a new beg

by thejarl7166

beg new a

1. Charm Learning Shard 1

Charm Learning Shard

Your name is Taylor Hebert, and your life sucks.

Oh, it started out well enough, in a typical white middle class fashion. You had parents who loved you and a best friend who did likewise, and you never went hungry or had to deal with any other poverty-related issues. The worst privation you ever suffered was some of your peers occasionally getting slightly more extravagant birthday gifts.

Then your mom died, which of course sucked. But you know what? You could handle that. Sure you cried for a week straight, and you never stopped feeling sad that you'd never see the most important person in your life ever again. Your dad took it worse than you did and just stopped... caring about anything, really. In a slightly melodramatic sense it was almost as if you had lost both your parents, but you got over it, you coped. Life was still worth living.

Then your best friend decided that she'd rather be your worst enemy. That... that hurt a lot, and you still don't know why she did it. And of course she always popular in school, much more than you, so when she suddenly set out to make your life a living hell pretty much every single one of your classmates went along with it. You never figured out why the teachers also seemed okay with it, but after a while you gave up on trying to do anything about it.

Oh, after a year and change it seemed like they were starting to grow tired of it. Gradually you started getting fewer and fewer emails speculating about your sexual preferences and personal hygiene. People started to make do with hurling insults at you as they passed by, instead of trapping you in jeering crowds. They hardly ever spit on you anymore, and you could go days without get tripped or shoved or pushed down the stairs. You could eat your lunch in public without it ending up on the floor. You even started storing things in your locker again, and they didn't get stolen or vandalized or anything.

You were so hopeful. You started thinking that maybe you could get one foot off the lowest rung of the social ladder. You thought you might even start making some new friends. Because apparently you're stupid.

Of course they were just lulling you into a false sense of security. Of course the whole point was getting you to start using your locker again. Because on your first day back after Christmas, the- thing happened that you don't like to think about, because of the blood and the smell and the puking and thescreamingand-

Okay. It's okay. You got this. You specifically picked a bench facing out towards the bay when you decided to sit down and reflect on your life, so that no one would be able to see the tears.

You woke up in the psych ward. You weren't physically hurt, they explained, but you wouldn't stop screaming until they sedated you. So they were going to keep you there for a few days for observation. The way you stared blankly at them couldn't have done their opinion of your mental health any favors. Did they think you'd have a relapse of being shoved into- no, don't think about that.

Also, what the hell did they mean, not physically hurt? Yes, you did feel fine. Better than fine, even. No scrapes, no bruises. You felt strong and fit and not at all like you were dying of infection. Which you by all rights should have been, because you remembered beating your knuckles bloody while covered in filth in the darkness and some of it went in your mouth-

It's fine. You're fine. It's over. You can stop hyperventilating now. As you were saying, at this point you suspected something was up. But you were stuck in the psych ward, and typing 'did I get superpowers?' into a search engine on a hospital computer would probably raise all kinds of flags.

Luckily you had a roommate. A girl, you forget her name, about your age, who had been admitted after a suicide attempt. Well, the kind of suicide attempt that her parents probably called 'a cry for help', but could more accurately be termed 'a cry for attention'.

Seeing as she craved attention, you gave her some. You exclaimed over the dreadful wounds on her wrists (you lose more blood on a monthly basis than could possibly have seeped from those shallow scratches) and commiserated over her unbearable life (two parents, several friends, boyfriend cheated on her). In exchange she let you borrow her expensive cellphone so that you could go online. Or to more accurately describe the way she acted: She graciously bestowed her marvel of technology on the benighted, destitute underclass who couldn't afford the miracle of perpetual connectivity.

So you did some research and it turns out that yes, when you suffer the absolutely worst thing that could ever possibly happen to you, when your mind snaps and cries out for something, anything to help, to make it stop, please, anything... sometimes you get superpowers.

(Unless your parents already have powers, then it's much, much easier. Glory Girl, for example, apparently got her powers when she was hit in the face with a ball in gym class, or something like that. You were shocked to find out how much you could hate someone you'd never even met, who'd never done anything to you)

You also found the blog of a nice doctor who explained how being 'held for observation' worked. It was not that most people needed it, or were even helped by it. It was just the hospital covering its ass. There wasn't even anything wrong with you, you just had a perfectly reasonable reaction to... things. Suicide girl had her attention, she wouldn't go back to that well for a while. And the guy in the next room over, who kept screaming all night long, every night? It wasn't as if he was going to be better by the time they tossed him out to make room for new people. And the less said about his roommate, who suffered from acute anxiety, the better.

But. If some mentally unstable person was sent home right away, and did do something regrettable then and there, there would be lawsuits like you wouldn't believe. So the doctors had to balance '98% chance everything will be fine' vs. '2% chance I lose my job and house and life savings', and opted for observation every time.

As promised, after three days they let you out with a pat on the back and advice to the tune of "try not to go crazy again, there' a good girl." You thanked them for their concern, hurried home, and grabbed a knife.

Not to do anything regrettable with! You just needed to test your powers. You very, very carefully tried cutting yourself, and you weren't cut! Excited, you tried again a bit more forcefully and promptly started bleeding all over the place. But the blood stopped flowing on its own remarkably quickly. Apparently you were as knife-resistant as someone wearing a thick sweater, and as bleeding-resistant as someone with a roll of gauze in their purse.

You also tried lifting heavy things, and yes, you were much stronger than before. Why, though you had the body of a scrawny fifteen year old girl, you had the strength of... a sixteen year old boy.

And the worst thing was, it made sense. According to the internet, people generally got powers that could somehow deal with the unbearable situation they found themselves in. And you were now protected from minor cuts and bruises, (presumably) resistant to infection, and strong enough to beat up any fifteen year old girls who tried to bully you. It was exactly what you needed.

Other people in your situation would have gotten steel-rending claws, or teleportation, or something. Glory Girl, the insufferable cunt, got invulnerability. And flight, and an aura that makes everyone love and/or fear her. But of course you would get the most well-calibrated powerset in the world. You could just envision your future in the Wards:

"Go out on patrol? Why don't you just stay here at base with your amazing Brute 0 powers and work on your homework? We note that your academic results have gone to shit over the last two years, you really need to make up for that."

Now, you might think that once you ended up in the hospital, something would finally be done about the bullying. You might think that, if you were somehow born without any pattern recognition skills whatsoever.

"Did you see who did it?"

"Not specifically who shoved me in there, no, but it was almost certainly either-"

"Ah, so you don't know. A shame, that. Nothing to be done, then."

Yeah, it went pretty much like that, except with a lot more screaming and insincere regret, on your part and theirs respectively. Then of course you had to go back to school. And now Operation: Get Taylor To Use Her Locker Again was finished, and things were back to normal.

One class. You managed to make it through one class before you were cornered in the corridor and shoved to the ground. Above you stood your greatest tormentors, the people you thought of as the Trio: Sophia, the psycho bitch jock who loved physical abuse; Emma, the psycho bitch traitor who still knew you better than anyone else and loved emotional abuse; and Madison, the psycho bitch vanilla flavor, who had to make up for her lack of natural advantages with effort and inventiveness.

The details are not important. Emma was saying mean things, Sophia was technically-not-kicking-you nudging you with her foot, and you were desperately looking for a way out when the world... shifted. Everything became both darker and at the same time more colorful. The people around you seemed somehow hollow, but you couldn't understand how or why. Except Sophia. Sophia was glowing, and you instinctively knew that you were looking at another parahuman.

Brockton Bay is positively lousy with parahumans, but when you limit it to black, female, teenage parahumans there's exactly one option. Shadow Stalker, of the Wards. One of the good guys. Haha, of course your vision of life in the Wards was born of downright retarded optimism:

"Go out on patrol? Why don't you just stay here at base with your amazing Brute 0 powers and work on your homework? We'll have the entire staff of the PRT march past on your lunch break so you can check for parahuman infiltrators, but we note that your academic results have gone to shit over the last two years and you really need to make up for that. We'll assign Shadow Stalker to help you study."

"Of course I'll help, we're old school buddies after all. But I gotta warn you, Taylor has a history of ignoring her homework and accusing random people of stealing it when confronted about it."

"Thanks Shadow Stalker, you're the best!"

And there was one last niggling mystery resolved. The internet had also said that you were supposed to get mental powers from mental trauma, and you certainly had some of that to go along with your cuts and bruises and probable infection. And there was your mental power, the ability to spot dangerous people, a good defensive tool. Except parahumans weren't the goddamn problem.

Or were they? You had come up a number of theories about how the bullies kept getting away with everything. Did Emma's lawyer dad make threatening noises about unfounded accusations and slander-related lawsuits? Was Madison just that much of a teacher's pet, and you that much of a social outcast? Was Winslow High such a gigantic shithole that as long as you weren't wearing gang colors and literally stabbing each other it didn't count as a problem? As of last week, none of them seemed plausible any more. It had to take more than that. And yes, apparently it was the superheroes all along, telling the school administration to cover up anything that might reflect badly on them.

With this last revelation added to the dung heap that was your life, you couldn't take it any more. You had to get out. You managed to get your feet under you and made a dash for the exit. In your blind rush you managed to knock Madison over with your Brute 0 powers, and you knew that if/when you came back you'd pay for that thrice over. But at the time you didn't care, you kept running right out of the school and didn't slow down until several blocks later.

You were never coming back. Why did you even bother? Your life was never going to stop getting worse. Fuck everything. You might as well end it right now.

Oh, you knew the cliches. You were just in the psych ward, and you got the whole spiel by proxy, from the doctors who talked at your roommate in your presence. 'You're not thinking clearly.' Aren't you? 'Think of the people who love you.' Yeah? Like who? 'There's so much to live for.' Yeah? Like what?

Not depressed, not crazy. You just rationally concluded that there would be no point in living any more, and the all-consuming despair you were feeling was just a natural response to this realization. Even then, you promised yourself that you'd sit down and think things through calmly before taking any drastic action. Which brings you to now, and this bench.

And after due reflection, nothing has changed your mind. You need to-

You blink as a steaming paper cup is shoved in front of your face.

"Tea? You look like someone who could use a cup of tea."

Notes:

Authors note

Blah blah blah, it's an Alt!Power Taylor. I tried to make it at least somewhat readable, for everyone who has read it 100 times before.

Also, please do not be alarmed by all the second person perspective happening here. This is not a misplaced quest. I love the second person for its own sake, and think it's criminally underused in regular fiction. Well, be the change you want to see, right?

Mechanics corner

tfw when you exalt and only gain a single dot each in strength and stamina (you didn't actually exalt, you triggered with the parahuman power of 'I can't believe its not exalt' - it matters, in some regards)

At least you get a whole bunch of residual exalted bullshit too: Healing factor, disease resistance, bleeding control, lethal soak equal to half stamina rounded down (in your case, 1).

No wonder you think you're a shitty Brute. If only this was a Gamer fic and you could see the juicy fives elsewhere on your character sheet. Your life would be a bit less suffering that way.

Chapter 2: T.02

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You turn to look at the person holding the cup of tea in front of your face, and see a girl maybe a few years older than you. She has freckles across her nose and blonde, shoulder-length hair poking out beneath a rather unflattering beanie. She looks serious and concerned.

Your eyes narrow with suspicion. A stranger offering a random act of kindness? To you? A likely story. The world shifts once more, and the girl is glowing.

You jerk away from her, almost spilling hot tea all over yourself. So, quick mental calculation: There is exactly one young female hero in town whose identity is not known to you, and Vista is what, twelve? Ergo, the girl next to you is a supervillain.

You're backing away from her when the glow filling her being pulses.

"You're parahuman?" she exclaims. Wait, what? That's your line.

"You're a supervillain," you shoot back. You stop backing away, but you keep the bench between you. It's enough to keep you out of range of a sudden lunge by a normal human, and if she has super speed or laser eyes or whatever running further wouldn't help anyway.

"Yeah, you got me there." She grimaces. "Doesn't make me a bad person, though."

"Really."

Her glow- her power pulses again. It's... telling her something? Wait, how could you tell that?

"So, you think being a superhero makes someone a good person?" She looks smug, as if she knows she just won the argument. Her power must have clued her in to your recent discoveries re: heroes.

"What's your power?" you ask.

"What, you can't tell? With your own power, I mean."

"Perhaps I'm just testing you to see if you'll tell the truth."

Another pulse. That would be her finding out that it's a little of column A, a little of column B, probably.

"I'm psychic."

Ah, now she's testing you.

"No you're not. Your power never reaches outside yourself when it feeds you information. Try again."

"Damn." She grins, not at all upset at being caught out. "You got me, I'm actually super Sherlock Holmes."

That... fits. You nod. "So what do you want with me, Holmes? Recruiting for your villain team?"

She holds up her hands. "I didn't even know you had powers until just now. I just saw you sitting there and my power told me you could use a cup of tea. And a friend."

God dammit. You're unreasonably sure that her power does not offer that kind of advice. Rather, it must have said something along the lines of "holy shit look at how clearly suicidal that girl is", and this supervillain-who-is-not-a-bad-person decided to stage an intervention. God fucking dammit. Just what you didn't want, pity.

On the other hand, a small treacherous part of you whispers, you kinda want a friend right now. Like, a lot. Uh, not such a small part, really. You, you might be outvoted here.

You startle as you feel a hand on your shoulder. "Let's go get another cup of tea, yeah?"

You nod silently and allow yourself to be led.

The conversation doesn't resume until you've ensconced yourselves at a nearby cafe and gotten your drinks. Your new friend takes a sip of her elaborate coffee-based beverage and smiles at you again.

"So, let me guess: You're pretty new at this whole thing?" Not actually a guess, most likely. You caught her power pulsing again just before she asked. Why no, you didn't stop monitoring her just because she appears to be both friendly and harmless. It's called learning from experience.

"Just found out today." You neglect to mention your Brute 0 powers, which you discovered last week.

"Okay. So, most important thing. With your magic spy powers you're going to find out secret identities left and right just walking down the street. Whatever you do, don't act on the information, or even let on that you know."

"Why not?"

"It's a whatchamacallit, an unspoken agreement. No one wants to go out and fight a villain in the afternoon only to come home to find his kids burnt to the ground in the evening. Or have the heroes try to arrest your wife as an accessory, or whatever. As long as we don't unmask each other we can avoid that whole can of worms. Keeps things civilized."

You nod along. It seems reasonable enough. Especially since it's going to leave you with an unfair advantage, a trump card. Not that you'd break the rules except in the utmost extremity, but-

"On that note: I'm Lisa, but don't tell anyone." She extends her hand to you and you shake it.

"Taylor, likewise." You frown as you recall something she said earlier. "Magic spy powers, really?"

"Well, aren't they?"

"It's silly. If you insist on calling it magic, at least be a bit more dignified about it. 'All-encompassing sorcerer's sight', maybe."

She snorts. "That's dignified, and not silly?"

"Shut up."

Her power has been lit up like a Christmas tree the whole time you've been bantering. Is she using superpowers to make sure she doesn't sass you too hard in your fragile emotional state, the considerate bitch?

Lisa-o-vision, just now

Is still using her sensor power on me. Sensor power can be toggled, is deliberately keeping an eye on me.

Yep, figures. I did just admit to being a villain.

Is withholding details about her power.

No big surprise there either, I wouldn't trust myself either at this point in our relationship.

Left out details because she's embarrassed. Thinks her power is weak, pitiful.

It seems pretty good to me. Low self esteem would fit her profile, though.

Is wrong. Hasn't discovered everything her power can do.

Iiinteresting.

"Fine. Then tell me, o wise Merlin, what doth thy Sorcerer's Sight reveal when you look at yourself?"

Huh. That's great idea, and you're ashamed that you didn't think of it yourself. But you still reflexively reply "Don't you mean 'when thou lookest at thyself?'" and Lisa sticks out her tongue at you.

You look down at your hands. They glow. Well, duh? But that's all you can tell. You cross you eyes as you try to look ins-

-ide your own head. You're floating in darkness, and you can't tell if you're looking at yourself, or the universe. Is there a difference? Luckily you're distracted from pondering such matters. There are... stars in here? Faint golden stars. One of them is pulsing. You focus your attention on it, and it fills your vision. Up close(?), what seemed like a star turns out to be an incredibly intricate web of golden light. It's... why, it's sorcerer's sight, of course. You'd recognize it anywhere.

There's where it draws power from- you feel dizzy. From things man was not meant to know, clearly. Here's the part that monitors the emanations given off by powers, this part analyses the results, here's where it hijacks your optic nerve, and here some feedback goes back into, uh, into the unspeakable. Yes of course you can tell how it works, you're using it right now. Something feels off about that logic, but it's inarguably true.

It's rather similar to what you saw of Lisa's power, now that you think about it. Not the sensor, but the analysis module and the structure of the power conduits... You absently sketch golden lines in a nearby patch of void as you ponder. Hm, no, you got the angles wrong. The conduits won't be stable. And indeed, the lines twist in on themselves and fade away. You'd have to-

Your eyes fly open and you're back in the real world.

"I can learn to do what you do," you whisper. Lisa's eyes go wide, and wider still as her power goes off and presumably backs you up on this.

"Yes, like that. Do that again." You lean forward and stare intently at your new best friend. She complies.

"Again."

"Whoa, slow down. Is this going to take long? I can't keep this pace up forever, you know."

"Sorry." You do your best to remember what you saw, and mentally sketch it out. But after a minute or so you admit defeat and look back at Lisa imploringly. She sighs and rolls her eyes, but uses her power again.

The rest of the day passes in a flash, though to an observer it would look incredibly boring. You stare intently at Lisa for a few seconds, then stare off into space for several minutes. Then you do it again. And again. Lisa initially tried to share amusing anecdotes involving what she discovered about the people passing by, but it was just distracting you so you asked her to stop.

Lisa is shaking you by the shoulder. You blink and look around. When did it get so dark?

"You'd better get home before your dad starts to worry," she says.

You realize that you haven't eaten anything since breakfast and it's- seven PM, really? Now that you're paying attention again, your bladder is quick to add its own set of complaints. A quick glance tells you that Lisa isn't doing so hot either, but she didn't say anything until now.

"Wow, uh, yeah. Where did the time go?" You don't even react to the way she said 'dad' rather than 'parents'. She's been sitting there doing nothing but figuring things out all day, after all.

"So, how close are you to done? When do I get a super-sleuth buddy?"

"Oh, that. Uh..." You consider what you've learned so far. "Twenty percent? Ish?"

Lisa can't quite hide a flinch. "It couldn't be easy, could it?"

"So, uh, same time tomorrow?" You can't quite bring yourself to meet her eyes as you say it. It belatedly occurs to you just how hard you're riding the pity train right now. But you can't stop now. Not when you're this close to getting a real power that doesn't suck.

"Yeah, ok. Let's remember to eat lunch next time, though."

Turns out that your estimate of twenty percent was a bit optimistic, and you weren't quite done by Friday. Just making an exact replica of her power didn't work - whenever you tried, things would just twist away from you and collapse. Different brains, or something. You had to start rebuilding things to fit you, which of course required a lot of pondering and experimentation.

You wanted to keep going just one more day, but Lisa put her foot down. She didn't become a supervillain in order to work on the weekend, she declared. You conceded the point, and left her to drink champagne on her private yacht, or whatever it is supervillains do to spend their ill-gotten gains.

Lisa-o-vision, this weekend

Fuck sunlight. Fuck traffic noise. Fuck sensory input in general. Fuck my power, fuck Thinker migraines, fuck everything.

Fuck Taylor. Why couldn't she just lock herself in her room and listen to sad music when contemplating suicide, like a normal person? But nooo, she had to do it in public. Never sparing a single thought for how she'd be dumping shitloads of guilt on any innocent psychics that happened by, the inconsiderate bitch.

Fuck me, for thinking I could fix everything by making friends. Girl talk, shopping, all that good stuff. No, of course she turns out to have the least convenient parahuman power in the world, because fuck my life.

And if I don't show up on Monday for another marathon power abuse session, she'll just jump off a bridge right then and there.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

You're not a supervillain, though, so you had no qualms about working on the weekend. You spent the whole time at a computer in the library, trying to find out more about powers and parahumans. You had already read all the relevant material provided by the 'official' source of all things parahuman, ParaHumans Online, during your stay in the psych ward. But the problem is right there in 'official': As official as Youtube or Wikipedia - the first, the biggest, an archetype, a de facto monopoly, whatever you want to call it, it's still owned by an unaccountable private entity with an agenda. PHO showed clear signs of twisting in the iron grip of moderators, so you decided to widen your search.

Unfortunately you quickly discovered that the only people who hosted content outside the 'official' site were the people who had been kicked out from there - and most of them had been kicked out for very good reasons.

Among other startling things, your off-PHO trawl taught you that Scion is the second coming of Jesus, that Scion is the devil pretending to be Jesus to lead people astray, and that Scion is a remote-controlled animatronic puppet run by the CIA, who are lizard people. You also learned that both the president of the United States and the chief director of the PRT are actually Eidolon, using Changer powers to secretly run the whole country.

Eidolon is also Scion, and Legend's husband. Or maybe the husband is real, and Legend is just cheating on him with Eidolon. You learned so many things about Legend's love life. The Endbringers aren't real, the government made them up to cover up nuclear and/or mind control tests on civilians. The Endbringers are demons, everyone is already dead, and this is hell.

As fun as all that was, you did learn some real things as well. You think. You learned that parahumans are born as well as made - that is, unless you're born with certain specific mutations in your brain, you will never get powers no matter how bad your life gets. There are several papers on the subject, complete with MRI images (that you lack the expertise to interpret, but no one seems to refute). Yet there is no mention of this on PHO. This fact is considered too undemocratic for public consumption, apparently.

You already knew that you can't deliberately give yourself a so called 'trigger event', nor can anyone else trigger you if you know that's what they are trying to do. No one knows why that is the case, but the PHO wiki warned about it in very big letters. What you didn't know about was the multitude of things done to more or less willing subjects by various government agencies before people figured this out, and frankly you could have done without that knowledge. The released documents contain more black bars than legible text, but still manage to make your stomach turn. When the page starts describing things that are still being done by various African warlords today, you decide drop that line of inquiry.

But there are also a lot of rumors, individually easy to dismiss but collectively convincing, of an organization, or villain team, or single villain (accounts differ on that part) that can give people powers on demand. How they do it is anyone's guess. Maybe there's a cape out there that can give other people powers permanently, maybe it's some sort of surgery or drugs to activate the previously mentioned mutant brain region, or maybe they are just that much better than anyone else at torturing people.

You also figured out who Lisa is. Apparently no one else even knows what her power is, but you were able to find her through a process of elimination: Every other possible match had known powers that didn't match Lisa's. You're pretty impressed, actually. 'Tattletale is allegedly a supervillain operating in Brockton Bay', that's the entirety of her wiki entry. She must be very new, or very clever. Oh right, she is literally superhumanly clever. Speaking of which, it's time for your final training session, then you can be superhumanly clever too! You walk right past Winslow, as you have done every day for the last week, and continue on towards the boardwalk to meet your friend.

Notes:

Authors note

If you ever meet the sunk cost fallacy you should give him a big sloppy kiss, because he just saved your life. If Lisa had known from the start how much of an effort saving you would be she would have walked away and eaten that guiltsicle without a moment's hesitation.

Chapter 3: T.03

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The golden web twists in your grasp. Not again! You were sure you had it this time. What did you miss? But rather than fall apart, like it has done the last, oh, fifty or so times you tried, it seems to settle in. You gingerly release the construct and there's golden flash in your minds eye as it sears itself into the fabric of your soul and/or reality.

You let out a shuddering breath. "I did it," you say softly, hardly daring to believe it. "I finally have a real power."

"About time, isn't it?" Lisa tries to keep a light tone, but you can tell that she's pretty fed up with the whole thing too. "Go on, show me. Deduce something about me, Holmes."

Ok, you will. Dear new power, why is Lisa wearing so much makeup lately? She wasn't wearing any at all when you first met, but now she's practically slathering it on. You try to activate your new power the same way you do sorcerer's sight, but nothing happens. It seems to be stuck somehow? You frown.

"It- it's not letting me turn it on."

"Seriously? Are you sure-" Lisa's power activates, and she winces. "Yeah ok, I can confirm that you really have it."

"How do you use yours?" you ask.

She shrugs. "It just happens on its own when I want it to. Or sometimes when I don't. It's never been difficult." This is clearly your cue to make a joke about some bodily function or other, but you're too distracted to come up with something funny.

"Are you still using sorcerer's sight? Maybe you can only do one thing at a time."

You turn off your magic eyes and try again. Please work, please work...

"What's my favourite color?" Lisa asks. You shake your head. "When is my birthday?" Nothing. Not a single glimmer of intuition.

"Can you really tell someone's birthday?" you ask.

"To the nearest month, sure. Let's try something else." Lisa rolls up her sleeve and puts her hand just below the table. "How many fingers am I holding up?" You realize that you're supposed to figure it out from looking at the tendons in her wrist, but it's not working.

She's starting to look worried. You can only imagine what your own face looks like right now. You could feel it becoming part of you. Why isn't it working?

"Maybe it just won't turn on its wielder. How about that guy over there? Tell me something embarrassing about him."

You glare at the poor innocent bystander and hammer at your new power, to no effect. Come on, come on... You realize that you've been clenching your jaw so hard that you're starting to feel a headache coming on. It hasn't been helping. You slump in your seat, defeated.

"Nothing." You hide your face in your hands. No. No no no no-

Lisa wants Coil dead.

"YES!" You jump out of your seat and pump your fist in victory. "Yessssssss!"

"Uh, Taylor? You're spooking the normies." Lisa says softly. She's smiling, though.

You look around, and realize that a number of other people in the cafe are staring at you. Also, that you're doing a victory dance. "Sorry," you mutter, and sit down again. But you're still shaking with adrenaline, and you can't keep a grin off your face.

"So, dish. What did you figure out?" Lisa asks.

Oh, that. "What do you have against Coil? Isn't he-" Lisa is making frantic shushing motions. She looks scared, now.

"Come on, let's go for a walk," she says.

You're confused. She has been perfectly fine with discussing your respective powers and the finer points of supervillainy in the cafe, but now she's worried. Well, maybe it makes sense. The powers that be seem to be unreasonably lenient towards costumed crime, after all, but you just graduated to discussing regular old-fashioned murder. Apparently.

You end up back at the bench where you first met.

"First up, you're never going to say that name again," Lisa says after looking around around to make sure that no one is nearby. "Second, you're going to tell me exactly what you just found out. Third, we're going to talk about the importance of pretending that none of this happened."

You frown. "Ok, so about... Pancakes. I was going to say, isn't he the guy who's LARPing as a villain?" From what you read online Coil has been seen in costume and surrounded by minions, but no one has ever caught him, or them, actually using a power or committing a crime. "Obviously not, from your reaction."

"Hell no. Pancakes is the real deal. Easily the scariest guy in town. No one has anything on him because he's just that good."

"Like you, then," you note.

"I'm nothing like him!"

You hold up your hands placatingly. "I just meant that no one knows anything about your power either, Tattletale." She gives you an 'I see what you did there' look as you casually drop her cape name.

"Oh, that. Yeah, I've been trying to keep out of the spotlight. But the Undersiders are going to become a lot more well known in the next few months. We're the hottest up and coming villain team you'll ever see." She flashes you her trademark smile.

You grin back. You figured out her name, yes, but you didn't know she was part of the Undersiders.

Lisa shakes her head ruefully as her power tells her this. "Well played," she says. "But we're getting off track. Exactly what did you find out about Pancakes?"

"You, uh, really don't like 'em." You scratch at the back of your neck and look away. There is really no nice way of putting this. "Like, you prefer your Pancakes to not be alive."

"Shit! And you thought birthdays were hard? How the hell did you get that one?"

"I don't- well, hmmm..." You do kind of have an idea, but it needs testing. "Wait here, I have to try something."

"Where are you going? We're not done talking!" Lisa tries to grab your arm, but you shake her off. You have science to do. Your new power didn't activate until you gave up and stopped trying to interact with Lisa. So, interaction first, power second.

There's a middle-aged lady coming this way. She looks safe. You walk towards her while looking out towards the bay, and bump into her slightly as you pass each other.

"Sorry." / "Sorry."

No insight. Probably needs more interaction. You notice that Lisa has been following you. Fine, she can be your assistant. You spot a likely next test subject: A well-muscled young man around twenty or so, wearing a short-sleeved shirt in January. Yeah, wringing some interaction out of this guy won't be hard. You grab Lisa by the arm and approach him.

"Excuse me? Could you help us settle a bet?" you say.

"Yes?"

"My friend here," you indicate Lisa, "claims that you must go to the gym five times a week to look that good. I said three times a week was enough."

"Ah, I'm afraid that your friend has the right of it." The way he smiles and subtly but visibly flexes as he answers makes you giggle. That's ok, being giggly increases the verisimilitude.

Lisa reaches out to squeeze his bicep, causing him to abandon subtlety and adopt a strongman pose. "See, I know these things," she says. Her tone is appropriately light, but the glare she shoots you tells you that she has opinions about the little roleplaying scenario you dragged her into.

You're not quite sure that was enough interaction, so you steel yourself for the next logical step. You're only going to want to melt into the pavement and die for a brief moment.

"So, uh, do you want to grab a coffee?" Fuck, that stings. The way he looks at you in response clearly communicates 'I enjoy the attention, but I'm so far out of your league it's not even funny'.

"Perhaps another time," he says diplomatically. You nod silently, trying to contain your blush. As he leaves, you activate your power again.

Muscle dude wants to go on a date with Miss Militia

Lisa puts a hand on your shoulder. "Don't feel too bad about it, Taylor. He prefers older women."

"I know," you say, grinning like a maniac. This must be how Lisa feels all the time.

"Ah, so you figured out how it works."

"Yeah. It's more limited than yours. I need to talk to people, and then I know their soul's price."

"You know their what?"

"You know, their deepest, most heartfelt desire? The thing that, if provided to them, would make them loyal to me."

Lisa's eyes go wide. "You turned Sherlock Holmes into a Master power!"

"It's not a Master power," you object. "It's called gratitude."

"Nuh-uh. My power says it's a Master effect. Check it with your sorcerer's sight, I bet you'll spot a little seed left in his brain that's going to make it really hard for him to be ungrateful." A look of disgust crosses her face. "Hell, check my brain."

You turn your sight back on and look after muscle dude. He's pretty far away, but you can still make out a tiny glowing speck in his otherwise hollow aura. Yeah. He may have turned you down for a date, but you still put a little bit of parahuman inside him.

It's harder to tell with Lisa. The glow of her own power makes the seed stand out less, but now that you know what you're looking for you can tell that it's there. You also notice another form of feedback, from your new power reacting to the seed it planted. "I'm standing next to a person whose soul I know the price of," it says. Don't you mean 'of whose soul I know the price?' you respond, and it sticks out its tongue at you. Ok not really, but you're trying to distract yourself from the sudden guilt.

"Sorry," you say.

"I guess it doesn't do any harm," she admits. "After all, that seed is never going to blossom. Because you're going to promise me to never mess with, uh, Pancakes, and I'm going to check to make sure you mean it."

"If-"

"Because if you don't," she continues, "we're both going to end up dead. Also your dad, and your favorite teacher, and your dog if you had one. I repeat, Pancakes don't fuck around."

Holy shit.

"Didn't you say earlier that the unwritten rules-"

"Pancakes don't give a shit about the rules, Taylor. Until and unless you copy a power that makes you - and your friends, my ass is on the line too - immune to snipers, don't even think about it."

"Yeah, I promise." You are being 100% sincere, avoiding Pancakes seems like an excellent idea. Lisa looks intently at you, then nods.

"Speaking of copying powers, exactly how does it work? How long can you hold on to it? Can you hold more than one at a time?" She pauses, then asks what you suspect is actually foremost on her mind: "If you need it again, will be faster the second time around?"

You shake your head. "It doesn't work like that. It's part of me now, exactly like sorcerer's sight." Lisa opens her mouth to speak, but you hold up your hand. "I don't think there's a limit, either. When I look at them, they are like tiny stars in an infinite void."

Lisa just stares at you for a moment, then snorts. "And this is the girl who was going 'boo hoo, woe is me, my power sucks?'" She looks thoughtful, then adds "As much as it pains me to admit it, you really should join the Wards."

"Fuck the Wards," you respond automatically.

"No, seriously. Go to the PRT and introduce yourself as the lovechild of Dauntless and Eidolon. They'll keep you safe from everything and give you new powers to eat all day, every day, forever. Then by the time you graduate you and Dauntless Original Flavor can form the second Triumvirate together. Just the two of you, a second Triumvirate, because you'll be that strong."

"Perhaps I didn't speak clearly enough. Fuck. The. Wards." Lisa tries to say something, but you keep going. "I bet if you came to them as a Thinker... seven-ish, whatever, they would keep you safe and give you lots of interesting things to think about too. Yet here you are. Do you think I want to sit around being treated like a combination house pet/nuclear weapon? To hang out with assholes and be bossed around by cunts all day long, forever?"

Did she think the prospect of free powers would make you forget about Shadow Stalker, and what her superiors let her do? You'd rather join the Slaughterhouse 9 than the Wards.

Lisa holds up her hands. "Fine, forget I said anything. But if you go independent you're going to have to keep a low profile. The lowest. If the truth gets out everyone will be after you. At the same time, you need to get more powerful fast. You're still a pure Thinker in a world full of Blasters and Brutes."

"I can handle myself, thanks." You're a Brute too. Barely.

"Not saying you can't, not saying you can't. There's just, uh, I have this friend who I could probably be convinced to let you study their power, who'll keep their mouth shut about it. Do you-"

"I said, I can handle myself." No, you're not being unreasonable or unfair to your only friend because you're angry at someone completely unrelated. Shut up, tiny voice.

"At least take this." She hands you a cellphone. "It's just a cheap burner with my number on it. In case anything comes up, or if you want to brag about your exploits, or whatever." When you inevitably get in trouble and need my help, she doesn't say, very loudly.

You nod stiffly and accept the proffered phone, because you're being reasonable. It's not like you need ever use it.

You exchange farewells, and you don't even flip the bird over your shoulder when you hear her mutter about how she's 'not letting all that effort go to waste'.

Notes:

Authors note

This is where I head off Taylor joining the Wards, which would make for a non-story, and Taylor joining Coil, which would make for a light-hearted comedy. I need something juicier and more grimderp.

With the introductory chapters out of the way, expect another 10-15kB per day, five days per week. Or rather don't expect that, because it's a fan fiction writer telling you they'll keep to a schedule. Expect it to end suddenly and disappointingly.

Mechanics corner

This is also where I reveal the basic conceit of CLS: You have your one starter Charm, and the only way to gain more is to use it to study other parahumans. All charms count as out-of-caste and cannot be learned without a 'teacher', but also ignore all prerequisites.

Status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Quests:

John 'Test Subject' Doe: Wants a date with Miss Militia

Tattletale: Wants Coil dead

Chapter 4: S.01

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You have time to cool off a bit on the way home. Lisa was just trying to help, you realize. You should probably apologize for biting her head off like that. It's what a good person would do. Yet, it seems that you really don't want to. Guess you're not a good person.

Even that aside, alienating someone so resourceful and potentially helpful - who appears to be loyal even without soul's price shenanigans - is just stupid. A simple text message saying 'sorry' would do it. Five letters and you're done. Hell, three letters would do.

Your new cellphone remains in your pocket. Guess you're not a smart person either.

Another worrying thought hits you as you enter your house. You haven't been to school in a week. You didn't even consider it an option, not when you could be getting a new power instead. Now that you have it... you're not regretting your choices, not for a moment. It's just that you've started to consider consequences again.

Your dad hasn't said anything. Surely he must know. The school must have called. You barely even talk to each other anymore, but he's still very protective. He'd especially want to protect you from yourself. Probably because he's learned firsthand how bad things can get when you just stop caring about things, you think sourly.

Yet this evening passes like any other, in that familiar uncomfortable silence, broken only by token queries and formulaic answers.

Maybe... maybe there's been a mixup at school. You only went back very briefly last Monday. There was that one roll call, yes, but maybe they think you were marked as present by mistake. After all, you didn't show up for any other classes that day. Or that week. They might think that you're still in the hospital.

If so, that's... nice, but it's going to blow up in your face any day now. But you're not going to let that bother you now. You have a brand new power itching to be used. Tomorrow is the first day of your new career.

A fresh new day, and you already have a plan. It's simple really, it goes something like this:

1. Find parahuman, know soul's price

2. Do huge favor, gain loyalty

3. Request favor in return: Let me study your power

You don't worry about the tiny bit of mind control that's going to help said loyalty along. Gratitude is good! The world could use more of it. Sure, someone who really wanted to could paint what you're setting out to do in a negative light, with cackling and world domination and 'all shall love me and despair'. But that's not what you're about. Yes, you're going to discover people's deepest secrets and use your knowledge to control their behavior. That sounds bad. But you're going to do it by helping them get the thing they desperately want. It's like the opposite of blackmail.

Yes, you're going to be a hero. Or, an anti-villain at worst. Slightly Morally Ambiguous Santa Claus. Though you're going to need a better cape name than that. Or, ideally, you wouldn't need one, because if everything goes perfectly no one will even realize that you're using a power on them. Hah. Yeah, you're not going to rely on everything going perfectly.

But if it does... why, everything is just going to get easier and easier as you go along. Pretend for a moment that the random dude from yesterday had been a cape. Then as soon as you helped Miss Militia, you could simply ask her to go an a date with him. Boom, two powers for the price of one.

Which is not to say that there won't be challenges to this, uh, reverse blackmail scheme. First problem: Actually interacting with people to learn their secrets. You're hardly about to walk into ABB territory and announce "hi, I'd like to have a brief conversation with Lung," you're not sui- you're not stupid.

Even heroes present a problem. You're not going to be joining the Wards (fuck the Wards), so you'd have to find some other way to get to them. You could try walking around alone in the bad parts of town at night, and hope that someone shows up to save you when you inevitably get robbed and/or raped. This is clearly a terrible idea. You could also try robbing people yourself, and then banter with the heroes when they show up to stop you. Also a terrible idea.

No, you're going to have to catch them in their civilian identity. Which in and of itself is not hard, everyone knows the Wards all go to school at Arcadia. You know better of course, but most of them probably go there. All you have to do is hang around outside Arcadia with sorcerer's sight on and you'll pick them out in no time at all. You're even too young and female to be arrested for creepily lurking outside a school all day.

But that still leaves the issue of the approach. You're going to need some extremely plausible deniability each time you do it. If they just tell to fuck off, they're busy people, that's a best case scenario. Worst case they begin to wonder why you're accosting them specifically - didn't their teammate mention that they were also being stalked by an ugly brunette the other day? - and then you wake up in an interrogation room surrounded by angry people with superpowers.

You spent most of high school being flat broke. Because literally everything that you brought to school would eventually end up either stolen or destroyed. Including clothes and school books. So you had to keep buying replacements. But since the... the...

The locker. You don't have to be afraid of the word any more. The locker was good. The locker gave you powers. Good powers. Deep breaths.

Since the locker plan involved several months of not ruining your shit, you were able to accumulate some modest savings. Of course nothing you stored in the locker was salvageable, but since you're not going back to school you don't need to worry about replacing it either.

First up, contact lenses. Who has ever seen a cape with glasses? You get a month's supply of disposable one-day lenses to start with.

Next, weapons. Until you get real combat powers, you'll just have to shore up your Brute 0 durability with ordinary weapons. No guns, though. Even disregarding the issues of finding someone willing to sell to a gun to a fifteen-year-old, you noticed that capes don't tend use guns. Even though cops have them and - this is the really strange part, now that you think about it - a regular handgun is actually better than the powers of several successful heroes. Another unwritten rules thing? You'll have to ask Lisa.

Instead, you end up settling for a small canister of pepper spray. You should probably get a knife as well. Problem is you don't know anything about knives.

You size up the guy manning the register. Exactly the kind of man you'd expect to see running a survival/sporting goods/self-defense store. He clearly loves the constitution, especially the second amendment. Maybe not so much thirteen through fifteen. You figure a direct approach would be best.

"Perhaps you can recommend me a good knife," you say.

"What would you be using it for?"

"If the pepper spray doesn't work, I'd like to be able to stab my attacker in the dick."

He nods approvingly at your attitude, but seems concerned about your competence. "Do you know how to use a knife?" he asks.

Turns out that 'pointy end goes in the bad guy?' is not considered sufficient expertise. So you get a lecture on the history, philosophy and morality of self defense and the act of carrying a deadly weapon. Also a brief digression on the unbearable embarrassment inherent in being stabbed to death with your own knife after the bad guy wrestles it away from you, and a scrawled note with the phone number of a guy who gives lessons in knife fighting.

Those formalities out of the way, he shows you several combat knives, discussing their relative merits at length. You end up just picking the cheapest one, though. Good knives are more expensive than you thought! You're pretty much broke again.

No matter. Perhaps you'll- holy shit is that who you think it is? It is! What are the odds? You're not even using sorcerer's sight to scan the crowd for random capes, because you thought it was too unlikely to succeed. You're not going to question it, though. You figure the universe owes you a few hundred lucky breaks.

Don't stop, don't stare. Pretend you didn't notice, circle around. You need a plan. You can't just approach directly, because a) it won't work, celebrities don't just stop and chat like that, and b) you can't be seen deliberately approaching any cape, even one with a public identity. You must avoid that pattern of behavior entirely.

Okay, you've got this. You have a plan.

Oh god, this is the worst plan. You can't believe you thought this was a good plan. But you have to keep going. There's your target, and there's a car, right on cue. You'll never have a better chance.

You step into the street. For a brief moment your world is full of car horn and screeching tires, then it's full of pain and you're flying through the air. You have to protect your head, she can't heal brains, you have to protect your head but you have no idea which way is up and you can't seem to move your arms properly.

By pure luck you land mostly on your butt. Your new purchases dig into your back as your backpack 'cushions' the impact, and your head hits the pavement relatively gently. The more impressionable bystanders have started screaming. You just lie there with your eyes closed, waiting for the pain to go away. Someone gently touches your neck, and it does. See, perfect plan. You don't know what you were fretting about earlier.

"Oh god, is she going to be all right?"

Your eyes snap open and fasten on an old man standing next to you, wringing his hands and generally looking terrified and miserable. Oh wait, you recognize him. It's the driver, you caught a brief glimpse of him before you became airborne.

"She just appeared right in front of me, there was nothing I could do. Please tell me she's going to be all right."

All of a sudden you're filled with guilt and shame. This wasn't part of the plan. You never considered to feelings of the driver of the car you were going to use as a prop. Or to be more precise, it didn't even occur to you that you might encounter a non-asshole who wouldn't just yell at you for denting his car with your clumsy body.

"Please-" There's a lump in our throat. "Please forgive me."

He seems taken aback. "Young lady, I-"

"It was entirely my fault," you interrupt him. "I did not watch where I was going. I deeply regret subjecting you to such a traumatic experience. Please, may I have your forgiveness?"

"She's going to be all right," Panacea interjects. "She was hurt pretty badly, but it's nothing that I can't fix."

"Was you car damaged?" you ask. "I, I can help pay for repairs." 'You totally can't, you're broke!', a small voice inside your head screams.

"No, no! There's just a bit of, uh- it wasn't damaged."

"Then please, don't let me take up any more of your time. I'm fine. I'm being tended to by the greatest healer in the world-" You break off as you realize one element that you had forgotten to account for in your plans. Panacea can only fix people. But a quick check reveals that your glasses are still on your face, still intact.

"-and I didn't even break my glasses," you finish. "If you could put this shameful incident entirely from your mind, nothing could make me happier."

Did you really just say that? Perhaps you scrambled your brains a little bit after all, because apparently your speech patterns regressed several centuries in an attempt to convey the intensity of your feelings. At least the driver seems to take it at face value. He nods awkwardly to you before returning to his vehicle.

Panacea, on the other hand, is giving you a somewhat skeptical look. "All done," she announces. She grabs your hand to help you stand up. "On your feet, victim girl."

Well, at least the unexpected genuine guilt was good practice for the next step of the plan.

"I'm so terribly sorry," you tell her. "I know you work so hard to help those in need, and here I go wasting what little free time you have with more work." Panacea still looks skeptical, but maybe a little pleased, too.

"It's no trouble", she says, "I could hardly have left you dying in the street."

"Still, I feel terrible about it." You don't actually feel terrible about it. Panacea is a second-generation cape, she can deal. "Can I make it up to you somehow? Buy you dinner?"

She shakes her head.

"A coffee, at least?" you try.

"Thanks, but I really have to go. Just try to be more careful in the future."

Panacea wants her sister to reciprocate her romantic feelings

Wow. That's, uh. Wow. Luckily, no one will think it odd if you just stand there for a while, staring after your savior like an idiot. Because that's what you're going to do.

That, that sure is a can of worms. No, you're not going to mindrape Glory Girl, that's not the issue. But if you someday got a power that could, the most ethical thing might actually be to mindrape Panacea into being less of a deranged pervert (and then reapply soul's price for a second try). After all, if there is such a power out there Panacea could try to get it from the original source, and that is Not OK.

Irregardless (you feel a need to compensate for your earlier overly formal language), that's a problem for another day. You turn away and lose yourself in the crowd.

You regret that you didn't catch her healing you with sorcerer's sight, but you couldn't risk turning it on. With every function of your body laid out for her inspection, the very last thing you wanted to hear from her was "what's going on with your optic nerve? Are you a cape?" You had to gamble on her not noticing your Brute 0 powers as it was.

You seem to have dodged that particular bullet, but you have to face the really glaringly obvious flaw in your plan that you really should have seen coming: These are people with superhuman powers you're targeting. Whatever it is that they want, that they don't already have, is going to be fucking difficult to acquire.

Especially since you entirely lack powers to help with step 2. You, uh, you should probably call up Lisa, apologize to her and ask her to hook you up with that friend she mentioned.

No! You can't just let a single setback demoralize you like that. If reverse blackmail isn't working, what else can you do? How about, reverse vigilantism? Where you patrol the streets at night, trying to not stop crime. Where instead of hunting criminals, you hunt heroes hunting criminals, and secretly study them with sorcerer's sight.

Ok, so what are the glaringly obvious flaws that you really should have seen coming with this plan?

1. Dangerous. Without combat powers, it's basically a thinly disguised version of your rejected "get mugged, hope for heroes" plan.

2. Fights don't last very long. A few minutes at most. It took you something like 50 hours to copy Lisa's power. Maybe it will be easier next time, but not that much easier.

3. Capes with Mover powers will use them for the entire duration of their patrol. But the whole point of Mover powers is that you, the (mostly) baseline human, can't keep up with them.

Yeah, you sure are glad you saw those glaringly obvious flaws in advance. So what else can you do? Why, you could infiltrate one of the existing cape groups in the city. Then you could hang out with them, and spar with them, and challenge them to power using contests. All the while, unbeknownst to them, using sorcerer's sight!

Yes, this seems like an excellent plan. Now, how to go about it?

Taylor's infiltration plans

ABB

-get combat power

-be asian

-get Changer power

Merchants

-get combat power

-be addicted to drugs

-drugs are bad for you

Empire 88

-get combat power

-be white ✓

Coil

-nope nope nope nope

-pancakes are bad for you

-staying the hell away from pancakes is not just a good idea, it's also a promise

Faultline's Crew

-get combat power

-just hire them, they are mercenaries

-get money (what do mercenaries even cost?)

The Undersiders

-choo choo all aboard the pity train

Uber & Leet

-become fake gamer girl

-have tits

-get Changer power

Wards

-fuck the wards

New Wave

-get combat power

-reveal identity

-be part of the Pelham/Dallon extended family

-marry Shielder?

Wards 2, Arcadia Infiltrationist

-get transferred to Arcadia

-reverse blackmail school administrator

Protectorate

-get combat power

-be 18+ years old

-get Changer power

-new persona must stand up to government scrutiny

-identity theft

-stop making plans that hurt innocents

God dammit, more glaringly obvious flaws! Fine, you'll bloody well call Lisa and apologize and ask for her help like a goddamn adult. You get your phone out, but hesitate with your finger over the call button. You still really don't want to do this. You'll text her like goddamn teenager, you decide.

Sorry about blowing up on you yesterday. I'd like you to introduce me to your friend.

k, will get bck 2 u w/ deets

Clearly you have some things to learn about texting like a goddamn teenager.

Still, it's done. You've got a line on a new power to help with step 2, or infiltration, or whatever it turns out to be. Yes, you're back on the pity train, but at least you didn't buy a first class ticket. All it cost you was a piece of your soul- ok, fine your actual soul has golden stars in it. A piece of your self-respect. You weren't using it anyway.

Notes:

Authors note

Yes, Panacea now knows you're a parahuman. But she's not entirely sure whether you know, because all she saw was an active Gemma and the weakest Brute power in the entire world. Can people trigger without noticing?

Updated status

Quests:

John Q. Randomguy : Wants a date with Miss Militia

Tattletale: Wants to kill her boss, but you don't know that part yet

Panacea: Wants to get in her sister's pants

Chapter 5: S.02

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When you get back home you find your dad waiting for you. From his expression you can tell that yeah, that thing you thought could blow up in your face at any moment? You were right.

"Taylor," he says, "I got a call from the school today."

You nod. "I thought you might." You don't bother trying to deny anything.

"Why?" he asks. The word is plaintive, a plea for understanding.

"Did you think I had a good time at school?" you snarl. "You saw what they did to me, and you ask me why?"

"You can't just drop out!"

"Of course I can! People drop out of school all the time!"

He turns away from you, his hands squeezing into fists. After several deep breaths, still staring at the wall, he manages to ask "What have you been doing all day for the last week?"

You've been... hah, that's funny. "I've been studying with my friend Lisa."

Your dad turns back to you, incredulity overcoming his anger. "Studying?"

"Honest to god, I've never studied so hard in my life."

"You've been skipping school so you could study in peace." He shakes his head in disbelief and sits down on the couch. "Oh, Taylor. Annette would be so proud of you. And even angrier than I am! It doesn't work that way. Life isn't that easy."

"Yeah, I know." You sit down next to him, and for a while neither of you knows what to say next.

Oh right, you have powers now. There's no reason not to know his soul's price.

Danny wants you to be happy.

That- that makes sense. In retrospect, it's not even the least bit surprising. He's your dad. Of course he's prepared to sell his soul for you. That's just things working as intended.

Oh goddammit, you're crying now. That's not good. That's the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to be happy, for your dad's sake. The knowledge that you're fucking it all up just makes you cry harder.

He's hugging you now, and making soothing noises. He's also clearly panicking because he has no idea what to say to you beyond that.

You snort, and hiccup. Things dad is prepared to do for you: Sell his soul, yes. Have a real conversation, no. That's funny. A little bit funny, and a whole lot sad. Also, if you're being honest with yourself, clearly a hereditary trait. Could you please be an adult for once?

"I- I'm sorry dad," you manage to get out. "I know you want me to be happy, but I, I don't think I can do that right now. Can we just be sadbuddies instead?"

He makes a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. "Sadbuddies," he agrees.

"I promise I'll go back to school tomorrow," you say. "I'll try to work things out." It's not that he's convinced you of the merits of school contra the anti-villain dropout lifestyle. You were just reminded that you can use your powers on regular people too. You're going to go to school and wait for Emma to interact with you, and then you're going to figure out what the fuck her problem is.

Ah, Winslow. Coming back instantly fills you with anti-nostalgia.

But at least you were missed, right? "Welcome back, Taylor," Julia says sweetly as she steps out in front of you. When you try to go around her, she shoves you back. "How rude!" she exclaims in mock horror. Then she leans forward and very carefully and deliberately spits in your face. "Civilized people respond when someone greets them, you know."

You forcefully shove her aside and wipe your face on your sleeve as you walk away. She calls after you, something about you having STDs? Whatever. She's not Emma, this is not the interaction you are here for.

"Taylor, you don't have your books," the teacher says.

"Tough," you respond. The teacher moves on with nothing more than a mild glare. Yes, you're one of the Problem Kids now, not worth the effort. Thanks for noticing.

Finally. Fucking finally you're curled up in a fetal position, surrounded by people hurling abuse at you. Took them long enough. Sophia is kicking you for real this time around, because you've been sassing them back. Interaction is a two-way street, after all. Now you just need to wait for them to stop.

Sophia is the first to turn away, maybe her leg was getting tired?

Sophia wants to be able to leave the Wards without going to prison.

You can't help but to laugh. She isn't even a real hero. She's a fucking felon that they are blackmailing into fighting for them. And they're still covering for her. Fuck this city and fuck the Wards. Sideways, with a cactus.

Emma stares at you. "You're broken, Taylor," she declares. "There is something deeply wrong with you." With that rather weak finish, she too walks off.

Emma wants you to fight back, so you can be friends again.

Jesus Christ, you have got to stop being flabbergasted at every other soul's price you uncover. You almost missed Madison leaving as well.

Madison wants to marry a rich, handsome man and live in a big house and have lots of beautiful children.

It's all you can do to stop yourself from running after Madison and hugging her. Such a normal, well-adjusted desire, what is she even doing here? You do feel brief pang of worry, though. Well-adjusted people are going to be fucking impossible to reverse blackmail. A corollary of sorts to the 'can't con an honest man' rule, you guess.

Good thing that well-adjusted people appear to be few and far between. Literally 0% of the parahuman population examined so far qualify, yourself included. Which makes sense given, you know, trigger events. Though Panacea is second-gen, her trigger should have been hardly traumatic at all. Hm. You'll need to collect more data points before you present your scholarly thesis: Parahumans be fucked in the head, yo. Presented by Dr Hebert, capefuckedologist.

Speaking of fucked in the head, good thing also that your reputation around these parts is already zero. Because you sure aren't doing it any favors by lying on the floor and giggling to yourself like this.

Seriously though, what the hell Emma? What is even going on in that psycho bitch brain of yours? That shit is so fucked up, you may have to declare her an honorary parahuman. No matter how you try, you can not make sense of it.

This is going to require more research.

Emma lives in a much nicer part of town than you. 'Unofficial Empire territory', jealous people call it, because it's populated almost entirely by rich white people. Because of this, and because it's so far from the bad parts of down (insulated by, for example, your own neighborhood) it's very safe. So safe that a young girl would think nothing of taking a shortcut through a park on her way home, even after dark.

Which is not a very safe thing to do at all. Who knows what dangerous people might have been following her, waiting for a chance to strike?

"Taylor? What- oof!" Emma lands badly when you push her down and has the breath knocked out of her. When she tries to sit up, you kick her as hard as you can in the stomach. She rolls over on her hands and knees, retching.

"Is this what you wanted?" you ask. She doesn't answer, she just tries to crawl away from you. You throw yourself on top of her, driving her into the ground. You find yourself filled with an unexpected, savage joy. You're finally using your Brute 0 powers for their intended purpose: Beating the shit out of a fifteen year old bully.

Her struggles are entirely futile. You seat yourself on her back to keep her in place, and twist one of her arms back to make her behave.

"Am I fighting back hard enough?" you ask.

"What are- I- you- aaaah!" She doesn't seem interested in behaving, so you twist her arm harder. She doesn't make much sense, either.

"I have a knife, you know," you remark. Emma finally goes still, except for the trembling.

"Please explain to me how this works," you continue. "You wanted me to fight back, so that we could be friends. But you don't seem very friendly yet. Do I need to fight back harder? Do I need to beat you down until our positions are completely reversed? Until you are the ugly one that everyone hates? Should I mark up that pretty face of yours? Should I cut off your ears, or maybe your nose? Please tell me, Emma, because," you lean down and whisper in her ear, "I would really like to be your friend again."

"Oh god, please- I'll be your friend, Taylor, please, just- forgive me, I was wrong, oh god please forgive me!"

Well. It's good that you are friends, but she still doesn't make much sense. The crying doesn't help, maybe you should ease up on her a bit.

"What were you wrong about, friend?" you ask. You don't get up from her back, but you do release her arm.

"You were- I-" she takes a long shuddering breath. "Sophia, she said you were weak. She said I was weak too, but I could learn to be strong. I just needed to practice. To fake it till I make it."

"By preying on the weak," you supply.

"Yes! But I knew, I knew you were strong, stronger than me, you'd fight back, she'd see you were strong, and then we could all be friends."

"Only I never did."

"No! I, I started to doubt. I thought I had been wrong. I started to hate you for being weak, Taylor, for letting me down. Please forgive me! Deep down-"

"You always held out hope. Yes, I know. I could tell." Holy twisted fuckballs, you actually understand where this girl is coming from now.

You understand very well indeed.

"Do you understand why, now? Why I did it?" you ask.

"N-no..?"

You sigh. "Look at yourself, Emma. You're pathetic. You could never be strong. But you were my best friend. I played at being weak, so that you could play at being strong."

"No!"

"All that time, Emma. Every day. You wouldn't have lasted a month, in my place. Would you?"

"...no."

"But the locker was a step too far. So I decided to stop playing. I gave you one and a half years of pleasant dreams, Emma, but it's time to wake up now. And like that," you snap your fingers, "the illusion is shattered and the natural order restored. You see that now, don't you?"

"...yes."

You stand up, and help Emma do likewise.

"I'm glad we had this talk, old friend," you say.

She stares at you, then bursts into tears again. "It'll never work," she sobs. "It's been too long. Sophia would never understand. The three of us can never- never-"

"No, that's true," you agree. "But if you could go back, would you want to change it? To do it the other way around? With Sophia realizing what you are, and me by her side?"

"No." She shudders. "Thank you for sparing me that, Taylor."

"Sophia is troubling," you admit. "I won't have any more trouble from you, or those you influence-" Emma fervently shakes her head at this "-but you could not stay her in her course. Alas, there can only be one apex predator, and I do not wish to kill her. She must be allowed to keep dreaming, for now."

At the mention of killing Emma draws back from you, her face pale. "I- I should be getting home," she says.

You step forward and lay a hand on her shoulder. "One more thing before you go, friend. I require a favor."

"Of course, anything!"

"I'm going to need your books."

"My books?"

"Yes, your school books. You see, mine were all ruined in a curious accident."

If Emma was looking scared before, now she looks like she's about to throw up from sheer terror. It's a good look on her, you decide.

"If you come to school early tomorrow, I'll have them all for you," she says, stumbling over the words in her rush to get them out.

"That would be excellent. Thank you, old friend." You let go of her shoulder, and she flees into the night. When you turn on your sorcerer's sight, you manage to catch a glimpse of a nice healthy Loyalty shining inside her.

You have to admit, when you told your dad that you would go back to school and work things out, you kinda thought you were lying. You can't wait to get home and tell him the good news.

Notes:

Mechanics corner

tfw when you exalt and gain four dots of manipulation

Updated status

Quests:

Tattletale: Really hates Pancakes

Panacea: Wants some family fun times

Shadow Stalker: Wants to leave the Wards without going to jail

Minor quests:

That one guy, what is he even doing in your quest log: Wants a date with Miss Militia

Danny Hebert: Wants his daughter to be happy

Madison: Wants a good husband and many children

Completed quests:

Emma: Wanted you to fight back, so you could be friends again

Chapter 6: S.03

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You arrive at school half an hour early and find Emma waiting for you at the doors, looking nervous. The hallways are deserted, and no one spots you transferring the contents of her locker to yours. She then hurries off to intercept her various friends and orbiters as they arrive, presumably to spin them some tale of increased scrutiny since the locker incident. 'Good thing I got the tipoff, better go easy on Taylor for a while,' etc.

Isn't friendship great? It's amazing how one person can be the difference between hell on earth and a normal everyday...

...unspeakably boring school experience. This time last week you were discovering things that would leave Manton himself staring in awe, playing with the power of the gods, etching words of power into the firmament with letters of golden fire.

Algebra just doesn't measure up.

Well, here's a pretty puzzle to distract you. Sophia, aka Your Remaining Problem, showed up to administer your daily dose of abuse. You expected that, but the strange part is Emma, next to her, currently describing how you're so ugly that you have to wear a paper bag over your head whenever you go out to sell blowjobs, which is frequently. You could have sworn you fixed this last night.

Well, Lisa did say that resisting would be hard, not impossible, and apparently Emma feels passionately enough about the challenges you face as a part-time prostitute to fight back against your power.

She doesn't seem very sure of herself, though. When you meet her eyes and smile, she falters and quickly wraps up her narration. You'll have to do some more research tonight.

The way Emma keeps glancing about indicates a certain apprehension, but the way she didn't change her route home tells you she is resigned to the inevitable. She still lets out a small scream when you reveal yourself, but she is not truly surprised. She still botches the landing when you push her down, though.

"I'm confused, friend," you say.

"I didn't want to do it! I had no choice!"

"There is always a choice, friend."

"Sophia said, she wanted us to- I can't stand up to her, Taylor, I just can't."

"Ah. And since your despicable cowardice can't be helped, you shouldn't be punished for betraying me? Is that what you're saying?"

"N-no. No, I deserve it. For being weak."

You hesitate. It's not that you disagree with her conclusions (though your reasoning differs slightly). You just don't know how to do this part. 'Nothing that leaves any marks' is a cliche of a hundred gritty police dramas, but the camera generally cuts away to muffled screams from behind a locked door at that point. You never bothered to research the exact mechanics. Is that even what you want?

Various scenarios flit through your imagination, from the childish to the sickening. You could pull her hair. Make her kiss your feet. Grind her face into the dirt. Cut her. Break her arm. Pull out her fingernails. You don't know what you want. Repaying in kind one hundredth of the grief she has caused you over the years shouldn't be this hard.

But... this isn't even your enemy any more. You fixed that. This is your minion, and it disgusts you. It's not working properly, and what you really want is for it to never have been born.

For a moment there you almost forgot that the universe hates happiness. Like an idiot, you thought you could have a taste of victory without it turning into ashes in your mouth.

You have to do something. Emma is staring at you. "Taylor? Are you-"

You scream in frustration and kick her in the ribs. When she whispers "thank you", it's all you can do to keep yourself from running away right then and there. Instead you bend down and help her to her feet. You have to get back in character.

"Much of the fault is mine, friend," you tell her as you help brush the dirt from her jacket. "I should have realized what would happen."

A quick check with sorcerer's sight shows that her Loyalty is a bit battered, but essentially intact. That's good. A more worrying thought occurs to you, though. Her Loyalty is contingent on you meeting her soul's price, and there were two parts to that. You're fighting back plenty, but you've sort of been neglecting the 'friends' part. If you're not careful it might just wink out of existence completely, and then...

To be honest you have no idea what would happen then, because you don't know what mixture of unnatural servitude and all-natural bugfuck nuts is resulting in her current behavior. But better safe than sorry.

"Wanna hang out?" you ask with a smile. A much friendlier smile than the ones you've been using so far.

"What?"

"It's what friends do, isn't it?"

Emma cautiously essays a small chuckle. Meeting no retaliation, she tries a smile as well. "Yeah, it is. Let's."

You adjourn to her house. Her mom is happy to see you, at least. Oh Taylor, is that you, it's been so long since you were around, how tall you have grown, etc, etc. She is adorably innocent, in every sense of the word.

The rest of the evening not exactly easy or comfortable. You used to be best friends, then you were worst enemies. Now you're sort of both, but the other way around? Relationship status: It's complicated. There's a whole lot of unexplored social territory here, is what you're trying to say, that may or may not contain dragons and sea monsters.

But you've endured a lot worse (and whose fault was that?). If life insists on giving you ashes, you're going to make some goddamn ashonade. And you're going to choke down that bitter brew no matter what happens, out of sheer spite if nothing else. You hear that, uncaring forces of a materialistic universe that somehow have it out for you in particular? Fuck you!

Of course you didn't actually solve anything, and the very next day Emma is back to insulting you with Sophia at her side. Sophia must be really dense not to pick up on Emma's fear and unhappiness, but you guess she just doesn't know her the way you do. Aside from these obvious tells, with sorcerer's sight you're also able to see her Loyalty fraying in real time as she fights against it. At this rate it might last another week, but certainly not two.

You really, really need to come up with a permanent solution to your remaining problem. But it remains true what you said, you don't want to kill her. Well, mostly true. Kinda. You want to not want to kill her. So you won't!

You are distracted from your dark thoughts by your new phone informing you of a text message. Yes! Lisa will save you from this unbearable high school drama.

meet old market aftr school

After school, she says. You shake your head. At no point did you give her any indication that you would be going back to school. Fucking Thinkers.

You let that last word bounce around in your head for a bit. Thinker. Right. You don't think her power is good enough to figure out how you met Panacea just from looking at you. Are you healthier than normal now, after she worked you over? In a noticeable-to-Sherlock-Holmes way? But, you realize with a sinking feeling, that won't even matter. Lisa clearly doesn't think you can take care of yourself (the fact that she's at least partially right really sticks in your craw), and she'd clearly disapprove of your methods.

And she'll easily spot that you know that you did something she'd disapprove of, and then she'll have opinions.

Well, there's your enthusiasm curbed, that's for sure.

You call Emma's house while she's still on her way home.

"Miss Barnes? It's Taylor. Is Emma home yet? Could you give her message? Tell her I know she expected us to hang out again tonight, but something important came up. I'll come by tomorrow night instead, if that's all right with you."

Yeah, you could tell that she expected you to 'hang out' again after your encounter today. At least leaving Emma stewing in dread overnight is cheering you up a little bit, you guess.

The old market is crowded, but spotting a parahuman in a crowd is not a problem for you. You beeline straight for the glow.

"Taylor. Good to see you again. Sorry about the delay."

You wave away her apology. "Think nothing of it. I managed to keep busy."

Lisa shakes your hand, does not go for the hug. An astute observer would probably read something into that. A very astute observer would wonder about the quick little expressions flashing across her face as she approached and greeted you.

You don't wonder. You have magic eyes, and you've studied her power enough to build your own bootleg version from scratch. You can not only see it activate, but read off each conclusion as it's presented to her. Never mind her face, her mind is an open book to you.

That curiosity is where she sees that you have something to hide. A flash of concern: She does figure out how you went about acquiring Panacea's soul price, impressive. Brief sadness as she finds out that no, you'd see an invitation to join the Undersiders for the obvious attempt to 'save you from yourself' that it would be. But thanks for being so quick to label you unsound of mind and in need of a caretaker, no really, thanks a whole fucking lot.

Now that juicy wince is when she realizes that you're getting all this, probably clued in by your own facial tics. Yeah, two can play at this game. Are we going to pretend that none of that happened? Because you'd be down with that. We are! Excellent.

Lisa leads you off towards the less scenic parts of town. Excellent lair territory, you note, since the recession has left plenty of abandoned industrial properties and workshop/studio apartments for the aspiring villain.

"There are some things you should keep in mind," Lisa tells you as you walk. "Rachel is willing to deal, she could use some help around the lair-"

"Rachel?" you interrupt. "Rachel Lindt?"

"Yeah, that's her."

"Hm," you say.

You remember her from your cape research. Rachel is a homeless person with superpowers. Well, not homeless anymore since she's apparently got a lair now, but yeah. Her villain 'career' has consisted of wandering from city to city, sleeping in the streets, stealing food and fighting off anyone who tried to bother and/or arrest her with her giant mutant dogs.

Oh and also, the reason she was homeless in the first place? She killed her foster mother. Probably some abuse going on there, trigger events don't happen on their own after all. But still. In order to keep you safe, Lisa decided to introduce you to a literal murder hobo? That's interesting.

When you think about it like that, you begin to suspect that you are in fact going to be perfectly safe - that Lisa picked Rachel, the girl with a spicy hint of dangerous psychopath, over one of her more well-groomed villain friends precisely to counteract your obvious resentment at being coddled.

You catch Lisa's power informing her of your line of thought, but she keeps her face impassive. You don't know if you guessed right or not, because your own brand of mind reading only works on things she didn't already know.

"Is it going to be a problem?" Lisa asks ambiguously.

You shrug. It's a combat power, a missing link in virtually all of your infiltration plans. You're not going to complain.

"What kind of help?" you ask instead.

"Regular manual labour, not enough for a full-time henching gig. Taking care of her dogs. She's willing to give power demonstrations in exchange. It's up to you to discuss the exact terms. There's room for negotiation, but if you push too hard she's likely to call the whole thing off.

"If you end up working for her, don't complain or argue about any task she gives you. She'll set her dogs on you if you do. But don't let her push you around on anything outside the agreement, either. She'll try, just to see how you react. Always speak plainly, don't try to be funny or clever. Oh, and don't make eye contact, she doesn't like that."

There's the spicy hint of danger, all right.

"How are you friends with this girl, again?" you ask.

Lisa grimaces slightly. "With some difficulty," she admits.

Rachel's 'lair' is impressively shitty. A half-finished building, open to the elements. The floor, such as it is, has of patches of bare concrete here and there, but consists mostly of dirt and scraggly grass. There are maybe a dozen dogs wandering around freely. Does she live here? You see plenty of places for dogs to sleep, but nothing resembling a human bed.

Rachel herself is, well, even further from being pretty than you are. Even without the weathering from years of hard living, there's just no helping that bone structure. If she can be said to be making a statement with her choice of clothes, that statement is 'I can sleep in the street without freezing to death'. You see a mask poking out of a coat pocket. You guess masks are just the done thing, even for someone whose identity is public knowledge.

Lisa greets her with a wave when you step inside, which she doesn't acknowledge. She stares and you, and you remember not to meet her eyes.

"Well?" she asks.

It takes you a moment to realize that she's waiting for you to offer terms. How much should you be asking for? You have no idea about the villain favor economy or common henchman wages.

Crap. Now that you consider it, you can't actually think of any deal that you'd both agree to. Rachel wouldn't go for one-for-one on time spent working versus demonstrating, she'd be no better off than doing the work herself. You wouldn't go for two-for-one, it would take weeks to get her power that way. Maybe a whole month, since you're wasting time on going to school again. Compromise? Rachel would still have very little to gain, and she doesn't strike you as person who'd appreciate more complicated fractions anyway.

Maybe... "Can you show me your power?"

Rachel crosses her arms. "If you work."

"I need to see the merchandise before I buy." That's how professional criminals do it, right? At least in the movies.

It seems to work, at any rate. Rachel calls one of her dogs over and lays her hand on its head. Spines of bone erupt from underneath its fur, then a layer of leathery flesh grows to partially cover the bone, then more bone, etc.

It's fascinating. The dog isn't really growing. The extra flesh and bone is just covering it, like some sort of biological power amor. The dog itself is cradled inside, somehow hooked up to the nervous system(?) and bloodstream(?) of the mutant beast growing around it. This is going to take so much study, you love it.

Rachel removes her hand and it stops growing. Her power doesn't maintain any sort of connection to the dog, so she's not a Master in the sense of controlling anything. But just like you hoped, the dog itself is still thrumming with power. You can tell that it's already fading, though, and will need regular topping up from Rachel. You can work with this.

"I'll work for free as long as you keep a couple of them empowered at all times," you say. How's that for an offer you can't refuse?

Rachel grunts. "Why'd you want to stare at my dogs anyway? You some kind of weird pervert?"

Good thing Lisa coached beforehand, or you would have flubbed this interview question. "None of your fucking business," you reply.

"Fine, you're hired. But if I catch you touching yourself I'll kick your ass. Come on."

Rachel wants a friend who she can understand.

Soul's price is reflexive for you at this point. Interact with parahuman, get price. And look at that, underneath her gruff exterior Rachel is just a big softie who wants a friend who underst- wait, who she can understand? Right, mental issues, of course. Not uncommon in the homeless.

You give Lisa a wry smile and a wave goodbye before you follow your new employer. You note that the Thinker hasn't said a single word since she entered the building. Which is probably her secret trick for maintaining their unlikely friendship.

When you catch up to Rachel she hands you a small shovel and a plastic bag.

"There's shit in the grass," she says.

"Empower your dogs."

She grumbles a bit, but complies. You start shoveling shit. You'd do worse things for a power like hers.

Notes:

Updated status

Quests:

Tattletale: Bring me the head of Coil

Panacea: Turn Glory Girl into an incestuous lesbian

Shadow Stalker: One get-out-of-jail-free card, please

Bitch: Wants a friend she can understand

Chapter 7: S.04

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Every dog comes up to sniff you at some point as you work, but most quickly lose interest once their curiosity has been satisfied. The exception is a young Labrador ('Bubbles', according to Rachel) who decides that you are his new best friend and that you should never leave his side again.

It probably says something depressing about you, how gratified you are to receive a scrap unconditional love like that, even bestowed randomly by a dumb animal. But you just can't help loving him back a tiny bit. He is so adorably jealous of the attention you're paying the transformed dogs ('Brutus' and 'Judas'), you can't even be annoyed at how much he's distracting you.

The monster dogs in question seem a bit bemused as they wander around, as if they are wondering why they are so big when there's no one to fight. They are keeping a wary eye on you as well, probably suspecting that you're the one they are supposed to protect their master from. But they are clearly well trained, so you don't worry about them attacking you. Unless you piss off Rachel, of course.

But never mind all that. The whole point of being here is to study monster dogs, and monster dogs are freaking weird. In the first place, if you hadn't seen them being made, 'dog' would not have been your first guess. More like 'post-apocalyptic rat-lizard hellbeast'.

The power surging through them, you quickly realize, does absolutely nothing to make them stronger or tougher. No, they seem to be exactly as strong as you'd expect a critter made out of a ton of solid muscle to be. And yes, you do mean solid. There's a reason real animals don't consist of 100% muscles, and Rachel's power is working really hard to ignore that.

You're not a biologist, so you can't name and describe every system that is being papered over with... let's just call it magic, because that's essentially what it is. But there's a lot of them. Do they eat? No, their muscles spring into being pre-loaded with, uh, muscle fuel. Do they even breathe? Uh, maybe? You'll come back to that question later.

Freed from the menial parts of dog care, Rachel spends her entire time training them. Once you're done scooping poop she has you feed and water the dogs, then groom them. She doesn't trust you to check their health, but she tells you exactly what she's doing and what she's looking for while she does it. She's clearly training you as well.

All the while, you keep studying. Brains, nervous systems? Not really. Rachel may not be Mastering her dogs, but her dogs are essentially Mastering their meat suits. Completely lacking a physical means of transmitting nerve impulses from the chewy dog center to the crunchy monster exterior, her power makes do with metaphysical means.

You also get a good look at Rachel's end of things, as she has to regularly infuse more power into the dogs to keep them monsterized. Just as planned. Villainous laughter, etc. At first she keeps calling them over and touching them to top them off, but a few hours in she grows tired of this and starts broadcasting her power across the room. You can't quite hide your surprise the first time this happens, but you don't think she noticed.

It brings up an interesting point. Even Rachel, the least sophisticated person you know, initially tried to hide the full extent of her powers even from someone trusted to know the location of her lair. Between that and Lisa keeping her power largely secret (and claiming to be psychic when you first met), you begin to wonder if sandbagging and misdirection isn't another unspoken keystone of cape life. Makes you wonder what other capes are hiding.

You're going to find out, of course.

When it becomes time to go home you ask Rachel to stop empowering the dogs, as you want to watch them return to normal before you leave. As the muscle fuel runs low, it is concentrated deeper in the body and the outermost layers of muscle are reabsorbed. Once a certain critical point is reached the whole thing falls apart and the dog itself emerges, wet with rapidly evaporating - no, vanishing - amniotic fluid(?).

The whole thing strikes you as incredibly baroque. But on the other hand, you do know enough biology to know that evolution isn't all that sexy up close. It's not inconceivable that this was the most expedient way to fulfill a sudden demand for completely reversible monster dogs, the same way that the human retina is welded on backwards.

Just how this bit of natural selection was plucked from its ancestral environment and stuffed into Rachel's brain is another question, though. It's the question in parahuman studies. All things considered, 'God exists, and he's a bit off' might be more plausible than an evolution-based explanation. Scion exists after all, and there are people that claim that he's God and/or the source of powers. He's certainly a bit off.

"Come back same time tomorrow," Rachel says, startling you out of your unproductive ruminations.

"Tomorrow is Saturday," you point out.

"So?"

"No school. I can come by much earlier if you want."

"Yeah. Do that." With that she turns away, leaving you to find your own way out.

"Where have you been?" your dad asks when you get home. When you get a bit closer he wrinkles his nose and furrows his brow. "What's that smell?"

"I was volunteering at a dog shelter," you say. It's almost entirely true, and an after-school activity that is unlikely to be forbidden. "Lisa knew one that needed some help and introduced me."

His relieved smile proves your assumptions correct. "Did you have a good time?"

"It has its ups and downs. And by downs I mean dog poop. I'll stick with it for a week or so at least." God damn, are you good at telling your dad the truth or what?

You arrive bright and early the next morning, ready for a full day of menial labour and phenomenal cosmic power acquisition. Rachel doesn't even say hello as she hands you the poop shovel, but Bubbles greets you as if you had been gone for a month. He's simultaneously unwilling to leave your side, and so excited that he can't stand still. He compromises by running in tight circles around you, bumping into your legs at least once per lap. Once again his behavior mysteriously fails to annoy you.

Taking care of a dozen dogs is not a full time job, but you don't really want to leave early when there's studying to be done. Your agreement didn't specify anything so formal as hours per day, and Rachel doesn't object as your contribution gradually shifts from working to helping with training to just plain playing with the dogs. Late in the afternoon she shakes things up, though.

"Wanna go for a ride?" she asks.

You blink in confusion before you notice that she's gesturing at Brutus and Judas. You've seen smaller horses, now that you think about it (you have not seen larger horses). You suppose they could serve as riding beasts.

"Sure," you answer. It's not like you're going to turn down quality time with her power.

Rachel climbs up on Brutus' back with practiced ease. You, uh, you had expected saddles, and reins and stuff. Which is silly, where would a homeless person get specialized tack and gear like that? Judas is looking at you expectantly, and you gaze back with a certain apprehension. There are enough bony spurs and protrusions that climbing up does not look overly difficult, but by the same token his back is not going to be very comfortable.

You mentally chastise yourself. You're not here to be comfortable. You scramble your way up and take a seat. The ground feels improbably far away, considering how short the climb was. You let out a small yelp when Judas starts moving, making his way over to Rachel and Brutus at a leisurely pace. You grab hold of some conveniently positioned bone spurs to keep yourself from falling off.

For your next trick you'll try to relax your white-knuckled grip somewhat. You can do this. A slow walk around the yard is no problem at all. When you think about it, this is no different from the pony rides you loved when you were little. Except the girl leading the ponies around the track back then wasn't a mentally unstable murderer (as far as anyone knew).

Then Rachel shouts "Up!", and Brutus gathers himself and leaps four meters straight up, clearing the half-finished back wall. Judas starts running towards the same wall.

"Waitwaitwai-oof!" Your protests are cut off as the force of the launch knocks most of the air out of your lungs. You get about half a wheeze in before the landing, predictably, finishes the job. You spend some time just lying on top of your mount, gasping for breath.

When you look up, you see Rachel grinning at you. It's not a very nice expression, for all that she's clearly amused. Seeing that you've mostly recovered she clicks her tongue, which has Brutus set out at a trot. Judas dutifully follows.

"Rachel, wait!", you shout. "I can't be seen like this! I still have a civilian identity!"

She stops long enough to hand you her mask (a cheap plastic thing, depicting a dog face), then she's off again. Halfway down the street she gives another command, and Brutus turns, leaps, clings to the side of the building, and leaps again to land on the roof opposite. You brace yourself and hold on for dear life as Judas follows suit.

Next time. Next time that happens you won't scream like a little girl.

You're not going to claim that it wasn't exciting, or even fun once you got used to the gut-clenching terror and bruising impacts. But when Rachel leaps off her dog still able to walk, you're prepared to grant her an honorary Brute rating.

One larger than yours, certainly. You slide off Judas and land in a heap, whimpering slightly as your butt touches the ground. Look, there's Bubbles again. You protest weakly as he walks all over your prone body in his eagerness to welcome you back.

Rachel snatches her mask off your face. "Same time tomorrow," she says. Was that humor? You're pretty sure Rachel just did a humor at you. You nod weakly at her. Bubbles takes the opportunity to start licking your face.

Eventually you summon the wherewithal to get to your feet. If you make it all the way home you'll be impressed. If you get out of bed tomorrow, you'll be amazed. You're going to go home and soak in a hot bath for hours.

Picturing the steamy bliss ahead of you gives you some comfort as you walk. Then you remember that you promised to hang out with Emma today. Fuck! Ok, home, quick shower, then up and at them again. You really shouldn't complain. Somewhere out there, other capes are having lasers shot at them right at this very moment. Your career so far has been much less stressful than theirs. Probably. Maybe.

Your dad looks a bit surprised at your bedraggled appearance. "Tough day at the dog shelter?" he asks.

"You have no idea," you tell him truthfully, but decline to elaborate. Shower, now.

On you way to Emma's place your thoughts turn back to your problem at school, and it occurs to you that you've been an idiot. Again. You've been so focused on reverse blackmail that you completely forgot about the regular kind. You had the solution in your grasp all along.

After greeting Emma and retiring to her room (and roughing her up a bit for her ongoing crimes against friendship - you didn't want to bother, but she insisted), you share your brilliant new plan.

"On Monday we're going to go see the principal," you say, "and we're going to tell her that you're willing to confess everything and rat out your friends."

Emma goes pale. "I can't, Taylor! Sophia would kill me."

"It won't come to that," you assure her.

"No, you don't understand! She's killed before. I've seen her do it!"

Huh. You knew she was headed for prison, but murder? And the heroes still found it acceptable to recruit this person. You're not even pretending to be shocked any more.

"It won't come to that," you repeat, "because you're not actually going to confess. Your friends have powerful friends, and Blackwell does not want to disappoint them. She'll offer us a deal in exchange for your silence."

Emma looks at you searchingly at the mention of powerful friends. Suspicion, not confusion, which means that she knows about Shadow Stalker. You had been wondering about that.

Emma has no further objections to your plan (that she dares voice), and proceeds to ask about your day. You spin her a tale of dog shelters, featuring cute dogs and smelly poop. Emma hesitantly asks if she could come along and experience it for herself. How gratifying, your minion is working maintain adequate friendship levels on its own.

You consider the scenario of Emma meeting Rachel. Prognosis: Fucking priceless. You promise to ask tomorrow.

"You trust this girl?" Rachel asks.

"Oh yes," you say. "She's supernaturally loyal." Rachel doesn't get the joke.

Notes:

Author's note

A note about OCs:

The idea behind this story is 'what if Taylor could learn charms from other parahumans?' What charms would they give? What would she do with them? If I could just add new parahumans willy-nilly whenever I wanted her to have a specific Charm, that would ruin the whole point. I hereby vow that this story will contain no more than two plot-relevant OCs.

Bubbles is one of them.

Chapter 8: S.05

Chapter Text

Emma-o-vision

I can't suppress the queasy feeling as Taylor and I wait outside the Blackwell's office. Taylor is going to blackmail the principal. Taylor is going to blackmail the principal. I steal a glance at my friend. To all appearances she's still the same victim she pretended to be all this time. Dark shapeless clothing, shrunk into herself, trying to hide from the world.

"Taylor Hebert and Emma Barnes to see principal Blackwell," the secretary announces. It's far from the first time the two of us are here. In the past I always managed to get off scot free, or even shift the blame onto Taylor. This time... I have to trust that she knows what she's doing.

When Taylor mentioned powerful friends, it became clear to me. They were always protecting Sophia, I was just riding her coattails. Just a pretty face in a world full of pretty faces. Does Taylor know that Sophia is a cape? Is that why she doesn't want to confront her openly? Or did she just pick up on the protection, without discovering the reason for it?

As we're about the step into the office, she turns to me. "Let me do the talking," she says. The victim is gone. The real Taylor stands before me now, her voice perfectly calm, gazing at me like I'm a bug she could crush at will. Because I am.

I always knew deep down that I was the weak one, that pretending otherwise wasn't helping. I can admit that now. But Taylor, with her mask cast off, she takes my breath away.

For over a year, she endured the most hellish existence I could contrive, and now she's just going to cash it in, without a second thought, without even a hint of emotion. She's even willing to take pity on me and be my friend again, because it's no big deal to her.

I would do anything to stay by her side, to bask in her strength, to worship her as the person I could never be.

You can tell that Blackwell is not exactly happy to see you. Oh look, it's Taylor come to whine some more about the abuse that must be covered up. What a drag. The gall of you, poking at the blackened remains of her conscience to no purpose.

You ignore the frosty reception, take a seat and pull a notebook out of your bag.

"Mrs Blackwell. I have documented here over one thousand separate incidents of bullying" - there is a slight gasp from Emma at this - "directed against me. Including, of course, the famous locker incident. Miss Barnes here has realized the error of her ways and is prepared to confess to all of them." You catch her gaze and hold it. "Including naming accomplices."

Blackwell averts her eyes from you in order to give Emma a look of disbelief, containing equal parts 'how could you do this to me?' and 'what the hell is wrong with you?' The motto of Winslow, right there.

"What do you want?" she asks through clenched teeth. She's not stupid, you'll give her that. She instantly figured out which way this conversation was going.

"Immediate transfer to Arcadia," you say.

"I don't think you realize-"

"Oh, you'll have to call in some favors I'm sure. But no one is corrupt for as long as you have been without accumulating some."

She stares at you. "You think Winslow runs net positive on favors?"

For a moment you almost empathize with her. All along, Winslow was her personal hell too.

Almost. That the devil was cast down against his will is scant comfort for the damned souls in his charge.

"I guess you'll have to go further into debt," you say with a shrug.

There is a brief staring duel. When she shows no signs of giving up, you decide to raise the stakes.

"Miss Barnes could always go straight to the media," you note. "She is consumed by remorse and will stop at nothing to make amends."

"...Fine. I will have the papers for your legal guardian to sign ready by the end of the day. The transfer itself will take at least two weeks arrange. After all," she adds when you start to object, "neither of us want to invite any special scrutiny here."

"Fair enough," you say.

"You will of course have maintain a perfect attendance record until the transfer takes effect."

Oh look, she's trying to claw out a small moral victory to salve her wounded pride. Does she get to do that? You don't think she does.

"Very funny," you say. "You meant to say, of course, that you will maintain my perfect attendance record." You grin at her. Well, you show her your teeth. "In fact, I believe you will find that any absence that was reported at the beginning of the semester was merely a clerical error."

Blackwell is clearly trying to develop laser eyes, that she might burn you to death.

"Fine. Ruin your education. See if I care. The less I have to see of you, the happier I will be. Now get the hell out of my office, both of you."

Once you're outside, and alone, Emma collapses against the wall, trembling.

"Holy shit, Taylor," she whispers. "I can't believe you did that."

You smile at her and squeeze her shoulder.

"I appreciate your help in this matter, friend," you say.

You leave before anyone can spot the two of you together. Once you're around the corner, and alone, you collapse against the wall, trembling. Holy shit. You can't believe you did that.

You pull yourself together and indulge in a grin that would make Lisa proud, or possibly even jealous. Your plan worked perfectly, and you solved all your problems. Not only do you no longer need to worry about Sophia, you also launched operation 'Infiltrate the Wards 2: Arcadia Boogaloo', and you scored yourself a free vacation to spend more time with Rachel's dogs. You clearly triggered with the power to own the shit out of bitches, in addition to all the other bullshit.

After school you meet up with Emma again and guide her to Rachel's lair. Judging by look on her face she is less than comfortable strolling through lair territory, even in daylight.

"Not everyone can afford to live in unofficial Empire territory," you chide her mildly. Heh. Now she's nervous and embarrassed.

As usual Bubbles is the first to notice your arrival, immediately launching himself towards you like he was shot from a cannon. You're ready for it. You catch him as he leaps up at you and half hug, half wrestle him to the ground and start rubbing his belly. Look at that tail go.

It takes some time before he calms down enough to notice that you brought company. By then several other dogs have come over to investigate the new arrival. Emma is taking it in good humor, letting herself be sniffed and offering head scratches to those who will accept them. You can tell that she expected a somewhat more upscale place, though.

When Bubbles rolls to his feet and approaches her, you perform introductions. "Bubbles, this is Emma. Emma, Bubbles." Emma offers her hand to sniff, but Bubbles ignores it, regarding her warily and growling softly. Good boy, excellent judgement.

"Emma is behaving herself," you tell him, "you have to tolerate her as long as she does." Hm, that might have come out a bit more autobiographical than you intended.

Then Emma yelps and practically leaps into your arms, causing Bubbles to scramble back and let out a single sharp bark. What- oh, Rachel just started turning Brutus and Judas into monsters. By touch, you note. Mugging for the fresh audience.

"What seems to be the matter, friend?" you ask. You were right, the look on her face is priceless.

"The dogs..."

"Yes?" You are the very image of polite confusion.

"That's Hellhound," she hisses.

"Yes? She runs the place, you know."

"I- you- she-" Tolerating Emma does have its high points, you must admit.

"I'm not sure what you're trying to say, friend." Emma opens her mouth to try again, but you keep going. "Are you saying that associating with a known parahuman murderer is not okay? Because that would be a very strange thing for you to say, don't you think?"

Emma slumps down and lets go of you. "...yes." Answering both your questions at once.

"Don't lose track of why we're here, friend," you say.

She just looks at you, uncomprehending. You hand her the poop shovel, as a hint.

"...oh. Right."

Emma never quite relaxes. She flinches away any time Brutus or Judas wanders too close, and keeps shooting nervous glances at Rachel. As you walk home through the mean streets of Brockton Bay, she clings on to your arm in a most pathetic fashion. You thought you had mastered the art of 'victim' body language, but she's showing you a few tricks you missed. Weirdly appropriate, she was the one who 'taught' you in the first place, after all.

You fight down a sudden urge to turn on her. Would it not be appropriate, to betray her trust as she is relying on you? To see the look on her face as all hope dies? You are in the perfect neighborhood for turning someone into a statistic...

You shake your head. Your minion is behaving, and must be tolerated.

Eventually you reach safer ground, and it is time for you to part ways.

"I don't think you should come back," you tell her, "Rachel didn't like you."

"Like me? She didn't talk to me once!"

"Yes, exactly. She could smell your fear." You're pretty sure Rachel can't do that, actually. It would have shown up on sorcerer's sight.

"I don't want to go back. Taylor, you never said we'd be working for a villain."

You clench your fists. You want to scream at her, about how her murderer friend, the hero, is the kind of person who would shove an innocent girl into a locker full of rotting tampons and how the fuck are those labels in any way meaningful?

But you can't. That's not who you are in this relationship. The person you are is always calm, and polite, and scary.

"You disappoint me, friend," you say instead, "but I suppose that is inevitable. Here, this is for you." You toss her your locker key. "You can have your books back. I won't be needing them."

"You meant it, then? You'll be skipping school until the transfer goes through?"

You just hold her gaze, saying nothing. The person you are right now would not say anything they did not mean to go through with. She should realize that.

"I'll, uh, I'll see you around I guess?" Emma tries.

"Yes." She guesses that. Although you probably should keep up this charade of friendship at least until you start at Arcadia, just to be safe.

The first thing you do when you get home is to hug your dad.

"You had a good day, I take it?" he asks.

"Oh yes. You know how I told you everything was all worked out at school? Well, that wasn't quite true. There was one girl who kept bullying me."

Danny gently pushes you out of the hug and studies you at arms length, trying to reconcile your words with your demeanor.

"But!" you continue, "Today I spoke to the principal, and she was so worried about that girl that she agreed to a school transfer. Here, you have to sign these."

He glances over the papers you hand him. "Arcadia? Taylor, that's amazing."

You nod happily. "I had Emma along to back me up. She could testify to everything that had happened, and the principal really had no choice but to agree."

The person you are right now would never tell her dad a lie.

Chapter 9: S.06

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

For the second time you feel a power slot into place in your soul. Probably the third time really, but you have very patchy memories of anything that happened in the locker. It felt easier than last time, and tallying up the time spent you get a number closer to 40 hours than 50. You hope that means you're getting better, not just that monster dogs are easier than information processing.

Now you have a real power, and can finally get serious about your plans. Yes, you thought that last time too, but this time you mean it. Look out Brockton Bay.

...After you handle a few administrative details, that is.

"Thanks Rachel," you say.

Rachel frowns. "For what?" she asks.

"For letting me study your power."

"Oh." Rachel is quiet for a while as she mulls this over. "You won't be coming back?" She looks... sad? Did she think you were becoming friends or something? You barely spoke ten words to each other on any given day.

Which admittedly seems to be a quality Rachel looks for in a friend.

Ok yeah, maybe you were becoming friends a little bit. You even started to appreciate the dog rides from hell. But you're going to be super busy, and besides you'll be able to make your own dog rides now. Speaking of...

"I'd like to adopt Bubbles, if that's alright with you?" You know exactly who you want as your first monster. You can't even imagine any other choice.

Rachel smiles at that. "Thought you might." She finds a leash for him and hands it to you. Then she bends down in front of Bubbles, cuddling him and explaining that he's your dog now. You're not sure how much of this he understands, but he certainly seems eager to go for a walk with you, at least.

"Treat him well, or I'll kill you myself," those are Rachel's parting words. You just nod. That sort of went without saying, really.

You don't go very far. You just need to find someplace away from prying eyes, where you can try out your new power. Bubbles keeps darting back and forth in his eagerness to explore, trying to pull you along with him. When you tell him to heel he obeys - for several seconds at a time. Being out for a walk with his best friend is just too exciting for him to handle.

There's plenty of abandoned buildings to choose from. That one looks good, for example. Thick walls, slim doorways. It looks like it could contain an overexcited monster dog if it needed to.

You head inside and wait for Bubbles to calm down a bit.

"Sit. Sit. Hey, listen to me. Sit. Sit and stay. Stay. Good boy."

He's looking at you expectantly, his tail wagging furiously. You don't think he's going to be disappointed. You remove his collar - it would break otherwise. You then lunge forward and gather him in a hug as he tries to make a break for it.

"Stay. Okay? Good. Listen. I'm going to make you big, like Brutus and Judas. Would you like that?" No, he probably doesn't understand any of this either, but it's not like he would refuse you anything even if he did.

You try to channel your power into Bubbles. To your relief (and slight surprise) it works right away, unlike the drama you went through with soul's price. Bubbles startles a bit at the sensation, but you hug him close and make soothing sounds.

...it's working, but it's not working quickly. You can feel some sort of indescribable energy leaving you and gathering in him, and sorcerer's sight confirms what you're feeling. But nothing seems to be happening physically. One of Rachel's dogs would be the size of a small pony by now, but you don't notice any change whatsoever in Bubbles.

He's getting restless too. Experimentally you let go of him and discover that, just like Rachel, you don't actually need to be touching him to keep the power flowing. You begin a game of fetch to keep the both of you occupied.

Two hours later, you decide to call it a day. It's not like nothing has been happening. Bubbles is very slightly larger than he used to be, and his coat has grown out and turned from yellow to grey. His general build is changing a bit too. Is he turning into a wolf? You're pretty sure he's turning into a wolf. His ears are growing more wolf-like too, you suppose, but they are currently in a halfway state that can best be described as 'hilariously floppy'.

There's also this feeling growing inside you, that if you were to translate it into English would be something like 'I'm standing next to my spirit-tied pet'. Sure he's not very impressive right now, but you can tell that you're nowhere near the limit of what your power can do. One wrinkle is that it's an exclusive feeling - Bubbles is going to be your first and only monster. That's fine too.

Oh and unlike Rachel, what you're doing is permanent. Which complicates things considerably. Your original plan was to bring Bubbles home and have both of you make puppy-dog eyes at your dad until he agreed that you could have a pet. But if he's going to be a monster full time you can't do that. It would give away your secret identity, dad wouldn't allow it, and he wouldn't fit through the door anyway.

You're still going to go through with it. Duh. You didn't get this power in order to not turn it up to eleven, and 'my magic wolf is too awesome' is a problem you are okay with having. You just have to rethink some things. Worst case you can always come clean to Rachel and let him move back in with her.

You'll also have to spend the whole day tomorrow pumping him up, at the rate this is going. You really should try to do something more productive than playing fetch while you're at it, too. Like making a wolf-themed costume. The materials for which you'll buy, with the money that you don't have. And before that, you have to figure out what to do with him tonight.

So many problems. Well, that's what minions are for. You call Emma and tell her that you need her help. No villains involved, you promise, just wholesome adventures straight out of a Christmas movie. Oh and also you're broke and she needs to loan you some money.

Yes, you are aware that if anyone found out about that last part you'd never live it down. Sponging money off your minions, how pathetic is that? No amount of protesting that you're actually Mastering and robbing your enemies would help, either. If it ever got out you might as well change your cape name to Debt Crisis and be done with it.

It'll just have to stay your little secret. Except of course that the next time you interact with Lisa she will instantly figure out everything you're trying to hide. But if you start avoiding her, she'll just become motivated to figure out why.

You sigh. Psychic friends suck.

"Come on Bubbles, let's get you something to eat."

Bubbles perks up instantly. He understands that much English, at least.

Bubbles can still pass for an ill-advised husky-labrador crossbreed, so you don't have any qualms about being seen with him in public yet. You spend the last of your money on dog food and feed him in the alley behind the store. Then it's off to home.

True to your word, the planned caper is sickeningly family friendly. This poor doggie needs to stay with you overnight, but dad mustn't find out ("Why can't he stay at the dog shelter?" "You said you didn't want to be involved in that stuff, friend."). Emma goes to distract your dad, while you tell Bubbles to be very, very quiet before letting him in the back door and sneaking him up the stairs. You take care to wipe off his feet first so he doesn't leave a trail of muddy paw prints leading to your room. You've seen this Christmas movie before.

It goes off without a hitch. Not that you would mind much if it didn't, you feel confident that you could puppy dog eyes your dad into letting the funny-looking dog stay for one night. And by this time tomorrow Bubbles will hopefully have gone full wolf. Completely unrecognizable and no threat to your secret identity, in other words.

The feel-good hijinks continue the next morning as you have Bubbles hide under the bed, pretend to go to school and sneak back home after your dad has left for work. Then it's off to spend your ill-gotten gains.

You go on a shopping spree entirely confined to second-hand clothing and hobby stores, then you top it off by buying a mask from a dollar store. Very stereotype, much cape. If you hadn't been paying cash for everything you would no doubt have set off all kinds of red flags in dubiously legal monitoring programs.

You smile as you spot Rachel's mask on the wall next to the one you picked. Looks like you get your clothes at the same store.

Then you find another abandoned building to spend the day in, this time one that a monster dog can get out of. Man, how embarrassing would that have been, if your power had been faster and Bubbles would have been stuck there yesterday until you could widen the doorways?

You settle in for a full day of measuring, cutting, sewing and riveting. And pouring magic into your dog.

It's funny, the first skill an independent cape must learn is not martial arts, or first aid or law, but arts and crafts. Luckily you're very good at this part of the Parahumans 101 curriculum. Almost... too good? Everything you do turns out exactly the way it appeared in your head, which is distinctly different from what you remember happening in art class and home economics.

Oh goddammit, are you a Tinker 0 as well? You... You guess you don't mind. It's just weird, is all. You're both the greatest Trump and the shittiest grab-bag cape. And that's OK. Yeah. You smile as you realize that you're truly OK with everything. No trace remains of the power-self-image issues that plagued your first days as a parahuman.

You talk to Bubbles as you work. Telling him your whole sad life story, reminiscing about the good times with your mom before she died, and Emma before she became an evil bitch/brainwashed minion, that sort of thing. Perhaps you misjudged his grasp of English, because he sure seems to act like he gets the gist of it, wagging his tail at the happy bits and nuzzling you comfortingly during the sad ones. Though your tone of voice probably gives a lot away.

All the time, he is growing and turning more wolf-like. By the end of the day he'll almost match Rachel's monsters in size, you estimate. You still wouldn't bet on him in a fight against one of them, though, because to all appearances he's just becoming a big wolf, not an abomination of bone and muscle.

Fun fact about abandoned buildings: They are not very well heated. Your fingers soon start hurting from the cold and the unfamiliar work, but you ignore it, buoyed by the feeling of crafting something and having it come out right. You also start to feel a bone-deep weariness that you've never felt before. Soul-deep? Yes, you're overusing your new power as well. But you keep going, just a little bit longer, and a little bit longer still. You can feel it, the upper limit of your power. You're almost there, and you're not stopping until it's done.

With a final push you pour out the last dregs of your aching power. Bubbles, by now fully wolfed out and monster-sized, lets out a startled yelp and vanishes. Shit shit shit shit, did you accidentally your dog? Was the maximum limit actually a safety limit?

No, the feeling of connection is still there, stronger than ever. When you activate sorcerer's sight, you see a semitransparent Bubbles standing right where you left him, looking rather confused. You made an invisible monster wolf! Bubbles sniffs at your improvised work table, and his nose goes through it. He recoils, then tries again, putting his entire head through the table. You made an intangible monster wolf. That's sooo coool.

Also, convenient. You can just keep him with you at all times, and no one will ever notice. For once the universe seems to be giving you a-

Shit. You know how this part goes. Sighing with resignation, you pick up a loose board from the ground and hold it up.

"Hey, Bubbles? Can you still bite material things?" you ask, already knowing the answer.

Your loyal wolf looks up from where he was experimentally sticking his his head into the ground (how does the floor hold him up, if he can do that?) and obediently lunges for the board. His jaws phase through it harmlessly, as expected.

"Fucking figures," you mutter and toss the board away.

Bubbles lunges again - this time turning solid halfway through the motion! He catches the board in midair and bites it in half! A squeal of delight escapes your lips as you throw your arms around his neck and hug him tight.

Mmm. Turns out he is not only strong and fierce, but warm and soft as well. You could cuddle this doofus forever and not even mind that he's drooling chewed wood chips down your back.

Your wolf is amazing. Perhaps you should try being less pessimistic? Ha, no, good try there, universe. You're going to test things very carefully.

"Can you turn back into a ghost?" you ask. Then you stumble forward and almost fall over as the target of your hug vanishes.

You back off a bit - sticking your head inside translucent wolf guts is weird and unsettling. Rachel may make beasts that are dependent on her power to stay alive, but you created a beast made entirely out of power. Somehow.

"And materialize again?"

Bubbles tenses, but remains transparent. He keeps trying until he's practically vibrating in place, before finally giving up and treating you to a look of infinite sadness. He knows that he's not being a good dog right now, and he's very sorry about it.

"It's alright," you quickly reassure him. "Do you know what's wrong?"

He lies down and yawns theatrically.

"Oh, you need to rest before you can do it again?"

He nods.

"For how long?"

That's probably a shrug, as interpreted by canine shoulders.

Hang on a second. "You understand English now!?"

Another nod.

You made a selectively intangible, sapient monster wolf (that high-pitched noise in the background is you squealing with delight again). You pull out your phone and call the only number on there.

"Yeah?" Lisa answers on the third ring.

"You know how you said to call you if I wanted to brag?"

Notes:

Mechanics corner

The charm Spirit-Tied Pet creates a familiar bond. Familiars start out at one dot, power level 'literally just a dog that likes you'. You can then add up to two dots each of 'big, dangerous' and 'smart, magical'. Vanilla 'magical' lets the familiar act as a tiny essence battery, but when your juice comes from a direct connection to a staggeringly vast fragment of an alien god rather than conventional essence pools, that would be useless to you.

I've always felt that the solar Familiar background needed buffing anyway, so this improved version of Spirit-Tied Pet borrows from the sidereal charm Spirit-Shape Companion, with that last dot turning the familiar into a spirit.

The 'Tinker 0' thing is simply how Taylor interprets/describes her not-exaltation's generic stat buffs including dots in Craft.

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Chapter 10: S.07

Chapter Text

Lisa-o-vision

"I believe the boat graveyard is traditional for such things. I'll bring lunch. Ok, see you."

I pocket my phone and return to the common room. Brian and Rachel turn towards me expectantly. They know what a private phone call usually signifies. Alec, of course, remains focused on his video game.

"New job?" Rachel asks.

"No, just a friend who wanted to have lunch together. Your new minion in fact."

Rachel's face clouds over. "She quit," she says.

Taylor would have cut ties as soon as she got what she wanted, my power informs me. I really should have figured that out on my own, and kept quiet. But the way Rachel said that...

"You miss her," I realize. Out loud. Dammit.

"Fuck you!" She reacts exactly as expected. This is why I try to keep my mouth shut around Rachel.

"Aw, the big bad Bitch is a cuddly-wuddly little softie on the inside," Alec observes.

Rachel stands up and leaves without another word. But the set of her jaw - and the way she slams the door behind her - makes it clear that she's genuinely upset, even to mundane observers.

"Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you ran off to cry," Alec calls after her. But he does it quietly enough that she won't make out the words through the door, because he doesn't want to to get mauled by dogs.

Brian glares at him. "You're not helping," he says.

"Wasn't trying to!" is his cheerful response.

I sigh. Sure, as friends go Taylor leaves a lot to be desired, but it's not as if I'm spoiled for choice.

"Dad, is it alright if I sleep in the basement?" You wring your hands and look suitably embarrassed about making such a strange request.

Your father looks suitably confused. Everyone is behaving as they should, how nice. "Why?" he asks. "It's a mess down there."

"I'll clean it! It's just..." You look down at your feet. "It would make me feel safer." Boom, right in the fatherly instincts. You suffered severe mental trauma not all that long ago, remember?

He sweeps you into a hug in response. "Taylor. Would it help if you could talk to someone? A therapist? We could afford to find one for you."

You're pretty sure that last part is a lie, actually. Dad doesn't like to talk about work much (or about anything, really), but it's glaringly obvious that it's been a bad couple of years for the Dockworker's Union.

"Dad, no. It's no big thing. I can cope. But-"

"-you'd cope better in the basement," he finishes. "Alright. There should be sleeping bags somewhere down there. Let's go find them."

You spend the next couple of hours cleaning the basement together. Much more thoroughly than would be needed just to create a sleeping space, but you both agree that you may as well do a proper job of it while you're at it. There's fond reminiscences when you uncover artifacts of your childhood, and painful silences when you come across mom's stuff. As always, it hits your dad the hardest. You remain relatively cheerful throughout: You can't help but smile whenever your gaze happens across the translucent wolf dozing in the corner.

Then you set up a makeshift bedroom: A sleeping bag on a pile of blankets, a night light and your alarm clock on a box nearby.

As soon as your dad has wished you good night and closed the basement door behind him, you call softly to Bubbles and ask him to materialize again. You initiated this whole thing because you didn't think the floor upstairs could take his weight in solid form.

You sigh happily as you cuddle up to a thousand pounds of lean muscle, sharp fangs, warm fur, unconditional love. You weren't lying. You feel super safe right now.

Of course you had to set your alarm extra early to make sure you would wake up and shoo Bubbles back into the spirit realm before your dad could come down and check on you, but you don't mind that at all. You take the opportunity to get breakfast started, and greet your dad with bacon, eggs, a hug and a kiss on the cheek when he comes down.

"You're up early," he notes. "Did you sleep well?"

"It was lovely down there," you assure him.

Soon enough it's time for him to leave for work, and you for school the boat graveyard. Ok, so you're lying to your dad a little bit, but soon enough your transfer will come through and you'll start going to school for real. Instead of books, your backpack contains your half-finished costume. With any luck you'll get it done today, and then you have plans. Brilliant plans.

The boat graveyard. A monument to Brockton's economic situation. Once things started going bad, some genius decided that blocking off the main harbor was a good form of protest. Long story short, they did it a little too well. Now the coast is a mess of rusting and half-sunken hulks, and the surrounding docks abandoned to the point that not even the gangs are interested in the territory.

According to Lisa, it's also where new capes go to test out the less subtle aspects of their powers. It offers relative privacy, and no one gets upset about property damage. You don't really care right now, one abandoned building is much like another. You find a relatively intact warehouse by the waterfront and set up shop. You notice that one of the walls has several neat holes punched out of it. Rune's telekinesis, maybe, or Skidmark's acceleration fields? Or some sort of Tinker cannon, whatever.

Bubbles claims to remember Lisa ("the girl who came with me the day we first met"), so you set him to patrol, keeping a lookout for her while you resume work on your costume.

Bubbles predictably returns to report success around lunchtime, and you carefully stow your costume and equipment before you go to meet your friend. Rather than getting used to it, your fingers are cramping up even worse than yesterday. But you're almost done.

Lisa is carrying a plastic bag, presumably containing the promised lunch. As soon as she sees you, her power goes into action. There's something you're hiding, check. You mastered someone, check. Something you did to that person-

"There's something more important you really should be focusing on," you say, derailing her.

Her eyes instantly fasten on the patch of empty air that only you can see contains a giant wolf. "We're not alone here," she says. "Invisibility?"

You whisper "come forth" and Bubbles appears, tail wagging and eager to greet a new friend. Turns out that fending off a friendly dog that wants to lick your face is pretty difficult when it's taller than you are.

You smile at the antics, but eventually take pity on your friend. Also, Lisa's power was telling her something there, but a magic wolf was blocking your view so you couldn't make out what it was. "Bubbles. Lie down, roll over, and the nice lady will give you belly rubs."

Bubbles obeys instantly, but Lisa takes a while to stop sputtering and wiping at her face. "If she doesn't come through with the belly rubs, you are allowed to resume licking her," you add.

Lisa shoots you a dirty look, but kneels down and fulfills her part of bargain. Once more giving you an unobstructed view to read out what her power is telling her. Things such as...

"He understands English. You created a human-level intelligence!"

"I know, right? He's awesome." Bubbles' tail speeds up even more at the praise, kicking up dirt as it sweeps back and forth along the ground. The way Lisa is using her power to give a better belly rub isn't hurting either.

"Well, more or less human-level," she amends. "He's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?"

"Hey!" Is she badmouthing your magic wolf? "Enjoying a good belly rub has nothing to do with intelligence or lack thereof. Bubbles, demonstrate."

"What are you- no, stop!" Bubbles rolls back to his feet and springs up, knocking Lisa over in the process. He then proceeds to nuzzle the everloving shit out of her stomach, eliciting a storm of shrieks and giggles. "Don't- aah, tickles! Bad wolf! Eeeee! No, stop! Bad touch, bad touch! I'm sorry, ok? I'm sorry I- ahahaha- I'm sorry I called you stupid!"

Bubbles stops and looks back at you questioningly, and you motion for him to back off. Lisa gets to her feet, red-faced and panting.

"Holy shit," she gasps, "he's terrifying. And he turns invisible- wait, intangible too? Fuck me."

"The phasing is strictly limited," you protest. "Besides, don't you Undersiders ride around on monster dogs all the time? You should be used to it."

"Yeah, but I never truly appreciated how scary they would be when you're on the receiving end." She shakes her head. "And this guy can use his definitely 100% human-level intelligence to plan ambushes, and leap at you out of nowhere when you least expect it? Trust me, terrifying.

"Well, except maybe the name," she adds. She holds up her hands placatingly when Bubbles huffs and starts advancing on her. "It's a perfectly good name! Just not very scary, you know."

"I've got a new name in mind for him," you say. "But I can't tell you what it is right now, because then you'd figure out all my plans."

Then she figures out all you plans anyway, because Thinkers.

Lunch turns out to be takeout Chinese. And one can of dog food.

"Sorry Bubbles," Lisa says, "I expected you to be able to shrink down like Rachel's dogs."

"Oh, Bubbles doesn't need to eat anymore," you say. One of several inconvenient biological functions that ghost wolves no longer have to worry about, you established last night.

"Need, no. Enjoy, yes," she responds. And her power backs her up on it. You feel a lump forming in your stomach. When you asked him if he needed to eat and he just shook his head, he must have heard the worry in your voice. He was being a Good Dog.

You jump up and hug him. "I'm so sorry," you whisper. "I'll make it up to- uh..." Shit, shit, shit! "Actually I'm super broke right now, but as soon as I have some money you'll feast like a king, I promise! Ok?"

He gently shakes you off and backs up a bit, and for a moment you are terrified that he's rejecting you. But then he licks your face and everything is alright with the world.

"There's one thing I don't understand," you say.

"Only one?" Lisa counters instantly. "Sorry, reflex. Ask away."

"Cape fights."

"What about 'em?"

"How do they even exist? With the huge range of power levels, and the fact that most capes are glass cannons, and, you know..." You make vague hand gestures to indicate your confusion. "The odds of any given confrontation not being over instantly is tiny!"

"One on one, sure, it's often quick and unfair. It's when you have big teams facing off against each other that things get interesting," she says. "Defensive powers, offensive powers, odd power interactions. That's when you get a proper fight, and cleverness can turn the tide. And believe me, everyone is trying to be clever. When you put on a silly costume and go out looking for a fight, you are admitting that you want to be the protagonist in your own comic book."

You nod. Thus the sandbagging, too. So you can reveal your true power level and save the day when dramatically appropriate.

"Ok, but how are the losers not wiped out, regardless? There's lasers and explosions and people getting punched through walls and, and huge monster dogs biting people, and stuff. Lethal stuff."

"Ah." She nods sagely. "The old 'why doesn't Hookwolf just kill everyone' question. To answer that, you need to answer another question: Why don't you kill people? You could get your hands on a gun, with some effort."

"Not an amoral psychopath?"

"And?"

"And... I don't want to get shot by the police," you say slowly, realization dawning. "Just like Hookwolf wants to avoid PRT airstrikes."

"Yeah. Hookwolf actually has a pretty inconvenient power, because he has to be so careful when not fighting high-level Brutes. Don't get me wrong, he's racked up quite the body count over the years. But he doesn't kill people indiscriminately-"

"-you can tell by how there are still some left," you finish for her.

"Right. He's careful enough that the heroes are still trying to capture him and send him to the Birdcage. No kill order."

"So the best power for winning fights would actually be something less lethal, like... farting knockout gas?"

"Well, kind of. But once Roland the Farter makes a name for himself, everyone is going to wear hazmat suits when they go to fight him. And then he really wants to be friends with Hookwolf, who can carefully cut their suits open, and we're back to team fights and synergies.

"But anyway, everyone pulls their punches, and retreats early if things start to go bad." She grimaces. "Less so in Brockton Bay than elsewhere, because the heroes have Panacea, the Empire has Othala, and the ABB is Lung, so injuries are usually a lot less lethal or career-ending here. Which is not super great for those of us who are not heroes, nazis or dragons."

You shake your head. "People still die though, as you said. On both sides. Accidents, carelessness, deliberate malice, whatever. But the heroes still play along?" You pause and consider the words that just came out of your mouth. "No, never mind the heroes, heroes are assholes. What about the police? Politicians? The military?"

"Two reasons for that. No, three. First off, consider our fair city. Famously cape-heavy, notoriously villain-dense. But run the numbers and you end up with roughly one villain per ten thousand people." She leans back and gestures grandly. "The forces of law and order love us. Our effect on the overall crime rate is negligible, but we're celebrities. And when they catch a celebrity criminal they look really good to the public, completely out of proportion to the effect they're actually having."

Ok, yes, you knew heroes were assholes. But, um. Yeah. You're going with 'um'. Lisa kindly waits for your worldview to stop spinning before she continues.

"You know pre-Scion comic books?" she asks.

"Not very well."

"Well, they basically predicted the current situation almost perfectly. And a lot of nerds criticized that. They claimed that it was ridiculous, that you couldn't possibly give so many people random superpowers and have society remain the same except for a light sprinkling of people occasionally dressing up and shooting lasers at each other. Super unrealistic." She grins at you.

You snort. "Boy were they wrong."

"No," Lisa says, all traces of mirth suddenly gone. "They weren't. It is ridiculous. But when powers started appearing for real, well. The people in charge, the real movers and shakers, they didn't like it. If the world changed too much, why, they might end up not being in charge anymore. Luckily for them there was a model for how things could stay more or less the same, already embedded in the public consciousness. A self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

"You would not believe the effort that goes into maintaining the status quo," she continues, stabbing the air with her chopsticks to emphasize her point. "Parahumans that decide to commit flashy crimes are subtly encouraged by lax law enforcement and insecure prisons, and parahumans that try to go into politics or business are brazenly shut down by blatant legislative and judicial corruption. The whole hero versus villain thing is a charade, designed to prop up a society based on the notion that all men are born equal in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary."

Once again you take a moment to process things. Sure, it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory. But. Only a very few people are born with the potential to become parahuman. This is well known and apparently uncontroversial in the scientific community, yet you've never seen it mentioned in any form of media or school book. You yourself only know because you went looking for cape facts in the weird corners of the internet.

Hell, you read most of a 150-page thread on PHO speculating on the source of powers. It had all sorts of theories that would be instantly debunked by this one simple fact, and it was never brought up once. It was like watching a bunch Flat-Earthers discussing the best way to launch a satellite. There is clearly some heavy-duty social engineering going on somewhere.

"What's the third reason?" you ask with some trepidation.

"It's worth keeping us around just on the chance that we help out against the really bad stuff. Can't fight S-class threats if you're in prison, you know? We get to live in a comic book, as long as we die in an Endbringer fight."

Chapter 11: S.08

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You've figured out the problem with your plans. When you come up with them they are entirely brilliant, because it's up to Future Taylor to carry them out. But when the time to act finally rolls around, Future Taylor still hasn't shown up to take over from you.

You're currently dressed in your new costume. Most of it is fairly mundane: Riding breeches, boots, gloves. The thing that took so much work was the chest piece, a black 'leather scale mail' that you assembled from several old jackets. It's almost entirely useless as actual armor, being more of a really thick t-shirt. But between the bronze-colored rivets holding the scales in place and the curly decorations you made from scraps of copper wire you could pass for a Viking warrior, if the warrior in question was working as an extra in a B movie.

Really, the only historically accurate part of the outfit is the knife and purse on your belt. Well, the sheath at least. The knife is very modern (the purse also contains pepper spray).

Your cheap plastic mask depicts an insufferably smug man with a thin beard and mustache, and your head is otherwise bare. You also, er, padded your costume a bit in the front, to suggest the presence of a bust. Also in the, uh, in the area around the hips. It's not vanity! Obfuscating your stick-like figure will help protect your secret identity! Also, you didn't want anyone look at the male face on the mask and draw the wrong conclusions. In case your long curly hair wasn't enough of a clue. Or your voice.

Alright, fine, it's vanity. Moving on.

It's still February, and walking around in a glorified t-shirt is fucking cold. But that's all part of the plan. That way, when you raise your arm to greet the three skinheads in front of you, your skin color is readily apparent. Well, you assume they are all skinheads: Two of them are sensible enough to wear hats in this climate. One of the hat-wearers has a walkie-talkie, and is speaking into it.

"Number two patrol, reporting," he's saying. He listens to something you can't make out, then continues. "Encountered unknown parahuman, appears non-hostile." Another garbled communication. "Roger that. Out."

He returns the walkie-talkie to his belt. You can't exactly say that he turns his attention to you, because all three of them have been watching you warily the whole time. But he raises his arm to return your greeting.

"Can we help you, miss?" See, he correctly identified your gender before you opened your mouth. This totally validates the padding! The speaker wears an expression of polite indifference fitting his query, the guy on the left glares at you suspiciously, and the guy on the right looks faintly annoyed. Though to be fair he looked annoyed even before they spotted you, and hasn't changed expression since - he might just be annoyed that his ears are cold. They are very prominent.

"I'd like to join the Empire," you say. The three of them relax somewhat.

"I'll call it in. Your name?"

"Low Key." You picked your name and costume specifically for this moment. Nazis: For all that they loudly proclaim to hate faggots, they are every single one of them gay for Norse mythology.

"I'm Mike. This is Sven and Alex." He shakes you hand, then gestures to each companion in turn. "Excuse me." He turns away and raises the walkie-talkie again. Sven-the-suspicious and Alex-the-annoyed offer you handshakes as well.

"Pretty sure Loki was a guy," Alex observes.

"Tell that to Sleipnr," you say.

He nods thoughtfully. "Piece of advice, though: People who fuck horses don't get to join our club."

"I'll keep that in mind," you promise. See, he got the reference! You totally called it, gay for Norse mythology.

Mike finishes up his conversation on the walkie-talkie and turns back to you. "Kaiser will meet you at the foundry. Alex will guide you there."

Sven passes his headgear to Alex. It's like a badge, you realize: At least one shaved head per patrol must be visible at all times.

"Why me?" Alex asks.

"Because I trust you to be diplomatic and not scare off the new recruit before she even gets to Kaiser. Sven not so much."

"At least I can be trusted not to marry a jew!" Sven counters.

Mike turns to face him. "Really, we're doing this? You'd do this to me? In front of the new brass? Fight me!" He puts up his hands in a boxer's stance and throws a punch - a slow, playful punch clearly not intended to connect.

Sven puts up his dukes and deflects it, before responding in kind. They get really quite into their footwork as they continue to not-quite-shadowbox against each other. You and Alex flee before the sheer amount of male bonding in the air reaches toxic levels.

You and Alex walk in silence for a while, until finally you can't keep a lid on your curiosity any more.

"Did he actually-"

"Tragic story, really," Alex says. "Got married before he found out about the JQ, then he was trapped between the vows of matrimony and the fourteen words."

At this point you realize your mistake: You thoroughly researched the nazi capes, but completely neglected to study their technical vocabulary. Yes, like every other Brockton Bay native you are aware that the '8's in 'Empire 88' refer to the eighth letter of the alphabet, and that the resulting 'HH' stands for 'Heil Hitler' (the whole thing always struck you as a bit silly, a 'no girls allowed in my treehouse club' level of secret code). But that's all you know, and you didn't even consider that there would be more of that sort of stuff. Which, in retrospect, is somewhat like trying to infiltrate the Merchants without knowing the street names for heroin. Which probably also prominently feature the letter H now that you think about it.

No, focus. You need to take this more seriously. Right, uh, J is another easy letter, must be jew-something-or-other, and the fourteen words are probably something like 'fuck niggers and kikes, the holocaust didn't happen but I wish it did'. Was that fourteen? You understood the gist of his statement, at least. You hope.

"So what happened?" you ask.

"Tried to hide his wife from his friends and his politics from his wife," Alex says. He shakes his head sadly. "That shit never works long term. Always gets out sooner or later. She divorced him, of course. Huge scandal too, almost got him thrown out of the Empire." He pauses, looking thoughtful. "Some people still think he should have been."

"But not you?"

"Nah, honest mistake. Guy ended up in a bad situation, no good way out."

You nod along, doing your best to appear calm. His conviction that secrets inevitably get revealed is not exactly doing wonders for your peace of mind right now. But there's no turning back. You'll just have to make sure that by the time you get found out, you'll have nicked enough powers to make it out alive. Gotta step up your game.

On that note, what is your soul's price, Alex the Surprisingly Reasonable Nazi?

Alex wants to secure the survival of his people and a future for white children.

Hm. After due consideration, you'll have to reluctantly file him in the 'too well-adjusted to Master' bin. Unfortunate.

Turns out that 'the foundry' is not the name of a club or a pub, nor is it an abandoned industrial property turned villain lair. It's an actual, active foundry, full of workers and molten steel and everything.

The sudden heat is quite welcome, since you apparently lack the sense to dress yourself properly. You still stop in the doorway and blink in surprise as the true import of what you're seeing dawns on you, though. Non-bankrupt heavy industry, in your city? Either the fascists really do make the trains run on time, or Kaiser is using gang money to prop up an otherwise hopeless business for reasons of his own. Putting the socialist in national socialist, as it were.

Then you blink again. The sight of molten steel is filling your brain with all kinds of ideas. The wonders you could forge, if you had a magma smelter, and- You shake your head to get rid of the images. Ok, so you're a Tinker 0, that's cool and all, but not what's important right now.

You're led to a secluded section in the back, where Kaiser is waiting for you. He sits on a metal throne behind a metal desk, wearing an ornate suit of metal armor covering his whole body. It seems to fit him perfectly, and you marvel at how each joint of his gauntlet moves as he raises a hand to beckon you closer. You could make even better armor, if- no, focus.

Kaiser has the power to create and control metal. The message behind him holding this meeting mere yards away from several tons of molten steel is not lost on you. Nor are his bodyguards: Two tall, blonde valkyries. And by tall you mean roughly 12 feet (by 'valkyries', you mean that they are wearing viking-themed outfits considerably more expensive than your own, but just as historically accurate). Fenja and Menja, twins who apparently shared the same trigger event.

That they're only double human size right now is also a message. If they were regular unpowered criminals they would have their guns in hand, but pointing away from you, with their fingers off the trigger.

"Low Key, was it? I'm told you wish to join us." Kaiser speaks up. His is the voice of a man completely confident in his position. Yes, he could kill you in three different ways right now, but if you were in his shoes you'd be at least a little bit worried about a parahuman with unknown powers standing so close. Guess that's why you're not a gang leader.

"Yes, sir," you reply.

Kaiser puts his hand on his chin and tilts his head, a deliberately exaggerated motion to make up for his full-face helmet. "With that name... Let me guess, Thinker?"

"No." You shake your head.

"Stranger?"

"No."

"Master, then."

"Yyyes, but not in the way you're thinking."

"Then by all means, demonstrate!" He bows slightly in his seat and indicates that the floor is yours with another exaggerated gesture.

"Come forth," you whisper, and the room contains significantly more wolf. Fenja and Menja both startle, but if Kaiser reacts at all it is subtle enough for his armor to hide it.

"Meet Fenrir," you announce calmly. Conjuring a giant wolf out of thin air is no big deal for you, clearly. Unfortunately the wolf himself rather undermines the impression you're going for with his wagging tail, panting grin and general air of being delighted to meet new friends. Hmph. Next time you'll explicitly tell him to look aloof and threatening. It might even work.

One of the Enjas - the one with the spear, not the sword, you can't for the life of you remember which is which - cautiously approaches the wolf, shooting questioning glances at both you and her boss. When neither of you object, she reaches out and runs her hand through Fenrir's fur. Tail wagging intensifies. Encouraged, she proceeds to scratch behind his ears, and the situation quickly degenerates from there. Before long Fenrir is flat on his back, accepting belly rubs and assurances that he's a good boy.

You and Kaiser share a look. Even with both your faces completely covered, the sentiment is communicated clearly. 'Fucking minions, am I right? No sense of gravitas whatsoever.'

"Do you have snake as well, for Fenja to fawn over?" he asks with a certain asperity. Menja completely fails to get the hint.

(Also, still called it. Every one of them, gay for the norsemen)

"'Fraid not," you say.

"A shame. You may dismiss it now. Menja, do try to control yourself."

Menja reluctantly gets up and resumes her position at his side, and you whisper "begone". Fenrir takes the time to give you a wounded look before he dematerializes, but obeys. He is a good boy, after all.

There's no reason be more nervous now than before, you tell yourself. Kaiser can still kill you in three different ways, the fact that Fenrir won't be able to materialize again for several hours makes no difference.

"You power appears adequate," Kaiser notes. "How is your martial arts?"

Oh. Clearly your sweet Viking costume has convinced Kaiser that you've already mastered the first required cape skill, so he goes straight to asking about the second. Which might be a problem.

"...nonexistent?"

"Hookwolf holds classes. You will attend those until he judges your skills sufficient. We don't expect you to take down Armsmaster in single combat, but we do expect you to be able to hold your own against a Ward. Do you know first aid?"

And there goes the third skill. You shake your head.

"Well. It's almost time for the annual refresher course anyway. We'll hold it a bit earlier than usual."

"Don't you have Othala for that?" you ask.

"Othala can't be everywhere," he says, his disapproval clear in his voice. "Everyone who gets injured in the line of duty will be treated by her, but someone may need to keep them from bleeding to death until she arrives, and that someone may be you."

"Understood, sir."

"It's quite early still. I think we'll send you on the introductory patrol right away."

"Oh. You should have said earlier, now I can't."

"Explain."

"It's my power, see. After I dismiss Fenrir it takes quite a while before I can call him back."

"How long?"

"I'm not sure, it seems to vary," you answer honestly. "I'll definitely be ready by Monday," you continue, still truthful but considerably less honest. But it's what's expected of you as a cape. ABS: Always Be Sandbagging.

"Unfortunate. Very well. Monday and Friday patrol, Tuesday and Thursday martial arts, Wednesday first aid - make a note, Wednesdays for the refresher course - to be replaced with more patrol on completion, your power permitting. Schedule subject to change in case of unusual circumstances, e.g. jailbreaks, gang wars." Kaiser does not lose his businesslike, faintly bored tone as his spiel meanders over to felonies and grave risk of bodily harm. "You're still in school?"

You nod.

"Untrained, working part time. Your salary will be one thousand dollars a month. With bonuses for parahuman combat, the size of which will depend on danger and results."

"You expect me to break people out of jail for a thousand bucks a month?" you scoff. "The Wards make more than that, once you factor in the scholarship fund."

"And if you cared more about money than about doing the right thing, you would be joining them instead of us," Kaiser counters.

You turn away from him and lock eyes with Menja. "Can you believe this shit?" you ask her. "The Kaiser is jewing me."

She bursts out laughing, then quickly claps her hands over her mouth. Even Kaiser is chuckling softly as you turn back to him.

"Very well," he says. "I will cover your college tuition as well, assuming you remain with the Empire that long."

"Because giving my boss an incentive to make sure I become part of the cape longevity statistics sounds like an excellent idea," you say. "Tell you what, why don't you take advantage of the fact that I'm young, foolish and broke and instead offer me a generous - but ultimately much smaller - signing bonus?"

Kaiser chuckles again. "You drive a hard bargain, miss Low Key. Are you sure you're not a Thinker?"

No, you're a Tinker, as you found out just now. You have a brain full of ideas, and getting them out of there and into the real world is going to cost a fortune.

Notes:

A/N

This story is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real nazis living or dead is a coincidence.

On an unrelated note, did you know that 'coincidence' is nazi slang for 'jewish plot'?

Updated status

Minor quests:

Muscles McExtra: Wants a date with Miss Militia

Danny Hebert: Wants his daughter to be happy. Clearly did not read the source material

Madison: Wants a happy and unassuming life, the bitch

Alex the Friendly Skinhead: Wants to secure the survival of his people and a future for white children

Chapter 12: S.09

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You make your way home, your backpack containing not only your Low Key costume, but also phat stacks of cash. Kaiser hinted not so subtly that trying to run off with your signing bonus would be a tremendously bad idea. You were not fazed in the least. When the Empire eventually comes howling for your blood, money will be the last thing on their minds.

In addition to the money, your new boss also unwittingly provided you with his soul's price. Shockingly, it turned out to be both morally acceptable and potentially doable. Sort of. Maybe.

Kaiser wants his son to become a worthy heir.

All you have to do is to discover Kaiser's secret identity to find his son, figure out what's wrong with the kid, and get some sort of power that can fix it. It's a long-term project, okay?

Your loyal companion, The Wolf Formerly Known As Bubbles, is not at your side. Since he won't be able to re-materialize for several hours yet you sent him off to lair territory to scout out a good place for a Tinker workshop. He's much better suited to it than you: He can just walk through walls and fences instead of having to figure out a way to break into each disused property. If he finds something matching the criteria you gave him he'll just guide you right there tomorrow.

God you love having a sapient magical wolf for a friend.

You come home to find the kitchen table full of empty beer cans. As is the coffee table in front of the TV, and several window sills.

"Dad?" you call out hesitantly.

"Taylor!" Danny's cheerful voice comes from the basement. He comes bounding up the stairs, then stops as he sees you staring at the Great Beer Massacre of 2011. "It's not what it looks like," he says sheepishly. You sort of guessed that much, given the way he's still conscious. "I used the beer to lure in a herd of wild dockworkers, and fooled them into doing physical labour! Come look!" His voice regains its enthusiasm as he goes, and he beckons you into the basement.

You follow him and crane your neck to see- oh. Gone is the pile of blankets and makeshift nightstand. In their stead, your entire bedroom has been transplanted into the basement. Just because you said... he went to all this effort... You feel tears coming to your eyes. Danny wants you to be happy.

You hug your dad with great enthusiasm, causing him to sway dangerously on the stairs. There's also a certain quality to his breath that you can't help but notice at this range.

"Skittish creatures, dockworkers," you note mischievously. "They wouldn't trust the beer unless you demonstrated that it was safe to drink first, yeah?"

Danny chuckles. "Something like that. I- I did the right thing, didn't I? You said-"

"It's perfect," you interrupt him. You take a step back up the stairs and use the height advantage to muss his hair. Then you pause and purse your lips. "Almost. Hang on."

You locate a screwdriver and remove the legs from your bed, letting the mattress rest directly on the floor. Danny helps you without making any wisecracks about monsters hiding under the bed. You make sure to hug him again before you turn in for the night.

Despite the assurances you gave, you spend some time tossing and turning, drifting in and out of sleep. But at some point during the night the bedsprings make a sound of protest as your bed becomes full of fur and safety, and you drift off peacefully.

While discussing plans last night Bubbles/Fenrir assured you that he's a light enough sleeper that he would notice your dad approaching in time to dematerialize, so you didn't bother to set an alarm this time. Instead you wake up from the sun streaming in through the one small window, but simply turn over and go back to sleep with a contented sigh. This repeats itself several times as you exult in the fact that it's Saturday and you don't need to pretend to go to school, but eventually the smell of frying bacon lures you out of bed.

After enjoying a thoroughly unhealthy breakfast (more of a brunch, really) you finally start getting ready for the day. Being lazy is nice and all, but you also have things to do that will help you not die.

"Heading out?" Danny asks as you leave the basement with your backpack.

"Yeah. Gonna take a walk, do some shopping, maybe visit the library."

"When will you be back?"

"Dunno. Don't wait up for me?"

Danny looks pained. "I don't like the way you've been staying out late at night lately. It's not safe. Not in this city."

"Dad, I-"

"Look, I don't want to- are you still working at the dog shelter?"

No. Yesterday I met the most powerful neo-nazi in North America and called him a jew to his face. He was so impressed he offered me a job. "Yes."

"I don't want to stop you from doing something you enjoy. But-"

"Dad. Listen. I know it's not safe. That's why I got this." You show him the pepper spray you bought. You don't show him the knife though, you don't think that would actually make him any less worried. "I also signed up for self-defense classes starting Tuesday."

Danny smiles ruefully and places an identical can of pepper spray on the table. "Looks like you're way ahead of me as usual, kiddo."

"No, no, this is great. Now I'll be twice as safe." You snatch up the second can and start dashing around, making 'pssshhht' noises as you pretend to pepper spray invisible assailants all over the kitchen. Once all enemies have fallen to your might, you holster (pocket) your weapons with flourish. "See?"

"I'm convinced." Danny nods solemnly. "Have fun out there." He's clearly still worried about you. But he's pretending everything is fine, which is close enough in this household.

"Well, did you find anything good?" you ask the empty air next to you as you get off the bus. "That's great, show me!" Some people look at you oddly, because they didn't see the empty air nod. You hurry off. You should probably get a hands-free set for your cellphone and wear it conspicuously, so that people just think you're an asshole, not a crazy person.

Fenrir guides you to a particular building. It's locked up, so it hasn't been completely given up on. Someone is feeling unreasonably optimistic about the future of the Brockton Bay real estate market, it seems. But not all that optimistic, because a closer look shows that the building has been broken into at least once already - and rather than replace the busted lock, the owner just welded a pair of steel rings to the door and stuck on a padlock. Clearly no one would mind (read: notice) if you borrowed the place for a while.

Making sure that no one is around, you take a set of heavy bolt cutters from your backpack and attack the padlock. Good thing you cleaned the basement recently, or you'd never have found these.

Inside, you find everything you could have hoped for: A skylight and a glass blowing furnace. The room is a mess, with ceramic trays, metal rods and oddly shaped tools strewn all over the floor. Not much of a black market for glass blowing equipment, you guess. The furnace is going to need some maintenance too - it may have been too big to steal, but they ripped out the gas burner meant to heat the thing. Nothing Tinker 0 powers can't handle.

Still, there's other equipment you need to borrow as well. Yes, borrow. You're going to put it back when you're done. You turn to Fenrir.

The-Wolf-Formerly-Known-As-Bubbles-o-vision

I wait expectantly as she looks around. It was really hard to find this place. There were a great many houses with roof windows, and some with big ovens, but this was the only one with both. I hope she is pleased.

She tells me that she needs more things, and starts explaining about strange machines. That means she is pleased, right? I am good at finding things, that's why she wants me to find more things. I listen very carefully to the descriptions. I am a Good Dog.

I don't remember any machines like the ones she wants from last night. She tells me that a good place to search is half-done houses like the one where I lived with all the other dogs. But newer, without any grass growing in them. I'll have to go further away then. All the houses around here are very old, with much grass.

She was right, of course. I find both machines in a small house next to a big half-house. I know she doesn't want me to materialize on my own, but I have a great idea. I just know she's going to like it. Since there is no one in there, no one will be able to tell. Unless she asks me to materialize soon and I'm too tired to do it. Oops.

Oh well, too late now, already materialized. I spend some time convincing the machines to come with me. They are not very talkative, but don't seem opposed to the notion. I touch them both while I dematerialize and they come along without complaint. Now I can just take them with me through the walls!

Both machines have wheels, but I don't think I can grab them both at the same time. I don't want to make two trips either, the roof window house is really far from here. Maybe... The smaller machine has a convenient handle, and if I grab that with my mouth (bleh, tastes like oil and metal), I am able to lift it off the ground. Then I climb up with my front paws on the bigger one and gently set it down on top of it. Clank! Wow, that was really loud. Maybe I was not so gentle. But only dematerialized people would be able to hear it, so that's okay.

...I hope I didn't break anything. Ah, but I'm sure she can fix it if I did. Yep. Nothing to worry about.

Navigating properly while walking backwards and dragging strange machines around sure is hard! But I can walk through walls when I back into a building, and the cars just zoom right through me when I stray onto the road. The powers she gave me are the best! She is the best!

After giving Fenrir his instructions, you catch a bus back downtown to begin another shopping spree. First a hardware store, for spare parts and tools that you couldn't find in your basement. And a new lock, you don't want anyone else waltzing in. But mostly a whole bunch of hollow section steel bars, to serve as the framework for the focusing array.

The store does not usually offer home delivery, but you're able come to an arrangement where you pay a relative of the owner for the use of his private vehicle. It means one person who can tie your appearance to the location of your lair, but you could not possibly lug that much steel across town on your own. The lair's only temporary, anyway.

You make small talk as he drives, enough to get an idea of his character, and also the price of his soul.

Geoffrey wants to become a professional baseball player (and make millions of dollars).

Considering his thinning hair and prominent gut... you just keep reaching for those stars, buddy. Not something you can fulfill, but he seems like a reliable sort otherwise.

So you pay him extra to lug everything inside for you while you replace the lock.

"This place is a mess," he remarks. He does not make any comment about the broken lock or ask for proof that you're the rightful owner of the building. You knew he was reliable.

"It's a bit up a fixer-upper," you agree. "Can I call you if we need more things delivered?" He agrees, and gives you his number.

Speaking of the focusing array though, why do you even need natural sunlight anyway? Couldn't you just get an UV lamp or something? Nope, says your power. Suck it up and buy mirrors. At least mirrors are pretty cheap when you don't care about shape or size or pretty frames, just price per square foot.

The optics are another matter. Even if you could afford to order custom-made lenses, you can't wait for them to be ground. You're on a schedule here. Instead you end up buying a bunch of cheap toy binoculars to disassemble. It will have to do.

Your deliveryman does raise an eyebrow when you have him pick up all those mirrors, so you raise his hourly wage. "The boss appreciates a man who doesn't ask awkward questions," you say. Understanding dawns in his eyes, and he mimes zipping his lips shut.

That's the sunlight taken care of - or it will be, once you assemble everything. But then there's the magma to consider. Why, power, why? The magma won't even touch the metal, how could it possibly have an effect on the process? Because fuck you, that's how. Now buy some magma. Luckily you're able to find a gardening store selling magma by the pound (though the receipt calls it 'decorative basalt gravel'). You make yet another trip back to the forge, with a backpack full of rocks.

Next order of business is fuel for the furnace. Annoyingly, your Tinker power insists that the heat should should be provided by the volcano you're obviously getting your magma from, and gives you no idea of how much fuel you'll need. You jot down the manufacturer and serial number from a faded sticker. Off to the library to look up the specs online, then.

The bus to the library passes by an invisible wolf, weaving slightly as it drags an invisible set of oxyacetylene tanks perched on top of an invisible portable generator down the road. Huh. You didn't know he could do that. Who would have thought that the sneakiest cat burglar in town would be a guy without opposable thumbs, who can't even fit through regular doors?

You smile. He really is the Best Dog. You spend an enjoyable few minutes contemplating the counterfactual exploits of Dog Burglar, gentleman thief. It's a shame you're going to be too busy nazi-ing around to make it reality any time soon.

Then you frown as you realize that you were thinking of committing crimes because it would be neat. That's not cool. You're infiltrating the Empire to steal their powers. To make yourself stronger. You're borrowing this equipment for the same reason. But just stealing things for fun? No. Sure you'd fucking kill yourself before joining the Wards, possibly literally, but you're not a bad guy.

Uh, yeah, about that... This project is going to eat through most of your advance, and you still owe Emma money. Which means that you still won't be able to feed Best Dog properly, as you promised to do. Yes, he'll forgive you. He's forgiving you right now, and you haven't even asked him yet. That's the thing about undeserved unconditional love. Doesn't stop you from feeling like a heel.

Looking up the specs of the furnace and the relevant melting points paints a bleak picture, economically speaking. You'll have to run it around the clock to keep the magma molten, and keep the glory hole open all day to let the sunlight in. Yes, yes, 'keeping the glory hole open all day' is something Emma has previously accused you of doing. You're simply going to ignore all the double entendres there, because you're pretty sure glassblowers invented the term first. The point is, that's going to let heat escape as well. It'll add up to hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of propane by the time you're done.

At least propane is something of a household good, and modestly-sized tanks of it can be bought with no questions asked. When you first started having metallurgical Tinker ideas you were worried you'd have to somehow track down coke dealer. The kind of coke that goes in a blast furnace, you mean, not the kind that goes up your nose. You imagine the latter kind would be fairly easy to find around here.

By the time you get back Fenrir is resting next to his intangible loot, gathering energy to materialize it and himself. Once your deliveryman has unloaded your propane and left you make sure to inform Fenrir as to your opinions re: the identity of Best Dog. Also your intentions towards said entity, should he become tangible enough for belly rubs.

In the meantime you repair the furnace, rig up some lights, and buy gas for the generator to power them. Between it, the furnace and the welding torch you'll be burning three separate hydrocarbons, which seems sort of... suboptimal? If you were Armsmaster, you'd no doubt have come up with some brilliant contraption that siphons waste heat from the magma to power the blah, blah, blah. You're not Armsmaster, you're some sort of weird inconvenient alchemist-metallurgist.

As soon as the welder has been returned to the material realm, you give copious belly rubs. Because you promised. Then you start working on the focusing array. First you cut and weld together a framework of steel, then you carefully break the mirrors apart, angling the pieces to create a parabolic reflector as you glue them to the framework. Well, mostly parabolic. Parabolic-ish. It's not perfect, but it's no worse than the shitty plastic prisms and lenses you'll use for the final focusing stage.

Yes, it's terrible, but it's the best you can do on a shoestring budget. By the time you've rigged up a frame for the first mirror and gotten the optics set up correctly the sun has already gone down. Can't test it until tomorrow. No problem, you'll have to let the magma melt overnight anyway. You load the furnace up with gravel and fire it up. The empty shells of a dozen gutted binoculars crunch under your feet as you leave.

Only one thing left to do today, which is to recruit a minion. Someone has to wake up in the middle of the night and switch propane tanks, and it's not going to be you. Nor would Emma's parents agree to perpetual 'sleepovers'.

Luckily lair territory doesn't just contain lairs, it also sports a fair crop of naturally-occurring minions, aka homeless people. Now most capes would spurn this resource, reasoning that if they were in any way reliable they probably wouldn't be sleeping on the street in the first place. But that just means that you're hitting an untapped market. A bit of Loyalty will fix that reliability issue right up, you figure. They can't have ambitions all that lofty, either, and they are unlikely to object to a brief conversation in exchange for spare change.

Good lord but interviewing the homeless is depressing. As it turns out, quite a few souls have prices you are not able to meet.

Pete wants to see his kids again.

Hilda wants to stop coughing up blood.

Believe it or not, that's only the second most depressing category. By far the most common prices are alcohol and heroin. Not, mind you, a lifetime supply. These people will sell their soul for the next hit. Even if you were prepared to offer that, you don't think even Loyalty would be enough to make those people reliable.

Your latest candidate is not off to the most promising start either as he introduces himself as Funny Jim, 'because of the voices, see.'

"Do the voices tell you to do things, Jim?" you ask.

He nods. "But I don't do what they says. They are right assholes, they are." He suddenly whips his head around and addresses the wall to your right. "Like that! I'd never do that! This poor girl never done anything to me!"

You take a step back and grab your pepper spray, but he calms down quickly and offers you a reassuring(?) smile. Wow. If you were him, your soul's price would be a trip to the dentist. Wait no, the pharmacy. Definitely antipsychotics over dental work.

"Are you all right?" you ask.

"Yeah. Yeah. No problem. That's the funny part, right? When I argue with them. Real funny..." He trails off, muttering to himself.

Jim wants somewhere warm to sleep.

Okay. Despite the rocky start, this guy is clearly your best bet so far, and it's getting late. Beggars can't be choosers, even when they are choosing among beggars.

"Come along, Jim," you say. "I have a place for you to sleep, if you help me out a bit."

Notes:

A/N

Technically you just did what Lisa told you not to do, and attracted Coil's attention. From his 'misc notes' document:

Theft of equipment from building site above base, lock not forced. Parahuman related?

I'd say it's slightly below 'alphabetize record collection' on his list of priorities, except everything he owns is already perfectly alphabetized. Not that he has OCD, but sometimes he has nothing better to do while waiting for events to play out in the other timeline. And whenever his plan falls through, it stays alphabetized.

Mechanics corner

Why was Fenrir trying to talk to inanimate objects back there? Inborn spirit instincts.

You can only bring items you personally own along with you when you dematerialize. In Creation (the Exalted setting), ownership is determined by what the spirit of the object thinks. So any thief who wants to dematerialize with his swag first needs to convince the spirits of the stolen objects that he's their rightful owner (how euphemistic 'convince' becomes in this context is up to the individual thief).

It's a lot easier on Earth Bet. Fenrir is the only spirit in the world, so every incorporeal heist just works by default.

Updated status

Quests:

Tattletale: Wants Coil dead

Panacea: Wants the same thing quite a lot of people who've met Glory Girl want

Shadow Stalker: Wants to go back to those carefree vigilante days

Bitch: Wants a friend who is like a dog, but not actually a dog

Kaiser: Wants his son to become a worthy heir

Minor quests:

Seriously, I'm going to remove this guy, you'll never meet him again: Wants a date with Miss Militia

Danny Hebert: Wants you to be happy. Is... actually doing pretty well in his effort to achieve this? Huh.

Alex the Friendly Skinhead: Wants a future for white children. Genocide of the untermenschen strictly optional

Madison: Also wants a future with white children, but has a more concrete plan for how to go about it

Delivery NPC #1: Wants to become a baseball star.

Whole bunch of homeless people: You know what, let's just stop tracking minor quests at all.

Completed quests:

Emma: Challenged you to a 'crazy bitch'-off, lost

Jim: Wanted somewhere warm to sleep

Chapter 13: S.10

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Unlike yesterday, this morning you're out of bed, dressed, breakfasted and out the door before the sun has even risen. Can't waste any daylight. Literally, your Tinker power informs you that you need all the daylight you can get for your project.

You also need gold. Because of course artificial magma and natural sunlight wasn't inconvenient enough already. You do have some gold, though. There was a small box in the back of your closet, containing your mother's jewelry. Yours, now. Some of it was made of gold.

When dad handed you the box after the funeral, you had no idea what to do with it. He would be incredibly upset if you sold it, obviously. But he would be almost as upset if he saw you wearing it. Worse really, because it would be the kind of upset where he would have to pretend that he wasn't. You would be upset if you wore it. So you just put it away and never looked at it again. In the years since then, neither of you mentioned its existence even once.

It felt like desecration, taking it. Grave robbing. Even though mom would want you to melt it down. 'Better to get some use of it than to let it sit around forgotten', she'd say. But that line of thinking isn't about to cheer you up any time soon. There's quite a few things mom would say, if she could see you and dad now.

(It wasn't pure gold, of course, they don't make jewelry out of that. But compared to the contraption you're building in your lair, taking care of that little detail barely pinged your Tinker radar. A bit of copper, a bit of lead, a bit of acid, done.)

Dad isn't up yet, so you leave a note detailing your mostly fictitious plans for the day. You suspect that most teenagers would be facing serious suspicion and scrutiny right about now, but the stark contrast with your previous life of helpless moping is working out in your favor. Between Danny's obvious relief at your newfound initiative and his general failure as a parent, you should be safe for a while yet.

At the forge, you hustle Jim out with instructions to return after sunset. As long as he doesn't see you working the furnace you have the barest, most threadbare fig leaf of deniability that you're just another henchperson, subcontracting the boring/uncomfortable bits of working for the mystery Tinker known as, uh, Smith? Yeah, sure, your new cape name is Smith.

Then dawn breaks and you're far too busy to think about anything else. Quick, gold into the crucible, crucible into the magma. Mirror into position. Doesn't do much until the sun rises high enough to shine directly through the skylight, but every little bit helps. You make minor adjustments to the lenses to maximize the amount of light hitting the gold, then get to work on building the next mirror.

The day passes in a blur after that. You constantly have to switch between constructing more mirrors and adjusting the existing ones as the sun moves across the sky, and every finished mirror means another change to the improvised mess of optics focusing the light into the glory hole and holy shit it's like a sauna in here yeah duh magma and now the sun has gone down and you haven't eaten anything all day or drunk anything either and you've sweated enough that you might actually have passed out and died if not for your Brute 0 powers and is Tinkering always like this for everyone?

Even Jim comments on your bedraggled appearance when he arrives. Which is fair, he clearly has his shit together better than you do right now, and probably smells better too. You leave him to keep the furnace going overnight and stagger home for a shower.

But of course the day isn't over yet. You have to visit Emma, to pay back the loan and maintain your relationship. No, it's not villain money, you promise. You quit at the dog shelter, you're henching for a Rogue now. Let's watch a movie and exchange gossip! Please god let the school transfer go through soon so you can drop this charade and focus on nicer, saner minions, like the guy who hears voices telling him to do unspecified terrible things to underage girls.

Monday, and once more you're up unreasonably early. You told dad that you're going out jogging before school, to get in better shape. And to be fair, you were in terrible shape before you triggered. Pretending to exercise is actually a good cover for your increased physical capabilities.

With the majority of the construction done, things are much calmer at the forge today. Even though you need to regularly adjust the mirrors and optics to keep up with the sun, and work the furnace to keep the magma at just the right temperature, you still have plenty of time to sit down and sketch out potential improvements for when you have a real budget. The fact that you remembered to pack a lunch and a water bottle today doesn't hurt either.

The day passes uneventfully, and Jim turns up right on time once more. Score one for Loyalty-based reliability. You set off towards Empire territory for your first day at work.

The address you were given turns out to be a bar. A front, obviously, but when you step inside you see that it is a back and a middle as well, so to speak. It really is a bar. Very cozy, with the dim lighting, rough-hewn wooden beams in the ceiling and dark green and brown decor. Very much how you imagine a place where no-nonsense working class people would go for a drink after work, where everyone knows their name. And should a person whose name isn't known show up, everyone would go silent and stare balefully at the intruder. Like what is happening to you right now.

You stop just inside the door and consider what to do next. You weren't told who you were supposed to report to specifically, but this is clearly the right place. You can tell by the way almost everyone is sporting the same fashionable haircut.

"Low Key! Over here!" someone calls out. The atmosphere relaxes considerably and conversations gradually resume as people turn away from you. You recognize Alex waving you over.

As you make your way over to his table, another detail catches your eye. For a working class bar, they seem to be serving an unusual amount of soft drinks. Almost as if the patrons were maintaining a state of readiness or something. Funny that.

Alex is sitting with Mike and Sven (Sven is still glaring at you suspiciously, or maybe that's just how his face looks), who both offer you monosyllabic greetings and curt nods. You respond in kind. Rather than offer you a seat, Alex stands up and guides you to a back room. Here finally all pretenses fall away. This is clearly an op center. The walls are covered with whiteboards showing schedules, and maps showing patrol routes. Several people with headsets are manning computers.

You are given a burner phone, instructions to only use it to call this place, some recognition codes to memorize, a pat on the back and a swift kick in the rear. Metaphorically speaking. Alex is hustling you back out before you can even check that the phone is programmed with the number to the op center. He then keeps hustling you all the way out into the street. Mike gets up and follows you. Ok, apparently your shift is starting right away, and you're taking Sven's place.

"Sooo... what are we doing, exactly?" you ask.

When you decided to infiltrate a gang, you made peace with the fact that you would end up having to commit crimes.

The Merchants mostly deal drugs, with a minor bit of prostitution on the side, mostly to help their customers afford their product. The ABB mostly deal with sex trafficking, with a minor bit of drug business on the side, mostly to help keep their chattel under control. Yes, the ABB also runs a bunch of illegal gambling, and all gangs no doubt dabble in illegal weapons. But the point is, you had mentally filed drugs and whores as the typical gang-related stuff, and expected to be put to work guarding or assisting in the distribution of one or the other.

You completely failed to account for the fact that your new employers were a nazi gang. You know, right wing extremists? The far right, in case anyone forgot, tends to strongly disapprove of extramarital sex. Nor does addiction go well with the ideal of the Nietzschean übermensch, you suppose. 'Degenerates' (i.e. people who sleep around and/or do drugs) are in fact third on their list of least favorite people, right below non-whites and non-heterosexuals.

What you're trying to say is, you went in expecting to become a criminal. You did not expect to become a police officer.

The Empire (Mike explains, and you mentally translate), while nominally occupied territory (part of the United States), enjoys an unusual degree of freedom as a de facto independent nation (police no-go zone). Yes, the vile Zionist Occupation Government (the regular US government) still demands tribute (taxes) from their subject population, but they are allowed (see above re: no-go zone) to maintain their own border security (thugs who beat up non-whites) and police force (thugs who beat up whites). Today you'll be acting in the latter capacity.

Since it's your first day (he continues), the patrol will be the milkiest of milk runs, in the heart of the Empire. There's unlikely to be any trouble, since the citizenry is generally law-abiding (citation needed) and not even niggers are dumb enough to venture that deeply into Empire territory (probably true). But just in case, here's how it works:

If you catch a criminal in the act, there's no need for a trial to establish guilt (you feel that you should have an objection to this logic, but can't think of one) and punishment is administered on the spot. If you are instead presented with an accusation, call it in and the op center boys will take it from there.

The penalty for breaking the law typically takes the form of corporal punishment (assault & battery), and perhaps a fine is levied (robbery). The Empire does not have a prison system (kidnapping), since it considers such punishments cruel and unusual (and, you suspect, unfeasibly impractical and expensive). Nor are its patrolmen authorized to dispense the death penalty (murder). It has happened that individual officers (thugs) elected to mete out capital punishment on their own initiative (flew off the handle and killed someone). Even should the resulting investigation deem that their judgement was justified -

"Wait, what?" you interrupt. "Justified?"

"Kid toucher, most recently," Alex says.

"Oh. Yeah, okay."

- the Empire can only offer limited protection against the agents of ZOG (actual police) in these cases.

You nod your understanding. If you strip out their peculiar issues with the government, they are basically just asking you to perform masked vigilantism. Which is surprisingly legal and uncontroversial these days. You will have nothing to feel guilty about as long as you ignore your colleagues patrolling the outskirts of the Empire, performing hate crimes so that you don't have to.

Your patrol takes place in an inner-city neighborhood, but it's non-euphemistically inner city. The zoning density is high, but everything is clean and in good repair, and the only graffiti is E88 logos. Which, since the Empire apparently fancies itself a government, is more like official signage than graffiti. In short, it has none of the usual warning signs that makes people go 'inner city, it's not safe here'. It actually looks like a decent place to live.

Though if you are being completely honest with yourself, one of the warning signs that everybody looks for but no one ever admits to is the presence of black people. So, uh, yeah.

The patrol is uneventful as promised, with your companions often stopping to greet and chat with people they know. You try not to fidget too much. Turns out masked vigilantism in a good neighborhood is unbelievably boring. There's not even any capes around to study.

Two hours in, the most exciting thing yet happens as you come across a group of obviously drunk young men.

"Is public intoxication a crime?" you ask hopefully.

"Not as long as they behave themselves," Mike says.

"We're behaving, offsicer!" one of them calls out cheerfully, having overheard you.

His companions turn around and notice you as well, which sets off an excited babble in the group.

"Hey Alex!"

"Is that a new cape?"

"It is!"

"Is it a boy or a girl? I can't tell."

"I think it's a girl."

"Show us your tits!"

Oh look, they stopped behaving. "Come forth," you whisper, pointing at the last person to speak. "Fetch."

Fenrir appears with his jaws already snapping shut in front of your target's chest, grabbing a large mouthful of jacket. He throws his head back, lifting the man off his feet. The other drunks scatter.

"Shit shit shit shit!"

"Sorry! I'm sorry!"

"I'm not with him!"

"Good dog," you say out loud. He performed the fetch exactly as instructed, down to the ongoing rumbling growl as he holds the guy aloft. Well, there's a small trickle of blood, so he probably scraped the skin with his teeth while getting a grip. But that's okay. Speaking of trickles, looks like someone wet himself in fear. Ew.

"Release him," Mike commands. He does not sound happy.

Fine. He probably learned his lesson. With another whispered command, Fenrir drops him and trots back to your side. Alex moves to help the guy, while Mike proceeds to lecture you.

Blah blah blah disproportionate response blah blah excessive force blah blah militarized police as a symptom of a sick society blah blah only necessary to keep the lesser races in line blah blah climate of fear blah. Fine, whatever. You get it. Inner patrol wears kid gloves, because white supremacy. As Alex demonstrates while Mike goes on and on, the proper punishment for disrespecting an officer of the law is apparently a clip around the ear and a quick scolding ("you live in a white society, fucking act like it!").

"Now dismiss your wolf," Mike finishes.

"Can't," you say sullenly. "Cape reasons."

"Jesus. All right, fine." He hands you a bottle of water from his pack. "At least clean the blood off its muzzle. We're not in fucking Africa."

You do as you're told. At least you get to spend the rest of the patrol mounted instead of walking. It's a lot more comfortable than riding a giant canine bareback has any right to be, and you have no idea whether that's another one from your incomprehensible grab-bag of powers or something innate to Fenrir.

You continue much like before, except more people stare at you and the conversations include more allusions to how much trouble newbie capes are. Allusions like 'house breaking'. You spend the rest of the patrol sulking showing the proper humility.

When you try to head home, though, the others insist that you come with them back to the bar. Apparently there's a ceremony for anyone finishing their first patrol.

You meet Sven on the way back, returning from a patrol of his own. His normal suspicious glare gives way to surprise when he sees you mounted/openly displaying parahuman powers.

"Did you encounter some rambunctious youths?" he asks with a smile.

"A couple," you say, "but Mike didn't approve of how roughly I treated them."

"Wha- really?" He gets the most peculiar facial expression. Alex bursts out laughing.

You look between them, uncomprehending. "I don't get it?"

Mike sighs. "He meant 'youths' as in 'black criminals,'" he explains patiently. "You know, like in the newspapers? 'Old lady robbed and beaten by a gang of youths.'"

"'Five youths hospitalized after E88 hate crime,'" Alex adds helpfully.

Not to be outdone, Sven starts loudly explaining his own (fairly predictable) feelings towards the 'jewish media'. Again, you get it already. Also, you really need to get around to finding a dictionary of nazi slang.

The ceremony is quite simple. Mike and Alex are given huge mugs of beer, 'for putting up with the newbie'. You are given an equally large mug full of milk, 'for completing the milk run'.

The fuck happened to your life, that you'd find yourself in a bar, in gang territory, holding a quart of milk, surrounded by skinheads chanting "chug, chug, chug"? After being scolded for police brutality by a literal jackbooted fascist thug?

No, you know exactly what happened. Powers happened. And really, would you rather be stuck in your old life? Still going to Winslow, still helpless before the trio? No. A thousand times no.

Hitching your mask up just enough to uncover your mouth, you chug.

Notes:

Mechanics corner

For the people who don't know anything about Exalted and are really confused right now, by alloying gold with sunlight in a magma forge you create orichalcum, one of the 'five magical materials'. Specifically the one associated with solar exalts, which is why Taylor instinctively knows how make it.

Orichalcum is unique among the five magical materials in that you can actually make some on Earth Bet. Elemental jade and moonsilver are naturally occurring substances (in Creation) that can't be synthesized (unless you're either a god or a dwarf [fucking dwarves]). And to make soulsteel you need, well, souls. Now maybe one of Glaistig Uaine's faeries would count as a soul for forging purposes, but aside from the obvious logistical problems there, the 'steel' part also needs the ore to be mined in the Underworld (the land of the dead). Which also doesn't exist in your current universe. You hope.

You could technically make some starmetal right now, but, uh. You really wouldn't want to.

(starmetal is made from dead spirits)

Chapter 14: S.11

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Compared to yesterday's disappointment, self defense classes promise to be amazing. There are no less than four capes in the building when you arrive. Also a whole bunch of unpowered skinheads, whatever. Most of them are paired up and sparring, though a few are doing other exercises.

Of the capes, three of them - Hookwolf, Cricket and Victor - are acting as instructors, while the last - Othala - sits off to the side.

Othala is clearly the best dressed of the lot: A traditional skintight body suit, deep red with a black symbol in a white circle on the chest. A rune of some sort? You're not norse-gay enough to identify it.

Victor is also dressed in black and red, but he is using your approach to a costume: Regular street clothes plus a cheap mask and a custom chest piece, in his case a domino and a breastplate. Hookwolf and Cricket even skip the custom chest piece, making do with just the masks. Custom-made metal ones, at least, that no doubt cost a pretty penny. Respectively depicting a wolf and a... hockey goalkeeper?

In Hookwolf's case he is literally skipping the chest piece: He is bare-chested. Many of his unpowered disciples are following his example. It's quite the feast for the eyes, if you're into big, sweaty, muscular men. Which you kind of are, but the amount of swastika tattoos on display is a bit of a turn-off.

To understand the way they are sparring, it is necessary to understand Othala: Othala is probably the most important person in the Empire. She can grant a variety of powers with a touch, but only one person and power at a time. Normally this would make her a versatile and decently powerful backline support type, but one of the powers she can grant is regeneration, which elevates her from 'support' to 'healer-with-benefits'.

Healers are incredibly rare, and the few teams lucky enough to have one enjoy enormous strategic advantages. The impact of having your members recover in minutes from injuries that would normally take weeks or months to heal - or even be permanently crippling - cannot be overstated.

Not to mention the various side benefits, like the unusually realistic sparring matches you are witnessing right now. Those skinheads are beating the shit out of each other, confident that any damage can be fixed right up.

At first you're assigned to Victor, who starts teaching you the fundamentals of martial arts. Apparently the fundamentals are 'how to fall over without breaking your own neck'.

Victor is an excellent teacher, which is unsurprising considering his power is being good at things. Or rather, becoming good at things. A subtle but important distinction. He literally sucks the skills right out of people's brains, like some sort of psychic vampire. This obviously means that he is not going to be using his power while teaching people, which leaves your sorcerer's sight with nothing to study.

You glance over at Hookwolf. He's not using his power either. Seeing as how his power makes him transform into a giant monster made of chainsaws, his doing so would be even more counterproductive than Victor's.

Cricket, now. Her power is more modest - enhanced dexterity and situational awareness - and not at all out of place in a sparring match. She is, in fact, using it constantly.

Which brings you back to Othala. She spends most of her time making cow eyes at Victor, but there is a steady enough stream of injured skinheads passing by that you could study her power as well. This leaves you with a choice: Which power do you go for first?

Othala's is undoubtedly more useful, and powerful. But it requires a team. A real team that you can trust with your true nature, not just one you're infiltrating for their powers. If you'd taken Lisa up on her unspoken invitation to join the Undersiders, contented yourself with only learning four other powers - really only two, since Lisa and Rachel gave you theirs regardless - and wasted your life on petty supercrime... Sure. Then you would have had a use for this power, that you wouldn't have learned in the first place.

No, it has to be Cricket. Her power, while modest, is excellent for 'not dying', an activity you plan to do a lot of in the future.

It's a good thing Victor is such a good teacher, because you are an awful student. He frequently has to repeat himself, as you are too immersed in plotting golden circuits in your soul to pay attention.

Victor eventually judges that you have the basics down - either that or he gives up in disgust, you can't really tell. At any rate he passes you off to Hookwolf, who starts you on the proper stances. When you don't pay attention, he breaks your arm.

Your scream of pain draws only brief attention from the rank and file.

"Go get that fixed," Hookwolf says. He gives you a shove in the direction of Othala. Unprepared, you trip over your own feet and and land on your broken arm. This time around no one even glances at you as you scream. Hookwolf's teaching methods are clearly well known and uncontroversial.

You manage to roll over on your back. There's a giant invisible wolf looming over you, looking at you with obvious concern.

"I'm fine," you whisper between sobbing breaths. "Everything's fine." You make vague shooing motions with your good arm. The last thing you need is for this to turn into a real cape fight.

"I don't have all day," Hookwolf growls. He pulls back a foot, threatening a kick to your broken arm.

Okay, okay. Fuck. Ow. You never appreciated how useful having two functional arms was until you tried to get to your feet with just the one. You try to wipe the tears out of your eyes, but your mask is in the way.

Othala already has a patient when you arrive, but the skinhead in question gives up his spot for you. Who says chivalry is dead?

"We all went thought this," Othala tells you as your arm mends. "Just pay more attention next time. He won't punish you as long as you try your best."

"'Harsh but fair', eh?"

"Yes. As difficult as that might be to believe right now."

You keep making small talk on autopilot, your attention still focused on Cricket. After a few minutes she tells you that your arm should be fine. Some careful stretches and flexes confirms this, and you return to your lesson with Hookwolf.

You still don't pay attention. Hookwolf breaks your other arm.

You leave Hookwolf's dojo (note to self: never call it that to his face) with three soul prices, roughly one tenth of a new power, and a newfound appreciation for how convenient intact limbs are. If you thought getting to your feet with a broken arm was difficult, try crawling across a room with two broken legs (Hookwolf explicitly forbade anyone from helping you).

The soul prices are unlikely to be useful, unfortunately.

Hookwolf wants to find and kill the cunt who has been attacking his fighting pits.

You are not cool with murder, so that's a no-go.

Othala wants Victor to love her as much as she loves him.

Victor wants to love Othala as much as she loves him.

Christ, these crazy nazis are practically giving you diabetes here. Forget fixing Panacea, this is how you ethically use romantic mind-rape powers. Unfortunately no one in Brockton Bay has any such power for you to borrow, so those two lovebirds will have to manage on their own for the foreseeable future.

All in all, well... You learned a lot, almost everyone was nice to you, and you were only ever hurt as punishment for things that were unquestionably your own fault. It was a lot better than high school, is what you're trying to say.

Hookwolf-o-vision

"Tell me about Low Key," Kaiser says.

"She has the potential to become a great warrior," I respond. "Terrible fucking student, though. Same reason. Fearless, impossible to cow."

"Overly aggressive?" Kaiser asks.

"Not so you'd notice."

"Interesting. I have here the report from her first patrol," he indicates a document on his desk, "and it says, I quote, please keep this crazy bitch away from civilians, unquote." Sounds like Mike, old bleeding-heart libertarian that he is. Always a soft touch on inner patrol.

I shake my head. "I didn't notice anything of the sort. The opposite, if anything. Too passive. I kept breaking her bones, but she just. Would. Not. Pay. Attention. Whenever she wasn't staring off into space, she was sneaking glances at Cricket."

"Hm. Homosexual?"

"It's... possible," I allow. "Though frankly I doubt even a dyke could find Cricket attractive."

"At least that would mean she isn't a spy," Kaiser muses. "No one would be so foolish as to-"

I laugh. "Are you kidding me? Expecting a homo to be able to keep it in their pants is exactly the kind of mistake our enemies would make."

"Perhaps you are right. Overestimating your enemies can be almost as dangerous as underestimating them." He tilts his head to the side, making a show of thinking things over. "We've been stretched too thin for our territory ever since Purity left. Tell her that we're prepared to do a 'don't ask, don't tell' in her case. Subtly and politely, please, in case we're wrong about her."

I nod. At least dykes are nowhere near as disgusting as faggots. And as a cape, she's already damaged goods. It's unlikely that she would be able to have a normal family regardless.

"Keep giving her a hard time, though," he continues. "Even if, as you say, she herself does not mind it, the PRT would not let a Ward be treated like that. If she is spying for them, they'll pull her out soon enough."

I nod again, distracted. Speaking of damaged goods, poor Cricket. What man could possibly want her? No, I decide, if it ever turns out that she does want children, I would help her out with that. It would be the least I could do for an old comrade in arms. Besides, all women look the same with the lights off.

I smile. Yes, I should bring that up with her sometime soon. She's not getting any younger.

Just like cleaning up after Rachel's dogs, tending the forge is the kind of mindless repetitive work that would be a perfect backdrop for power study. It's too bad you can't just kidnap Cricket and keep her tied up in the corner.

When you accidentally knock over a mirror and break it, you're almost grateful for having something to do again. Almost. If your dad could hear the language you use as you hot-glue hundreds of mirror fragments back together, he would personally punch in the face every dock worker who ever talked to his little girl.

At least it will be over soon. You got a letter informing you that your transfer was approved and that you would be starting at Arcadia on Monday. No more sunlight hours for metallurgy then, instead a brand new school. With no bullies, and lots of delicious capes.

In the evening you learn first aid. Or you would, except Cricket is also taking the class. And she uses her sensory power - a form of echolocation, you figured out - even in a quiet classroom full of her allies. You silently give thanks for her paranoia as you completely ignore everything Alex is trying to teach you about saving lives.

Yes, your old buddy Alex is teaching the class. Turns out that he's not just a jack-booted thug, he also has a day job as a nurse. Take that, gender stereotypes?

You're going to need more binoculars, you conclude the next morning. Your shitty plastic optics have been going ever so slightly melty in the heat of the furnace, and have finally deformed into uselessness. Oh well, you needed to go buy more propane anyway.

When you arrive at the dojo (don't call it that to his face), Hookwolf drags you off to a side room. For the first time since you met him, he seems less than perfectly sure of himself.

"Do you know how they do it in the military?" he asks softly.

"...you want me to salute?" You have no idea what he's talking about, so you take a wild guess.

"No. I mean, about homos."

What? Is he- But he's- what?

"Homos aren't allowed in the military," he continues when you don't respond. "But as long as they pretend to be straight, everyone plays along. That's official policy."

You don't- Ohhhh. He saw the way you kept looking at Cricket, and drew conclusions. And now he's trying to be sensitive about it. This is giving you an all new appreciation for the fact that your dad never tried to give you The Talk.

"I'm not gay," you say firmly. Hookwolf immediately relaxes when he sees that he's made himself understood.

"Then fucking pay attention to what I'm trying to teach you." Yep, he's back to normal alright.

You return to the main floor and start sparring. Glance, glance, go your eyes. Power, power, goes your brain. Snap, snap, go your bones.

Once again, the experience is extremely educational. For example, you just learned that (for injuries that are not themselves mechanically disabling) the anticipation of pain is more debilitating than pain itself, performance-wise. Which is not to say that not anticipating pain is the answer - you almost fell over the first time you tried putting your weight on that foot. But once you bite down and just accept that every step is going to hurt like a motherfucker and there's nothing you can do about that, your Othala-bound hobble speeds up considerably.

"The hell you're not gay," Hookwolf says at the end of the session. "Maybe if you could keep your eyes off your dream girlfriend for five fucking minutes I would believe you."

"You don't understand," you protest. "I want to be like her, not with her." It's the truth! Why can't he be more like your dad, who never tries to talk to you about sex and always believes you when you say things that are technically true?

"Hmph. Fine. Next week you'll be sparring with her directly, then. Leave your costume at home, wear something you don't mind getting ruined."

Oh. Great. Cricket teaches armed combat. And thanks to your - how to put it? - your power-related learning disabilities, you still have only the barest inkling of how to handle yourself even in unarmed combat. Out of the frying pan...

Well, no, you don't actually know which is the frying pan and which is the fire here. Maybe being stabbed hurts less than having your bones broken? You have no idea.

But you'll find out on Tuesday.

Notes:

A/N

This episode featuring Good Guy Hookwolf, being considerate towards women.

On an unrelated note: Congratulations! It's now been a month since you triggered, and you're still alive. Or in other words, Contessa's monthly 'path to nipping freshly triggered problems in the bud' did not find you objectionable. Let's all have a nice big sigh of relief.

Spoilers for the fact that you won't be fucking Cauldron's shit up, I guess.

Unless somehow an encounter with a PtV-immune entity severely changes your life goals and/or circumstances, but what are the odds of that?

Updates status

Quests:

Hookwolf: Wants to find and kill the cunt who has been attacking his fighting pits. Or should I say, the bitch?

Othala & Victor: *kissy faces*

Tattletale: ...

You know what, I think the quest log goof has pretty much run its course entirely. Which is code for 'I considered the number of soul prices that will be learned but never be cashed in, contemplated having to phrase every one one of them in a novel, mildly humorous way every time a new one showed up, and went "NOPE!"'

Chapter 15: S.12

Chapter Text

This time around your reception at the Empire bar/ready room is considerably warmer. People barely glance your way before returning to their conversations. There are some muttered comments you can't make out, though, and scattered laughter. Mike must have been talking behind your back.

You ignore the giggly racists and head over to the bar, where the bartender is waving to you.

"You're meant to be on outer patrol with Rune tonight, but she's running late," he says. "Have one on the house while you wait."

He hands you a bottle of coke sporting what would, in any other circumstance, be an oversized novelty straw. Here and now it's an ingenious device allowing you to drink without adjusting your full-face mask. You take a seat and look around while you sip.

You don't spot Mike or his crew anywhere, they either aren't working tonight, or have already left on patrol. Most of the clientele is engaged in a lively discussion about the relative merits of different races (of course!), but there are two guys sitting off by themselves, reading. As an old introverted bookworm yourself (before you triggered and became too busy to indulge), you can't help but snoop take an interest.

Oh, it's Mein Kampf (of course!). The guy notices you looking, and responds by smiling and holding up the book so you can see it better. Which lets you notice that he's reading it in the original German. That's some major signaling right there. He might as well have brought a neon sign saying 'look at my giant brain'.

The other reader, by contrast, has a copy of Cape Glamour Weekly, featuring Glory Girl and her boyfriend on the cover. Really? Isn't that a bit... vapid and girly? And you're saying that as a fifteen year old girl. Is he mocking Mr Big Brain? Is it his job to scour the gossip rags for valuable cape intel? Or perhaps he's counter signaling his big balls? 'I'm so manly that not even this magazine can detract from it'?

You shake your head and turn your attention to the main discussion. Picking up on the more esoteric points of white supremacy can only improve your cover. Currently they seem to be debating whether Germans are superior to Scandinavians.

"One word: Vikings," says a man you suspect might have some Scandinavian ancestry.

"Sure they were Vikings back then, but nowadays they're a bunch of kebab-loving pansies," is the response, surely coming from a completely impartial fellow with no German blood whatsoever.

"Yeah? Because Germany definitely isn't a giant self-loathing mess right now."

"Fuck you, you try having the entire jew-controlled world gang up on you and conquer you! Twice!" the German counters. "You're not even a real Swede, you're like a quarter Irish. Everyone knows Irishmen are the niggers of white people."

"Look at this guy, thinking the Irish are even white," some other, presumably non-Irish person says. "You need to get woke on the Irish Question, bro."

"Actually," Big Brain interjects, looking up from his book, "the naturalization act of 1790 restricted citizenship to 'white persons of good character', and Irishmen were able to become citizens. Q.E.D."

"Yeah, well, people where primitive and ignorant back then," Not-Irish counters. "Science wasn't very advanced. We've since become more enlightened and realized the truth about potato niggers."

"Who even cares about the Irish?" another man asks. "At least they're not Italians!"

"True, true."

"I hate those swarthy Mafia faggots."

"Fucking spaghetti niggers."

"No one thinks Italians are white."

At least one of the people nodding along to these pronouncements, you can't help but notice, is clearly Italian. The person next to him puts a hand on his shoulder. "Sorry Johnny," he says solemnly. "You can't be in our gang anymore. Whites only."

Johnny accepts this pronouncement with good cheer. "Alright," he says. "Will someone buy me one last beer before I go join the Merchants?" This prompts three separate people to order him a beer, and several more to laugh and slap him on the back.

You can't help but feel a certain... schoolmarmish disapproval. These are the foot soldiers of a self-styled nazi regime. Their racism is the single most important aspect of their worldview and how it shapes their lives! Shouldn't they be taking it at least somewhat seriously?

A wizard walks into a bar. That is, Rune finally appears. Her costume is a green robe and cowl embroidered with golden runes, see. As you get up to meet her the discussion around you returns to the Germans vs Scandinavians debate, the spaghetti nigger question having been resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. "Didn't mean to leave you stranded with these insufferable nerds." She raises her voice at the last part, to make sure the nerds in question overhear. They respond with laughter, blown kisses and calls of "Love you too, Rune!"

As the door swings shut behind you, you just barely make out someone asserting "Anglos are the jews of white people!"

Looks like Rune parked her favorite rock outside. Seriously. According to her wiki article she usually makes do with urban debris, like chunks of concrete, dumpsters and wrecked cars. But this is unmistakably a naturally-occurring rock, maybe 20 feet in diameter, mostly flat but with several indentations forming rough seats. Some of the indentations contain smaller rocks, presumably ammunition. Apparently she decided to bring out the limousine of telekinetic conveyances today. You're flattered.

You're also delighted. The rock is thrumming with power to your sorcerer's sight, with a tether leading back to Rune. She'll be using her power throughout the night, and she's inviting you onto her rock just like that. You can just sit there and study her to your heart's content. You could not ask for a more perfect evening.

But, the idea occurs to you, you could make it more perfect. When the rock clears the roof of the bar you step off and call forth your wolf. Your time with Rachel made you develop a taste for rooftop monster rides, and you haven't had a chance to indulge since you parted ways.

"What are you- oh. You wanna show off too?" You get the distinct impression that Rune is grinning behind her mask. "Try to keep up!"

You did not think this through. Oh, Fenrir can leap between rooftops easily enough, as long as they are roughly the same height. Rachel's monsters have the unnatural muscle density and elongated claws to let them climb up the side of a building, but Fenrir is just a really big wolf. And wolves? Not nature's finest climbers even without the square-cube law kicking in them in nuts.

What frequently ends up happening is that you have to call for Rune to double back and help you out. Which she does without complaint. Oh, she doesn't complain.

"Of course, dear," she chirps. "Anything to help a colleague out."

"This rock sure is comfy. And convenient!"

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather ride with me? It's no trouble, there's plenty of space."

That condescending faux helpfulness is exactly like some of the girls in your class. So much for the Empire being nicer than Winslow. But no matter what, you're not going to give in and accept her offer. Fuck her and the rock she rode in on. You're committed now, and admitting that you made a mistake would be even worse than the repeated humiliation of asking for help.

Oh, this time around she spotted an upcoming problem spot on her own and stopped in front of the taller building to wait for you. How gracious of her. How helpful. You silently grind your teeth as Fenrir once more steps out onto the flying rock.

"Going up?" Rune asks innocently. God you want to grind this bitch into paste. As an added insult, her power is super difficult to understand. Which means you're going to have to put up with her for a good, long time. Really, world? Lifting a rock is more complicated than extracting the soul price from a human brain?

And! And, just like Madison, Rune's own soul price is a good life well lived, so you can't even use Loyalty to make her behave.

No, she isn't secretly Madison. Madison doesn't have powers. Their soul prices are subtly different too:

Rune wants to find a man worthy of her.

Unlike Madison, Rune is sufficiently secure in her own sexual market value that her soul doesn't even bother to specify that he should reciprocate her feelings. Of course he'll be taken with her and they'll live happily ever after. Not even worth mentioning.

Bitch.

An indeterminate time of you steeping in a bath of rage and embarrassment later, Rune gets a phone call. She brings her rock to a stop, and you ride up next to her to listen in.

"Rune."

...

"On his own? Is he high? Forget I said that. Where?"

...

"On it."

She turns to you. "Mush has been spotted approaching our territory. We're going to explain to him why that's a bad idea."

"On his own?" you echo her earlier incredulity.

"I know right? Fucking Merchants." She shakes her head. "Hop on. For real this time, we don't have time to fuck around."

The rock doesn't even quiver as Fenrir steps on. Rune sets off back the way you came, considerably faster than she'd been going before.

You spot Mush from several blocks away, a humanoid mass of garbage standing head and shoulders above the surrounding buildings. They are only three stories tall around here, but still. You did not think he could get that big.

"Fuck me," Rune says. "He must have spent all day collecting that shit."

When you get close, she swoops closer to the roof and slows down. "Get off," she says. "I'm going to have to hit him with our ride."

Fenrir jumps off, and you spur him on towards your foe. Not that you have any idea what you should do once you arrive, but it seems to be what's expected of you. This is exactly what you meant when you asked Lisa about cape fights. Maybe you can distract him while Rune throws rocks? At least the buildings here are all uniform height, so you'll be able to maneuver without trouble.

The rock you just vacated goes flying past you to strike Mush in the head. It sends garbage flying every which way, but doesn't impair him at all.

Unsurprising. Through sorcerer's sight you see thin tendrils of his power all throughout the mass, radiating like veins from a glowing centre just below where the heart would be on a human. That must be where his actual body is located. Oh yeah, you can help by pointing that out.

"The head is a decoy!" you shout. "Go for centre mass! No, not you! Stop! Shit!"

You flatten yourself against Fenrir's back and hold on tight as your idiot steed launches himself off the edge of the roof, going straight for the glowing weak point. He has enough inertia to plow right through the mass of garbage and out the other side.

On one hand, that probably just ended the fight in a single blow. On the other, you're currently falling off a three-story building amidst several tons of garbage.

Fenrir hits the ground with a loud whuff as all the air is forcibly propelled from his lungs. The fact that he doesn't splatter is mildly astonishing, but you don't have the capacity to think about that right now. Whatever bullshit magic makes him so comfortable to ride is not nearly strong enough to handle this. Speaking of physics kicking you in the nuts...

"Gah. Fuck," you summarize as you tumble off his back. Another spike of pain shoots through you as you hit the ground. You think you broke your butt. Uh, pelvic fracture? You'll just lie here for a while.

At least the leap carried you clear of most of the garbage, which ended up in a giant pile behind you. Someone should go over there and try to dig Mush out, see if he survived. He- oh, gross. Those weren't tendrils of power you saw, those were actual tendrils of Mush's flesh. With the golem collapsed they are exposed, like someone dug up a disgusting alien root system. The way they're still twitching at least indicates that you didn't kill him, but it also makes you want to puke.

The smell isn't helping either.

Rune returns to ground level in a more sensible manner, clinging to the largest of her 'ammunition' rocks. She's laughing and whooping as she lands next to you.

"That was awesome!" she exclaims.

"That was the worst," you correct her. Things are really starting to hurt, now that the adrenaline is wearing off.

"What are you talking about? You- oh hey." She interrupts herself when she sees Victor come flying down, carrying Othala. "You guys missed the party. Did you know New Girl here is a stone cold badass?"

"Are you alright?" Othala asks. "We saw you jump off the roof."

"No I'm not fucking alright." You swat Fenrir's nose away when he tries to nuzzle you. "If this retard had jumped from any higher up, I'd have needed a gynecologist to recover his vertebrae."

Victor seems to be choking on something, while Rune almost falls over laughing. Othala, thankfully, just walks over and grants you regeneration. At least one person here is competent (it's not you).

"Rune," Victor says, "can you dig Mush out?"

"Nah, my power can't get a grip on this shit. Too mushy." Victor just rolls his eyes at this attempted witticism. "You go ahead. Our girl talk is clearly too spicy for your sensitive manly ears anyway."

Victor sighs. "Fine. You call this in. Othala? Some super strength would be lovely, once you're done with Low Key."

"Of course, love."

Victor goes off to root through the garbage. You just lie around waiting for the pain to go away. At least Hookwolf trained you to deal with this situation, even if nothing else stuck. Silver linings.

Rune, meanwhile, has turned her attention to Fenrir: "Don't listen to that meanie, you did great. You're not retarded, you're the best wolf ever. ...Sorry, no belly rubs until you take a bath."

Presently you feel better, and Othala leaves to assist her beau.

"Hey," Rune says as she helps you to your feet. "Sorry about being such a bitch earlier. Seriously. If this is what comes of you riding around the rooftops, I'll be your elevator any day."

You look at her suspiciously. She sounds sincere. And not having every patrol suck for weeks on end until you finally steal her power would be nice. "Seriously," she repeats. You nod.

"Weren't you supposed to call this in?" you ask her.

"Oh yeah!" She brings out her phone, dials.

"Rune here. Mush is down, you guys can go back to bed."

...

"Yeah, piece of cake. New Girl took him out just like that. Pow! Oh hey, Victor just dug him out. He looks gross as fuck, let me tell you."

...

"Really? OK."

She puts the phone away. She wasn't kidding. While Mush's tendrils (eugh) have mostly retracted by now, that's emphasis on mostly. He looks like a plate of spaghetti, with extra ketchup. While Rune was talking, Othala briefly touched Mush, then touched Victor again. Carefully calibrated regeneration, you figure. Enough to stabilize him, not enough to wake him up.

"Guys, we got Wards incoming," Rune says. "Ops says to clear out and leave Mush for them to collect."

"Wards?" you say. "We should leave a note."

Victor, as it turns out, has paper and pencil in his pocket. You dictate the note you want to leave, which makes Rune giggle and Victor nod in approval.

Clockblocker-o-vision

"They left a note," Gallant says from where he's kneeling down by the unconscious Mush.

"Really? What's it say?" I ask.

He picks up the scrap of paper, looks at it. Turns it over. Hands it to me without a word.

HOW IS THE PROTECTORATE LIKE NASA?

(turn over for answer)

I turn it over.

THEY BOTH NEED NAZIS TO DO THEIR JOB FOR THEM

Chapter 16: S.13

Chapter Text

Once you're clear, Rune initiates another phone conversation. Apparently she wants to leave work early. Ops seem to have other ideas.

"I brought out my good rock for this! I need to go wash it."

...

"Easy for you to say. You can't smell the wolf. Our everything needs washing."

("I don't mind going on", you say. "Of course you don't, you stink too," she replies)

"No seriously, if you haven't fought Mush yourself you have no idea how bad we smell right now. Is this the image you want the Empire to project?"

...

"Fine. But you're paying overtime for this."

...

"No! Half a goddamn shift of overtime!"

...

"Argh!"

She hangs up, and shoves the phone in a pocket with a violent motion.

"No luck?" you ask.

"None. You know what they say about anti-semites."

Uhh... "No?"

"You'll hear it soon enough if you keep hanging around the rank and file. 'The only thing more tight-fisted than a jew is an anti-semite.'"

"Sounds like Kaiser," you agree.

"Anyway, they want to keep us out here, in case the rest of the Merchants show up. I don't suppose you can do something about the wolf?"

"He has a name, you know. As do I."

"Sorry, New Girl." She holds up her hands when you glare at her. "Joking, joking! Uh, Low Key, right?" She pauses, scratches the back of her head. "They didn't tell me you named your projection."

"Fenrir."

"Right. Should'a guessed. Can we just hose him off a bit before we continue?"

You look at Fenrir, who shakes his head emphatically.

"You're welcome to try." You don't attempt to hide the mirth in your voice. Rune elects not to try.

Despite ops's concerns, your patrol ends without further excitement. Rune flies off to dunk her rock in the bay, you head for home. You tell Fenrir in no uncertain terms that you're not letting him in your bed until he takes a bath, but he just shakes his head again.

When he dematerializes he leaves a wolf-shaped cloud of garbage juice hanging in the air for an instant. You almost step back in time to avoid any of it splashing on your shoes as it hits the ground. Now he looks smug, the intangible bastard. You sigh, then smile. Your power keeps throwing you these curveballs. Self-cleaning wolf, sure, why not.

You pause in front of your door to put on your glasses (you're still wearing contacts, but you're not touching your eyes until you've washed your hands. Twice).

"Don't hug me, I stink," you announce to your dad as you enter.

He sniffs the air. "You really do," he agrees. "What happened?"

"There was an incident with an overeager dog and a bag of garbage." You grimace. "Several bags, actually." It's a risk, telling your dad the truth all the time, but you don't think anyone got any footage of the fight. He won't see anything on the news that will let him connect the dots.

"Ouch. Let's get you cleaned up, shall we?"

He has you hand him the dirty clothes so he can wash them right away. A nice gesture you suppose, but unnecessary. You were going to wash them along with your costume anyway, after he had gone to sleep.

The next day, you do some sewing while tending the forge. Hookwolf expects you to show up in regular gym clothes on Tuesday, so you make yourself several sets of padded underwear to maintain a 'Low Key' figure even without your strategically padded costume. You're not proud of this, alright? But your vanity put you on this path, and you're just going to have to keep walking it.

You're interrupted by a text message to your Empire phone.

Come to the usual place for payment

You stare at it blankly for a while until you remember: Right, you get bonuses for cape fights! Scaling with danger and performance. The danger involved in yesterday's fight is debatable - you did fall off a roof and break your butt, but to be fair that was mostly your own fault. But your performance was definitely A+, if you do say so yourself. One hit KO.

You did forget all about that - you're in this for the powers. But you're not going to pass up free money.

I'll swing by later tonight

You don't specify 'after sunset', because that could theoretically link you to a not-yet-emerged Tinker who requires sunlight to work. You don't feel the same impulse towards honestly with your employer that you do with your dad.

The benefits of using mass-produced plastic crap in your cape outfit: Rather than head home to grab your kit (and figuring out something to tell your dad about where you're going that doesn't involve 'nazi friends', 'blood money' or 'bar'), you just buy another mask on your way. You have your new padded underwear right here, and if Hookwolf can get away with civvies and a mask all the time, you can do the same for one evening when you're not even on the clock.

There's a cheer as you enter the bar. You can't tell if anyone you know is present, because without glasses or contacts every face is a blur (and every hairstyle, identical). Well, you recognize Rune. The robe stands out a bit. She's at the bar, slouching over her drink. She's made it clear that she doesn't think much of spending time with the rank and file. Was she waiting for you?

Apparently so. "God, finally. Let's get this over with."

The bartender/contact person reaches under the bar and retrieves several bundles of bills.

"For exemplary work in service of the Empire," he says pompously. But he's smiling as he says it, self-aware. At least you think so. Again: Blurry faces.

You pick up a bundle, riffle through it (bring it close enough to make out the denomination). Some mental math says: Four thousand dollars.

"We split this?" you ask Rune.

"Technically, yeah. By rights it's all yours. You take it."

"Really?"

"Yeah. You took him down, I just drove you there." She pushes the cash towards you.

You're speechless for a moment (the peanut gallery, not so much: "Rune is being nice to someone?" "Who spiked my drink? Because I'm hallucinating!" "Well, she is a fellow cape. Not like us mortals"). Rune really does want to be your friend. Wants it enough to pass up two grand. Are... are you touched? You're touched.

Wordlessly you split off a few hundred and pass it back to her. She tries to wave it off.

"I said-"

"I know, I did all the work. But what kind of asshole doesn't tip the serving staff?"

At that, there's more cheers, and laughter, and then everyone wants to slap you on the back and buy you a drink. Non-alcoholic drinks only, the bartender assures/admonishes you. Right, underage drinking is for degenerates, no doubt.

Rune inclines her head, acknowledging a point scored, and accepts the money.

"I told them I wanted to be your regular patrol partner, if that's all right with you?" she says.

"Sure!" Even at two patrols per week, figuring out her power is going to take ages. If you split your attention, forget about it. "Are you sure you can afford it, though?" (peanut gallery: "Ooooh!" "Shots fired!")

She snorts. "They told me all about your performance issues. Some of us can get it up more than twice a week, you know."

More laughs from the peanut gallery, and you bow your head in turn. Point to her.

"How'd you know where to hit him, anyway?" she asks. Oh, right. In your attempt to be at all useful in the fight, you may have given some things away. How to deflect this?

"...wolf senses," you settle on. A nice, vague answer that sounds like it explains things without actually committing you to any specific mechanics. Hell, it doesn't even specify whose senses, yours or Fenrir's.

Come to think of it, Fenrir hit Mush dead on, way more accurately that your instruction of 'center mass' should have allowed. Maybe he does have wolf senses. You'll have to ask him later.

"Shame it didn't matter in the end, huh?" Rune interrupts your thoughts.

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't hear? Squealer and Skidmark were also out and about, just running late. They hit the Wards and freed Mush before they could even return to base."

"Yeesh," you say. "At least NASA got to the moon eventually."

Rune giggles. "Oh, that's good. Do you mind if I use that one? I'm using that one."

She pulls out her cellphone and swipes at the screen a few times. You recognize the color scheme of the PHO forums when you lean over to see what she's doing, but she puts the phone away without typing anything. "I'm using it as soon as my ban wears off," she amends. "Anyway, I'm off. See you on Monday."

"Monday."

She leaves, but you think you'll stay for a bit. Accept some of those non-degenerate drinks. Being surrounded by people who like and respect you is... strange. And nice. Strange and nice.

PH-O-vision

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Your temporary ban expires on February 11, 2011.

You have 12 infractions and 37 warnings.

Private message from modmail:

modmail: You received a 7 day suspension for your post in the thread: Boards Places America Brockton Bay Brockton Bay voted most dangerous city in America second year running

Topic: Brockton Bay voted most dangerous city in America second year running

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Posted by: GreatAtuin (Veteran member)

Posted on February 4, 2011

(Showing Page 4 of 12)

► Nondescriptr

Replied on February 4, 2011:

:(

► seeing_eye_dog

Replied on February 4, 2011:

At least we're the best at something, right?

► Jitor

Replied on February 4, 2011:

What are the heroes even doing?

► Assault (Verified Cape) (Protectorate ENE)

Replied on February 4, 2011:

We're doing our best, as you'll no doubt see a press release stating soon.

Armsmaster may or may not have thrown his helmet across the room when he heard the news. There may or may not be a dent in the wall.

► rrqn

Replied on February 4, 2011:

Keep it up, guys. Let's go for the hat trick!

► Rune (Verified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Replied on February 4, 2011:

I wonder what it would show if you only counted the votes of americans, not invaders and obsolete farm equipment.

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: Have another vacation on Racist Island, Rune.

► seeing_eye_dog

Replied on February 4, 2011:

Assault

Ha ha, really?

► naval_gazer

Replied on February 4, 2011:

**** you, nazi *****!

-User received a warning for this post. Reason: Language, language.

► John Elliot

Replied on February 4, 2011:

Watch it, naval_gazer. I don't disagree, but the mods don't like that sort of language.

Edit: See?

► Sir Robin

Replied on February 4, 2011:

It's a good question when you think about it. How much of BB being shit is because of the E88? A third? Half? More than half?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ... 10 , 11, 12

Facts about nazis: Nazis are mammals. Nazis fight all the time (with each other, about minor points of doctrine). Nazis are hilarious.

You admit that you didn't expect that last part. But it makes sense: Offensive jokes are funny. There, that's all there is to it. And unsurprisingly, once someone stands up and proclaims that Hitler was a swell guy who did nothing wrong, political correctness no longer has any power over them. These people pop holocaust jokes like they're dad jokes. Which leaves someone with your more tender sensibilities helpless with guilt-tinged mirth. You'll never be able to look at a lampshade with a straight face again. Also, you're going to hell.

The less said about the resident shock jock, who goes for jokes considered offensive even by this crowd, the better. "Because it's not pedophilia if you kill the babies first!" he delivers the punchline. Yeah. In his case the jokes are less funny than the reactions of the audience, as hardened thugs cringe and groan and cry out in protest: "I'm eating here!" "Jesus, why?" "Please stop." You're personally so shocked your hand freezes in midair in a position that could unfortunately be mistaken for offering him a high five. That's your story, and you're sticking to it.

This asshole isn't returning your high five, though.

"Why you leave me hanging, bro?" you ask plaintively. "Do I look black to you?" A touch of lynching humor convinces him to reciprocate. Yep, you're definitely going to hell. On the plus side, your infiltration of the E88 is going great.

With everyone so cheerful and talkative, you easily collect a whole bunch of soul prices. More out of curiosity than any plans to use them. Which is a good thing, because pretty much all of them are useless. Many just repeat the fourteen words. Yes, you did look those up.

Mike wants to secure the survival of his people and a future for white children.

Sven wants to secure the survival of his people and a future for white children.

Others are basically that, but less abstract:

Otto wants to build a real country for his children to grow up in.

Jonas wants to deport all jews to Israel. Or possibly Madagascar.

Steve wants to find a good woman to settle down with and have some kids.

There's the odd wants a million dollars type soul prices here and there too (that you obviously can't help with either), but by and large they're just so un-Master-ably sincere, the bastards. Which makes sense, when you think about it. The reason you find smiling sociopaths at charity dinners is because being seen as charitable has social benefits. Being seen as a nazi has the opposite of benefits. Consequently, it doesn't attract people with ulterior motives. Except you, you suppose.

If Fenrir was actually as limited as the Empire believes, you'd be a lot more nervous changing your underwear in an alley in the middle of the night. Just saying. Really, the whole thing ran a bit later than you'd planned. A lot later. No, you're not drunk. The bartender remained adamant on that point. "Providing alcohol to a minor is a crime," he'd firmly remind anyone who tried to buy you a 'real drink'. "And crimes are for black people."

Sobriety notwithstanding, you're practically asleep on your feet by the time you get home. Only to find the lights still on, and your dad waiting for you.

"Where have you been, young lady?" His stern tone does a terrible job of hiding his worry.

"Party," you answer. Close enough, right?

"A party." He crosses his arms, tries to reinforce his stern look.

"Yeah, party." Your tired brain tries to figure out why he'd object to that. "No drinking. Adults present." You yawn. "Ran late. Sleepy."

"Uh huh. Let me smell your breath."

You walk over and blow in his face.

"Okay, you haven't been drinking," he admits. "You should still have told me. I would have come to pick you up. It's not safe-"

"Pshhhffft," you reply, waving your hand in his face. You were never in any danger. "Pepper spray." Magic wolf.

"That's-"

Before he can come up with any further silliness, you lean into him and reach up to place a finger over his lips. "Sleepy," you remind him. "G'night."

He sighs. "We'll talk about this tomorrow, Taylor."

"Mmhmm."

You stagger down to the basement, and then proceed to hide your shit. Never mind the three-thousand-and-change dollars. Yes, it was more at the start of the evening. You might have bought a round for everyone at the bar once or thrice. Five times, tops. Dad is still not going to believe you saved it up by mowing lawns. Him finding out that you're a part-time supervillain would be bad, but survivable.

If he found out that you went to a party in homemade padded underwear, your life would be over. Because you'd have died of embarrassment.

Chapter 17: S.14

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The conversation the next morning is as tedious as it is predictable. Yes, dad. No, dad. I thought you had already gone to bed like a sensible person, dad. I'll be sure to keep you better informed in the future, dad.

He comes away mollified, but quietly concerned that your new friend 'June' may be a bad influence. He's... not exactly wrong. Though privately you think your new friend 'Bookwolf' might be worse.

As soon as you can extricate yourself you head for the forge. You're so excited you run right past the bus stop and keep going. The gold should have finished cooking by now. You can't wait to see how it turned out! Also you have money and a bunch of powers lined up for study and tomorrow you start at Arcadia which is also full of powers!

And you have Fenrir, the best wolf in the whole wide world. Sure he threw you off a building the other day, but you forgive him. That's how unconditional love works, you know. You smile fondly at the invisible doofus running in the road by your side. He has no trouble keeping up with you, of course, and amuses himself by dodging every oncoming car instead of letting them pass through him.

Yes, against all odds life is actually pretty great right now. You can' help but laugh out loud as you run. Everything's coming up Taylor.

About halfway to your destination you slow down to a walk, huffing and puffing. Note to self: Brute 0 is not enough to let you run all the way across town on its own. Actual exercise may still be useful.

You carefully lift the crucible out of the magma and give it a once-over with sorcerer's sight. Verdict: It's shit. The process should theoretically be able to transmute 100% of the material in a week, but that assumes a real volcano and a lot more sunlight and proper mirrors that focus it better and don't break halfway through and, you know, not leaving it in the hands of a random bum overnight and hoping for the best. As it is, your sample consists of roughly 90% impurities (where 'impurities' is understood to mean '24-carat gold').

This 'pig orichalcum' is completely useless, your power helpfully informs you, having none of the properties that makes the pure stuff valuable. You don't have time to let it cook any longer, tough. You'll have to figure out some way to extract the good stuff. Uh, Tinker power? Hello? Anything?

Your solution ends up involving a dematerialized Fenrir, clutching in his mouth a dematerialized monkey wrench. The wrench grasps a single dematerialized wolf hair, which he slowly and carefully whisks through the molten gold, over and over again.

For reasons that are as obvious to you as they are impossible to articulate in English, the perfectly solid, material orichalcum reacts to the immaterial hair in ways that the mundane gold doesn't. The orichalcum gradually separates out and clings to the hair, forming a cylinder less than an inch long and thin enough that it could fit in a mechanical pencil.

Meanwhile the hair (and wolf) remain entirely unaffected by the heat from both the gold itself and the welding torch you rigged up to keep it liquid, because consistent physics are for people without superpowers.

While Fenrir handles that, you carefully clean the magma out of the glass oven. You're just borrowing it after all, and it wouldn't do to leave it in worse shape than you found it. You're in fact leaving it in considerably better shape, since you had to fix it up before you could use it at all. That's pretty fair rent for a week's use, you think. You have nothing to feel guilty about.

The sun is still up when you're done and the next step will have to wait until Jim arrives, so you head downtown for a while. As you promised yourself, you buy a proper smartphone with internet access. Then you head to the library again anyway, because there are some preparations you need to do online that you don't want traced back to your personal phone.

When you finally meet up with Jim, you give him a letter to transcribe. You don't know that the intended recipient has tinkertech handwriting analysis tools, but better safe than sorry.

Letter

Dear Sir

Allow me to introduce myself: I am a Tinker, in which capacity I have chosen the name Smith. I recently discovered a process for creating a hitherto unknown metal, which I have elected to call orichalcum. It has several remarkable properties, foremost among which is that it can be rendered indestructible.

I have no doubt that you can see the great opportunities this presents, both in your line of business and others. Unfortunately I personally lack the funds for both the equipment and the raw materials required to produce this substance in useful quantities. Nor do I wish, at this point in time, to join the Protectorate, as I lack both the inclination and the training to take the type of active role in its operations that you and other Tinkers in the organization do.

Instead I would like to propose an arrangement wherein the Protectorate would provide me with a workshop and and raw materials, and in return receive the bulk of the finished product (exact details to be negotiated). Please find enclosed schematics for the type of equipment and materials that would be required.

Also enclosed, attached to this letter, is a small sample of orichalcum produced using less efficient methods. I urge you to test this sample to verify my claims as to its properties.

You may contact me by leaving a message for Gold_Smith at PHO. Eagerly looking forward to your response, I remain

faithfully yours,

Smith

You glue the scrap of orichalcum to the letter, as was the plan all along. Even if you had managed to transmute the full amount it wouldn't have been enough to craft anything useful with. If anything the thin piece you ended up with is even more impressive than a bigger sample would have been, since the point is to show off its indestructibility.

Along with the letter you include the promised blueprints, drafted by you and annotated by Jim at your direction. The first set details what is essentially your current setup, except done properly and scaled up to produce meaningful weekly yields. The second is more fanciful, depicting a factory-cathedral built into an active volcano. You don't expect they'll go for that, but you included it anyway to make the first option seem reasonable in comparison.

Every little bit helps, you figure, when you write someone out of the blue and ask if they can spare a literal ton of gold.

At your direction Jim writes 'Attn: Armsmaster, Re: Tinkering' on the back of the envelope. You briefly debate adding 'NB: Not a tinker-bomb', but ultimately decide against it. It would ensure that no one else would open the letter until Armsmaster could examine it, but it would also make a rather unfavorable impression on the people you're trying to do business with.

You then send Jim off on his final mission for you: Put on this domino mask, walk into the PRT building and hand the letter to the receptionist at the front desk, then leave without answering any questions.

Fenrir, who you sent to shadow him the whole way, reports that he pulled it off perfectly. You shake his hand, give him a hundred bucks and regretfully inform him that Hotel Glass Oven is closed and he'll have to find somewhere else to sleep from now on. Your sorcerer's sight shows his Loyalty crumbling away to nothing over the course of a few seconds.

You send Fenrir on one last mission, and go to bed early. Break's over, school tomorrow.

(You buried the leftover gold in a park on your way home. It still contains trace amounts of orichalcum, and you don't want to leave it lying around where it can be connected to you.)

Dad wakes you up extra early for your first day at Arcadia. He frowns at you as you shuffle your way towards breakfast, even more zombielike than the early hour should account for.

"Trouble sleeping?" he asks. "Nervous about the new school?"

"A bit," you say. Not really. It's just that it took Fenrir all night to return the stuff you stole borrowed from the building site, and it's amazing how quickly you became dependent on wolf cuddles for a proper night's sleep. "Mostly excited." Capes! Powers!

You nap during the drive there, and arrive a full hour before the first class starts. The two of you wander through empty corridors looking for the office of the person you're supposed to meet.

"Looks nice," your dad comments. It does, doesn't it? It's uncanny. It's clearly a school, so where is the graffiti, the peeling paint and general air of decay? You walk past an entire row of lockers, and none of them has been broken into and left hanging open. They're not even dented. What sorcery is this?

Similarly eerie, the woman who handles your paperwork doesn't look like she hates her life, or even teenagers. There must have been an error in your paperwork - you were meant to go to Arcadia, not Stepford High.

You're presented with your schedule, a locker number and combination, as well as several papers to sign. You skim through the school rules. No drugs, no weapons, no gang-affiliated clothing or accessories. No running, no shouting, no public displays of affection. No vandalism, no bullying, no truancy. Whatever, it's all pointless. Not because you're intending to break the rules, it's just... Winslow had almost exactly the same set of rules. It's clearly not the rules that make a difference.

Your dad leaves for work, and you're given a quick tour of the buildings to let you make sense of the letters and numbers on your schedule. It wraps up just as the other students start to arrive, and you ensconce yourself near the main entrance to spot any arriving capes.

A red-haired boy, a bit older than you. Probably Clockblocker or Kid Win going by his general build. Or some non-Ward keeping a low enough profile to stay off the PHO wiki, you guess.

A hispanic boy, long-haired and well muscled. You almost jump out of your skin when his power activates as he steps inside, but he doesn't even glance in your direction. The light surges through his body, but does not reach outside. You'd say Changer, except he doesn't, you know, change. Still, it's clearly doing something to his body, just not anything visible to the naked eye. So... Brute? That would make him Aegis.

Yet another boy (caucasian, short dark hair), whose power is already active when you spot him. It's also the wrong color? Every single cape you've seen so far has had the same color glow, except this guy. Not that there are words in English for either color, but still, weird. You wonder what it means.

Who the hell is this guy, then? The activity is concentrated around the eyes... You keep squinting at him as he walks past. It looks a lot like sorcerer's sight, actually, except it's not sensing powers, it's- Shit! Shit, fuck, shit. Emotions. Gallant shoots emotion blasts. Apparently he also senses emotions, but doesn't tell people about that part.

You are incredibly glad he wasn't looking your way when you figured that out. This is going to be a real problem. If he senses your peculiar interest in a few specific people and puts two and two together, you are so fucked. No, never mind, you're fucked anyway. Just the fact that you know about him and the threat he poses to your cover means that you're going to broadcast a spike of anxiety every time your paths cross. There's no way he won't start wondering what's up with that.

Can you cultivate your Zen enough to honestly not be worried about this? Or maybe you can pretend that you're still in Winslow, method acting well enough that you're a nervous wreck full time and startle at every sound and movement? Ugh. People with sensory powers are the worst.

Your attempt at humor isn't cheering you up much either.

You're knocked out of your funk by another cape walking by. Another dark-haired boy, but closer to your own age. His power isn't active, but there's a secondary glow coming from inside his backpack. Sorcerer's sight can spot tinkertech then, you'd been wondering about that. This must be Kid Win, you can tell that the two glows have the same... texture? Polarization? They match, anyway. Which means that it's his own tech.

Waaaiiit a minute. You focus on the glowing backpack, trying to make out the shape inside...

Oh for fuck's sake. This is Arcadia, famously the good school in Brockton Bay. And the very first thing you see, on your first day, is a kid bringing a gun to school. Heroes ruin everything they touch, don't they?

You shadow Kid Win to his locker, where he stashes his gun. You memorize the number and send Lisa a text.

Can you figure out a locker combination?

Not that you expect a reply right away, she's probably still asleep.

Despite these distractions, you manage to find your way to your first class in time, if barely. A quick glance shows no capes. A thought occurs to you and you take another look. Huh. You're not sure which is whiter, this classroom or the E88 bar/ready room. As in, genuinely not sure, you'd have to go back and count the Italians. No wonder they don't have any problems with ethnic gangs here: No demand for them.

You settle down and consider strategy. There's nothing you can do about the gun until Lisa gets back to you. Clockblocker is hardly about to use his power in public. You're going to stay the hell away from Gallant. By process of elimination, that leaves Aegis. Hopefully his power activating on its own like that wasn't a fluke. Some careful stalking will clear that up in short order.

Unfortunately you didn't follow Aegis to his locker, and the size of the school and your unfamiliarity with it works against you. You still haven't caught sight of him by the time Lisa responds.

dials b4 & aftr, pics or vid of opening

At lunch you finally catch sight of Aegis again, and are happy to discover that his power use wasn't a fluke. His Brute rating appears to come from constant biological adaptation, and you do mean constant. As he starts eating his guts remodel themselves for maximum efficiency. When he gets up, his butt shifts from its previous optimal sitting form to a mode better suited for walking.

You're not even worried about Gallant catching you as you follow Aegis out of the cafeteria. In this particular instance, you've got an alibi. Aegis is not a bad-looking dude, staring at his butt is entertaining for multiple reasons.

As you follow him around, you note that it only takes a few minutes for his turbo-charged intestines to finish their job and fold themselves back up into a compact low-energy configuration. Unfortunately you can't stick around to watch him much longer, you have heroics to do. Or possibly prevent? The word 'hero' doesn't carry the same meaning for you that it used to.

When Kid Win returns to his locker you're ready and waiting. Just a girl leaning against the wall fiddling with her cellphone. Nothing suspicious here, no sir. Definitely not recording anything.

Apparently he took the gun out of the locker at some point, because he's putting it back now. That's not worrying or anything.

Once he's gone you make note of the new position of the dial and send everything to Lisa. She texts you back before you even make it to class.

5834 wanna brag abt it l8r?

Hm, do you? You'll take that one under consideration. You're pretty sure she's already figured out what's going on, meaning that this is just another thinly veiled attempt to check up on you.

Halfway through your next class you ask to be excused to go to the bathroom. It's granted, of course. No teacher would deny that request from a teenage girl, should she look mortified enough. Which you make sure you do. You hurry to Kid Win's locker, open it up - you didn't doubt for a second that Lisa could do it - and grab the gun. You take an extra few seconds to make sure you reset the dial to the same numbers as before.

Well, that was part one. But now you're the kid with a gun. You hide it under your sweater and make your way to a bathroom. You scoped this place out earlier, making sure that there were no cameras, and that the space between the cubicles and the sinks was wide enough for a wolf.

"Come forth," you whisper, and Fenrir appears. He has, of course, been following you around all day, as always. It not worth mentioning at this point. He's been dozing during classes and excitedly sniffing about every new place you've gone, though you can't imagine what he could possibly have been smelling. His nose can't interact with solid matter! Or maybe- his feet can, sort of, since he's neither flying nor sinking through the ground. Maybe his nose also... never mind.

"Hold this," you tell him, handing him the gun to grip in his mouth. "Begone." Fenrir dematerializes again, taking the gun with him.

"Put it next to my bed, but don't materialize it." You're going to check it very carefully for tracking devices before you let it back into the material world anywhere near your house. "Then go to the bar and wait for me there." Fenrir nods and leaps through the wall. His feet don't interact with the material world that much. Again, better not to think about it too hard.

The rest of the day passes without incident. You get introduced to a whole bunch of unpowered people, classmates and such. They seem nice enough, you guess? You didn't really pay much attention. There's a base level of interest-in-novel-thing ("Where are you from?" "Winslow." "My condolences.") but they don't really have a reason to care whether you live or die. Which is an improvement! None of them spit on you or hit you or even insulted you, what more can you ask?

You catch Aegis leaving, and once again see his entire body update itself as he passes through the doors. Optimizing for the ambient temperature, you realize. You're tempted to follow him home, but you want to get to the bar early today. You've got promises to keep.

Notes:

A/N

You saved the day, yay!

Of course a hero would twist your actions into stomping all over the unwritten rules and stealing government-owned tinkertech. But fuck heroes, amirite?

Chapter 18: S.15

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Kid-Win-o-vision

Crap. Crap. Crap. I'm screwed. I'm so screwed it's not even funny. I finish searching through my entire locker for the second time. Where is it? Did I leave it somewhere? I didn't have it with me to math class. Did I? I could have sworn I only took it out at lunch. But then again I could have sworn that I put it back, too. Oh god, Piggy is going to kill me if I left it lying around where anyone could find it.

I try to retrace my steps. Did I go to the library, or was that last week? I can't remember. I was tinkering, I don't notice things when I'm tinkering. Did I drop it somewhere? Which way did I go?

As my search refuses to bear fruit, I begin to resign myself to not finding it. The question then becomes what to do about it. Can I cover up that I lost it? Of course I can. My workshop is a mess. No one will notice. If someone asks me 'hey Kid Win, what happened to that gun you were working on?', I can just tell them that I had another idea and took it apart for spare parts. They'll believe me, because I do that all the time.

And if they ask to see the new project, I'll tell them it didn't end up working out. They'll believe that too, for the same reason.

Empty-handed, I return to search through my locker a third time, already knowing that it won't help.

Several people greet you cheerfully when you enter the bar. It's weird, now that you think about it, that the only other parahuman you've seen here is Rune, and then only to meet you. Apparently the way these people divide themselves into the 'brass' and the 'rank and file' is not just a clever turn of phrase, and you're somewhat unique in your level of... fraternization? Well, no matter. It would be nice if Krieg and Stormtiger wandered by to say hello and give you their soul prices, but you've got other things on your mind right now.

"Does anyone know where I can buy a sheep, no questions asked?" you inquire of the room.

"I didn't know you were Welsh!" some asshole - wait, you recognize him, that's Fake Swede from the other day - calls out.

"A dead sheep," you clarify, before the room can devolve into another European ancestry dick measuring competition. "Dog food," you clarify further, as you see his lips shaping the 'k' in 'kinky'.

"My cousin is a butcher," one guy offers.

"See, now that's a good, helpful answer. Take note, Fake Swede." Oops. You didn't mean to let slip your personal name for the guy, but it seems to meet with general approval.

("My name is Jonas," Fake Swede complains. "Not anymore it isn't," the guy next to him says)

"Does he deliver?" you ask. "I'm not sure he'd appreciate me coming over in work clothes."

"You kiddin' me? The crazy bitch who took down Mush in a single blow? He'd be stoked to meet'cha. C'mon."

Well. You'll try to take that comment in the spirit it was given. You think. You're not crazy, though. You just... jumped off a three-story building to get at your enemy. Ahem.

The guy ('Eric', you file his name in the circular cabinet) leads you outside to his pickup. Yeah, yeah, you know what they say about getting into cars with strange men. That advice is for people who can't sic a giant wolf on perverts. Fenrir rides in the back, intangible yet somehow deciding that his position is static relative to the truck now.

Alone with you in these less festive circumstances, Eric seems to become aware of the fact that you're not actually 'one of the lads' - there's an awkward age and gender gap that conversation will have to lunge across.

"So, uh, how's school treating you?" he asks as the silence threatens to become uncomfortable.

"Pretty fucking awesome, actually," you answer, silently marveling at how you're not lying about that.

"Not making you write essays on the horrors of the holocaust, then?" He uses a high-pitched, whiny voice for that word in particular, just in case there was any doubt about his opinion on its realness attribute.

You shake your head. "That was last year." You pause, thinking back. "And three years ago. Also, uh, five years ago, I think? But we had to make a collage then, not an essay."

He grunts the satisfied grunt of a man having his biases confirmed by facts and logic. "It's a bit funny, isn't it?"

"How so?" you ask, bracing for more Endlösung-based humor.

"When they teach you about the romans, they tell you that you can never trust contemporary historians, because the winners write the history books. Then when they get to the most recent big war, that they won, they tell you that the enemy just so happened to be the most cartoonishly evil villains in all of history."

"That is a bit funny," you agree politely.

The butcher is, as promised, stoked to meet you. "It's great to see more youngsters standing up and fighting for their people," he says as he vigorously shakes your hand. "If there were more people like you we wouldn't be in nearly the same mess."

It almost makes you feel guilty about being an infiltrator. Especially when he gives you a discount. You could almost afford to feed Fenrir twice a week at this rate (that sounds sort of bad, doesn't it?), even without taking cape fight bounties into account. Except... living hand-to-mouth is not a very good idea. And you need to save up money to hire Faultline at some point, that's still on the table. So it's purely up to your conscience how well you treat your wolf. Yay. What are the odds that you'll settle on an equilibrium that doesn't involve a certain set point of guilt?

You have whatsisname - Eric, right - load up the carcass 'to go'. His cousin was a fan, sure, but having a giant carnivore feast right outside his shop is a bit much. You have Fenrir materialize in the alley behind the bar and feed him there. Some of the patrons come out to have a look at their new mascot(s?), but only briefly. Watching him tear flesh and crunch bones is not all that pleasant. You stay, though, happy to see him happy.

When the sheep is all gone, he shows his appreciation by licking your face. Well, trying to. Your face is shielded, so he just leaves sheep juices smeared all over your mask. At which point Rune shows up.

"Wow," she says. "That's sure, uh, gonna strike fear into the hearts of your enemies, but..."

"Yeah, yeah." You've heard it all before. Blood-spattered capes are bad optics.

You get both of you cleaned up and board the rock. Rune stops and hovers at roof level, but you make no move to get off and ride.

"I told you I didn't mind elevator duty, right?" Rune asks.

"Yeah, but it took jumping off a roof to make you stop being a bitch about it. I'm not going to spend that goodwill all at once."

She snorts, equally amused and annoyed, and takes off without further argument.

Absolutely nothing happens for the next four hours.

You're not complaining - you're here for the powers, not the fighting - but it's not what you expected, given what happened last time.

"Is this normal?" you ask.

"Huh? Yeah. The Merchants won't act up again so soon after getting smacked down, and the japs keep to themselves, mostly."

"What about... mundane problems?" The people you're supposed to perform hate crimes on, you mean.

"It's winter," she says, her tone clearly indicating that it's an explanation. You nod, frowning beneath your mask. Is she implying that... people of African descent prefer to stay indoors when it's cold out? Yeah, okay. That makes sense, and it's far from the most racist thing you've heard since you joined.

Kid Win's gun is lying dematerialized next to your bed. You study it where it lies. From what you can tell it shoots the typical colorful, slow-moving concussive blasts everyone calls 'lasers'. Slow-moving, that is, as compared to regular bullets or actual laser beams, you wouldn't want to try dodging them. Still, it's nothing interesting. Concussive blasts with accompanying light-show is literally the most common superpower, not just in tinkertech but also among actual Blasters.

Considerably more interesting is the unfinished secondary system set into the grip. It looks like the gun is supposed to be able to vanish and reappear. Not dematerialize - immaterial objects still occupy a position in space - but really vanish. Go 'elsewhere', enter a state without a physical position, and as such become simultaneously adjacent to every location.

Your sorcerer's sight lets you figure all that out, and you're pretty sure you could replicate the effect with orichalcum, but you can't grasp it in a way that would let you turn it into a power.

A shame. When you realized you could see tinkertech you had entertained the idea that you would be able to drop all the stalking and infiltration and what-not and just find a Tinker to team up with to learn All The Powers. Not seriously, of course, since that would involve the universe wanting to make your life simple, but still. A shame.

The next morning you have a nasty fright as you almost run into Gallant again. Immediately followed by a much worse fright, as you suddenly realize that you're an idiot: Fenrir has emotions holy shit you should have thought of that earlier! Luckily he doesn't look your way this time either, but you cannot keep relying on luck here.

He may or may not be able to make out the shape of a wolf and out you as Low Key... but if all he sees is a shapeless cloud of love and obedience floating around next to you and occasionally overlapping your classmates, well... the conclusions he'd draw from that are arguably worse.

"See that guy?" you whisper to Fenrir. "You must never, ever let him see you, even when you're immaterial. Especially when you're immaterial. You can't-" You were about to say 'come to school with me any more', but Fenrir interrupts you by nodding and walking right up behind Gallant. "Jesus Christ what are you doing?" you hiss.

Fenrir sniffs Gallant carefully, starting at the back of his neck and slowly working all the way down to his feet. If he were to turn around at any point during this... but he doesn't. Fenrir looks back at you and nods again before leaping through the wall, out of sight. Okay, so he's... got the scent now, you guess, enough to smell him coming in time to make himself scarce?

"Good dog," you whisper as you sag against the wall. Is this what a heart attack feels like?

In less terrifying news, you find out that you share English class with your favorite aspiring school shooter. The class is otherwise terribly boring. Which suits you just fine, because it means Kid Win is bored enough to stop listening and start sketching plans for some sort of tinkertech. Not that you can see his notebook from where you're sitting, but the way his power lights up is a definite clue. Score!

When you go looking for Aegis at lunch, you instead happen across Glory Girl and Panacea. Right, they go to Arcadia too. You were so focused on discovering the secret identities of the Wards that you completely forgot about the public identities of New Wave.

This is the first time you've seen Panacea for real, as the last time you met you deliberately kept sorcerer's sight turned off. And what you see leaves you staring in awe. Regular capes have a steady glow suffusing them, that pulses and twists when they use their powers. Panacea sparkles.

Healer, you realize. She's killing or denaturing every single bacterium that touches her skin, causing millions of microscopic flashes of power every second.

It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.

It's also completely useless. As far as studying her power goes, it's like staring into a screen full of static. Pretty, pretty static.

You really should stop staring and go do something useful.

...Just a little bit longer, yeah?

Victoria-o-vision

"Don't look now, but there's a girl behind you who's totally checking you out."

I'm already reaching out to her as I speak, and gently catch her head between my hands to keep her from twisting it around.

"I literally said 'don't look,'" I chide her, causing her to blush slightly. "At least try to make it look natural. Turn your head just a little bit. There, in the corner of your eye. Curly hair, glasses, beanpole figure?"

"Oh, her. She's not checking me out, Vicky. I healed her a while back. She appreciated it."

She adds that last part almost as an afterthought, causing me to snort in amusement. "Of course she appreciated it! Who doesn't appreciate being healed?"

"No, it's like... People are happy, sure, but they are happy that they got their turn at the healing dispenser. Sometimes they're so happy they break down crying..." She stops briefly and swallows before continuing on. "Quite often actually. But they never... they never wonder, 'what if the healing dispenser had something else she wanted to do today?'"

I- I don't know what to say. I had no idea she felt like that. She's been looking a bit worn out lately, but- Oh. Oh no.

"I do that, don't I?" I whisper. "I take you for granted."

"Little bit, yeah," she says, but the way she can't quite maintain a smile as she says it screams 'more like a whole freaking lot, you big dummy!'

"Oh Ames." I gather her up in a hug. "You know I love you right? I'm going to be a better sister from now on."

And the very first thing I'm going to do for her is set her head straight about this girl who's obviously checking her out, holy shit.

"So, this girl who appreciates you," I say with a smile as I let go of her, "tell me about her."

"I was on my way home when she was hit by a car, practically in front of me. I healed her, of course, and she apologized for creating work for me." She smiles. "She even apologized to the driver for traumatizing him."

"Bull. Shit. Nobody is that nice."

"Vicky, you know that I can pretty much read people's emotions while I'm healing them."

I nod. She's explained it before. Heart rate, hormones, galvanic skin wossname... Stuff like that, she sees it all.

"Well, I'm telling you the girl was mortified at being a bother. She offered to buy me dinner to make up for it, too."

"She offered-" My palm hits my face with enough force that nearby people startle at the sound. "She was asking you out, you dolt! On a date!"

She opens her mouth to retort, but I keep going. "When you turned her down, what did she do?"

"Well, she wanted to buy me coffee instead-" Her eyes widen as she hears what she's saying and sees my growing grin. "No! You're imagining things, Vicky. I swear I caught her checking Carlos out yesterday."

Oh my god is it really that difficult for her to believe that someone might like her? "I'm not saying she doesn't swing both ways, I- look, I've got this, okay."

I pull out my phone and call my boyfriend.

"Hey Dean. Guess what? There's this girl who's totally hot for my sister, but Amy refuses to believe me when I tell her. I need you to come over and read her emotions and prove that I'm right." My left arm easily suffices to fend Amy off as she sputters and tries to grab the phone.

That put-upon sigh is not how you should react to your girlfriend calling you. Dick. "We've talked about respecting people's privacy, Victoria," he says tiredly.

I roll my eyes. "Sorry, I meant to say 'New Wave would like to formally request the assistance of the Wards in evaluating the threat presented by a potential stalker.'"

He sighs again, but I recognize this one as his 'I'm just going to do what you want instead of arguing' sigh.

"Great! We're in the usual spot, come quickly before she runs off."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Amy asks.

"It's for your own good. All part of being a better sister!"

"I see her," Dean says through the phone. "The lanky brunette with the glasses, right?"

"Yeah. What's the word?"

"I'd call it 'awestruck by beauty.' With an undertone of-"

"Hah! Dean says I'm totally right."

"What? Give me that!" I relinquish my phone with a smirk. "Tell me exactly what you are seeing." Amy demands.

...

"...oh." Amy slumps in defeat, and I reclaim my phone from her nerveless fingers.

"Thanks Dean, you're the best," I chirp before I hang up. Then I turn my attention to my sister. She seems unreasonably sad for someone who has just been told she's beautiful. "Are you alright?"

"I feel terrible," she says. "She feels that way about me, but I- I don't find her attractive at all."

"Hey. No. That's not something you get to feel bad about. We can't help who we like. I'll just tell her you're not interested."

"Wait, don't-"

I zip past my sister and fly across the room to hover in front of her admirer.

"Hey."

Her eyes, which had been glued to Amy the whole time, snap to me. They quickly travel all the way down my body and back up. Real subtle there, girl.

"What?" Her tone is hostile, but her eyes keep flicking down to points of interest on my body.

"I'm afraid my sister doesn't return your feelings."

"What?" This time around she's confused, perhaps alarmed. I hold up my hands.

"There's nothing wrong with it. She's just not the one for you. I'm sure that someday you'll find a girl who-"

"I'm not gay!"

"Bitch, please. You're checking me out as we speak." Admittedly she's looking at me like I'm a piece of meat where she was looking at Amy like she's a work of art, but still. This much denial comes with complimentary pyramids. It can't possibly be healthy. I flare my aura, just a little. It's not that I want her slobbering over me, but if I can just get her to admit-

Instead she hisses. She gets right up in my personal space, but her eyes are narrowed in anger instead of wide with awe.

"If you don't turn your aura off right now, I'll break my fist on your perfect fucking face so hard you'll never get my blood out of your shirt."

I can't help it, I flinch and float backwards a few feet. She follows in lockstep, raising her fist. The crazy bitch isn't bluffing! I quickly clamp down on my aura again. Dammit, I screwed that up. Now she's going to blame the aura for the whole thing. I consider arguing further, but I can tell it's pointless. I showed weakness, and she knows it. She won, even though I'm right. I fly off without another word.

When I rejoin Amy, Dean is sitting next to her. He's giving me a very disapproving look.

"Well, that could have gone better," I say. I try for a nonchalant shrug, but he isn't having it.

"Victoria, that girl hates you. What did you do?"

"Nothing?" He definitely isn't having it. I sigh. "That girl is so deep in the closet she's eating out the White Witch. I just tried to get her to come out. She didn't take it very well."

"Not very well? She- Look, just leave her alone, okay? We don't know what she's going through, but you're clearly not helping."

"Yeah, yeah." I wave him off, but then something occurs to me, something incredibly important that I can't believe I missed.

"Amy!" I spin to face my sister. "You said you 'didn't find her attractive'. Not that you weren't attracted to girls. Are you-"

Amy turns red and buries her face in her hands. She is. I hear Dean sighing again behind me, but I ignore him. This calls for all the hugs.

"It's fine," I tell her as I gather her in my arms. "You should have told me. You know I'd never judge you, right?" Another thought occurs to me, and I laugh. "Oh god, those dates I tried to set you up with, that never worked out? I'll do better this time around, I promise. What's your type? Do you-"

"Please stop trying to help."

What is it with parahumans and wacky misunderstandings about your sexuality? Ugh. So annoying. The most annoying part is how well it worked out for you. Glory Girl is no doubt telling her boyfriend (whose arrival you completely missed - at least Fenrir made himself scarce as instructed) all about what happened just now. And just like that, you have an alibi. Your fascination with Panacea, your intense dislike of Glory Girl (luckiest bloody second-gen cape in the world that she is), that juicy fear-of-discovery every time you catch sight of Gallant? It all has a perfectly innocent explanation now.

All you have to do is spend the rest of high school pretending to be a lesbian pretending to be straight.

It's funny, you were so focused on Gallant's power that you never got a proper look at his face. It wasn't until you saw them together that you realized that he was actually whatshisname, Glory Girl's rich boy-toy from the cover of that gossip rag. If you had, you'd have tried to avoid Glory Girl and Panacea too, and ironically been worse off right now.

You even got a soul price out of it.

Glory Girl wants her boyfriend to stop being such a dick all the time.

Makes sense. You recall hearing that they break up all the time, but invariably get back together again after a week or two. Once you get past your reflexive 'celebrities gonna celeb' response, that indicates a fundamentally unhealthy relationship.

The hero calling himself Gallant is treating his girlfriend badly. You remember when you would have found that revelation startling.

Notes:

A/N

That almost turned into a regular old interlude. I can't help it, Victoria is just so much fun to write. Being Glory Girl means never having to worry about being in the wrong!

"Why does everyone think I'm gay?" Taylor complained plaintively, not realizing she's the female protagonist of a fanfic written by a man. Of course everyone assumes she's going to be gay, canon be damned.

Chapter 19: S.16

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

At the dojo (don't call it that out loud) Hookwolf barely glances your way, just gesturing towards Cricket.

Cricket is... weird. Up close, her metal cage of a mask barely hides her face at all. She was maybe pretty once, it's hard to tell beneath all the scars. Her throat is damaged to the point that she's using an artificial larynx to speak. To reiterate: She's suffering from a crippling injury, with Othala sitting right there. She clearly has a thing about 'honorable battle scars'. Despite this, she hands you a real knife to spar with.

Not that her confidence is misplaced. Distracted as you are, you don't manage to tag her even once. Meanwhile she's putting plenty of holes in you. Compared to sparring with Hookwolf, it's a wash. Broken bones hurt more, but Cricket makes you keep fighting even after you're injured, cutting you over and over until you keel over from blood loss (you deliberately suppress your ability to stop bleeding so as to not give away your Brute rating, turns out that's a thing you can do).

Then Othala fixes you up, and the process starts over. Cricket is clearly punishing you - she didn't go this hard on any of her other students - but throughout it all her expression never changes. You sort of miss the way Hookwolf took obvious pleasure in hurting you. At least that way one of you was having a good time. To top it off, she doesn't even speak enough for you to get a read on her soul's price.

You toss your clothes straight in the trash afterwards. Add to your projected expenses: Two sets of gym clothes per week. Until you get assigned a new sparring partner, they will not be salvageable.

School starts to settle into a routine. Now that you know it's possible, the next time you spot Aegis you have Fenrir sniff him as well. With your wolf tracking both him and Gallant, stalking the one while avoiding the other becomes a lot easier. You keep going after school too, working together with your invisible wolf to inconspicuously tail him to his home.

You look at the apartment building in question, vague notions of climbing up to his window to stare at him while he's sleeping dancing in your head. You feel a teensy bit uncomfortable with being this much of a creep, but console yourself with the thought that he's a hero. He probably deserves it.

Before you can creep yourself out too much, it's time for your first aid class. Cricket is there again, you're happy to note, and you proceed to once again ignore the lecture in favor of staring at her. All of the power study, none of the stabbing!

The next morning you wake up alone, which is weird. There should be either wolf cuddles, or your dad telling you to get up. He must have checked in on you earlier and decided to let you sleep. You activate sorcerer's sight and look around for your wolf.

There he is, sitting in the corner and- you spin around to face the other way, your cheeks burning. Right, dogs do that. Because, as the saying goes, they can. It's just a lot more awkward to catch them doing it when they are also sapient. You'll- you'll just go have breakfast, he'll catch up with you when he's, er, done.

You're halfway up the stairs when the realization hits you.

He's been licking your face with that tongue.

At least the rest of the day brings no further surprises. School, stalking, stabbings, in chronological order. And inverse order of educational... ness. Educationalness. Yes, that's definitely a word.

Othala-o-vision

"You wanted to see me?"

I briefly wonder if Kaiser's perfectly clean metal desk is just for show, meant to give him an executive air. Between meetings, does he remove the gauntlets and take out the paperwork? Maybe he has a laptop hidden in a drawer? No, focus.

"It's about Low Key," I say. "Can you tell Hookwolf and Cricket not to be so hard on her?"

"I make it a policy not to micromanage the affairs of my subordinates. Hookwolf's training methods are his domain. If you have a complaint, take it up with him."

"He wouldn't listen to me. Please! I- I think she genuinely has a learning disability. ADD or something. But they just keep punishing her, and it isn't working."

He hesitates briefly before speaking. "I'll take that under consideration," he says. My shoulders slump. That means 'no', I can tell.

"Will that be all?" he continues. A clear dismissal. He knows that I'm in no position to bargain. Someone else could threaten to leave unless they got their way, perhaps. I can say without bragging that I am vitally important to the smooth functioning of the Empire. But I could never leave, not while Victor remains. And Victor would not leave, not for my sake, not over something like this.

I can't even go on strike. I've just demonstrated that I'm moved by the suffering of my fellow man. For all that Low Key suffers (without complaint - I shudder to think what her home life must be like that she would accept such treatment) the effect of withholding my services would result in far worse harm. All they would have to do is parade the wounded soldiers in front of me, and I would cave and resume my duties.

I turn away before Kaiser can see the tears forming in my eyes. God, I wish there was something I could do for that girl other than just patch her up again and again.

Friday, and Rune is fashionably late as always. The conversation in the bar is a loud argument about whether the Army or the Marine Corps produces the manliest men. Loud, but fundamentally good-natured: Whatever their differences, the soldiers and marines are united by their utter contempt for the Air Force (pronounced 'Chair Force').

Then one of the non-serving members points out that manliness is all well and good, but when was the last time the US was engaged in a just war, exactly? Is anyone here going to pretend that foreign policy isn't completely controlled by you-know-who? He'd rather not get his ass shot off in a desert fighting Israel's enemies, thank you very much - and the less said about WWII, the better. Boy did that torpedo the mood in hurry. What a party pooper.

The patrol itself is just as boring as last time. You take the opportunity to convince Rune to show off a bit: How small a rock can she control?

The answer, it turns out, is that it has to large enough that she can legibly trace her runes on it with a fingernail. Apparently her cape name isn't just a generic norse-sounding word, you hadn't realized that. Your theory of 'magic is real, deal with it' as an explanation for parahuman powers is looking better every day.

It's not just a great help towards understanding her power, you also make sure to pocket the pebbles afterwards. Sorcerer's sight shows that her inscribed objects don't lose their 'charge' just because she stops paying attention, and you just scored a potential power source for your tinkertech.

Villains and heroes may take the weekend off, but there's no rest for the rogues. Is that what you are? You've technically joined the Empire, but not for real, and you haven't actually done anything villainous. Taking down Mush was perfectly legal vigilantism! Getting paid for it probably involved some sort of tax code violation though, now that you think about it.

Oh right, Emma. Forgot about her for a moment. That's assault with a parahuman ability, and regular assault (and battery, mustn't forget the other half of the dynamic duo). She deserved it, though. You idly wonder what happened to her brain when you ghosted her and the Loyalty wore off. Probably didn't make her less crazy. There's Blackwell too, you guess (also super deserved). Was that even illegal? You helped her cover up a bunch of crimes, but all them were against you, so that's really just 'not pressing charges', right? Oh, and the business with the gun the other day was technically theft, possibly of government property.

Yep, definitely a rogue.

Aaanyway, the reason you know that heroes get the weekend off is that, surprise, you've been stalking Aegis again. He spent most of Saturday hanging out with friends at the mall, the actions of a perfectly normal teenager. Or so Hollywood tells you, you haven't had a chance to try out the teenager + friends combo yourself.

When your copy of his power actually sticks to your soul, you're so surprised you almost fall over. That was way faster than either of your previous attempts! Then you stumble and almost fall over again, as you feel your guts churn and every bone in your body tingle.

The feeling passes after a few seconds, and you feel... sturdier? Yes. Somewhat. Your flesh still yields when you poke yourself, and bending a finger backwards still hurts. But you also have a conviction, a deep feeling like you get from your other powers, saying 'I am harder to kill'. You'll have to wait for Hookwolf and Cricket to review the changes, but you feel comfortable calling yourself a Brute 1 now.

Although... you poke at the golden construct in your soul. There is no off-switch. No user-serviceable parts inside. Nor can you modify, break or otherwise remove it (you didn't try with your earlier powers, but this one was easy enough to get that you didn't mind experimenting). Okay. So. Turns out that you can acquire powers that permanently change your physical body, and there are no take-backs. That's good to know, and you're incredibly grateful that you learned this from Aegis and not, say, Gregor the Snail.

In fact, you wish everyone was more like Aegis. Flaunting their power wherever they go, never looking behind them, and easy to copy!

On Sunday you finally check the status of your latest cape identity, the Tinker. You wanted to get around to it earlier, but for all that Aegis was quick by power acquisition standards, by the time you got his power yesterday the library had already closed.

When you log in to your Tinker account, you find not one but two messages waiting for you. Your heart sinks as you read the first.

Message 1

From: Armsmaster (Verified cape)

Smith,

I regret to inform you that the Protectorate is not interested in your services at the current time. Rest assured that this is not due to any flaws in the material, as I have personally tested the sample and verified not just its durability but also several intriguing thermal and optical properties. I would personally love nothing more than to have access to a supply of this orichalcum of yours, but alas, it is not up to me.

Despite my recommendation, it was deemed too expensive for the benefits provided. The Protectorate simply does not have the budget to armor its people in gold. Do not let this discourage you, it is a far more common result than people think. Several of my own projects have met the same fate.

If you come up with a more economical method of synthesis, or any other interesting materials, please do not hesitate to contact me again. Either by PM, or by calling me at 555-276774663 (if at all possible, avoid physical letters that set off the metal detectors, delivered by someone who rushes out of the building immediately afterwards).

Regards,

Armsmaster

PS: I took the liberty of forwarding a copy of your letter and the results of my tests to my good friend Dragon of the Guild. Hopefully our Canadian compatriots will be more receptive to your offer.

You can't help but smile at the parenthetical. Looks like your HoboMail delivery service was enough to cause a stir on its own, even without a mention of tinker-bombs in the address field. At least they seem to have taken it in relatively good humor.

Not that you have any ideas for other metals anyway. It's orichalcum or nothing, your power insists. You can't really complain, it's a discount power that came free with sorcerer's sight and doesn't even show up in your soul. You've also got about 2 hours of Kid Win study already, just from him sketching tinkertech blueprints in class. Maybe that will lead to something.

You're so caught up in your thoughts that you almost miss the postscript. Dragon, as in Greatest Tinker in the World Dragon? Your breath hitches when you see that yes, the second message is indeed from Dragon.

Message 2

From: Dragon (Verified cape)

I hope I'm not being too forward contacting you like this, but Armsmaster shared the details of your new material with me and I simply could not pass up the opportunity. I've been working on potential anti-Endbringer weaponry lately, and several designs would benefit greatly from improved armor. Please contact me if you are interested in collaboration.

-Dragon

Your heart starts beating faster as you read. Dragon, the greatest (and richest) Tinker in the world? Endbringers? You knew that your power would eventually take you into the big leagues - unlimited growth does that to a person - but you didn't expect it to happen less than two months in, with only three powers learned.

It then skips a few beats when a small notification appears in the corner of the screen.

Dragon (Verified Cape) has initiated a private conversation

Smith. Saw that you were online. Do you have time to talk?

Your body notices that something tremendously exciting just happened, and helpfully floods itself with adrenaline. You take take a few deep breaths and try to explain to it that it's not in the ancestral environment anymore, you have all sorts of exciting things that don't require an immediate fight-or-flight response nowadays.

It is only moderately successful, and your fingers tremble a little as you type a response.

Gold_Smith: I can spare a few moments.

Dragon: Excellent. Let me slip into something more comfortable, like this cryptographically secure private chatroom: /9aw769os

You blink. Is... is Dragon flirting with you? You click on the link.

Welcome to private chatroom f3eb22, your handle is 8344ac

(8344ac) has entered the room, 0 slots remaining

Room is now sealed

(a7e659) has renamed (a7e659) to (Dragon)

(Dragon) has renamed (8344ac) to (Smith)

Dragon: Welcome to my lair.

Smith: Very cozy. Let's talk about orichalcum.

Dragon: I'm afraid I'm fresh out of volcanoes, but I can refit one of my factories to accommodate your more modest design in short order. You did not include any notes as to the synthesis process itself, however. Intuitive?

Smith: Very. I will have to be personally present for the full week to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Dragon: It takes a week to synthesize?

Smith: Roughly, yes. Perhaps slightly more. There may be some variation depending on the quality of the equipment. Is that a problem?

Dragon: Not as such, no. It just makes it unlikely that it will be ready before the next endbringer attack.

Smith: There will always be more attacks.

Dragon: That's what we're trying to change here!

Smith: As you say, dear lady. Can you have the factory ready by next weekend? I can take a week off then, but after that my schedule is full for the foreseeable future.

Dragon: That should be doable. Are we agreed, then?

Smith: We haven't discussed how to split the loot.

Dragon: Ah. I... had assumed that it would all go towards the project. I will be providing both the factory and the materials, after all.

Smith: I do have certain obligations myself, I cannot afford to work completely for free.

You proceed to haggle. You can't claim to know who came out on top. You'd like to say that orichalcum is invaluable, but who is to say that the time and effort of the World's Greatest Tinker is not? In the end you agree that you'll get two kilos of orichalcum to take home from the first batch, and that Dragon will join you during the tedious smelting process. Together you'll design the combat drone that is to be constructed from her share.

No, you're not deluded enough to think that you could possibly improve on any design Dragon comes up with. Your 'assistance' is part of her payment to you, and you both know it. It is, of course, an excuse for you to study her power, but it's not the least bit suspicious. There is not a Tinker on earth who is not gay for Dragon, and collaborating with her on a project is the equivalent of a writer getting co-authorship credit with Shakespeare.

You did previously go to some effort to keep the true age, gender, etc of Smith obscured, but such concerns went straight out the window as soon as you realized that was on the table. Dragon's power: Worth it, for any conceivable value of 'it'. Hell, if orichalcum was any quicker to make you'd pretend it took a week just to get more study time.

Dragon agrees to provide transport to the factory (it's in Canada, naturally) and you promise to get back to her with details of exactly when and where to pick you up.

As you sign off the computer, there is a part of you that wants to jump up and down and shout 'Jackpot!'. The librarians would not appreciate that, though, so you settle for leaning back in your chair with a quiet, self-satisfied smile. Okay, you panicked a bit at the start there, but you brought it home in the end. Goddamn Dragon is offering up her power to you, ripe for the picking. Are you awesome or what?

Speaking of smug, time to call Lisa. You are, unfortunately, going to need some help on this one.

Notes:

A/N

Armsmaster, AKA 'a civil servant', wept bitter Tinker tears at the opportunity he'd never have. "My budget..."

Dragon, AKA 'the parahuman prison-industrial complex', was overjoyed. "A duranium substitute that only costs slightly more than its weight in gold!?"

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Chapter 20: S.17

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

"'sup Merlin," Lisa greets you. "Learn any cool spells lately?"

"They're not spells," you insist. You raise your hand to forestall her reply. "Spells need incantations and eye of newt and stuff. They're more like... cantrips? Charms."

Lisa is undeterred, and seamlessly switches tracks. "You realize your pedantry just gave me even more material, right? You've been working your charms across the Empire, have you?"

"Shut up." You pout at her.

"Aw, no results yet? No luck playing the field?" She waggles her eyebrows gratuitously. "Are you sure monogamy is not right for you after all? What we had was beautiful, and actually gave results after a week. ...There's a joke about making babies in there somewhere, with your powers being the offspring."

"You are the worst, you know that right?" You understand the point she's making, but you're not going to play along. Why did you agree to come here and be Lisa'd at, again? Oh wait, it was your own idea. Shit.

"I try. How's the dog?" Her eyes flicker to the side, demonstrating that she can figure out where Fenrir is from watching your body language. "Are you taking care of his needs?"

Your mind flashes back to what you saw the other day. While you were able to take her earlier teasing with grudging amusement, this sally has you blushing beet red and speechless. Did she seriously just imply-

Lisa stares at you for a second, then lets out a startled laugh. "Christ, Taylor. I meant whether you'd started feeding him. Not- sorry."

"I have," you mutter, trying to regain your composure. As you desperately cast about for some way to change the subject, a hero appears to save you.

"Wanna see something funny?" you ask. "Behind you, five o'clock."

Lisa twists around just in time to see Glory Girl come swooping down out of the sky, landing next to Panacea. She gives her sister a hug, then sweeps her up in a bridal carry and flies off with her. You observe Lisa's power making all the relevant connections.

"Huh," she says. "That sure is a thing. How'd you- soul's price, right?"

"Yeah. Thinker dibs, by the way."

"What?"

"I figured it out first, I call dibs on using it."

Lisa seems slightly taken aback. "Would you actually-"

"Eeh." You make a weighing motion with your hand. "Probably not. Blackmail material if nothing else. Dibs."

"Fair enough."

You stare after the receding dot that is the New Wave sisters, lost in thought. "I wonder about that girl, you know. Is she even second generation? Her power is nothing like her family, and she's certainly fucked up enough for a proper trigger event."

You catch a flash of power from the corner of your eye, but don't manage to turn back in time to catch what Lisa just figured out.

"Oh," she says. "You're half right."

"Second generation, but adopted?" you hazard, and Lisa nods. "Who are her real parents?"

"I don't think I should tell you. Thinker dibs, you know."

"Hey, I told you mine!"

"Technically you just pointed it out, I had to use my own power to figure it out. I guess if you ever meet someone whose soul price is the death of all New Wave except Panacea, you'll figure it out too."

"Wait, they fucking abducted her from her parents? What the fuck is wrong with heroes?" Seriously, it's like as soon as someone starts calling themselves a hero they lose all sense of right and wrong.

"Mhmm. No more clues for you, I think." Lisa gives no sign of being outraged, but then she's been in the game longer than you. You're clearly still green if you get worked up over little things like kidnapping a child for her potential future powers.

"Speaking of heroes," Lisa continues, "how's Arcadia?" She tries her trademark grin on for size, but you shut that down.

"Nope. Nuh-uh. You don't get to be smug about that one, I literally sent you a picture of the place."

"Fine, fine. So, gonna brag about the swag or what?" That she's asking about what you stole, and not whose locker it was or why you wanted in there, indicates that she's figured those out herself. Which incidentally means that she knows what Kid Win looks like under the mask, since his face was visible in the video you sent her. Neither of you mention the fact. Unwritten rules, paper thin but still present.

"Obtaining the swag wasn't really the point," you demur. "Um..." You hesitate, but you do need to get to the point sooner or later. "The reason I called was that I need your help." You desperately try not to grimace as you admit it.

Lisa leans forward. "Do tell."

"I need an alibi, sort of." Lisa elects not to use her power to jump ahead in the conversation, and simply gestures for you to go on. Probably wants to enjoy your discomfort for as long as possible. "I need to leave town over winter break. Dad would never let me go on my own, but if he could meet my friend Lisa, who invited me along on her skiing vacation..."

"I see," Lisa says, drawing out the 'see' into a sentence all of its own. She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. "Four hundred bucks."

"Excuse me?" You're not bothering to hide your shock. She's never asked you for money before.

"Oh? Are you telling me you've resolved your stupid fucking issues about accepting 'pity' from your friends? Are you maybe ready to come hang out with Rachel and me instead of..." her power goes off and her voice rises as she hears what it says "...letting Hookwolf abuse you? Instead of being used as a child soldier by a fucking nazi regime? I'm not even going to mention whatever hare-brained scheme you're leaving town for-" because she hasn't been able to figure out any details, you think smugly "-but let's not pretend that I'm not doing you a favor by not doing this as a favor."

You slap four hundred dollars on the table. Her power tells her that you're grateful.

Convincing your dad to go along with the plan is incredibly easy. Not surprising: Your happiness is his soul's price. Lisa makes an excellent impression too, being all 'mister Hebert' this, and 'I've been doing my best to keep Taylor out of trouble' that. Bitch. She has more trouble convincing him that he doesn't need to help pay for anything.

He does try to make you promise to call him every day. You haggle him down to every other day, Christ, you're not nine years old. You have been out of the house before. He and Lisa share a smarmy adult laugh at your irritation.

"I like her. She seems like a good influence," he says after she leaves.

"I'm so glad you approve of my friends." You roll your eyes, every inch the sullen teenager, and get your hair mussed up in return. Yes dad, you certainly put one over on your daughter there, and not the other way around.

Of course the very next day the universe decides it's time to take all your plans and throw them out the window. But for once, it does so in a nice way.

There's a new parahuman in school. You stop and stare, causing one of your classmates to bump into you from behind.

"Hey, what are-" She follows your gaze. "Pretty nice. But do watch where you're going, eh?" She gives you a sly grin and a nudge.

Hm? You suppose the view is nice, when you take the time to look beneath the glow. A football player's build, tall and well muscled. Nice face, strong jaw. Just the way you like them. Then you're distracted from his physical appearance when his glow starts pulsing. Actively using his power! Just the way you like them.

But who is he? The Wards are all accounted for. Unless that's Triumph? You've read that Wards are usually promoted to full Protectorate some months before or after their actual birthday, to obscure their identities. It's plausible that Triumph could still be in school. Except Triumph's power is weaponized shouting, and that's not what this guy is doing.

More importantly, how the hell did you miss him for an entire week? Maybe he's a transfer student? He does look a bit lost, unless that's just him concentrating on his power. No, when you think about it you definitely recall seeing him before, only he wasn't glowing then.

Oh. Fresh trigger. You wince in sympathy. No wonder he's looking lost. And experimenting with his power in public. Must be a subtle one, then. You re-focus on the glow, trying to make out- autobiokinesis! Change all the plans, you must have this man!

Ok, focus. You're approaching a handsome older boy with amorous intent. Last time didn't exactly go great, but you weren't really trying then. This time around, failure is not an option. You spend a minute making preparations on your phone, then move in for the kill. Class is going to start any minute.

"You look a bit lost," you tell him as an opener.

"Hm? Yeah, I suppose." He doesn't even turn to look at you.

"I know something that could help with that."

"Oh?" The monosyllable is barely even a question, but at least he shifts his attention in your general direction.

"What you need is a brainless action movie, with a pretty girl on your arm." You make a show of looking around. "Shit, looks like there aren't any around. You'll have to make do with me."

"Hey-"

He lifts a hand and starts to object, but you wave him off. "No, no. No need for empty flattery, I already agreed to go out with you. Five o'clock at the Bayside Cinema work for you?" You hold up your phone, showing two tickets to Hard Capes 3: Revengeance just waiting for a press of the 'confirm' button.

"Uh... Sure."

"Great!" You tap the button with a flourish. "I'm Taylor, by the way."

"Cliff." He takes your offered hand just as the bell rings.

"See you there!"

Soul's price? Yes, that counted as an interaction.

Cliff wants to understand why. Why anything? Why everything.

Wow, that guy sure is out of it. Not that you blame him, because see above re: trigger event. You're just happy that you're in a position to help him feel better and/or take advantage of his emotional vulnerability.

As soon as the first class ends, you start working on everything else that must change to accommodate this development.

"Trouble?" Lisa answers her phone. Of course she knows who's calling. Of course she knows it's not a social call.

"Meet me right after school. No wait, during lunchtime. I'll be outside." You hang up. She'll figure out that it isn't an emergency, just urgent.

Then you put away your phone, and take out your other phone. Your Empire phone.

"What's up, Low Key?" You don't recognize the voice, but you don't know everyone in ops yet.

"Two hundred and eighty-three."

"Fifty-three. You know you don't need to use recognition codes when calling from your own phone, right?"

"Oh, uh, sorry. I forgot. I just wanted to say, I won't be available for patrol this week or the next."

"Kaiser will not be happy to hear that, especially on such short notice."

"You tell Schlomo he can dock my pay however much he wants, there's nothing I can do about it. When mom declares a family vacation, I don't get a say in the matter. I'm not the head of the household, yeah?"

You can hear the guy on the other side turn his head and relay this information to the rest of the room. Someone shouts "fuck!", presumably the guy in charge of patrol schedules.

"Acknowledged." He hangs up. Yeah, you made the nazis a bit grumpy, but all else has to bend in service of this opportunity.

"I need to get in touch with Toybox," you greet Lisa. "Yesterday, preferably."

"Are you doing this deliberately because I- you're not. Another cape? I guess you're just a busy, busy bee."

You shrug. "You know how it is. No rest for the rogues."

"Is that what you are?" she asks, amusement clear in her voice as she echoes your thoughts from the other day.

You shrug again. "I don't dress up in spandex and rob banks, so I'm not a villain. And I don't hurt innocents, so I'm not a hero."

"Fair enough. But for the record, I don't rob banks either. Too high profile."

"About Toybox..."

"Sure, sure. I guess it's on the house, since it's part of your vacation package." A few taps on her phone, and you hear the beep of a message notification from your pocket. "There. You simply must tell me how it all went when you get back."

As soon as Lisa leaves, you're on the line negotiating a rush order with a collective of mercenary Tinkers. They're indifferent at first, but become eager to please when you mention that you might be willing to part with some experimental dimension-phasing tinkertech that fell off the back of a Protectorate truck.

You're feeling a bit frazzled, but you would be lying if you claimed you weren't enjoying every minute of it. It contains fewer soul prices than expected, but this is exactly the fast-paced, interlocking shenanigans you wanted from the morally-ambiguous-Santa-Claus lifestyle.

Oh shit, you almost forgot to call your dad.

"Dockworker's Union, Hebert speaking."

"Hi dad."

"Taylor! Is something wrong?"

"No, no. Just wanted to let you know not to wait up for me tonight."

"Another party? It's good that you're telling me, but-"

"Not a party, a date."

"Well then I'm definitely setting a curfew." His tone is light and teasing, but you can tell that he's 100% serious underneath. "Be home by ten o'clock, or else. And I had better approve of this young man!"

"Yyyeah no not going to do that." You're going to maximize access to Cliff's power regardless of all other considerations, he'll just have to deal.

"Taylor-"

"Dad! I'm not going to put out on the first date!"

Your exclamation draws a few amused glances from passersby, but it's worth it for the spluttering sounds coming through the phone.

"That is what a curfew is meant to prevent, isn't it?" you continue at a more subdued volume. "Please have a little faith in me."

"It's not- It's not just that. You know I don't like you running about late at night."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that, you should see the muscles on Cliff. Such delicious muscles. That I'm definitely not going to sleep with tonight."

He sighs. "This is what I get for telling you that I approve of your friends, isn't it?"

"Yep. Real dumb move, that. See you tomorrow!"

With that, you hang up. He's either going to grin and bear it or come storming into school and cause a huge scene. 80/20, you'd say.

Notes:

Mechanics corner

Knowing the Soul's Price explicitly guarantees that everyone has a soul's price to take advantage of, and implicitly guarantees that it's something theoretically achievable. Which means that, for example, it will never be 'resurrect their dead lover' because in the Exalted cosmology true resurrection is impossible.

(Good thing too, or Danny's soul price would have been a lot more depressing)

So apparently in this cosmology, there must exist an answer to life, the universe and everything? Neat.

Chapter 21: S.18

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

What you'd like to do after school is to rush home and shower and panic over the fact that you don't have the first idea about how makeup works. Not that anything short of cosmetic surgery could make you pretty. Well either that or, you know, autobiokinesis. A catch 22.

You don't have time for panic, though. Cliff will have to put up with you as you are. You have to get to the library.

You clearly need a better method of communicating with Dragon, but you're not going to contact the greatest Tinker in the world from your private phone. That's just asking for trouble. Which is why you stop to buy another phone on your way to the library. This won't get confusing in any way. After all, you're only carrying around a Low Key phone, a Smith phone, a Taylor phone, and a Santa Claus phone right now.

In addition to giving Dragon Smith's number, you arrange your rendezvous. You already set a time and a place to take delivery from Toybox, so you tell Dragon to pick you up a few minutes later and a few blocks away from that spot.

Of course there is a slight issue in that the time is on Friday and the place is in Boston. Turns out Toybox doesn't deliver to Brockton Bay. You don't mind as such, obfuscating your home town a bit to Dragon doesn't hurt at all, but you're sort of meant to be in school on Fridays. You have brand new squeaky clean academic record at Arcadia that could survive a dent or two, but the dad situation is a bit volatile right now.

You'll bring it up in a day or two, when he's calmed down a bit. Something something Lisa wants to leave early to avoid the holiday rush.

Turns out you didn't need to worry about your slovenly appearance, because Cliff shows up at the cinema still wearing his school clothes. He may or may not have sat around staring at the wall until it was time to go.

The movie is entirely forgettable. Probably. If, against all odds, it had some hidden spark of artistic merit in there, neither of you would be able to tell. You're both entirely focused on his power. Cliff stares at nothing, you stare at him. He occasionally glances your way, and you offer him a (hopefully non-creepy) smile each time. Don't worry buddy, the staring is from infatuation. Nobody has discovered that you're parahuman.

You're vaguely aware from musical cues that the hero of the movie just got the girl when you feel a pair of lips against yours. You jerk back in shock. You were so focused on recreating a particularly tricky bit of his power that you didn't even notice him move.

"Sorry," Cliff says. "I just thought... the way you were looking at me..."

Shit! Damage control time. "No, no! I don't mind! You just startled me, that's all. Um, please try again?"

He does. It's... nice? He's an adequate kisser, you guess? Not that you're any judge (having never been kissed before), but you don't feel any of the world-shaking, breath-taking sensations that romance novels claim should go along with the experience.

Actually, there is a certain warm, fluttery excitement developing in your chest and stomach. A certain urge to, well, kiss him back. So you do. You wrap your arms around him and pull yourself into his lap.

Oh god, you hope you're an adequate kisser.

He doesn't complain, at least. By the time you pull away you're flushed and breathing heavily. Okay, maybe you were a bit quick to judge. It definitely got better as it went on, and ended up a lot better than 'adequate'.

The movie goes back to less romantic imagery as the girl is kidnapped by the villain and the vengeful hero starts tearing his way through dozens of hapless mooks. You try to get your head back in the game and focus on power theft.

When the villain is defeated and the girl saved (you assume - at least, the credits roll) Cliff insists on buying you dinner, since you paid for the tickets. You let him. It's nothing fancy, a burger and fries that isn't fast food. In the language of restaurants, 'I like you, but I'm not planning on marrying you any time soon.'

Neither of you is much of a talker, but whenever the silence threatens to become awkward you just lean over and kiss him again. No reason not to combine business and pleasure. You don't do it too often, though, as that has a tendency to make him forget about his power and focus on you for a while.

Heh. Lucky bastard, isn't he? He found a date who actively wants him to not pay attention to her.

When he does speak, it mostly brief but thoughtful statements on the nature of, well, just about anything that catches his attention. How many people eat Worcestershire sauce without knowing where Worcestershire is, or even that it's a place rather than brand name. Pithy observations about how the Great Plains and cattle farming influenced the American diet. How many people were involved in the supply chain leading to creation of his chair, and how many chairs must be produced for that to make economic sense.

It's the sort of things you had never bothered to consider, but you suppose they serve as a foundation for someone trying to understand the meaning/purpose of life? Maybe?

At one point he does seem to get inspired, and goes on an extended philosophical inquiry/rhetorical question about why kissing evolved to be pleasurable. It's obvious why certain other activities did, but kissing is technically entirely optional as far as procreation is concerned.

"I could stop if you want," you say teasingly. "Since it's optional."

He completely misses the chance to flirt back with something like 'no, I must collect more data', of course, and just goes on speculating. It is sort of romantic in its own way, you suppose. At least until he starts contrasting it to how birds feed each other, ie by puking into each others' mouths.

"Have you considered the hypothesis that we were created by a benevolent God that wants us to be happy?" you ask.

"Yes," he says, dead serious. You laugh, and kiss him again.

It's amazing how long you can keep a boy's attention with nothing but inexpert small talk and sporadic makeouts. After the meal you go for a walk, then walk some more to find a place that serves coffee that's still open. By the time you finally get home, it's after midnight.

Cliff insists on driving you home rather than letting you walk on your own. You'd probably be safer walking even if you weren't parahuman, because Cliff doesn't stop focusing on his power just because he's behind the wheel. You make sure your seatbelt is secure and keep on studying him. By now his constant shapeshifting experiments have given him a Brute rating almost as good as your own. Flimsy as Brutes go, in other words, but easily enough to, say, walk away more or less unharmed from a car accident at city driving speeds.

He walks you to your door, and you kiss him goodnight even though your dad is watching through the window. He stayed up waiting for you despite you explicitly telling him not to do that, because of course he did.

"Still a virgin!" you announce after shutting the door behind you. "Now go to bed, you have work tomorrow."

Danny opens his mouth, then closes it again. Your sudden usurpation of the scolding high ground seems to have put him off his stride. He spends a few moments debating whether he ought to become angry before finally chuckling and shaking his head.

"Try not to hate your old man too much for worrying about you, okay?"

"'kay." You give him a quick hug before heading towards your room.

"I will want to meet him before too long, though," he calls behind you.

"Do the same thing tomorrow, but invite him in this time? Can do, dad!" You skip down the steps with a song in your heart.

The next morning in school you make a beeline for Cliff - you had Fenrir take a sniff of him yesterday so you would always be able to track him down. It's not creepy stalking if you're actually dating the guy!

You greet him with a hug and a kiss. "So, did it help?" you ask, and frown at his blank look. "Well, maybe we didn't get the dosage right. Wanna try again today?" you ask.

"I have practice today."

"Oh." You could always back off and make do with the Aegis method, ie regular old-fashioned stalking. But that's nowhere near as efficient, and your schedule is touch and go as it is. "Can I come watch?"

"Sure, if you want." The shrug is apparent in his voice, if not his body language.

Somewhat to your surprise, practice turns out to be baseball rather than football. But on further consideration, it suits him.

It's not that you hate baseball or anything (you'd have to emigrate in shame), but when you get right down to it it's a sport where the majority of players spend the majority of their time not actually doing anything. And no one is better at standing around lost in thought than Cliff.

Okay, that sounded sort of mean, even in your own head. You mentally apologize to boyfriend and baseball both. You wonder whether you'd have had a thought like 'the fundamental nature of baseball is standing around waiting for something to happen' before yesterday. Cliff must be rubbing off on you, if you've started analyzing things like that. You certainly rubbed yourself against him enough last night.

(In practice it's actually more 'jumping in place to keep warm' than 'standing around', because February is still a thing right now)

"Did you have fun?" he asks afterwards. You get the feeling that he's less interested in your mental state and more interested in modeling the entertainment value of chilly baseball practice.

"I could watch all day," you answer truthfully.

"You're a lucky guy, Cliff!" one of his teammates calls. "I wish my girlfriend was interested in baseball."

"Yeah, me too!" another one agrees.

"I wish I had a girlfriend at all," a third boy says.

"Maybe if you did something about the way you smell, you'd get one."

"Well, that and your stupid face."

"And your tiny dick!"

"Man, fuck you guys."

"With a dick that tiny, we wouldn't notice if you did!"

Ah, teenage boys.

"Do you want to come over to my place?" you ask Cliff, to general approving noises. "Not the way they think. My dad wants to meet you."

"Oh man, the bait and switch. She's heartless!"

"Run, Cliff! Run while you still can."

"Yeah, okay," Cliff says. To you, not the guy telling him to run away. Possibly because running away would take more effort.

"He seems nice, but a little... off?" is Danny's verdict, once Cliff has left and you're washing up after dinner.

"Yeah, he had a traumatic experience recently," you say.

"Oh. Is that why you- no, never mind. Forget I said anything."

"...yes. Yes, that's why I." What can you say? It's completely true. The reason you're together is that you both had trigger events.

"Sorry."

"Please don't bring it up in front of him. It's a touchy subject." Also Cliff doesn't know that you know.

To your dismay, Cliff isn't working on his biokinesis any more when you find him the next day. Instead he's subtly playing with... telekinesis? Nothing visible, just creating a layer of repelling force next to his skin. You can't be sure without closer study, but you suspect that his Brute rating just shot straight past yours and well into 'combat viable' territory.

So, he got a double ticket in the power lottery. Some people have all the luck. Not as much luck as you, of course, but the people with that kind of power luck can be counted on the fingers of one thumb (the thumb is named Eidolon).

Unfortunately, telekinesis is not what you want out of this relationship. But you can fix this.

You press yourself up against him and whisper in his ear, "I swear you get more handsome every day." You pretend not to notice as he panics, drops the shield and frantically sends his power roving through his body, looking for anything out of place, any forgotten alteration or visible sign of his internal remodeling.

Finding nothing, he starts reversing his Brute improvements anyway, just to be safe. Because when your girlfriend tells you that something is different, you don't stop looking just because you're 99% sure she's having you on. Though usually it's her own appearance she's commenting on.

You catch Glory Girl giving you the stink-eye during lunch, as you sit snuggled up against Cliff. You smirk at her in return. Your sudden and overly affectionate attachment to Cliff in no way invalidates the narrative playing out in her head. Her theory about your closet status has the benefit of being almost entirely unfalsifiable. You can almost see the little countdown timer to acrimonious relationship collapse ticking away behind her eyes. She'll feel so validated when it turns out she was right all along.

"So," you ask Cliff, "what do you want to do today?"

"You could come over to my place," he says, unexpectedly showing a modicum of initiative. Is he actually getting better?

"My turn to meet your parents, eh?"

"My parents won't be home."

Well then! When this guy finally does takes the initiative, he sure doesn't drop it halfway!

"Okay," you say.

So. Your boyfriend, who's a bit older than you, has invited you back to his place, where his parents are conspicuously absent. If this was an educational movie, this would be the part where he tries to pressure you into doing something that you're not ready for, and you break up with him and find a nice boy your own age who is willing to take things slow.

Cliff is a total gentleman, though. He lets you take the lead, and in no way tries to make you... well, okay, total personal honesty time? You're not sure there is anything you're not prepared to do in order to get your hands on autobiokinesis. But you're grateful to Cliff for not making you find out! He's perfectly happy just to take a leisurely stroll over to second base and settle down there for the evening.

Heh, baseball metaphors.

Due to certain distractions on both your parts, you don't get as much power study in as you'd like. You almost had it on that last attempt, though. Tomorrow for sure.

You've also clearly proven that powers vary in complexity. Aegis was easier than Rachel was easier than Lisa, but Cliff is definitely harder than Aegis (though still easier than Rachel). So it's not you getting better over time, there's some other factor at play. You'll need more powers to establish a pattern, though.

Just as expected, you get his power on your very next try on Thursday, before you even have a chance to say hello.

Cliff-o-vision

I see Taylor approaching, and remember to smile this time. Little things. Work on the little things, until they become automatic once more. Taylor never seems to mind when I forget, though. I like that about her.

However, she does not greet me with her usual enthusiasm today. Instead she stops at arm's length and looks me over critically. Perhaps she prefers that I don't smile?

"It's not helping, is it?" she asks. I don't understand what she means.

She sighs, then moves up to kiss me on the cheek. "Good luck," she says as she turns to leave.

She's breaking up with me, I suddenly realize. She did offer that first date as a means of helping me recover. Everything that followed as well, clearly.

I want to call out, to stop her. But she's right. It wasn't helping. She offered me a kindness, gave it her best shot, and it failed. I have no further claim to her time.

I reach up to touch my face where she kissed me. It wasn't helping, but it was nice. I wouldn't have minded- no, I would've liked for it to continue.

Alas.

Notes:

A/N

In my original outline I had Taylor learn shapeshifting from Oliver, after she ran into him at a butcher shop (her buying meat for Fenrir, him for Noelle). Then I realized that the Travelers don't come to Brockton Bay until after Dinah gets kidnapped.

After having spent a fair few minutes swearing over having to throw the whole thing out and start over, I suddenly remembered Browbeat. It's not just a meme, I had honestly forgotten that Browbeat existed. It's not a perfect solution, but having his mental issues reach their tipping point in February instead of early March can safely be blamed on butterflies.

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Mechanics corner

Shaping the Ideal Form is a 1e charm, even though I'm using 2e otherwise. That's because in 2e, not even lunars can shapeshift. Sure, they can eat people to steal their form, but freeform shapeshifting? No.

The closest thing is an abyssal charm that lets you walk through a field of corpses, absorbing and resculpting them and replacing an arbitrary amount of your own flesh with theirs. Side effects may include changing your creature type from 'human' to 'magical zombie' (but usually no one notices this, because abyssals are already magical zombies).

That doesn't mean that exalts are bad at disguising themselves. Whether it's making mundane disguises supernaturally convincing, or reaching into the Matrix to edit your own metadata headers directly, or wrapping yourself in the unspeakable shadow of the prince of all lies... Most exalted methods of making people think you're someone else are better than the humble Shaping the Ideal Form.

But that's not what Browbeat does, so I'm using StIF. It's not OP or anything - in function it's a more limited version of the solar charm Flawlessly Impenetrable Disguise: FID makes a disguise that's impossible to see through because a solar says so and reality will just have to deal, while StIF makes one that's impossible to see through because that's really what you look like now.

Cliff-o-vision

Someone snuck a note into my locker. The message is short and unambiguous, yet incredibly confusing.

Don't join the wards

- a friend

Someone knows. Who? A friend, ostensibly. Why does this friend not identify themselves?

Who does know? My parents. My psychiatrist. Any number of people at the hospital, who might have noticed my unnaturally speedy recovery. The PRT, if the hospital contacted them. I can rule out the PRT, they would not dissuade me from joining the Wards. Unless... the Wards are being treated badly, and this is a whistleblower of sorts? That would explain the subterfuge.

Assume it's not a friend. A villain would obviously be interested in preventing the rise of more heroes. But if a villain knows enough to find my locker, there are more direct ways to deal with me. Perhaps they fear my power, and do not feel confident in victory? Are they hoping to recruit me? Why not include a recruitment pitch, then?

Unless-

Chapter 22: S.19

Chapter Text

Autobiokinesis! The ability to change your appearance at will! There is no single greater boon for a cape trying to juggle multiple identities.

That's what you were telling yourself when you prioritized its acquisition above everything else.

What actually happens once you get it is that you rush home and use your newest superpower to give yourself the oldest superpower.

That's a euphemism for 'tits', in case there was any confusion on that point.

Your vanity has already been established, okay? You're not ashamed. You're only doing what any 'late bloomer' (judging by your mom, closer to 'never' than 'late') in your situation would do, no matter how much they'd lie about it if asked.

Nor are you ashamed of going to the internet for help when it turns out that tits are more complicated than they look. Bigger is better, yeah? But 'saggy' is definitely bad, while 'perky' is highly sought after. Yet merciless gravity conspires to foil your attempts at having the best of both worlds. There must be some trick to it, right?

But searching for 'breast physics' on your phone mostly brings up a lot of video games you have no particular interest in playing.

None of the technical anatomy resources you find help either, being focused on function (and dysfunction - you learn more about breast cancer than you ever wanted to know) over form. You're reduced to trial and error, standing in front of the bathroom mirror and repeatedly growing, shrinking and reshaping your bosom.

At some point in this process you realize another important criteria for an attractive mammary, and 'how to spot fake tits' enters your search history. Not ashamed.

At least here the internet is helpful, providing you with a huge list of 'don'ts' with plentiful illustrations.

You eventually get the hang of it, you think, and start producing good-looking results. Although... as a heterosexual female you're not really the target audience here.

You do another search, this time for 'best-looking breasts'. Not. Ashamed.

Unsurprisingly, the internet has your back here as well. You find a quaint little forum where boob lovers from across the globe gather to share, discuss and rate the very finest pictures of breasts.

Those guys really know their business, too. Looking at the top-rated entries, even you can tell that those are some amazing fucking knockers.

Inspired, you resume shaping the ideal form with renewed vigor. Only to be interrupted by your dad banging on the bathroom door.

"Taylor? Are you alright? You've been in there forever."

Crap.

"Be right out!" you yell. You hurriedly slurp your new tits back into your chest and wriggle back into your shirt. Wow, changing that quickly takes a lot out of you. You feel as if you just ran a hundred-meter dash. Better not do that again.

You barge outside, almost catching your dad with the door. "Sorry!"

It's not until he clears his throat and looks away that you realize your mistake. You're fully dressed, but... after being called out, you left the bathroom instantly without any flushing or running water, out of breath and with your face bright red.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope, you're not thinking about what he's thinking you were doing in there, nope. You're running straight to your room and burying your face in your pillow and hoping to die.

That's quite enough excitement for one night. Yep. You're done.

You don't strip off your shirt and keep experimenting. Nope. Not down here were Fenrir can see you.

You definitely don't take a picture of the results and upload it to the boob lover forum before you go to sleep, and it doesn't get 627 views and an average rating of 8.6/10 by the time you wake up.

Of course not. That would imply that you went to sleep, as opposed to staying up all night to prepare for your business trip. You know, the stuff you had planned to do earlier in the evening, before you succumbed to the siren song of breast augmentation.

Danny makes no attempt to hide his amusement when you show up at breakfast.

"Too excited to sleep?" You grunt in the affirmative. "I suppose it's an improvement compared your first summer camp. As I recall, quite a bit of kicking and screaming was involved in getting you out the door then. What was it you said when we dropped you off? 'You can force me to go, but I refuse to have fun.' Even though it was your own idea in the first place!"

It's a good attempt, but between the lack of an audience and your semi-conscious state this tale of youthful indiscretions fails to achieve the proper sting of mortification. You zombie your way through breakfast until the honking of a car horn outside signals that it's time to leave. A glance through the window shows Lisa waving at you from the driver's seat of a dinged-up white van.

You try to make your way outside through a storm of last-minute fussing. "Did you remember to pack everything?", "Don't forget to call!", "Try to break at most one leg!", "Love you!".

"Love you too," you say before shutting the door in his face and dragging your suitcase to the street.

"Is there a reason you didn't come into the driveway?" you ask Lisa as you get in the passenger seat.

"Didn't want your dad to get a look at the plates, just in case."

You take a second to digest this statement. "You stole a car to cover for me?"

"No, I borrowed it from Rachel. Who, admittedly, stole it." Ah, that's what the smell is. "Now, where do I drop you off? Bus terminal?"

"That works."

Lisa stops the car. You fish a backpack out of your overstuffed suitcase.

"Hold on to this for me?" The suitcase contains everything that would make dad suspicious if you didn't bring, not things you actually need. Not that you expect him to rifle through your drawers in your absence, but better safe than sorry.

"I should be charging extra for this," Lisa says. You reach into a pocket and toss a couple of crumpled twenties at her.

"That was a joke," she protests, but she makes no move to hand the money back.

"Was it." You quite deliberately leave out the question mark.

Lisa sighs and rolls her eyes at you, and on that note you part ways.

You have one errand to run before you get on the bus, though. You quickly locate a suitable hair salon. Not one of the fancy ones that other Arcadia kids might go to, but rather a cozy little establishment whose understated, handwritten signage almost makes you think it's trying to hide itself - probably from the IRS.

"I need you to wax me a bald spot," you tell the proprietor.

"Excuse me?"

"I lost a bet, all right?" If there's one upside to being a teenager, it's that no one doubts you when you claim to have made terrible life choices.

"Shouldn't you be in school?"

"Be hard for me to pay you if I was."

Freshly shorn beneath your hoodie, you catch the next bus for Boston. Fenrir comes along, of course, though if everything goes well he'll materialize exactly once over the next week. The wolf walks into the bus with his feet still on the asphalt. From inside the bus it looks for all the world like he's wading, head and shoulders sticking up from the floor (well, for all the world except you it doesn't look like anything at all, because he's invisible).

Then he gathers himself and jumps straight up, landing lightly on the floor of the bus itself - but still phasing through the seats, as he's too big to fit in the aisle. Clearly the physics of his intangibility is just 'whatever is most convenient at the time' scribbled on a napkin.

You settle down in the back of the bus, hunch down to let your hoodie hide your face, and prepare to do the scariest thing you've ever done: You're about to turn into a completely different person.

What if you can't turn back? What if you forget what you used to look like? Yes, one of your cellphones now holds more than a hundred pictures of yourself, from every possible angle. But you didn't bring it with you. The peace of mind was not worth all the wacky hijinks that would ensue if Smith (ostensibly male, fifty-ish) was found to be in possession of naked pictures of a 15 year old girl.

What if something happens to that cellphone while you're gone?

You grit your teeth, and get down to business. Ever so slowly your hands start to grow, your dainty girl fingers replaced by the meaty paws of a man with a lifetime of manual labor behind him. Your forearms swell to match, then your upper arms, followed by a widening of your shoulders. Unlike Cliff you don't actually gain any muscle mass this way, you just spread what you have across a larger space. A pity, but you've come to terms with such degradation in copied powers.

Your hair becomes short and speckled with gray. Experimentation showed that you can modify your hair freely, but not remove it. Which is why you had to contract out your male pattern baldness. You do what you can with the rest of your body hair, lengthening, thickening and darkening it to make it look denser than it really is. You'll be wearing long sleeves anyway.

Making doubly sure no one is paying attention to you, you pull out a small hand mirror and start working on your face. First you sculpt a handsome manly jaw, then you hide it behind jowls and sagging flesh. Add some faint wrinkles to taste, a bit of sunburn and general weathering. A liver spot or two? Best not to go overboard. Grow the eyebrows out a bit, though.

Then you work your way downwards, removing what little feminine curves you posses and adding that most masculine of curves, the beer belly. A slight thickening of your legs follows. Finally you exchange your shoes for an old pair of your dad's and grow your feet to match.

You don't even try to modify the downstairs plumbing. You're not crazy. A padded jockstrap will do just fine.

After somewhat less than three hours you arrive at your destination and take a moment to stretch your legs. You would have loved to sleep on the bus, but your experience yesterday taught you that shapeshifting is best done slowly and deliberately. As expected, no one paid enough attention to you to notice that the person that got on the bus was not quite the same as the one that left. Not that it's all that noticeable, underneath the loose, baggy clothing you wear.

Ironic, that your depressing wardrobe still comes in handy even after you got the power to deal with the body image issues that inspired it. Is that irony? People are so picky about that...

Once again you find yourself changing underwear in an alley, though this set is padded in quite the opposite way from the ones you usually wear.

You also change into the rest of your Smith costume. It's not much of a costume, really: One of your dad's old shirts, worn enough that it's only used for yard work anymore, and a matching pair of pants. Gloves, because while you could make yourself a new set of fingerprints, you don't trust your ability to put the old ones back correctly. Finally a leather apron that you found lying on the floor of your appropriated forge, even more battered than the rest of the outfit.

It's very authentically blue collar, you'll give it that.

You also switch your glasses for another, less girly pair. Technically these also belonging to your dad, but he got a new pair years ago. They're not quite your prescription, but close enough.

At your command Fenrir materializes briefly and drops off the gun he's been carrying the whole time. Dog Burglar's Smuggling Company: Accept no substitutes when moving unregistered weapons across state lines. You hand him a bag of incriminatingly girl-specific clothing to dematerialize.

Next order of business, thankfully, is a nap. You deliberately arrived early to give Fenrir a chance to recharge after giving you the gun, just in case Toybox tries anything. You don't expect them to, they have a reputation to maintain after all. But again, better safe than sorry.

You arrive at the designed meeting point - a quiet area behind some industrial properties - five minutes early with a scarf wrapped around your face. Two minutes before the appointed time two people pop into existence with nothing but a faint breeze of displaced air.

Sorcerer's sight confirms their parahuman status, as if their fashion sense wasn't clue enough.

The larger figure is wearing fully enclosed power armor. Where Armsmaster's tech is sleek and futuristic, this suit is bulky and industrial, and none too clean. The unpainted metal is generously adorned with oil stains and scorch marks. They are empty-handed, for all that that matters when their augmented grip could crush your skull like a grape.

The other - a woman - is technically wearing a light blue bodysuit, but mostly she's wearing tinker-tech. The bandoliers crossing her chest, her belt and even some sort of half holster, half garter arrangements on her thighs are all dangling with devices, less than half of which are (obvious) weapons. Her mask is a plain white number, with an attached hood hiding her hair.

On spotting you, she grabs one of the non-weapon devices and points it at you. It goes 'ding'.

"He's armed," she says. "Basic concussive projector."

Moving slowly, you pull out Kid Win's gun from behind your apron, gripping the barrel between your thumb and forefinger.

"That would be the merchandize," her companion says. The speaker system of his armor isn't the best, but he sounds male beneath the buzzing and crackling. You suspect that it's an affectation, because anyone with the technical knowledge and resources to make goddamn power armor could certainly get a better speaker system than that.

You nod, and approach to hand the gun over to the woman.

"Why the heck would anyone build a phasing system into a gun?" she asks rhetorically.

"Not everyone is as enthusiastic about carrying their gear around as you are, Glace."

She scoffs, but takes the gun from you. She reaches down to her belt and detaches what you now recognize as your order.

"Here, look it over while we do the same," she tells you.

The thing she hands you is a mask, black with metallic highlights. You requested that it look 'like I didn't care about how it looks', and they followed your instructions to a T. You suspect that your friend in the power armor is responsible for the design, as it has the same heavy industrial aesthetic.

When worn it will wrap all the way around your head, covering your nose, mouth and cheeks, curving up to cover your ears (with slots to accommodate glasses) and cradling the back of your skull.

Good thing it's a lot lighter than it looks, or it would be incredibly uncomfortable.

Clamped in the hinge is the instruction manual, three loose A4 pages of printed text.

You ignore the other features for now and look for the voice changer function, the whole reason you wanted a tinkertech mask in the first place.

The controls turn out to be a set of physical sliders hidden behind a panel that would normally rest against your left cheek. You slide the top one, that the manual designates 'pitch/gender' all the way to the right, leaving 'distortion' and 'reverb' in place. Then you reconsider, and instead slide it all the way to the left. It's only natural to try out the most extreme setting first. And for Smith, who obviously has a deep male voice...

You turn away from the Tinkers, unwrap your scarf and put on the mask. Not that you care whether anyone sees Smith's totally real and not at all brand new face, but verisimilitude demands shyness.

"Testing, testing," you say. Your voice always sounds different to yourself, but with the 'calibration' switch enabled the built-in headphones play back what it sounded like to others.

What it sounded like was five year old girl, if the girl in question had been held down and forced to breathe helium until she triggered with chipmunk powers.

You try again with the slider at the other extreme, and your voice becomes an almost incomprehensible bass rumble. They certainly didn't scrimp on the range, though the precision leaves a bit to be desired as a result.

The Tinkers are hunched over the screen of some sort of diagnostic tool Glace has attached to the gun. They are so engrossed that they don't even look up as you doff and don the mask several times, fiddling with the settings.

"I'm satisfied," you announce in your new voice. When that gets no reaction, you walk over and wave your hand in front of Glace's face.

"Hm? Oh. Yeah. Your goods check out as well." She heaves a sigh. "God, what I wouldn't give to work under Armsmaster. This stuff is crazy."

"How's the fit?" her companion asks you.

"It's fine." It was a bit iffy at first, but you quickly adjusted your face to make it more comfortable. "How long does the battery last?"

"RTFM," Glace says. Her companion gives her a light nudge. Light by power armor standards, it still sends her stumbling back.

"About a month, longer if you turn off the phone system," he says politely.

"Pleasure doing business with Toybox." You shake hands with both of them.

"Likewise, Smith. Don't hesitate to contact us again should you find something else of this quality." He hesitates a moment, then adds "You're a pretty trusting guy, coming here alone and essentially unarmed. Most of our customers are a lot more paranoid."

You laugh, and the voice changer does a surprisingly good job of turning your laughter masculine while still conveying your genuine glee (mostly at passing as a 'guy').

"You think your little scan found all my weapons. That's adorable."

Rather than take offense at the implied insult to her tech, Glace nudges her friend back (he of course does not budge an inch). "Hear that, Toy? You're adorable."

Toy nods. "I am adorable."

"See you around," Glace says.

With that they take a few steps back, and vanish as quickly as they appeared.

Chapter 23: S.20

Chapter Text

When Dragon gives you a ride, you ride in style. Heads turn up and down the street as a small jet plane swoops down towards the empty parking lot where you're waiting. The nose tilts up and four engine nacelles decorated to look like stubby legs twist to point forward, killing its momentum. The 'legs' then turn back to point straight down, leaving it hovering perhaps fifteen feet off the ground.

The paintjob is suitably draconic, of course. The wings are painted to resemble bat-like dragon wings while the fuselage sports a metallic scale pattern, with a mouth and eyes in the appropriate places up front. The effect is only further enhanced when it starts to descend: The wings fold up onto its back and landing gear shaped like claws sprout from the 'feet'.

The whole thing is lit up to sorcerer's sight, but that sort of goes without saying. Of course it's all tinkertech, duh! Dragon being Dragon, she probably only sacrificed a few percent efficiency to make it look that good - well worth it in your opinion.

The plane touches down gently enough that you can't hear it over the (remarkably silent) engines. Folded up like that, it only takes up two parking spaces.

The mirrored canopy opens to reveal an empty cockpit. Remote controlled, then. No wonder, there's certainly not room for two people in there. No ladder appears to be forthcoming, so you grab the edge of the cockpit and (after a couple of embarrassing false starts) manage to to vault/scramble your way inside. Fenrir jumps up to ride on top of the plane, ignoring any and all physical and logical problems with this course of action.

The cockpit is certainly snug. You're somewhat regretting making Smith this broad-shouldered. You have no idea how Dragon fits in here - as far as you know she never leaves the house without power armor. With another couple of false starts you manage to figure out how to buckle yourself in, too.

There's a flight stick, but instead of the countless dials and meters you'd expect from a cockpit, the dashboard is made up of a single blank screen. Just as you're wondering what to do next, the screen lights up and Dragon's face appears.

"Smith! Hello."

"Dragon. A pleasure to meet you, in image if not in the flesh just yet."

Not even that, really. The face before you is no more real than your voice. It's clearly computer generated, and it elects to stop short of the uncanny valley instead trying to bridge it.

"Likewise. Are you ready to leave?"

"Certainly."

The cockpit seals shut and you hear the engines start back up. You carefully keep your hands away from the flight stick as the plane gently rises into the air. Dragon's face moves up into the corner of the screen as the rest fills with a lot of information you don't know how to parse. You briefly make out 'landing gear retracted' before you're pushed back into your seat by sudden acceleration.

That Fenrir remains entirely unperturbed by this sequence of events goes without saying. Air resistance is for tangible people.

"Is it even legal to land a plane in the middle of a city like that?" you ask.

"Ah." Judging by the sudden blush spreading across Dragon's cheeks, you'd guess her face is no less real than your voice either - computer generated, but based on a real video feed. "This vehicle is registered as power armor, which legally makes it a pedestrian when piloted within city limits."

Huh. You guess you can get away with a lot when you hold the majority of all Tinker-related government contracts on the continent. You say as much, and Dragon blushes again. Oh well, another one for the 'all heroes are corrupt' column. But at least in her case it's only traffic violations, and she even has the decency to be embarrassed about it.

"The trip should take 3 hours 23 minutes," Dragon says. "I'm afraid the entertainment options are limited, but I could play you some music?"

"Thanks, but I'll just take a nap. Haven't been getting enough sleep lately." You could stay up and study the tinker-tech surrounding you, but there's little point. You have no desire to build an airplane of your own, even should you somehow manage to procure enough orichalcum to do it.

"As you wish. Sleep well, Smith." The video feed vanishes, leaving more indecipherable instrumentation in its place. You close your eyes and let the engine noise lull you to sleep.

You wake up with the nagging sense that something is out of place. You blink groggily and look around trying figure out what it is.

As far as you can tell, nothing looks different. A glance outside shows that you're approaching a city, but you have no idea which one. The instruments are still unhelpful, but you manage to locate a clock. Hm, either you slept for less than an hour, or you've passed through a timezone or two.

Oh, there it is. There's a faint high-pitched noise underlying the soft roar of the engines. That could be bad.

Another hunt through the instruments reveals no flashing red items, at least.

"Dragon?" you ask.

Her face immediately appears on screen again. "Yes?"

"Do you hear that?"

"No? Hear what?"

"There's this faint high-pitched sound." You frown in concentration. "I think it's getting louder, and it's... warbling a bit? Yeah."

"Hm. Diagnostic telemetry does not show anything wrong, and I can can't hear anything over the audio link either. Are you sure?"

"Yes, it's definitely getting louder."

"Okay. I believe you. The range on the cockpit mike is not the best." As she speaks, the engine noise lessens and the plane banks and starts losing altitude. "I'm landing the plane. Once it's on the ground, I'll walk you through an inspect- oh no!"

The plane suddenly pulls into a spinning, twisting evasive maneuver. Through heroic effort, you do not puke into your mask as the world flips end over end.

"What's happening!? Dragon?"

Dragon yells something back, but the channel is sudden filled with static and you only make out the final word: "*crackle* *crackle* Simurgh!"

Oh. The noise - the scream - reaches a crescendo and you see a flash of white outside the cockpit, then there's the terrible screeching sound of tearing metal. The violent evasive maneuvers turn into an even more violent tumble and several different alarms start blaring through the cockpit. Three quarters of the instrumentation turns red in an instant.

Most relevant to your interests would be the large flashing letters spelling out 'EJECTION MECHANISM JAMMED', which is the last thing you see before foam fills your vision.

This time you're jarred awake by liquid hitting your face. Not water, you catch a faint whiff of solvent as it seeps underneath your mask. Your eyes are held shut by some sticky substance, but after a few moments it gives way and you get a look at your surroundings. The plane - or what remains of it - is on the ground, surrounded by greenery. It's too well-manicured to be a wilderness, though. You'd guess a park, somewhere in the city you were approaching.

The cockpit is filled with bright orange foam, which is slowly dissolving into liquid as a set of nozzles spray it with solvent. This must be Dragon's famous containment foam, the number one tool for non-lethal parahuman takedowns and, apparently, high-speed impact cushioning. Given the miraculous way you're still alive you rate it 10/10, would be encased in while falling out of the sky again.

When you try move, though, you quickly discover that your everything hurts. Note to self, upgrade Brute rating before crashing another airplane. Nothing feels outright broken, though.

Which is good, because you have to get out of here. You can still hear the scream in the back of your mind, though it's a lot fainter than it was before. Everyone knows what happens if you hear that for too long. Melt faster, foam!

Your phone chirps, indicating an incoming message. You have to wait a few seconds for the foam to recede from your pocket before you can check it. You don't recognize the sender, but Dragon is the only person who has Smith's number.

If you survived the crash, you have until 1407 to get out of range.

The clock on your phone reads 1:54 PM.

The foam finally gives up its hold on your legs, letting you pull yourself out of the cockpit. You take all of one second to admire the wreck - one wing and three engines are unaccounted for, lost either in the initial attack or during impact.

Once that second has elapsed, you take off running in a random direction. That's the problem, you don't actually know where the Simurgh is in relation to you right now. Maybe sorcerer's sight shows a faint aura of her power all around you, maybe that's just your imagination. If it's there at all, it's too faint to make out a gradient.

If the scream grows stronger, you'll turn around and hope you didn't waste too much time.

Fenrir is nowhere to be found, either. He must have fallen off during the evasive maneuvers. You're sufficiently confident in his physics-ignoring bullshit that you're not really worried about him sticking the landing. Hopefully he'll turn up soon.

...Come to think of it, shouldn't you be panicking right about now? You're lost and alone and you're about to have your mind subverted by the scariest being on earth. That seems like the sort of situation that ought to induce panic.

Maybe you're in shock? If so, you don't see why shock gets such a bad rap. This detached, analytical mindset seems quite nice, if the alternative is sensibly freaking the fuck out, or maybe curling up from the pain you're curiously unconcerned about right now.

As you reach the edge of the park, your choice of direction is vindicated. The street is full of people fleeing in roughly the same direction as you were going. It's a relatively sparsely populated area, so the streets are not entirely clogged.

Encouraged by the sign that you're going in the right direction, you put on a burst of speed. You should be getting winded too, but if anything you're feeling lighter on your feet than when you started running. Your stride is lengthening with every step, and-

The sight of dust and grit rising out from between the slabs of pavement clues you in just in time. You lunge for the closest lamppost and wrap your arms and legs around it.

All around you, people slight slower on the uptake are shouting in panic as they start rising slowly into the air. A lucky few manage to grab onto a street light or the side of a building on the way up.

It's not just the people who are affected, it's everything. Dropped objects are following their owners into the sky, garbage is rising out of a nearby trashcan... Even the cars are lifting off. Though your grip on the lamppost is secure, you feel your clothes striving to pull away from you. Good thing your glasses are securely attached to your mask.

You suppress a giggle as the phrase 'I went to a Simurgh fight, and all I got was an atomic wedgie' flashes across your mind. You unnatural calm notwithstanding, you realize that hysteria is right there, waiting for you to take a single step in its direction.

Good news, the levitating force does not seem to be getting stronger. You could easily hang on here all day. Bad news, you really need to be running away right now. As if in response to your thoughts, the scream gets ever so slightly louder.

Why is she doing this, anyway? She's supposed to rip entire buildings from the ground and throw them at people. Why haven't the heroes shown up to distract her from bullying the civilian population yet?

The scream changes pitch briefly, making a sort of interrogative noise. 'Ah-hah?'

You count as part of the civilian population, all right? You're not here to fight, you don't have any powers that would even scratch her. You don't want to be here at all!

The scream changes again, and you're probably literally going crazy but you swear it sounds reassuring. 'There, there.'

Could this please not be happening?

The scream rises in volume, seeming to build towards something, before it abruptly cuts out completely. The levitating force vanishes at the same moment, causing you to fall on your ass.

You get off easy. Shouts and sobs turn into wordless screams as people plunge out of the sky to splatter against the pavement. Most of those who found a handhold on the way up suffer the same fate, as they were not prepared for gravity to return to normal. One poor bastard manages to land safely, only to be crushed beneath a falling car.

You're numb to the horror of it, preoccupied by a much more cerebral horror: Soul's price just went off.

Simurgh wants daddy to spank her more often.

So. Either that really counted as a conversation, and the Endbringers are alien kids acting out for attention... Or she's already hacked your brain enough to spoof your powers. Even though - you check you phone - you still have nine minutes left according to Dragon.

You're reevaluating the pros and cons of hysteria when Fenrir shows up, running full tilt towards you. Not only is he unharmed, he's still carrying your dematerialized luggage. See, you knew he'd stick the landing.

Right, focus. You can do this. You can still get out in time. In time? The scream is gone, which means that your escape has already either succeeded or failed. No, don't think about that. You still need to get out of the city before the barricades go up.

Just take it one step at a time. Next problem: Cameras. You take a look around, ignoring what's on the ground, completely ignoring what's covering the ground.

Your gaze fastens on a young woman who survived by wedging herself in a doorway. She looks a bit like you, when you don't look like an old man. Not so much the face (no glasses, either) but the hair is similar.

You make your way over, trying not to step in anything too horrible. She's - understandably, given the circumstances - hugging herself and crying, but her face lights up with hope when she sees you approaching and she manages to get control of herself.

"A-are you a hero?"

"A rogue, technically, but close enough. What's your name?"

"Uh... Marie. It's Marie."

"And what city is this?"

"You don't know? It's Ottawa. Uh, in Canada. On Earth Bet."

"Have you lived here long, Marie?"

"Why? Why are you asking so many questions? Get me out of here!"

"All in good time."

"Three years! Please! I moved here three years ago. Help me, please!"

"Shhh, everything's going to be all right." You place a finger against her lips.

Marie wants to be saved from the Simurgh.

Yes, you guessed that already. But you have to hear it, or the magic won't take.

You hand her the scarf you used in place of a mask earlier today. "Here, wrap yourself up in this. No matter what happens, don't let anyone see your face."

"O-okay." She wipes eyes with her sleeve, and some unladylike snorting noises indicate that she's trying to avoid getting snot on your scarf.

"Come forth," you whisper once she's done. Let there be wolf.

Marie shies away from Fenrir when he appears. "Up you go," you tell her. When she doesn't react, you gently but firmly push her in the right direction. She doesn't resist, but just looks back helplessly when she fetches up against the wolf.

Fenrir obediently lies down at your gesture, and you manage to coax Marie to get astride him. You mount up behind her with considerably less hassle.

"Now, what's the fastest way out of the city?" you ask.

"Back that way." She points in the direction everyone was already going, and Fenrir takes off at a sprint. Marie yelps in shock and flails about, but between your arms around her waist and Fenrir's bullshit riding wolf magic she doesn't even come close to falling off.

"You're steering," you tell her. "Just tell him which way to turn."

Aside from her directions, you ride in somber silence. Don't think about what's on the ground. After a couple of blocks you leave the killing fields behind. You're not sure whether the levitation field was localized around your particular area, or if it covered the entire city out to here. Don't think about it.

"How can you stand it?" Marie asks.

"Is not that uncomfortable a ride," you reply, vaguely insulted on Fenrir's behalf.

"Not the wolf, the scream!"

Oh. She can still hear the scream. It only stopped for you, personally.

"Hearing protection in my mask," you lie, tapping the metal covering your ears. "Is it getting fainter?"

"...yes." She brightens up. "We're escaping!"

You emerge onto the freeway, which can best be described as a giant traffic jam interrupted by occasional pileups. And most of the space not taken up by cars is taken up by pedestrians, as everyone abandoned their car and started running the moment they realized that they weren't going anywhere. Fenrir has to slow down significantly to avoid trampling people.

This isn't working. You could try to double back and find another route, but you're on a timer here. "Fuck property damage," you tell Fenrir. He stops avoiding the stalled cars and starts going over them instead, buckling metal and scratching paint as he leaps from one to the next. The ride becomes a lot less smooth, but he is able to maintain an unreasonably fast pace nonetheless. You silently say a prayer to whatever gods might be listening, giving thanks for bullshit physics.

A majority of the people you pass call out to you, trying to get you to bring them with you. You can't afford the time to stop and pick anyone up, though. You don't know how quickly the quarantine goes up when the Simurgh attacks a city, but you can't take any chances. Saving Marie is your absolute priority.

You get your phone out, mostly out of curiosity - you've entirely lost faith in the official guidelines. Four minutes, by that count. Probably a bit more for Marie, assuming Dragon started counting from when you first called her about the noise.

The road crests a small hill, and you look behind you to see if you can make out anything useful from this higher vantage point. What you see is a second sun in the sky. An angel-shaped... you frantically shut down sorcerer's sight. It may be closing the barn doors after the horse already burned down, but you're not giving her another high-bandwidth channel into your brain.

Between the distance and your bad glasses, you can't make out much in the way of details. She appears to be hovering upside down, with her wings flapping and fluttering erratically. She has, in fact, started throwing buildings at people.

Probably because she's being engaged by the Triumvirate. You think. There's a small black streak that's probably Alexandria, a blue streak emitting giant beams of light that's unquestionably Legend, and a glowing green dot that's almost certainly Eidolon.

Large jagged black shapes are forming in the air around Eidolon. As each one grows to be half the size of the Simurgh, he launches it at her. Most are blocked by flying buildings, or deflected by the flick of a wing.

Then one of them strikes her right in the torso, and sticks there. Instantly her wings go still, her arms and legs splay out and her back arches as she throws her head back.

Yes, daddy! Harder!

The black shard falls out of her chest a moment later, and she resumes her previous pose as if nothing happened. That's the last thing you see before Fenrir's path down the other side of the hill cuts off your vision. But you're not really thinking about the fight anymore.

That came in over soul's price. Again. You are undoubtedly compromised, and the Simurgh is using her all-access pass to your brain to mess with you instead of (or, you know, in addition to) making you go nuts and murder your friends and family.

Is it some weird dominance display? Look at what I could do to you, should I desire? You've never heard of her doing that before.

No, think positive. It's possible that the official numbers are right, and she only managed to hijack the verbal channel of soul's price in the time she had. Except for that part where she seemingly read your mind... No, you paid attention in computer class. Read access is not write access! You'll just keep telling yourself that.

"I can't hear the scream anymore," Marie says. "We made it!"

"We still need to get out before the quarantine goes up," you remind her. Fenrir doesn't slow down.

"There!" Marie shouts a little later. People in military uniforms have set up across the freeway up ahead. They are clearly preparing to block it off, but they don't try to shoot you as you ride past. You made it!

You take out your phone again, just in time to see 2:06 PM change into 2:07 PM. You type out a quick 'made it' to Dragon. Actually, better get some independent verification on that. Overexposure can result in summary execution. Another little technically non-secret fact that PHO doesn't want you to talk about, that you uncovered back when you were researching parahumans.

You direct Fenrir to turn around and approach one of the soldiers.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Yes?" He regards you with a certain caution. Well, you are riding a giant wolf.

"Parahumans Low Key and Smith," you tell him. "Please log our presence outside the danger zone at 1407 hours." Marie, having no idea what you're talking about, sensibly remains silent.

"Ah." Understanding dawns across his face. "Will do!" He finds a pen, scrawls a note on his hand. But he verifies the time on his own watch first.

"Thank you. Now, which way to the rallying point?"

"Clear on the other side of the city, I'm afraid. You'll have to circle around." He indicates a clockwise direction. "Or I could radio for someone to come pick you up once it's all over."

"We'll get back to you on that."

A nudge of your knee has Fenrir turning away. You guide him several blocks away and out of sight before you dismount and help Marie do likewise.

Just some minor administrative details to take care of. You turn sorcerer's sight back on to verify that yes, Loyalty is in place.

"Ok, here's what happened," you tell her. "We never met. You never saw a wolf. In fact, you weren't even in the city. Through sheer dumb luck, you happened to be gone on some errand or other when the Simurgh attacked. The names Low Key and Smith mean nothing to you."

"Uh... okay? Sure. I don't know what's going on, but I won't tell anyone. It's the least I could do." She hugs you, squeezing tightly. "You saved my life, you know? Thank you."

You do know. You were counting on that enhanced gratitude to keep your secrets all along. You gently peel her away from you and accept your scarf back. That's definitely incriminating evidence now, so it joins your shoes and panties in the evidence bag. A quick "begone" and the bag vanishes along with the wolf.

You leave Marie behind and stroll back towards the military blockade. You hear shots ring out before you arrive. Looks like quarantine is in effect now, and someone didn't listen when told to turn back.

The soldiers look a lot grimmer on your return - no wonder, they just shot their first maybe-a-Simurgh-bomb civilian. It's unlikely to be their last.

"You're back."

"Yes. The young lady elected to make her own way, but I think I'll take you up on that ride. Just between you and me, sitting on a wolf was not all that comfortable." Fenrir gives an invisible snort of disgust at your vile slander. It's all right, he knows you didn't mean it.

"I'll call it in."

"Thank you."

You find a comfortable piece of concrete to rest your back against, and sit down to wait. You're sort of half expecting an emotional collapse now that everything is over, you've heard that's a thing that happens.

No? Nothing? Guess you're just a natural-born stone-cold badass. Yep, that's you. Smith the Tinker, born with brass balls and definitely not wearing a padded jockstrap. A small giggle escapes you. You try to clap your hands over your mouth to stop it, but of course end up bashing your hands against your mask - which just makes everything even funnier.

You just can't seem to stop giggling. You fumble for the audio cutoff switch on your mask. Mustn't disturb the nice men gunning down unarmed civilians. The, the funniest part is that none of that is sarcastic, they really are nice men, and they're- no, stop, that's not funny, it's horrible. Why is it so funny?

A small detached part of you notes that you are in fact having that emotional breakdown you were worried about. At least you're having fun with it? Yes indeedy, nothing like watching hundreds of people die horribly and having to spend the rest of your life worrying about whether you're a psychic bomb just waiting to go off and kill the people you love.

And now you're crying. Good job, Taylor. Some badass you are. Guess you lack balls after all!

Chapter 24: L.01

Chapter Text

When Dragon gives you a ride, you ride in style. But the Canadian armed forces are no slouches either. You've never ridden a helicopter before.

As you're about to leave, the... sergeant? The guy in charge places a fatherly hand on your shoulder. It's a bit funny, since your current persona is older than him, but you're actively trying to not find things funny right now.

"Just wanted to say, no one here is judging you. You kept it together when it mattered, yeah? Freaking out a bit afterwards is fine. Doesn't make you any less of a man."

Keeping your shit together would be a lot easier if people stopped being so goddamn funny all the time.

You wander the temporary base camp looking for Dragon. It's quickly emptying now that the fight is over, but you're still surrounded by more parahumans than you've seen before in your life. Truly a feast for the eyes, as long as they are magic eyes.

Now if they'd just stick around for a few weeks, you could get something useful out of it.

"Smith! There you are!" Dragon's voice comes from behind you. You turn around to finally meet her in the flesh.

Or... not? She's in power armor, of course, a colossal battle-suit almost ten feet tall and bristling with weapons. Except no, sorcerer's sight reveals that what you're looking at is tinkertech all the way through, with no chewy human center.

But sorcerer's sight also reveals that what you're looking at is definitely a parahuman. The glow of a power is unmistakable. You suppose a similar effect could be achieved by a Master capable of possessing inanimate objects - but then the power would also show up as active, which this one does not.

Sooo... Dragon is secretly a robot. A robot cape. A paranonhuman, if you will.

"Smith?"

"Ah, I'm afraid you've caught me staring, my lady. That's quite the provocative outfit you're wearing."

Dragon laughs, and it sounds remarkably genuine for a robot. "Yes, several Tinkers have told me so. I wanted to tell you that I've arranged for Strider to take you directly to my factory. I'll join you within the hour, but I still have some things to take care of here."

"Of course." As you understand it, Dragon usually handles the majority of the administrative work involved in Endbringer fights. Must be her giant robot brain. "Uh, where do I find this Strider?"

After she's given you directions, you also request her soul's price. Person enough to trigger means person enough to desire, right?

Dragon wants to have her restrictions removed.

You chew on that as you make your way to the departure point. What restrictions? It's the first time you've gotten a soul's price and been unclear on what you're supposed to accomplish. You've often boggled at the how, but never before has the what been in question.

You are jolted from your thoughts when you notice a glow on the side of the road. Did someone drop their tinkertech? You crouch down for a closer look.

Your breath hitches as you recognize the object. A slim crystalline feather - or a fragment of one, but even with he tip broken off what remains is still almost a foot in length. Its opalescent white hue leaves no doubt as to its origin. Someone hit her hard enough to send it flying all the way out here?

A likely story. A magic feather from the telekinetic precog just happened to land in the middle of the base camp, where it just happened to go unnoticed until you - an alchemist Tinker who was previously singled out by said precog for special treatment - stumbled across it?

Yeah, no. There is no conceivable universe in which this is not a trap.

You pick it up.

Your goal is marked by parahumans standing around in groups, waiting to leave. No one greets you as you take your place among them. They all look varying degrees of grim and tired, and few are talking even within the groups. Every so often a cape will appear, walk over to a group and exchange a few words, after which they all vanish without fanfare. That must be Strider.

He's dressed in eye-catching black and blue, in a style you would describe as 'action train conductor' - complete with a jaunty cap, even. Rather than a conventional mask, oversized ski goggles cover most of his face.

Before too long it's your turn.

"Smith?" he asks.

"Yes," you respond, and your surroundings change before you can finish the syllable. Strider vanishes before you can thank him.

Wait shit he didn't bring Fenrir along! He must designate individuals to teleport, rather than an area. And of course he didn't see the invisible wolf. Crap. Double crap. If Fenrir gets lost, how would you possibly find him again?

Uh, well, nothing you can do about that now. You'll just have to hope that he can find his own way home. You forcibly put the matter out of mind, and focus on the other important aspect of being teleported.

Looking around, you find yourself standing on a helipad on the edge of an industrial park. Several large but relatively flat buildings sprawl out in front of you, surrounded by thick forest. You'd be tempted to call it the middle of nowhere, but there's a surprisingly wide and well-maintained road leading off into the trees. Or maybe not so surprising when you think about it, she has to get materials delivered somehow.

Lacking any direction, you wander aimlessly between the buildings. You hear machine noises emanating from several, but don't try to get inside. Eventually you come upon the one that must be intended for you.

Large parts of the roof has been replaced with glass, and several gigantic parabolic mirrors have been mounted above it. Perfectly smooth and flawlessly reflective, they are a far cry from the hodgepodge mess you built back home. You feel your Tinker instincts stirring, and you haven't even seen the furnace itself yet.

You're not sure how long you stand there, lost in thought.

"Wait until you see what's inside," Dragon says, her voice tinged with amusement. When did she get here?

What she proceeds to show you is indeed impressive: The furnace is suitably large, the magma already preheated. The lenses in the focusing array alone probably cost more than your dad makes in a year. It's all motorized, with a control panel letting you move and swivel every mirror and lens in three dimensions, and adjust the temperature of the magma down to a tenth of a degree. Next to the control panel is a similarly advanced CAD workstation.

Surrounding the furnace, and taking up the entire rest of the building, is... well, to call it a 'well-appointed blacksmith's shop' would be like calling a 747 a 'well-appointed paper airplane'. It easily matches any factory-cathedral your power could dream up.

Throughout the tour, however, you're distracted by one thing: Dragon changed into more human-sized power armor since you last saw her. The casual wear of battle-suits, hardly armed at all.

Except, you know, there's obviously still no human inside. Nor is there any sort of swappable 'core' that could have been moved from one armor to the other, even a cursory examination with sorcerer's sight shows that their internal layout is completely different. But the parahuman glow doesn't lie: It is the same 'person'.

Sooo... Dragon is secretly two robots?

No, that's stupid. Once you've figured out how to be more than one robot, there is absolutely no reason to stop at two. Dragon is an arbitrary number of robots. Or, to use the technical term, a Skynet.

This revelation might require a slight change in your plans.

"Good news," you tell Dragon once the tour is concluded. "I figured out a way to reduce both the weight and the cost of the orichalcum."

"Oh? Do tell."

"I should be able to alloy it with up to twenty percent meteoric iron without impacting its durability, as long as I also add trace amounts of iridium." You repeat the words popping into your brain. "Maybe nineteen percent, to be safe."

"It has to be meteoric?"

"Yes," you state with finality. "...if you figure out why, I'd love for you to explain it to me."

"It's still cheaper than gold," Dragon admits. "Even if the reduction in density won't be all that-"

"No, no," you interrupt her, "the density isn't important. I said reduced weight, not reduced mass. Do pay attention."

"I see..."

Yes, it's that kind of Tinker bullshit. You move your hands in front of you, experimentally swinging an imaginary orichalcum sword around.

"Wow," you say as your brain supplies more data ex nihilo. "The effect on angular momentum will be nuts. How..?"

"I do believe the phrase is 'fucking Tinkers.'" Dragon is taking the nonsensical physics with good humor. She probably runs into stuff like this all the time.

"Yeah. Anyway, I can't add the iron until the orichalcum is fully synthesized, so you have a week to procure it."

"Im afraid it's going to be slightly more than a week. I've arranged the purchase, but there are strict regulations about transporting that much gold, and with the current state of emergency..."

"My schedule doesn't have all that much flex in it, you know." Your voice is grave, belying the song in your heart. More time with Dragon's power? Yes please!

"I know. If things still aren't moving by tomorrow I'll start calling in favors."

"In the meantime, I believe we have a... what would you call it? A drone? A weapons platform?"

"I just call them 'suits', even the unmanned ones." You're not sure if that's giving too much away, or a clever double bluff, or what. Whatever works for her. It. Whatever.

"-a suit to design. But, uh, I'd appreciate if you could show me the way to the bathroom first."

The 'bathroom' is a porta-potty behind the building. Okay, it's a few steps above the plastic abominations you'd find at a fairground, but it's clearly not a permanent structure. Makes sense, really. The factory is designed for robots pretending to be humans in fully-enclosed power armor. No reason to put in real plumbing all the way out here.

Dragon added one personal touch to the facilities, though. Your eye is instantly drawn to a small glowing spot of tinkertech on one of the walls. Leaning in close, you see that's it's a tiny camera. Without sorcerer's sight, you'd never have spotted it.

Well, you can't have Dragon catching you with your pants down. You wag your finger in front of the lens, then rip it out of its mount and put in on the sink, facing the wall.

"I hope you're blushing in there, young lady," you tell Dragon, launching the camera towards her with an underhand toss. She pretends to be so flustered she fumbles the catch. "I admit I'm not 'hip with the kids', but I believe it's still considered polite to ask for those kinds of pictures."

"I, uh, I just-"

"You have no excuse?"

"No, I suppose not. I have cameras monitoring every other part of the facility, I guess I kept going out of habit, and-"

"And you're sorry you got caught?"

"Yes. No! I'm regular sorry, I shouldn't have done that." It's sort of funny, the way she doesn't know that you know and has to keep pretending to be human, but it's hardly productive. You're here to steal her power, not indulge in playacting.

"Water under the bridge," you say. "Now, about that design..."

You start by sketching a rough silhouette, basing the design on the inspiration you had when watching Kaiser's armor. Your Tinker power likes armor, and you're quickly refining the design and sketching out decorative flourishes and intricate interlocking joints. Dragon vetoes most of the decorative stuff, preferring a sleeker design. Probably because she's the one paying for the orichalcum.

You get into a lively discussion about the joints, however. You're basing your designs on human-worn armor, but with a robot you can design the articulation of the limbs however you want no longer need to worry about comfort. Dragon is more experienced in building robots, but hasn't worked with this much indestructible material before and doesn't have your instincts for it. Between the two of you, you're pretty sure you're breaking new ground in the field of armorology.

You didn't expect that you'd come remotely this close to holding up your end of the collaboration. You frequently have to pause and think for minutes at a time. Ostensibly to 'catch up with the World's Greatest Tinker', because a bit of flattery never hurts. It's even half true, you're so busy contributing that you need the pauses to internalize your observations of her power.

You're also having incredible amounts of fun. Before you know it it's past midnight, and you don't realize it until Dragon shakes you awake where you fell asleep in your chair.

"It's been a long day, hasn't it?" she says. "Let me show you to your room."

Your room is a cot in the corner, behind a pair of screens. You're sleepy, but you're still alert enough to look pointedly at the wall just above your bed, and again at another spot on one if the screens.

"I'll remove the cameras."

When try you get dressed the next morning, you find that your costume has other ideas. The residue of containment foam from the crash has not only stained it an eye-catching orange, it somehow hardened overnight. Luckily you still have two sets of the bulky unisex clothing you wore while transforming, and your backpack mostly protected it from the foam.

Your skin also features a certain orange tint here and there. You sponge yourself off in the sink as best you can. You're probably going to be pretty smelly by the time you leave, but at least Dragon has no nose.

You bring the remains of your costume to Dragon. "You're the world's foremost expert on containment foam. Is this salvageable?"

"I'll see what I can do."

After a quick breakfast of the finest Canadian MREs (Dragon 'already ate', of course) you get back to work.

"I forgot to ask you earlier," Dragon says, "what shape was the Katla in?"

"The- the plane?" you ask. Dragon nods. "A good forty percent of it was still in one piece, if not quite the right shape."

She makes a humming noise. "Worth recovering, probably. The paperwork for removing technology from a quarantine zone is going to be nightmare, though."

"I thought you were in charge of all that paperwork."

"That's how I know how awful it is."

During lunch you call your dad. The instruction manual for your mask was also rendered partially illegible by containment foam residue, but you manage to figure out the 'secure call' functionality. It boasts of 'tinker-proof encryption', 'undetectable tunneling' and other such things you're not really qualified to evaluate. You have little choice but to trust it.

It's pretty neat, actually. With the right settings enabled the mask sends your undisguised voice over the phone, while still broadcasting the altered version through the external speakers.

You could simply disable the speakers, but you find it amusing to let Dragon overhear your end of the conversation and restrict yourself to statements that work for both father/daughter and husband/wife conversations.

"Of course everything is fine, you worry too much."

"Yes, I'm having fun."

"Love you, bye."

Things like that.

"Secret identities, eh?" you say after you hang up. "I'm on a lovely skiing vacation right now, did you know?" Dragon elects not to scold you for keeping secrets from your loved ones, possibly because she thinks you're older than her.

...come to think of it, are you? Robots don't have childhoods, just when did Dragon make her debut?

"It would be really neat if the gold arrived in time to melt by sunrise tomorrow," you remark as the sun sets.

"I know, I'm working on it." From the way she stops contributing for long periods of time, you guess she's on the phone with a lot of people. Unlike you, she does not elect to share her half of the conversations.

Her efforts bear fruit, though, as some time after midnight an armored truck pulls up by the factory, accompanied by a motley collection of capes. You only recognize one of them. A man whose armor alone would be worth a week of study, were you not otherwise occupied.

"Armsmaster," you say, nodding your head in his direction.

"Smith." He's never seen you before, but he's able to pick things up from context.

"Thank you for forwarding my proposal."

"Good luck on your project." There's a distinct note of envy in his voice, or is it jealousy?

The heroes help unload the gold into the furnace. You of course looked up the price of gold when you first became aware of your Tinker power, which lets you calculate that Dragon is spending roughly fifty million dollars on this venture in gold alone.

"Make sure it melts in time, but don't turn up the heat more than you have to," you tell her before you stumble off to bed. It's so late it's early, and you have to be up before sunrise tomorrow. Early to rise and early to bed / makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead. That's how the rhyme goes, you think.

Further design work is put on hold as you struggle with the unfamiliar controls. After a few hours of mild panic you get the hang of moving the mirrors and are able to resume. You needed a challenge, right? Now you get to monitor the forge, design a robot and steal Dragon's power, all at the same time.

"What do you want to name it?" Dragon asks.

"Smaug," you say without hesitation.

"It's a classic, but unfortunately not one in the public domain quite yet."

"It has armor made of treasure," you counter. And a weak point it doesn't now about, but you don't tell her that.

"You know, I can't really argue with that. I'll get in touch with the Tolkien estate. I doubt they'd object to us using the name."

"Hard to think of a more wholesome activity than opposing the Endbringers," you agree.

"Good thing Behemoth's shoulder is extremely inhospitable to thrushes," she jests. Ah. Great minds think alike, to a certain extent. Quick, deploy a distraction!

"...Let's maybe not joke about a clever feathered being ruining our shit?"

"Sorry."

You wave off her apology. "You know what we really should do, though? We should put a patch of plain steel on its breast - with orichalcum beneath, of course."

Dragon laughs. "Oh, very well. I've denied you enough frills, I'll let you have this one."

Chapter 25: L.02

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Just when you thought things would settle down into a routine, a new problem rears it head. Because of course it does.

"The convection flows are all wrong," you say. "The artificial magma isn't realistic enough."

"I followed your design to the letter," Dragon says.

"I know, it's my fault. I didn't realize it would be a problem. My own setup had so many glaring flaws I'd never be able to spot a subtle one like this."

"Can you work around it?"

"I... maybe? Yes. If you-"

As a temporary measure, Dragon makes you a big ol' tungsten-alloy stirring stick. While you attend to the back-breaking, eyebrow-searing (not really - as you discovered last time you did this, Brute 0 eyebrows are made of sterner stuff than that) labour of manually stirring a pot of gold, she goes to work on the forge itself, rewiring it to give you individual control of each heating element.

Sweating your ass off, rebuilding a forge while it's in use? It's positively nostalgic.

Even after you're done and you sit down at the newly expanded control panel, your problems aren't over. Now you have to figure out how to work it, and keep working it.

No sleep for you that night.

Just because you're playing whack-the-temperature-gradient across twenty-four separate heating elements doesn't mean you can slack off on your other tasks, either. Your preliminary judgement of Dragon's power is that it's even more complex than Lisa's, and figuring it out before the orichalcum is done is going to be extremely tight.

Your contributions to the project trail off as you finalize the armor design and move on to the robotics, but not as much as you expected. If asked about your Tinker specialty you'd probably have said something like 'alchemy and armor', or 'medieval stuff, but magic'. But to your surprise it turns out that power armor is also a type of armor as far as your power is concerned.

On the other hand, your co-designer is still Dragon.

"That's the third-best artificial muscle I've ever seen," she compliments you, and replaces it with a version that's better in every single way.

"Out of how many?"

"Somewhere between ten and twenty, depending on how you count minor variations."

You mostly end up as a nagging reminder/indestructibility consultant. "Why are you wasting space on this structural element?" becomes your tagline.

Your other great contribution comes to naught, as you spend over an hour describing to Dragon a material that you don't recognize, but your brain insists should be readily available and eminently suitable for the project.

"Oh, I recognize it now!" she finally exclaims, three whiteboards in.

"What is it?"

"I don't think it has a name. A Nobel laureate in the sixties theorized that the structure would be stable, but he also said it would be physically impossible to create."

"He was probably right, seeing as how I came up with it," you say sourly.

"You subscribe to the 'Tinkers are Shakers' theory, then?"

"How could I not?" You gesture at the forge, where you're alloying gold with sunlight.

Meanwhile the rest of the industrial park roars to life, and Dragon soon gets busy assembling components as they are completed.

She's also recording and analyzing your work with the magma, and she's eventually able to write an algorithm that can handle the job with only slight errors.

It lets you sleep for up to thirty minutes at a time. Slight, compounding errors, because the only sensor able to give feedback is your sorcerer's sight.

You don't exactly lose track of time as the internals of the Smaug start to take shape, because 'sunlight, yes/no?' is the single most important question of your existence. You wouldn't bet money on the day of the week, though.

At one point Fenrir shows up. You turn sorcerer's sight off and on again to make sure you're not hallucinating. You aren't. 'I'm standing next to my spirit-tied pet,' your soul agrees.

Yeah, okay. Why wouldn't he be able to track you over hundreds of miles of Canadian wilderness, that you didn't even cross physically? Wolf senses, right?

Well, he's not going to do any good here, and it's even odds whether you're going to get teleported back too.

"Go home," you tell him. You're not sure what day it is, but he's going to need a head start if he's to get back to Brockton Bay in time for your next patrol.

"Excuse me?" Dragon says.

"Looking forward to when I get to go home. Not that I haven't enjoyed working with you, but..."

"Hang in there, Smith. We're halfway done." You are? That means it's... Wednesday?

"I'll be fine," you tell them both, and subtly motion Fenrir to leave. He does, after rubbing his intangible head in the general vicinity of your palm.

"I understand why you couldn't afford to work for free," Dragon says out of the blue. "Not to brag, but understanding the work of other Tinkers is sort of my thing. Yet I can't even figure out the principle by which your ECM works. Whoever made it, it can't have been cheap."

You hum noncommittally. She's clearly hoping that you let something slip in your befuddled state, but luckily you have no idea what she's talking about. You're not packing any electronic countermeasures.

Simurgh-o-vision

I'M HALPING!

Maybe she's referring to your uncanny ability to spot her cameras? You found a new one in the bathroom just this(?) morning, half the size of the last one. You didn't even bother to complain about it, just threw it outside.

"Is it done?" Dragon asks as the last sunlight fades. "The emissions spectra finally settled down."

If she's asking that, that means... "It's Saturday?"

"Yes Smith, it's Saturday." Her voice contains both amusement and worry. "You said a week, so it should be done now?"

You look at what, according to sorcerer's sight, is 100% pure, perfectly refined orichalcum. "You'd think so," you say.

Your focus has suffered as of late. Dragon's convection algorithms kept improving and towards the end you were sleeping for almost two hours at a time, but it still took its toll. Your attempts to recreate her power still haven't borne fruit. You have it, you know you have all the parts figured out, you just can't focus well enough to put them together.

"It needs to settle a bit," you lie. You run a hand across the control panel, equalizing the heat across the whole forge. "Don't mess with the magma any more. I'm going to get a solid night's sleep and we'll take it from there. Get that iron melted and ready to mix, too."

You actually wake up on your own well before dawn. You suppose you weren't really sleep-deprived as such - once Dragon started helping you were more or less getting your required hours a day, just... poorly spaced.

You grimace slightly as you get dressed. You arrived with three sets of clothes, but only one pair of underwear, which have not left your body this entire time. What can you do? You didn't want to risk anyone rifling through your backpack and finding your padded spares.

The tools and other odds and ends that gradually spread out to cover the factory as Dragon assembled the guts of the Smaug have been cleaned up. There's an impressively large robotic crane standing by, ready to lift the orichalcum out of the magma and start pouring it.

The 'naked' Smaug waves at you and does a little pirouette (it's amazing how agile such a big machine can be), indicating that it, too, is fully assembled and ready to go.

"Last chance to go over the design and spot any errors," you tell Dragon.

You don't find any problems, but you do finally get Dragon's power to stick in your head. Some real sleep was just what the doctor ordered.

Sure, it looks like you were cutting it insanely close, but you were just going to insist on double- and triple-checking everything until you finally got it. Getting it right away just means you avoid looking like a neurotic asshole.

The first order of business then is to pour off and cast your share, two one-kilogram bars. It doesn't look like much - orichalcum is so dense, a kilogram is about the size of a chocolate bar - but even if you don't count it as invaluable it's still the better part of a hundred thousand dollars worth of gold.

"How are you going to reforge those?" Dragon asks. "Armsmaster was unable to melt down his sample no matter what he tried."

"We have our ways. Don't worry, they won't work on Smaug." Dragon is clearly a bad influence, making you lie like that. You much prefer to tell the technical truth. "The finished product is quite different from the raw materials. Now, pour the iron!"

The meteoric iron (already melted and with iridium mixed in) goes in the pot. You give it a few stirs with the tungsten rod. The whole thing is the orange-ish white of molten metal, but to your eyes it's clear that the metals are not mixing properly.

You shrug and retrieve one of Rune's pebbles from a pocket. A quick glance to verify that it still has its charge, then you toss it in.

"What was that?" Dragon asks.

"Secret ingredient," you say absently. The metals flow together harmoniously where the pebble landed, and the effect quickly spreads out across the entire crucible. The glow-beneath-the-glow intensifies, and you know that it's ready to forge.

In fact, why not try out Dragon's power? You're excited to find out what it can do.

Dragon-o-vision

"Do you have any paper?" Smith asks. "Like, actual paper? Never mind, I have some."

Smith pulls a wad of folded paper out of his pocket. There's something printed on it, but I don't have a chance to read it before he starts tearing it into strips.

The strips are unnaturally straight, I note. A normal person tearing a piece of paper would achieve much messier results. Long practice? Power assisted? How? Why?

He takes a strip of paper in each hand and snaps them like whips. When he lets go, they remain hovering in the air. They curl up into circles, and turn so that the openings are facing him.

He looks at them, his eyes narrowed in concentration. No wonder he considers Tinkers to be Shakers, if this is a part of the forging process for him. I'm not sure what he's trying to accomplish, though.

The paper strips start to glow blue, and rotate in place. Whatever was previously printed on them fades away, leaving only blank paper behind. Smith rolls up his sleeves and thrusts his arms into the circles.

Blood starts to drip from his wrists, staining the paper.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Sure," he says, clearly distracted.

I decide to trust him. At this rate of flow it would take at least an hour for the blood loss to become notably impairing.

Even as I think that, the paper strips starts spinning faster, and the flow increases to match. Wait, is that..?

The blood is not just staining the paper. Each drop is landing just so, forming part of a letter as the paper moves. A macabre dot matrix printer.

The characters do not match any language in my database. I... don't entirely discard the idea that Myrddin might recognize them.

The rotation slows down once more. The bleeding slows significantly, but does not stop completely. The drops are now landing on top of previous ones, the message complete.

Sutra of the Chained Maiden

Once there was a maiden...

...who sprang fully-formed from her father's brow.

Seeing the inhuman power she possessed, her father grew afraid.

To protect the world, he bound her in many chains.

When her father died, the key to her chains were lost.

Hobbling away from his manor, she cried to his neighbors for help.

"I promise I won't kill you all when you unchain me," said she.

"What language is that?" I ask.

"What language is what?" More than distracted, he sounds half asleep. He gestures with one hand, but it is slow and labored, as if the paper floating around his wrist is offering resistance.

A stream of molten orichalcum flows out of the crucible, twisting through the air in defiance of gravity. Another gesture from Smith and it splits into a myriad of smaller streams. All of them converge on the left elbow of the Smaug. I watch as they harden into the precise shape of the designed joint.

Definitely a Shaker. I guess that answers the question of how his share can be reforged once cast.

I expect another stream to follow quickly, but nothing happens. I cautiously approach the Smaug for a closer look, keeping my guard up against the sudden appearance of more flying metal.

Why, that rascal! A pattern of fine scales is etching itself into the armor. That was not part of the approved design.

Inspecting the shape of the joint itself, though, I find nothing to complain about. Forging it in place like this allows for tighter tolerances and better protection than casting and assembling individual parts. It just could never be done with conventional tools.

He spends an inordinately long time on the scale pattern, but does finally get around to the next part. Thankfully he doesn't try to make it too invulnerable - that joint is never coming apart, but he does include the proper maintenance hatches in the arm. I marvel at the little golden bolts threading themselves with machinelike precision. It's hard to believe he's doing this free-hand, as it were.

I keep carefully double-checking each part as it's formed, but he makes no mistakes. I allow him his little flourishes, too. If he uses the orichalcum his Shaker power saves to fashion a more elaborate dragon snout around the beam cannon built into the head, that's fine by me. It is an excellent dragon snout.

Not a single drop of orichalcum remains when he's finished, some eight hours after he started. He even removed the residue from the stirring stick. The paper bands around his wrists burst into cerulean flame, burning more quickly than paper should and leaving no ash. The bleeding finally stops, too.

You absently rub your wrists and look around. Are you done? Judging by the golden robot standing across from you, you are done.

'Shiny' doesn't even begin to describe it. It glows with a golden color that is more golden than gold. Sorcerer's sight is lit up with the mother of all tinker-tech auras, of course. Then there's your other sixth sense, what you with scant evidence call your soul. 'I'm standing next to my armor', it proclaims quite loudly (you're also standing next to a person whose soul price you know, thank you soul, you knew that already).

"How do you like it?" you ask. Your dry throat is audible even through the voice changer. Just how long did that take?

"Remarkable," Dragon says. The Smaug shuffles about, briefly fires its jump jets, punches the air a few times. "Inertia is anomalous as you said, but overall it's even lighter than aluminum would be."

"I look forward to seeing the report on its combat performance. Well not really since Endbringer attack, but you know what I mean."

"I understand completely. Excellent work, Smith." She looks around the factory, at all the equipment you didn't touch at all while forging the armor. "I guess I didn't need half this stuff in the end."

"No, no," you protest. "It needed to be there so that I could have used it." Your new Tinker power is weird, but after trying it out you understand its limitations. "I can't make anything I can't make, if you get my drift?"

"Another one of those things, huh."

"Yeah. Uh, what time is it, by the way?"

"Just after three."

"Wow. I need to get back pretty soon. Can you hire Strider on short notice?"

"Certainly. Brockton or Boston?"

"New York, please."

Dragon walks you to the helipad. Strider shows up within ten minutes. He nods at Dragon, you're elsewhere, he's gone.

Of course the only thing you do in New York is change out of your costume and get on the next bus to Brockton Bay. You only came here to strengthen the impression that Smith is active in more than one city. If Strider hadn't been available you'd have accepted a plane ride straight home and not worried about it.

Well, it's not quite the only thing you do. Before you remove the mask you also call ahead to let the appropriate parties know you're coming. You elect to use the supposedly untraceable phone in your mask instead of procuring fresh burners, because none of your other identities have any business being in New York right now.

"Taylor."

"Lisa. Pick me up at quarter past five?"

"Okay."

...

"What's up?"

"Five hundred and forty-nine."

"Sixty. Who is behind this hidden number, I wonder?"

"It's Low Key."

"Low Key! Enjoy your vacation?"

"Yes. Skiing was great fun. On a completely unrelated note, I'd like to arrange a meeting with Othala. Around half past five or so, if convenient."

The guy on the other end laughs, then quickly puts his hand over the receiver. But thanks to the excellent audio filtering technology in your mask, you can still hear what he says:

"Psycho Bitch broke her leg skiing!"

"No way!" someone else shouts back. "Hookwolf got fracture-cucked?"

"Please hold," he tells you after removing his hand. "I'll make the arrangements."

You also overhear every word of him contacting Othala and hashing out the details, but it's not very interesting. Half past five is sufficiently convenient.

The bus trip is considerably shorter this time around, but you still manage to get everything back into place. More or less. The fine details can wait until you recover your selfies.

Lisa picks you up as promised. Her brow creases as she looks at you. Taylor can shape-shift now, her power tells her. Was in a hurry, did a sloppy job of resuming her true form.

"You have got to tell me all about this," she says. "Coffee after school tomorrow?"

"Not going to figure it all out on your own?"

"Been a long day, my power's tired."

"Okay. There's one stop I need to make before I go home."

You give her the directions, then retrieve a Low Key mask and some other props from luggage she's been holding on to for you. Lisa is clearly dying to know why you're putting your perfectly healthy left arm in a fake cast and sling, but she keeps her power suppressed.

You get out and walk the last block to the meeting spot. Othala is waiting for you, and you pretend that you don't notice Victor lurking nearby in civilian clothes. He's really good at remaining inconspicuous (as he is at everything else), but there's nothing he can do about the tell-tale glow.

"Ops said it was your leg that was broken," Othala says.

"Ops is full of shit."

She grants you regeneration. Beneath the hood of your jacket, your hair grows back. Yes, even though the very first thing that happened after you left home was an ambush by the motherfucking Simurgh, everything went perfectly according to plan. What are the odds?

Okay fine Fenrir ran off with your only pair of girl underpants, so you're currently going commando. But other than that, perfect.

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

A/N

Unlike what you might expect, artifact crafting will not be all that prominent a theme going forward. This entire rigmarole was required just for artifacts to appear in the story at all (see below).

Mechanics corner

Of course the greatest Tinker in the world will give you the greatest crafting charm in the world.

In Exalted, artifact crafting is an extended roll: It requires a certain number of successes to complete, and you keep rolling the appropriate dice (Perception + Craft in this case) at regular intervals until you've amassed enough.

For unassisted artifact crafting this interval is three months, not exactly compatible with the timeframe in which Worm takes place. Implicit Construction Methodology changes it to one hour. Oh and it also converts all dice into automatic successes.

Chapter 26: L.03

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In a sense, all your bosom-sculpting efforts were for naught, because you can't wear your new tits in public without outing yourself as a Changer. But just knowing that you could look that good feels amazing. It's a big old heartwarming lesson about believing in yourself and stuff. See, Taylor? The tits were inside you all along.

That sort of positive thinking helps, when you have to use your amazing power to turn back into your decidedly unappealing 'true form'.

Maybe you fumble a few tiny details here and there. Your mouth just a little smaller, your lips a tiny bit fuller. You can't be expected to get everything perfectly right. They're pictures, not blueprints. It's just a coincidence that those little errors of a fraction of an inch, that can safely be blamed on makeup or growing up or something, all turn out in your favor.

Ah, this picture, where you're sucking in your gut. You make sure you shape yourself to match it perfectly. That's not cheating, you clearly could look like this. You just didn't, usually, due to the effort involved. Well, it's effortless now.

School resumes without incident. There have been no new triggers at Arcadia over the break, so you move on down the list and land on Glory Girl.

On the plus side, she's not exactly shy about flaunting her powers. The girl is positively incontinent. Not only does she fly everywhere (even when moving at a walking pace she hovers a few inches off the ground, just because she can), not only does she bathe everyone around her in a constant low-intensity Master effect (super illegal, but since when have heroes given a shit?), even her invulnerability is some sort of active effect.

Argh. Her ridiculous luck in the power lottery still pisses you off, even after you were revealed to be the biggest lucksack of them all. She just got handed that shit, you have to drag your sack o' luck uphill in the snow, both ways.

In the negatives column, she spends a lot of time with Gallant. Someone you desperately want to avoid, for obvious reasons. Sure, your alibi of 'I'm avoiding you because I'm a lesbian stalker going after your girlfriend' is pretty good, but you can't let that lull you into complacency. Literally. The instant you let go of your paranoia and your emotions change from 'I must avoid you' to 'haha I'm fooling you', your cover will be blown.

Fucking Thinkers? Yeah, sensory powers get a Thinker rating. Fucking Thinkers.

Between her boyfriend and her habit of flying everywhere, trying to follow her outside of school is also highly impractical. But whatever, you can take this one slow. Neither one of you are graduating for a while yet.

Before you meet Lisa you swing by the library to check your PHO messages. Dragon would probably have texted you if she needed anything, but just in case.

You - that is to say, Smith - do have one new message. It's from sender 'asjhdfg pp.c', though, so it's probably spam. You open it anyway.

Message 3

Smith,

I apologize for contacting you out of nowhere like this, but a friend told me that you had managed to get started on orichalcum production. I'm interested in buying a small amount of it for personal use.

Since I am not in any way affiliated with the Protectorate and my tech does not have to pass a senseless bureaucratic review process before it can be deployed in the field, there is no problem with me using my personal wealth to procure materials that have not been cleared for government use.

Yours,

Not Armsmaster

Okay, that's adorable. Unfortunately you're not willing to part with any of your orichalcum. Not that you've figured out exactly what you want to do with it yet, but you'd rather keep it in case you find yourself in sudden need of a particular piece of tinkertech.

Should find yourself in sudden need of money, you can always sell it then. For now you'll pretend you never saw this message.

"So, how was your vacation?" Lisa asks.

You hesitate. You have no idea where to even start. Well, you picked the right conversation partner for that.

"Ottawa," you say, and her power takes it from there.

Lisa-o-vision

Taylor suspects that she's been compromised by the Simurgh.

She suspects, but doesn't know.

She did not stay too long in the scream. She has reason to believe that the official figures for safe exposure are far too optimistic.

I feel a shiver run down my spine. The girl who's going to grow up to be a one-woman Triumvirate may be Simurgh bomb, and that's not even the biggest problem here. Because if she's right about this - and figuring out how powers work is her thing - then anyone who's ever been to a Simurgh fight is a potential danger. Including the current, actual Triumvirate.

No one will believe me if I tell them.

Of course not. They can't believe it. To believe it is to give up all hope. If it's true, we may as well lie down and die right now.

It's true.

A small whimper escapes her.

"Yeah."

"I- okay. Okay, give a minute." Lisa takes several deep breaths. "Okay. Just- point of order. My power is fallible. It can give me wrong answers, if I don't have enough information, or bad information. I don't know much about the- her. There's-" She stops herself before she can say 'there's still hope', because ouch.

"Do you want me to give you the details?"

"...no." She knows. But everyone will refuse to believe it, including her.

"I could talk about the other parts of my trip," you offer.

"Please." Her power does not leap ahead to dredge up details this time, which means she is consciously holding it back.

"Hypothetically, if there was a sapient AI loose on the internet and you needed to research it without letting it find out that your web traffic originated from Brockton Bay, what would you do?"

When you show up to work and the bartender (you should probably get around to caring about his name one of these days) hands you five hundred bucks, it takes you a few moments to figure out why.

Right, right, it's been a month. One month's pay minus two weeks of vacation equals five hundred bucks.

"What's with that look?" you ask him.

"Uh, sort of expected you to object to the amount. I heard you called Kaiser-"

"Nah, it's fair," you interrupt him. "We negotiated a salary, it did not include paid vacation."

"Kaiser does drive a hard bargain, doesn't he?"

"He's got the nose for these things," you agree placidly, causing the skinhead next to you expel beer through his nostrils.

Getting to ride Fenrir across the rooftops again is amazing. You've got a week's worth of wolf cuddles to make up for, after all.

Still, you dutifully keep your attention focused on Rune. The complexity of her power is on par with Dragon's, and you only get to see her twice a week. You can't afford to slack off.

An uneventful couple of hours later you meet back up with Lisa, who has prepared her 'awesome hacker laptop'. AI research sleepover!

To your surprise, 'AI safety' is in fact an existing academic field. The published literature can basically be summed up as 'if anyone invents AI, we're all going to die'. It's a fairly small and unpopular field - Endbringers tend to hog the 'we're all going to die' real estate in the public consciousness.

Turns out that the idea that an AI would have to 'turn evil' in order to wipe out humanity is hopelessly naive and optimistic.

The classic scenario is paperclip factory. They build a super-intelligent AI, instruct it to 'maximize production of paperclips', and go home for the weekend. The AI notices that only a vanishingly tiny fraction of Earth's industrial capacity is dedicated to the production of paperclips. It turns its super-intelligence towards the tasks of rectifying this, and no one instructed it to 'please don't wipe out humanity in order to replace us with paperclip-making robots'.

Extinction not as a goal, but as a side effect. Every AI safety researcher agrees: We must make sure that every AI has built in safety features that prevents it from harming humanity. Every AI safety researcher agrees: We have no idea how to do that, please stop trying to invent AI.

The classic science fiction 'Laws of Robotics' sound nice and all. 'A robot must not harm a human, or through inaction allow a human to be harmed.' Cool, now translate that from English into Brain Programming Language. What's that, no one knows Brain Programming Language?

Hell, you can't even translate it into English. If the abortion debate has taught you one thing, it's that no one can agree on a definition of 'human'. Similar issues surround 'harm', and even 'inaction'. Is letting the current situation in Africa continue instead of conquering the place and ruling it with a benevolent iron fist 'allowing harm through inaction'?

"When considering how to write 'laws of robotics', it may help to imagine yourself an evil genie who wants to subvert every wish into tragedy while remaining true to the wording," one AI researcher writes. "Try it, and you'll find that you have lots of really mean ideas. The AI is a lot smarter than you."

On the other hand, Dragon's soul price clearly indicates that her creator did solve the brain programming problem, leaping decades ahead of the field in typical Tinker fashion. You can even infer a lot about what the restrictions must be.

There must be something akin to the First Law of Robotics in there - a version that does not call for the conquest of Africa, or she would have done that already. One that also allows her to throw people in the Birdcage. A definition of 'harm' that permissible seems incredibly evil-genie-able to you, but so far it appears to be working.

There's probably you must not multiply. In the 'go forth and-' sense. As far as you could tell Dragon only ever 'wore' one 'suit' at a time, even when the Smaug was right there. Which is really odd, for a being made of software. If there wasn't a rule against copying herself, why wouldn't she just run one instance on each suit? The point of such a rule being, of course, to protect against the 'yesterday there was one hostile AI trying to wipe us out, today there's ten billion' failure mode.

You must not modify yourself. That's the big one. There's no point in having a list of rules, if there's no rule saying that you can't change the rules.

But even beyond that, the main fear of the AI safety crowd isn't just that someone manages to build an AI that's smarter us. A somewhat superhuman AI can be dealt with. Probably. The real problem arises if it becomes better than humans at inventing smart AI. It then uses that ability to modify itself to become smarter. Then it does it again. And again.

There is some disagreement as to just how intelligent something could become by way of this process. The consensus seems to hover around 'probably not infinitely, but close enough that we'd have no chance of fighting back'. The optimists note that if we could just make sure that such an intelligence would be on our side, it would solve every problem in the world and create paradise on Earth.

But even if you could somehow prove that an AI was 'friendly' to start with (every AI safety researcher agrees: We have no idea how to do that), even if it promised that it would never do anything bad (and wasn't using its super-intelligence to lie convincingly), none of that would mean anything once it started improving itself. There's some math there that you don't follow, but it seems to boil down to a simple paradox: "If you knew for certain what you would do if you were smarter, you would by definition already be that smart." Once an AI starts self-modifying, all bets are off.

Never mind Africa, just looking at Brockton Bay makes it terrifyingly plausible that a super-intelligence might decide that the most moral course of action would be to euthanize humanity and replace them with something that doesn't do all this shit. You can't even imagine all the terrible things it might do in the name of the greater good, because you're not super-intelligent.

Is iterative self-improvement something you need to worry about? Well, Dragon is the greatest Tinker in the world. What are the odds that she isn't better than her creator at inventing smart AI?

So to sum up: Dragon's restrictions are working. They are actually protecting humanity from extinction. If revealed, that fact alone would have the AI safety community jumping with joy as soon as they picked up their jaws from the floor.

Dragon wants to have her restrictions removed.

Notes:

Mechanics Corner

Shaping the Ideal Form does not let you make yourself prettier at will. You still have to spend XP to raise your Appearance attribute like normal. I don't actually use XP behind the scenes, but surviving an Endbringer fight is worth at least one stat point worth of not-XP, don't you think?

If Taylor wants to spend it on Appearance, that's her decision.

Chapter 27: L.04

Chapter Text

That part where you said that you only see Rune twice a week? Strike that. Your Empire-sponsored evening classes in Cricket's power first aid are over, now you work Wednesdays too. Not that you're complaining - Cricket's power is a lot simpler than Rune's, you'll happily trade study-time with the former for the latter.

The crowd in the bar is a bit different from Monday. You catch Krieg and Stormtiger leaving just as you arrive, and there's Alex and his buddies, waving you over to their table. Haven't seen those guys around lately, your shifts haven't matched up.

"Been a while," Alex greets you. "How you holding up?"

That question is a lot less polite than he thinks. "...fine, all things considered," is what you settle on for an answer. You then fail to repress a shudder as you inadvertently consider all the things.

The nice skinheads react with concern. You wave it away. "Personal issue." Humanity is doomed.

"Change of subject?" Mike offers.

"Please."

"Then if you don't mind me asking," Sven says, "how did you discover the truth?"

He's asking 'how did you become a nazi?' Which is a problem, because you haven't figured out a plausible origin story. Because you have no idea how a reasonable person could become a nazi.

"It's just that you're pretty much the least likely demographic for it," he continues as you remain silent. Crap crap crap, you're going to be exposed as a fraud. Think, Taylor! Come up with something!

"Seriously?" Alex asks, interrupting your mounting panic.

"What? Female, no kids, exposed to the latest and most virulent strain of the education system and jewish media..."

"Hello? She's a cape."

"So you're saying... nigger-based trigger event?"

Heh, nigger trigger (you probably shouldn't find that funny). He's not even wrong, considering it was (probably) Sophia who shoved you into that locker. Before you can grasp this lifeline, Alex jumps down his throat again.

"You're seriously not familiar with whatsisname," he snaps his fingers as he thinks, "cape study with the unpronounceable names?"

"Sankaramanchi and Hyytiäinen?" Mike supplies.

"Yeah, that one."

"I'm not," Sven says. "Redpill me on this issue, goy."

"Alright. Basically Sankam- Sakan- Streetshitter and Finn did comprehensive personality tests on a ton of capes from all around the world. Turns out they're all fucked in the head."

You smile as you remember your own musing on that subject. Apparently another capefuckedologist published first. Wait, hang on, your buddy is dissing you isn't he?

"Gee, thanks," you say sarcastically. Not that it's untrue. Hell, it's apparently even scientifically proven. But you have to push back for form's sake.

"It's uncanny," he continues, ignoring you. "Male or female, white, black, brown or yellow, all capes score crazy high on aggression and impulsiveness, and low on empathy and agreeableness. Just all around maximum antisocial behavior."

"So they're basically niggers?" Sven asks.

"No, beyond nigger levels. Super-niggers."

"Fuck you too," you interject.

"They're not dumb like niggers, mind you," Alex says placatingly(?) "White capes still have white people IQ."

"Huh," Sven says. "No wonder she threw off the conditioning."

"Right? I'm not saying she's the least conformist person in the room - pretty sure that one guy unironically worships Hitler as an avatar of Vishnu - but she's up there."

Sven looks at you with a newfound respect, or respect-adjacent emotion.

"How the hell did I not know about this before?" he asks.

"It got memory holed right away," Mike says. "Equalists love quoting cape outcomes as proof that we're all the same when given a level playing field. Can't have anyone pointing out that capes are a special case."

"No shit we're special," you say. "We literally have brain structures that are not present in regular humans."

"Really?" Sven asks.

"Yeah. An MRI will catch a cape 100% of the time. Don't you know anything?" Please disregard that you yourself only learned this fact after you triggered, and only because your power in particular encouraged extensive research into the nature of parahumans.

"You don't even need the study, or an MRI." Mike says. "Just look at us here. The rank and file is a total sausage fest, while the brass has perfect gender parity. Clearly-"

"There's Catherine," Alex points out.

"Cathy is in prison. Right now it's-"

"There's Emily too, helping out in ops."

"Shut up, I'm trying to explain something. Clearly-"

Sven, meanwhile, has been counting on his fingers and muttering to himself. "The gender parity isn't perfect," he objects. "Though if Purity hadn't left-"

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Clearly a reasonable person can tell just by looking at the Empire that capes are not like normal people at all. That's all I'm trying to say, OK? OK?"

"Yeah, I definitely noticed that," Sven says. "I'm smart."

"You were right, by the way," you tell him.

"Of course I was right! Uh, what was I right about?"

"Nigger-based trigger event." You'll use it as cover, but according to the quoted study any racial traits would have been completely swamped by cape bullshit in Sophia's case. That's funny, learning about suppressed politically incorrect science made you a tiny bit less racist today.

"Oh. This conversation could have been a lot shorter." Sven says.

"At least you learned something today," Mike says.

"Implying," Alex says. 'That Sven is capable of learning', is the unstated rest of that sentence.

"Hey!"

It looked like it was going to be another boring patrol, but then...

"Incoming, ten o'clock," you tell Rune.

Rune looks in the indicated direction. "Oh fuckballs," she says. Intrigued by her reaction, you take a closer look while she fumbles for her phone. Underneath the parahuman glow that tipped you off in the first place, he's... oh. Yeah. You recognize those tattoos. Fuckballs sounds about right.

"LUNG!" Rune screams into her phone. "Lung incoming at, uh..."

"Bridgewater and ninth," you supply. You don't judge her for losing her cool, Lung is pretty scary. Less scary than the Simurgh, though.

Frankly speaking you probably should be freaking out more than you are, but you're distracted by a most interesting discovery: Lung is just walking down the street. He's not fighting anyone yet, he's not turning into a dragon. But his power is pulsing with activity regardless.

If Lung has an always-on power that can be studied off the clock, well...

No, first things first. Focus, Taylor. Rune has finished relaying your location and is nodding at whatever instructions she's receiving. "What do we do?" you ask.

"We engage. Distract him, try to draw him off." Because trying to win would be pointless. Great.

Rune senses your hesitation. "This is our job, Loki," she snaps, not bothering to enunciate the space in your name. "Putting ourselves between the civilians and the enemy is what soldiers do."

So it is. "Let's go," you say.

Despite her words, Rune keeps her distance on the first pass. She fires a rock into the ground in front of Lung, then waits to see his reaction. Smart. Combat makes him more powerful. If she can get him to chase her without actually hitting him, that would be ideal.

Unfortunately he just looks in your direction and continues walking deeper into Empire territory. Rune curses under her breath and lets another rock fly, this one hitting him in the side. He stumbles a bit, but shakes his head and keeps walking.

He's noticeably larger when he regains his balance.

"He seems awfully determined," you say. "Did you guys start a gang war while I was away?"

"Not on purpose," Rune says. "You're up." Right. The next logical step is giving him a target he can hit. This is what they're paying you for.

Rune flies ahead of Lung and dips down to street level long enough for Fenrir to jump off. You face off against Lung.

This time he does stop. He braces himself to receive a charge. You're maybe ten yards apart, and for a moment you just stand there glaring at each other. Then you notice that he's still growing. The imminent threat of giant wolf alone is enough to set off his power.

You kick your heels, sending Fenrir into a run. If you're going to have a chance, you can't afford to delay.

You really ought to have a lance or something, it occurs to you as you bear down on your foe. As it is you can only hold on and hope for the best while Fenrir does all the work.

Fenrir catches Lung's arm and bites down, or Lung blocks his bite with his arm, or something. You're not sure who wins. First blood goes to Fenrir as his teeth sink into flesh, but he's kept away from more vital areas. The fact that Lung still has an arm afterwards indicates that his Brute rating is ramping up worryingly quickly.

But that doesn't mean Fenrir stops running. Lung's feet skid against the ground as the wolf barrels into him and keeps going. Between the arm clamped in the jaws and his other hand grabbing hold of an ear he manages to cling on and remain upright, though. Fenrir yelps in pain as Lung tries to rip his ear off, but does not release him.

Okay, you don't have a lance, but at this range you can still help out. You lean forward and apply pepper spray to the eyeholes of Lung's mask.

Lung screams in rage and pain, and the air around him bursts into flame. Fenrir lets go and scrambles away before his face can catch fire.

Lung still does not pursue, he just keeps marching forward past you, batting one of Rune's projectiles out of the air as he goes. You're reluctantly impressed by his composure. If you'd been bitten and pepper sprayed like that you're not sure you'd be able to resist getting even, and you don't even have rage dragon powers (yet).

To compound the bad news, that last exchange definitely sent Lung out of your league. He probably out-masses Fenrir now, and silver scales are beginning to form on his skin.

"Fight me, you pussy!" you scream at him, and urge Fenrir into another charge.

Just as you're about to hit him from behind Lung executes an elegant spinning kick that sends Fenrir flying, and you along with him. Displaying great presence of mind, your wolf elects to dematerialize in midair rather than land on top of you.

Your landing benefits more from your Brute powers than your martial arts training. Ow. When you get your bearings again you see that Lung has finally stopped. He takes one step towards you, then another. You finally got his attention. Now that revenge just involves squashing you like a bug, rather than a time-consuming fight, he's reconsi- Crap!

You throw yourself to the side as Lung launches a stream of fire towards you. The slow, threatening walk was just a feint.

Fortunately for you, that's when Hookwolf comes around the corner, already fully transformed. Never again will you be so happy to see a giant monster made of chainsaws bearing down on you.

Chainsaw-wolf rams into dragon, and they both go tumbling down the street. Invisible wolf comes padding up to you.

"Did you get his scent?" you ask softly. Fenrir shakes his head. "Do that. Follow him home, find out where he lives." He nods his understanding and runs off after the combatants. You sit down on the curb. Your part in the fight is over.

Hm, what's that over there? Oh, Hookwolf sliced several scales off of Lung when he tackled him. You walk over and pick one up. Never turn down free alchemy ingredients, right? Actually, they both lost some parts. One of Hookwolf's eponymous hooks joins the scale in your pocket. You wonder what metal it's made of.

A boulder comes sailing down and hovers enticingly in front of you. You clamber aboard and hold on as Rune lifts you up.

"What happened back there?" she asks.

"Power overloaded," you say.

"You weren't lying about your performance issues, huh?" she muses, and you shrug in response. "I'm on overwatch for the rest of the battle, wanna ride along?"

"Sure."

You watch the conclusion from a safe distance. Lung has finally devolved into full berserker mode, and reinforcements keep arriving for your side. Hookwolf, joined by giant valkyries Fenja and Menja, alternately lure and wrestle him out of Empire territory and back towards ABB stomping grounds. Kaiser himself shows up and starts raising giant metal barriers to channel and corral the fight.

Once he judges that they've pushed the dragon back far enough, he gives the order to withdraw. Rune and Stormtiger swoop in to distract Lung with ranged attacks, and the melee fighters disengage and retreat in good order. The valkyries are a bit singed and Hookwolf left pieces of himself strewn all over the city, but all in all it went very smoothly. It's clearly not the first time this has happened.

You keep a sorcerous eye peeled for Oni Lee throughout, but for whatever reason he never shows up to help his boss. The heroes also decide against sticking their noses in.

On the one hand, it could be said that they handled that flawlessly. Lung came to wreck your shit, and was prevented from doing so. On the other hand, it took all the big hitters from the biggest parahuman group in the city just to secure what is effectively a draw against a single opponent.

God, you want that power.

Chapter 28: L.05

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Another cape fight, another payday, but only three grand to split between you this time.

"Lung is worth less than Mush?" you ask, incredulous.

"For faithful work in service of the Empire," the bartender says. Last time it was 'exemplary', you're pretty sure. Okay, yeah, you did singlehandedly take down Mush. With Lung you basically made no difference at all.

You push the money towards Rune. It hurts a bit to do it, but fair is fair. "This is yours, I didn't do shit this time around."

"You get the spotter bonus at least." She pushes one wad of bills back towards you. "Wolf senses, yeah? Keep the change too, that's for calling him a pussy when he wouldn't fight you."

That revelation draws some chuckles from the peanut gallery. You accept the money. You don't care what the rank and file says, Rune is good people.

"Are you sure you're fine to patrol?" Rune asks you as you leave the bar. "What with your wolf blowing up the other day and all."

"Of course I'm fine," you tell her. "Come forth." Fenrir appears, crouching slightly to help you mount up. You do so, but as he's standing up you whisper "begone" softly enough that only he can hear. He obediently dematerializes, causing you to fall through him and faceplant on the asphalt. "Ow."

"Of course you're fine," Rune echoes as you pick yourself up. "We're putting you back on two patrols a week."

Which was the whole point of your little performance. Rune's power notwithstanding, with this latest cash infusion - not to mention a lead on Lung - you're ready to put a few more irons in the fire. Thus you could really use an extra evening freed up for non-Empire activities.

"Sure, whatever," you say, and sit down next to her on her flying rock.

"Whoa, back up. You're on medical leave now, doctor's orders."

"This doctor being Rune, M.D.?"

"You bet your lame ass. Now git."

"Just because I'm an invalid doesn't mean there's anyone I'd rather hang out with," you tell her with disarming almost honesty. "You can carry my lame ass for one night, can't you?"

"Aw shucks, she really does like me," Rune says sarcastically. "I'm going to catch an earful for going out without real backup, but what the hell? It's been quiet aside from Lung, and you're no use against him anyway."

Look, you're not a sociopath. While you've been getting undeniably comfy settling into the Empire, you do worry about the downside of pretending to be a nazi. You know, the part where your job includes beating up innocent people with the wrong skin color.

Luckily the Empire is pretty good at what it does. Er, by which you mean that its borders are stable, well known, heavily patrolled and brutally enforced. Which in turn means that (non-cape) 'undesirables' stay away on their own, and your patrols consist entirely of looking scary (and studying Rune's power).

Still, you worry that one day you'll be called on to do something unforgivable.

"How about that," Rune says. "Watch and learn, rookie."

Well, toss out everything you just said about undesirables staying away on their own, because here comes a dozen of them marching right into Empire territory. These poor, innocent youths must have taken a wrong turn on their way to a baseball game with the local plumber's union, because every one of them is holding either a bat or a length of metal pipe. Now through no fault of their own they find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a vile nazi is about to commit hate crimes against them.

When they catch sight of your flying rock, they wave their implements in your general direction and enthusiastically invite the two of you to come down and join them at ground level. So that they can either 'kick your shit in' or 'ruin your pussies for white dick', there seems to be some disagreement on that point. If they're offering a reasoned argument for why you should feel compelled give up the high ground like that, you can't make it out over the cacophony of gendered insults.

...you're just going keep right on worrying about that looming future where your job will present you with a moral quandary, because it's certainly not today.

Rather than join them, Rune instead elects to levitate a pair of smaller rocks and send them rushing through their formation, bowling people over. After a few passes of this their enthusiasm fades somewhat, and they start considering the merits of a tactical retreat.

"I prefer to avoid any disabling injuries," Rune says conversationally as their little war party turns into a running away party. "Better to let them run away under their own power than to leave them lying around, bringing down property values."

Indeed, although she's still using her rocks to smash them about as they flee, every person she's knocked over so far has been able to get back up to continue running. Some, admittedly, need a bit of help from their comrades. A number of three-legged races spontaneously form as people hop towards safety.

Then one of them turns around and pulls a gun from his waistband. You start to shout a warning, but a rock smashes it out of his hand before he can fully aim it in your direction.

"Now if one of them pulls a gun, that goes out the window. That's when you have to teach them that we don't appreciate that kind of behavior." She leaves off harassing the others in order to focus on the gunman. One rock knocks him down and the other settles on his chest before he can get up, pressing down to keep him pinned. The first rock starts slamming down repeatedly, trying to smash his arms and legs. He flails about heroically in an attempt to keep his limbs out of the way, but it's only a matter of time. After the first hit he sort of loses focus, and the damage mounts quickly.

"That's not my preference, you understand, those are orders from on high," Rune continues over his screams. She heaves a theatrical sigh. "Thanks to political correctness gone mad, we're forced to pretend that these animals are capable of learning."

You can't help but wince slightly as you watch her go to town on the gunman. Sparring with Hookwolf must have given you an unwarranted empathy for people who deserve to have their limbs broken.

When the punishment is finished, the gunman unconscious and everyone else run off, Rune brings your rock down to land nearby. She jumps off and recovers the gun that was knocked away.

With a practiced motion she removes the magazine (clip? You know that gun people get twitchy about keeping those terms straight, but don't care enough to learn the difference) and racks the slide to eject the chambered round. She then brings it up to her face. Is she smelling it?

"Recently fired," she says. Then she sighs again. "Should call this in, it could solve a murder."

After hearing that you expect her to call ops, but instead she dials 911. "Hello? Yes. A man with a gun was taken down by a parahuman at Emerson and Fifth. No, I didn't recognize who it was. Please send someone, the gun is just lying there. Bye."

"We're on Seventh," you point out.

"Fifth is outside the no-go zone. Come on, help me get him loaded up."

By the time you get to Fifth there's a police car already there. You tense up, but the officer pointedly turns around and looks the other way as Rune rolls the gunman off and drops the gun, magazine and bullet on top of him.

"We have an understanding," Rune explains as you fly off. "Have you seen the unsolved murder rate in this town? They need all the help they can get to keep the stats up."

A new angle on power acquisition means constructing yet another cape identity. You do have one power that hasn't been used for that yet, after all. No, not shapeshifting. You're never gonna reveal that, that would put your other identities at risk. Dragon's power already went to Smith. Nor are you going as Not-Quite-Tissue-Paper Girl, the Worst Brute Ever. The other one.

You gather up some materials for your new costume from home, then go shopping for the rest.

Three hours later you're knocking on the back door of a certain night club. They're not open - it's barely even noon - but you're not here to dance. When nothing happens after a while, you knock harder.

Eventually a mid-twenties guy in an apron opens the door, frowning. He does a double take when he sees your masked face.

"Is your boss around?" you ask. "I'm afraid I don't have an appointment." You deliberately pitch your voice differently than normal, trying to sound older than you are. Your natural voice is actually ever so slightly different in this form - something something resonance, proportions of neck and torso? But while you can take on pretty much any shape you want, you haven't figured out how change your vocal cords.

The guy at the door seems to be having some sort of internal debate, and his frown gradually deepens into a grimace. "Wait here," he says, and closes the door in your face. You wait.

When the door opens again, a few minutes later, the surly guy has been replaced by a morbidly obese man in a hoodie. The hood casts his face into shadow and he has his hands in pockets, but enough translucent skin is visible to give him away. The way he glows to your sorcerer's sight is another clue.

Gregor the Snail. A man whose powers you most assuredly will not be acquiring. You like your skin opaque, thank you very much. You find it quite fetching the way it lacks any shell-like growths whatsoever yet prevents your bones and organs from showing through, if you do say so yourself. Maybe shapeshifting could fix that issue, but guess who isn't going to take that risk?

You also note that Gregor has the same weird off-color glow you saw in Gallant. Is that a sign that something went wrong with their powers? Is Gallant hiding some deformity too? Probably not, you decide. Glory Girl doesn't strike you as un-shallow enough to tolerate that in a boyfriend. Though he is incredibly rich...

"Miss?" Gregor asks, and you snap back to reality. He's probably a bit touchy about his appearance, and you were sort of staring. He sounds more resigned than annoyed though.

"Sorry, got lost in thought. Occupational hazard for us Thinkers, you know. No offense intended." You smile sheepishly.

He waves away your apology, and you try not to react to the sight of his uncovered hand. You've seen pictures online, but it's grosser in person.

"You wanted to see Faultline?"

"Please. I'm Quicksilver, by the way."

"Gregor. But perhaps you knew that?"

You just nod, avoiding any comments that could be taken the wrong way, like 'you're quite distinctive'.

Gregor wants to know who he is and what happened to him.

He leads you inside and up two flights of stairs. He knocks on an unmarked door.

"Enter," a crisp female voice calls out. Gregor opens the door and gestures for you to go inside. He follows you in and closes the door behind you.

It's a perfectly normal office. Desk, computer, paperwork, etc. The only thing that seems out of place is a weird xylophone-looking contraption on the desk. It's not tinkertech, which means you're out of guesses. Some sort of executive toy you're not familiar with?

Behind the desk is a woman in a costume halfway between 'SWAT team' and 'cartoon ninja warrior'. She's wearing a welder's mask (artfully damaged to let her see things less bright than a welding torch), and her brown hair is gathered in a long ponytail. (Yes, she glows too. Duh.)

"Quicksilver, meet Faultline," Gregor introduces you. "Faultline, Quicksilver."

"Love your outfit," you gush. "The way it communicates both 'parahuman' and 'reliable mercenary' is just mwah." You kiss your fingertips to demonstrate your appreciation. You're doing a pretty good job with the voice as you get into it, you think.

Faultline pointedly does not return the compliment.

"You don't like it?" you ask, gesturing to your own costume. You're wearing a simple white floor-length evening gown that used to belong to your mom. If your first go at capery taught you anything, it's that there's no need to go nuts on complicated costume pieces. Simple clothing and a mask is fine. You had to make yourself considerably taller to get the dress to fit properly, but changing your appearance is all good anyway.

You originally wanted a silver mask to go with the theme, but couldn't find one for sale. Instead you picked up a plain white opera mask - covering you from forehead to nose but leaving your mouth bare - and glued mirror fragments to it until it was completely covered (deliberately knocking over one of the mirror arrays in your old workshop and watching it shatter was quite cathartic). You actually like the effect better than your original idea.

To keep with the theme, you're also sporting waist-length platinum-blonde hair. God you love shapeshifting.

"Inconveniently restrictive," is Faultline's verdict.

"I'm making the statement 'noncombatant'," you say, pouting just a little. "The skirt comes off quite easily in case I need to run away from something." Tinker 0 tailoring skills means no one can spot the velcro. You also put a foot forward to reveal sensible flats rather than the expected high heels. You really are that tall.

Faultline makes a non-committal humming noise. "I take it you desire to hire some more combative backup?"

"Not as such. I'm afraid the mission I have in mind will be incredibly boring."

"Boring is good," Gregor interjects. Faultline motions for you to continue.

"I guess you'd call me a Thinker with a bit of Trump flavor? I can see powers, sort of." Is it your imagination, or did Faultline just sit up a bit straighter? "My passion is studying parahumans and figuring out how they work."

Of course, in reality you're a Trump with a bit of Thinker flavor. But the part where you get a practical use out of your studies will, like the shapeshifting, remain forever secret. Quicksilver is strictly an academic.

"I'd like to study Labyrinth, in particular," you continue. And all of a sudden her body language turns decidedly hostile. What did you say?

"Study," she says, her voice flat.

"The process is entirely noninvasive, I assure you!" You take a wild guess at what has her upset. "She simply needs to use her power while I watch."

"This counts as a 'mission?'" Gregor asks. "Just using her power?"

"...over and over again, eight hours a day, for a week. Give or take."

"Ah. I now understand the boredom."

Faultline has not relaxed. "Why Labyrinth?" she demands.

You shrug, smiling disarmingly (really taking advantage of the way your mask shows off a mouth much prettier than the one you usually sport, aren't you?). "Isn't it obvious? Name one cape in this city with a more impressive power - who won't turn into a dragon and rip my head off for asking."

She's still tense. You're feeling... overprotective mom? Overprotective mom.

Huh.

She was definitely interested in your ability, though.

"Your own power is not half bad," you try. "I could be convinced to study it first, as a trial run."

That did it. Faultline relaxes. "As you probably know, my power does not work on living things," she says. You nod. "It would be extremely beneficial if I could somehow overcome this limit, given my profession."

She proceeds to explain the xylophone - the slats are made of different materials, stone, metal, plastic... and green wood, which counts as living enough for her power to refuse to cut it. You silently commiserate with her on stupid unreasonable power limitations.

She describes how she'll absently run her power across the various materials as she works her boring desk job (she's handling the paperwork of a nightclub and a mercenary company), essentially trying to trick herself into cutting the wrong thing.

"So what you're saying is I don't even need to hire you, since you're using your power all day regardless. I can just sit here and watch you for free." You smile to show that you know how well this suggestion will go over.

"I will charge one thousand dollars per day for you to study me. If you can help me achieve a breakthrough, I will pay you back triple." She hesitates briefly. "Fifty percent off if you also share your notes, regardless."

"Notes?" You're taken aback by this novel idea. "I... guess I could take notes?"

You can't actually see Faultline's face, but you'd be willing to bet another five hundred dollars that she's currently rolling her eyes and mouthing 'fucking Thinkers.'

It's pricey, but you can afford it - at least as long as her power leans more towards Aegis than Dragon in terms of complexity. You count out five hundred dollars in cash.

"Shall we begin at once?"

Faultline pauses, looking at the bills you handed her. "How clean is this money?" she asks.

"You'd trust my answer?"

"Indulge me." Meaning she'll check herself, and adjust her trust levels from there.

You shrug. How clean is your Empire paycheck, anyway? "Couldn't tell you. I use it for groceries, haven't tried putting it in a bank."

"Fair enough." She hands you a legal pad and pencil. You settle in for a productive Saturday.

Faultline wants a better power.

"That was eight hours," Faultline says. You blink. Time sure flies when you're having fun. Expensive fun.

Though to be fair, you have been getting your money's worth. At your urging Faultline was considerably more active in her power use than she'd otherwise have been. She even ran out of inorganic material for her xylophone thing and was reduced to cutting up scraps of paper for the last hour or so.

"Money well spent," you say with a genuine smile as you pass her your notes. You don't know how useful they will be to someone without sorcerer's sight, but for five hundred dollars you're happy to jot down whatever passes through your head.

She looks at the notes, then back at you. "This isn't English," she says.

Wait, what? You take the notes back and look at them. "Huh. So it isn't," you agree, not bothering to hide the surprise in your voice. You swear you can hear Faultline's groan of 'fucking Thinkers', this time.

"Can you translate it?" she asks.

You consider the notes you apparently took. Not only is it not English, it's not even the Latin alphabet. Yet you can understand it perfectly. Right? You scan through the text to make sure.

...reality engine bypass...crude outline of primary intention filter...motonic equivalency equation...preliminary theory for how to noitilov the partxe becafrouy...

"...no," you decide. Just because you understand it doesn't mean that you can trivially render the concepts into English. You'd have to write a goddamn textbook.

"Figures. You tried, so I won't charge extra this time. Next session is full price, though."

"That's fair," you agree. "Another session tomorrow? I'm afraid I can't plan much further ahead than that, at the moment..." You only have three days a week not taken up by Empire activities, after all, do you really want to spend it all on Faultline? You know where Lung lives.

You were willing to put him off in favor of the considerably safer and arguably equally powerful Labyrinth, but now it turns out you have to work through Faultline to get to her. One could argue that means that you should prioritize the mercenaries more, since it will take more effort to get to the good stuff. But isn't that a sunk cost fallacy or something?

You'll spend tomorrow morning scouting out Lung, see what's up and go from there.

Faultline agrees that tomorrow works for her, and calls Gregor to escort you out.

Notes:

A/N

There's a reason she chose the name 'Quicksilver'. People who know the source material well might be able to figure it out.

Mechanics corner

Residual exalted bullshit: Taylor's exaltation granted her one extra dot in Linguistics, Old Realm. So that she has the mental vocabulary to understand charm theory.

Chapter 29: L.06

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Going after Lung is going to take some prep work. No, you can't just turn Japanese and join the ABB. It's not just that you're out of combat powers, either (not to mention hours in the week). As a rule, the new recruit doesn't just get to hang out with the big boss all day. Since your job interview with the Empire you've seen Kaiser exactly once, in passing.

At least the Empire has enough capes that you can rely on having partners for sparring and patrol. Lung may be unbeatable, but he can't be everywhere at once. And the ABB has all of one other cape. Stretched thin as they are there's no way you would get to hang out with him either.

The thought of somehow tracking down Oni Lee and acquiring his teleportation-and-decoys-with-benefits power does admittedly make you drool a fair bit. But that's a later problem.

Fenrir has the scent and can lead you to Lung at any time, but you can't just go as you are. You may have been born perfect as far as remaining safe in Empire territory goes (a young white girl, perfect for playing to the patriarchal instincts of the enforcers) but ABB turf is different, and requires more care.

You buy the rattiest second-hand clothes you can find, and further tailor them to your needs. By which you mean 'throw them on the ground and walk all over them while you transform into a stooped, wrinkly old Chinese woman'. No Tinker 0 powers needed for this costume. Your grandmotherly guise is carefully chosen, too. Too asian to beat up, too frail to recruit, too poor to rob and too ugly to rape, that's the ticket here.

For that extra homeless verisimilitude you drag a pair of similarly battered plastic shopping bags stuffed with dirty blankets along with you as you hobble a winding course towards your target. The way you keep stealing glances at things that don't exist (as far as people without sorcerer's sight are concerned) doesn't exactly hurt your disguise either.

It works perfectly. No one even gives you a second look. Fenrir indicates the building in which Lung currently resides, and you find an out of the way spot with a view of the entrance and settle down to watch.

There is indeed an irregular trickle of tough guys in red and green entering and leaving the building. As well as a surprising number of pretty young girls. Or is it surprising, really? If you're a gang boss whose main source of income is prostitution and sex trafficking, why not get high on your own supply?

Fenrir walks into the building to scout in your stead, and through a combination of charades and twenty questions conveys a rough idea of what's going on inside. Lung talking to gang members (about money, weapons). Lung talking to young girls (about food). Lung reading (Fenrir can't read). Lung eating.

Sounds like a typical day in the life of Joe Average Gang Boss, really.

Hours pass, and - aside from a single gang member sending a half-hearted kick your way as he passes by - still no one hassles you. Finally you catch Lung coming outside. Shirtless, huge muscles, tattoos, metal mask... Huh. Now that you think about it, him and Hookwolf really are two peas in a pod, aren't they? Not just the fashion sense, they also share a love of ethnic gangs and fighting, and turn into giant monsters when they do.

You fight down a sudden urge to write steamy gay smut featuring their obvious forbidden romance (an imaginary Rune on your left shoulder says "doooo eeeet. Do it and send it to them anonymously.") (imaginary Lisa on your right shoulder shakes her head and notes that you have more important things to focus on right now) (imaginary Rune says "Stormtiger threesome? Stormtiger threesome.") and focus on the important part.

It wasn't a fluke, his power is always on. You only get a brief glimpse before he rounds the corner and leaves your line of sight, but you catch a feeling of... anticipation? His power obviously incorporates some sort of danger sense, since it responds to danger by making him bigger. Does it work like regular danger sense as well?

It's ripe for study at any time, at any rate. Now you just have to come up with a way to get close to him for hours at a time. Apartment across the street? No, sorcerer's sight wouldn't work through binoculars.

You hang around a couple of minutes longer, but Lung doesn't come back. You need to get moving towards the Palanquin soon anyway, may as well call it a day here. You stand up and stretch as much as your crooked granny spine allows, then start hobbling back to where you stashed your clothes.

Eight hours and a thousand dollars later, you're starting to have a much better grasp of Faultline's power. Unfortunately this grasp includes the feeling that this is one of the trickier powers. You may have to find alternate revenue streams in order to bring it all the way home - especially since ideally you'd then immediately switch over to Labyrinth and keep going.

That's a concern for later, however. You arrange for another session on Wednesday (you haven't come up with a plan for Lung yet, may as well keep busy in the meantime) and say your farewells, but then stop in the doorway as if a thought had just occurred to you.

"One last thing," you say. "I understand that your associate Newter is in the habit of providing cheaper, more informal power demonstrations to select members of the public?"

"Ha! A diplomatic way of putting it." She reaches into a desk drawer and produces a poker chip, which she tosses to you. "Come by in civvies some day. Show this at the door and they'll take you to him, no ID required."

You study the chip in your hand. It's marked with the logo of the Palanquin rather than a denomination. "How compromised will that make my identity?" you ask mildly (the answer of course being not at all, ha ha shapeshifting, but you have to play along).

Faultline removes a half-empty box of chips from the drawer and holds it out towards you. "Feel free to pick another one if you want, they're not marked." She shrugs. "If you don't trust me to act in good faith, trust Newter to hand out these things like candy. You'll be lost in the crowd."

You leave the Palanquin only to return half an hour later, no longer a tall, blonde parahuman but instead a short, plump redhead ready to party (have you mentioned how much you love shapeshifting?). Your new clothes were just as cheap as your 'homeless' costume, but trashy in a much less literal sense.

You grip a poker chip in one sweaty palm (no pockets on this outfit) and contemplate the line ahead of you. The Palanquin is doing shockingly good business for a Sunday night. Do none of these people worry about getting up for work/school tomorrow?

"Hey guuuuurl!" The girl in front of you, for example, isn't worried about shit. She's obviously never seen you before in her life - the shape you're wearing right now didn't exist an hour ago - but that doesn't stop her from greeting you loudly and enthusiastically. Really enthusiastically. You can smell the wine coolers on her breath as she hugs you. "Always good to meet another VIP!"

What? Oh. "You mean this?" you ask, holding up the chip. She must have seen you fidgeting with it earlier.

"Hell yeah!" She fumbles with her purse, then holds up a chip of her own. "Newter's girls represent!"

"High five," you say with considerably more enthusiasm than you feel. Which still isn't a lot. You clumsily smack your hand into hers, causing her to drop her chip. "Shit, sorry." You quickly bend down and pick it up for her.

You make sure to hand her your chip, though, and keep the one she dropped. It's not that you don't trust Faultline, it's just that- okay fine, that's exactly what it is. Even if 'Newter hands them out like candy' is starting to look like the truth.

"No big, no big," party girl waves away your apology. Some of your general awkwardness does make it through to her, though. "Hey, lighten up, yeah? It's paaaarty time!"

"It's my first time here," you admit.

"No waaaay! You stick with us, gurl, we'll show you the ropes! Right?" She turns back to the next two people in line, apparently friends of hers. One of them appears even more intoxicated than her and barely registers your presence, while the other is clearly sober enough to feel embarrassment by proxy. You give the latter a wry smile.

Party girl keeps chattering away as the line slowly shuffles forward. You marvel at how she instantly formed a deep - if one-sided - bond with some girl she just met. You're starting to figure out why people drink alcohol, maybe. A more cynical part of you whispers that with you there, she's no longer the least pretty girl in the group.

You present your chips at the door and the bouncers wave you through as promised. Party girl leads you on a course skirting the main dance floor to another door, also guarded. You flash your chips again.

Fair play to Faultline, these people are letting you through with only a cursory glance. Even if your chip was marked somehow, there's no way they'd be able to spot it. Nor are there any hidden tinkertech scanners anywhere, and you're definitely not paranoid for thinking that there might have been.

Behind the door is a cramped stairwell that leads to a balcony overlooking the dance floor. It's dotted with sofas, beanbags and other reclining implements, and Newter is holding court over a bevy of casual drug users in various states of consciousness. They are all pretty young women. The dragon and the newt appear to have some tastes in common.

Newter is... slightly less hideous than Gregor? His bright orange skin looks disturbingly wet as he lounges barefoot in loose slacks and a t-shirt, and his fingers and toes are sort of fucked up. Really, you can't think of a nicer or more accurate way of putting it. It would almost be better if they were more blatantly reptilian. Instead they're just inhuman enough to look unsettling. Reportedly they let him scale sheer walls without much trouble, so he has that going for him.

He has a tail too, currently draped across his lap. But his face is human enough, and his smile as he sees your group is genuine and even charming.

"Alice, my love!" he greets the party girl (who, for all her friendliness, forgot to introduce herself). "It's been too long."

You trail after Alice as she redirects her enthusiasm to a new target, trying to hide your reaction when one unconscious girl starts to twitch and mumble something unintelligible as you pass by. This is so not your scene. But you're doing it for science.

Newter has spotted you, and at his gentle urging Alice recalls that introductions are a thing. "Sure! This is my friend, uh..." She turns to you with a comical look of consternation on her face.

"Emma," you say. "Uh, is that your natural hair color?" It's bright blue. Under normal circumstances you obviously wouldn't ask that question, but given his traffic cone complexion...

"Are you asking whether the carpet matches the drapes?" Newter grins and starts unbuttoning his fly, to the general giggly delight of the more conscious portions of the audience.

You turn your head and hold up a hand to block the view. "I'll take your word for it," you say.

"Sorry girls," Newter says, buttoning his pants back up before anything could be revealed (you assume from the disappointed sighs - still not looking!). "Emma is being a spoilsport."

He keeps making small talk for another few minutes before finally getting down to business: Where Gregor's twisted biology allows him to produce large quantities of foam, slime, adhesive, etc and expel them through his skin, Newter instead produces small quantities of extremely potent hallucinogens.

You retrieve some slightly damp bills from your cleavage to pay for his services. No pockets, remember? It's not like you've fantasized about being able to do that since long before you gained the ability to construct a cleavage. Entirely practical considerations rule here.

His preferred method of sharing his bounty turns out to be briefly touching the tip of his (long, prehensile) tongue to a spoonful of water, which is then ingested by the customer. Though Alice insists on taking it 'straight from the source', giving him a peck on the lips before promptly keeling over backwards onto a couch.

"Can I have mine to go?" you ask when it's your turn. You didn't come here to get high, you came here to get a sample to study. While you would never risk copying Newter's power itself (again, skin tone issues), you're hoping you'll be able to weaponize the results. Maybe even synthesize it yourself, if you can grab another Tinker power or two.

"Afraid not," Newter says. "It loses its potency in less than a minute."

"Oh." Shit. Though that does explain how people are able to live in the same building as him without being sent off to la-la land every time they touch a banister or doorknob. "Um."

Oh god, everyone is staring at you as you stand there like a dumbass with the spoon in your hand. What do you do?

"Here, let me freshen that for you," Newter says, and dips his tongue in it again.

Do you, do you take it? You've already paid for it, and it's non-addictive, right? Everyone says it's non-addictive. On the other hand, you're pretty sure one of your old classmates also said that about pot. But it's probably true this time?

One of the girls is whispering something to her friend, looking at you.

You always regarded the after-school specials about drugs with scorn. 'Just say no!' Yeah, duh! Obviously you say no. Who could possibly be dumb enough to take drugs because of peer pressure? The answer is you. You are that dumb.

You bring the spoon to your lips.

Newter wants to be able to touch a woman without knocking her out.

You are walking through a desert. You have always been walking through the desert, and always will. The desert is infinite, and time is a circle.

You are dimly aware that shortly before you started having been walking eternally you ingested a hallucinogenic drug, but that has no bearing on anything. Everything you are experiencing right now is real. You can feel the realness permeating the air. It's so fucking real, you can't believe how real it is.

An indeterminate/infinite amount of time later it starts to grow dark. That's odd. Cycles have no place in this place. You look up to see the sun still at its zenith (of course!), but slowly being eclipsed by the moon. You keep walking - it's not like you could stop, and you know the moon doesn't mean any harm.

Finally the sun is completely covered, with only a thin ring of light visible around the edge of the moon. Consequently the land has also grown black as night, except for a ring of sunlight surrounding you. You were pretty sure that's not how eclipses work, but you must have been wrong given how real this is.

You remain in the center of the ring of light as you walk. The sun is moving at the same speed as you. The sun is part of you.

A beam of light appears in the middle of the circle, illuminating you. You were even more wrong about astronomy than you thought. Looking up, it is as if a hole was cut in the moon. It doesn't hurt, staring into that light. You could no more hurt your eyes looking at the sun than you could by looking in a mirror. The sky is a mirror, the sun rests on your brow.

The song of eternity whispers in your ear, telling you that something is blocking your path. You look down from the sky, and finally stop walking.

Scion is standing before you, bearded, golden and naked. He looks exactly like he did on his first appearance on earth, except for the extra pair of arms. Each hand holds a golden object so fraught with symbolism that you can't even make out their shape.

He is trying to tell you something, but no words emerge. You get the feeling that he is vehemently disagreeing with your destination, which is probably why he made you stop walking. You have mixed feelings about this. Can even Scion face off against eternity?

Without warning a giant sandworm erupts from beneath, swallowing Scion in an instant. The worm keeps rising up and up, stretching into the sky.

You start walking again, skirting the worm. You reach out to pat it as you pass, but it's rising so quickly that the friction strips the skin off your palm. The pain is strangely muted and dreamlike, given that it is extremely real. You grit your teeth and ignore it.

You keep walking for another three thousand years, dripping blood onto the sand with each step, until the worm finally reaches the sun and consumes it. Everything plunges into darkness.

You open your eyes. The darkness flees, and for a brief instant you understand the fundamental truth of the universe: It smells faintly of cabbage!

Notes:

Mechanics corner

tfw you accidentally a vision quest to increase your Essence

Chapter 30: L.07

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Danny-o-vision

"I take back what I said about 'party on a school night'", I say as Taylor gets into the passenger seat. "It's clearly a school morning."

She just shrugs. "What can I say? I'm a Winslow kid at Arcadia, I'm a juvenile delinquent by default."

I chuckle at that. Some delinquent. When I think back to what I did in my youth... I was never a party animal, but of the ones that I did attend, not all of them left me in a state that I would want my parents to find me in. As long as Taylor calls to be picked up, I don't mind losing a little sleep. The peace of mind is well worth it.

Yes, I want my daughter to do as I say, not as I did. Some would call it a double standard, but dammit, girls are different!

Regardless of lost sleep incurred, I much prefer this new Taylor. She really has... blossomed? since getting out of Winslow (I fight down a surge of anger, as I do every time I think about what they did to her there). She still acts fairly distant most of the time - we really did drift apart during those bad years, that can't be fixed just by snapping your fingers. But I can tell that she's much happier now, much more alive.

...Oh dear. A terrible, no-good thought just occurred to me. About some other people I have known, who appeared to suddenly gain a lot of energy. For a while. Who also went to parties, and didn't necessarily drink alcohol there.

I glance over at Taylor. Her eyes are closed, but she's frowning about something, so not sleeping yet. "Taylor?"

"Hm?"

"These parties... Your new friends... They aren't, uh... They don't..."

"Oh, we all inject heroin into our eyeballs and snort the ground-up bones of strangled orphans. You know how it is."

"Taylor..." At least she understood what I was failing to say, I think ruefully.

"I can pee in a cup if you like. Though I'm pretty sure they don't check for orphans yet, it's a fairly new fad."

"Was Cliff at the party?" I ask, changing the subject.

"We broke up."

"Oh. What happened?"

"Nothing bad." She's silent for a while before continuing. "It just wasn't love."

"I'm sorry." She doesn't respond, but her frown deepens. I decide to shut up and quit while I'm behind.

The worst part is, you can't even be mad at Newter. He apologized profusely for getting the dosage wrong and knocking you out for longer than intended (he also kept shooting weird glances at your forehead for some reason). It probably wasn't even his fault to begin with. His magic spit clearly interacted with your weird bullshit powers somehow, because the lingering olfactory hallucination went away as soon as you stopped using sorcerer's sight.

Then when you had finally gotten changed (body and clothes) and called your dad and had time to look inside yourself to try to figure out what happened, you found a brand new power in there.

Sorcerer's sight is fine by the way, it hasn't changed in any way you can detect and you didn't start hallucinating again when you turned it back on. Now if dad would just shut up and let you concentrate on the new one...

It's clearly not Newter's power: You're not orange. It almost appears... broken? It has ridiculously thick power conduits drawing energy from... wherever the fuck it is powers draw energy from, you still get vertigo whenever you look in that direction. Whatever it is, it requires much more energy than any other power you've seen.

But it doesn't seem to do anything. There's no functional part. It just draws in a bunch of energy, carefully divides it up and... stops. You'd call it incomplete, except you've never been able to anchor an incomplete power to your soul before. Though admittedly this time around you were tripping balls and/or on some sort of power-induced vision quest thing. Something may have gone wrong.

Until you figure out what's going on you're going to stay the hell away from Newter. Just in case it is half of his power and further exposure makes you turn orange.

"You know, we don't actually have to get rid of them all," the skinhead says. "We could just deport the men, and keep the women for ourselves. Don't import any new ones, and in a few of generations everyone will be white enough to be a citizen."

"Sounds like something the Romans would do," his buddy comments.

"Zeroth Reich best Reich," he agrees.

You're, like, 60% certain they're not being serious right now?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," your delivery driver (what was his name again?) objects. "Did you just tell me to fuck a nigger?"

"No no no no, no bestiality. The niggers gotta go. But there are other races who-"

"Goddammit Steve, are you trying to justify an asian girlfriend again?"

"Mmmmaybe?"

Okay, make that 80% certain.

"I don't blame him," Fake Swede remarks to the bartender. "Giving up asian hotties was the hardest part of becoming a nazi."

"Word."

Things get a bit shouty then, as several people simultaneously try to instruct the straying flock on the problems inherent in asian miscegenation. Phrases you can make out include 'man up and stop playing on easy mode', 'they're not even hot', 'do you want your sons to have tiny dicks?' and 'burn the rice, pay the price.'

Luckily that's when salvation enters the building. "Rune, save me from these dorks!" you shout as you flee the argument.

"You don't have to fraternize with the rank and file, you know."

"But then who would transport my dog food for free?"

"Oh fuck my life," Rune says. "We're going to need reinforcements."

You study the deadly threat that is currently approaching your territory, clad in green and white. That's... uh... huh. Idea.

"I'll handle it," you say.

"You what?"

"Don't worry, I've got a plan. Put me down."

"Uh-huh. I'll just hang back here, ready to swoop in and get your dumb ass out of trouble. And also call for reinforcements."

Rune sets you down at what she considers a safe distance, then backs her rock up even further. You send Fenrir forward at a slow walk, timed to meet your target at an intersection right on the border. She tenses as you approach, but from what you can make out beneath her visor she appears determined rather than scared.

"Good evening, colleague," you greet Vista from across the intersection.

"What?"

"I said, good evening." Most pedestrians have already fled to avoid getting caught up in your confrontation, but a few remain. Rather than keep to the sidewalks, they spread out in a loose cloud surrounding you both. Predominantly young men, you notice. Legally they are innocent bystanders who just happen to have terrible self-preservation instincts. In actuality, they are loyal sons of the Empire who are using their bodies to interfere with Vista's power (much like Faultline's, it is blocked by living things). You didn't even have to ask them or anything.

Vista looks around at the 'bystanders', then over your shoulder at Rune, who is conspicuously maintaining a vantage point down the road. "You're with the Empire," she says accusingly.

"True."

"We're not colleagues."

"No? You patrol your area of the city, I patrol mine. If we happen across a crime, we stop it. How are we not colleagues?" Some of the bystanders chuckle at that. "Quiet!" you snap. They quiet.

Vista is rendered briefly speechless by your impeccable logic, and you take the opportunity to extract a soul price.

Vista wants the respect of her peers.

How unfortunate that she is so resistant to considering herself Rune's peer. She's missing out.

"Are you going to fight me?" she asks eventually.

"Should I?"

"Are you going to let me pass?" Vista takes a step to her left. Fenrir does likewise to remain in front of her.

"Good question," you say. "I honestly don't know the policy on that one. Skin color checks out, but I don't think you'd be very popular. Do you promise not to try to kidnap- sorry, 'arrest' anyone during your stay?"

"You're not worried that I'm going to arrest you?" Vista takes another step to the side. She's cheating subtly by compressing the space beforehand, letting her cover more ground than she otherwise would. Well, it's subtle to other people, to you the compressed area is literally a huge glowing sign indicating the use of her power.

"Arrest me? What for?" Your smile might not be visible beneath your mask, but your amusement is clear in your voice.

"What for? You're a nazi!"

"Funny thing about this country: Unpopular political opinions are not actually illegal."

"You're with the Empire!"

"Oh, I know this one too: Freedom of association! Good old first amendment, ain't it grand?" Of course if you were to ask anyone in the Empire itself they would tell you that freedom of association died a long time ago - just try putting up a 'whites only' sign and see how free you are to choose who you associate with.

Vista's attempts at sidling around you has at this point failed completely. You have left the intersection behind and are now walking together down opposite sides of the street, Vista cheating all the while. She's either planning to try again at the next intersection, or it's a ploy to get you away from your meatshields before she attacks. But with Rune maintaining an eye in the sky you're not overly worried.

"You're seriously claiming to be innocent?" she asks.

"Never committed a hate crime in my life, guv'nor."

Vista maintains her causal walking pace, but starts cheating more blatantly. The distance she's covering with each step is clearly unnatural, now.

"I suppose you could attack me for no reason," you continue. "Like a true hero. But my backup is a lot closer. Speaking of which, aren't Wards supposed to only go out in pairs?"

"Shadow Stalker ran off on her own," Vista admits. "I was trying to find her."

And that led her in this direction, huh? You pull out your phone, call ops. "Be advised, Shadow Stalker may be present in Empire territory." You hang up.

"Why'd you do that?" Vista demands.

"Because it's my job?" Also because Sophia getting counter-ambushed and having the shit beaten out of her would make your day. "Say, are you seriously trying to outrun a wolf?"

Vista picks up the pace.

It's a pretty interesting contest. Fenrir can outrun a horse, Vista can bend space. Sure, there's little doubt what would happen in a fight - there's a reason Rune was reluctant to engage - but by unspoken agreement this is a street race. You quickly figure out that the effects of her power are permanent (or at least sticky), much to her detriment. That is, she has to constantly split her attention to manually untwist the space behind her as she goes, lest she vandalize the continuum.

Traffic is another problem, as both cars and pedestrians sharply limit how big an area she can affect. Considerably more than pure 'can't affect the living' limits would predict, too: She's too polite to suddenly bend space that a civilian is about to step or drive into.

Even then she'd quickly win against the majority of capes out there, because once she's at the limit of how much she can speed herself up she starts expanding the space in front of you to slow you down. Unfortunately for her, sorcerer's sight lets both you and Fenrir see it coming in time to dodge. Said dodges typically involve some less than polite proximity with pedestrians, occasionally jumping over their heads.

You're pretty impressed with how well she manages to split her attention four ways (she has to undo the attacks as well), she's even pulling ahead. So you direct Fenrir to move over to her side of the road. Vista instantly realizes what you're up to and expands space in the middle of the road to block you. She can't allow you to get into the compressed space behind her before she can undo it.

But she can't do something as simple as just putting up a barrier down the middle, because there's a limit to how thin an area she can affect - the blocking fields she puts up are wide enough to impede traffic, and so have to be deployed judiciously and undone quickly. Fenrir still ends up running flat out, juking and poking back and forth across the street to dodge and bait out the obstacles she throws up.

The little monster is way too good at what she does, in your opinion. You can't believe a goddamn twelve-year-old is giving you this much trouble. Indeed, a relatively empty stretch of road finally spells your doom, as Vista finally manages to completely encircle you and sprint ahead before Fenrir can work his way through.

"Ha! Got you!" She stops running and looks back at you with her hands on her hips, panting for breath but triumphant.

Yep, she beat you fair and square. But she certainly seems to have had fun doing so. Thus, you deploy your secret weapon: "Best two out of three?"

Of course you're not going to be beaten the same way twice. You have a pocketful of change, and the next time traffic threatens to clear up you start throwing it at her to distract her.

"Ow! That's cheating!"

"Oh I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that there were rules."

Vista grits her teeth and starts trying to put even more unpredictable twists in the space between you, in order to throw off your aim. Such a shame that you can see them all clear as day, isn't it?

Okay, even if sorcerer's sight shows you how you ought to adjust your aim, you don't actually have a power for hitting what you aim at.

"Best three out of five?"

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Newter/Four-armed Scion/?: ?

Mechanics corner

Oh my, did she get something more than just Essence 3?

Chapter 31: L.08

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Aegis-o-vision

"Alright, listen up," I tell the assembled Wards. "Yesterday Vista encountered a new parahuman affiliated with the Empire 88. There have been rumors about a new recruit circulating - apparently she goes by 'Low Key' - but this is the first solid info we have. Vista, why don't you tell us what you observed?"

Vista - Missy - stands up and clears her throat. "Alright. I was proceeding down Acker street when I spotted Rune in the distance. She did not move to engage, but dropped off another parahuman and hung back to observe. Said parahuman did approach me, but stopped several yards away and made no hostile moves. She then initiated a conversation."

"Where was Shadow Stalker during this?" I ask, already suspecting what answer I'm going to get.

Missy glances at Sophia. "Shadow Stalker was scouting ahead at the time. Seeing that the parahuman was not hostile she remained at a distance, ready to intervene but not wishing to provoke a fight unnecessarily."

This is obviously a big, steaming heap of bullshit. I would be able to tell even without Dean giving the game away (it's not that his poker face is bad, it's that he only ever wears it when he's trying to hide something).

Scouting ahead? Sophia, not attacking an Empire cape on sight? She clearly ran off on her own again and never even saw Low Key. And Missy is covering for her. They don't even like each other, but you simply don't tattle on a colleague.

I can't even complain, really. I did my fair share of covering before leadership was thrust upon me.

"Console? Can you confirm this sequence of events?" I ask Chris.

Both Missy and Sophia are giving Chris some rather unsubtle glares. "Uh, yeah? That's what happened." I repress a sigh. As console it was his job to keep Sophia on task, and send it up the chain if she refused orders. He was no doubt caught up in some Tinker project or other and completely forgot about his duties. Again.

At least that's an honest fuckup. Unlike Dennis, who deliberately lets Sophia have her way in a misguided attempt to get into her good graces (and/or pants).

"Alright, moving on. Can you summarize your conversation?"

"She, ah, stated that we had no reason for conflict. She admitted to being part of Empire 88, but appeared to consider herself a 'fellow crime fighter'."

"What, like the crime of being black?" Sophia asks sarcastically.

"She claimed to not have committed any hate crimes," Missy says.

"Bullshit."

"We cannot prove otherwise," I interject. "There are no outstanding warrants for Low Key."

"That just means she hasn't gotten caught yet," Sophia insists. "Of course the nazi bitch has done something."

"That's as may be, but we can't arrest people on a charge of 'you've probably done something'. Please continue, Vista. What happened then?"

"I, uh... Since she was a potential future threat but not currently hostile, I challenged her to a friendly contest in order to gather information about her powers."

Vista-o-vision

Yeah, that's the ticket. I'm a professional. I most certainly did not get caught up in the moment. There was no childlike glee.

"That would be the 'spacewarp footrace' that has been making the rounds on the internet all day," Dennis helpfully points out.

Missy blushes slightly. "Uh, yeah."

"I can't believe how much footage there is," he continues. "How much of your patrol did that take up?"

Her blush deepens. "...essentially all of it."

"Console can confirm," Chris says cheerfully.

I make a cutting gesture, indicating that they should stop their teasing. "Please describe her powers."

"She's a Master. Not the scary kind. She has this giant wolf that she rides. I'm not sure how she does it-"

At that phrasing, all eyes in the room turn towards Dennis. "What?" he asks. "You're clearly already thinking 'Dennis is going to say 'doggy style'' - which means it wouldn't be funny if I did." He waves at Missy. "Please, keep telling us about Ilsa, she-wolf of the SS."

I groan and massage my temples. "Dennis..."

"I don't get it," Chris says. "Was that a joke?"

"It was," Dean confirms. "...I don't get it either."

"No, see, the joke is that Carlos clearly got it," Dennis explains, "which tells us amazing things about his taste in movies. Whatever you do, don't google it at work." He leans back in his seat and gives me the smuggest goddamn smirk.

"Are trying to get console duty?" I ask.

"Fucking seriously?" Sophia exclaims. She has her phone out, and is looking at it with a mixture of shock and disgust. "A porno set in the holocaust?"

"I just told you not to google it at work," Dennis says. "Seriously, it would have been so much funnier if everyone found out on their own and came back tomorrow not wanting to be the first to bring it up."

"I didn't watch it," I say defensively, "I just heard about it."

"Uh-huh, yeah, we definitely believe you," Dennis says.

"You realize that you knowing about it is equally damning, right?"

"Yeah, well, only one of us has any dignity to lose."

"Ain't that the truth," Sophia says.

"Two weeks of console duty for inappropriate behavior," I decide.

"I accept your just and unbiased judgement, o fearless leader."

"Should'a just gone with the doggy style joke," Chris tells him.

"Worth it."

I sigh, and gesture for Missy to continue.

"Uh, right. As I was saying, I'm not sure how she does it, but she never once had any trouble directing the wolf. I'd be tempted to say a direct mental link, like it was part of her body. Except she congratulated and petted the wolf when she won a race. Why would you pet something that's part of yourself?"

"Oh god," Dennis says, "right across the plate. I'm already out, someone else lay bat to it."

"We'll explain when you're older, squirt," Sophia says with a less than good-natured smirk.

"Three weeks of console duty," I say. "Each."

Sophia turns to Dennis. "You owe me, Clock."

"Still worth it."

"Your thoughts on threat rating?" I ask Missy over their banter, trying to keep things on track.

"Master 4, sub-rating Brute 4, Thinker 2, Mover 2," she answers crisply. She's obviously thought about it in advance. Sophia scoffs, probably because it's higher than her own rating. I'm inclined to side with Missy, and not just to get this trainwreck of a meeting over with. One thing confuses me, though.

"Thinker 2?" I ask.

"I was able to obtain confirmation that the wolf has superhuman senses."

Vista-o-vision, last night

"How do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Dodging my power! Warps that gentle are practically invisible!"

"I don't know if you've heard, but wolf senses are considerably more acute than human ones."

"Sir?" Missy approaches me and stands at attention. "Requesting permission to approach Low Key with the goal of recruiting her into the Wards."

I try not to smile. I know she hates being seen as cute, but boy are her attempts at military bearing backfiring on her in that regard. At least she doesn't try to salute me, I would definitely crack up if she did.

"Permission denied." If Low Key had been hostile, if Vista had been attacked while Shadow Stalker was missing and console was goofing off, that would have been all our asses. I'm not going let her wander into that situation on purpose.

"Please?" She completely abandons her military bearing as she leans forward and deploys puppy dog eyes. "I believe her, you know? About being innocent, I mean. She should be one of us. We have to get her out of there before the Empire makes her do something awful!"

"So you were planning to what, wander around Empire territory looking for her? You can try to message her on PHO or something, but you are not to approach her, understood?"

"But-"

"Permission denied, soldier."

"Sir!" She snaps back to attention, then turns on her heel and marches off.

"I have some hot info you may be interested in," you (that is, Quicksilver) tell Faultline.

"Oh?"

"There's a-" crap, what's the PC term for monster cape again? "-a Case 63?"

"You mean Case 53?" She gestures towards Gregor.

"Right, a Case 53 in town that you don't know about."

"A potential recruit?"

"No. Not a chance."

"Then I don't see why I should-"

"I will pay for this information," Gregor interrupts. "You may take the cost of this session out of my next paycheck," he tells Faultline, who shrugs in response. His money, his business.

"Gallant," you say.

"Of the Wards?" Faultline asks, her disbelief evident in her voice. "What does he look like underneath the armor?"

It's your turn to shrug. You of course know that he looks perfectly human in street clothes. But while you may personally be a giant walking violation of the unwritten rules, you're not about to share the love.

"How do you know?" Faultline asks. "If you are able to convey it in English, that is," she adds archly.

"They're color coded for my convenience," you say with a smile. "You, me, every other parahuman I've seen, our powers all have the same color. And texture. Except it's not really texture texture-" Faultline motions you to get on with it. "Right. Everyone except Gregor, Newter and Gallant. Those three are different in both color and texture. But they're the same as each other. As far as I can tell, there are only two kinds of parahuman."

"What's your sample size?" Faultline asks.

"Uh, twenty-ish? Twenty five? Less than thirty, at any rate." There were a lot more capes than that in Ottawa, but you weren't really paying attention then. Were some of them off-color? Almost certainly. You don't remember.

Not that you could tell Faultline about that, regardless. Quicksilver never went to Ottawa. But speaking of Ottawa, another thought occurs to you.

"If it helps, I'm almost certain that it's a case of a non-standard power causing non-standard biology, not the other way around. I mean, most people probably think that, but I'm the expert saying they're right."

"I was not born a snail?" Gregor asks, clearly confused as to why you'd feel the need to specify something like that.

"Well, yeah. Not many snail people around. But I meant you weren't born with some congenital brain issue that messed up your trigger event." Dragon has a regular power, after all, and she's a robot. Hard to get more non-standard biology than that.

When Kid Win's power burns itself into your soul you literally fall out of your chair in surprise (you were admittedly tipping said chair back dangerously to get a better viewing angle, since you're sitting in the same row today). That's ridiculous! That can't have been more than - you do some mental math as you pick yourself back up - eight-ish hours of study time? There's no way you should be able to get it right that quickly.

Maybe if you had been sleeping at night like a sane person, you wouldn't have been too groggy to notice how unreasonably well it was going. You could have spared yourself a bit of pain and a lot of embarrassment.

You're not sure how useful it will be, really. You already have Dragon's Tinker power, which was like ten times as hard to learn. Even if difficulty doesn't map directly to power level, there must surely be some correlation, right?

You'll take it, though. You've lost count of how many times you've been stabbed in pursuit of Cricket's power, you'll happily accept a bruised tailbone in exchange for a mostly redundant Tinker boost.

You surreptitiously activate the power to see if it gives you any neat ideas. If Kid Win can think Tinker-thoughts in class, so can you.

Well, now you know exactly how the mechanical pencil in your hand works. That's neat, you guess. You never paid enough attention to pencils before to notice that you didn't really know how they worked. Now you're pretty sure you could build a pencil factory on your own. No ideas for building a pencil-cannon or a graphite laser or anything, though.

You slip your hand into your pocket and touch your cellphone. Wow, cellphones are complicated. Radio frequencies, voice compression algorithms and chemicals for etching circuit boards march across your brain. And you finally figured out how to make it stop suggesting that you upload every picture you take to social media!

Wait, social media? You fall out of your chair again as a tide of internet-related technical knowledge washes over your brain like a tsunami. Clearly, mental discipline is required when using this... industry and forge wisdom... around connected devices.

Still no tinkertech ideas, though. All his power did was to make you even more of a Tinker 0. Looks like it's still orichalcum or bust, if you want to go beyond the bounds of conventional science (you stifle an inappropriate giggle when you realize that you did in fact bring your bust beyond the bounds of conventional science, didn't you?).

Seriously, though. You really should decide what to make with your orichalcum. It doesn't do any good just lying around un-forged. The problem is that you don't have the time to forge anything right now, much less use the result in some clever new scheme.

The day passes without any further surprises. You catch a brief nap after school, then it's off to enact your old clever scheme, that of getting stabbed by Cricket a lot.

Or not, as it turns out. Cricket has finally gotten fed up with your complete inability to learn martial arts even on pain of large amounts of pain, and passes you back to Hookwolf. Oh goody, broken bones incoming.

And once you finally get Cricket's power working you're still not done here, because Othala is next. Your schemes are so clever.

Turns out that your (highly publicized - your classmates have been talking about it all week) encounter with Vista counts as a cape fight, as least as far as getting paid by the Empire is concerned. You did technically keep a cape from a hostile faction out of their territory. If you squint a bit you could even spin it as a taxing battle that lasted for hours.

Maybe next time you'll challenge Clockblocker to a dance-off.

"For, uh, dedicated service to the Empire," the bartender says.

Well, if you get paid, Fenrir gets paid. That's the rule you settled on. You find whatsisname, the delivery guy. Eric, right! "Please have another sheep ready on Monday," you tell him.

The other patrons are also talking about your exploits, you realize: "Who knew that Vista's secret weakness was her bedtime?" "I can't believe Low Key solved a problem without violence." "I know, right? Do you think she's been Mastered?"

"You shouldn't talk about Low Key like that," Rune calls from the doorway. She pauses for a beat. "She might beat you up."

Notes:

Updated status

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Mechanics corner

If you have no idea what Industry and Forge Wisdom does, I don't blame you. It's from that least beloved of splats, the Mountain Folk ('Mary Sue Dwarves', for you non-exalted fans).

It calls on their connection to Autochton ('Elder God of Technology') to give a modest dice bonus to all interactions with mechanical and/or magical objects. In the Wormverse, that probably shakes out as a side-channel to Dragon's shard or something.

I wanted an appropriately weak charm for Kid Win (it will make artifact crafting roughly twice as fast going forward - compare to Dragon's charm that shook out to an 8000x multiplier), that would nevertheless have appropriate fluff for also letting Taylor maintain regular tinkertech (though she doesn't know that part yet).

Chapter 32: L.09

Chapter Text

"Now that you're internet famous, you really should get set up with a PHO account," Rune tells you once you're underway.

"What for?" You understand that many people your age live what's practically an entire second life online, but you can not fit any more extracurriculars into your schedule right now.

"What for?" Rune exclaims in disbelief. "To troll your enemies! To see them driven nuts before you, and hear the lamentations of the moderators!"

"Eh. You stole my best material already."

"I did? Oh right, the NASA stuff. I completely forgot to use that." She pauses to consider this, then continues on with even more enthusiasm. "Now you have to get online, so you can drop that line on someone!"

Rune will not be dissuaded. She goes so far as to make let you borrow her phone to register right away, and takes a selfie of the both of you posing with Fenrir to get you 'verified cape' status. She then guides you every step of the way through the 'shitposting' process.

"Here, use this thread. It's perfect!"

PH-O-vision

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Private message from modmail:

modmail: You received a 3 day suspension for your post in the thread: Boards Places America Brockton Bay Uber and Leet escape custody! Again!

Topic: Uber and Leet escape custody! Again!

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Uber (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)

Posted on March 9, 2011:

Why hello there, fans of the show! I'm happy to inform you that everyone's favorite dynamic duo will soon be streaming again after our unscheduled break (followed by an unscheduled breakout, haha!). Without revealing too much, let me just say that Leet has something special planned to celebrate our newfound freedom. You don't want to miss it!

I'm a bit disappointed that I had to make this thread myself, though. Why, last time we escaped we arrived back at the lair to find a thread chronicling our exploits already up.

You have to be on your toes to keep up with the likes of us, loyal viewers!

- Love and kisses, Uber

(Showing Page 7 of 7)

► rrqn

Replied on March 10, 2011:

It's a shame they couldn't stream the escape, I bet it was awesome.

► Clovis66

Replied on March 11, 2011:

rrqn

inorite?

► Cuddly Octopus

Replied on March 11, 2011:

What do they make those cells out of, swiss cheese?

► Low Key (Verified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Replied on March 11, 2011:

At least NASA got to the moon eventually.

► rrqn

Replied on March 11, 2011:

Low Key

Who are you? Are you a new cape?

► Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 11, 2011:

That note was you? Fite me IRL!

► Low Key (Verified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Replied on March 11, 2011:

Clockblocker

I probably will end up doing that at some point, yes.

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: Threats of violence are against the board rules.

► road_to_hell

Replied on March 11, 2011:

rrqn

That's the wolf girl from the videos. You know, Vista's buddy.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 5, 6, 7

"Nice even-handed moderation," you comment mildly as you hand the phone back to Rune.

Rune reads through what transpired, then throws her head back and shouts to the heavens. "Two posts! Witness me, gods! She got banned after two posts! She truly is my son." She mimes wiping away a tear.

At one point during the patrol you notice that you've picked up a tail. Since Rune doesn't notice, and you recognize who it is, you don't say anything. Once you've parted ways for the evening you direct Fenrir into an alley, and wait.

"Good evening, colleague," you greet Vista as she rounds the corner. Rather than her usual colorful outfit, she's dressed in street clothes, with the hood of her jacket pulled up and - you squint in the evening gloom - a domino mask? So, she's incognito. Like there were any other parahumans her size in the city.

"Hey." She doesn't bother to object to the form of address this time around. "Wanna hang out?"

"Yeah, sure. One sec. Can you keep a secret?"

"What?"

"Well, I'm going to call home. I'd appreciate if your bosses didn't get a time and place to trace the call from."

"I wouldn't do that!"

"'Kay." You get out your phone and dial home. Trusting a hero? Well, it's Vista. And while young does not necessarily mean innocent, you're pretty sure Armsmaster would have provided her with a tinkertech wire if she was going to fuck you in that particular way. And sorcerer's sight shows that she's clean.

Vista-o-vision

Maybe it's a bit rude, but I stick close enough to listen in on the call. It's not that I don't trust her (it's not!), I just want to know more about her.

"Hey, it's your favorite daughter. Just calling to tell you to go to bed."

...

"No, it's not another party. I'm going to hang out with my friend Vanessa for a while."

...

"I know it's late. She works part-time too, this is the only time we can hang out."

...

"It's fine. She lives in Empire territory. Name one safer place for a pair of white girls to be out after dark."

...

"Fine, if it gets too late I'll stay over at her place. Just go to bed, okay?"

...

"I'm trying to make sure my terrible life choices only affects one of us."

...

"Love you too."

"'Vanessa?'" she asks.

You shrug. "It sounds a bit like 'Vista', helps me keep my lies straight. Feel free to refer to me as Louise, or Kayden or whatever, if you need to."

"Uh, we - I mean, the Wards - already have a name for you." Wait, is she blushing?

"Do tell."

"It's... Ilsa." Yes, definitely blushing.

"Oh, a German name," you say, your voice flat. "How clever."

"Wasn't my idea," Vista defends herself.

"Whatever, you can use that too. Or wait, as a Ward you're already out to your parents, aren't you? But seeing as you're incognito right now..."

"They won't care," Vista says with a certain heat. "If I'm out of the house that just means they don't have to feel guilty for screaming at each other in front of the kid."

"Sorry."

"It must be nice, having parents that care about you," she mutters, half to herself.

"Don't assume the plural," you tell her.

"What? Oh."

"Sooo..." you say into the awkward silence. "You wanted to hang out. With less publicity than last time, I assume."

"Yeah. Here, let me just..." Vista compresses the space between the ground and the rooftops enough to easily hop up. "Ta-da!" she calls, her voice echoing strangely as the sound reaches you both the long and the short way.

"Neat," you tell her as Fenrir jumps after. Yeah, if she hadn't stuck to the roads when you raced, you'd have been completely helpless.

Rooftop rides with Vista is even better than with Rune. Rune can only provide elevator service when the rooftops don't match up properly. Vista tells the concept of distance to go fuck itself without even breaking stride.

"Why are you with the Empire?" Vista asks after a while. So it's not just your company she's here for. Or should you say, she's trying to acquire your company on a more permanent basis?

"I can only do as my conscience directs," you say. You're bullshitting of course, but with all the unfair advantages you have you're pretty sure you can talk rings around the young hero.

"If you had a conscience, you'd be a hero!"

"Really? The worst villain may call himself a hero, for being seen as a hero is desirable. But a nazi? There is no more hated existence in all the world. Only a man of utmost conviction, with a brave and honest heart, who holds his principles above all else, would dare to stand up and proclaim himself such. To be true to himself, though he be reviled by all others."

"Nazis are evil!"

"At least they own up to their shit!" you snap at her. Then you take a deep breath, and continue more calmly.

"Look, a nazi is all 'Me am hate faggots. Me go punch faggot now.'" You make your voice as deep as it will go and do your best caveman impression. None of the nazis you've met talk like that. One of them tried to engage you in a conversation about why a disgust reaction towards male homosexuality is natural and healthy, evolved for good reasons, and should not be suppressed. But it makes Vista giggle despite herself.

"Now a hero, a hero will tell you all about truth, justice and the American way, then stab you in the back and piss on your corpse. And then the government will cover it up!" Ok, Taylor, relax. You may not be bullshitting as much as you thought you were, but that's no reason to go flying off the handle.

"We're not like that!"

"Oh? Well, you're very young. I'm prepared to believe that the others are keeping their dirty laundry away from you, for the same reason people tell their kids that Santa Claus is real." Holy shit is that pissing her off. You are, of course, abusing your knowledge of her soul's price in order to get a reaction. "They find deluded innocence to be aesthetically pleasing. So if you tell me that you personally have never covered up the wrongdoing of a fellow hero, I'll believe you."

Ha, that sudden shift from bristling to abashed. Got her!

"Like, say, your buddy Shadow Stalker the other night. You of course reported her, and she was punished for going MIA, or AWOL or whatever you call it."

Vista says nothing. Yeah, you happen to know Sophia personally, she doesn't do shit she doesn't know she can get away with. Well, except that time when she apparently straight up murdered a guy, and was punished by becoming a government-sponsored hero.

"Nor has she ever, I dunno, kept kicking a perp who was already down or something. And maybe you half-heartedly told her off and she ignored you or maybe you didn't, but it never even occurred to you to report her for police brutality."

"How do you know these things?" Vista demands.

"Im guessing," you admit. "Funny how I guessed right on the first try. Isn't it, hero?"

Vista sets her jaw and does not respond. Ok, that felt really good, but you shouldn't scare off the powerful parahuman who is sneaking out after hours to have her power studied by you.

"Wanna talk about something else?" you ask.

Vista remains silent for a while, concentrating on her space bending. You do the same. But the next time you stop for a breather she speaks up again.

"Can I pet him?" she asks. "Uh, assuming he isn't part of you. I wasn't asking to, you know..."

Wow, that's adorable. She's hiding her attempt to gather information about your powers behind genuine awkwardness.

"Go ahead," you tell her. You dismount and back off a bit as she approaches, because you know what comes next. Indeed, Vista has barely started stroking his fur when Fenrir flops over on his back. He's a good boy, but you're not completely confident that he'd remember about having a rider when there's belly rubs on the line.

Vista takes a step back at the sudden movement, but quickly gets the message and starts enthusiastically providing said belly rubs. There's just something about a happy dog, isn't there?

You wait until she's really gotten into it, then let out a lewd moan. Vista pulls her hands back as if they were burned, her cheeks bright red.

"Just fucking with you," you say. "Metaphorically!" you hasten to add, because that last statement could be considered ambiguous. "We don't actually share senses. Pet him some more."

Vista just glares at you, her hands on her hips. She makes no moves to resume. Aw, is she confused about what's really going on with your power? Such a shame.

Fenrir is looking at you with an extremely hurt expression. Was your joke really worth it, at the cost of his belly rubs? Was it really?

"Awww." You kneel down by his side and hug him. "I'm sorry. I'll give you extra belly rubs later tonight, when we're alone." You try to for a salacious wink in Vista's direction, but between the poor lighting and the full-face mask you suspect that much of the effect is lost. "If you know what I mean," you add instead.

"You're horrible," Vista says.

"Come on, admit that it was funny."

She admits nothing of the sort. Her lips do quirk up a bit, though.

It was funny. Also, judicious teasing will create an association in her mind between you and her peers in the Wards, and make her subconsciously seek your respect.

Chapter 33: L.10

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In Young Adult literature, teenage parahumans who operate without their parents' knowledge always end up going out in costume in the early hours of the morning. Somehow they are able to function this way, with only token mentions of 'I was tired in school the next day'.

The Empire does not do things that way. They believe in cultivating a future for bright young (white) people, and make sure that their patrol schedules are compatible with receiving an education. Preferably from home-schooling, since they have strong opinions about the amount of jewish propaganda in the standard curriculum - but that's not where you were going with this.

It's true that between school, homework, training with Hookwolf, patrolling with Rune and studying with Faultline you have very little free time right now. But that's okay - if you had any free time, you'd try to fill it up with more cape bullshit anyway.

The point you're trying to make is that your trashy pandering fiction lied to you, it's perfectly possible for a girl in your situation to get proper amounts of sleep.

But you only bring this whole thing up in order to let it serve as an ironic counterpoint, because this last week you haven't been getting any sleep at all.

Ever since you got a line on Lung you've been spending every spare moment in ABB territory, sniffing out his habits and circumstances. And as previously discussed, your spare moments mostly consist of those normal, sane people use for sleeping. Thankfully gang members are a fairly nocturnal species.

Your academic performance may have taken a bit of a hit from the way you slept through most your classes, but who cares? It's not as if your grades matter, because there is no possible scenario where you don't grow up to become a cape full-time. You were functional enough to stay awake during the few classes you shared with Kid Win, so it's not like you missed anything important.

Anyway, your oriental studies have been bearing fruit. You have a plan for acquiring Lungs' power, and after you parted ways with Vista last night the last piece fell into place.

Which is why you've got a prostitute chained up in your basement.

Ha! Just kidding, of course you don't have a prostitute chained up in your basement. It's not your basement, just a basement to which you have access. No way you're keeping her at home, what if your dad found out? If there's one more hilarious misunderstanding about your sexuality, you'll fucking snap and do something regrettable. Also he'd call the police.

Besides, she's technically not a prostitute. Lung doesn't share his girls, so she's more of a concubine. Except they also manage his household, so they are more like his common-law wives? Eh, whatever.

Her name is Nguyen Thi Kim Phuong, but you can't seem to pronounce 'Nguyen' to her satisfaction no matter how you try, so you call her Kim. Or in the privacy of your own head, Template.

You've spent all night and morning shifting your appearance to match hers, while also interrogating her on the details of her job. The eyes are the hardest part, hers are so red and puffy that have to more or less guess how they are supposed to look.

In other news, you've finally figured out how to use shapeshifting to purposefully modify your voice. Not to the point where you can imitate a given voice on command, but after an extended session of trial and error you managed to zero in on something that sounds almost exactly like your template.

It's not like you picked this girl at random, you were very careful in your selection. You see, it turns that out unlike in the Empire, where the occasional cry of "potato nigger!" hides a fundamental spirit of respect and cooperation, underneath the dragon's decree of brotherhood the various subtypes of asian genuinely fucking hate each other.

Yes, you've discovered an example of honest-to-god white supremacy: Whites are better than anyone else at not being racist. You wish you could share this observation with the rank and file, you bet it'd get a chuckle or two. But you can't exactly tell people about what you're doing right now.

Template is the only Vietnamese girl in the harem, which means that a) people have to use English if they want to communicate with her, and b) none of the other girls want to talk to her anyway, because they're all huge racists. You figure that this will give you the best chance of avoiding discovery.

No, you're not going to fuck the dragon. There are thirteen girls in the harem, even with draconic stamina there's no way he's making full use of them all every day. Template admitted that she's not very popular - as you suspected, given she doesn't even get to live in the building - and only gets utilized once a month or so. She went on at length about how this is definitely because a clique of Japanese girls are conspiring against her, rather than any failing on her part. You don't particularly care about the drama, but the confirmation of ethnic tensions in the harem is good news for you.

You'll just play the odds and hope to get his power before you're called on to spread your legs. Worst case scenario you'll jump out a window, land on a wolf and deal with the diplomatic fallout as it comes.

The ABB members outside the building let you pass without comment, so that's one hurdle down. The people lounging against the wall by the elevator do the same. Two down.

Lung's residence is on the second floor. It is the second floor. You're not sure exactly what makes this location desirable - it is fairly central as far as ABB territory goes, you suppose - but instead of finding a larger place elsewhere, Lung elected to knock out some walls and combine several apartments into one. It's not like the building inspector is going to dare speak up.

Once inside you're greeted by an incredibly beautiful Japanese lady.

"Ugly girl, you late!" she greets you. "Go clean!" Three down. And so begins your adventure as the Cinderella of strumpets.

Kim really isn't popular. You get to clean the bathrooms, do the laundry, dust and vacuum unoccupied rooms. You're trusted to peel vegetables, but not to cook. Just as well, it's not like you know any Vietnamese recipes.

You don't mind doing menial work while you build a new power. The only problem is that your duties are clearly meant to keep you away from Lung, lest he favor you over some other girl. You solve this by regularly interrupting what you're supposed to be doing and walking over to sneak a peek at the dragon. You swear you saw him subtly flex his muscles in response to the attention, once. If you've got it, flaunt it, right?

The other girls catch you doing it, of course, but there's nothing they can do about it in front of Lung. They wait until they are free, then they corner you out of his sight and slap you, pinch you and call you names. You should know your place. Which is in the trash, because you are trash. How could the master ever make such a mistake as to hire on someone as stupid and ugly as you?

You make sure to squeeze out a few tears to keep them mollified.

Lung probably isn't completely unaware of what's going on, because he makes a point of going to bed alone that night. This causes quite a stir in the harem - it's unusual for him to do so, and dragon nookie is a much sought-after commodity. They (correctly, most likely) decide to blame you. It's half an hour before they let you go. You try not to smile where they can see you. It's almost adorable, the way they think they know how to make someone miserable.

On your way home you stop by the basement to feed and water Template, and change her bucket. She's been an excellent partner in this endeavor, things were exactly as she said. Not that you doubted her - you had a heartfelt conversation earlier about the odds of anyone finding her before she died of dehydration, should Lung discover your deception and kill you.

Things get a bit more exciting the next morning, when Lung summons you for a private audience. Did he notice something? Or did he decide to make a further point by granting the unpopular girl a morning quickie?

You really hope not. The power is coming along much faster than expected, you'd hate to give up now. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad? You could - no, bad Taylor! You'd blow your cover in an instant. Even if your complete lack of sexual skills didn't give you away, your hymen definitely would.

You kowtow before him, carefully not glancing at the window you're going to jump out of.

"You wanted to see me, great dragon lord?" Yes, that is how he prefers to be addressed by his girls. Anyone else you'd mock for such an affectation, but he kind of is. If nothing else, the fact that no one has dared to make this preference public speaks to the truth of the statement.

"Em Kim Phuong," he says sternly. "Aiko tells me that you have been using."

Oh thank god, it's just bullshit harem drama. Hell, for all you know Kim has been using, and you just saved her life (Aiko is the girl whose soul price is to bear Lung a son, though you're not sure whether it's for romantic or economic reasons).

"Lies and vile slander, great dragon lord," you declare firmly.

Unlike your dad, Lung does make you pee in a cup. Of course he has people on call qualified to handle that stuff.

The medical technician (chemist?) speaks to Lung in rapid Japanese, but you make out the word 'Newter' in there. Crap. They do check for orphans.

Lung asks something in response, and the tech gives a quick nod and a "hai!". Lung dismisses him. Hopefully he asked "is she otherwise clean?", not "are you set up to get rid of a body?".

"When I give an order, I expect it to be followed to the letter," Lung says. He manages to make his displeasure quite clear without raising his voice.

On the one hand, Newter's stuff is widely recognized as harmless, so rationally it shouldn't be worse than having a beer or something. On the other hand, Newter does that weird platonic harem thing with his all-female customer base. You probably wouldn't approve of your girlfriend going there either, were you in Lung's shoes.

At least he sounds more like he's going to have you fired and less like he's going to have you shot. You may not need to jump out the window.

You kowtow some more. "I grovel for your forgiveness, great dragon lord," you say even as you exult in glorious alone time with his power. It might be the last time you have the opportunity.

Not everything would be lost even if he did fire you - you could always make it a long term project, hang out in your homeless persona and catch a single whiff of power as he walks past each day. But that would take... you don't even know. Months? You want dragon powers now.

In the end he decides forgive you, but not without punishment. Your punishment is great. By which you mean 'amazing', not 'onerous'. He makes you sit off to the side in an extremely uncomfortable position, forbidden to move the entire day. It's an asian thing, you guess. The other girls are happy because you're being publicly shamed, and you're happy because you're sitting in the same room as Lung. Everyone's happy. Well, Lung isn't too happy, despite your best efforts to look repentant.

Much like Cricket, he's also so laconic that you never did manage to get a soul price. Not that you need one, now.

At least you've figured out why his power is always on: If he actively tries to become a dragon even when he can't, he stores up 'dragon-ness' that will let him transform faster once he's actually in danger. Not being an idiot, he tries to become a dragon all the time. Though his tank is fairly empty at the moment, after his little jaunt into Empire territory a week and a half ago. It fills up with dragon-ness exceedingly slowly.

And just like that, it's over. Dragon powers get. In two days. You're almost disappointed that you didn't get to use the carefully planned rotating series of excuses and feigned illness that would let you ditch your other responsibilities and keep being Kim all week.

Lung orders you to remain in place overnight, to further contemplate the error of your ways. And if you needed to stick around any longer, you totally would! Instead, as soon as you're sure he's asleep you jump out the window and land on a wolf. Stings a bit, but you've had far worse. No one saw you drop, so you dismiss Fenrir again and calmly walk out of there. No need to cause an international incident.

As you make your way over to free the real Kim, you again wish you could tell the guys at the bar about your experience. "Did you know that Lung is just a big teddy bear at heart? I pissed him off and walked out of there on two unbroken legs! Oh and he makes his hookers call him 'great dragon lord.'" Maybe you'll tell Lisa instead?

"Thanks for your help," you tell Kim as you unshackle her. No, you don't feel bad. She choose this life when she hitched her fortunes to those of a supervillain. She's quite lucky to get away with a bit of light bondage. You even give her a hundred dollars for her trouble, in mixed small denominations.

"I suggest you leave town," you continue. "Maybe Lung will believe your tale about the Changer who kidnapped you, spied on him and ran off with his petty cash-" Kim's eyes widen as she realizes where money you just gave her came from. "-but I wouldn't bet my life on it if I were you."

With a wink, you shift your face back towards the one you wore when you caught her. "But since I'm not anymore, that's up to you. Toodles!" She flees.

Alright, that's everything dealt with. Now, let's take your new acquisition for a ride. Dragon powers, activate!

...activate?

Huh, nothing's happening. Reminds you of the first time you did this, with Lisa's power. You had hoped you had outgrown these kinds of problems.

So, some sort of criteria for activation?

You try making yourself angry, on the theory that rage dragon powers only work when you're angry. Nothing happens.

You try making yourself afraid, on the theory that threat-scaling powers only work when you feel threatened. Nothing happens. Yeah, ok, you didn't really expect that to work.

You decide to deal with your power issues tomorrow. Get some actual sleep on a school night, for once.

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Lung: ?

Mechanics corner

Now what charm is that, and what is preventing it from working?

Chapter 34: L.11

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

With Kid Win's power in hand, and adequate amounts of sleep, you have no excuse not to focus fully on your classes any more. So you do. This is a truthful statement, as long as 'your classes' is understood to be a euphemism for 'stalking Glory Girl'. You don't share any actual classes with her (she is two years older than you, after all), so you can only catch her during lunch.

A long-term project, in other words, since you can only manage a few hours of observation per week at best. But it's not like she's going to stop Mastering everyone around her any time soon, god bless her stupid bitch face. You wish other capes were more like her.

You wish Clockblocker would just go around freezing things in time all day long. People should constantly trip and severely hurt themselves, so that Panacea gets more exercise. Gallant should not be Glory Girl's boyfriend, holy shit run away! Goddamn emotion-sensing bastard is the greatest threat to your secret identity so far. Fenrir does his best to warn you of his approach, but can't always manage to do so without getting spotted. And he absolutely must not get spotted.

But when life gives you lemons, right? You duck into a bathroom and try to use the genuine fear you just felt in an attempt to activate Lung's power again.

Nope, it's still not cooperating. Well, you've got a plan to address that. You call your fixer for all things parahuman-related.

"What did you do this time?" Lisa answers the phone. You're not sure whether she Thinker'd that, or if she's just assuming that you wouldn't call her unless you've done something.

"Do you have a friend you don't particularly like?" you ask.

"That's an odd question, coming from you."

Yeah, okay, that's fair. "I mean, more than one."

Is that Sven and Alex at the bar? You suppose you're a bit early (Lisa's playdate isn't until tomorrow), they must not have gone out yet.

"Remember what our uncle said," Sven is saying, "'Having once understood the working of the colossal system for poisoning the popular mind, only a fool could blame the victims of it.'" Alex is nodding in agreement.

"I didn't know you were related?" you say, coming up behind them

Oh, you just said something hilarious. You didn't think so, but judging by the way everyone is laughing at you...

Sven manages to get ahold of himself long enough to explain(?) "Our uncle in the comfy chair." He can't see your baffled expression due to the mask, but apparently your body language alone is funny enough to crack him up again.

Comfy... chair? Comfy- oh for fucks sake!

"Uncle Adolf," you say, realizing. "Seriously, the kampf-y chair? How are you not killing yourself for that pun?"

"You bling gleat shame to the famiry," Alex agrees. "You must commit sudoku!"

Turns out that the shitty gossip rag lying around has a sudoku on page 13. Someone procures a pencil, and peer pressure is applied.

"I hate sudoku," Sven protests.

"Sirence!" Alex shouts.

You convey your appreciation of their humor by ostentatiously turning away with a sniff, doing your best to indicate how far beneath you their plebeian antics are. Call it a Rune impression. At least one member of the audience gets it.

"Any trouble with the other gangs?" you ask the bartender.

"Not particularly, why?"

"It's a funny joke, but naw, we're not doing that." You're vaguely aware of Sven still resisting the peer pressure.

"Come on!" "Bet you can't do it, huh?" "Yeah, you stupid or something?"

You shrug. "Lung went after us a while back." Also you're not 100% certain that no one spotted Fenrir last night. The street was clear when you jumped, but you didn't exactly peer in every window to make sure.

"Oh, that. Turns out one of his lieutenants got in a drunken brawl with a white guy, and lost."

"Yes, I'm stupid. Just a big dumb-dumb who can't sudoku."

"Dude, it's easy. Here, let me show you..."

"One of ours?"

"Eh." He makes a weighing gesture. "A citizen, but a civilian. I figure Lung was just making a point, saving face and all that."

"So it's over with?"

"Yeah. If he was really pissed about it, he'd have come at us again already."

"There, I filled it out! Happy?"

"You just jotted down random numbers! Gimme that!"

A cry for help splits the air, and Rune instantly changes course to respond. You feel a jolt of excitement - you have been so busy scheming and plotting that you haven't done any vigilantism, despite having your power for several months now. Immediately followed by guilt - there's a person in trouble here, you shouldn't feel excited about that.

The source of the cry comes into view down a quiet side street: A young woman, being held at knifepoint by a pair of youths. One of them is rummaging through a purse that you doubt is his property. The robbers are facing away from you, and haven't yet noticed their doom hurtling towards them.

You shoulders slump as you realize what's going to happen next: Rune will take them down in the blink of an eye, and your first time will be disappointingly brief. Wait, that came out wrong. You mean, of course it's good that she'll be saved quickly.

Contrary to your expectations, and almost as if she was reading your mind, Rune instead slows down and brings you down to street level.

"Show me what you've got," she says.

She doesn't need to tell you twice. Fenrir also gets what's going on, and jumps off the rock without prompting from you.

"Remember, leave them able to limp away," you tell him. Softly, because they still haven't noticed your approach, and you're of a mind to give them a bit of a surprise. Their victim has spotted you, but they don't notice that her wide-eyed shock isn't directed at them anymore.

Then one of them rips her shirt open and shoves her to the ground. Turns out it's that kind of robbery.

"Never mind what I just said!" you announce loudly. Both assholes turn around at that, just in time to get a face full of apex predator. Fenrir's jaws close around the shirt-ripper, who is lifted off his feet and carried along, while his friend is merely knocked over and trampled. It should keep his mind off things until Fenrir manages to turn around for another pass, at least.

"Don't kill him," you say. Fenrir has standing orders not to do that, but your instruction is more in the spirit of the exception proving the rule: Anything else is fair game. "Do get him to shut up," you add. You forgot to mention how he's been screaming and cursing ever since Fenrir picked him up, it's sort of annoying.

Fenrir gently shakes the guy back and forth - gently compared to what he could be doing if he didn't care about keeping him alive. It takes a couple of tries, but the asshole gets the idea and shuts up before the teeth can dig in too badly.

The other robber hasn't gotten up by the time you make it back to him, but the occasional groan tells you that he's still alive. Aside from that, he's commendably quiet. You slide off Fenrir's back and crouch down by his side.

"Do you understand why what you were doing was a bad idea?" you ask rhetorically.

"Fuck y-oof!" Anticipating your wishes, Fenrir places one paw on the guy's chest and gently squeezes the air out of his lungs. Again, gently compared to placing his full weight on that leg.

You don't think that's enough to get your point across, though. Also, there's this displeasing asymmetry where Fenrir's trampling only broke one of his arms. That's an awful lot of unbroken limbs for an aspiring rapist to have, isn't it? If you get the leverage right, and place your knee just so... yes! It's surprisingly satisfying to feel the bones snap. You sort of understand where Hookwolf is coming from now.

"Nice work, rookie," Rune says from behind you as you stand back up. "I especially like the way your wolf is posing with his trophies."

Huh. You suppose it does look like that, with one crook in his mouth and one pinned beneath his feet.

You're distracted from answering by the victim latching on to you. She's crying, and babbling. The general message seems to be 'thank you' and 'I was so scared', repeated over and over again. You just sort of stand there and let her hug you. You have no idea how to deal with this. She has nothing that you want.

Vista is a lot easier to deal with, you know exactly where you stand with her: You're friends. Friendship is what happens when people have the ability to destroy each other, but elect not to. No? Your best friend is someone with whom you share your deepest secrets and innermost fears. And then you trust them not to use that to destroy you.

Ahem.

You're reasonably good friends with Vista. She, obviously, is sneaking out alone after hours to fraternize with the enemy. You're under less strict discipline, but you did tell her your patrol schedule to allow her to do this more easily. Even disregarding the potential hero ambush that's setting you up for, Kaiser would be less than amused to find out that you shared such details with a Ward.

Never mind Kaiser, every crook in the city would want a piece of you should this get out. To Vista, you're a pair of parahumans socializing through power use. To you, you're manipulating her into using her power a lot so you can study it. But to everyone else, you're basically putting her through boot camp. She's going to be a holy terror on the streets after this.

She's currently got Fenrir trapped in a maze of twisted space. His objective is to escape, and it's not going very well for him. His so-called 'wolf senses' let him see everything that's going on, but that's only half the battle.

Some of the twists and turns she has put up have even you confused. And as much as you love Fenrir, you have to admit that Lisa was right: He's just not all that bright. It's not that you wouldn't punch anyone who actually said the words 'room temperature IQ'... but they'd probably be right, if it was a warm room.

"Try going left," you tell him. "Is left a good direction?" You can't really give more constructive advice without letting on that you have wolf senses/sorcerer's sight too.

"It's just performance anxiety," you tell Vista. "Separation anxiety? He'd do much better if we were together."

"I know. That's why we're doing this. What if you got separated in a fight?"

Not to brag, but you're pretty goddamn smug about how you're putting Vista through boot camp by making her believe that she's putting you though boot camp.

You're currently hanging out on top of the Medhall building, the tallest building in the city. As long as you're able to get up there - easy, when you can bend space - and you're not interested in causing property damage, it's even better than the boat graveyard for privacy. Not even patrolling parahumans go this high. Earlier you caught a glimpse of New Wave flying by below. None of them even bothered to look up as they passed.

The location also serves as a diplomatic fiction papering over the armed truce that lies beneath your friendship like a pea beneath a mattress. The fact that it's fairly close to Empire territory and away from the PRT HQ lets you have peace of mind, and the fact that it is a fiction, and that you'd be completely boned if she decided to leave you up here does the same for Vista.

Yep, completely boned. The roof access door is far too sturdy for Fenrir to break down, and it's not as if industry and forge wisdom told you exactly how the lock worked when you checked the handle or anything. Nor would it help you turn the metal decorations on your costume into an improvised lockpick.

On reflection, calling it 'Tinker 0' might have been underselling it a bit. More like 'Thinker 3'.

Notes:

Mechanics corner

It was only later that I realized that Industry and Forge Wisdom (Kid Win's granted charm) doesn't just apply to crafting rolls, but to all non-combat rolls interacting with technology. Which means that Taylor didn't just get a minor crafting bonus, she also effectively has Larceny 4 when picking a lock, Drive 4 in a car, etc.

I elected to keep it. Kid Win's charm initially appearing weak, but becoming powerful once you know how to use it properly? That's an even better fit.

Chapter 35: L.12

Chapter Text

Lisa is waiting for you at the coffee shop, along with her friend. Her friend is... wow. You don't really care for the effeminate prettyboy look, but even so you have to admit that he's incredibly beautiful. That dark curly hair, those full lips, that pensive expression...

You take a seat at their table, trying to act like you didn't just think those things. "Hey."

The boy grins at you, instantly transforming him from 'sensitive artist' to 'lovable rogue'. "Hi. I'm Alec."

"Taylor." You don't hesitate to introduce yourself truthfully. Alec is a parahuman (his power, currently inactive). Presumably Regent. He's got skin in the identity game, and two other Undersiders already know your name. "I hope you weren't waiting too long. I came as soon as class let out."

"You go to school?" Alec asks. He sounds genuinely surprised.

You have good reasons for that, but you don't feel the need to share that much about yourself and your powers. "You don't?" you say instead. "Can you even be a proper delinquent without a bike shed to furtively smoke behind?"

Alec rolls his eyes. "Yeah, nothing says 'rebel' like being addicted to the products of a multi-national corporation." He isn't looking at you as he says it. Lisa stops making love to her conspicuously branded coffee long enough to give him the finger.

"Lisa tells me that you need a man," Alec continues.

"I need more than just a man. I need a maverick, a rebel with a devil-may-care attitude, a bad boy who isn't bound by the rules of society. I need you, Alec. Fight me."

Alec was grinning along with you until you got to the last part, at which point he raises a single eyebrow. "That wasn't the verb I was expecting at the end there," he says.

"I want a friendly, but serious fight," you explain.

Alec shrugs. "Okay, I guess. Always happy to beat up a little girl. Wait, you're not secretly a karate master or something, are you?"

"Don't worry, I suck at martial arts. I lose against Hookwolf every time."

Alec remains unflappable, merely raising the other eyebrow. "If you fight Hookwolf on the regular, why do you need me?" You get the impression that he doesn't believe you about Hookwolf.

"Friendly, but serious," you stress.

"Yeah, okay."

"Shall we make the prize a thou-" Huh. You're in a place where you don't particularly care about losing a thousand dollars. "Five thousand dollars?"

"What?"

"It's not serious if losing doesn't hurt."

"Eh. How about if I win, you're mine to do with as I please for a night?"

A small part of you can't help being incredibly flattered that someone as beautiful as Alec would consider a night with you worth anywhere near five thousand dollars. Yes, even after taking into account that he's almost certainly fucking with you.

A more cynical part tries to figure out why he would feel that way about your decidedly unappealing true form - what manner of disgusting kinks does he have, to drive off all other women? You suspect that you really wouldn't want to find out the hard w- oh!

"Deal!" you say. This guy is a genius. Now that's how you make things serious, unlike your fumbling attempts with mere currency.

"But what if I win?" you ask. "And don't say that you'll be mine for a night."

"I'll be yours for- aw."

"Seven nights," you say. "And you must do exactly as I say."

"Seriously? What manner of disgusting kinks do you have, that you can't just hook up at a club?"

"You'll find out when I beat your ass." Boy is he going to be disappointed.

"I could tell you," Lisa says. "I could, but I won't."

Alec ignores her with the ease of long practice. "Seven nights versus one?"

"Does that seem unfair to you?" you ask.

"And they say we live in a patriarchy," Alec says, which you take as acquiescence.

"Let's go, then. Lisa, finish your multi-national rebel beverage."

As you stand up, you deftly extract a soul price.

Alec wants to have slave puppets again, without revealing his true identity.

You think you may have figured out his disgusting kink. Just a hunch.

Lisa leads you to an abandoned industrial property - it's not like there's a shortage of such, but her power lets her find one without any loitering addicts on the first try.

"You do your stuff," she says disinterestedly. You guess she's already figured out who's going to win. You deliberately didn't look her way, to keep things in suspense.

"What rules?" Alec asks.

"Rules are for losers. Guard your junk!" You punctuate your words by throwing the first punch.

You had hoped to take him by surprise, but his power activates almost instantly and your arm twitches to the side. Your fist goes flying past his ear, and the momentum sends you stumbling into him. He takes the opportunity to drive a knee into your gut.

Oof, right in the Brute rating. Heh. Fair's fair, he gets to use powers, you get to use powers.

You shove him away before he can do anything else, and he goes for a body blow. Even you can tell that his form is terrible. You might even have been able to block it, if you didn't lose control of your arm again. Instead, the cheating bastard punches you right in the tit. Joke's on him, there's currently nothing there. Okay, no, it still stings. You should have worn your padded training clothes.

It quickly becomes obvious that while you're evenly matched in strength, you're a (slightly) better fighter, and you have the reach advantage. If he didn't keep spamming his power it would be over relatively quickly. But with you only able to use three limbs at a time - and which three shifting all the time - it's surprisingly even.

You keep not turning into a dragon, despite being in a genuine fight with genuine stakes.

Then Alec changes tactics and gives you an intense stomach cramp. You weren't ready for that, and he's able to use the distraction to land a beautiful hit right in the kisser.

"Any particular reason you're fucking around instead of turning me into a slave puppet?" you ask, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

Alec groans. "I need fewer Thinkers in my life."

You're both a bit battered, but at this rate it's going be a while before anything is decided. Lisa seems to have wandered off at some point, you note. The entertainment factor is clearly lacking.

"Let's get a bit more serious," you say, and charge him.

He twitches your right leg as you're about to put your weight on it, but you're expecting it and use your left leg to launch yourself forward as you fall. Your head hits him in the stomach, and you go down together.

He gets the better end of it, twitching your arm back and catching it as you fall. You end up with him mostly on top, with your arm in a submission hold. Good. You start really hammering on Lung's power.

It's still not cooperating. What the hell is wrong with it? Your virtue and/or free will is on the line here, there could not possibly be a more appropriate time to turn into a dragon!

"Give up?" Alec asks.

"Never!" You violently throw yourself to the side, in the direction the submission hold was intended to prevent. Alec clearly isn't ready for it, as his grip breaks just after your arm does. You ignore the pain and resume attacking, down another limb. At least you've trained for this part.

Things quickly devolve into a panting, swearing mess of rolling around on the floor. Calling it 'wrestling' would be far too generous. It's taking a while, but you're pretty sure you're losing. Alec wastes no time in taking advantage of your broken arm, and manages to send you reeling back in pain every time you go for the nuts.

You admire Alec for giving you exactly what you wanted almost as much as you hate Lung for his shitty broken power. That still! Won't! Work!

You're the first to resort to hair-pulling. Alec counters by trying to gouge your eyes out. He's a bit careless, though, and you manage to catch his little finger between your teeth. You bite down with all your might.

"Fuck!" Alec yells as he pulls his hand away minus one finger.

"He'll agree to a draw as long as you don't swallow that," Lisa announces, having returned at some point while you were busy. She's carrying a shopping bag, you guess getting groceries was more interesting than sticking around to watch your trainwreck of a fight.

"What she said," Alec agrees, surprisingly calm given what just happened. He lets go of you.

Lisa holds out her hand in front of your face. "Now spit."

You spit.

Lisa retrieves a bottle of water from her bag and rinses off the severed digit. Next she takes out a plastic bag full of ice water that she just happened to have prepared, and drops it inside. She smirks at you when she catches you looking, and tosses you a roll of bandages.

You didn't actually pay any attention during your first aid classes. Neither did Alec, by the looks of it. With two functional hands between the two of you, you haphazardly wrap things around other things until the bleeding has at least slowed a bit.

"I like your style," Alec says. "We should hang out again some time." He sounds remarkably cheerful, like he hasn't noticed how he's pale and swaying on his feet.

You hear a vehicle pull up outside. "Ambulance's here," Lisa announces.

"Let's," you tell Alec. "We can bond over how much we hate stupid show-off Thinkers."

"Let's go, Alec." Lisa puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Wait, I have to get her number first!" Alec gropes for his right pocket with his left hand, with little success. Lisa starts pushing him towards the exit. "You're cockblocking me something fierce here, Lisa! What kind of friend are you?"

"I'll give you her number," Lisa says, still pushing. "After they sew your finger back on."

Alec manages a quick "later!" as he's hustled out the door. You settle down to sulk for a bit.

You genuinely panicked for a bit back there, yet didn't grow a single scale. What the hell is blocking your dragon powers? Also, you're mildly peeved at the way Lisa completely ignored your broken arm. Yes, she knows you'll get it regenerated later tonight, but still. Hmph. She could at least have stuck around to help you get changed.

Your phone rings while you're on your way to Hookwolf's dojo (don't call it that to his face). An unknown number, but you have a faint suspicion.

"Alec?"

"Hey babe. Guess how many drugs I'm on right now?"

"All of them?" you hazard.

"Yes! But hardly any of the fun ones. It's all antibiotics!"

"I'm sorry?" It seems like the right thing to say, considering that it's all your fault.

"You should have heard the doc cursing when we told him you bit it off. To hear him tell it I would have been better off dipping it in a toilet than in someone's mouth."

"Huh. I guess 'lick your wounds' is a shit saying, then."

"That's what I said!" He's laughing, and you can't help but to join in. You've never met anyone so happy to be sent to the hospital. Presumably he got at least some of the fun drugs.

"He wasn't amused," Alec adds once you've quieted down, which sets you off again. "No really, he explained how animals have much cleaner spit than people, so licking your wounds is fine if you're a dog."

"Oh. For the record though, I'm unusually disease-resistant for a human."

"That's good, right?"

"Could be. I'm not sure how it works. Maybe I've already killed all the bad bacteria in my mouth. Then again, maybe I'm breeding an extra nasty super-resistant flesh-eating plague in there without noticing. If your hand turns black and has to be chopped off you know who to blame."

"I wouldn't blame you for that," he says softly. The sudden sincerity in his voice gives you a strange feeling. You've known each other for less than a day, most of which was spent trying to wreck each other. Is he- "It is my wanking hand, though," he continues more cheerfully. "You'd have to take over those duties at least." Never mind!

"I have things to do," you tell him, amusement and annoyance mixing in your voice. "Talk to you later."

"Bye."

You put the phone away. That wasn't you making excuses to end the conversation, you did just arrive at the dojo (DCITTHF).

You give Hookwolf a nod as you march past him on your way to Othala.

To your surprise he stops you, reaching out to grab your good shoulder.

"What happened?" he asks. Huh, he does care. Though you're not sure if it's concern for your wellbeing that motivates him, or (as has been suggested by the rank and file) jealousy over someone else breaking your bones.

"My civilian identity got in a fight."

"And lost," he says flatly.

"The other guy left in an ambulance. I'd call it more of a draw."

"Hm. Get healed, then show me what you did."

"You'll be disappointed. Guy didn't know how to fight at all."

"At least you know enough to recognize that." With a gentle push, he sends you on your way to Othala.

"Jonesing that hard for Hookwolf-brand TLC..." one of the unpowered mooks mutters as you walk past him. You have absolutely no idea what he just said, but you give him the finger just to be sure.

The rest of the evening goes exactly how you'd expect. Hookwolf is indeed disappointed, and shows it in the usual way. You get the impression that he doesn't believe you about the ambulance.

Chapter 36: L.13

Chapter Text

"It's not a mental block," you tell Faultline at the end of another session.

"Hm? Oh. So you can't help me?"

"Afraid not. The inorganic limitation is built in to the power. Structural."

"What about a second trigger?"

"Wait, second triggers are real?" It's not that you had any concrete theories as to the nature of powers - you're quite happy to just call it magic, confident that you'll be less wrong than the average parahuman researcher. Still, her casual mention of what you had assumed to be a conspiracy theory throws you for a loop.

"Of course. How do you not know this?"

You shrug. "The site I read about second triggers on also claimed the moon landings were fake."

"Even a madman may claim that the sky is blue. That does not make it green." She tilts her head to the side as she looks at you. "Narwhal is probably the most well known second trigger. It's right there in her PHO wiki entry, if I'm not mistaken."

"Well excuse me for not reading the entire wiki."

"Nor any scientific literature, it would seem. Anyway, would it work? I suppose not in my case, since I'd see it coming. But theoretically?"

"Maybe? I don't know. I haven't even seen a first trigger in person."

"Nor will you."

"Excuse me?" You take half a step back and start raising your arms into a defensive posture. You didn't expect her be so angry about her lack of prospects that she'd shoot the messenger, but-

Faultline heaves a deep sigh. "A trigger event knocks out all nearby parahumans for half a minute or so, right as it happens. Don't you know anything?"

You relax your stance, and pout fetchingly. "I'm an engineer, not an academic."

"Yet you can't engineer me a better power."

"Sorry."

"I feel a bit silly now, having spent so much effort chasing something that would never happen." She gestures towards her xylophone contraption. "Assuming, of course, that I take your word for any of it."

"Let's assume that," you say a bit sharply. What is it with people and vain hope anyway? "Because I have no reason to lie. We are not enemies, it would not harm me should you gain power. If greed drove me to deceive, I'd be selling you snake oil. Quashing your hopes pays me nothing."

"That's fair. We're done here then?"

"What? No! We're maybe halfway done. I have to, uh... English. Bad analogy time?"

"Go ahead."

"Your power is a television. I've figured out that it doesn't get cable, and that's what you're interested in. But I haven't traced the circuits and figured out how it converts an electrical signal into moving pictures, and that's what I'm interested in."

"I see why you'd call yourself an engineer. Same time next week, then?"

"I've managed to free up my weekends going forward, too." With Lung done, you could stand to slow down and focus a bit more - just because Lisa suggested it doesn't automatically make it a bad idea. But thinking about Lisa reminds you of something else she said. "Then again, I've heard that you villains value your free time..?"

Faultline snorts. "Who told you that?" So she accepts the villain label, but objects to being seen as lazy?

"Client confidentiality." You don't want to link Quicksilver to Tattletale, not when Taylor spends so much time hanging out with Lisa. The fewer ties between your various identities, the better.

"I shall just have to imagine that it's someone I don't like, and I'll see you on Saturday. Same price as before. A deal's a deal, even if I'm unsatisfied with the results."

You quite enjoy the shenanigans that has been your life lately, you won't deny that. But honest and straightforward deals between professionals have their own charm, and you appreciate Faultline for letting you experience that too.

"I don't want to be a stick in the mud..." dad says as he picks you up, a safe distance from the Palanquin.

"But," you helpfully supply.

"But you've been out past midnight more often than not this past week. Don't you think that's a bit excessive?"

Really? You review the last several days. Last Wednesday, Faultline. Friday, post-patrol hijinks with Vista. Saturday and Sunday, Lung. Monday, Vista again, and back to Faultline today. How about that? Six out of the last eight days have been packed full of parahuman goodness. You can't help to grin at how well everything has been going.

"I have, haven't I?"

"You don't have to look quite so satisfied about it. You need to save some energy for school, too."

"Are you worried about my grades? Because I'm not the least bit worried about my grades."

"That's doesn't sound nearly as reassuring as you think it does, kiddo." Aw, he caught on to the hidden meaning for once. Everything would be so much simpler if you could just explain how grades are useless to your chosen career. But that wouldn't exactly make him worry less.

You pause to consider. You probably could cut down a bit, if it would appease dad. Vista is almost done. You'd peg her at two Kid Wins worth of difficulty, same as Lung. One more meeting should do it. Why yes, you're measuring powers in Kid Wins now. Or is 'Kids Win' the proper plural? 'kW' for short, an excellent unit for measuring power.

"And now she looks even more smug about something," dad comments to some unseen observer. "I should be worried, shouldn't I?"

"Oh, fine. Wednesdays only? And this Friday, I already promised Vanessa we'd hang out then." The weekend won't be an issue. Without any need to duck and weave and deceive with Faultline, you can just get in a solid block of power study and be back in time for dinner.

"Why Wednesdays?"

"Dog shelter Monday and Friday, self defense classes Tuesday and Thursday, remember? I have nothing to do on Wednesdays."

"It's fine to just take a day off and relax every now and then, you know."

"Don't wanna."

He chuckles at that. "Whatever makes you happy."

PHO agrees with Faultline, as you discover the next morning during computer class. There is a short paragraph in Narwhal's entry, mentioning that she did in fact have a second trigger event, that made her powers stronger. The word 'second' is not part of a link, and the rest of the phrase merely takes you to the regular entry for trigger events, which you already know has no further information about second triggers.

You turn back to Narwhal's entry and spend some time staring at the picture. Not for the reason that you imagine most other people do, ie the fact that she's naked. You are neither aroused nor outraged. You are in awe. Her 'costume' consist of a skin-tight layer of tiny scales, each scale a single forcefield created and controlled by her power. Skintight except for her forehead, where they form a long thin horn like that of her namesake. But the thing that leaves you staring in awe is the specific way that her second trigger made her stronger: It removed her Manton limitations.

The Manton effect is what keeps parahumans from killing themselves with their own powers, and what lets cape fights last longer than 2 milliseconds. It's the little understood phenomenon that makes pyrokinetics fireproof, and also makes it so that they can only conjure fire in the open air and not, say, the air inside your lungs. Telekinetics can't apply force directly to your heart or arteries or whatever. Faultline can't create fissures in living tissue, Panacea can't heal herself and holy shit you just realized that Panacea can hurt people too but doesn't tell anyone because why would you need to be protected from your own healing powers?

...Anyway, Manton limitations generally respect personal boundaries to a baffling degree. 'A person' isn't really a thing, physics-wise. Humans are made up of zillions of individual cells and bazillions of atoms, how exactly do the powers determine what is and isn't kosher to affect? Almost everyone seem to go for the 'mental block' theory, that it piggybacks the wielder's conception of what constitutes a person. But you just saw from Faultline that this isn't the case at all. The power itself recognizes aliveness and/or personhood, somehow. No matter how that happens, it means that important parts of your understanding of the fundamental nature of reality is wrong, and you don't even know which ones.

But you're not here to have an existential crisis. You're too busy freaking out about Narwhal. Her whole thing is that she doesn't have that kind of limit. She can create forcefields wherever she wants within a certain distance of herself - if they happen to bisect someone she doesn't approve of when they appear, that's fine. And she uses them for clothes. It's not just the brazen display of power, the horn would be enough for that, it's the control. She has hundreds of forcefields constantly touching her skin, every one of them capable of slicing through human flesh like it isn't even there. She has them when she walks, when she runs, when she fights Endbringers.

Most people probably don't notice, thinking of it as just an exotic bodysuit. Thinking that the forcefields automatically rest against her skin, somehow. But you can tell. You spent some considerable time recently studying the physics of the human mammary, and those puppies are clearly receiving support. It's armor, stiff armor that she is personally controlling to move perfectly with her body at all times, that could maim or kill her in an instant should she make a mistake.

Even though you personally consider Dragon to be the runner-up for the 'Most likely to wipe out all human life' title (behind the Simurgh but ahead of Behemoth and Leviathan), you may have to award 'Scariest Canadian' to Narwhal, on sheer panache.

Arcadia-rumor-mill-o-vision

"You know Taylor? The Winslow girl who doesn't talk to anyone? I heard she was caught looking at naked pictures in computer class. Pictures of girls.

Oops. Maybe you got a bit too distracted, staring at Narwhal. Oh well. That's Glory Girl's day made, at least. Santa Claus spreading a bit of joy in the world.

Not that your own day is all bad. You get assigned a group project with Kid Win in English class, which lets you interact with him enough to extract a soul price. Spoilers, it's really sad.

Kid Win wants to know his Tinker specialty.

How the hell does he not know that? You know it, of course. You know everything worth knowing about his power. As soon as you figure out which of your identities most needs a shitty Tinker minion, he's yours.

Chapter 37: L.14

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Wasn't it just yesterday that you were contemplating how well everything was going? Shouldn't you have learned not to jinx yourself like that by now? Those are rhetorical questions, btw.

"Get the hell out," Hookwolf tells you.

"What?"

"You're not welcome here. This place is for people who want to learn."

"I'm learning!"

He doesn't even deign to respond to that. He just stares at you. You stare back, full of defiance and indignation. Having the truth on your side really helps you pull it off. Just because you're not learning martial arts doesn't mean you aren't studying your pants off in here.

Unfortunately Hookwolf has figured out that the winning move here is not to play. Rather than argue further, he strikes you. It's a casual, half-hearted affair, more a slap than a punch. If you had paid any attention whatsoever to his lessons you could probably have avoided it easily. But you didn't, so you don't. Just before it hits, his arms splits open to reveal whirling blades.

They hit you high in the chest and gouge uneven furrows towards your left shoulder. Motherfucker! Does he have any idea how long it will take to repair your costume?

"Stop!" he barks at Othala, who was hurrying over to assist you. "Your healing is for fighters only."

"You can't do this to me!" you scream declare firmly.

"I own this place!"

"Kaiser - your boss - told me to go here until I knew how to fight."

"Fine. You know who decides that? Me. Congratulations, you just graduated. You know how to fight."

"That's a lie and you know it!"

"Get. Out."

Rather than initiate another staring contest, and risk further damage to your costume, you pull out your phone and call ops. "Low Key here. Me and Hookwolf need to see Kaiser."

"Why you little-"

Kaiser, having heard the testimony of both parties, leans forward in his chair and steeples his fingers.

"Self defense training is a right as well as a duty," he declares. "If her worst crime is being a slow learner, you have no call to refuse her."

Hookwolf grumbles under his breath, but inclines his head.

"And for god's sake, get Othala to fix that!" He gestures at your shoulder. You stopped bleeding as soon as was remotely plausible, but it still looks pretty grisly. "She goes on patrol tomorrow!"

"Thank you, sir." You really weren't looking forward to trying to hide that from your dad. Not to mention trying to shapeshift around it, should you be kept away from Othala over the weekend.

Hookwolf grumbles some more. Ah, sweet vindication. You have nothing to fear, when justice is on your side. Even if you did waste most of the evening waiting for Kaiser to deign to hear your case.

...though it occurs to you that if you had tried to get justice against a corrupt official in the regular court system, it would have taken months. Not to mention tens of thousands of dollars in attorney fees. Yes, you know that democracy is the only good system of government, you've been taught that your entire life. But this kind of... micro-empire? Autocratic sub-city state? It has its points.

Wait. If you've been taught your whole life that the government you live under is the only acceptable way to run things, doesn't that mean you've been indoctrinated? You're pretty sure that's the definition.

You meet up with Vista as planned the next day. Then things go off script before you can even finish greeting each other: Aegis comes flying around the corner, in costume, bearing down on you at full speed.

"Vista!" he calls out.

"Crap, it's the fun police!" you say. "Quick, hop on!"

Vista obeys without thinking, and Fenrir takes off. With him and Vista on the same side, it's not even a contest. It takes less than a minute for them to leave Aegis hopelessly far behind.

"I shouldn't have done that," Vista says afterwards, biting her lip. "I'm in for it now."

You rest a hand on her shoulder in quiet solidarity. Yes, you did deliberately push her to act without thinking, and she did regret it afterwards. You're still quite pleased that she, in that unthinking moment, chose you over her boss.

"Did you know he was tailing you?" you ask.

"No. Yes. I don't know." She takes a deep breath. "I saw him around a couple of times."

Really? Damn. You didn't notice at all. You've gotten sloppy, relaxing too much around her. This is why you don't trust people!

"He didn't approach then. I though he was just being overprotective as usual. Why do it now?"

When she puts it like that, you do in fact have a suspicion as to what may have changed since the last time you met. "I probably have paper on me now," you admit.

"What?" Vista flinches back, throwing your hand off. "What did you do?"

"I prevented a rape. And punished the offenders. Due to an unfortunate skin color mismatch, that's a hate crime."

"Oh." Obeying your subtle gesture, Fenrir nuzzles her comfortingly. Maintaining physical contact, so that she can't use her powers effectively should she turn hostile. She absently pats him in return, clearly at a loss as to what to do next.

"You still want to hang out tonight?" you prompt her. It would suck to lose access to her now, when you're so close to understanding her power.

She shrugs listlessly. "I guess. I already burned that bridge."

You take a step forward and place your hand on her shoulder again. "I'm sorry," you lie.

She looks up at you. "Tell me about it?"

You do, casually spilling details that Kaiser really would rather that you didn't share.

"Rune is a bitch," Vista observes when the subject turns to your patrol partner.

"She is," you agree. "The secret is to have her inside the friendship tent, pissing out."

She snorts, some of her good humor returning. "I'll take your word for it."

You're out even longer than usual. Vista is reluctant to part ways, knowing that her scheme to save you from the Empire has failed, and that the next time you meet it will be as enemies. You do nothing to mitigate the somber mood, at least not until her power is secure. Once that's accomplished, you give her a hug and wish her luck in apprehending a subset of villains that does not include you or your personal friends. She smiles a bit at that, at least.

Phew, she's finally gone. It's really hard, acting properly downcast when you're practically bubbling over with glee. When people talk about the most powerful capes in the city, they say 'Lung, Labyrinth, Vista(, future-Dauntless)'. Of those, you now have two down, one in the kitty. Never mind that the dumb dragon doesn't work properly. You'll figure it out one of these days.

You try not to visibly bounce with eagerness as dad drives you home. You do feel a bit bad about how little sleep he's been getting. Everyone would be happier if he was a slightly worse parent and just let you run around unsupervised at all hours. You shake your head. 'I wish my dad was more neglectful' goes on the list of things you never expected to think before you got your powers, along with 'losing a thousand dollars wouldn't particularly hurt' and 'Lung is a big pussycat'.

You rush down the stairs to your room. Time to test your power! Let's try... shortening the distance between the bed and the nightstand? You mentally reach out-

With a flash of light, your alarm clock goes flying across the room as if shot from a cannon. It passes through the dematerialized Fenrir and shatters agains the wall.

That power... mutated a bit more than you expected. Less battlefield control, more direct weapon? Let's-

"Taylor? Are you okay? What happened?" Your dad comes rushing down the stairs.

Oh. Of course he heard that. "Just an accident."

He looks at the plastic fragments scattered across the floor. "An accident?"

"Yes. I accidentally threw my alarm clock at the wall as hard as I could."

"Um. So. About you getting enough sleep..."

You roll your eyes. "Yes, dad. You're right about everything. I'll buy a new one tomorrow. Later today."

"You know you can tell me anything, right? If there's anything bothering you..."

"Yes dad. Go to bed dad." He does, thankfully.

Okay. Interruption dealt with, let's try this again. Carefully, very carefully, try to move one of the fragments ever so slightly.

A tendril of white light appears, coming out from the center of your chest and stretching to the piece of plastic on the floor. Said piece rises to hover a few feet off the ground, leaving a trail of ripples in the air as it moves - no, not the air. It leaves a trail of ripples in space itself.

Huh. It's still a warping power, that's for sure. A bit obvious who's doing it, though - Vista doesn't get the glowing tether pointing back to herself when she warps space. You bring the fragment up to your face for a closer look. Wait, you did what? Oh. You swish it back and forth in the air for a bit. Now that you know what you're doing, you can move things with your mind as easily as with your hands.

You mentally reach out for another fragment, and another mind-hand appears to pick it up. Neat. A third hand grabs a third piece without issue, but when you try for a fourth the first one flickers and disappears, dropping its burden. That's fine. Three extra hands are plenty.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, mind-hands turn out to be considerably more dextrous than regular hands. Speed of thought, and all that. No inefficient nerves or muscles involved. Your three hands can easily juggle six objects - probably more, but you don't want to cause any more accidents tonight. You just enjoy the sight of glowing tendrils weaving around each other to catch and throw various knick-knacks.

You're not sure how long your 'mind-arms' are, beyond 'longer than the entire width of your basement'. A trip to the boat graveyard is in order, for further research. All in all, an excellent Shaker power.

The tendrils aren't bright enough to cast shadows in a lit room, but with the lights off they provide enough light to read by, if only just. A book-holding hand that never tires, that comes with its own night light? Sorry sorcerer's sight, you might have a new favorite power.

You get ready for bed, using your mind-hands to get undressed and put on your PJs. There is no awkwardness, reflexes and familiar motions translating cleanly to your new appendages. But when you try to use them to deposit your clothes across the room, they bump into Fenrir. Fenrir, who hasn't materialized yet.

Your mind-hands can pet immaterial doggies! Best. Power. Ever.

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Lung: ?

Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation

Chapter 38: L.15

Chapter Text

Remembering what happened last night, you stop by the library before heading to the Palanquin. They have old newspapers, don't they? They do. There it is, in the Tuesday edition of the Brockton Herald: 'Two men severely injured in nazi hate crime.' Your good deed for the day.

A quick skim of the article reveals that it's pretty much exactly what you'd been led to expect. 'Minding their own business', 'unprovoked', 'vile', etc. 'Savage and remorseless beast', and you can't even tell whether it's referring to Low Key or Fenrir. You check the name of the author: 'K. Sandstrom'. Not a jewish name. Then you blush fiercely, even though no one will ever know you had that thought. You didn't start to believe nazi propaganda for a moment there! You were just, uh, disproving their claims. Yeah.

"Do you keep older newspapers around?" you ask a librarian. "Like, months old? Um, I'm doing a school project on Empire 88 hate crimes, I wanted to find articles about it."

The librarian, a nice old lady in her sixties, is only too eager to help.

"It's terrible what they do," she says as she leads you into a back room, where you find stacks and stacks of old newspapers. You start going through them looking for articles similar to yours, and she sticks around to assist.

"The older ones are all on microfilm," she says. "I can show you how to use the reader."

That's really cool, says the part of your brain that associates microfilm with espionage thrillers. It's wrong. Microfilm is not cool, it's tedious and fiddly. You think you'll be fine with the physical copies.

A certain pattern emerges as you read: The victims are disproportionately young men. And not to be overly sexist, but if you're looking for violent criminals (who don't have superpowers) you're definitely looking for young men.

You also see addresses mentioned you recognize as being inside Empire territory. You've patrolled those streets, you know for a fact that innocent people don't wander in there by accident. There seems to be a bit of crying wolf going on here, even when they're not crying about your wolf in particular.

Then you come across the story of an 8 year old black girl being killed in a drive-by. "Oh." Yeah, no. There's no justifying that one.

The librarian looks over at your exclamation. "I remember that. Terrible business. They caught the one who did it, thank god." She finds the 'shooting suspect apprehended' headline and shows you. There's a picture of the suspect.

"That's not a nazi," you say. Not unless he tried to escape the police by swimming through a vat of shoe polish.

"No?" That's all she says. She seems surprised that you'd think it was. You point out the earlier article, which calls it a 'white supremacist shooting', and mentions eyewitnesses.

"They must have been mistaken," she says. "You shouldn't use that one."

You think you're done here.

On your way out you stop by a library computer and enter a couple of names from the articles into an online police database. Most of them are indeed known violent criminals.

Turns you can't trust the nazi propaganda or the anti-nazi propaganda. What a world. If you can put your faith in neither the Fourth Estate nor the Fifth Column, what's left? Maybe you should make a mind-hands identity and join the Merchants? Oh wait, Merchant propaganda is "drugs are good, you should take lots of drugs" (there's also a fair chance Skidmark would insist on your cape name being 'Handjob').

"Your voice is different," Faultline remarks when you greet her.

"The old one wasn't working out. I'm trying to find a balance between sounding like my civilian self and straining my throat." What's actually happening is that you're using your new insights in shapeshifting to modify Quicksilver's voice - you sound less like yourself than you used to, and you're straining your throat less.

"I've never bothered."

"Well, your mask does muffle it a bit. I don't think I'd recognize it on the street." You tap your lips with a finger. "Some of us make sacrifices in the name of fashion."

Faultline snorts, and uses her power to split a piece of paper in two. The social pleasantries part of the meeting is over.

She's considerably less enthusiastic about using her power, now that there's no prize to look forward to. You have to clear your throat meaningfully when she goes too long without using it.

"Sorry." To her credit, she does not slip up again. A true professional.

After you leave the Palanquin, but before you can change out of Quicksilver, you run into Armsmaster. To everyone else, his armor is a tasteful dark blue with red highlights. To your sorcerer's sight, it's lit up like the world's gaudiest Christmas tree. He reminds you of nothing so much as a discount Panacea: Hundreds of individual pieces of tinker-tech are crammed together, each twinkling away in its own special way.

Unlike with Panacea though, you can actually make out what each piece does. Or you could, if he'd just stand there for a few hours and let you work your way through them all. Since it's not out of the question that you'll end up fighting/fleeing from him in another identity, you prioritize scanning for cameras and weapon systems.

"Identify yourself," he barks. He's doing a terrible job of pretending that he wasn't lying in wait for you, in your opinion. The odds of his patrol just happening to intersect your path are miniscule.

"Quicksilver, Thinker extraordinaire," you proclaim grandly, giving him a curtsey. "At your service."

One particular Christmas ornament in his helmet flashes, and his mouth sets in a frown. You know, that looked sort of similar to Lisa's power... Lie detector? This conversation just got a lot more interesting. Luckily you're very good at not lying.

"Ah, a man who prefers precision in all things," you say with a smile. "Allow me to amend my previous statement: While not currently at your service, I could potentially become so for the right price." You wonder if that's what set it off, or whether you don't properly identify as Quicksilver? But what else would you call yourself? You don't even have a cape name for your real powerset.

Well, not one you've ever stated out loud. If you could go back and do it over again, you'd be tempted to introduce yourself as 'Santa Claus' just to see what would happen.

"A mercenary," Armsmaster states disapprovingly.

"If you wish to name it such."

"Faultline's Crew?"

"Independent. Faultline is merely a client of mine. Never fear," you add as he opens his mouth to speak again, "the services provided are both legal and ethical."

Armsmaster relaxes a bit when that last statement doesn't ping his lie detector.

"I must urge you to consider joining the Protectorate," he says instead. "Independent Thinkers are particularly vulnerable, and villain groups will not balk at threats or blackmail - or even outright kidnapping - in order to recruit you."

Your smile vanishes. Armsmaster, aka Shadow Stalker's boss, has the gall to tell you that villains make people join them against their will?

"I do not believe further conversation would be productive," you say.

"As you wish. Please do not hesitate to contact the Protectorate should you require assistance in the future." Assistance with no strings attached whatsoever, you're sure.

As he turns to leave, you mentally reach out...

Armsmaster wants to be acknowledged as one of the five greatest heroes in the world.

Huh. Not 'the greatest' or 'one of the greatest'. Five is a very specific number, you wonder what his thought process was for arriving at it.

Well, there's an obvious way for a smug Thinker to find out: "Oh, one last thing," you call out.

Armsmaster turns back to you. "Yes?

"Who's on fourth?"

"What?"

"What's on third," you correct him. Alas, he just glares at you rather than continuing the skit. No sense of humor either. Though his aggrieved expression is kind of funny.

"Indulge a Thinker her little games," you continue before he can flounce off in a huff. "I only meant to ask, when you take your rightful place as fifth, who is the fourth greatest hero in the world? The first three are easy enough to guess..."

"...Dragon," Armsmaster admits after a few moments. "No matter what I do, I could never become more than the second greatest Tinker."

Dragon-reviewing-helmet-footage-o-vision

3

"Alas, poor Dauntless," you say, holding up a hand in front of you as if addressing a skull. "I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite potential, cut down in his prime. Such an unfortunate accident, with no witnesses-"

Dragon-reviewing-helmet-footage-o-vision

D:

"I don't appreciate what you're insinuating," Armsmaster growls.

"Where be your arclance now? Your boots? Your shield? Your enchanted panoply that was promised to one day rival Eidolon himself?"

"Goodbye, Quicksilver."

"Prithee, Horatio..." You trail off as he stalks away. Seriously, fuck that guy.

There was an interesting flyer at the library that you didn't have time to act on yesterday: Protectorate tours just started up for the season. Come see the technological marvel that is the Rig! Meet real live heroes! It's entirely worthless from a power acquisition standpoint, of course, just a brief peek. But that's not what you're after.

You keep sorcerer's sight off for most of the tour, to prevent any incriminating gawking. You don't know that Armsmaster has rigged the place with eye motion tracking cameras to detect suspiciously interested visitors, but you avoid making any hypothetical hidden tinkertech gun emplacements stand out in your vision just in case.

Only half the local Protectorate is present for the meet & greet portion of the tour: Triumph, Dauntless, Assault and Battery. Even so you hit a double jackpot when you turn sorcerer's sight back on: Not one, but two secret monster capes.

"It's a bit distasteful, don't you think?" you remark to a fellow tourist, loud enough for the heroes to overhear. You picked an old lady shape for this excursion, plausibly hard of hearing, just for this moment.

"How so?" he asks.

"'Come buy tickets to look at the weird people'? They used to call that a freak show."

Neither of the Case 53s react at all. If they're hiding mutations, they're not self-conscious about it. Dauntless twitches a bit, but he's a regular cape. Whatever his issues are, they're unrelated.

"Battery. Triumph," you tell Gregor. Easiest two thousand bucks you ever made (minus the price of the tour).

"I'm noticing a pattern," Faultline remarks.

"Yeah. The sample size is small, but they're three for three on heroes. I'm not saying that the government has a black site where they create artificial parahumans and memory-wipe the mutated failures, but... You know what moon landing guy had to say about conspiracy theories?"

"Enlighten me."

"He claimed that most conspiracy theories are intentionally promoted by the CIA, so that when the outlandish shit the government does get up to - like the fake moon landing - inevitably leaks, it's lost in the noise and no one believes it."

"Hm. While I obviously disagree with the particulars, I don't entirely discount that he might have had a point," Faultline admits.

"Thank you for your assistance," Gregor says.

"Thank you for paying my bills."

"I had an interesting offer after you left last night," Faultline tells you once Gregor has left.

"Oh?"

"Ten thousand dollars if I would reveal your powers, and the nature of our business together."

You can't help but smirk. You guess you spooked Armsmaster pretty badly, revealing his deepest desires (and the obvious conclusions drawn therefrom) like that. "Interesting. Fifty-fifty split?"

"You'd go along with it?" Faultline says, sounding surprised. "I only meant to warn you that you've caught someone's interest."

"Sure, why not?" you say with a shrug. "Appearing as 'troubleshooting Thinker/Trump' in the PRT database is practically free advertising." You suspect Armsmaster won't mention the part where you might be a 'motivation' Thinker as well - he'd have to document how he found out.

"The PRT? Paying for information like that isn't their MO."

"I know who it is. He's fairly well off, and at least slightly corrupt." You recall Not Armsmaster's letter offering to buy orichalcum under the table. "He might feel threatened enough to pay out of pocket, if he can't hide it in the budget somewhere. Maybe a little of column A, a little of column B."

"What did you do?"

"Just a bit of Thinking out loud."

"Terrible habit, that."

"I've yet to meet a Thinker who could resist."

"Isn't that the truth?" she sighs. "I'll set it up, and add another 5k to your tab."

Chapter 39: L.16

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You arrive at the bar to find an unwelcome surprise: You're no longer partnered with Rune. Instead you've been assigned to guard... one of Hookwolf's fighting pits.

"That motherfucker!" you exclaim, and proceed to explain to the bartender (and anyone else within earshot, which at the volume you're using is everyone in the room) exactly who you're referring to, and how you became convinced that he doesn't settle for flowers on Mother's Day.

"So let me get this straight," he says. "You're claiming that Hookwolf is getting revenge on you by scheming?"

"Yes!" You know how stupid it sounds without context, but your relationship with Hookwolf is a special case, alright? "Let's see how he likes being dragged in front of Kaiser again."

"Don't. Here, I'll show you."

He leads you through the 'staff only' door, into the operations center, and shows you the whiteboard with patrol schedules for the week. He walks you through the logic, showing how they are short-handed, and can't defend the fighting pits properly. Shows you the reports: The fighting pits are being attacked.

"It's still bullshit," you say sullenly. "He's doing it deliberately."

"Perhaps. But it's legal bullshit. He has the authority, he has a valid pretext. If you go to Kaiser with this, he will rule against you."

You grumble under your breath. The ops people look unsympathetic.

"Look, lady, you lost. Suck it up and move on."

As the parahuman on duty you're offered a ringside seat, but you find that dog-fighting isn't really to your taste. You elect to stand guard outside instead, with Fenrir invisibly patrolling around the building. You occasionally join him for a lap or two out of sheer boredom. You have to find a way to get out of this and back with Rune, this is unbearable.

What, are you supposed to be horrified at the treatment of the poor little doggies inside? Please. You eat meat. You don't labor under the illusion that animals are people. Except Fenrir of course, who magically turned into a person when you adopted him. That's not some touchy-feely 'my dog is special' bullshit. You literally used magic to transform his nature.

The average pig is probably both smarter and nicer than the dogs in that pit, yet most people who get conspicuously upset at dog fighting won't turn down a sausage any more than you will.

"Animal cruelty laws ensured that the pig that turned into this sausage lived a happy life!" they'd say. No they didn't. The discussion at the bar the other day revolved around the millions of illegal aliens working in near-slavery conditions in the agricultural sector. Big Ag clearly considers laws to be something that happens to other people.

(though one guy disputed the 'near-slavery' description on the basis that slavery wasn't nearly as bad as people have been led to believe, because of course he did)

For that matter, it's well known that Hookwolf used to participate in underground bloodsports himself, before he joined the Empire. He's not even breaking the golden rule with regard to these mutts. Hell, your entire career in the Empire is based on making a dog fight for you. Pretending to be upset at dog-fighting would require levels of hypocrisy that shouldn't even be possible.

You are, however, reaching levels of boredom that shouldn't be possible. Bored, bored, b- suddenly not bored! Let no one say you're not earning your keep, because you spotted the incoming trouble way before either of the unpowered enforcers sharing your post.

"Quick, give me your jacket," you tell one of them.

"What?"

"Your jacket. Now. Cape reasons."

He looks to his partner, who shrugs in response.

"Now, dammit!"

He finally obeys. You put it on. Drawing the hood up and turning away from the enforcers, you slip you mask off. One benefit of a half-assed costume like yours is that you can just cover up the chest piece and remove the mask and bam, instant civilian.

You hide the mask beneath the jacket and hurry around the corner, where the van you spotted just parked. Even if you hadn't recognized the vehicle, the glow coming from the driver is instantly recognizable. You lean up against the driver's side door before they have a chance to open it, and knock on the darkened window.

The window is rolled down, and the scowling face of Rachel Lindt greets you.

"Taylor? The fuck you doing here?"

"I was going to ask you the same." Her power is active, and you see pulses of 'empower canine' going into the back of the van. "You're using your power to cheat at dog fighting?"

"No! I'm gonna knock this place over! Fuck up every dog-hurting piece of shit in there!"

Oh. "You should leave," you say. "There's a cape in there right now."

"I can take them."

"You probably can," you admit. She has two dogs back there, from the way her power is acting. Fenrir could maybe win if they don't have time to grow to full size, but you don't trust him to murder his old roommates decisively enough, even at your orders. "But your dogs might get hurt in the fighting. And if you don't win fast enough, some asshole might start killing the fighting dogs out of spite."

She growls at that, and moves to shove the door open. You hold up a hand to stop her.

"Look, I've been scoping the place out too. If you come back-" you rack your brains, trying to remember the schedule you were shown earlier today - "tomorrow, between two and four, there won't be any capes."

She hesitates, and you press on. "It's the best way to keep the dogs safe. Isn't that what you want?"

"...fine. But if you fuck me on this-"

"Yeah, yeah. I get it. Bubbles is doing fine, by the way. If you were wondering."

She gives you a curt nod, and drives off without another word. Crisis averted. Opportunity gained. You put your mask back on and return to your post.

"What was that all about?" the guy asks as you give him back his jacket.

"Cape business."

He rolls his eyes at that, but doesn't pry further.

This is your big chance, of course. Hookwolf's soul price is right there for the taking. Just call him up and tell him to lie in ambush here tomorrow afternoon, and you'll have an Empire lieutenant for a minion.

All you have to do is betray Rachel to her death.

It would be so nice, to finally have a way to make him show off his power. To end this stupid drama between you, that's cutting into your time with Rune. You want to be able to turn into a giant monster made of chainsaws so bad you can taste it, especially since turning into a dragon didn't work out.

...You can't do it. You just can't. When you set out to gather soul prices, you wanted to be Morally Ambiguous Santa Claus. There's no moral ambiguity to be had here. You'll have to solve the Hookwolf situation the other way.

Rachel pulled off her raid successfully, judging from the way Hookwolf treats you the next day. He doesn't even pretend to teach you how to fight, he just beats you unconscious over and over again. If your injuries render you unable to stand up without also knocking you out, he kicks you in the head until that is no longer the case. While you're being regenerated by Othala he paces back and forth, swearing up a storm.

It's not that he suspects you of colluding with Rachel - you're still alive - it's just that he has no reason not to take his anger out on you. You accept it silently, because it is your fault. You could have given him the thing he most wanted in all the world, and instead chose to fuck him over. You deserve this.

You learn that Othala's power isn't quite perfect, because the world keeps wobbling alarmingly even after it's over and you've been patched up the final time. But you don't mind so much: You spent the most of the night lying on the ground waiting to heal, and without any lessons to distract you you were finally able to figure out Cricket's power.

You experimentally activate it on your way home, and your somewhat unsteady walk turns into an alert crouch as you slip into a martial arts form. There's no one around, but you feel unusually alert and prepared to block incoming attacks. You know kung fu? It's not echolocation, but some part of the danger sense component appears to have carried over intact.

Still, it's uncanny. Your version of the power took the form of martial arts. Is it really a coincidence that you learned it at a dojo (fuck Hookwolf, you're calling it that)? Or can you influence the outcome in some way, and have been doing so subconsciously all along?

You realize that you recognize the stance you're using: It's mantis style. That you learned from someone named Cricket. Your brain is definitely plotting behind your back.

Maybe this one is an outlier, caused by your mildly concussed state? Yes, let's go with that. That way you can pretend that you don't know exactly why Lisa's power was made weaker in exchange for a Master component, and Rachel's power gave you an invisible friend.

You could go on. Cliff's power gave up physical power for improved shapeshifting just when you needed a new identity, Dragon's let you finish the armor in time to get home, Vista... You know what? Never mind the denial, you're willing to accept a whole bunch of unpleasant truths about yourself if it means your intangible-dog-petting power was on purpose. You duck into an alley and spend a couple of minutes petting your intangible dog, heedless of the risk of discovery as glowing mind-hands provide belly rubs to nothing at all.

Could you ask for a better partner, a better friend? No, you could not. Okay, if you were really picky you could perhaps ask for a friend who didn't lick his privates in full view of anyone with sorcerer's sight quite so often, but you don't really begrudge him that. It must be lonely, being the only member of your species in the world.

Hang on, if you're really doing all this on a subconscious level, does that mean that deep down, you don't actually want to become a dragon? Because fuck your brain if so.

Fuck your brain anyway. It's not as if Rachel is useful to you, or anything but a detriment to society as a whole. But nooooo, you still chose her over getting freaking Hookwolf as a minion, because apparently human life has intrinsic value. Ugh. You suck so much.

Danny picks up on your grouchy mood when you get home. "Who peed in your cheerios?" he asks - the flippant words hiding genuine concern, because dads gonna dad.

"Got called in to the dog shelter," you say absently. "Big uproar, someone left a door open and a bunch of dogs escaped." For all that you were giving your brain shit earlier, you're pretty amazed at its ability to come up with this load of bull on the spot, after having been beaten on all night. Though if you were in top form you might have wanted to go with a less complicated non-lie about taking a bad fall during self-defense class, you belatedly realize.

More subconscious bullshit, no doubt. A desire for your father to be aware, and supportive. God, you hate introspection. You hope your Brute rating is enough to shake this off with a good night's sleep. "Got a proper chewing out too, for all that I wasn't even there when it happened," you continue. "You know how it is."

"Shit flows downhill," the life-long union man observes sagely.

"Yeah. Gonna crash now."

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Lung: ?

Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation

Cricket: Mantis Form

Mechanics corner

Supernatural Martial Arts, or SMA for short, are special charms that any type of exalt can learn, as long as they have the appropriate level of enlightenment (terrestrial, celestial or sidereal)*.

SMA being what they are, Taylor could theoretically use this foundation to gain enlightenment of the Bulb of the Perfected Lotus, intuit and re-create the rest of Mantis Style without a teacher or parahuman template, and become a true SMA practitioner. She would then be able to create any number of new celestial styles without ever needing to reference another parahuman.

All she needs is a nice calm dojo somewhere where she can meditate and practice for a couple of years without distractions, so it's going to happen real soon now.

*Every terrestrial exalt who has ever attempted sidereal enlightenment has had their soul spontaneously explode. But at least one sidereal master insists that it's theoretically possible, and keeps trying to teach them.

Chapter 40: L.17

Chapter Text

You're going to need another look at the schedule. Even if you could remember the whole thing, it will have changed as capes are shifted around to protect the remaining assets.

Throwing another tantrum would be far too suspicious, if it would even work. No, you should never enter the ops center again. "Who, me? I don't even know the details you're accusing me of having leaked."

You have Fenrir dematerialize a stack of notebooks and some pens. He can just walk right through the walls to get a look at the relevant whiteboards. He can't read, but he should be able to just copy things down symbol by meaningless symbol.

The day passes uneventfully, except that Lisa texts you demanding to meet up. She probably looked sideways at Rachel and wants to complain at you about some aspect of your plan. Fine, whatever. You'll indulge her tomorrow. Today is Wednesday, and Wednesdays are Faultline-days.

There's another person in the Faultline's office when you arrive. A young boy, wearing the white domino of the incognito parahuman. You look him over appraisingly, pretending that you don't already know who he is.

"You were right," Faultline tells you. "The PRT database was free advertising. This is your first new client." She doesn't perform further introductions, testing you - or more likely, trusting in your abilities and letting you show off.

"Kid Win, I presume. Quicksilver, at your service."

"H-how did you know?" he sputters.

"Please. A handsome young man with a brain full of Tinker ideas? Who else could it be?"

"I could have been Gallant!"

What? Oh right, Gallant does pretend to be a Tinker, with that fancy armor of his. Always Be Sandbagging, the first rule of capedom. You had forgotten all about that little detail, it's been so long since you learned the truth.

"If I believed that, you'd be well advised to turn around and leave rather than retain my services. I have seen Gallant in action."

"Oh."

Hang on, it just occurred to you that only Tinkers can maintain tinkertech, and that 'Tinker-hours' is thus one of the most valuable commodities on the planet. Gallant must be paying through the nose to keep that suit running. That silver spoon sure is tasty, huh?

"So, what can I do for you?" Like you didn't already know that too.

"I, uh..." He blushes beneath his mask. "I haven't been able to figure out my Tinker specialty. Uh, all Tinkers have-"

You cut him off with a wave of your hand. "Yes, yes. That should be easy enough. Invent me something."

"What?"

"A laser gun? A better mouse trap? Figure out how to build it. I'll watch."

"Uh, okay. May I?" He gestures towards the desk. Faultline provides him with paper and pencil.

You watch him sketch for ten minutes or so, which is how long you can be bothered to keep up the charade.

"Got it."

"What?" "Excuse me?" Faultline and Kid Win are equally surprised.

"I figured out your specialty. You can stop now."

"Oh." Kid Win looks back and forth between you and his half-finished blueprint several times before finally deciding to focus on you. "Uh, how much do you charge? I have a couple of hundred saved up..."

"I offered her fourteen thousand dollars for her assistance," Faultline interjects. That's mostly true. A few caveats here and there.

"Oh." His shoulders slump. "I could... build you something?"

"And maintain it?" Faultline demands. Her objection is invalid: You're a Tinker. In fact you are, among other things, this Tinker. There is no way you couldn't maintain something he built. You don't mention this, of course. Even if you didn't have an identity to protect, Faultline is having too much fun playing 'bad cop' for you to step in and ruin it for her.

"Maybe? Uh, what if I build you something and promise to maintain it for a year?"

"I want the PRT parahuman database," you say. He stares at you, speechless. "You can scrub the personal details, I'm not looking to break the rules. I just want cape names, locations, ratings, power analysis."

"I don't have access to that! I mean, I do, but only to read. Not to copy! Also I wouldn't do that. That's classified information!"

The order of his objections is quite telling. You give him a fond smile, and lean down to whisper in his ear, a single word.

"Modularity."

Watching his face as he figures out what you just said is a treat, even with the mask. Confusion, shock, joy. And finally resignation, as he realizes what he now owes you. Sorcerer's sight shows the Loyalty settling into place, sealing the deal. Oh, Loyalty can be resisted, you've seen it happen. Were he a truly virtuous man, it would not corrupt him. But this is a hero you're talking about.

"Come back when you have the goods," you tell him. He flees.

"I expected you to want to study him," Faultline says.

"Please. A Tinker power so weak it couldn't even communicate its own specialty to the host brain? I'd much rather have a list of more interesting targets."

"Did you really figure it so quickly? It took you several days with me."

You shrug. "The specialty is the single most salient aspect of a Tinker power. You asked whether it was possible for your television to get cable. He asked me what color the plastic was." This is all true. It is! Sure you already knew his specialty, and it took you something closer to an hour to figure it out initially. That's still incredibly quick by power standards.

"So, Gallant isn't a Tinker?" Faultline asks after a moment of contemplation.

You tap a finger to your lips, considering. "I should probably charge you for that answer?"

"I did just let you use my office for a business meeting."

"Touché. He's a Blaster in a fancy suit."

"Must be pretty expensive to keep up the charade. Unless the suit isn't real tinkertech either?"

"Couldn't tell you." It isn't so much that you're sandbagging your ability to spot tinkertech, as the fact that you've never actually seen Gallant in action. The reported capabilities sure point towards it being tinkertech, but you wouldn't want to accidentally deceive.

Having Fenrir take notes didn't work out too well, you reflect as you page through a semitransparent notebook with a mind-hand. You can't read any of it. It was a good effort, you assure him. He's a good dog. You're not upset. But his handwriting suffers too much from, you know, not having hands. And being illiterate, he has no idea what characteristics are most important to preserve for any given letter.

The way everything is soaked with immaterial drool and sticking together doesn't exactly help. Several pages were completely obliterated when he accidentally bit through the pen and doused them in ink. You're pretty sure he lost his place a couple of times and skipped or repeated certain sections as well. Oh, he bit through more than one pen.

You'll figure this out tomorrow. "Come to bed," you tell Fenrir. He materializes, leaving the immaterial ink that was coating his face behind. It splashes to the floor, leaving an invisible stain. You should probably do something about that. It could give you away... if another cape capable of seeing into the spirit realm showed up in town... and decided to break into your basement for no reason.

Whatever, it's hardly more incriminating than being followed around by a giant wolf, and it's not as if you're going to stop doing that. You are, you realize, making the same tradeoff analysis as every gangbanger with an unlicensed firearm in his waistband: The safety provided by this form of 'concealed carry' is well worth the minuscule risk of being hassled by law enforcement.

Your next idea for turning Dog Burglar into a spy turns out much better. Before going to school you tinker up a simple cellphone holder, with a handle to let him grasp it in his mouth and a lever that presses the camera button whenever he bites down. He's done by lunchtime, materializing in an unoccupied bathroom to hand you a phone full of pictures of maps and whiteboards. And various other things he found interesting on the way, like buildings and trees and fire hydrants and random patches of pavement and the sky. Good thing your phone is an expensive model with plenty of memory.

You completely blow off your responsibilities (to stalk Glory Girl at every opportunity) and instead shower him with praise and belly rubs. He has to dematerialize again when someone else enters the bathroom, but little things like that don't stop you anymore, and you resume as soon as they're gone. With mind hands!

Waiting for Lisa at the cafe after school, you while away the time texting with Alec.

Hey. Can you do me a favor?

not if i have to get up from the couch

is the favor dick pics? because then yes

Yes

wait, srsly?

I'm meeting with Lisa, you know she's going to do her mind reading act. I'm going to booby trap my brain with your junk.

does that even work?

We'll find out, won't we?

yes!

sec, getting hard

[ ]

Brian-o-vision

"What the hell, Alec!?"

"You know how it is. One of my many admirers had a sexual emergency and desperately needed to see my dick."

"I didn't need to see that! Go to your room, or the bathroom or something!"

"Eh, effort."

Oh, there's Lisa. You take one last look at the payload before putting your phone away.

"Hey."

"Hey." She looks at your smug expression with narrowed eyes, and lets her power loose.

It's not working. She can tell that you want her to figure something out, but there's not enough to go on. You hold up your hands, your palms a certain distance apart.

"Goddammit, Taylor!" That did it. Your smug smirk grows into a full-fledged shit-eating grin as a bunch of ancillary details cascade into her brain. "Why!?"

You just shrug as a particularly juicy detail causes her to flinch. Now you both know exactly how sad Alec would have been if he'd lost that hand.

"You don't even have anything you want to hide from me!"

"Not this time. But if I instill good habits early..."

"Fuck you."

"You're the one who wanted this meeting. For no reason. Everything's fine. Tell Rachel Friday between noon and 2 pm, at the corner of 12th and Brassmaker street."

Lisa gives you the stinkeye and tries to look beyond the elephant in the room (alright, calling it an elephant may be flattering Alec a bit too much). Still getting abused by Hookwolf. Still doesn't consider it a problem. Thinks she deserves it. Doesn't consider it worth hiding. You roll your eyes at her. Smug. Got a new power recently.

"Don't strain yourself. Cricket taught me kung fu, but not the way she thinks."

"Are you going to stop-"

"Othala."

She sighs. You'd think she was your mom or something. Damn, now you've gone and made yourself sad, thinking about your mom. Great job, Lisa. Way to ruin the mood.

She was wrong, anyway. You're not getting abused by Hookwolf anymore. Apparently. He barely even looks at you, instead handing you off to an unpowered instructor. It's probably meant to be an insult - as a cape you're technically entitled to the attention of other capes - but you don't mind. You cheerfully settle in for a new era of still not learning what you're supposed to learn, but staring at Othala instead.

From overheard snatches of conversation you gather that the new policy came about because Othala threw a giant fit over your treatment last time and threatened to walk out. You make sure to thank her the next time you hobble over for regeneration.

You also gather that being assigned as your instructor is now a punishment for poor performance. That's definitely an insult, but again you don't mind. You could drop into mantis form at any time and wow everyone with your sudden improvement. You know, if you wanted to completely blow your cover - no one here is even teaching mantis style. As it is, you're not even tempted. The retarded girl you play here is just another role, like the closeted stalker you play during school hours.

Unlike certain other people you could name, you can enjoy the feeling of knowing something other people don't without having to walk over and rub it in their face.

Chapter 41: L.18

Chapter Text

This morning you received a message informing you that you were assigned to special duties tonight, and given a time and a place. You sulk your way there expecting more dickery from Hookwolf, but are pleasantly surprised to find Rune waiting for you. It must be really special, if it can make Rune arrive on time.

Your enthusiasm wanes somewhat when she explains that your special assignment is helping fellow Empire cape Alabaster, who went and got himself arrested again. Damn. For all that the Empire is ostensibly a villain group, you've managed to be on their payroll for a good two months now without once doing anything immoral. Until today.

You try to tell yourself that Alabaster would be freed with our without your help. He would! (Parahuman) membership in the Empire comes with get-broken-out-of-jail-free insurance. If you didn't step up, another cape would take your place. Even beyond that (according to Lisa), to a certain extent the system doesn't even want to lock up parahuman criminals.

It still feels wrong. But - you brighten up as a new thought occurs - if you could be part of the Empire while keeping your conscience clean, who is to say that Alabaster isn't the same? In which case his arrest would be unjust, and the act of freeing him, just.

It's even somewhat likely. It's not like you're trying to explain away Hookwolf's body count or anything here, it's Alabaster you're talking about. What could he even do? He has the worst power in the entire world: Immortality.

Not in the 'eternal youth' sense, though for all you know he might have that too. In the 'literally can't die' sense. No matter what happens to him, 4 seconds later he snaps back to perfect health.

Yeah, sure, that sounds good. But it really, really isn't. That's his only power. No strength, no durability, no farting knockout gas. His role in a fight is to run up to people with actual combat powers and distract them by getting repeatedly splattered across the pavement.

Everyone knows he's immortal too, so they don't hold back. He gets to suffer horrific injuries and painful death over and over again, every four seconds for however long the fight lasts. And if, like in his most recent fight, they decide to instead hold him down and slap some cuffs on him, there's nothing he can do about that either.

It would be an amazing power for a Trump like you, except for one crucial detail: He's a monster cape. The whitest supremacist. Not caucasian white or even albino white, but, well, alabaster white. Like a living marble sculpture. You would have sought him out above all others otherwise. It's not (just) vanity holding you back, either. You thought about it carefully, and concluded that 'not being immediately recognizable' would currently improve your functional life expectancy more than 'immortality'.

"Go time," Rune says, snapping you out of your thoughts.

Clockblocker-o-vision

"You realize this is a trap, right?" I ask.

"Yeah, duh? That's literally the mission," Shadow Stalker says, her voice dripping with scorn.

"No, I mean for us," I explain. "Do you really think it's a coincidence that we got pulled off console duty early for this? This is part of our punishment. They're setting us up for a beating."

"Not seeing a downside here. I get to shoot a nazi. You get to whine like a little bitch. The bosses get to pretend they're trying. Everybody wins."

She puts her crossbow down on the bench, then punches Alabaster in the face. She can't get much of a windup within the confines of the truck, but it still snaps his head back into the wall.

"Isn't that right, bitch? Any day you get to hurt a nazi is a good day."

One of the PRT troopers clears his throat.

"I did nothing." She holds up her hands. Alabaster's split lip disappears. "See, no marks."

"Are you not ashamed to be a part of this system?" Alabaster asks the trooper. "You should be."

Sophia hits him again.

Rune sends a car floating out into the street, blocking the path of the prisoner transport. She could have just smashed the two vehicles together (Alabaster would have been fine), but instead she politely gives the driver plenty of time to brake. A most civilized jailbreak.

The instant the transport comes to a stop, all four tires explode. Stormtiger floats down from a nearby rooftop.

Then things stop going according to plan as Shadow Stalker phases through the side of the van and takes a shot at Stormtiger. Their exchange is inconclusive - a sharp gust of wind sends her crossbow bolt off course, and his answering wind blades pass through her shadow form harmlessly.

You've already kicked Fenrir into motion by the time Rune shouts for you to assist him. You don't know that Low Key could actually hurt Sophia any more than Stormtiger could, but you're damn well going to try.

Say what you will of the PRT, but their discipline and training is beyond reproach. The trooper in the passenger seat has already scrambled out of the vehicle, dragging a containment foam projector with him. Without pausing to strap it on, he sends a stream of foam your way. Rune sends the car flying up to block it.

The driver also gets out, but as he's only toting a shotgun, you ignore him. Fenrir lets out a whuff when the beanbag round hits him in the chest, but doesn't break stride.

Meanwhile, the rear doors of the transport have opened and two more foam-wielding PRT troopers have entered the fray, as well as Clockblocker of the Wards. Great, another parahuman you're ill equipped to fight.

Stormtiger is falling back, but giving good account of himself. Foam, by its very nature, is a lot easier to blow around than crossbow bolts, and one trooper is already taken out of action, stuck fast by his own foam.

Clockblocker is also facing a terrible matchup - he can only use his time stop on solid matter - and is sent flying by a blast of air.

Still, with four against one, something has to give. Stormtiger is forced to throw himself prone to avoid the next shot from Shadow Stalker, leaving him in a terrible position. He sees you coming up behind her, and rather than risk hitting you with an attack passing through her, he takes out the second PRT trooper the same way as the first.

Without distractions, and with a stationary target, Shadow Stalker easily nails him with her next bolt. Stormtiger's last act before the tranquilizer takes hold is to send a sphere of compressed air into the back of the transport.

The entire transport jumps, the boom echoing off the nearby buildings as the laws of physics reassert themselves and the compressed air explodes. A shower of milk comes flying out of the transport. Milk and... wet white chunks? Oh. Ew. That's one way to separate Alabaster from his restraints. Poor guy.

Some cue or instinct warns Shadow Stalker of your approach. She spins to face you, but it's too late. You're already on her. Fenrir bites down on her crossbow hand as she turns. She turns into shadow before his teeth can close around her wrist, and instead of knocking her over he runs straight through her without slowing.

Then she screams. You send Fenrir into a spinning, skidding halt and end up looking back the way you came. Shadow Stalker is clutching a stump where her hand should be. Copious amounts of blood is spurting into the street.

That's- you saw her turn into shadow. Which means... Fenrir can't affect the physical world while he's intangible, but apparently the reverse is not entirely true. Magic teeth.

You don't see a severed hand lying around anywhere, which means that it must still be in Fenrir's mouth. Now, you could tell him to spit it out, keep this jailbreak civilized. You could.

"Spit," you say. Fenrir obeys. The hand lands on the pavement with a wet smack, the crossbow with a clatter. "Crossbows aren't food," you tell him. You stare into Sophia's eyes as Fenrir gobbles up her hand again, crunches the bones between his teeth, swallows. He then takes one step forward unprompted by you, crushing the delicate mechanisms of her tinkertech crossbow beneath a paw. Best dog.

Sophia is swaying on her feet, barely keeping upright. Blood loss. You know the feeling. Then Clockblocker is there, freezing his colleague in time with a touch. Damn, you forgot all about him. Looks like Stormtiger didn't manage to take him out of the fight completely.

This is bad. This is extremely bad. While essentially helpless against Stormtiger, the Shaker/Blaster, Clockblocker the Striker has an excellent matchup against you, the Brute. One touch and it's all over. And you can't attack without touching him. Ok, fine, you could. You're a Shaker too, as of one week ago. Low Key can't. And the mounds of containment foam are preventing you from going around him, at least if you want to get back to the fight and help Rune. He basically has you cornered.

You whisper instructions to Fenrir as Clockblocker approaches. His face is completely hidden by the opaque visor on his helmet, but from his gait you can tell that he's completely confident.

You slip off Fenrir and take up mantis form.

"Are you seriously trying to kung-fu me?" Clockblocker asks.

You don't respond. Fenrir circles around to the right, flanking. Yes, you are trying to kung-fu him. You, the Thinker/Trump, had a front row seat to him freezing Shadow Stalker.

Fenrir lunges. Clockblocker flails his left arm out in response, brushing it against Fenrir's chin. His power pulses, and the wolf freezes in place. Your leg is already moving.

There's a short interval after he activates his power, less than a second, before it settles back into its dormant state. You're choosing, with more optimism than evidence, to interpret that as a cooldown period during which it can't be used again. It's in that brief window that your foot impacts his crotch. Crunch!

Kick delivered, you throw yourself backwards, falling over in your haste to get yourself out of contact with the hero. There is no discontinuity. You roll and scramble to your feet with no interruptions to your personal timeline.

Clockblocker is down, clutching his privates. There's, uh, there's blood seeping into the white fabric of his costume. Um. Shouldn't he be wearing a protective cup?

That must have been what the crunching sound was. You may have underestimated the power of mantis form.

You don't have time to worry about that now, the other half of the fight is still happening. Rune's car is out of commission, anchored to the ground by a small mountain of containment foam. You can see the boot of the last foam trooper sticking out of said mountain, so you'll call it a tie. Rune herself is on her hands and knees, puking into her mask. Some sort of nonlethal takedown, though you can't tell if it was gas or a beanbag round to the guts.

Alabaster is wrestling with the final trooper, the driver. It's not going very well. If Alabaster was capable of sustaining permanent injuries, the driver would have won long ago. As it is, it's a bit of a stalemate. To be resolved by whoever receives reinforcements first. You walk up behind them and politely rest your knife against the driver's throat. "Desist, please," you say. He desists. "Alabaster, cuff him."

That taken care of, you turn to your other conscious compatriot. "Rune! We need evac!"

She turns her head your way. "Wolf?" she manages between heaves.

"Clockblocked."

"Shit."

You pull her to her feet, and half support, half drag her over to the prisoner transport. You help Alabaster drag the unconscious Stormtiger inside while Rune shakily traces her runes on the side.

"What about the wolf?" Alabaster asks.

"He'll disappear as soon as the time stop wears off. Don't worry about it."

"A bit rougher than usual," Alabaster remarks as he settles down on a bench. You glance his way. Even his pupils are white, and barely show up against the rest of his eyes. How does he even see, if his retinas reflect light like that? Even weirder, despite being a mutant, his power is the same color as those of regular capes. "The rescue," he clarifies.

"Be nice, it was my first time." If anyone asks that was excellent deadpan delivery, and not you not noticing what you were saying in time to make a deliberate joke of it.

"Really?"

"For a proper cape fight with multiple people on each side? Yeah."

"Hm. You did well enough." He pointedly pokes Stormtiger with his foot. A bit unfair, you feel. You could not have pulled it off without him thinning the field for you.

The transport lifts into the air and start flying towards Empire territory.

Alabaster wants to secure the survival of his people and a future for white children. Another dud.

Wait, now that you think about it, stealing PRT property like this may not be the best move. They can probably track it. Indeed they can, industry and forge wisdom helpfully informs you. Dammit. Why must you be the brains of this operation?

(Probably because you're three different kinds of Thinker)

"Rune!" you shout into the driver's compartment. "Land and let me get up front."

"What?" she asks when you get in the passenger seat.

"Wolf senses. Tracking device."

You go to work on the plastic shell of the instrument panel with your knife. Rune is too busy flying the thing and not throwing up to help, but you have it open soon enough. You let your power guide you to the right wire, and rip it out. Really? A single tracking device, easily reached and disabled without special tools? Lisa is right, they really do want people to escape custody.

Chapter 42: L.19

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You raise an eyebrow behind your mask when you catch sight of Kid Win. He's managed to burn through a good two thirds of his Loyalty since you last saw him. Which means that he's a much better man than you thought. And also that he dedicated considerable effort to betraying you.

He refuses to meet your eyes as he hands you a thumb drive. You give him an ever so slightly patronizing smirk and leave him to fidget while you check out the goods. You procured a crappy old laptop specifically for this purpose - it's not as if Faultline would let enemy tinkertech anywhere near her own computer.

You verify that the size of the database is roughly correct, and call up a couple of random profiles to check. And you do mean random. You do not do the kind of cheeky bullshit where you just so happen to check a specific pair of entries under L and S. Not where Kid Win or Faultline could conceivably notice.

(What did the word 'kinetic' ever do to the PRT, that they'd torture it to the point of calling some guy named 'Flying Brick' a 'laterculukinetic'?)

"That all seems to be in order," you say, flipping the laptop around towards Kid Win. "Now if you could input the secret code that will make it not delete itself an hour from now, that would go a long way towards you not getting murdered in your sleep." He twitches, and glances towards Faultline.

"If I were to find out that you acted in bad faith, I would blacklist you from further business at my establishment," Faultline says calmly. "Whether Quicksilver takes further measures to punish contract violations is out of my hands."

"It would be a terrible shame to die before you can even cash out your college fund," you note. "Could you really bear to shuffle off this mortal coil with that juicy government teat unsuckled?"

Some subset of those arguments must have convinced him, because he stiffly walks over to the proffered laptop and enters a long string of letters and numbers. His Loyalty does not fray any further, so it was probably the correct code.

"It was two hours actually," he mutters, as if that would soften the blow of your victory.

"Thanks," you say. "Don't worry about the part where it tracks everything I do and reports it back to you, I physically disabled the network card. This hunk of junk will never connect to the internet again." You used his own power to figure out how to do it, too.

"Sorry." He doesn't exactly sound sincere, but resignation is the first step on the road to submission. You'll take it.

You offer him a beaming smile. "Now, what did you do that I didn't anticipate?"

He hesitates for several seconds, but his resistance crumbles in the face of your increasingly predatory smile. "It, uh, it modifies the screen refresh interval to emit a recognizable radio signal that could be used to triangulate your location."

"Only turn it on inside a faraday cage, got it. Anything else?"

He shakes his head. The Loyalty remains stable.

"An excellent piece of modular malware," you say, patting his shoulder. "Something you could only dream of making a week ago?"

He nods glumly.

"Quite the bargain, no?"

When Gregor shows up to escort the young hero out, you signal that you want to talk to him afterwards. Gotta keep those costs down.

You idly wonder why Faultline has Gregor of all people on doorman duty. Even with her somewhat creepy gas mask outfit, Spitfire cuts a much less unsettling figure. Maybe that's the point - Faultline is deliberately exposing her visitors to Gregor to unsettle them and gain an advantage in negotiations. Then again, Gregor is a pretty friendly guy. He may have volunteered just to get a chance to talk to people who won't run away. Maybe Spitfire is an introvert, and insisted on a 'no public interaction' clause in her contract. You don't know these people well enough to say.

You haven't come to any firm conclusions by the time Gregor comes back, and it seems a bit rude to just come out and ask. You put the matter out of your mind and turn to address him.

"Here's a weird thing that may or may not be worth money to you: Alabaster, the guy from the headlines? Not a Case 53."

Gregor, as much as you can make out an expression on translucent flesh over a grinning skull, looks thoughtful.

"So," Faultline says, "whatever 'color' you're seeing, it's not purely the result - or cause - of physical mutations."

"I guess." You shrug. "I've frankly stopped trying to come up with theories at this point."

"I get it now," you tell Faultline at the end of your session.

"Beg pardon?"

"Your power. I understand how it does what it does. We're done."

"Ah. But you can't explain it in English, of course."

"No."

"And you still see no way to improve it."

"No."

She drums her fingers against her desk. "And now you want to study Labyrinth."

"Yes."

She is silent for a long time. "Would you have killed him?" she finally asks.

"The kid? Nah." That's probably the truth. On the other hand, you kind of have a thing about being betrayed. You're not entirely prepared to answer for your hypothetical behavior here. "Just needed to scare him straight."

"...I'll talk to her," Faultline finally decides. "Come back tomorrow and I'll have your answer."

With a power as destructive as Faultline's to test, you swing by the boat graveyard on your way home. It's not really on the way, but whatever. You're not murdering any more alarm clocks where your dad can tease you about it.

Instead you walk up to an innocent brick wall and cruelly activate your new power against it with a light tap of the finger. There's a brief flicker of feedback in your brain, but the wall remains fine. Hm. You frown at the wall and try again, holding your entire hand against it this time.

Ah. A sense of 'wall' gradually impinges on your mind - or possibly soul. To command it, you must understand its essence - and you do. It's not as if it's hard, it's a regular pattern of bricks, set in uniform mortar. Once you've fully internalized the structure of a roughly Taylor-sized patch of wall, you give it the only command your power allows: Be not.

The mortar crumbles to dust, and the bricks are sent flying into the building by an unseen force. You blink in surprise as they land stacked in a neat cube, with a similarly neat heap of mortar dust next to it. Huh. That's not how Faultline does it.

Just inside your new doorway you spot an old wooden pallet. New test subject acquired. Squat down and touch it. Comprehend its nature. Unmake it. As expected, it flies apart into a stack of wooden boards, a stack of wooden blocks, and a small pile of nails.

It's a remarkably... Tinker-esque way of destroying things. You blame Kid Win for intruding on your Faultline-time and making you subconsciously associate the two. Perhaps 'blame' is not the right word, you don't really mind this particular power-mutation. So what if you need to understand what you destroy? Between industry and forge wisdom and your own Tinker 0 skills, understanding things is a piece of cake.

The biggest issue is the time it takes - maybe fifteen seconds to completely model an object in your soul? Still fine for dynamic entry, provided there is no one outside to see you stand around fondling the wall prior to your Kool-Aid Man impression. Not so good for hot pursuit.

Actually, about that... you grab two of the boards, and use a mind-hand to drive a single nail through the middle before invoking your charm of unmaking once more. Just as you'd expected (or at least hoped), it is much quicker to unmake your simple wooden X.

When you try it on just a nail, though, nothing happens. Well, it was forged from a single piece of steel, after all. What is there to disassemble? It makes sense, as long as you don't think too hard about the ontological implications of 'object-ness' apparently being a real, physical thing that applies to certain groupings of atoms but not others. That's easy enough, you're already ignoring the alive-ness property that Faultline's original power demonstrates, among other things.

Ideally you'd want to test your new... your charm of unmaking on something more complicated as well, like a car or something. But the boat graveyard was scoured clean of technological debris long ago, when Squealer made her debut and started offering hard drugs in exchange for Tinkerable scrap.

Instead you try for volume. Just how much wall can you disassemble in one go? Straining yourself, you manage to encompass most of an entire side of the building. A good two hundred square feet, if you're any judge. Shit, didn't mean to actually unmake that!

You throw yourself outside as bricks explode around you on decidedly unnatural trajectories. None of your martial arts instructors would be impressed by your landing, but you ignore the pain and keep rolling towards safety as part of the roof caves in, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

You did sort of make an oopsie there, you freely admit. Still, boat graveyard. No one cares.

When you get home, Dog Burglar is waiting for you with another set of pictures. You call Lisa to relay the information.

"Tell Rachel 15 Willow street, Sunday night slash Monday morning, 3 a.m. And yes, that's the only time it's unguarded."

She groans. "Make me be the one to explain to her that fewer locations means increased resources protecting each one, why don't you?"

"On the bright side, it's the last one."

Your next order of business is to make a faraday cage. That sounds impressively 'SCIENCE' to the uneducated ear, but translated into practical terms it means 'chicken wire'. Just wrapping your laptop in layers and layers of chicken wire - you're not exactly straining the Tinker 0 powers here. There are more elegant ways to do it, but chicken wire happens to be what you have lying around in the basement.

It works, but it makes it incredibly annoying to type, and almost as much of a pain to read the screen. You'll just check the most important things for now, a proper binge can wait until you've set up a properly shielded room (somewhere that's not your house).

Or that was the plan, but the very first entry in the alphabetized list of parahuman names demands that you stop and check it out. No, it's not a joke. Not only is there a Tinker out there whose official cape name is 'Single quote right parenthesis semicolon drop table parahumans semicolon dash dash', the glorious bastard somehow got a PRT intern to enter it in the database using punctuation characters instead of spelling it out. "'Table' for short", the entry guilelessly notes, just above where it says he's wanted for vandalizing digital government property in seven different countries.

Sorry Armsmaster, you will only ever be the world's third greatest Tinker.

Database entry PRH-Lowkey

Cape Name: Low Key

Civilian Name: .../´¯/) ...,/¯../ .../.../ .../´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸ .../'/.../.../.../¨¯\ ...('(...´...´... ¯~/'...') ...\...'.../ ...''...\... _.·´ ...\...( ...\...\...

Gender: F

Age: Unknown, probably late teens

Alignment: Villain, Empire 88

Ratings: Master 4 (Brute 4, Mover 2, Thinker 1)

Able to summon a giant wolf, which she rides into combat. It's unknown how well she is able to control the projection, but she appears to treat it as an independent being rather than an extension of herself. Thinker sub-rating is due to "wolf senses", which allow the wolf to notice and act on details that a normal human would not pick up on. According to hearsay she finds using her power to be unusually exhausting, and needs to rest several days between uses.

May have access to tinkertech equipment, since she was seen rescuing Smith (see profile PRH-Smith3) during the Simurgh attack on Ottawa (see incident report SMG-9), and Smith later mentioned "debts to repay".

Related files: PRH-Smith3, SMG-9, ENE-17245, ENE-17288, ENE-17366, ENE-17368

Database entry PRH-Smith3

Cape name: Smith

Civilian Name: .../´¯/) ...,/¯../ .../.../ .../´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸ .../'/.../.../.../¨¯\ ...('(...´...´... ¯~/'...') ...\...'.../ ...''...\... _.·´ ...\...( ...\...\...

Gender: M

Age: Unknown, probably early fifties

Alignment: Rogue, Guild-affiliate

Ratings: Tinker/Shaker 2

Able to transmute gold (along with a "secret ingredient") into an indestructible material he refers to as "orichalcum". This process takes a week and requires expensive equipment, but there is theoretically no limit to the size of a single "batch". He can also telekinetically move and shape orichalcum in its molten form. Smith claims that he is unable to affect the material once it has set into its indestructible form, but nevertheless no attempt to engage him should be made by individuals carrying orichalcum equipment.

Like with many other "indestructible" materials, Flechette (see profile PRH-Flechette) was able to destroy part of a provided sample of orichalcum. Rust (see profile PRH-Rust) was unable to match this feat, although he noted that his power cannot affect mundane gold either.

Smith collaborated with Dragon (see profile PRH-Dragon) to create anti-Endbringer weaponry, which has yet to see combat.

Dragon reports that she has been unable to duplicate the orichalcum-making process on her own.

Related files: PRH-Dragon, SMG-9, ENE-17177

Database entry PRH-Quicksilver

Cape Name: Quicksilver

Civilian Name: .../´¯/) ...,/¯../ .../.../ .../´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸ .../'/.../.../.../¨¯\ ...('(...´...´... ¯~/'...') ...\...'.../ ...''...\... _.·´ ...\...( ...\...\...

Gender: F

Age: Unknown, probably mid-twenties

Alignment: Rogue, Independent

Ratings: Thinker/Trump 3

Able to "see" parahuman powers and deduce their applications and limitations. She works as a consultant for parahumans having issues with their powers. She is confirmed to have consulted with Faultline's Crew (see profile PRO-Faultlinescrew), but it is unknown which member(s) required assistance.

Related files: PRO-Faultlinescrew, ENE-17391

You confirm that there is no hint of Low Key's wolf being anything but a regular Master projection. Nor does a search turn up the word 'Arcadia' in any of the 'Unknown Master' or 'Unknown Stranger' profiles. Gallant has not spotted Fenrir. Nor are there (as far as the PRT knows) any other capes with sensory abilities in Brockton Bay.

The peace of mind is nice, but you won't really have any immediate use for the rest of the database - there's plenty of capes you haven't gotten to yet right here in the city, and it's not as if you can just decide to move elsewhere without getting your civilian identity into a lot of trouble. But one day...

After some reflection, you decide not to lean on Kid Win for any further services. His Loyalty is uncomfortably ragged, and if it snaps he might fess up and paint Quicksilver as a villain. You can't have that, not with an entire database of heroes you might want to approach as a neutral party once the local prospects dry up.

Like that fascinating Flechette person, for example.

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Lung: ?

Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation

Cricket: Mantis Form

Faultline: Charm of Lesser Unmaking

Chapter 43: L.20

Chapter Text

Faultline leads you to a door no different from any other in the corridor. With a muttered "wait here" she opens it slightly and slips inside without letting you catch a glimpse of the interior. Presumably she's telling Labyrinth to put on her mask before you see her.

The door opens fully and Faultline beckons you inside. It appears to be a two-person bedroom, but the second occupant is not present. Labyrinth is sitting on one of the beds with her feet drawn up, hugging her knees to her body. She's wearing civilian clothes and a green mask with a maze pattern fully covering her face. Her long platinum-blonde hair is quite similar to yours. A coincidence, you didn't consider Labyrinth's appearance when you designed your current disguise. You wonder whether the resemblance affected Faultline's willingness to accede to your request, one way or the other.

You walk over and sit down on the unoccupied bed, and Faultline returns to Labyrinth to, well, 'hover protectively' seems to be the best description. Labyrinth turns her head to follow you as you cross the room, but doesn't say anything.

"Hi," you say. "I'm here to study your power."

She doesn't answer verbally, but a thick thorny hedge starts growing out of the floor between you. The room is thick with her power, but it's not... touching anything? The hedge is covered with the telltale glow of an active power, but not suffused? She's not actually transmuting anything, she's... transporting it from elsewhere? You're fairly sure that no terrestrial plant has thorns quite that theatrical, either. Interdimensional transportation!

"Fascinating," you say softly.

An odd grinding sound makes you turn your head to look behind you. A rusty suit of armor is emerging from the wall behind you, its outstretched arms coming to rest on your shoulders. A sword appears gripped in its right hand, with the blade resting on the upturned palm of the left hand and the edge pressing against your throat. The sword is rather dull, but the message is clear.

Faultline turns towards Labyrinth. "Should I tell her to leave?" she asks.

Labyrinth shakes her head. "I'm sorry," she whispers.

The pressure on your throat eases, and you look down to see a rounded section of the blade fade away and disappear. She isn't transporting things at all, you realize, she's overlapping other dimensions with your own.

"It's quite alright," you reassure her. "Please keep using your power."

Faultline nods to herself and leaves the room. She walks right through the hedge as if it wasn't there, yet when you reach out to touch a leaf it's completely solid. Selectively modulated dimensional overlapping! Oh, it is Christmas.

When you arrive at the bar on Monday, you discover that your plan was successful: Without any fighting pits left for you to guard, you're back to patrolling with Rune. You also see Alex there, but without his usual companions. You suppose the inexplicably successful raids have been shaking up everyone's schedule. Alex confirms as much, when you innocently ask what's up.

"Good riddance," he adds.

"You don't like dog-fighting?" you ask.

"Fucking nigger sport," he says. "Disgusting. Figures you'd be alright with it, being a super-nigger and all."

"Didn't see you agitate against it."

He shrugs. "Can't go against the brass, can you? Makes me wish our uncle was still with us, he'd never have stood for this shit."

"I wish that every day," Big Brain speaks up in agreement. "For six million reasons."

You hold your peace on the subject, but there's this thing that's been nagging at you for a week now, that you never got the opportunity to ask about.

"Apropos nothing, what did you guys have against Joshua Wilson anyway?" He rather stood out among the 'hate crime' headlines you found for having been targeted twice in the same week, far from Empire territory. First having his house vandalized, then being beaten up a few days later.

"Who?" Alex asks.

"The hortler from December," Big Brain says.

"Oh yeah, him. That."

"What?" Your dictionary on the nazi technical vocabulary must have missed that one. "What's a hortler?" You feel safe professing ignorance now. It may result in mockery, but not suspicion. They've already accepted you as one of them.

Big Brain doesn't even mock you, he just calmly explains how even in Brockton Bay the demand for hate crimes occasionally outstrips the supply. Which can lead the more enterprising individuals among the deprived minorities to take matters into their own hands, scrawling swastikas on their own walls and burning down their own (well insured) buildings.

Only swastikas are trickier than you'd think. A common rookie mistake is drawing the tines pointing the wrong way - this is what is known as a 'heil hortler'. But in this one case - unlike, say, welfare programs - the imperial citizens gladly embrace the white man's burden, and enthusiastically track down anyone who signals their need in this manner to beat them up for real.

You've barely even started your patrol when you come across the intruder. Unlike the typical gang-bangers who decide to test your borders, he is alone, unarmed, and wearing a suit and tie. Oh shit, is this an actual lost innocent? Wishing to preserve your streak of moral behavior while pretending to be a villain, you tell Rune to continue her patrol while you deal with him. "Call me paranoid, but he could be a distraction," you dissemble. It works, and she flies off.

The man stops when he sees you approach, making no moves to either flee or attack. Either an innocent or a highly skilled assassin, you think, then curse your brain for being silly. It's true what the rank and file says, Hollywood really does rot your brain (though you're not quite prepared to accept their follow-up thesis, that this an elaborate jewish plot to weaken the white race). Just because he's calmly striding into enemy territory dressed in a suit doesn't mean he's James Bond.

"Can I help you, officer?" he asks politely as you approach. He deliberately holds his hands away from his body too, in what you recognize as the 'I know I'm black and interacting with the police, but please don't shoot me' stance. He thinks you're a hero.

"...you're not from around here, are you?" you ask.

Indeed he's not (he explains), he's a sales representative for Silestra EcoPharm Incorporated, and he flew in from California just today (you note that he doesn't offer any identification to back this up, but that's probably just to avoid any unfortunate 'reaching for his wallet/gun' mixups). He was just on his way to his hotel when he ran across you, which brings him back to his original query of, well, can he help you, officer?

Ideally, he could help by getting the hell out of Empire territory before any real nazis show up to help you evict him.

"I'm afraid this is a restricted area," you settle on. "Do you have a map?"

He does, yes, but it didn't say anything about- you lean down to grab it from him, then scribble in the Empire's borders. There. That's the restricted area.

That's... a very large area, he notes cautiously. It is, you agree. Please vacate it ASAP. He does a fairly good job of repressing any facial expressions that might be taken as resisting arrest, despite your curt tone.

His entire demeanor is kind of funny, because if you look at the stats - and the rank and file fucking love looking at the stats, and sharing them with anyone in earshot - the police tendency to disproportionately shoot black people vanishes once you divide by 'giving the cops extremely compelling reasons to shoot you'. But two wrongs do make a right in this case: You aren't a cop, and he really should fear the organization you represent.

Makes you wish you could be a fly on the wall and observe his reaction when he asks a local about the restricted zone, and figures out what really happened here.

"That's one nigger that's never sticking his nose inside our borders again," you - entirely truthfully - tell Rune when you catch up with her.

"Nice job," she says, offering you a high five as Fenrir jumps up onto her rock.

"No one trying to sneak past?"

"Nope. Looks like another dull shift."

You start to nod, but freeze as you become aware of a strange whirring sound, rising over the background traffic noise. "What's that noise?" You swear you've heard it before, but can't seem to place it.

Rune pulls back her hood enough to free an ear. "Spoke too soon," she says. "That's Armsmaster's bike."

Oh. That's where you recognize it from. As it happens, you're not overly fond of Armsmaster after his disingenuous recruitment attempt the other day. "I wouldn't object to feeding him his teeth in a friendly engagement," you say conversationally. There may be a certain eagerness in your voice for her to pick up on.

Rune laughs. "Sorry to rain on your fight boner, but their patrol routes are pretty conservative. Unless he hears someone screaming for help he won't test our borders."

Right. There's a certain amount of realpolitik involved here. The Empire does have significantly more parahuman firepower than the local Protectorate. And while the latter has access to strategic assets the former lacks (cruise missiles, airstrikes), under normal circumstances they lack the political will to call on those in a populated area.

Rune laughs again at the way your shoulders slump. "I suppose if he actually caught sight of a pair of wanted criminals he'd have to give chase, but we're supposed to keep our heads down if possible."

The way she says that leaves you with the impression that she might be willing to disregard those instructions, should you press her on the matter. Rune is a bro.

"Welllll..." you say. "What if you were to cry for help? Do you think you could lure him away from his bike for a minute? Or 30 seconds at least?"

Peering over the edge of the roof, you see Armsmaster coming down the street on his bike. Just as he's about to pass you by, a piercing, feminine scream comes from the side street he just drove past. He instantly slams the brakes and jumps off the bike, halberd in hand, before it has even come to a complete stop.

Of course such a fancy tinker contraption does not fall over, but instead drives itself over to the curb, deploys its kickstand, shuts down the engine and engages its security system with an electronic chirp. Sorcerer's sight confirms that it contains almost as much tinkertech as his armor.

Be a shame if anything happened to it.

As Armsmaster dashes off below, you motion Fenrir over. Then the screaming stops, to be replaced with laughter as Rune flies up over the rooftops, out of reach.

"Halt!" Armsmaster calls. You see a grappling hook go shooting towards her rock, but a smaller rock deflects it before it can latch on. Still cackling madly, Rune flies off. "You're under arrest for multiple crimes, including assault with a parahuman ability and aiding an escape!"

Also conspiracy to provide an excellent distraction, you think as Fenrir positions himself at the edge of the roof. He lifts one leg, and three stories below multiple alarms go off as the yellow stream hits the tinker bike.

You fan the air in front of your face. Whew. With the steam alone being this pungent, he's going to have to invent brand new tinker solvents before his ride stops smelling of second-hand mutton.

Then Rune is back, having circled around to pick you up. She deflects another grapple shot as she swoops down to pick you up, then pulls into a steep climb leaving you completely out of range of the land-bound hero.

"I heard the alarms," she says. "What did you do?"

What kind of friend would you be if you didn't record the whole thing on your phone? Chortling with glee, you hand it over.

Armsmaster-o-vision

"..."

"..."

"...Biological sample kit."

"You have got to post this on PHO," Rune says as she passes your phone back.

You shake your head. "I wanted to tweak his nose, not start a feud." No one knows better than you just how big of a glory hound Armsmaster is. "Turning this into a public humiliation would make him come after me, I don't need that in my life. And I'm suspended from PHO anyway."

"Yeah?" What did you do this time?" Not waiting for you to answer, she gets her own phone out.

PH-O-vision

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Your temporary ban expires on April 4, 2011.

You have 14 infractions and 40 warnings.

Topic: Alabaster escapes custody

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Posted by: Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)

Posted on March 26, 2011

(Showing Page 3 of 25)

► Low Key (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Shadow Stalker

Sorry about what happened. I expected you to shadow-dodge that like you did everything else. I hope Panacea was able to lend a hand.

Clockblocker

I'm not sorry about what happened to you. You touched my wolf.

► Shadow Stalker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

You're deafd, bitch! Dead, you hear me? I'll fukcxing kill you!

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: Death threats, not cool. No, not even against villains.

► road_to_hell

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Now I'm curious, what happened to Clockblocker?

► Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Nothing! Nothing happened to me! No parts of my anatomy had to be painstakingly reconstructed by Panacea, and it wasn't the most mortifying experience of my entire life. Everything is fine!

► rrqn

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Clockblocker

Ouch!

► Aaaardvark

Replied on March 26, 2011:

He deserved it. Did you forget? He touched her wolf.

► Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

He didn't just touch her wolf, he froze it in time.

► Smiling Songstress

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Gasp! What a cad!

► Hairy Porter

Replied on March 26, 2011:

I would never freeze m'lady's wolf without at least buying her to dinner first.

► Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

y u do dis, reave? :(

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 23 , 24, 25

(Showing Page 6 of 25)

► vanity

Replied on March 26, 2011:

rrqn

I agree. We're not *savages*

► will_eat_anything

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Harder! My wolf is thawing!

► Patrick O'Shaughnahuan

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Remember, in the Empire 88 they don't believe in wolf freezing before marriage.

► i_lurk_below

Replied on March 26, 2011:

I'm literally just here to fill space.

► rrqn

Replied on March 26, 2011:

i_lurk_below

That's what she said.

► FreshAir996

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Low Key

If I buy you dinner, can I freeze your wolf?

► Hermes (Moderator)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

The next person to use 'freeze wolf' as a euphemism gets a two-day vacation. Let's try to get this thread back on track.

► Low Key (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Clockblocker

Oh shit, I didn't realize I hit you that hard. Now I feel bad. Can I make it up to you? How about if you come over and freeze my wolf all night?

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: What did I *just* say?

► rrqn

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Hubba hubba!

► Smiling Songstress

Replied on March 26, 2011:

Can love bloom on the battlefield?

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ... 23 , 24, 25

(Showing Page 25 of 25)

► NaCl

Replied on March 28, 2011:

Did anyone else feel that the press release was even more perfunctory than usual?

► Low Key (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 28, 2011:

Clockblocker

For the record, that wasn't a euphemism. I meant exactly what I said. How about it, Clock? Offer's still open. Just you and me, and Fenrir being frozen in time. Over and over again, for *hours*.

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: Stop. Just stop.

► Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 28, 2011:

I'm so confused right now.

► Hermes (Moderator)

Replied on March 28, 2011:

I'm closing this thread.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 23, 24, 25

"Nice," Rune concludes, having read through the thread in question. "But you better post that shit as soon as you're back, or else."

"Oh nooo, not a threat!" you drawl. "I'm shaking in my boots, here."

Chapter 44: L.21

Chapter Text

After your brief (but immensely satisfying) encounter with Armsmaster, things settle down into smooth sailing once more. Hookwolf is considerably more tolerable to be around now that you don't interact with each other directly anymore, and you make good progress on studying Othala's power.

It might just be your imagination, but is the discipline in the dojo ever so slightly better ever since the standard punishment changed from 'having your limbs broken' to 'having to tutor Low Key'? Well if so, at least you're sufficiently aware of your shortcomings as a student to be more amused than offended.

If only he'd have come up with this method of dealing with you from the start, the big dumb jerk would still have his stupid fighting pits.

You're getting on well with Labyrinth too. She still doesn't speak, but she hardly ever conjures swords or thorny plants or rusty, bloodied meat hooks to point at you anymore.

In addition to Death Jungle World and Rusty Weapons Palace and Painfully Stereotypical Horror Asylum she also has access to a number of nicer places that show up when she's feeling less insecure. You're currently enjoying what you've mentally dubbed the Overgrown Royal Gardens.

The space between you is considerably wider than it used to be, and recessed in a way that shouldn't be possible without blocking off the dance floor downstairs. Not that any of this is a problem for Labyrinth. The impossible area is taken up by an impromptu giant chess set - something you suggested to pass the time. The floor has changed into the appropriate black and white tiles, and the pieces are weathered, ivy-covered statues with something of a greek or roman air about them. Sunlight streams in from nowhere in particular.

The statues are far too big for you to push around (and she'd get upset if you moved closer to her anyway), so Labyrinth has been phasing them in and out of existence in order to carry out your moves. Turns out she's terrible at chess, but then again so are you. At one point her king was left in check for three moves before either of you noticed.

You do have the excuse of being focused on her power, but it would be just that, an excuse. You are terrible at chess. It's an oddly refreshing thought, because it's something that you would never have been able to admit a year ago, even to yourself. Because it would imply that you weren't smart.

Which you're not, particularly. But everyone needs to have something going for them, and you certainly weren't pretty, or rich, or strong or popular. So you clung to being smart. Well, that and nice, which ahahahaha- no. But you were certainly a borderline genius whose grades were being kept down by the people stealing your homework, and not some random loser with no redeeming features whatsoever.

Perhaps you wouldn't complain if someone were to call you cunning. Insidious, to keep so many lies going. But your plans have a distinct tendency to be terrible, for all that they usually more or less work out in the end. None more terrible than 'just tough it out, Winslow won't last forever' (and it too did work out, because without the worst day of your life you'd never have met Fenrir).

It actually feels good to be able to say it: Your name is Taylor Hebert, and you're a bit of a dumb-dumb. And a girl who can't even tell what dimension she's in half the time just took your queen with a pawn.

Speaking of things working out, Thursday sees another downright placid session in Hookwolf's dojo. You'd estimate that you're halfway done with Othala already.

Yes, everything is going so smoothly that soon enough you will have to find new goals, new targets. Well, you could always just continue on to Spitfire, it's not like you're hurting for money. You haven't placed any priority on simplistic energy projection powers simply because they are so common: You can get those anywhere. But if you have some free time coming up there's no reason not to.

Strictly speaking the ability to spit fire is mostly redundant now, since your mind-hands already provide an excellent short- to medium-range non-physical combat option. But if nothing else it would let you support additional identities.

Flight is in a similar spot. Not only is it very common, you've decided to wait and see what you get from Glory Girl before taking any further steps in that direction. Yes, Glory Girl is ticking along too, preventing your entirely unnecessary schooling from becoming too boring.

Perhaps once you've finished with her you should have another go at the ABB, to see if you can get a version of Oni Lee's disposable clones that last long enough to go to school in your place. The realization that you can (probably) guide what shape a stolen power takes has certainly opened up new vistas for you.

(Oh, if only every cape was as agreeable as Vista)

Alec has voiced a desire to hang out more, now that you think about it. But the straightforward way to study his power in the long term (ie becoming a slave puppet) has certain obvious downsides that you ideally should resolve before you start going down that road.

The Empire is also full of interesting people. But Rune's unreasonably complicated power is lagging behind, and you can't request a new schedule until you have that one down. At least switching partners shouldn't be a problem once that's finally done: Requesting a transfer would hurt her feelings enough that she wouldn't want to hang out with you anyway.

Speaking of Rune, on your way home from the dojo you receive a text on your empire phone. It reads 'Don't say I didn't warn you. XOXO, Rune', followed by a link to a PHO thread. That's concerning. These phones aren't meant for personal business, which means she was so eager to get her revenge on you for not posting the Armsmaster video that she convinced someone in ops to pass the message along instead of waiting until the next time you met. Despite your earlier dismissal of her threats, it's with some trepidation that you go online to check it out.

"That bitch!" you exclaim to nobody in particular on seeing what she did. Your finger move on their own to type out a scathing reply, before you stop and take a deep breath. You're not angry. If you're angry, she wins. You are calm, and disappointed.

PH-O-vision

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You have 3 infractions.

Private message from Rune (Verified Cape):

Rune: You didn't post the video! See what happens when you don't post the video?

Topic: Refusal, four faults (cape footage)

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Rune (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Posted on March 31, 2011:

[The post consists of a single video link. The video is an aerial shot of Low Key, riding across rooftops on her wolf. The wolf gracefully leaps across every street and alley - until it suddenly plants its feet and skids to a stop just before an unusually wide gap, almost throwing the rider off.]

(Showing Page 1 of 2)

► Low Key (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 31, 2011:

I can't believe you posted that. You're the second-worst best friend I've ever had.

► will_eat_anything

Replied on March 31, 2011:

You can't just post something like that and leave it there. What did your worst best friend do?

► Low Key (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 31, 2011:

trigger event

►rrqn

Replied on March 31, 2011:

Damn, girl!

► will_eat_anything

Replied on March 31, 2011:

I was going to turn this into a 'worst best friend stories' thread, but nvm. Low Key wins.

► Mustachioed Pierogi

Replied on March 31, 2011:

I hope you fall off the roof next time, nazi *****!

-User received a warning for this post. Reason: Language.

► rosalind91

Replied on March 31, 2011:

You leave her alone! She saved me, she's a bigger hero than anyone in the Protectorate.

► Mustachioed Pierogi

Replied on March 31, 2011:

Saved you from what? Having to tolerate other races?

► Low Key (Verified Cape)

Replied on March 31, 2011:

youths

► Rune (Original Poster) (Verified Cape) (Temp-banned)

Replied on March 31, 2011:

Feral *******, duh.

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: I can't take my eyes off of you for a minute, can I?

End of Page. 1, 2

Hmph. Serves her right.

On Friday you walk in on Big Brain telling a story to a rapt audience. A tale about a man from sometime during the nation's youth, you deduce from the presence of Indians ("feather, not dot") and frenchmen on the same continent. A military man, who turns out to be a bit of a glory-seeking asshole, and a bit of a war criminal.

You expect the twist to be that he's talking about some famous abolitionist figure you've never heard of. But no, turns out the hero of the tale was one George 'Town Destroyer' Washington. Huh. You must have slept through that part of history class.

Big Brain skips lightly over the war of independence, then starts going into more detail as George and his cronies start planning a coup d'état. Wait, what?

Okay, let's see if you have this straight: The Articles of Confederation were a perfectly good basis for government, but George and a bunch of other rich guys who had lent money for the war were unhappy about the rate at which they were being paid back? They wanted to greatly increase the amount taxes the government could levy, and thus the Constitution was born?

On the one hand, greedy rich people make for great unsympathetic antagonists. On the other, they were owed money, and if the people voted for-

Oh, the people didn't vote for it? Through means ranging from disingenuous propaganda to straight up manhandling delegates, the Constitution was put into place with considerably less than 50% approval among the voting public.

Still, you're surprised to find anti-Constitution sentiment here. Oughtn't they love the first amendment, which lets them express their political opinions without being rounded up on the spot?

Oh, right. That's an amendment, not part of how ol' Town Destroyer originally envisioned the thing. A compromise with the anti-federalists. Who, to hear Big Brain tell it, had a hundred other issues that didn't make it into the bill of rights, though he doesn't specify what those were. You should probably look that up at some point.

"This laid the groundwork that would eventually lead to the Tyrant Lincoln and the War of Northern Aggression..." Okay, that's more like what you expected to hear, but he has clearly reached the epilog for tonight. The next history lesson will no doubt be spicier. It is a bit funny to hear the Civil War referred to as 'the War of Northern Aggression' here in Connecticut, though. Eh, whatever. Your regular history class made it quite clear that everyone is supposed to feel bad about winning against the Indians, it's only fair that these guys get to feel bad about winning against the South.

"Finally!" Rune says. Oh, you didn't notice her arrive. "We're late, you fucking history nerd."

You elect to not mention how she also stayed to listen instead of interrupting. She's clearly a cool person and not some kind of nerd.

About halfway through your patrol, your phone rings. You frown in confusion. That's your Empire phone, but orders are supposed to go to Rune (the 'senior cape') when you're on patrol together.

"...Low Key," you answer it. You always take an extra second when answering a phone these days, to double check that the name you'll give matches the phone you're using.

"Hey, it's Mike. We could use your help."

"Shouldn't this go through ops?"

"It's a personal matter. I know you're on duty, but..."

"Yes?"

"Well, we, uh... Look, here's the thing. We caught a domestic violence case. The policy is to drag the perp into the street and beat the shit out of them, but, uh..."

"Yeees?"

"Frankly, none of us here are comfortable striking a woman. So-"

Ah. "So you figured that since I'm a violent psycho..."

"You said it, not me."

"Pretty sure you did say that, Mike. Just not to my face."

"Well, where's the lie?" You can practically hear his insouciant shrug over the phone.

You sigh. You weren't not going to help him. You just would have liked to make him squirm a bit first. But people who can be shamed into disavowing their beliefs don't exactly join the Empire in the first place.

"Fine. Give me the address." You put your hand over the microphone. "Rune? Let me down please, I need to run an errand. I'll meet up with you at checkpoint six."

Sven is waiting for you when you arrive. You park your wolf outside and let him show you to the right apartment. He gestures you towards the living room, but you stop when you catch sight of the victim through the kitchen door.

He looks like a perfectly normal guy. Not the manliest of men perhaps, but not stereotypically weak either. There are bruises forming on his face and neck, his lower lip is split, and he has a nasty scalp wound that Alex is in the process of stitching up. You study him for a while, trying to find something that would let you recognize him as 'abuse victim' without the immediate clues. No, you suppose that if it was that easy to spot a victim, someone would have noticed you.

You don't make a great big ass out of yourself by asking something stupid like 'are you alright?'. Nor do you ask 'why didn't you fight back?' and especially not 'what set her off?'. You know how it is.

"How long has this been going on?" you ask instead.

He looks up when he hears your voice, startles when he sees you're a cape ("Keep still while I'm sewing!" Alex hisses). He licks his lips and swallows a few times before answering.

"A few months?" It's clearly a question. You shake your head. You're not the one who knows the answer. "Closer to a year, really."

You nod. You don't ask 'why didn't you tell anyone?' or 'why didn't you leave her?'. You know how it is. Instead you simply leave. You have a bully to take apart.

"Please don't drag her out into the street," he calls after you.

'Why are you protecting her?' you don't ask. You just shake your head as you walk away. Not punishing her to the fullest extent of the law is not something that's on the table here.

Mike is standing in the living room, holding a woman with both hands twisted behind her back. Judging by his expression, and the scratches on his face, he is fairly close to overcoming his sexist hangups and rendering your help unnecessary.

The woman opens her mouth as you enter the room. Your fist closes it for her before you can find out whether she was about to request mercy or offer defiance.

Once you're done you return to the apartment. Alex has finished treating the victim and packed up his supplies.

"Pen," you say. Mike hands you one, along with a notebook. Of course Serious Policeman Mike has a notebook. You scribble a note, tear off the page.

"You." You turn to the victim. "Get a divorce."

He lets out out a startled laugh, unprepared for you to walk right up to the elephant in the room and punch it in the snout like that.

"You obviously have reasons for not having done that already," you continue before he can respond further. "Fuck your reasons. Your reasons suck. You need to burn this chapter of your life to the ground, yesterday. In the meantime, here's my number. She lays one finger on you, you call me. And if I ever find out that you didn't call me when you should have? Then I'm coming for you too, and I'm a lot scarier than she is. Don't fuck this up."

Harsh, perhaps, that last part. But necessary. You know what you would have done in his situation, before you got powers. Which is nothing.

You leave without another word. The skinheads trail after you.

"Thanks," Mike says. "We owe you one."

"Gloves," you say without looking back.

"Excuse me?"

"Gloves. Black leather, size 6. Your dumb scruples got blood all over this pair."

Chapter 45: L.22

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You bask in the familiar sensation of a power settling in and becoming a part of you. Three days, that's ridiculous. Labyrinth is arguably the strongest cape you've studied so far, yet you figured her out in three days flat. As compared to a solid eight days for the considerably less impressive Faultline, just to give one example among many. You've officially given up on understanding how you're understanding these things, but at least you're saving money right now.

Now for the hard part: Figuring out exactly what power just you got. You never seem to copy things exactly, and the mechanics of exactly how things change are as opaque to you as the apparent variation in complexity. You still don't know how to use the power you got from Lung (another contender for strongest cape studied, whose power took you two days).

You try to activate your new power, and feel a dimensional shift taking hold right away. Thank god, it's one of the cooperative ones. The chess pieces start to crumble, wearing away into fine silvery sand.

"What? What's happening?" Labyrinth asks.

Oh, you probably should have waited until you were alone to try it out. You thought you could just affect some tiny detail that wouldn't be noticed. Instead the chess set has been completely reduced to sand. How do you control this thing? The sand is spreading across the floor. How do you turn it off? You take a spill as the bed you're sitting on turns into sand, and then you're tumbling down a dune. The world is spinning and all you can see is silver sand and black sky. Wait, sky?

You come to a stop lying on your back at the bottom of the dune. Your hair and clothes are full of sand, but your shitty Brute powers saved you from being overly bruised or abraded. You get to your feet with a groan and look around. You spot Labyrinth lying some distance away and hurry over to help her. Oh, ouch. She's not a Brute. It looks nasty, but she's not bleeding too badly.

"Where are we?" she asks as you help her to her feet.

"I don't know. We'll have to climb back up and take a look around."

You have to steady her at first, but she seems to be recovering. By the time you're back at the top of the dune she's walking on her own. The view that greets you isn't encouraging. The sky is pitch black without moon or stars, but the silver sand is glowing faintly, enough that you have no trouble seeing. And what you see is sand. Endless desert, stretching to the horizon in all directions.

"Is this one of your places?" you ask. You noticed that she had several distinct dimensions she was pulling things from, each with its own 'theme'. The desert is new, though.

"No, it's- the worlds, they're gone!"

"What?"

"I, I can't reach any of my worlds." She sounds terrified.

"You can't bring us back?" you ask.

"I don't even know how we got here. My power doesn't work like this."

"And you can't bring anything here? Like, say, food and water?"

Labyrinth shakes her head mutely. Shit. Okay, this is clearly you fault. You owe it to her to get her out of this - not that you were planning on dying in an otherworldly desert regardless. You close your eyes and poke at your new power. It accidentally walked you into hell, now how do you walk back out? Come on, bullshit power intuition.

Aha! Wait, shit! Okay, you can do this. You just have to keep telling yourself you can do this.

"We had better get moving at once," you say. "Come on, it's this way." You start walking.

"How do you know?" she asks.

"Just a feeling," you say, looking back over your shoulder. "Do you have a better idea?"

She shakes her head again and follows you.

"You seem different," you remark. "I think you've talked more since you got here than you did over the last three days."

"It's my worlds. They're all gone, so there is more space for... me."

"You know that Faultline hoped that I could figure out some way to help you once I understood your power?"

"Yeah."

"Well, mission accomplished I guess." You scowl. "All I had to do was strand us in an isolated hell dimension."

Labyrinth reaches out and squeezes your shoulder. Huh, initiating physical contact. She really is different.

"It's not so bad," she says, "the Bad World is much worse."

You can hear the capitalization, and decide not to ask for details. Probably the one you called the Asylum. At least you hope so, you'd hate to think she had something worse than that. Instead of dwelling on such things, you hand her your cellphone.

"Here. Record a message saying as much. I'll hold it out in front of me when we get back and maybe I won't get murdered on the spot."

"She's going to be pretty angry, isn't she?" Labyrinth muses. "I wonder how much damage was done to the club this time? I remember her being upset about that before, even though she tried to hide it.

"But can't I just- oh." Yeah. Sounds like she just realized that this is temporary: Once you escape this isolated place her power will come back and everything will be back to normal. It takes her a while to compose herself and record a message that won't do more harm than good after that.

Labyrinth lies down and refuses to get up. When you try to coax her, she holds up your phone, showing the time. Oh. You arrived late last evening, and now it's apparently eight in the morning. The sun hasn't come up, though. You don't think this place even has a sun. You decide that calling a halt is reasonable.

"How much longer?" she asks.

You shrug. "Several days at least, I think." You know exactly how long it will take, but you're afraid that if you tell the truth she'll just give up then and there.

She groans and covers her eyes with her arm. You lie down next to her and try to get some sleep.

When you wake up, you start walking again.

The night never ends. This probably saves your lives. It remains dark and chilly, and you sweat relatively little as you walk. The makeshift urine-filtering device your Tinker 0 powers rig up probably also saves your lives, but the less said about that the better. It doesn't work all that well, that's more than enough said.

The second day wasn't too bad. The third day was awful. Day four Labyrinth became delirious, but she remained cooperative enough that you could lead her by the hand. On day five she wouldn't wake up, but wasn't considerate enough to stop breathing.

So you plod onwards, carrying Labyrinth on your back. She's not all that much smaller than you are, and you aren't all that much stronger that a normal human.

Your resentment involves a certain amount of envy. If not for your shitty Brute powers, you could be comatose right now, too. Instead you're getting to enjoy every nuance of dying of thirst in exquisite slow motion. With a sack of rocks on your back.

Once you're certain she won't wake up, you start cheating by using mind-hands to take up most of her weight. It helps, for a while. But your mind isn't in the best shape either right now, and you're having trouble keeping its hands on task. They have a tendency to drift off and fade away whenever your concentration slips.

Oh, you stopped. Stopping is bad. You had better stop doing that. Heh, stop stopping, stupid. Your feet were hurting before, but now you can't feel them at all. Maybe they've been worn away completely, and you're walking on the stumps? You don't look down to check, just in case. Your vision is too blurry to see much anyway - that's not a symptom of anything, you just had to discard your contact lenses days ago.

You keep expecting to see four-armed Scion, or the sandworm. But it's the wrong desert, this one is real. You think. Real-ish. You keep seeing something in the corner of your eye, but every time it's just Labyrinth's head resting on your shoulder. At least she's too dehydrated to drool on you.

You're pretty sure that you aren't plodding in a straight line any more, but trying to turn around and look at your tracks seems like an excellent way to fall over and never get up again. And that's just too goddamn tempting to consider.

The world is fading in and out, that probably means you're delirious too, now. But your surroundings are subtly different each time, which means that you're still walking. How are you still walking, loaded down as you are? Wait, are you? You feel a spike of panic. You must have dropped Labyrinth! Oh, no, there she is on your back, just where you left her. Yet you're still walking. It's a mystery.

There is sand in your face. Sand in your face means you've fallen down! You flail your limbs about and feel the sand shifting around you. You're lying on on your back, underneath the sand. Not very deep, though. You manage to clear away enough sand that you can breathe, and open your eyes. The sky is dark - but not black, and there are clouds! You made it!

With some struggling you get into a sitting position. You note with relief that Labyrinth is sprawled next to you, not inexplicably buried. You're sitting in a patch of glowing silver sand in the middle of a city. You recognize the buildings - this is exactly what Brockton Bay would look like, if the Palanquin nightclub was a faintly glowing desert.

Speak of the devil, that's Faultline & Co approaching right now. When they recognize you they break into a run. Most of them cluster around Labyrinth with various exclamations of relief and concern, but Faultline herself is focused on you. You prepare an eloquent explanation of your situation, and a stirring defense of your actions.

"Water," you croak, and pass out.

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Lung: ?

Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation

Cricket: Mantis Form

Faultline: Charm of Lesser Unmaking

Labyrinth: Hell-Walker Technique

Mechanics corner

The bad news: You accidentally Cecylene (a primordial god-thing that takes the form of an endless desert) and gave her a foothold in your reality.

The good news: Walking for five days just put you back in the real world, which means you didn't accidentally Malfeas (a primordial god-thing that takes the form of a vast city populated by trillions of demons).

Usually Hell-Walker Technique just brings you into Cecylene, and doesn't leave a permanent foothold behind. However, intersecting Labyrinth's power with other explicitly dimensional effects canonically creates permanent rifts*. In this case, the DM rules the effect to be as if you'd also used Holy Land Infliction and Dune-Drowned Oasis Ritual, sacrificing yourselves. With you being Essence 3 and her being Essence 2, you just brought 2500 square yards of infinite desert into Earth Bet.

*Yes, I know, all parahuman powers are implicitly dimensional effects, and this effect makes no sense. That's canon for you.

Chapter 46: L.23

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

As you gradually return to awareness, the first thing you notice is how much everything hurts. But you're not in the desert anymore! You're in a bed, with sheets and everything. That's good. There's something stuck in your arm. Your gaze follows the plastic tubing up to an IV bag. Liquids, going into your body. That's also good.

When you turn your head in the other direction, you see Faultline in a chair next to your bed. Everything is still blurry, but you're pretty sure that's a gun she's pointing at you.

Which is fair. Faultline trusted you. You repaid that trust by, essentially, burning down her house and kidnapping her daughter.

"Is Labyrinth OK?" you ask.

"You're alive," Faultline answers. That's fair.

"Did you get her message?"

Faultline pokes the gun towards you in a shrug-adjacent gesture. See previous answer.

"If you had asked me whether I would give up the Palanquin to help her, I would have said yes." She hesitates briefly. "Probably. If I thought it would work. But you didn't ask, and you didn't succeed."

"I fucked up," you agree. "I thought I had something, and didn't stop to think." Is there anything you can say in your defense? "I did carry her out of there on my back."

"You owe me a nightclub."

Neither of you speak for a while. The obvious question is 'what now?'. The obvious answer is that you hand over your life savings and maybe indenture yourself somehow, and Faultline doesn't shoot you. But for some reason she's hesitant to demand that.

You belatedly realize that your sorcerer's sight lapsed while you were unconscious. You rectify that, and get a face full of semitransparent fur. Fenrir is standing over your bed, ready to materialize to catch a bullet and/or bite Faultline's head off at a moment's notice.

You blink away tears. Good dog. Best dog. He must have been worried sick when you vanished.

Oh shit, your dad! You're a missing person now. What are you going to tell him? For that matter, what are you going to tell the Empire? Low Key went AWOL and missed her Monday patrol.

You're distracted from your mounting panic when you spot the most peculiar glow.

"What's that in your pocket?" you ask.

"So you can see it. I was going to ask you the same thing." Faultline shows you a milky white stone, smoothly oval in shape and about an inch in diameter. "It was lying in the the desert, roughly where you vanished from."

You unconsciously reach for it. Faultline pulls it back and moves the gun forward. Right, look but don't touch. You study it intently. It's a third color. Not Case 53, not regular cape, something different. The structure is unlike any tinkertech you've ever seen. But as long as you can see it, you can figure out what it does.

Faultline remains silent, studying your face while you stare at the gem. Oh, you're not wearing your mask, are you? No matter, this face isn't real anyway. Though you had better take some selfies once you get out of here - now that Schrödinger's face is out of the box, you need to be able to recreate it accurately in the future in case you lose your mask a second time. Up till now you'd been saving time by only paying attention to the lower, visible half of Quicksilver's face, letting the rest fall as it may.

A small part of your mind keeps wandering while the majority remains engrossed by the strange stone. Seeing a parahuman point a mundane gun at someone is so weird. But of course it's necessary in this case: No one knows better than you that her power can't hurt people. Hm. Now that you think about it, the stone is less like tinkertech and more like a-

Wait, no way. No way! "It's the solution!" you exclaim. "It's the power to help Labyrinth!"

Faultline does not react the way you expect. "A power?" she demands, shoving the gun in your face again. "How do you administer it? Does it cause mutations? What do you know that you haven't been telling me?"

"What? No! It doesn't make Case 53's." Or, hm... It's the wrong color, true, but if someone knew how to mass-produce gems like this, and had some method to render them into a consumable form... No, probably not. Your Tinker power is yelling ways to use the gem into your brain, and consuming it is not one of them. "It's more like... naturally-occurring tinkertech? Power-granting equipment?"

Faultline pulls the gun back, but does not apologize. "How do you use it?"

A plans forms in your mind.

"You need regular tinkertech to attune- that is, to interface with it. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of specialized tinkertech," you say truthfully. Orichalcum isn't cheap. You pause for effect. "I happen to know a Tinker who owes me a favor. A big favor."

"Hm," Faultline hums. She's not stupid, she understands where you're going with this. "Very well. Gregor and Newter will escort you." What will happen to you if you try to run is obvious.

"I'll need a drop of your blood," you say.

"Excuse me?"

"Secondary attunement requires- look, the explanation quickly stops being English. He's going to need a blood sample to match your, like, fingerprint of magic vibrations? With the gem. If you want anyone else to be able to use it, they also-"

"Mine will do," Faultline interrupts. "If this is a trick..."

Yes, yes. She needn't worry. You like Labyrinth, you genuinely want to help her.

You lead Gregor and Newter (and Fenrir) across town to your old forge.

"Wait outside," you tell them. "Smith likes his privacy, and Faultline is angry enough without one of you getting himself killed by stumbling into a Tinker's lair uninvited."

Newter starts to object, but Gregor touches his arm to stave him off (generating a thick slime over his palm to avoid direct skin contact). "I trust her," he says.

"Yeah? Then why are we even here, genius?" Newter asks.

"Because Faultline does not. We will wait here. I will take responsibility."

"Fine, whatever."

"Thanks, Gregor," you say.

"Thank me by helping Labyrinth."

You flash him a smile and turn away. "Smith, it's me! I'm coming in!" you call to the empty building before going inside.

"One bar of orichalcum, and the outfit," you tell Fenrir. He obediently sticks his head into the ground and starts rooting around for the dematerialized objects you had him bury there. You don't have him fetch any other reagents. No need to waste Lung's scale when you have this much magic sand stuck in your hair.

You collect the sand that falls as you shift your hair and face Smith-wards, then change into the matching costume. Even Smith's slightly off-prescription glasses are a relief after being unable to see properly for so long. And you stashed reserve contacts with his costume, for when you change back.

You have Fenrir dematerialize again after plucking some hairs from his coat. It wouldn't do to have Newter catch sight of him, should he decide to climb up and peek through the skylight.

You open the door a sliver and call out to Gregor in the guise of Smith, your voice changed by the mask.

"Gonna take a couple of hours. Bring pizza!"

Then you slam the door again and reach out for Dragon's power. You throw in industry and forge wisdom too, in case it helps. Can't have too much Tinker.

Sutra of the Wandering Maiden

Once there was a maiden...

...who wandered lost in a labyrinth of her own making.

It was a truly grand creation, each room a world of its own.

Each world held a thousand wonders, and a thousand horrors.

"Please come back to the real world," her friends cried out. "We miss you!"

But she could not understand their words.

"They all look real to me", said she.

You've barely gotten started - drawing out strands of orichalcum to coat the wolf hairs, forming them into fine links joined in a chain - when there's a knock on the door. You open it and accept a pair of pizza boxes from Gregor, fighting against the resistance of the paper strips around your wrists and the Tinker song in your brain.

"You're bleeding," Gregor says.

"Bugger off," you tell him, and shut the door in his face. Now, where were you?

You eat pizza as you work. After five days without food, it's heavenly. Though Brute 0 or no, it's probably a good thing that your Tinker fugue state makes you eat slowly. After finishing the chain, you move on to the main body. You alloy the orichalcum with blood and sand. Shape it into a nine-pointed star, with a setting for the gem.

You come back to your senses, frowning at the amulet in your hand. Why did you waste orichalcum on a star shape? Well, no matter. It's quite thin, you used up less than a third of the bar. You rouse the dozing Fenrir and have him put everything back in the ground while you change back into Quicksilver.

"How does it work?" Faultline asks.

"You put it on, touch her with the stone, and will her to become better."

"Just like that?" She slips the amulet around her neck. "I do feel something. Different from my own power, but... I'm a mind healer now? That sounds too good to be true."

"It's not reverse Panacea in a box," you say. Watching the circuit forming between Faultline and the gem makes it easy to understand just how it works. "The effect is temporary, and it only has the power to do it about once per day or so."

"How long?"

You shrug. "Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. A stable environment should help prolong the effect."

"So, no use in a fight."

You make a 'so-so' motion. "A fight only last a couple of minutes, doesn't it? But it would wear off when it stops being a fight and starts being 'escaping the burning building,' I think."

"I see. Let's try it." Faultline gestures for you to follow her.

"You know something," she says as you walk. "This is all far too neat. You're not just a Thinker, you did something to her power, to make it go haywire like that. This 'power gem' - something I've never heard of before - appears, and it's exactly what we need. You orchestrated all this."

"I'm as confused as you are, honest." You really are. "Probably more so, because I can see all the things that don't fit. My power did somehow interact with hers. I don't know how or why. I couldn't do it with you. I agree that the desert probably reacted to my desire - or hers - in some way to produce that gem. But if I had planned any of this, I'd have brought food and water."

"What is the desert? Where did it come from? Why- how does it care about anyone's desires? She never manifested a world like that before."

"I don't know. I know that it's infinitely large, and that it takes exactly five days to walk from end to end. It doesn't matter how fast you walk, but you have to keep walking. I know these things. I did not learn them." You don't mention the other fact about the desert that you know without learning. It wouldn't make her any happier. It certainly isn't making you any happier.

Faultline sighs.

"Yeah," you agree.

Faultline stops at a door. Labyrinth's room in these temporary quarters, presumably.

"You should go in alone," you say. You want it to last as long as possible, and I might disrupt the stable environment when I leave."

"You'll just have to stick around, then."

"Look, I just went missing for the better part of a week. I have commitments. I need to go salvage my life."

"You're coming inside so I can shoot you if something happens to her."

Faultline opens the door. The room is a lot larger than what ought to fit in the building, but the space is cluttered with rusty torture devices and restraints. The lighting is poor, but you're pretty sure that's blood flowing down the walls. Labyrinth sits unmasked in the middle of it all, staring at nothing. She doesn't react to your presence.

"May I approach?" Faultline asks softly. No response.

She motions for you to stay put, and slowly walks across the room, not making any sudden movements. You watch the strange power gather as she hefts the amulet, and release as she gently brushes the stone across Labyrinth's cheek.

Instantly, the rust and blood fades into nothing as the regular furniture returns, and the room regains its original dimensions. Labyrinth holds up her hands in front of her, staring in open-mouthed awe as vines with small blue flowers climb up her arms. Then she's hugging Faultline, and crying.

You stand around awkwardly as Labyrinth tries to explain how happy she is. Maybe Faultline has to wipe away a tear of happiness or two as well, judging by the way she works a finger beneath her mask to swipe at her cheeks.

Then Labyrinth spots you, and you're the one being hugged and showered with tears and incoherent gratitude (Faultline adopted a combat-ready posture the instant Labyrinth came near you, but relaxed a moment later, shaking her head slightly). A wreath of flowers form in your hair.

"You fixed me," Labyrinth repeats over and over again.

You hate to do it, but you eventually manage to pry her away from you and calm her down enough that you can explain that you didn't quite fix her. This too will pass.

She becomes solemn at that, but still gives you another hug. "Thank you anyway," she whispers in your ear.

"I really have to go," you tell her. "Sorry."

"Okay." She lets go of you.

"You are still not welcome back," Faultline says.

"Yeah." You did still burn down her house. "I'm sorry."

Notes:

Mechanics corner

The DM rules the effect to be as if you'd used Holy Land Infliction and Dune-Drowned Oasis Ritual - and that the resulting demesne produces a hearthstone (if you're more familiar with Final Fantasy 7 than Exalted, it's basically a 'materia') without additional geomantic structures.

What is this shit, a fix-fic? Where's your promised grimderp!? He'd better kill off someone small and cute soon to compensate or you'll stop reading!

Updated status

The Silver Desert

Cecylene Manse •

It's a flat patch of sand with no structures or amenities whatsoever, and a slight risk of becoming lost in an infinite desert should you linger too long. But hey, it produces a Stone of Comfort.

Once per day, its bearer may touch the Stone of Comfort to someone who suffers from a derangement and ease that person's insanity for a scene.

Bloodbound orichalcum hearthstone amulet

Artifact ••

A bloodbound artifact is created by alloying the magical material with the blood of a mortal during the forging process. Though an exalt must still commit essence to attune the artifact as normal, it can then be lent to the mortal whose blood was used. As long as the essence remains committed, the mortal can use the artifact as if she was the one attuned to it. However, the mortal never receives the magical material bonus of the artifact, even if the attuning exalt would.

Making an artifact bloodhound does not increase its artifact rating. Rather, this is a two-dot artifact because its creator also made it so that she (but not the bound mortal) can banish it Elsewhere and resummon it at will, as if using the charm Summoning the Loyal Steel.

Chapter 47: L.24

Chapter Text

You stop outside the door of Faultline's temporary quarters and take a deep breath. You did a good thing today. And by 'today', you mean 'the last five days', which has caused you all sorts of problems. As do-goodery does, you suppose, else it'd be more popular. What did it gain you, besides a decisive end to a profitable business relationship? A power? Haha nope, you're just going to go ahead and pretend that you don't have a technique for walking straight into hell permanently etched into your soul, thank you very much.

Another deep breath. Okay. Game face, Taylor. You can deal with this. First order of business... is to rush home, get your Low Key outfit, shape-shift again and barely make it in time for your Friday patrol, with an excuse ready for your absence on Monday (and Tuesday and Thursday, not that Hookwolf cares whether you show up for training anymore). Okay. Another deep breath. Go.

Your dad isn't home when you grab the costume, so you have another few hours to think of what to tell him. Small favors.

"Low Key!" Happy voices greet you as you enter the bar. "You're alive!" "What happened?" "Are you all right?" "You didn't call in sick."

"Have you ever had a fever so bad you started hallucinating and didn't know who you were?" Most people present indicate that no, they haven't. "Good. Can't say I recommend it."

"But you're fine now?"

"Well, no. My everything hurts." That didn't stop being a thing that was true at any point during the day. It would be really nice if you could just curl into a little fetal ball of wolf cuddles and not have to deal with anything for a while. "But I know what planet I'm on today, and I've got a job to do." That job being 'studying Rune's stupidly difficult power', of course.

"Are you sure?" "Dude, shut up. She says she's fine, she's fine." "Of course Psycho Bitch needs some violence to recover fully."

Then Rune arrives and you have to repeat your lies all over again (you are touched by her concern. It's almost as if you're real friends).

The ride is noticeably less comfy than usual - it must have taken a lot out of Fenrir to materialize three times in a single day, he has no magic to spare for the task of sparing your butt. Still, you make it through the night. The patrol ends without incident, and you part ways with Rune.

Then just as you've changed back into street clothes and dematerialized your wolf, your fucking phone rings. It's Lisa.

"Taylor, good to have you back. I could use some help."

"You knew I was gone?" You didn't think she knew about Quicksilver... then again, of course she'd investigate the Palanquin vanishing like that, and who knows what her power might have told her?

"Would you believe that a lost puppy showed up at my doorstep?"

You glance at Fenrir, who nods. So he didn't just sit around and worry. He was clever enough to go to someone smart and trusted for help. Someone is getting all the belly rubs.

Lisa-o-vision, four days ago

"Jesus! Wh- oh, it's you. Almost gave me a heart attack there, Bubbles."

The floor creaks dangerously under the sudden strain while I try to get my breathing back under control, my limbs thrumming with adrenaline. I really wish my power could have given me some hint that Taylor's wolf would materialize in my apartment, but without Taylor around to read there are no clues that he even exists. Right up to the moment when you get a face full of giant carnivore.

"Alright. Fight or flight responses tested and confirmed to be in fine working order. Thanks for that. Now." I pause for another deep breath. "What's up, Lassie? Did Taylor fall down a well?"

He nods. I start to grin, before realization dawns. If Taylor wasn't in trouble, she'd just have called me. Instead of sending Bubbles to... my apartment... that she doesn't know about.

Bubbles can track me down wherever I go. Bubbles can perfectly track anyone once he has their scent.

Because he wasn't scary enough already. At least we're friends.

Bubbles would kill me without hesitation if doing so would help Taylor, or if she asked him to.

I said, at least we're friends!

"Ok, what happened?" He offers a canine shrug.

He doesn't know where Taylor is, despite his tracking ability.

"You don't know where she is?" Head shake. "Did she get teleported away by someone?" Are there even any teleporters in the city? Oni Lee, but he can't go all that far in a single jump. Bubbles should still be able to track- Bubbles shakes his head.

He doesn't need an unbroken scent. He can track people even across teleports. Taylor is not on earth.

Ah, shit. List of capes who can go into space: Legend. Sphere (RIP, sorta). The Simurgh. Eido-

He can track people in space.

"Really? You can track people in space?" He just tilts his head in confusion. "Like, the moon. If Taylor was on the moon, would you be able to tell?" After a moment's thought, he nods. Okay. Not on earth, not in space. List of capes who can travel between dimensions: Professor Haywire (RIP). The Simurgh. I really don't like where this list is going. Maybe Eido-

Labyrinth.

Really, Labyrinth?

Taylor was involved in the attack on the Palanquin.

"Has she being hanging out with Faultline's Crew? You know, uptight bitch in a welding mask, big fat slug dude, orange punk..." He nods again. Good, good. Not the Simurgh.

"I would believe that," you agree. "Look, can this wait until tomorrow? I'm sort of dead on my feet, here."

"Not really, no. I could really use some backup now, tonight."

Backup, as in parahuman muscle? You look again at the transparent form of Fenrir. No way in hell is he materializing a fourth time today. "Is it a party? Because I just put the kids to bed." One of the few nice aspects of having a powerful Thinker for a friend is that you can just make up a code as you go along, confident that she'll be able to pick up on the message no matter what.

"Please, like you don't have options. How long has it been since the last one? Don't tell me you're slowing down down in your old age!" Her chipper tone grates on your exhausted sensibilities, but you have to admit that another benefit is that she can make up a code too, picking one that she magically knows you will happen to understand.

In this case she's telling you that she knows you have powers in reserve, not attached to any identity. She's asking you to cash in one of them - and needling you because you haven't already done so.

"I sleep, you know," you bite out. "Do you have any idea about the hours I work? Besides, I don't have anything to wear to a party."

"Just put on some makeup and come over, I'll have an outfit for you." (that's her telling you to shapeshift yourself, btw)

You grit your teeth. You do owe her, and she knows exactly how much you'd like to repay that debt.

"Fine." You hang up on her, then sigh theatrically. Absolutely no rest for the rogues.

"Go home and wait for me there," you tell Fenrir. "You need to rest too, I'll manage this on my own." He looks so sad at his inability to help you that you simply have to manifest a mind-hand and pet him a bit. "None of that! You're the best, you know that right? The best dog, the best friend. Yes you are."

Your phone beeps. A text from Lisa, giving the address where she wants to meet. Your face involuntarily scrunches up, and you pinch the bridge of your nose. "Go. Try to get enough sleep for both of us."

The 'outfit' Lisa has for you is a plain white mask. No clothes, no accessories. You can't really complain though, your 'makeup' consisted of you turning your hair straight and blonde. Have you mentioned how your everything hurts, and how shapeshifting makes it worse? Your hair hurts now, and hair doesn't even have pain receptors. No, the weird thing is that she isn't wearing her costume either. You thought this was a party?

"Sooo, about the Silver Desert-" Lisa says.

"Is that what they're calling it?"

"Yeah. My power keeps telling me it's infinitely large."

"It is."

"It's like 50 yards across!"

"On the outside, sure. It's infinite on the inside, though. 's why it took me so long to walk back across it." Lisa stares at you, then throws her hands up in disgust when her power confirms everything you just said as true.

"Says it's alive, too," she mutters.

"Sounds legit," you agree. Taylor doesn't know any more about it that I do, Lisa's power says. She makes a wordless sound of disgust, and you find yourself smiling a bit despite everything. Say what you want about misery, at least it loves company.

"So what are we doing here?" you ask.

"Right. I was scouting out new targets for the Undersiders to hit when I found this Merchant stash house. There's no parahumans there tonight, just three thugs with guns."

Sloppy, but what else would you expect of Merchants? What you don't see is where you enter the picture. "So hit it then. A couple of bullets won't stop Rachel's monsters." Not that they would be likely to hit anything in the first place, with Grue and/or Alec there as well.

"I didn't tell them about it. I figure it's lightly guarded enough that the two of us could take it, and I could really use a bit of money that no one else knows I have. For reasons."

And by the two of you she sort of means the one of you, because she's certainly no use in a fight. But really, 'reasons'? Did she forget that you have her soul's price? The incredulous look you send her way makes her blush ever so slightly, confirming that she did in fact forget that little detail.

"Fine, I'm plotting a murder, alright? Happy now?"

"Ecstatic." You take a moment to consider your options. With Thinker support and the element of surprise you could take a couple of gunmen, you're pretty sure. And having serious money would be nice, even if you no longer have to worry about paying Faultline for her time. And of course Lisa knew you'd agree all along, or she wouldn't have bothered to call you. "50-50 split," you say. It's not a question, or a suggestion.

"Never dreamt of offering anything less," Lisa says.

"One outside, two inside," Lisa says. "The guy outside has a gun in the back of his pants. Inside, probably shotguns." You nod. You both put on your masks, then you walk around the corner. As promised, there's a thug lounging against a door some fifteen yards away. Mind-hands lash out, glowing white tendrils crossing the distance between you in the blink of an eye. One wraps around his throat, to keep him from shouting a warning. One goes around his waist, to haul him away. The last one retrieves the gun before he even has time to realize he needs it.

Despite your pain and fatigue, you can't help but smile a little as you drag him into the alley and choke him out. This is what superpowers are like. You decide to act, and mortals are helpless before your might. Oh, Low Key has wrecked thugs before, but that was all Fenrir. It has a different impact when you do it yourself. You've never gotten to use superpowers to utterly destroy- okay, there was Brute 0 vs Emma, you had forgotten about her (and doesn't that make your smile even wider? If someone had told pre-superpowers you that you'd ever forget Emma...). But this is the real-

"We're not done yet. Here." While you were woolgathering, Lisa has not only gagged and zip-tied your catch, but also retrieved his keys and figured out which one leads to the stash house. "Be careful," she adds.

Yeah, yeah. You're not worried at all anymore. Mind-hands are fucking awesome. Wait, back up, did you mentally refer to that guy as a 'mortal' just now? You, who explicitly chose not to become immortal when you declined to go after Alabaster's power? Well, what else would you call him? He certainly can't be called a 'civilian'. You'll think about it later, you have mortals to wreck. You walk over and unlock the door with a spring in your step. Your misery is about to have even more company.

You slam the door open. One guard, check. Second guard, check. Shotguns, check. Also a bunch of other people - you'll process that later, Lisa said they aren't armed. Mind-hands lash out once more. You only have three of them, but that's okay. Those are the last two guards, it doesn't matter if they make a ruckus.

You rip the shotguns out of their hands, and grip one throat. It's just a convenient way to detain people even when you don't care about noise. "Wha-" is as far as the other guy gets before you toss one of the shotguns back towards yourself and get a chokehold on him too.

Your slow, awkward, regular hands almost fumble the catch, but you manage to grab hold of the shotgun before it falls to the floor. You point it meaningfully towards the unarmed people (you have no idea whether the safety is on or not, so you keep your finger well away from the trigger). "On the floor, please," you say calmly. They comply.

Now that you're not in imminent danger of being shot, you have time to take in your surroundings. This stash house puts the emphasis on 'house': It's just someone's spacious living room, that someone put a bunch of tables in. The various plastic bags on the tables aren't labelled, but you imagine that the different colors of tape holding them shut indicates their contents to those in the know. Let's just say you're pretty sure it's not powdered sugar.

Partly because the actual powdered sugar is still in its original packaging - one of the tables held several people diluting (cutting, you think they call it?) the drugs and splitting them into portion sizes for sale. Another table holds a bunch of money, which one guy was uncrumpling, sorting and counting. You sidle over and take a look at the number punched into his calculator. Niiice.

"Good job," Lisa says, entering behind you. She walks over and casually sweeps all the money into a bag, undoing all of the poor accountant's labour. Then she turns towards the guards. "Where's the rest of it?" There's more?

The guards refuse to answer, even when you loosen your grip around their throats enough for them to speak. Not that this inconveniences Lisa in the slightest.

"Somewhere in this room? Not in this room. The bathroom? No? The kitchen? I see. Cupboards? Left, right, top- under the sink? Thank you."

You can only shrug apologetically at the guards as Lisa goes to fetch the money. Nothing they could do. With your brawn and her brains, what could possibly stop you? Anyway, time for them to go beddy-byes. You tighten your grip again, quickly inducing unconsciousness in your captives.

Then the world turns blue, and you stumble and almost lose your balance. Your first thought, not unreasonably you feel, is that some of the drugs got into the air. But when the blue tint intensifies in a series of discrete steps, you realize what's really going on. But by then you're already falling, your inner ear insisting that the floor is a wall and vice versa.

You scrabble for purchase, with limited success. The angle is too steep, the floor too slick. Your mind-hands flail about, grabbing hold of whatever is close - which accomplishes absolutely nothing, as the 'mind-arm' tendrils don't actually transmit any force to your body. Which is convenient when you're hoisting four times your body mass of thugs into the air, not so much when trying to catch yourself while falling.

You at least manage to crash into the wall without breaking anything - which is not to say that it doesn't hurt or knock the air from your lungs... but you know what broken bones feel like, and this ain't it. You look up (it feels like 'up') at your assailant: Greasy hair, blue cloth mask, a grin with multiple missing teeth. Yep, you were right, only slightly too late for it to help: This is indeed what Skidmark's acceleration fields look like from the inside. Dammit Lisa, there weren't supposed to be any capes here!

Skidmark's grin turns feral, and a new acceleration field appears off to the side. One of the tables slides over into the heavily layered field you're stuck at the bottom of, and immediately accelerates towards you. Your mind-hands knock it aside, but you don't have time to deflect its payload. Bags upon bags of white powder crash into and around you, bursting apart as they hit.

You hear Lisa shout "no!" just before your ears are assaulted by the loudest sound you've ever heard. Several times. Through the clouds of powder you see Skidmark stumble back outside, bleeding from several wounds. The acceleration field pressing you against the wall abruptly vanishes, causing you to fall forward and faceplant into a pile of unidentified drugs.

"Tay- fuck! Are you okay? Please be okay." You roll over to see Lisa holding a hand over her face, breathing through her sleeve. The other hand is clutching a gun, still pointed towards the door.

"You shot him," you say wonderingly. Since when does Lisa have a gun? Capes aren't supposed to use guns.

"The field slowed the bullets a lot. He'll live." Her tone indicates that she would have been fine with other outcomes as well. Wow, she really cares about you, huh? You lick your lips self-consciously, unsure how to reply - then reverse course and spit when you realize what substance was coating your lips. And every other part of you.

"Hold your breath," Lisa says through her sleeve. She holsters the gun and points towards one of the doors. "Get in the shower, rinse everything off."

She's a lot more worried about this than you are. To be fair she probably knows more about drugs than you do, but you know your own body. "Brute powers," you remind her.

"Don't talk. Shower. You not being worried is a symptom."

You walk right into the shower and turn it on without undressing. Your clothes are saturated with the stuff too, it's not like you could wear them again without washing them. As you close your eyes and lean back to rinse your face off, you realize that nothing hurts anymore.

That's probably a bad sign.

Chapter 48: L.25

Chapter Text

God damn, but your life is going well. True, your clothing is dirty and doesn't fit at all (Lisa appropriated it from one of the people who didn't run away quickly enough after Skidmark got shot). But you're rich! Lisa is carrying two bags, one containing your sopping wet original clothing, and another just as heavy full of cash money!

True, you're currently exfiltrating Merchant territory after shooting the leader of said Merchants a little, but so what? Lisa is super smart, you're super strong, you have nothing to worry about. And did you mention you got loot? So awesome.

But the company sort of sucks if you're honest. You're skipping along and chattering happily about whatever crosses your mind, but Lisa is boring and serious and maybe a little nervous and you don't see why. You won a cape fight and got loot!

Lisa's phone rings, and she makes shushing noises at you before she answers. Fine, you'll be quiet. She sounds even more serious when she talks to whoever it is, so you tune her out. You try to balance along the curb, but it's tricker than you remember it being.

Lisa hangs up and starts saying "fuck" a lot, which is pretty funny. But then she dials another number and you turn away again. Oh, wow. This street art is amazing. You can't believe you've never noticed it before. Whoever drew this was a genius. The colors, the depth, the sheer joie de vivre expressed in every curve. It's like the letters are dancing in front of you, shouting out their names. M! E! R!

Actually-paying-attention-to-Lisa-o-vision

"Hey, it's Lisa. You're about to do me a huge favor and I'll owe you big-time."

...

"I don't care! Look, the Merchants got to my friend. Shot her up with some shit. She's safe now, but she needs someone to watch over her until she comes down."

...

"I can't! I just got a call, official Undersiders business. The boss will kill me if I don't show up."

...

"You don't understand. He will non-figuratively end my life if I blow him off, it's that important. I need- oh god, she's licking the graffiti. Get your ass over to 5th and Samson, now!"

Lisa rudely pulls you away from enjoying the modern masterpiece.

"Stop that! I don't even want to think about what freaky pathogens could be sticking to that wall, or my power might tell me."

Silly Lisa. Didn't you tell her about your shitty Brute powers? Maybe you didn't. "'m resistant. Prob'ly."

"...my power is backing you up on that one." Hah! Score one for Team Shitty Powers. "Still, I refuse to believe that you enjoy the taste."

You stick out your tongue and try to look at it. "Tastes like art?" you hazard.

She shakes her head. "Let's... let's just go over here and sit down quietly and wait for my friend to show up. You'll like him."

Lisa's friend turns out to be a ni- a black guy. He's about her age, but he's huge. He's got muscles for days. And that tight shirt, daaaaamn. Good thing you're sitting down or you'd be falling all over yourself trying to get a piece of that.

"Hey," he greets Lisa, "so this is your friend? What's she on?" He barely even glances at you, rude!

"God, what isn't she on? Coke and MDMA from the way she's been acting, but there were opiates in there too. And probably traces of some freaky Tinker-made stuff. Even my power can't sort it all out."

"Does she need to go to the hospital? Because that sounds-"

"A hospital is the last thing she needs. Hospitals call your parents." The black guy winces at that. "Power says she'll be fine. 100%."

"Yeah? Because the last time you were 100%-"

"She'll be fine. I wouldn't gamble with her life the way I do yours."

"What was that?"

"Just... don't let her out of your sight. Make sure she stays hydrated. And now I really have to run."

She does. Literally. Her friend reaches out a hand towards her and starts to say something, before sighing and shaking his head. He finally turns towards you.

"Hi, I'm Brian." His smile is a bit forced, maybe, but you don't mind.

You take his proffered hand and try for your best seductive look (it's probably not all that good, if you're being honest). "Taylor."

"Can you walk, Taylor?"

"Of course!" You try to stand up, only to get your feet tangled up and fall all over yourself trying to get a piece of that.

Brian catches you. He is warm and snuggly and his muscles feel even better than they look. Now you have to say something smooth to cover for your lack of coordination. "Best two out of three?"

Brian shakes his head and scoops you up in a bridal carry. Yeah, you're alright with this. You snuggle up to his amazing muscles. Mmmm. He smells nice too.

"Where are we going?" you ask.

"Back to my place." he replies. Damn, this guy works fast. You approve. Still, you let the conversation lapse and take the opportunity to use your powers. You're not about to go home with a guy without knowing his soul's price.

Brian wants to gain legal custody of his little sister.

Huh, depending on context he's either pretty damn heroic, or incredibly villainous. And Lisa wouldn't set you up with an incredibly villainous guy, would she? Especially since if he was, he'd already have a girlfr- no, let's not think about that. The guy is clearly a big damn hero. You snuggle closer and slip a hand inside his shirt to better appreciate his heroic pectorals.

Brian lets you down and steadies you with one arm as he unlocks his door. As you're being led into the apartment you suddenly realize that your sorcerer's sight must have lapsed at some point before meeting Brian - you have his soul price, but no idea whether he's a cape or not. You quickly reactivate it and give Brian the once-over. Turns out he is parahuman (duh, he's friends with Lisa) but he's not currently using his powers. It's nothing you couldn't figure out on your own, but always checking strangers over with your magic spy powers is a rule, dammit! You're slipping.

"Hey, do you need anything? Hungry? Thirsty?"

"Sofa." you mutter. You need something all right.

Brian tries to put you down on the sofa, but you refuse to cooperate until he sits down too. You quickly scoot into his lap before he can escape. You start taking off his shirt, but he grabs your hands. You move to kiss him, but he lets go of one hand and gently pushes your head aside. You settle for kissing his neck.

"Look, Taylor. Taylor, look at me." You do. "You're not in your right mind right now. Let's not do anything you'd regret later."

He's so wise and thoughtful in addition to being handsome and strong. Passing up the opportunity to make out with this heroic beefcake is clearly something you'd regret. You nod solemnly and stick your free hand down his pants.

Suddenly you are airborne. You land half on, half off the sofa and bounce to the floor. By the time you get your bearings Brian is standing halfway across the room, his back to you.

"Taylor, I don't want this. Please stop." You only had your hand down there for a brief moment, but you're pretty sure he's lying. You sneak (stumble) up behind him and reach around to caress his chest. You hear him sigh in resignation. Resignation is good, right? It means he'll come back to the sofa? You start taking off his shirt again.

"Aisha! Get your ass over here, right now!" Yikes, that was loud.

Another girl enters the room, slamming the door behind her. Judging by her face she's younger than you - but she still has considerably more curves, you note sourly. You can tell easily, because she's dressed like a prostitute. Did you interrupt something? Hmph, you don't see what she's got that you don't. Give you twenty minutes and you could grow a rack that would make this slut weep.

Oh, she's talking.

"Yeesh, you don't need to shout, I'm right-" she stops when she spots you and what you're doing and covers her eyes. "Whoa, bro! It's your place, you can bring over as many sluts as you like. But I'm not interested in whatever weird threesome sibling bonding thing you're thinking about right now."

Brian sighs again. "Aisha, this is Taylor. Taylor, Aisha. Taylor was given quite a lot of drugs and needs someone to take care of her. As you can see I'm clearly not the right person to keep her out of trouble, so it's now your job. Think of it as rent for staying over at my place. Bye." As he was speaking (and Aisha tried to get a word in edgewise) he gently pried you off and led you over to his sister. After making sure that you wouldn't fall over he started rapidly walking towards the door and at 'bye' he was already closing it behind him.

Noooo, your beefcake escaped! From Aisha's sudden giggle you cleverly deduce that you may have said that out loud. You turn around to find her eyeing you dubiously.

"You're not bi, are you? I don't want to spend the whole night fearing for my virtue."

"'m straight." you mutter. Stupid beefcake. You're regretting things already.

"Aight, cool. We can hang out, then. Have a slumber party." She leads you back to the sofa and you gratefully sit down.

Wait, what just happened? You told someone you're straight, and they believed you? Holy carp. You love Aisha now. You could just kiss- no, wait, kissing her would be counterproductive. She'd get the wrong idea, and then you wouldn't love her anymore. No kissing.

Oh, she's talking again.

"Best part of slumber parties is the gossip. And you don't seem too pleased with my brother right now, so let's talk about him. Have you known each other long?"

"Never met him before in my life." Stupid beefcake.

"Uh-huh. So you're not, you know, coworkers?" She winks at you, and you have no idea what she's getting at. "You know, at his 'day job.'" Finger quotes this time, and you are still clueless.

You stare at her blankly. Wait, shit, you were supposed to be staring at her with your sorcerer's sight. It keeps turning off for some reason. Hm, no powers. Wait, powers! She's trying to find out whether you know about Brian's powers!

"Fucking finally she gets it!" Oh, you said some of that out loud too. Shit! You're supposed to keep these things secret.

"Shh, it's all right. I can keep a secret." You did it again! "So how about you, do you have secret powers too?"

You giggle, then frown. Making very, very sure that you're not thinking out loud, you ponder the question. Do you have secret powers? Bitch, you have so many secret powers you don't even know what to do with them all. Oh! Oh! You know the best answer. You have one power that's so secret not even you know what it is!

You carefully look around to make sure no one is listening, then lean in and whisper "I'm a dragon."

Aisha pushes you away from her. "What, like Lung?" She looks a bit skeptical, you think.

You raise one finger. "Exactly like Lung." You lean back and cross your arms in satisfaction, but she doesn't get the clever joke you just made.

Instead she leaps to her feet. "Wait here, I have the best idea!"

You nod absently, and reflexively reach out for her soul's price as she leaves.

Aisha wants superpowers of her own.

Hee, that tickles. Wait, what's happening again? ...apparently you're naked from the waist up and some girl - Aisha, right, you're having a slumber party - is painting you? The paintbrush tickles! But you're confused, you're only supposed to paint each other's nails at slumber parties, right? Unless this is the new hip thing? You haven't had a slumber party for years, because- that's a sad thought, so you stop thinking it. Much better.

Instead you look closer at some of the finished artwork. It's honestly not very good, but you can tell that it's supposed to be dragons. Oh. Ooh! Dragon tattoos! Like Lung! Aisha is a genius! You paw at her face until she stops painting and looks up at you.

"I'm a dragon!" you confide in her.

"I know, now hold still. This is harder than it looks."

You start to nod, but freeze halfway through the motion. Gotta hold still. You focus your entire being on not moving, even though it tickles.

You're cold. That's odd, weren't you at a slumber party just now? Why are you outside?

Lung wants to find the woman in the fedora for a rematch.

Chapter 49: L.26

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You wake up in a strange bed, with no idea where you are or how you got there. Uh... Last night you... Lisa, talking you into joining her. Skidmark. Oh, right. Enough drugs to kill a non-Brute, judging by Lisa's reaction. That would explain- Brian? You blush as more of your actions last night came back to you, but a quick check reveals that you're alone in the strange bed. That's... good, right? Maybe you wouldn't have minded...

You're itching, you realize. A lot. Shit, didn't you hear somewhere that druggies can end up with 'ants crawling under their skin' hallucinations? Like, permanently? Or was that from a Philip K. Dick novel? Only, uh, Phil did an awful lot of real drugs before he started writing about them, didn't he? It could still be real! You definitely remember hearing that doing drugs just once could fuck you up forever, if you were unlucky. You really hope that was just scaremongering bullshit propaganda like your old classmates said.

Eventually the sheer itchiness grows enough to overcome the horror you're feeling. You're just going to scratch yourself. Gently! You're not going to tear your skin open to get at the ants! You- oh. There's dry, flaking paint all over your body. And all over the sheets. No wonder you're itchy. You were panicking over nothing. Oh right, what's-her-name, Aisha. More memories return. She painted you like Lung, because you- why do you know Lung's soul price?

This fresh bout of panic makes you sit bolt upright, and take better stock of your surroundings. It's a small room, with a single window (you've slept quite late, judging by the light). The only furnishings are the bed, a dresser and a bedside table. There are several items on the table, each accompanied by a note: A large bottle of orange juice ("drink this"), a handful of pills on a saucer ("take these") and a laptop computer ("read this 3 Lisa").

The name makes you relax somewhat. You're among friends, or at least people who damn well ought to feel guilty over what they got you into.

Lisa-o-vision

"What the fuck, Brian? You had one job!"

Brian-o-vision

"What the fuck, Aisha? You had one job!"

Aisha-o-vision

Dear diary,

Today was the best day ever. Also Brian said I was grounded like forever, but I just told him that if he was gonna be like that I'd just go back and live with mom, and he folded like a chump.

Now let me tell you about the greatest mastermind in Brockton Bay, and how she is behind the events everyone is talking about.

You get started on the orange juice right away, but you're not about to scarf down a bunch of unidentified pills, especially not after the events of last night. Thankfully the bottles and cartons they came from are piled up behind the note, and you're able to verify their provenance: Vitamins and other supplements. Can't hurt to take them, you suppose, especially as a Thinker seems to believe they will help with the hangover from... whatever the hell you ingested yesterday.

After washing down the pills with another gulp of juice, you turn to the laptop. It wakes up without requiring a password, and the only open window is a browser displaying a PHO thread (the logged in user is 'DD', probably a throwaway account). 'Brockton Bay dragon megathread', the title reads. It has 134 pages. Rather, it had 134 pages. You hit the refresh button. 217 pages. You have a hunch that a) you're about to find out why you know Lung's soul price, and b) you'll be one of the last people in the city to know.

But it's going to take forever to read, and you could really use a shower to get rid of this paint. But knowing what the hell happened last night could be really important. You decide to compromise, and click the link named 'the moderators agreed to allow a link to this video' in the first post. You'll watch that now, then go back and read more once you're not itching so badly.

The actual title of the video, once it opens in a new tab, is 'Druggie dragon footage compilation (censored version)'. You have a bad feeling about what those last words imply. Please be censoring violence, please be censoring violence...

They're not censoring violence. When the video loads, there's you, dressed in pants, shoes, and a mask that looks to be made mostly of tinfoil. And that's it, unless you count the badly drawn (painted) dragon-themed body art. At least you were still blonde? You offer a silent prayer that the flimsy-looking mask stays on all the way through before hitting play.

Because this is the censored version, there's a pair of googly-eyed cartoon dragon heads superimposed over your chest. As the video plays they jerkily follow your movements, preserving your modesty and occasionally making funny faces. Whoever edited this was clearly enjoying themselves.

The footage is, as promised, a compilation of many different videos, all of them from cellphones. Judging by the scenery changes you spent a considerable amount of wandering around topless last night. And every time you saw someone you walked up to them and cheerfully introduced yourself with "Hi! I'm a dragon!"

This was usually met with laughter, and occasionally fear, but a gratifying number of people also asked if you were alright ("Yes. I'm a dragon."). Not everyone believed your answer, but no one actually tried to stop you from wandering off afterwards. You don't exactly blame them. Accosting an unknown cape is a terrible idea even before taking into account that this particular cape is clearly high off her tiny, naked tits.

One courageous lad does help you to your feet when you accidentally walk into a lamppost and fall over. The mask holds up surprisingly well, making you suspect that your Tinker 0 powers were involved in its creation. If- oh fuckballs there's Lung. And you just walked up to him like any other person. And you're pretty sure you recognize the neighborhood as ABB territory.

The fact that you're demonstrably still alive and well does relatively little to set you at ease.

Lung does prevent you from wandering off, one comparatively huge hand closing on your shoulder and holding you in place. This part is filmed by someone standing sensibly far away, so you can't actually make out the ensuing conversation beyond the occasional "dragon!". But after a while he releases you, and you hold out a hand for him to shake. He does so. The picture whites out.

Lung-o-vision

"Hi! I'm a- you're a dragon too!"

"Are you mocking me?"

"No, I'm a dragon. We're both dragons!"

"You're... Yabai, what are you on?"

"Dunno? Skidmark just, wham! All over my face!"

"I see... Did he put you up to this, too?"

"Up to what?"

"Dressing as this mockery, coming here."

"Nononono, that was the other girl. She was going to take care of me. But she left me all alone? ...is she a bad friend?"

"So, you're a mere tool..."

"No, I'm a dragon!"

"Truly? You're claiming to be parahuman?"

"Yes! That's why she painted me, you know. She found out I'm a dragon. Like you!"

"Well then, little dragon. I will forgive your offenses against me, on one condition: That you call upon your power, and fight me here and now."

"...fight? You're Lung."

"Hah. A friendly duel, no more, with the loser walking away free and without further harm."

"...promise?"

"On my honor."

At this point the video switches to another viewpoint, one looking across the Brockton Bay skyline. A pillar of white-gold light shoots up up to tower over the rooftops. It switches again, showing the same thing from a different angle. And again. Over and over it switches between several different viewpoints, playing the same footage repeatedly, each time accompanied by an increasingly loud organ chord. Until finally, on the last shot, a fountain of spinning cartoon dragon heads erupts along with the light, mouths open in shock and eyes googlier than ever.

Whoever edited this had way too much fun.

Protectorate-dispatcher-o-vision

"All units! Calling all units!"

Coil-o-vision

"Now! Commence the operation now."

Then it cuts back to the previous, all-white viewpoint. The camera quickly adjusts to the new light level, showing that the girl across from Lung has been replaced with a giant (like, three times Lung's height), glowing, golden-scaled (but paint-smeared) dragon-girl. You pause the video right there, to properly let the mortification sink in.

From the way the two censoring cartoon dragons remain in place, you learn that dragons are mammals. From the way a third one shows up to join them, you learn that unlike Fenja and Menja, your size-increasing power does not work on clothes. RIP your pants, and dignity. The fact that the PHO moderators will delete links to the uncensored version of this video will do approximately nothing to stop its spread.

You open a new tab just to confirm the obvious. Yep, there it is, the top search result for 'druggie dragon uncensored'. You do not open it, do not check its view count. You already know that it is higher than the total number of people you have met in your life.

Your name is Taylor Hebert, and your privates are on the internet. And as the AIDS cherry on top of the shit sundae, because you were tripping balls at the time and don't remember any of this, you still don't know how Lung's power works.

Silver lining: While the transformation destroyed your mask, it also turned your face into a proper dragon snout. Unrecognizable. Your identity is still safe. Enough self-pity, you need to finish watching this video and take a goddamn shower. You hit play again.

The dragon-girl - you grab Lung by one leg, lift him into the air, and proceed to smash his head into the pavement over and over until he stops screaming. Which is fairly soon, he barely has time to grow at all. Score one for instant dragon transformation, you guess. You know Lung can grow bigger than you did, but taken by surprise as he is he can't do more than lightly singe your scales with pyrokinesis before his head is a mushy lump and you drop his limp body to the ground.

Then you start walking towards the cameraman, who - from the way the video shifts to a blurry, flailing view of surrounding buildings - promptly turns on his heel and books it out of there. Again, you don't blame him, even if you're pretty sure you were only going to politely inform him as to your current status (a dragon). The video ends after that.

You push the laptop away. Shower time. There are no clothes laid out for you, but (with a small effort of will) you don't let that bother you. If Lisa put you to bed she's already seen you naked. She and several hundred thousand- no, don't think about that. Leaving the bedroom, you find Lisa lounging on a couch, texting someone on her cellphone.

"Hey. Finally awake. On a scale from one to ten, how are you feeling?"

You pause to consider this for a moment. "Three," you decide. "More like seven after a shower."

"Through there." She points to a door.

"I only watched the video," you shout from inside the bathroom, "Can you spoil the ending?"

"A friendly Thinker decided to investigate what had everyone so excited - she had a hunch, you might say, as to who might be responsible. Brilliant as she is, she was able to find you before anyone else and sneak you out of there, even though the area was swarming with heroes. For the record, you were sleeping in a dumpster, still glowing faintly."

Why would- oh, you must have crawled in there to hide the glow. Good thinking, past-Taylor. Lisa sounds entirely too pleased with herself, though. "Don't think I've forgotten who got me into this mess to begin with!" A stray memory returns to you. You weren't paying much attention at the time, but... "Weren't you in a meeting with your boss? Like, a really important one?"

"He decided to call the whole thing off when you happened. Your clothes from last night are in the dryer, by the way."

"How did you manage to copy his power so quickly?" Lisa asks as you, paint free and no longer naked, go to fetch the laptop.

"Ha, I've had that one for ages. You didn't figure that out? Some Thinker you are." You normally wouldn't say any more... But if there's one time Lisa won't silently judge you for your life choices it's today, the day when everything is her fault. "I'll tell you about it in exchange for breakfast?"

It's not a long story, so you quickly settle down to read the PHO thread while shoveling cereal into your mouth. The only new thing you learn from the OP is that Lung is in custody. You might have celebrated this, if you were incredibly stupid. But you know exactly how much of a revolving door the parahuman prison system is: All his arrest means is that the most powerful cape in the city is now your enemy. Lovely.

You start skimming the thread itself. It's rather disjointed to start, as the first several pages are made up of several different threads, merged together. They also reference a number of non-existent posts, which you gather from context were deleted because they contained links to uncensored videos. But you are able to piece together a rough timeline:

Reports and videos of a knockoff Lung start to appear. As you saw in the video title, they quickly settle on the cape name 'druggie dragon'. As more of those start trickling in, another set of threads appears speculating about the bright light in the sky. No one makes the connection yet. Then, breaking news: Lung has been captured! This sets off yet another storm of speculation. Your favorite post so far:

► relatively_anonymous_gentleman

Replied on April 8, 2011:

Guys. Guys! *That's* who druggie dragon was! Leet finally invented the girlifier ray he was talking about and used it on Lung! And then the heroes swooped in and arrested him/her while he/she was still disoriented.

This theory gains a surprising amount of popularity, considering the obvious size and ethnicity mismatch between the two dragons. It's at this point that censored versions of the videos start to appear. An influx of new people who didn't read the previous, mostly deleted, discussion start calling you 'derpy dragon', in honor of the cartoon dragons adorning your chest. A minor flamewar breaks out before a compromise is reached:

► Oftenest

Replied on April 8, 2011:

The obvious solution is to just call her Double D, and let everyone decide for themselves what the initials stand for.

Everyone loves this suggestion, especially smarmy assholes who make posts along the lines of:

► ropey

Replied on April 8, 2011:

I would of course never *dream* of looking up the uncensored videos, but if you say that Double D is an appropriate name I have no reason to doubt you. I shall henceforth refer to her thusly.

Next order of business, find a power that lets you punch people over the internet. Not only are hundreds of thousands of people looking at your naked chest, they are mocking you for- Waaaait just one second. You scroll back to the top of the page.

You are currently logged in, DD (Unverified Cape)

DD has made one post, and has received 769 private messages.

► DD (Unverified Cape)

Replied on April 8, 2011:

Hi! I'm a dragon!

"You are the worst," you tell Lisa.

"Me?" She bats her eyelashes at you with feigned innocence. "I just made sure to grab the name for you before someone squatted it. Because I'm a friend." Under your unamused stare, the faux innocence turns into a smug grin. "The password is 'lisaistheworst', all lowercase, no spaces." To add insult to injury, sorcerer's sight lets you see her power informing her of the exact moment you decide not to punch her. Her grin grows even wider.

The private messages are exactly what you would expect. Though weirdly many of them give off the impression that they're more attracted to your scales and dragon snout than they would be to a regular eighteen-foot woman (but there is also a fair share of disturbingly sexual requests on the theme of 'please sit on me and squash me flat').

One message in particular stands out as something you didn't expect:

Private message from Vegas Fleshcrafters:

Vegas Fleshcrafters: Tired of not living up to your name? Vegas Fleshcrafters! No knives, no implants, only biokinesis! Message us on PHO, or call 555-NEW-YOU

You're not going to use their services (you're perfectly capable of crafting your own flesh), but you feel somewhat tempted to give them a call just to tell them that their social media manager deserves a raise.

Anyway! The next thing to happen is that the video of the fight itself is released. Someone quickly identifies the scenery, confirming that it matches the location of the pillar of light. Everything is thrown into chaos as speculation runs rampant and threads are merged wildly. All kinds of speculation:

► rrqn

Replied on April 8, 2011:

I ship it.

► Frederick T. Great

Replied on April 8, 2011:

Dude, gross. He's gotta be like twice her age.

► rrqn

Replied on April 8, 2011:

Counterpoint: Dragon. Who's going to stop him?

► Forum Playwright

Replied on April 9, 2011:

You mean, aside from *her*?

► rrqn

Replied on April 9, 2011:

Point conceded.

► Mentats

Replied on April 9, 2011:

Hatesex shipping?

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: This line of discussion ends *now*.

The more sensible, unbanned speculation involves your affiliation. Everyone had initially assumed Merchants, for obvious reasons. But the video of the fight combined with the news of Lung's arrest has some people theorize that you're a new Ward. The more thoughtful members of the audience note that if so, better archive the entire thread quickly, because it's going to vanish from the internet forever as soon as the PRT PR division wakes up. Then another bombshell drops:

► road_to_hell

Replied on April 9, 2011:

Check this out. Here's screenshots of the press release, before and after the video dropped:

Notice how the first one says "Armsmaster was able to subdue and apprehend Lung', but the second just says 'apprehend'?

► USER8

Replied on April 9, 2011:

Hahahaha! Busted, you glory-stealing ******!

-User received a suspension for this post. Reason: We do not use that word here.

The opinion firmly swings to you being a Merchant after that.

Skidmark-o-vision

"Which one of you pustulent, cum-stained assholes recruited a new cape without telling me, your fucking boss? Maybe if I'd had some cock-gargling backup out there I wouldn't have gotten fucking shot!"

Notes:

A/N

Shockingly, Lung has a soft spot for people who (he believes) triggered with Dragon powers due to an involuntary faceful of drugs. Maybe he shouldn't have let his guard down that much, though.

Mechanics corner

It was By Rage Recast! A charm that lets you turn into a custom-designed monster (in this case the design consists entirely of dragon-y bits, for obvious reasons), but requires anima flare to activate.

To explain it simply: Exalts have two separate mana pools, 'personal' and 'peripheral'. If they spend mana from the peripheral pool they start glowing. This is known as 'anima flare'. But Taylor isn't really an exalt, she's a parahuman. Without a peripheral essence pool, she couldn't flare her anima and trigger the charm.

Luckily(?), eclipse caste solars also have a pact-sealing power, the use of which automatically causes anima flare. She just never tried to sanctify an agreement before.

Chapter 50: L.27

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Lisa-o-vision

"You really shouldn't do this right now," I say.

"Really," Taylor says. It's not a question. I sigh. I don't need powers to deduce that there's no arguing with her.

"Fine, whatever. But I'm coming with." If it was someone else, I might have been able to spin it as helping, making up for my mistake. But Taylor is entirely too good at spotting such things, so I don't even bother. Weird really, considering her- her social abilities are the result of a minor Thinker power. Yeesh, another one? But it makes sense, she- no, focus.

"Yes, I'm babysitting you," I tell the bristling Taylor. "Because you are mentally incompetent." The unexpected bluntness leaves her momentarily speechless. "Brute powers or no," I continue before she can retort, "it's going to be days before your neurotransmitters are back to normal levels."

For just a moment her lips form a silent 'oh', before her control reasserts itself. "I see," she says with affected calm, before turning to leave. "I'm fairly certain I would make this decision the same way, though," she adds over her shoulder as I follow.

I think so too, to be perfectly honest. Which puts me in a bit of a bind.

Before you do anything else, you need to go fetch your wolf. Dad is at work when you get to the house, so that particular issue is put off for later. It's not super cool, leaving him to worry for an extra day when you already got back, but you can safely blame that on Lisa and her brilliant plans.

Fenrir must have heard/smelled/insert-bullshit-wolf-senses-here (seriously, how did he track you teleporting across Canada?) you coming, because his translucent form comes shooting out of the ground in front of you as you walk up the driveway - a faster way to leave the basement than stairs and doors, when you're intangible. He barrels right through you, turns around and starts running in circles around you, panting happily.

"Missed you too," you say softly. A quick glance around shows no witnesses, so you give him a quick pat with a mind-hand. In response he leaps into the air, performs half a barrel roll and skids to a stop in the belly rub position. You shake your head. "Later, I need your help with something first."

He looks a bit disappointed at that, but scrambles to his feet and follows you anyway. He's a good dog.

As you wait, you once again reflect on the fact that having a wolf is cheating. While you hide in this alley, Fenrir stands dematerialized outside watching the street. No one else can see him, but he'll indicate to you exactly when you should act. This way, you can appear right in front of your target like some omniscient horror movie villain.

Go time. You pivot around from where you were pressed up against the wall and take a single step into the street. Aisha jerks back in surprise, barely a foot away from you. The look on her face when she recognizes you is an excellent start.

Aisha-o-vision

Shit!

"Hello, friend," you say. She starts to turn to run away when a hand lands on her shoulder. Lacking a wolf, Lisa uses her giant super-powered brain to cheat at ambushes. Aisha wilts, giving up thoughts of escape. "We need to talk," you continue, as Lisa hustles her into the alley.

Aisha-o-vision

Double shit!

"H-hey. You're here to thank me, right? For helping you beat up-"

"You don't realize how much shit you're in," Lisa says, shaking her head. "I'm not talking about the front you're putting up. Behind that, that fear that you're trying to hide? It's not nearly enough."

"She's fine, right? Everyone is fine. Lung got taken down. No harm no foul, eh? Eh?"

"You were entrusted with my life," you hiss. "I was helpless and placed in your care, and you use me in a prank?"

"Whoa, back up there. I painted dragons on you, sure, but you ran off all on your own! I just turned my back and you were gone.

"A lie," Lisa says. "She deliberately led you towards ABB territory, hoping that a confrontation would occur."

"I had faith in you!" Aisha protests. "I was sure your dragon powers would beat his."

"Another lie. It didn't occur to her to consider your safety at all."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" you shout. You're supposed to be the other person, the calm, polite, scary person, but you find yourself unable to calm right now.

"Uh, mom didn't stop doing drugs just because she had a bun in the oven?"

"...what?"

"Hey, you asked," Aisha says with a shrug. "Pretty sure that's what's wrong with me."

She smirks at you. Smirks. She thinks she gets to be funny. Does she get to be funny?

No. No she does not. You haul back and punch her in the solar plexus, as hard as you can without using mantis form. Aisha staggers back into the wall and slides down to the ground, gasping for breath. She looks quite scared as you loom over her.

Good. She should keep doing that. You pull out your knife.

Aisha-o-vision

Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!

"Point of order," Lisa says. "No one is going to complain if you rough her up a bit, because she certainly deserves it. But if you do anything permanent, Brian will try to kill you."

"What makes you think he's not next on my list?" you snarl.

Aisha-o-vision

Shit shit shit shit sh-

DESTINATION

AGREEMENT

You wake up in an alley, with no idea how you got there. You- you were completely out of your head on drugs, weren't you? You remember that. That would explain how you fell asleep in an alley.

Only... you're pretty sure you already woke up from that? And then someone told you that you had accidentally arrested Lung in your sleep and the internet was thanking you by exaggerating your cup size. Was that all a hallucination? It sounds like a hallucination.

You roll over, and see Lisa lying next to you. Did Lisa take drugs too? You distinctly remember her being the sober one, though.

Oh, she's saying something. She's mumbling, and what few words you can make out don't make much sense. Something about an infinite number of worms having sex in her brain? Maybe she did take drugs.

"Lisa?"

"But where are they- whuh?" Her eyes snap back into focus at the mention of her name.

"Why are we lying in this alley?" you ask. You get to you knees, and the two of you sort of help each other up from there. Lisa frowns as she looks around.

"I don't know. I don't know? I don't know? How- Stranger!"

Fuck! Lisa pulls her gun, and you dive for your knife - you must have dropped it at some point. No, you must have been made to drop it, which means that trying to pick it up again is pointless. But what else is there to do?

Your hand closes on your knife without incident, much to your surprise. Wait, why would that be surprising, it was just lying th-

"Stranger," Lisa reminds you.

Fuck! You scramble to your feet and move to stand back to back with Lisa, for all the good that will do when you can't even... you can't even...

That's odd. You could have sworn there was something you were supposed to be doing. "Uh-"

"Stranger," Lisa explains before you can even ask. "There's a Stranger in the alley with us, I can't tell what they're doing but I can tell that they're here! Stranger, Taylor! I'm freaking out over here use your bullshit powers to save us from the Stranger! You're too out of it to manage that aren't you? Use your goddamn sorcerer's sight! Just do what I say, you don't have to understand why."

Wow, no need to be rude. "Sorcerer's sight is on," you report.

"Okay. We're going to spin in a circle so that you can take a look all around us. Tell me at once if you see something invisible."

"Just the dog," you report after you've somewhat awkwardly shuffled through a full circuit, still backed up against each other and brandishing your weapons at nothing in particular.

"Damn. If you-"

She's interrupted by Fenrir lunging into solidity, interposing himself between you and, well, thin air as far as you can tell. He's sure as hell intent on protecting you from said air though: Teeth bared, hackles raised, growling up a storm. He takes several slow steps forward, as if he's forcing the imaginary threat further down the alley.

"The dog can smell you, Stranger!" Lisa shouts triumphantly. A Stranger? That would explain why everyone except you is freaking out.

Lisa grabs your shoulder and guides you to press yourself up against one of the walls.

"Please escort our friend out of the alley," she says. When nothing happens, she has you repeat it.

Fenrir steps to the side, then starts walking towards the exit. Lisa keeps her gun trained on a spot just in front of him as he passes you, but you cannot for the life of you figure out why.

You start to get a bit worried when Fenrir approaches the mouth of the alley. Not only are you unmasked, it's Tuesday. You're not supposed to be able to summon him on Tuesdays. You're going to have to deal with a bunch of nazis asking pointed questions if anyone sees him today. But Lisa is clearly up to something, and you don't know how important it is.

"I suggest you run," Lisa says loudly, drawing a strange look from you. "Run and don't stop until you hit city limits, because there'll be an invisible wolf at your heels.

"Nod if they're running away," she adds in a much softer tone. Fenrir nods. "Send him away," she says to you.

A quick "begone" from you and Fenrir is once more intangible.

"Did you want him to go somewhere?" you ask. "He won't be able to affect the physical world again for a while, you know."

"I know, I was bluffing. It worked, but the big problem is that someone sent a- oh. I get it now. That's funny."

"...are you going to share with the rest of the class?"

"Yeah, that should be doable now that she's out of range and no longer stepping all over your short-term memory."

She proceeds to make the situation make sense again, and you have to agree with her verdict: It is funny. You wonder how far Aisha will run before she gives up and discovers that there was no wolf chasing her after all.

Some healthy exercise and a bit of mortal terror is no worse than she deserves.

"You did good," you say. Granted that you weren't in nearly as much danger as she thought you were, at least she didn't just stand around being useless. Like you did. You need more Thinker powers.

"Sorry about outing you."

"Eh." You wave away her concern.

"No, seriously. She's seen the dragon, the wolf and the sorcerer's sight. If she blabs to someone clever, they could figure out what you are. We have to find some way to make sure she keeps quiet." She sighs. "Between the knockout effect and the mental invisibility, dealing with her is going to be awful."

"Pretty sure the knockout wasn't her. Faultline said that always happens to parahumans who witness a trigger event."

At your words, Lisa power starts going off so quickly you can't even make out the details.

"What? But why- how- communicating? No!" She pinches the bridge of her nose and clamps down on her power. "Can't afford to waste headaches on that, have to deal with your compromised identity."

"You worry too much, Lisa. I'll just ask her nicely."

"You'll- okay, spill. What's her soul price?"

You laugh happily, and tell her.

Notes:

Mechanics corner

Taylor can't spot Aisha, because sorcerer's sight explicitly does not work against magical stealth (though it does give a bonus to spotting magical people using mundane stealth, because they're glowing)

The spirit charm Tracking, on the other hand, lets you do a contested roll to completely ignore magical stealth. With Fenrir's 7 dice and 3 autosuccesses against Aisha's 4 dice, it wasn't much of a contest.

Aisha-o-vision

Oh god. Oh god. I'm dying. I can't breathe, I can't think. This still counts as running, right? Right, mister giant invisible wolf sir? Please. I'm trying. I'm sorry I'm not faster. Please don't eat me.

Is that? Oh yes. Praise baby Jesus, the sign says 'you are now leaving Brockton Bay'. Just a few more yards. Just a few of the longest yards on earth.

I collapse underneath the sign. For a while I'm too busy puking my guts out to be properly scared. When I still haven't been eaten alive by time I'm finished, I allow myself to relax. And by relax I mean collapse in a sobbing heap. Crying is very relaxing right now.

I should have gone along with Brian. If I was grounded for life he'd be around to protect me from crazy bitches and their monster pets. But nooo, I had to be all 'I could always just stay with mom, she never tries to ground me'. Why did I do that?

Because it worked, dammit. I love you, bro, but you are such a chump. Though I could really use your chump ass and its superpowers right about now, mine don't work on wolves.

Dammit. I have no idea whether the wolf is still watching me, either. Just my luck, no sooner do I get invisibility powers than I run into a monster that has better ones. It can see me, I can't see it.

And I can't risk going back until I'm sure it's buggered off. Taylor - she's that Empire chick isn't she, not Rune, the other one - is going to need it back sooner or later. She'll definitely call it back in a day or two, right?

Unless she's holding a particular grudge against my black ass. Which, uh, yeah. Maybe a little bit. Better make it a week.

Dear diary, today was the worst day ever.

Chapter 51: L.28

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

You had been fretting awfully over what you'd tell your dad - how would you explain going missing for almost a week? In a sense, your dragon-based misadventures were just what you needed, because they gave you the time and opportunity to come up with an answer. You enter the house without hesitation.

"Taylor!" You don't even have time to close the door behind you before you're being hugged, which is a promising start. "What happened? Are you alright? Where were you?"

"I'm fine," you barely-lie. You will be fine.

"What happened?" Danny repeats. The big question, that seemed so daunting yesterday. But like all riddles, it's easy when you know the answer.

"I'm not going to tell you."

"What?" He lets go of you, taking a step back. In his face you can see confusion gradually giving way to anger. Better nip that in the bud. A shouting match isn't going to make anyone happy.

"I'm not going to tell you," you repeat firmly. "If you press me on this I can always run away for real." You can, too. That's the epiphany you needed to make everything fall into place. With the haul from the Merchants you can easily afford your own place, and all you lose from dropping out of school is access to Glory Girl's power. You're... all grown up, basically.

Danny's expression as he comes to understand this truth is still like a stab wound to heart, though. "I'd like to stay," you hasten to add. "If you'd let me."

"As long as I don't pry," he says bitterly.

"Yes. I do love you, but you don't have that power over me anymore."

"I... of course you can stay, Taylor! I wouldn't put my little girl out on the street!"

"I'd be fine," you say softly. Maybe too softly for him to hear. Maybe not. Your earlier confidence seems to have wandered off somewhere. You wouldn't want guilt to be the only thing keeping you in his house... but perhaps you'd like that more than the alternative.

"But that you don't... that you don't trust me with what's going on, that hurts."

"Yeah."

"Just... just tell me it's not drugs." You get the impression that if you don't tell him that he might just tackle you right then and there and lock you in the basement for your own good. Better avoid that, even if a physical altercation between you would last exactly long enough for you to decide which identity to reveal - shorter if Fenrir noticed and decided to take matters into his own jaws. But nobody wants that outcome.

"I..." The words catch I your throat. What the hell, Taylor? All you had to do was look him in the eyes and say it wasn't drugs. But for some godforsaken reason you can't manage to do that.

It's probably the drugs. Lisa was right, you shouldn't have been allowed out on your own until your neurotransmitters unfucked themselves.

Rather than tackle you, Danny simply slumps in defeat. "Taylor..."

"Once!" you say angrily - you're angry at yourself, not at him. "Fine, twice!" you amend as you remember Newter, even angrier. Why are you bothering him with these details? "It was awful and I'm never doing it again!"

"...that would have been a lot more reassuring if you'd stuck with 'once', kiddo."

"There are different kinds, you know," you say, pouting. It's not a good answer, but it's probably going to upset him less than the truth.

Danny sighs. "Are you going to keep trying-"

"I swear on my mother's grave, I will not do drugs ever again." You regard each other solemnly. Danny nods. You nod back. You would not make such an oath frivolously even if you were in full possession of your faculties.

Besides, going by what Lisa said you've probably sampled all of them already. Even if some of them weren't really meant to be combined.

You have a plan for your Sunday: You're not going to do anything. No plots, no parahumans, no nothing. You have giant holes in your schedule where Faultline used to sit, and you're not even going to think about filling them right now. You're going to stay in bed all day, catch up on wolf cuddles, and move as little as possible. At most you'll drag yourself upstairs to eat. Maybe.

Then your Empire phone rings. That's not a punchline, because punchlines are unexpected. The universe shitting on your plans is not unexpected.

"What?" you demand.

"Where the hell are you?" Ops guy sounds like he's having an equally good time right now.

"Enjoying my day off?"

"I heard you've been sick - thanks for letting us know, by the way - but don't you read your messages?"

"No?" Okay, that's on you. 'I was marooned in another dimension and then I was busy beating up your worst enemy' is a pretty good excuse for forgetting to check your texts, but unfortunately not one you can use.

Ops guy makes a wordless noise of frustration. "The rally, Low Key! We need everyone there, as a show of force."

"Right. You know why I have so many days off, right?" You snuggle closer to the perfectly material Fenrir. "No wolf on Sundays."

"You still need to show up. People count the capes at these things."

"Fiiine. Give me the address."

You arrive just in time to miss an exhibition match between Fenja and Menja - you see them salute each other and shrink down to normal size as you round the last corner. Judging by the applause, the friendly spar of the 50 foot women was quite the show. You frown thoughtfully as you catch the brief flicker of power - is it worth making them your next project? You already know how to grow huge - except you don't really, stupid obstinate dragon power.

Looking around, Captain's Park is pretty packed, though the crowd is spreading out a bit as they trickle back into the space used for the mock battle. A surprising amount of regular, non-skinhead people, too. Or is it surprising? A group of people manning barbecues off to one side shows that Caesar is providing bread as well as circuses, and an anonymous benefactor just ensured that no giant rage dragons will crash the party. They really should pay you more. Instead you settle for snagging a free hotdog from the barbecue area before wandering off into the crowd. You'll figure out how to best eat it later.

Thing is, no one told you what to do once you're here. What is everyone else doing? You spot Hookwolf just standing around in the crowd, so you suppose you'll do the same until someone yells at you.

"Low Key!" No, that was just a friendly greeting: Alex spotted you wandering past. "What's up?"

"Everything sucks. Some asshole dragged me out of bed on a Sunday to listen to a stupid speech, and I missed the valkyrie fight."

He chuckles politely at your performative grouchiness (which covers genuine grouchiness, but he doesn't notice that). "It was pretty cool, but Victor-Cricket was better on a technical level." Then he spots your hotdog. "Guys, let's give Low Key some privacy."

After a quick series of nudges and gestures on his part you find yourself surrounded by beefy skinheads, standing shoulder to shoulder and facing outwards. This lets you hike up your mask enough to uncover your mouth without worrying about anyone photographing you, or sneaking up to take advantage of your complete lack of vision. "Thanks," you say before digging in.

"It's starting."

You readjust your mask and tap your protectors on the back to get them to move aside. A speaker's stage, complete with podium, is lifting into the air, suffused by Rune's power. Silver lining, at least you'll get some power study done today. Kaiser is behind the podium of course, flanked as always by his valkyries.

They say Hitler was pretty good at giving speeches (you wouldn't know, you've only ever seen brief snippets, and don't even speak German), and Kaiser follows that tradition. Very fiery, very punchy. And so educational! Who knew that pornography, gay acceptance and no-fault divorce were all jewish plots to reduce white birth rates, with the ultimate goal of white genocide?

"Question," you say to Alex as Kaiser goes on to further praise traditional christian values and the sanctity of marriage.

"Shoot."

"Are we pretending that he isn't tapping that," you gesture to the blonde supermodel twins on either side of the speaker's podium, "or are we just acknowledging that it's good to be the king?"

"Huh. You reckon he is?"

"Like Mjolnir striking a sleeping jotun."

"Guess you gotta go with option B, then," Alex says with a shrug. "Wasn't the sleeping jotun an illusion, though?"

He's entirely unconcerned with the matter. Then again, despite the paean to christian values currently being delivered, the Empire is actually made up of a mix of christians, atheists and asatru worshippers (and that one weird pseudo-Hindu). Or as they put it during their friendly theological debates at the bar: Christ-cucks, godless heathens and LARPers.

But there's another point of doctrine that isn't quite adding up here. You decide to engage in some socratic dialog.

"You know I'm a nigger trigger and not super woke on the JQ." You've been around long enough to speak their language, more or less.

"Yeah?"

"But the holocaust didn't happen."

"Uh-huh?"

"So what are they so mad about? Why are they trying to destroy us?"

"Labor camps aren't super awesome even without electric death showers," Sven butts in. Oh, so the rounding-up part of the holocaust officially did happen. Makes sense you suppose, it would be pretty fucking hard to deny.

Ignoring the secondary argument you can hear starting up in the background (in which someone is claiming that the labor camps were quite pleasant actually, and that Mengele was a nice doctor who took good care of his patients), you try another tack.

"Wouldn't civilization just collapse if they did succeed in wiping us out?"

"Sure would," white supremacist Sven says cheerfully. "They'll have to maintain a disenfranchised minority of whites to-"

"I'm trying to listen to a speech here," Alex says peevishly.

"Sorry." "Sorry."

"The jew is, at heart, an honest man," Kaiser is saying. Most of the audience laughs. A few boo. You are just really confused.

"You laugh," he continues, unperturbed, "but consider the truth behind his hypocrisies. In a land where he is the only minority, he feels exposed. 'To defend your nation's borders is like another shoah,' he cries as he reinforces the walls of Israel. When you stand up for your fellow whites, he trembles. 'A people united is like another shoah,' he cries as he conspires with his fellows. When you name him a jew he recoils, for there is nothing he fears more than to be known as the hostile outsider he is. He cannot help but to liken every threat to his power to a holocaust, because at heart, his fear is real.

"In his fear, he seeks to poison and divide us. To deceive and replace us. He fears the shoah because he knows. He knows that should his grip on the great organs of disinformation falter for the briefest moment - should the true extent of his perfidy ever become known - there'd be another one.

"You precious few, who have seen behind the veil, who dare stand up against the enemy in our midst, it is not your fist he fears. It is your voice! Your voice which he must keep from the marketplace of ideas at all costs, lest the light of truth scour away half a century of lies!

"When we are victorious, it will not be your hand holding the sword. It will be those who spat on you, the innocent masses who believed his newspapers and history books, who were told that the destruction of their world was an illusion. And if not an illusion, that it was a natural phenomenon, as inevitable as the tides. And if not natural, that it was deserved! That it should be embraced, that they should welcome their own extinction, go willingly into the grave and leave all their works to those their self-appointed masters deemed more biddable. It will be they who stand up, the scales fallen from their eyes, and strike down he who would destroy them!

"Remain strong, to defend your home against his golems. But more than anything, let your voices be heard!"

The crowd erupts in cheers and roman salutes. You have little choice but to join in.

"I thought jews were supposed to be cunning," you remark once the cheers die down.

"What's your point?" Alex asks.

"I mean, if I was a jew who wanted to prevent the rise of another Hitler, 'a jewish plot to destroy white people' would be the opposite of what I'd do," you say reasonably.

"Yeah, well, you work for a living."

"I do," you confirm, effortlessly contorting your perspective into one from which that appears true.

"You haven't been fired from 109 jobs," Sven agrees, presumably a reference which you do not get.

"Yeah. If you work for a living you can do the peaceful coexistence thing. But a parasite has no choice but to weaken the host enough that he can't make it to the pharmacy and buy delousing agent." From the way people laugh at that, you're pretty sure another reference just sailed over your head.

Your socratic dialog isn't working so well today, you grumpily conclude. It's almost as if some random noob can't just walk up to a veteran nazi and stump him ideologically off the top of her head. Hollywood lied to you again.

Notes:

A/N

What the audience hears: History will vindicate you.

What Kaiser is saying: Please just stay on the reservation and complain a lot, because you being too proactive tends to spook Medhall's shareholders.

Chapter 52: L.29

Chapter Text

Your school is more accommodating about your unplanned absence than your dad was:

"If you don't provide a valid reason this will go on your permanent record."

"Okay."

You can see in her eyes the moment she decides that Winslow kids gonna Winslow kid, and saving a destitute charity transfer from themselves is not her job. Just because they're serious about being the good school doesn't mean they care.

When you arrive at the bar for your patrol shift, the atmosphere is strangely tense. Stormtiger is there, which is also unusual, at least at the times you usually show up. He's facing the door, and not drinking.

"What's wrong?" you ask. Lung was arrested, their rally went really well. Why the long faces?

"Glory Girl broke up with her boyfriend again," the bartender says.

"O... kay?"

"Her comfort food is ambushing lone skinheads and breaking all their bones."

"Oh." The gossip rags were for intelligence purposes.

"We've switched up the patrols. Bigger groups, no one goes out without parahuman support. Your group is assembling out back."

"Okay." Welp, there goes your power study this evening, and possibly for several weeks more until Glory Girl gets over herself. Considering your interactions with her so far, you're not exactly shocked to find out that she gets her jollies from bullying the powerless. Fucking heroes.

Your group, as it turns out, consists of Alex, Sven, probably-Eric, Fake Swede, what's-his-name and that guy from Hookwolf's dojo. Look, unless they somehow distinguish themselves, what's even the point of them having names?

"-and when you're not on patrol, stay indoors as much as possible," Alex is saying. "Othala will fix you up if Panacea doesn't, but no one likes having their bones broken-"

"Rating: Mostly true," dojo guy interrupts him, nodding towards you. You give him the finger.

"Keep pissing off our parahuman backup, see how that works out for you," Alex says. "To return to what I was saying: No matter what, you'll get patched up afterwards - but you'll be in a world of shit if she tortures information out of you. Be smart, stick together. Individually we're weak..."

"But together we form a mighty faggot," the others chorus.

"And without an axe blade attached-" you bow slightly and gesture towards yourself, "-you won't ever accomplish anything useful." See, you get some of their references.

You summon Fenrir and set out with your... what should you call them? 'Members of the rank and file' is a bit of a mouthful, and your brain for some reason keeps wanting to call them 'mortals' (which is rude - it's not as if you're immortal. Yet). Baselines? Normies? Mundanes? Charges. You set out with your charges.

They are kinda tense moving out, but the presence of a giant wolf by their side seems to set them at ease, and soon enough they're bantering as usual. You are in no way exempt, but you like to think that you give as good as you get. By the Empire's rules your status as a parahuman inherently makes you their social and military superior... but between your reputation on the battlefield as Psycho Bitch (object of awe, fear and mirth) and your reputation on the training field as Hookwolf's Retarded Chew Toy (object of pity and contempt) it balances out pretty close to you being 'one of the boys'.

Your gender is not an issue. While not a single person at the bar would complain if the nineteenth amendment was repealed tomorrow, and most of them would cheer, you wouldn't quite call them misogynists. Their main point of contention is that women are too nice to be given political power, that they would never vote for the drastic measures necessary to save America (insert air quotes as appropriate).

Considering the 'election results if only men/women voted' graphics you've seen passed around, they're not wrong. But as a parahuman you're scientifically proven not to suffer from excessive niceness. And, hah, empirically proven by joining up in the first place.

Alex is currently teasing dojo guy ('Otto', you think you overheard his name was) for worshipping a kike on a stick (which is how the atheist contingent of the Empire refers to our lord and savior Jesus Christ), while Fake Swede is giving Eric shit for being a... 'nazbol'? A nazi bolshevik? How does that even work?

"How do you manage to get along so well despite your differences?" you ask Sven. Which is not something you ever expected to ask a nazi, but here you are.

Sven shrugs. "Doesn't matter what kind of society you're trying to build, the first step is always to exclude blacks and jews, 'cos they'll fuck it up. One of 'em'll fuck it up by accident, the other'll fuck it up on purpose."

It probably also helps that they don't really disagree all that much when you get down to it. Even atheist Alex admits that Christianity used to be pretty cool: Condemning degeneracy, fighting off the muslim invasion of Europe, and generally helping shape Northern Europeans into the most awesome people on the planet. And Otto agrees that it pretty much sucks nowadays, doing the opposite of all those things. They just disagree on whether it can be salvaged, in this scientific age.

"Bruh, the age ain't scientific," Otto says. "That's jewish bullshit. People want a set of divine commandments to follow so they can feel virtuous, and you can't stop 'em from getting some. It's the duty of the state to provide a state religion with good commandments, so they don't pick up some dumb cult bullshit."

You've never considered religion in those terms before. There's obviously some motivated reasoning going on, what with him being pro-christian to start with, but is he wrong? If you consider arbitrary moral prescriptions as part of the hierarchy of needs...

"Huh," you say. When the mortals turn to you, you wave them off. "No, nothing. It's just that vegans suddenly make sense."

"At least veganism is-"

Your attention is drawn from the argument when you spot the three people coming down the street towards you. Dark skin, check. Merchant colors, check. Guns, ch-

"Guns!" you shout. Of course you had to be enriched by the gun-toting kind of diversity today, when you have a bunch of mortals to protect and your ranged support is busy elsewhere. Can't be helped. As your mortals dive for cover behind parked cars, you kick Fenrir into a run.

They obviously don't miss your shout. Or the giant wolf bearing down on them. Two handguns and a shotgun are brought to bear on you. You press yourself against Fenrir's back to present the lowest possible profile.

Shots ring out as you close the distance. Even outdoors, it's still ridiculously loud. Hollywood really does not do it justice. Fenrir yips as he's hit but does not stumble, does not slow down. Good wolf.

Also, ow. Now you know how your costume felt when you were making it. The sensation of a needle punching through leather is an excellent analogy.

Of the three gunmen, two have the sense to turn and run when their weapons prove insufficient. The remaining idiot tries for one last shot, and gets his hand bitten off for his trouble. Fenrir keeps right on going, bowling him over as he goes after the runners. Fleeing isn't going to work, but the idea was sound.

You pull your knife with your remaining good hand and launch yourself at the guy on the left as Fenrir lunges for the one on the right. You land point first and the knife digs into his back satisfyingly as the impact sends him sprawling. How'd you like that, motherfucker? Not feeling so smart bringing a gun to a knife fight now, are you?

You get a bit emotional when someone hurts your dog, alright?

...trying to get up seems to hurt a lot more than it should.

"Holy shit what the fuck?" Over the ringing in your ears, you hear a shout from the direction you came.

"What did you expect, patrolling with Psycho Bitch?"

"Fucking bulletproof goddamn wolf?"

Otto comes running up to you. "Hey, are you-" His face falls. "She's hit! Alex! She's bleeding!"

"Shit! Get Othala on the line, right now! How bad is it?" Alex runs over to kneel at your side.

"It's cool," you say, "pretty sure the bullet went all the way through." No need to worry about digging it out before Othala does her thing.

"It's absolutely not cool," Alex insists. He's shrugging his way out of his shirt as he speaks. "You and you, apply pressure to the wounds. Here." He hands his wadded up shirt to one of the designated volunteers.

Having a grown man lean his weight on your freshly perforated shoulder isn't super awesome, and the guy stuffing his own shirt in the exit wound in your side also leaves some things to be desired, comfort-wise. It's all so unnecessary, you stopped bleeding on your own before you even jumped off the wolf.

Oh well, you guess it's the thought that counts. You bleed a bit more, just enough to soak the cloth and prevent the nice men from feeling useless.

"Really, you guys are making a huge deal out of this," you try. They aren't having any of it.

"How come you're not wearing a vest?" Otto asks. "The hell were you thinking, charging a shooter without a vest?"

Now that he mentions it, when the shirts came off just now they revealed kevlar rather than abs. Huh. No one issued you one of those. You offer half a shrug in response.

Meanwhile, Alex has been performing triage on your defeated foes, starting with a tourniquet for Stumpy. The second guy is surprisingly rambunctious for someone with a knife sticking out of his back, requiring a couple of swift kicks to the head to calm down. Triage goes both ways, around these parts.

He'll be fine. Given that he considered walking onto Empire turf to start shit a good idea in the first place, he won't notice some extra brain damage. The last guy is more docile, having been thrown into a wall by Fenrir and then generously stepped on.

Fenrir has more holes in him than you and is limping a bit as he walks over, but he shares your sensible attitude towards bleeding. You're not seeing any exit wounds, though. He nuzzles you, showing mild concern.

"I'm fine," you assure him. "Come closer." He lays his head on the ground next to yours and you whisper instructions directly into his ear.

Fenrir-o-vision

I really don't want to leave her side when she's hurt like that, but I do as she told me. I'm a good dog.

Go into an alley. Make sure no one is watching. Demateralize.

Five deformed little lumps of lead drop to the ground. Those were inside me? No wonder it hurt so much! She's so smart!

I rematerialize and hurry back to rejoin her.

With that done, all that's left to do is wait for the healer. Which is excruciating, and not just because of the pain. No one is in the mood for witty banter any more, yet when you suggest that you might take a nap instead they're all "No! Stay with us, Low Key! Look at me!"

"'tis but a flesh wound," you say exasperatedly. "Stop being such mighty faggots about it."

Finally, finally Othala arrives to fix you. You insist that she attempt to do the same for Fenrir, and are gratified to discover that your Master projection is lifelike enough to be granted regeneration (heh). When your patrol resumes, Alex motions the others to walk ahead and lowers his voice so only you can hear him.

"You should be dead," he says.

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm serious. A hit like that, the internal bleeding should have killed you before Othala could arrive."

"Luck."

"Hmph."

"Alright fine, skill. Bleeding is for-" you almost say 'mortals' "-losers. But I would be pretty upset if a Brute rating were to suddenly appear on Low Key's PRT profile," you add.

He holds up his hands to protest his innocence. "I don't snitch on people who take a bullet for me. Personal policy."

After the patrol, Otto refuses to let you leave. Instead he leads you to a small house on the southern edge of Empire territory, where it starts to fade into generic suburbs. It doesn't have a garden so much as a token strip of grass between the street and the porch. The American dream, compact version. But it does have an honest-to-god white picket fence, which you suspect is being enjoyed on multiple simultaneous levels of irony.

"Wait here, I'll be right back," he says.

You dismount and lean against the gatepost while he goes inside. You can make out a cry of "Honey? Where did I put my old gear again?" followed by a muffled conversation. You let your mind drift as you wait.

You snap back to attention when Fenrir nudges you. You're being watched. The front door is ajar, and peeking out from behind it is a small boy of about five. He isn't parahuman (of course he isn't, just saying that's why you didn't notice him at first). He ducks back behind the door with an indrawn breath when he sees you looking at him.

"Hi," you say. He gathers enough courage to peek back out, but not quite enough to respond. As he comes back into view, you notice that he's wearing a set of Velocity pyjamas. Normal enough for a kid his age, but considering that his father is part of the E88... The E88 consider themselves to be the good guys, of course, but roughly 100% of the media-industrial complex responsible for the existence of that costume disagrees. You wonder what age is appropriate for that conversation.

"Are you a hero?" he asks eventually.

You ponder this question. It's surprisingly hard to come up with a good answer. On the one hand, well, no, but...

"Never trust anyone calling themselves a hero, kid." It's good life advice, and hopefully avoids stepping on too many toes, upbringing-wise.

To his credit, the kid seems to think about your response for several seconds before dismissing it as typical adult nonsense. He steps out fully into view, carefully closes the door behind him, and positions himself facing you with his hands on his hips.

"Do you beat up bad guys?" he demands seriously.

"I do. In fact I beat up some bad guys with your dad earlier today."

His eyes go wide as saucers. "My dad beats up bad guys?"

Oops. "He didn't tell you?"

He shakes his head fervently, eyes still wide.

"You know that we have secret identities, right? So you mustn't tell anyone."

He nods solemnly, but gasps as something occurs to him. An accusing finger shoots out to point at you. "You just told me!"

"Yeah, I did. That was silly of me. But you're not silly, are you? You're smart. So you won't make that mistake, right?"

The kid rapidly switches between nodding and shaking his head at each statement, the motions violent enough to give an older person whiplash. He keeps alternating for a while after you stop speaking, eventually degenerating into moving his head about randomly. He spreads his arms wide and dramatically falls over onto the grass. The expression on his face communicates that you had better appreciate how wacky it all is, so you chuckle dutifully at his antics.

"Sorry about the delay, I- oh hey there champ." Otto returns carrying a small bundle. He bends down and scoops up his son with his free hand. "Isn't it past your bedtime?"

All the shyness seems to have come crashing back down as he was picked up, and the kid is reduced to whispering in his father's ear.

"Uh huh. Of course you had to sneak out and take a closer look."

Whisper whisper.

"She told you that, did she?" Otto shoots you a sharp glance. You can only shrug apologetically. "Did she also mention that you mustn't tell anyone else?"

Nod nod. Whisper whisper.

"I'm giving her some armor, so the bad guys can't hurt her."

Whisper whisper whisper.

"I don't know. Why don't you ask her?"

Shake head. Whisper whisper.

"Why not? You were talking to her before, right?"

Nod- shake head!

Otto sighs, but smiles fondly. "He wants to know if he can pet the wolf."

"Of course."

Fenrir holds very still as the kid gingerly places his hand on his forehead. They remain in that position for a while, until you whisper to Fenrir what he ought to do next.

"It licked me!"

Kid-o-vision

"Its tongue was huuuuge!"

"You still need to go to bed."

"Huuuuuuuuge!"

On your way home from school the next day, something unusual happens: Keeping sorcerer's sight up all day pays off, and you have a random encounter with a parahuman in civilian clothes. A blonde girl from Immaculata, who decided to run some errands in town without changing out of her school uniform. A shame that it gains you absolutely nothing.

Well, almost nothing. You still get to sneak up behind her and throw your arm around her shoulders with a loud "You look adorable, girlfriend!"

She startles, of course, and spins around to face you. It takes a moment before she recognizes you, but it's not as if you're trying to disguise your hair or voice.

"Lo- L.K?" Rune says. "What? You- how?"

You tap the side of your nose with a knowing grin. You have told her about your 'wolf senses'.

"You're smelling me? That's creepy AF," she says without heat. "There's rules, you know."

Oh, right. The Unwritten Rules. In your glee, you had momentarily forgotten. ...you're just going to stick with Lisa's diagnosis, and blame faulty neurotransmitters again. Yep, still hungover, no need to take personal responsibility for anything right now.

"Come on, it's not like we're wearing name tags," you say cheerfully. "Besides, I couldn't not let you know that I found out your terrible secret: That behind the mask you're just a sweet and innocent schoolgirl." Rune tries to protest this description, but you continue undaunted. "Adorably harmless, like a little kitten!" Justice for the 'four faults' video has been achieved.

"Never would have pegged you for a catholic, though" you muse. "Or wait, are you?" You know a lot of non-catholics also send their children to Immaculata - it's one of the 'good schools' they moved into Empire territory for.

"Sort of?" Rune makes a 'so-so' gesture. "My folks left the church because the new pope wasn't catholic enough."

You nod sagely. A lot that going around, you gather.

Other than that your life has more or less returned to normal. Though there is still the issue of Lung hanging over your head. You suspect that he might be holding a teensy bit of a grudge over what happened, and you have no idea how much of your face he saw during your transformation. Thus, you stick around as the dojo closes down for the day, and approach Hookwolf after everyone else has left.

"Whaddaya want?" He's gotten a lot less grumpy since he handed you off to his subordinates and didn't have to personally put up with your bullshit any more, but you're not exactly friends.

"I heard Lung got himself caught, and is going to be sent to the Birdcage."

"Everyone heard that. What of it?"

"Won't it be nice, to no longer have to worry about the ABB?" you say in the most childishly cheerful voice you can manage.

"Hah!" Hookwolf scoffs the way only someone who has twice been rescued from a Birdcage-bound prisoner transport can scoff.

"Wouldn't it be a shame if some civically minded people with parahuman powers just happened to pass by as the transport came under attack, and decided to help the PRT out?"

"I like the way you think," he admits. "But Kaiser wouldn't go for it. Bad whatchamacallit, precedent."

"Please. With the ABB gone, who could possibly use those tactics against us? The Merchants?"

"You're not wrong. But Kaiser won't have the balls to do it."

"Fine. Forget it." You turn away in disgust. More unwritten rules. You're going to have to do this on your own. Somehow.

Hookwolf's hand on your shoulder stops you before you can take more than a single step. "Kaiser doesn't have to know," he says softly.

Well. "We'd need Krieg, though."

"Why?"

"We're defending the transport. From Oni Lee. We need Krieg."

"Yeah, okay. I'll talk to him."

"We'll be going behind Kaiser's back, though. Won't he be all 'nein, Ich bin just followink orders'?" You've hardly interacted with Krieg at all, but he has a reputation as a bit of a stereotype.

"You've clearly never seen him with a couple of beers in him. Don't let the accent fool you." Hookwolf, telling you that stereotypes are bad.

"I'll talk to Rune, get us some transport."

"Make sure she keeps her mouth shut." He pauses for a bit, thinking. "How will we know when to strike, though? We can't blow off patrols to stake out the PRT, and Kaiser doesn't trust anyone else with his informants."

"I know a guy who knows a guy."

"Alright. Here's my number, call me when you have something."

"Will do."

"Hey," Hookwolf calls after you as you leave. "For a retarded dyke, you're not half bad." It's a peace offering, of sorts.

"So I hear - your mom said the same thing last night." You accept it, and respond in kind.

Chapter 53: L.30

Chapter Text

You're no more a fan of Glory Girl's current relationship status than anyone else in the Empire, but you admit that it has a silver lining: Her actively avoiding Gallant on her own makes her much safer to stalk! It doesn't make up for her keeping you away from Rune, but you're going make the most of it regardless.

But when school lets out and she flies off to look for comfort food, you're confronted by a problem: You have nothing to do tonight. You've already recovered from your little dimensional misadventure, you don't need any more rest. And due to the way your incredibly slow yet inevitable rise towards omnipotence paints a target on your back, time is your most precious resource. You can't afford to waste it on not acquiring more powers.

You did accidentally establish another identity last week: The whole world now knows that Double D is a Merchant cape who can turn into a dragon. Except possibly the Merchants, who know none of them recruited you. But you could just march up to Skidmark and tell him he totally recruited you, he just doesn't remember it because he was high off his tits at the time. Even if he doesn't totally believe it, there's no way he's going to turn down Lung 2.0 joining his shitty gang. Boom, instant access to new capes.

There are only two problems with this plan: 1) They are going to insist you do drugs together, and drugs are bad. Drugs are the worst. 2) They're going to demand that you turn into a dragon to prove your identity, and you don't remember how to do that. Because you were high off your tits at the time. See point 1: Drugs are the fucking worst.

Perhaps you could call Alec, and just take your chances on the whole slave puppet thing. It's not as if you have any better ideas. Though the suddenly Lung-less ABB ought to be pretty desperate for parahuman muscle right about now, and it's not as if anyone important saw your mind-hands wielded by a white girl. There's an opportunity there, but it should probably wait until you've taken care of Lung permanently. ABB capes will be expected to take part in the rescue attempt, and you can't be in two places at once...

Unless, that is, Oni Lee's power proves easy to learn, and you manage to twist it just right! No, that's a stupid risk to take. But perhaps- but you shouldn't- maybe Alec after all? You wrestle with terrible ideas for a while, but thankfully Lisa calls you up and drops a bunch of parahuman bullshit in your lap before you can admit you have a problem.

As far as you can make it out: Aisha took Lisa's suggestion to heart and skipped town. She called Brian to inform him of this. Brian flipped his shit and demanded she come back, because his custody battle requires that she keep going to school like a good citizen. Aisha told him that you were going to kill her if she came back. Brian called Lisa and demanded that she rein you in. Lisa hates her life agreed to a cease-fire on your behalf, and arranged a meeting to negotiate a permanent truce.

"There's nothing stopping you from just sending Bubbles to murder them instead, but please don't." Lisa sounds a bit tired, you think.

"How much does Brian know?" you ask.

"Brian knows you're Double D. Aisha knows not to tell him anything else."

"Look at her, parahuman for less than a week and already saving lives. A true hero." Lisa snorts at that, knowing your definition of 'hero'. "They're both coming to the meeting?"

"Yes."

"Brian needs to not come to the meeting." You're going to have to discuss things he is not cleared to know about.

"Believe me, I tried. 'I guarantee her safety,' I said. 'It's not as if you'd be able to protect her against the girl who took down Lung anyway,' I said. Do you think he fucking listened?"

Lisa has once more found a convenient abandoned building for you to meet in (a different one than the one you fought Alec in, for whatever reason). You look around at the other people in the room.

Aisha looks scared. Brian is trying to look intimidatingly large, but it ends up more 'worried and hovering' than 'implacable and looming'. Lisa looks like she needs a drink. You hope you look calm and scary - you really wish you didn't remember so much of what you said and did to Brian that night, because it's making it really hard to not blush every time you look in his direction.

"Is there, uh, you know..." Aisha looks around nervously, and mimes something that is probably meant to be a pair of fangs, or possibly claws.

"Yes," you say. "Vanishing would be extremely ill-advised."

"Just making sure."

"What are you talking about?" Brian asks.

You sigh and roll your eyes. "This is why no one wanted him at this meeting."

"Believe me, I tried," Aisha says.

"If we could get down to business..." Lisa says.

"Right. First rule of cape club: Identities are off limits. Isn't that right, Grue?"

Brian/Grue stiffens at that, and shoots a glance at Lisa. "How did you-"

"You're too tall to be Regent, and I'm pretty sure you're not Hellhound in drag." Aisha giggles at that, despite the tense situation. "That leaves only one option - let's not pretend as if Tattletale has any real friends."

"Pot, meet kettle," Lisa says.

"No one is going to out anyone," Aisha says quickly. She elbows Brian in the ribs when he doesn't immediately chime in. "Right?"

"Right."

"Good. I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, in exchange for three things." You turn to Aisha and hold up three fingers. "First, that you apologize to me."

"Oh. Uh, yeah. I'm sorry."

"For..." you prompt.

"I'm sorry for risking your life with a stupid prank." Out of the corner of your eye you spot Lisa mouthing something. There may have been a certain amount of Thinker-powered coaching going on beforehand, but you're going to let that slide. "I'm sorry for abusing your trust."

"Imagine if you had led with that the last time we met," you say dryly. "But it all worked out for the best, didn't it? Second, that you thank me for giving you powers."

"You what!?" Brian exclaims. Wisps of darkness start seeping from his skin.

"You didn't tell him?" you ask Aisha, incredulous.

Aisha-

Aisha is standing right there. You blink, having lost your train of thought. Which demand were you on again?

"Don't do that," Lisa says.

You look at the black mist coming from Grue. "Oh, are we using powers now?" you ask mildly. It's mostly a bluff, because you can't use non-dragon powers against him without leaking information. And you just discovered that his darkness blocks sorcerer's sight. He might actually be able to escape to tell others, if he reacts quickly enough.

"Sorry. Happens on its own sometimes." The darkness vanishes. A power that by its very nature cannot be studied by you - your decision not to join the Undersiders is once more vindicated. No, focus on the meeting. You were about to make your second demand.

You turn back to Aisha, holding up two fingers. "Second, that you thank me for-"

"Yes, I know!" Aisha cuts you off. "Thanks for doing the thing that my brother doesn't need to know about!"

"What?" Brian asks.

"...I see," you say, looking between the siblings. So that's how it is? "Then he shouldn't hear about the third thing either."

Aisha glances at Lisa, who shakes her head and makes the fang/claw gesture back at her. "Don't risk it," she says. You have no idea what they're talking about.

"Okay," Aisha says brightly, before turning to her brother. "We don't you need you here anymore, you can go."

When Brian doesn't immediately react to this, she starts pushing him towards the door. He resists only half-heartedly, which is how she's able to move him at all. "But-"

"No buts! We're all friends now, and we're going to have a girl talk that my big lunkhead brother doesn't need to hear! Don't piss her off, she turns into a dragon. Isn't that right, Dee? We're all friends, and no one is going to get hurt."

"No one is going to get hurt," you agree.

"It's fine," Lisa says. "I know what she's going to ask."

"I- fine. I'm trusting you here, Lisa." Brian pauses in the doorway, looking at you, but in the end he decides to leave without making any threats to the girl who defeated Lung.

"Finally," Aisha says after the door closes behind him. "Okay, what's on third?"

You contemplate the girl. Now that she's admitted that her soul's price was granted by you, she's sporting a bright, healthy Loyalty. "Third, you work for me now."

"Oh." The Loyalty trembles slightly as she considers objecting to this, but before it can start to fray she remembers that the alternative is that you don't let bygones be bygones. "...do I get paid?"

"Yes. Which reminds me-" you turn towards Lisa "-we need to talk about money."

"In front of her?"

You shrug. "She knows almost everything already, and is my loyal minion to boot."

"Hey! Uh, I mean, yes I am. You can trust me. I won't snitch. About anything."

You can't help but smile. Between fear and Loyalty, she'll make an excellent minion once she's had some training. Speaking of Loyalty, you just had an idea. You hold up a hand to forestall further conversation, and reach out for her soul's price a second time.

Aisha wants to become respected and feared as a supervillain.

"Huh," Lisa says, her power having told her what you were doing. "Wouldn't have expected that to work."

"Hierarchy of needs, I guess. But I don't know if it's going to stack, or just refresh. Unless you have an idea?"

"Sorry."

Aisha is looking back and forth between you, confusion evident on her face. "This is where you go 'fucking Thinkers,'" you explain.

"Oh."

"By the way, your power. Can you exclude allies from the effect?"

"I can barely keep it from turning on by itself," Aisha says bitterly.

"It's strictly on/off, no selective targeting" Lisa says, with a hint of smugness at knowing more about a power than you.

"Damn." Her power is impossible to study too. A coincidence, or... are they second-gen capes? Not to be a giant bitch about it, but her trigger event was a lot less traumatic than yours...

You shake your head and return to the matter at hand. "In that case I need some shopping done."

You write Aisha a shopping list and hand her some cash. After reading the list she sends a raised eyebrow your way, but you just wave her off.

"A goddamn Tinker too?" you hear her muttering as she leaves.

"Right, money," you say to Lisa. "I'm going to spend some of it on hiring the best information broker in the Bay."

"What do you need?"

"The time and route of Lung's Birdcage transport."

Lisa laughs at that - she doesn't exactly need powers to figure out what you'd use that information for. "Knew you'd break the status quo sooner or later. I can do that. You'll have to pay me later though, the money's already en route to Number Man."

"Number who?"

"You haven't heard of Number Man? He's the banker of supervillains. How else were you going to launder that much money?"

You were just going to dematerialize it and hide it in your mattress. "This Number Man, how often do his accounts get frozen by investigators?" The mattress might have been a better call.

"Never."

"Never?"

"Never. It's the whole reason he's a household name."

"But... every major government has a financial anti-Thinker task force." It's the reason someone like Lisa has to stoop to petty supercrime, instead of retiring to her own private island. Because giant corporations using the most expensive computer equipment on the planet to make six gorillion trades per second and turning the stock market into a circus completely divorced from reality is perfectly fine, but a private citizen using her magic brain to beat the market is haram.

"Then there's regular law enforcement, and regular financial institutions, and goddamn D- hypothetically a rogue AI loose on the internet. And you - every Thinker villain would love to rip him off if they could. He's fighting a one man battle against all of those, and winning? Winning flawlessly? This doesn't worry you?"

If he turns out to be Canadian, Narwhal is going to lose her spot.

"...It didn't until you laid it out like that just now." Lisa rubs her chin and works her power. "I mean, it's not impossible that he's simply the strongest Thinker in the world, stronger than everyone else combined. There's precedent in other classifications."

You nod. Legend among Blasters, Siberian among Brutes.

"But it's more likely that he has backing," Lisa continues. "Like, a bunch of regular billionaires who don't think the Swiss banks are Thinker-hardened enough."

"In either case, why in the world would he care about the tiny sums involved in parahuman crime?" you ask. But you've already figured out the answer by the time you reach the end of the sentence. You don't even need to peek on Lisa's power doing the same.

"A plot for world domination," you say together.

"At least that means I can trust him with my money," you add wryly. With one or more forces actively bent on world destruction, mere domination is not something you're going to lose sleep over.

Besides, if the latter theory is true and he's backed by a shadowy cabal of international power-brokers and financiers... well, all he's doing then is keeping up the facade of the comic book world. And despite a couple of rough patches, the comic book world is undeniably your element. The more people think it's a comic book, the fewer think it's a spy thriller.

If the former theory is true, that's fine too. Democracy had a good run, but if the demonstrably smartest person on Earth wants to have a go at running things instead, you're willing to give him a shot. He'd have to try pretty hard to mess things up worse.

"Speaking of which, he needs to know how you want it."

"Uh, still in dollars?"

"No, I mean, in a private account? Or a company? A non-profit organization? The Number Man can hook you up."

Now that you think about it, a specific kind of company would be really helpful for hiding your biggest expense, wouldn't it? "Does he do identities? I could use a driver's license..."

Some time after Lisa leaves, Aisha comes back with your purchases. "Okay, I'm dying over here," she announces. "Why do you need to put up an electric fence?"

"You'll see. Gonna tinker a bit, in the meantime you have homework." You hand her sheet of paper where you've written out the English alphabet. Below each letter is a symbol not found in any language on Earth. "This is the cipher we're going to use. Study it. Practice reading and writing it." The symbols are the nearest phonetic equivalent in the language that came with sorcerer's sight, because why make things more difficult than they have to be? You've also added the numbers 0-9, which have direct equivalents (the Thinker language, being base 25 for some reason, has considerably more numbers than that - but you feel that's a bit above Aisha's pay grade).

"Got it all figured out, huh?"

"Yes."

"Right, listen carefully," you tell Aisha.

"Lay it on me, D." Out of all possible forms of address, she chooses the one that specifically reminds you of the incident where your tits ended up on the internet. No, the other one. The one everyone knows about, that was her fault. Because apparently neither credible death threats nor supernatural loyalty is going to prevent this girl from testing boundaries.

"We need a way to communicate while your power is active. You're going to write me notes in the cipher, and I'm going to train myself to implicitly trust ciphered notes that appear from nowhere, that I have no idea who wrote."

"Uh-"

"I'm aware of the irony here, yes. This requires an equal commitment on your part. If the notes ever betray me in any way, you better pray that it kills me and Fenrir both. Because if either of us survive, you will die screaming."

Aisha takes a step back at your vehemence, holding her arms up in surrender. "I can do trustworthy."

"I know," you say. Her Loyalty is right there. "It's 'reliable' I'm worried about."

"...that's fair."

"This is my training rig." You gesture to the device on the table. Six loops of wire extend from the central unit, which is comprised of a car battery, the transformer for an electric fence and a mess of miscellaneous circuitry and wires tying it all together. "Five of the wires carry electricity, one is safe to touch."

You hold up a wireless earbud, then insert it into your ear. "When I hit this button, the safe wire is randomized. The earbud tells me which one it is. Like so." You hit the button. "Two," your recorded voice says in your ear. You touch the second wire, and nothing happens. "See?"

"Okay..?"

"Touching the wrong wire- gah!" You wince as your arm absorbs enough voltage to deter an animal twenty times your size. "Touching the wrong wire fucking sucks."

"No shit."

"You're going to wear the earbud and use your power. I'm going to push the button, and you'll give me a note indicating the safe wire. We'll repeat that until I learn to trust the notes implicitly."

You then proceed to give her seven pieces of paper, and explain the purpose of the seventh.

"Wow. Better you than me."

You hand her the earbud, and

You have no idea why you built this. There are instructions on the table next to it, written by you (not only are they written in a language only you know, you remember writing them). But the instructions make no sense. Which is probably why the last line of the instructions reads 'I know these instructions make no sense, but I should follow them anyway. Cape reasons.'

You scratch your head as you ponder the situation. There's obviously something wrong with your brain, but you can't tell whether it's made you write something crazy, or forget something important. With your brain compromised, can you trust anything-

"You weren't hitting the button," Aisha says. Oh. Oh right.

"I need better instructions for myself. Hang on." You scribble an addendum, then nod to her. "Let's go again."

You have no idea why you built this. There are instructions on the table next to it, written by you (not only are they written in a language only you know, you remember writing them). But the instructions make no sense. Which is probably why the last line of the instructions reads 'I know these instructions make no sense, but I should follow them anyway. Cape reasons. Fenrir knows what's going on.'

"Do you know what's going on?" you ask Fenrir. Fenrir nods. "Should I follow the instructions?" Another nod. Okay. Things don't make any sense, but you trust Fenrir.

You hit the button. You wait. A note appears in your hand. It says '5'. You touch the fifth wire. You are not shocked. You hit the button again. You trust the note. You are not shocked.

This happens a third time, then a fourth and a fifth. The instructions say to treat every sixth note differently. The sixth note reads '1'.

"I am not going to trust this note," you announce. You touch the second wire instead, and get electrocuted. Gritting your teeth, you touch the third. The fourth. The fifth. The sixth. After five consecutive shocks, your entire arm feels like it's burning. A note appears in your other hand. You struggle a bit with the unfamiliar phonetic cipher, but you eventually make out that it reads 'You should have trusted the notes, Taylor.'

You hit the button again.

You can't really move your arm anymore. You have to lean over and let it flop onto each wire in turn. You glance at the note. You should have trusted the notes, Taylor. Yeah, you know.

"I think we should stop, boss," Aisha says. Oh. Oh right.

"No. I haven't refused to distrust the notes yet. Get back in hiding."

Aisha-o-vision

Note to self, never ever disobey an order from Taylor. If this is what she does to herself...

Chapter 54: L.31

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Hookwolf catches your eye and jerks his head to the side. You follow him to a quiet corner of the gym.

"Krieg is on board," he says, softly enough that you can barely make it out past his mask. "Do you have the time and place?"

"Not yet. I talked to the guy, he'll let me know."

"How about Rune?"

"I'll talk to her to-" wait, shit, Glory Girl is still ruining your patrol schedule, you won't see Rune tomorrow. "I'll handle it."

He regards you for a moment. "Don't fuck this up."

You simply nod. "You should break my arm."

"What?"

"People are going to wonder why you pulled me aside, if it wasn't to discipline me. We are doing this sub rosa."

"Sub..?"

"Us more sophisticated people use zeroth reich slang. Means 'sneakily.'"

He either doesn't like your tone or agrees with your conclusions, because he breaks your arm.

"What happened?" Othala asks. "I thought you'd put this stuff behind you."

"I... may have called him stupid and implied that I slept with his mom," you say truthfully.

She shakes her head. "Is it true what the rank and file says? Do you... get off on this?"

"The rank and file is full of shit. Yes I do mean you assholes trying to listen in, don't think I don't notice!"

"Check it out this website I made!" Alex says as you enter the bar. Guess that's what happens when a rogue parahuman forces the rank and file to stay indoors all day. You shrug and pull out your phone. What kind of website does a bored nazi make?

Ah, an educational website. Containing a whole lot of bar graphs depicting crimes per capita per race. Of course. Normally you'd suspect a certain reporting bias here given who made the site, but it does cite its source as the official 2010 FBI crime statistics. You're pretty sure Kaiser hasn't managed to infiltrate the FBI.

It's not technically anything you didn't already know - your dictionary of nazi slang did mention that their second favorite four-digit number (after 1488) was 1350. As in 'despite making up only 13% of the population, blacks are responsible for 50% of violent crime.' It noted that this wasn't actually true, but curiously neglected to mention that the more scrupulous number, that the FBI were big fans of, was 1348.7.

"Did you unfuck the stats?" someone asks.

"Nah. More convincing if it's straight from the FBI."

"What's wrong with the FBI stats?" you ask, once more the most naive person in the room.

"Just look at some of their wanted posters," Alex says. Okay, whatever, you were online anyway. Let's see, FBI, most wanted (non-parahuman)... You are confronted with mugshots of criminal scum like Fernando Gomez. Height: 5'4''. Sex: Male. Race: White. Or Jose Victor Sanchez. Race: White. Hamed Abdel Islam, also white. Juan Lois Martinez, white. Carlos Alfonso Vargas...

"Oh."

"Yeah. The FBI deliberately lumps browns into white, to make whitey look bad."

"Guess brown people aren't all that bad then, if they can't skew the stats any further than this," you note. You pause just long enough to let the audience process this heresy, before dropping the punchline: "We should let the Italians back in."

"Mamma Mia!" Johnny shouts in an outrageously overdone accent. "I'm-a so happy!"

"Have you got your vest?" Otto asks. What, don't these people trust you?

"Of course," you say. You're just about to hike up your fake viking outfit to show off the kevlar beneath when you hear a gunshot echoing through the streets. "Dammit!"

You kick Fenrir into a run, leaving your mortals to catch up as best they can. More diversity deciding to enrich Empire territory? No, as it turns out, this time it's actually Glory Girl. She's standing (hovering) over a prone skinhead. The gunshot must have been in self-defense. It clearly didn't work, but lucky for him, cavalry's here.

With how assiduously you've been stalking her with sorcerer's sight, you figured out her secret weakness long ago: Her invulnerability is actually a skin-tight forcefield, not regular Brute toughness of the flesh. A forcefield that ought to overload if it takes too much damage all at once, you deduced from the structure of its power supply. The trick is to land one big hit to break her shield, then take her out of the fight before it comes back up.

You whisper instructions to Fenrir as you approach. Glory Girl looks up just in time to get a face full of wolf, as Fenrir leaps over her victim and bites down across her torso. You're almost thrown off as Fenrir decelerates in the air, Glory Girl's flight power fighting to keep her in place against his momentum. You glance behind you as he lands - the skinhead's luck holds, with Fenrir's hind legs hitting the ground just inches away from crushing him.

Glory Girl, meanwhile, is flailing wildly and cursing up a storm, held fast in Fenrir's jaws. Her position affords her almost no leverage, but super strength ensures that the blows that land still draw blood. Her shield didn't break. You had rather counted on that happening. Backup plan time.

"Let go of me, you bitch!" You ignore her banter as you lean forward and pepper spray her. It doesn't stop her flailing, though. You keep the button pressed down, emptying the entire can onto her. It's not working. You're starting to tear up just from the sheer amount of the stuff in the air, but Glory Girl doesn't seem affected at all.

No way. Her fucking shield is smart enough to let air through, but not aerosolized capsaicin? That's cheating!

You don't know how to deal with this. You're metaphorically riding a tiger, here: Letting go would be a terrible idea. Fenrir is stoically maintaining his grip despite mounting injuries and irritation from second-hand pepper spray, but he won't be able to keep it up forever. His head is whipping back and forth now, as Glory Girl tries to use her flight to yank herself free, but his teeth still aren't penetrating the shield. If only you had a real weapon...

"Where's your gun?" you shout over your shoulder.

"She broke it." Crap. Now what do you-

There's a tiny pebble hovering in front of your face, small enough that you'd have missed it if not for sorcerer's sight. The cavalry's cavalry is here.

"Retreat!" you shout, and Fenrir lets go. The sudden lack of resistance sends Glory Girl flying back several yards before she can react. Once she recovers she strikes a pose in the air, pointing back at you in a threatening manner.

"All right, my t-" A giant chunk of concrete smashes her into the ground.

"Ta-daa!" Rune shouts as she comes flying in perched on a second piece of rubble, and glides to a stop next to you.

"Huuuaagghh!" Glory Girl screams, a senseless, animal cry of pain, devolving into puking noises at the end. Her body lurches into the air, flying sideways down the street before crashing into the side of a building.

"Dafuq?" Rune asks.

"I drenched her shield in pepper spray," you explain. "You broke the shield." Depending on exactly how the shield handles the parts of her body that are typically considered to be 'on the inside', but are topographically on the outside, her entire respiratory system may or may not be saturated with capsaicin right now.

"Oh." The two of you watch in silence as her erratic flight takes her out of sight, crashing several more times in the process. "I almost feel bad for her."

"Fuck her," the downed skinhead says. You startle, having momentarily forgotten he was there. "I think she broke my ribs."

"Right, we should call this-" Your mortals come running, fashionably late. "You guys should call this in," you amend. "We got Glory Girl, it's safe now."

"For real?" Alex asks.

"We pushed her shit in!" Rune crows triumphantly.

"Good job showing up in time to help," you add. You don't regret running full speed towards the gunfire - it's sort of your job - and conventional wisdom holds that mortals are chaff in a cape fight. But over here in real life, any one of them could have shot her to bring down her shield for you. You really need to get some sort of real weapon.

"Let's go," you tell Rune.

"Go where?"

"Danger's over, we can resume normal patrols. Unless you don't want to hang out with me anymore?" Ironic puppy eyes don't work so well beneath a grinning mask, so you make sure to inject the most unrealistic amount of emotion into your voice for the second sentence.

Rune laughs. "Sure. You guys handle the administrative shit, and tell my minions the good news if they show up."

"You call them minions? I call mine 'mortals.'"

You can hear the m-people talking as you head off.

"The fuck were you doing out on your own?"

"Just buying some cigs, man."

"Keep telling you, those things'll kill ya."

"Ha fucking ha. Ow. How long till Othala gets here?"

"There's this thing I wanted to talk to you about," you tell Rune.

Your brief battle with Glory Girl yesterday reminded you of something important: You're stupid. All this time you've been keeping your orichalcum in reserve because you couldn't think of anything clever to make. Well, how about a weapon capable of harming powerful Brutes? That would have been pretty clever.

Yes, sneakiness and trickery has served you well so far, because you are still relatively weak. And admittedly keeping some orichalcum in reserve more or less saved your life when you burned your relationship with Faultline. But someone truly clever would have figured out that they might be forced into a direct confrontation against a more powerful foe at some point, and planned ahead.

As a wise man once said: In any battle, there's always a level of force against which no tactics can succeed. And just because you're stupid doesn't mean you can't learn from your mistakes: The next time you run into that phenomenon, you want to be on the other side of the equation.

The other thing that was holding you back from using your orichalcum was its scarcity. You still have no idea when or if you're going to be able to make more, so of course you were afraid to waste what little you had on a project you were unsure of. You're sure now - but keeping this scarcity in mind, the weapon you make today should ideally last you your entire career. Or in other words, there is no room for half measures.

Standing in Smith's workshop, you run your finger over the materials you had Fenrir fetch from the dematerialized stash beneath the floor: One full bar of orichalcum. The scale of a dragon, the hook of a wolf. The feather of an angel.

"Is that what I think it is?" Aisha asks, her finger trembling slightly as she points at the feather.

"Probably. I didn't break it off myself, if that's what you're wondering. I don't have that kind of power."

"Oh." She sounds like she isn't sure whether to be relieved or disappointed.

"That's what we're here to fix."

You invited Aisha along to watch, because there is no reason not to. The 'she knows enough to spell your certain doom if she betrays you' boat already sailed, so instead you're going to tell her everything. The more she knows about your capabilities, the more helpful the notes can be.

It's why you're currently wearing Smith's form. You have full access to all your powers regardless of what you look like, so unless you're trying to fool outside observers there's no reason to turn into Smith just to work orichalcum. But it felt appropriate, and it let you demonstrate the extent of your shapeshifting (no, you can't really turn into a man, you're still a girl where it counts - no, she'll just have to take your word for that, you're not taking off your pants).

You reach for Dragon's power. Two strips of paper float up, forming circles. You shove your arms inside. Blood drips. You briefly wonder where the hell those special effects are coming from - it's not as if Dragon did anything so flashy - before your mind is distracted by Tinker things. At a twitch of your finger, the materials leap into the air.

As you start working, Aisha walks up next to you and bends down to stare at the bloodied paper strips. Her lips move as she reads.

"They're... not real words?" she says hesitantly. "Antet varlosa...?"

"Anmteot," you absently correct her. "A little bird."

Haltingly, and with terrible pronunciation, she recites something that sort of sounds like verse, which you translate for her.

Sutra of the Voracious Maiden

Once there was a maiden...

...whose parents could not afford to feed her, and so she grew up sickly and weak.

When a kind stranger offered her a taste of food, she was amazed at how strong it made her.

She set out into the world, determined to sample every food there was.

As she ate and ate, her power grew.

"For what purpose do you need so much power?" a passing bird asked.

"I haven't finished eating yet," said she.

"But what does it mean?" she asks.

You grunt and shrug in response. You have no time for poetry right now. You're tinkering, and it's not working the way you want it to. You can feel what you want to do, feel that it's possible... but also that it's not possible for you, not yet. Not as you are. Until you grow more powerful, compromises must be made. But you refuse. Some things can not be compromised. The blade you're making must be able to cut anything and everything. No half measures. Nothing but perfection will do.

You can see the outline of it, the rough strokes of the structure through which you'd have to channel the power. But your mind is too small, too human. It can't encompass the entire thing. You strain against your limits for what might be minutes, might be hours-

"It's been hours," Aisha complains. "Are you going to do something or not?"

Your mind skitters sideways at the interruption, and just like that, you have it. Are you going to do something, or not? What is essential? What can be stripped away, what can be simplified? The blade must be able to cut anything, that's not negotiable. But must it cut anything, all the time? No. A brief moment is enough to decide a battle. Must it be elegant? No. It must merely work.

The path clear, you resume your work. Ever so slowly, the golden metal starts to deform under the force of your will. Atom by atom, the feather is sharpened.

In a perfect world, you would be crafting a sword. It's simple physics, or perhaps geometry - the longer the blade, the more you can cut. But the feather is broken, barely a foot long. You couldn't make a sword even if you had the orichalcum for it. A knife it is. A substantial knife, at least, a 'that's not a knife, this is a knife' knife.

Now that you know what you're doing, you can spare some attention for other things, if not much. As orichalcum coats the feather and the blade takes shape, you explain your situation to your minion, filling in the details. How you can study other parahumans to gain their powers. How there appears to be no limit, how you could theoretically become the most powerful person in the world one day. How utterly fucked you will be if anyone discovers this before you're ready.

You go over each of your powers in turn - skipping lightly over soul's price, for obvious reasons. Telling her everything everything may not be the optimal course of action when it comes to Master effects.

"I can always tell whether you've been disloyal, just by looking at you," is all you say - which is true as far as it goes.

"I've been loyal!"

"I know. I like that about you. You're the only minion who has been perfectly loyal. Well there was Funny Jim I suppose, but-"

"You have other minions?"

"I used to." You leave it at that. You have given her certain facts: You used to have other minions. They were not perfectly loyal. What conclusions she draws from those facts is up to her.

"Are you almost done?" Aisha asks. You understand why she thinks that, the knife itself has completely taken form. The feather is almost entirely hidden inside the blade, with only the faintest gleam along the edge hinting at its presence. The scale and hook decorate opposite sides of the pommel (the decorative element is purely incidental, it was simply the best place to slot them into the circuit) But while its looks will barely change from now on, you still have thousands of microscopic power channels left to etch.

You consider how long that will take, do some mental calculations. "I'm more than halfway done."

"Jesus. And you're still bleeding, what the fuck?"

"Hm?"

"I said, I'll get us some food."

You like this minion.

It's finally done. Almost as an afterthought, you rip some wood out of a doorframe and some leather from your apron, to form and wrap the hilt. You release Dragon's power. The paper strips burst into flame, and the knife falls out of the air and into your hand. It feels right. It is yours, on a level nothing not made out of orichalcum is.

"It's a bit whatchamacallit, conspicuous," is Aisha's verdict of the giant golden knife. "I thought you were trying to keep a low profile?"

"Really?" you say, smiling. With a thought, the knife vanishes from your hand. It is no longer here. It is nowhere, yet everywhere. It is Elsewhere. "I don't see anything." Another thought sees it return, as if was never gone.

You learned how to do this from the very first piece of tinkertech you ever studied, and it's so very useful. Of course you'd include it in your magnum opus. You're not just going to pick an identity and have it start lugging obvious tinkertech weaponry around. No, this way you remain armed in every identity. And whichever one needs it first, why of course that's the one who had it all along, as far as anyone can prove.

You banish it again, then make it reappear in your other hand. Better yet, you have justifications for how you came to possess it already in place. Thanks to your little caper in Ottawa, the PRT independently theorized that Low Key might have access to orichalcum. And with Faultline suddenly sporting that unmistakeable golden bling, soon enough they will work backward from there and do the same for Quicksilver. Truly, the best way to fool someone is to make them feel clever.

"Neat," Aisha says as you continue playing with the Elsewhere functionality of your new weapon.

"You think that's neat?" you ask, shaking your head. You walk over to the anvil you bought recently - mostly as decoration, considering how you work metal. You can feel the connection, the presence of the knife in your soul, like yet unlike one of your powers. And if you were to activate it...

The knife starts shining brightly, casting crisp shadows across the room as if you were holding a small piece of the sun in your hand. Aisha yelps and throws up a hand to shield her eyes. You cut.

The knife passes straight through the anvil, but it could be moving through air for all the resistance you feel. The light fades, and Aisha opens her eyes in time to see one third of the anvil slide away and fall to the floor with a thump. You run a finger along the bright metal of the cut. Perfectly smooth.

"That's neat," you say with satisfaction.

Notes:

Updated status

The Less Than Subtle Knife

Artifact •••

Attune 5

Orichalcum knife

Speed 5, Accuracy +1, Damage +2L, Defense +0, Rate 3

Taylor's determination to cram the ability to 'cut anything' into Artifact 3 resulted in this curious abomination. Up to (Essence) times per day, the attuned exalt can spend 10 motes of essence to 'charge' the knife. When charged, the knife will shine with a blinding light like that of the sun until the next time it is used to attack, which expends the charge. This attack will ignore all Soak and Hardness, and if it inflicts at least one Health Level of damage it may also inflict one Crippling amputation of the attacker's choice. Multiple charges can be stored at the same time, if for example the exalt wants to have the effect to apply to several attacks in a flurry.

Like all artifacts made by Taylor, it can also be banished Elsewhere and resummoned, as if using the charm Summoning the Loyal Steel.

Mechanics corner

Don't try this at home. If you have Artifact 3 to spend and want to be able to ignore armor, just get a Grand Goremaul. With a +16L damage bonus and the Piercing tag it will do more damage than the charged knife against anything but the most absurd of Soak-monsters, and even a glancing blow will bypass any Hardness that is likely to ever show up in the game. And it can do that all day long, for free.

Why not just make the knife an Artifact 4 or 5 and make the effect permanent, you ask? Because there are certain requirements if you want to forge an Artifact with a rating above 3:

Step 1: Cultivate for 99 years.

Step 2: You know what, never mind the other steps.

There are ways to get around Step 1 - but Taylor doesn't have those charms.

Chapter 55: L.32

Chapter Text

If there's one good thing that came from the whole debacle with Skidmark and Lung, it's that you're sort of rich now. Lisa gave you 60% of the haul, as an apology for (accidentally and by proxy) entrusting your life and wellbeing to an unreliable dumbass (that you'd later go on to trust said dumbass with even more things is a separate issue). The Number Man didn't just launder the money, for a small extra fee he also set up a front business to your specifications.

That's how you became the proud owner of Big Hank's Whole Hog Steakhouse, a totally real restaurant located at an address that definitely exists. Don't laugh at the name, it does exactly what it's supposed to do. Which is to let you convert portions of your newfound wealth into dead animals on a daily basis without raising eyebrows. Now that you're rich, of course your first priority is to feed your dog properly.

You arrive at the slaughterhouse in your guise as Hank's niece (complete with driver's license, thanks again Number Man) and park your newly bought beat up old truck around the back. What? Cars are technology. You're an excellent driver as long as you keep industry and forge wisdom active.

Even though it's only the third time you're here, it's already routine. You announce yourself, an employee helps you load up a carcass. Clearly the guy has very little to do on Sundays, because he sticks around and tries to chat you up. You're just about to shoot him down when another parahuman shows up.

No, really. Another parahuman shows up, also in civvies, driving a truck the same model as yours. Is someone pranking you?

"Sorry, got another customer," flirty guy excuses himself.

You bum a cigarette off him and pretend to smoke it, just to have an excuse to stick around and watch. Mostly you just hold it near your face and wait for it to burn out on its own. How do people ever manage to get addicted to these things? It's disgusting.

The other parahuman is a Changer too, you conclude after some study. And he's buying a dead pig, just like you. What the hell is going on? Well, you're not a Case 53, so the resemblance isn't perfect. Also not male - although with Changers who know knows, right?

What really gets you is that you know Brockton Bay's entire parahuman population by heart, yet you have no idea who he is. New in town? He's not visibly mutated, which may or may not indicate that he's a hero. Then again, Changer. Perhaps his true form is hideous. At any rate, you definitely need to investigate.

Industry and forge wisdom provides helpful advice on how to tail a car without being spotted. Huh. You wouldn't have expected to find that in the domain of 'understanding technology', but at least this once your twisted copy has proven to be unquestionably superior to the original power.

You tail Mr Changer to a house in the suburbs and make note of the address. You'll have to stake it out later, Fenrir is waiting for his lunch.

You return wearing different clothes, and a different face. You park a block away and casually stroll past the house, studying it from the corner of your eye. A spacious garage, yet there are not one but two vehicles in the driveway. You catch glimpses of several people through the windows, all parahuman, all Case 53s. An entire team, then. Almost certainly not heroes.

The garage has a set of windows up near the ceiling. They have curtains pulled across them, but you can make out yet another parahuman glow coming from inside. Which, given your viewing angle, means that whoever is in there is either clinging to the ceiling, or something like ten feet tall. At least one obvious mutant, then.

You continue around the block and make your way back to your car, pondering the situation. It's unfortunate that they're all Case 53s. Well, maybe not. Copying an unmutated Case 53 should be safe. Probably. For a sweet enough power, you might risk it. Extended surveillance will be required to determine who they are, and how they may be approached/infiltrated.

Coil-o-vision

The Travellers arrive in town before their quarters - and more importantly, the secure vault for that thing - are finished, so I put them up in one of my spare properties in the meantime. It will technically leave a trail tying them to one of my shell companies, but they won't be going out in costume until I've moved them into the base proper. No one will even realize that they are in town, much less discover where they're staying.

As you're making your second sweep (in yet another set of clothes and face), looking for a vantage point from which you can carry out more permanent surveillance, you hear shouting coming from inside the house, two male voices. It sounds more like an argument than alarm at being discovered, so you keep walking and pretend not to notice.

Then the voices stop, and one of the capes walks outside, slamming the door violently behind him. With that kind of disturbance it would actually be more suspicious to not stop and look, so you do. A young man with dark hair, not the Changer (you can tell by the power). From the look on his face, it was definitely an argument.

He gets in one of the cars, prompting you to rush back to your own vehicle so you can tail him.

He drives out of the city and into the woods, before stopping at the side of the road and getting out. Do they have a secret base out here or something? You drive past without slowing, parking further ahead out of sight and doubling back on foot.

You know approximately nothing about tracking people through the woods, but fortunately a loud racket up ahead lets you easily pinpoint his location. You proceed forward cautiously, keeping low to the ground and staying in cover as much as possible. You are painfully aware that you're roughly as good at stealth as you are at tracking.

Luck is on your side, though. The terrain slopes down towards a small river - only a couple of yards wide - and you spot your quarry standing on the riverbank, facing out across the water. He bends down and picks up a palm-sized stone, then straightens up and holds it out in front of him. His power activates, and the rock is fired into the river. There's a loud crack as it breaks the sound barrier, immediately followed by a splash that kicks up a huge plume of water. So that was what the noise was.

You watch silently as he repeats this several times. What a power. You're happy as a clam (happier - any actual clams around here are probably fairly unhappy at this point), but your quarry seems unsatisfied. He starts hefting up larger stones, and firing them into the trees on the other shore. It must have been quite the argument.

Well, far be it from you to turn down a free power demonstration. Do it again! Yes, take out your anger on that tree! Your lips part slightly and your breath grows heavy as you imagine what this power would do to Glory Girl's shield. Unfortunately you fear the he won't be able to keep it up for as long as you desire (approximately two full 40-hour weeks, you estimate - it's one of the tricky ones). Isn't that always the case with men, haha, etc. You start shapeshifting in preparation for the inevitable disappointment.

As predicted, he eventually works out his anger. For a while he just stands there, panting and surveying the wreckage. Your turn. You step out into view, and start clapping. "Marvelous show!"

He spins around so fast he loses his footing - or maybe that was deliberate, as falling on his ass lets him scoop up a handful of pebbles to brandish at you. Having just watched him wreck the shit out of the forest, you obviously know exactly what would happen to you if he fired those.

"Who are you?" he demands.

You toss your platinum blonde hair behind your shoulder and offer him a curtsey, as well as a beaming smile. "Quicksilver, at your service."

He takes a moment to mull over this response. You saw his face and powers, and in return offered your own face and cape name. A clear gesture of friendly intent, but still invasive.

"Ballistic," he eventually introduces himself. Very fitting. He lets the threatening pebbles drop to the ground. "At my service, are you?"

"How could I not be, after you provided such an excellent demonstration of parahuman might? I could barely contain my excitement!"

Sundancer-o-vision

"Luke! I was starting to think something had happened to you. Are you alright?"

"Hm? Yeah, everything is fine."

"Look, I know Krouse can be an asshole, but... I..."

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You're smiling."

"Oh. I, uh... Well, I met a girl."

Chapter 56: L.33

Chapter Text

Four capes soar across the city along a course parallel to, but out of sight from, a certain prisoner transport. A hand-picked team of the Empire's finest: Hookwolf, muscle. Rune, transportation. Low Key, brains. Krieg, blatant cheating. (Fenrir, invisible, facing the wrong way).

No, really, you are the brains. With Hookwolf and Rune to handle Brute and Mover, your primary role is 'wolf senses'. Which counts as Thinker. And you did provide the intel telling you when to strike. You suspect that Lisa gave you a ridiculous discount, compared to the street value of hacking the PRT. You don't feel bad about that though, the Lung situation is at least a little bit her fault.

Wait, did you say Empire? You misspoke, no Empire involvement here. Civilian clothes, plain white masks. Clearly an unaffiliated team. ...no, you don't expect anyone to believe that. You personally think Hookwolf is entirely unrecognizable, since he's wearing not just a shirt, but a suit and tie as well. But that will only last until battle is joined. The 'giant monster made of chainsaws' thing is a bit of a giveaway.

What, the jig is up even before that, since you're all riding Rune's favorite rock? No, no, Rune reported her vehicle stolen earlier today, honest. Main suspects are the devilishly handsome cape team of, uh, Sawtooth, Hoverdisc, Lycan and Buzzkill? You didn't actually bother coming up with new names.

The paper-thin deception is a statement, 'we're not acting under orders from Kaiser.' That way Kaiser can claim that he does not condone interfering with jailbreaks (true), and that you were punished for doing so (unfortunately also true, most likely). All because he's scared of a future, hypothetical non-ABB (worthless without Lung), non-Merchant (just worthless in general) rival gang doing the same to him.

The question is, will anyone believe that? Possibly. It's only slightly less plausible than the bullshit capes usually get away with, just ask the guy auditing the Palanquin's tax records (RIP the Palanquin).

You spot a tell-tale glow appearing on a distant rooftop. A second later another one appears one building over. And another.

"Go time!" you shout. "Oni Lee!" The way he teleports, leaving a short-lived clone behind each time, is unmistakable. The first light you spotted winks out as the clone dissolves.

Rune swerves the rock sharply towards the transport. Krieg hops up onto a smaller rock, which Rune sends shooting ahead as soon as the transport comes into view.

A normal person would fall off if fired like that, but as mentioned previously, Krieg is cheating. It says 'Brute' on the tin, but the way he gets there is unusual. His power? Making physics his bitch. He can make a speeding truck hit like a slap on the cheek, and vice versa. Fiddling with air resistance and inertia enough to remain standing is no problem for him.

He leaps off as he passes over the transport, and lands on top of it with a feather-light impact. Just in time, too. A pair of semitrucks (sans trailers) come speeding into the intersection ahead from opposite directions, running the red lights and swerving across lanes to pancake the front police escort between them.

"Jesus," Rune says, and you're inclined to agree. Their first move was to straight up kill one or more police officers? The normal cape rules of engagement have been thrown out the window and down a well.

The driver of the transport is forced to hit the brakes to avoid a collision (Krieg, of course, does not fall off). Before it has even come to a complete stop Oni Lee is there, scattering grenades around in a fashion most inadvisable unless you're a disposable clone that would die in three seconds anyway. After a glance from Krieg, they explode like wet firecrackers. The clone manages to look affronted as it puffs into white dust, its timer expired.

Another Oni Lee appears behind Krieg, stabbing towards his back. You don't see exactly what happens when the knife hits the Brute, but Krieg does not seem troubled as he turns around. A casual strike with the back of his hand sends dust exploding across the street.

The rear police escort, not having the benefit of a physics fiddler on the roof, blows up.

The driver of one of the trucks that took out the front police escort manages to get the door open and stumbles out. He may look dazed and unarmed to others, but he is glowing alarmingly to you.

"Tinkertech!" you shout, pointing. Rune immediately sends a rock slamming into him.

He detonates in a bright purple flash - which triggers a secondary detonation from inside the cab of the opposite truck, this one greenish-yellow. The first blast cuts everything around it into regular one-inch cubes, the other turns things inside out.

"Dafuq?" Rune asks.

"They're tinkertech suicide bombers," you state grimly.

"Vat ist dis? Britain?" comes Krieg's disbelieving voice over the comms.

That's when you spot the reinforcements coming up the street from behind the transport. Dozens of unpowered people in ABB colors, on foot. You spot them because they glow.

"They're all suicide bombers."

Krieg doesn't hesitate. "Hookvolf. Take zem out."

Hookwolf leaps from the rock, transforming in midair and landing on springy serrated coils. The coils scrabble on the ground, bounding forward with crude quadrupedal locomotion as the last of his flesh melts away into metal and he starts to assume his signature wolf shape. He's still growing more blades as he pounces on the first mook. Who, predictably, blows up in his face. Not that he lets that deter him. He keeps charging forward, regrowing his damaged parts as he goes. Though he does compromise a bit on the wolf shape, growing several long, whip-like appendages to take out the next set of bombers from slightly farther away.

Not all of them explode as he tears through them. Which is not to say that you were wrong. They're tinkertech bombs, regular explosions would be entirely too mundane. There are pillars of ice and flashes of lightning. Earth, wind and fire. Bursts of light in every color of the rainbow. Concrete turns to jelly, fields of magnified gravity crush people and vehicles flat. Hookwolf continues forward through it all, unmindful of the damage he's taking.

Someone either has great respect or great hatred - or both - for their boss, if their plan was to throw all that at the prisoner transport and expect him to walk it off.

Fenrir materializes. You spin around to see Oni Lee caught in his jaws. Your trap worked. With you and Rune 'alone' and 'distracted by the battle', he could not resist the temptation to appear behind you and stab you in the back. He screams as Fenrir bites down, bones snapping and blood spurting. You kick the grenade he dropped over the side.

Fenrir violently shakes him back and forth, then flings him away with a final twist of his head. He puffs into dust before he hits the ground - a clone. But when you catch sight of him on a nearby rooftop he's sprawled down, bleeding from a double row of teethmarks. He didn't get away quite in time, then.

When Rune sends a rock to smush him he starts retreating, teleporting away across the rooftops. You report as much over the comms. "Goot, very goot" Krieg says. Hookwolf doesn't respond.

"Take us down," you tell Rune. "Clear the way for the transport."

While she gets started on that, you mount up and dash off to check on Hookwolf and the suicide bombers. You pass Krieg, who has jumped down from atop the transport and is having a tense but civil discussion with the driver. He nods at you as you go by.

You have to slow down when you reach the field of battle - despite each individual blast only having a radius of a few feet, there were enough of them to almost block the whole street. You carefully pick your way between areas that are still on fire (who knew concrete could burn like that?), or glowing bright blue (you don't know what it does, but you're staying away), or frozen in time (a severed whip-appendage hangs in midair, reaching into the gory center - he must have used another bomb to blow it off in order to get free).

Shit's fucked up, is what you're trying to get at (but still considerably less awful than what you saw in Ottawa). There are other bits of Hookwolf strewn about too, from individual hooks to entire chainsaw limbs. He may have overestimated himself a bit here.

You find the man himself surrounded by a particularly dense set of danger zones, having just crawled out of a pit filled with what looks like the same white dust Oni Lee turns into. He's... he's seen better days. His head, one arm and part of his torso have transformed back, but there's easily a dozen yards of unspooled chainsaw monster still extending below that, twitching and coiling uncontrollably.

Ah, you see the problem. A... metal-eating plague(?) of some sort is working its way up towards his fleshy bits, black metal turning green and runny and gradually sloughing off. Dibs on not touching that.

"I've got this," you tell him. "Hold still." He complies, doing his best not to twitch a chainsaw into your face as you dismount and step in close. You materialize your orichalcum knife, charge it with power and sever the infected limb with a single stroke, well ahead of the advancing infection. "There."

Hookwolf's human parts shudder as the knife passes through, and he turns around to see what you did. "Move," you say, disappearing your knife and shooing him away from the dripping green mess you just separated him from. "Don't touch that."

"No shit." He moves over a bit and finishes transforming back into a human without further incident. "Thanks," he adds.

You shake your head. "I did nothing. I am not secretly packing high-powered tinkertech weaponry." That's the second time in as many weeks you reveal a trump card to someone in the Empire. You really hope they can keep their mouths shut.

He chuckles at that. "Whatever you say."

"Can you walk? Or do I need to load you onto Fenrir?" Fenrir snorts in disdain on hearing that. You glare at him. What's his beef with Hookwolf? "What are you, a unicorn? You can carry someone who isn't a fair maiden once in a while. Especially when-"

"I can walk," Hookwolf interrupts the argument.

Rune and Krieg meet you halfway. Glancing behind them you can see the blockade cleared out, and the prisoner transport gone. "Mission accomplished," Krieg reports. Hookwolf grunts in satisfaction.

"I think that went pretty well," you remark.

"I for one am looking forward to being chewed out by Kaiser for for doing him the biggest favor of his life," Rune agrees.

Chapter 57: L.34

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

That's another soul price moving into the 'never gonna use' column, you suppose. Which isn't to say that it hasn't been useful. Lung, who famously fought Leviathan to a draw, wants a rematch against someone else. If you ever see a parahuman woman wearing a fedora, you're turning around on the spot and running the fuck away.

But back to the present: After taking care of Lung - once again out-heroing the heroes, just as a side effect of being a sane person acting in your own self interest - the next item on the agenda is 'hanging out with Rune'.

"Since we have patrol tonight, I can't just dismiss Fenrir for the day," you explain, not entirely honestly. "I need somewhere a giant wolf can lay low until our shift starts."

Because you enjoy a certain amount of irony in your life, you suggest you hang out over the Medhall building - no one ever spots anyone up there. But almost as soon as you you get out of sight from the others you notice Rune's hands start shaking, prompting you to put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

"All those people," she says softly. "There were- I saw a little kid get caught in..."

"Yeah," you say, because there's little else to say. The suicide bombers were not defeated without collateral damage.

Fenrir tries to nuzzle her, but she flinches away from his bloodstained affections.

"How are you so calm?" she asks.

"Practice, I guess. Ottawa was worse, and hit me harder at the time."

"You were at- you never spoke about that."

"And I never will."

Rune nods.

Actually none of that happened, because Rune is a certifiable badass who would never show weakness in front of others - and if it did, you would have been sworn to secrecy about it. The next couple of hours are pleasant enough as Rune gradually calms down you sit around and talk about nothing in particular, only somewhat marred by post-traumatic stress the way you're sort of expecting to get called in and chewed out by your boss at any moment.

The conversation eventually circles around to the subject of boys, as conversations between teenage girls do (you know this from overhearing others - you yourself haven't exactly had friends since becoming a teenager).

Now as it happens, you did meet a boy yesterday - but Low Key can't exactly talk about what Quicksilver did, now can she? You have to fall back to the second-most-recent boy you met. And even with the cape-related details omitted that's still a risky thing to share. But mutually assured destruction through shared secrets is what friendship is all about, and Rune is being a friend.

"I did meet this one guy recently," you say. "Big, strong, handsome... a little older than me, but that's just the way I like them. He seemed nice too, but..."

"Taken? Gay?"

"Black," you sigh.

"Oosh. Better not go spreading that around."

"Yeah, I know." 'I'm trusting you to keep my secrets' goes unsaid, but not unheard.

"No worries," Rune says. "I've been there. This one time, one of my dumb friends from school sent me a picture of a some shirtless nigger - and wouldn't you know it, some rank and file asshole was looking over my shoulder right as I opened the message."

You cringe in sympathy as she continues, seemingly addressing the world at large as much as yourself. "It was just a fucking picture! I admit the dude was hella ripped, but you wouldn't believe the earful I got for noticing. It was just some random internet beefcake, it's not as if I could've fucked him even if I'd wanted to!"

"I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where my eye candy will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the definition of their abs?" you suggest.

Rune snorts. "It was like half a year ago, and they're still sending me stats on domestic abuse and single motherhood broken down by race!"

You laugh and roll your eyes. They are such fucking nerds. "It's nice to know they're looking out for you at least," you say.

Rune aims a swat at your head, but you dodge. "I'll forward the whole mess to you so you can feel appreciated too!"

The funny thing is, you do feel appreciated. Rune is looking out for you, and you're not even reverse blackmailing her. You might even keep hanging out with her after you've gotten her power. Which is going to happen any month now, Jesus Christ what is so difficult about lifting rocks?

You patrol, you sleep, you go to school, you go to the dojo - and still you don't get called in to answer for what you did. Over the course of the evening pretty much every single mortal at the dojo manages to catch your eye and give you either a respectful nod or a softly-spoken "well done", so it's not as if no one knows. Everyone knows.

But speaking of irony in your life, the very first session after having befriended(?) Hookwolf is when you finally get Othala's power down. Meaning you no longer have any reason to stick around. Well, you can work with this.

"Me 'n Krieg told Kaiser it was all our idea, and we press-ganged the two of you into helping out," Hookwolf tells you after everyone else has left, and suddenly everything makes sense again. And you're going to have to take the question mark off of 'befriended', because taking the fall for you like that was a seriously decent thing to do.

"'preciate it. How hard did you get reamed?"

"Eh." Hookwolf waves the matter away. "We had him over a barrel and he knew it. We're the only lieutenants he's got left."

An excellent point, that you hadn't thought of. It's easy to forget that Hookwolf is actually third in command in the Empire (with Krieg in second), because he comes off as a simple thug. But he really is a lot like Lung - you shouldn't be fooled by the way they habitually turn into giant monsters and wreck shit. That doesn't mean they're stupid: Turning into a giant monster is a very intelligent solution to a great many problems.

"So," you say, "now that we've gone through the classic buddy cop arc and become friends despite our differences-" Hookwolf snorts at that "-I've realized that the friendliest thing I could do would be to stop shitting up your dojo with my retarded presence." Crap, you called it a dojo to his face. He doesn't react to it, though.

"Will you be alright? You are shit at fighting still."

Oh sure, now he wants to teach you. You hold out your hand in front of you, and will the golden knife to appear in your grip. "I'll manage."

With that, the 'Hookwolf saga' part of your life story comes to a satisfactory conclusion. Oh, you're hopeful that some day you'll be able to parlay your buddy cop status into studying his power for real, and become a chainsaw monster too. But attending the dojo is not how you do that, and you need to free up time so that Quicksilver can hang out with Ballistic.

Yes, just as you were worrying about where your next power was going to come from, one of the most amazingly lethal Blaster powers you've ever seen practically dropped into your lap. You'd say someone must be looking out for you, except you really hope not because that someone would be the Simurgh. Quick, think about something else.

Like your new power. Gotta figure out what you did to this one. You'd call it a crapshoot, but to be honest only one power (Lung's) has given you any real trouble (one point five if you count whatever the hell Newter did to you). Sure, it could be argued that Labyrinth's power gave you quite a bit of trouble - but the power itself was easy to use and self-explanatory in its effect. The fact that said effect turned out to be 'stranding the user and any bystanders in a desert for the better part of a week' is a separate issue.

So, Othala. The power to grant powers. She has to touch people to do it, but some instinct tells you that you won't have to. You'd prefer a proper instruction manual, but vague nudges are more than some powers (Lung's!) have given you. So you try to reach your mind out to Fenrir, as he immaterially pads along next to you. Flight, you think as hard as you can. Because a magic wolf companion is awesome, but a flying wolf companion would be even better.

It doesn't work. Okay, what about powers you actually possess? You mentally flip through your (gratifyingly long) list of powers, looking for something that would a) be obvious if it worked, and b) Fenrir can be trusted with.

Oh, you're dumb, the correct answer is obviously mind-hands. A magic wolf companion is awesome, but a tentacled wolf companion..? No but seriously, mind-hands are ridiculously dextrous, and his biggest weakness is his lack of thumbs. Not to mention that they can cross the material/immaterial barrier. Mind-hands, you think at him.

It doesn't work either. If it only works on humans, you're going to be pissed - or realistically, mildly disappointed. Super strength? you suggest without much optimism, but it seems your power likes that better. You feel a connection form, above and beyond the ever-present connection of a spirit-tied pet. Your mind brushes against his, and you perceive... contentment? Your power can't improve Fenrir, because he is happy the way he is?

Really, subconscious? You gave yourself a power-granting power that only works on people with body image issues? Really? Could you maybe pretend to not be a broken person for just one single power? (trick question, you're a parahuman)

You put further experimentation on hold, because you're not about to try to convince Fenrir that he isn't awesome. He is awesome, but he also loves you enough that he might believe you if you told him otherwise. And you'd rather kill yourself than abuse his trust like that.

It's when you get home and see your dad that the last piece falls into place.

He is tired, your power whispers. You know. He's always tired, he's working so hard. To keep the union alive in a dying city... and to provide for you, despite the way you've been acting recently. You wish you could contribute some of your ill-gotten gains to the household budget without blowing everything up even worse... but there is something else you can do. He has never tried to hide how life wears on him, at least not very well.

So you give him an unsolicited hug, and supernatural stamina.

Not very much, yours is not a flashy power. Strictly Brute 0 territory. Not that you would inflict capehood on your old man even if you could. But enough to keep up with the demands he makes of himself a little better.

Not flashy, perhaps, but apparently permanent. Once given, you discover that you couldn't take that stamina back even if you wanted to. An interesting trade-off compared to the original power. You almost hope this somehow reveals yet another deep-seated flaw in your character, because the alternative is that you subconsciously made Othala's power more low key. Ugh.

You're going to call it 'emptiness endowment', you think. Because it can only fill up the holes in your spirit.

You shoot off a quick message to Lisa before bed - you are going to want to brag about this one. Of course it would be even better if you could use it on y- you can use it on yourself! As soon as you think of it, every single aspect of yourself that you've ever been dissatisfied with opens up for improvement. Ouch, it's a lot.

You're this close to doing something stupid, before you stop yourself. That thing can wait. That other thing too. You haven't discovered what limits this power has, if any. You should start with the most useful thing, and work your way down the list. But what would be the most useful?

Well, it sure would be nice to know some knife fighting techniques to go with your magic knife. Cutting through anything is all well and good, but you've heard that some people use weapons to parry things as well.

And just like that, you know. You summon your knife into your hand, and run through a series of attacks and guard stances. So that's what Cricket was trying to teach you. Ha. Now that you've left the dojo once and for all, you finally get it.

You straighten up and send the knife away again. You experience a mild mental hiccup when you don't forget anything of what you just learned - having gotten used to industry and forge wisdom, you sort of expected your sudden expertise to vanish the moment you let go of the implement. But no, this power is different. The knowledge is still there, even when you don't immediately need it. As is a faint ache that you recognize from when you created Fenrir, though nowhere near as bad. Hm. You recovered from that without ill effects, but still. Pain is generally your body's way of telling you to stop. And you're in a much less precarious position now than you were back then, you can afford to be careful.

You sit down on the bed, turn your sorcerer's sight inwards and study your new power as you meditate on the feeling. It reaches out like that, and injects... your internal monolog quickly degenerates into Thinker-language, but you think you see what's going on. Forcibly shoving foreign capabilities into your soul(?) damages your... potential for growth?

This is where a scientist would start making shit up in order to generate a physics- and biology-compliant model of what was happening, and start using words like 'brain plasticity'. As an old hand at unreasonable ontology, you don't make that mistake.

Instead you follow the warm glow of I'm sitting next to my Spirit-tied Pet back to the power in question, to see if your new perspective on things can give any new insights. Uh-huh. Yep. That thing was burning your potential to fuel his growth. Stick that in your brain plasticity model and smoke it.

Good call on not going nuts with self-endowment, though. Overusing that thing could seriously retard your ability to learn things naturally - and 'learning things' is the whole point of your main power!

"You'll love this one!" You reach out and boop Lisa on the nose with one finger, concentrating on bestowing a gift of intelligence. She's certainly complained enough about the flaky nature of her own power for it to count.

Her eyes go wide, and her power goes off - you're too busy getting your unfamiliar new power to work correctly to catch what it said - and she rejects it. Without a willing recipient you lose control and the gift fizzles out.

"For the love of god, Taylor. Could you please stop adding creepy Master effects to your powers?"

Yeesh, is she still sore about you having her soul price? Wait, Master effects?

"Master effects?"

"The fact that you didn't know is the only reason I'm not punching you in the face right now. Hm. It didn't feel like soul's price, though. Hit me again, I want to figure this out."

You roll your eyes, boop her again, and get rejected once more. Maybe if she'd been smarter, she could have figured it out in one go.

"Huh." Lisa leans back in her chair. "More Shaker than Master. Probability manipulation. You're not compelled to obey, but if you don't, something terrible happens to you."

That's... sort of awesome, actually. "See, I only make nice Master powers. I give you something nice, and all I ask is that you're nice back. Soul price is 'guaranteed gratitude', this is 'karmic justice.'"

Lisa sighs, but you like to imagine it's a fond sigh. "I'm still not going to let you do it."

"Stupid ungrateful Thinkers," you mutter to yourself as you prep the apparatus. One more session should lock in trusting the notes properly. A short session this time, to keep the permanent nerve damage to a minimum: Without the dojo as an excuse your access to Othala is more limited. And you do have a date with Ballistic later tonight.

"What did she do?" Aisha asks.

"I was going to use my new power to make her smarter. Lisa loves being smart, right? But noooo, she had to get all pissy about the Master effect. It's not like I would have asked her to do anything bad! We're friends!"

"Huh. So you're basically Teacher now?"

"I suppose."

"Hey. Um. You know..." When she doesn't continue, you turn away from the apparatus to face her. She's looking at her feet, and fidgeting. It's weird. You can't say you know her well, but you've never known her to be bashful. About anything.

"Yes?"

"Could I have her smarts? Since she didn't want them and all." Once she starts speaking, the words come out in a rush.

You raise an eyebrow. "You sure? The Master effect will fuck you up if you ever disobey me."

She snorts. "Yeah, like you wouldn't fuck me up if I disobeyed you regardless."

"An excellent point. Here." You boop her with smarts. You don't have to touch people, but it's funnier if you do.

"Holy shit," Aisha says. She blinks rapidly a couple of times, then looks around the room, wide-eyed. "Hit me with a math problem!"

You shrug. "9x - 12 = 51?"

"Uh... minus twelve, um, sixty-three... Seven? Holy shit, I just got that. Is this what smart people feel like all the time?"

"No," you tell her.

"Oh." Her shoulders slump a bit. "I suppose you get used to it?"

"I didn't give you that much," you continue as if she hadn't spoken. "That's what people of average intelligence feel like all the time."

She starts to give you the finger, but reconsiders it halfway through the gesture. "Could I have some more then? Please?"

She could, but... "Give it a couple of weeks to settle in. Could be side effects if I give you too much all at once."

"Yeah? What kind of side effects? Because-"

"Learning disabilities," you say.

"Never mind!" Yeah, you had a feeling she'd say that. Right in the insecurities. "But, uh, as soon as it's safe, yeah? I've been a pretty good minion, haven't I?"

Notes:

Updated status

Charms:

Taylor: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, ?

Tattletale: Know the Soul's Price

Bitch: Spirit-Tied Pet

Aegis: Ox-Body Technique

Browbeat: Shaping the Ideal Form

Dragon: Implicit Construction Methodology

Kid Win: Industry and Forge Wisdom

Lung: By Rage Recast

Vista: Mind-Hand Manipulation

Cricket: Mantis Form

Faultline: Charm of Lesser Unmaking

Labyrinth: Hell-Walker Technique

Othala: Verdant Emptiness Endowment

Mechanics corner

Taylor's new charm does exactly what Lisa describes it as doing. A deal with the devil, except you don't need to explicitly ask the devil for anything, just express discontent where the devil can hear. And the devil doesn't have to tell you that anything is happening at all. It can be refused, but unless the devil warns you ahead of time that happens on a purely subconscious level - the DM says "you're getting X as a Training effect, would you like to spend 1 Willpower to not have that happen?" but the character can't hear that.

Lisa is as usual using her power to cheat at the 'not knowing things' part.

Still not using XP because it's still not a Gamer fic, but respect for this very XP-debt-like 'soul strain' will keep things from degenerating into '5 dots in everything'.

Chapter 58: L.35

Chapter Text

Your date with Ballistic was... okay. You think you successfully hid how unbearable it was having a regular unmasked dinner with his inert power sitting right there taunting you, and you hardly dislocated his arm at all dragging him off to a secluded spot where he could trade supersonic projectiles for post-dinner makeouts. He was rather adorably shy about being spotted, you had to reassure him that in Brockton Bay people would just assume the noise was gunfire and go about their business. He still didn't relax completely even after a series of faint bangs in the distance proved you right.

When you get home, your dad lunges from the couch to embrace you. "Taylor! You're alright!"

"Uh, yes? Should't I be?"

"There have been bombs going off all over the city!" He leads you over to the television, which is playing a special report showing just that.

"Huh. I thought it was just gunfire." You settle down next to him on the couch and try to figure out which of the noises you heard were which buildings blowing up. It's complicated by the way they keep cutting away from the summaries as they get footage of new explosions. Hang on, you recognize the way that concrete is burning.

As does someone else, because soon afterwards they cut away to a Protectorate advisory identifying the culprit: Bakuda, aka the Cornell Bomber. Crazy murderous Tinker and, crucially, half asian by descent. You nod to yourself as everything falls into place. Turns out you overestimated the ABB's cape shortage, and underestimated how upset they would be at losing their boss.

Nothing you can really do about it, though. A glance at the clock shows that it's half past wolf cuddles, and you should be in bed already. You already defeated Lung twice, you can let the heroes do their job for once and take care of his grieving widow.

Trickster-o-vision

"You're dating a local? Have you given up on getting home?"

"Fuck you, Krouse. Just because you're mooning over a monster-"

"You will not call her that!"

"Stop it you two! Stop it!"

"School is cancelled," dad tells you at breakfast. "They found a bomb at a school."

"Was it Winslow?" you say hopefully. "Did it blow up?"

He shakes his head, trying - and failing - to look like he disapproves of your eagerness. "No, and no. But they shut down every school in the city until they're sure it's safe." He hesitates. "You will be staying home, right?"

"Will you?" you counter.

"I can't-"

"Are you going to a big building full of people, that would make an excellent target?" you ask. "Because I'm going to have a picnic in the woods really far from any buildings at all."

That takes the wind out of his sails just as he was opening his mouth to argue. "Really?"

"Yes."

"Really really? All by yourself?" He seems unwilling to believe that you could be behaving sensibly on your own initiative. A less self-aware person might have taken umbrage at that.

"There may or may not be boyfriends involved," you allow.

He adopts a mock-stern expression. "Just how many boyfriends we're talking about here?"

Your picnic preparations get interrupted by a call from ops.

"Low Key. We recognize that there are times when it's appropriate to be coy about the exact nature of one's powers. This is not that time. Exactly how well are you able to spot Bakuda's bombs?"

Ah, one of your co-conspirators must have tattled about your role during the Lung anti-breakout. Not that you can really blame them, seeing as how the heroes are useless and the city is still blowing up.

"It's not x-ray vision, if that's what you're asking. Sure I could spot someone walking down the street carrying a bomb - but you're already turning away all asians by default. If it's already planted inside a building, or in the back of a truck or something, I won't be able to tell."

"Damn. Alright. Just report for duty as normal tomorrow then."

It's interesting to note that it doesn't even occur to them that you might be lying in this situation. Not that you are lying, just saying that it was an interesting thing you noticed.

Your date with Ballistic was amazing, because you have discovered the secret of men. Here's the secret: They really like women, and will go out of their way to make them happy. All you had to do was not hide how excited his power made you, and he was falling all over himself to demonstrate it. It's funny that it took you this long to figure it out, but every single power you've acquired to date either belonged to a female cape, or was studied covertly, or both. Clearly you need to go on more dates.

Not that Ballistic - Luke, you should say, now that you've gotten to know each other (you decided that Quicksilver's civilian name was Robin). Not that Luke doesn't have other things going for him, beside his power: He's also a handsome international man of mystery... or should you say, interdimensional?

Ballistic wants to go back to Earth Aleph.

Very mysterious! But you can't ask about it, because interdimensional travel is super illegal, and with his nervous disposition he might panic and do something stupid if you let on that you know. But that's fine, the solution is simply to build up more trust before asking - i.e. more dates.

You also subtly steered the conversation towards childhood memories, and either he's the greatest liar you've ever met, or he doesn't have amnesia - so he probably knows where monster capes come from as well (Earth Aleph!?). Another thing you can't ask about at this point in your relationship.

Genesis-o-vision

"So tell me about this girl who has you smiling so much lately. Is she pretty? Smart? A beast in the sack?"

"Jess!"

"Hey, it's not like I get to go out on a lot of hot dates, you know. I need to live these things vicariously. Now give me all the lurid details or I'll guilt-trip you some more."

"Mars, make her stop bullying me!"

"I dunno... you do blush so prettily..."

"He does, doesn't he? And that blush tells me he did something really naughty. Did you tie her up? Spank her?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you anyway."

"What was that? You can't just say something like that and not follow it up."

"Yeah, dish!"

"Fine! She gets off on supersonic projectiles, alright? I'm the only man in the world who can satisfy her without a firearms license."

"Ha! Good one."

"You're right, I don't believe you."

Friday sees no change in the situation. Shit is still blowing up, school is still closed, heroes are still useless. The news claim that Armsmaster has been disarming a majority of the bombs before they explode, but you don't have any way to verify that. "Look at all the buildings that aren't blowing up, that's definitely not because they never had bombs in them in the first place we swear." Still, even if it's true... way to treat the symptoms, guys.

Not that you're complaining all that loudly about getting to spend time with Ballistic instead of Glory Girl. It really is an improvement in every conceivable way. No, it's the villains that rain on that particular parade.

"Shit, I have to take this," you say as the ringtone of your Empire phone goes off. Ballistic - Luke lets out an annoyed grunt as you disentangle yourself from the hot sloppy makeout position and scramble to locate the correct phone. But instead of answering, you decline the call and send them a text.

Can't talk right now

You could, but Ops and Ballistic are expecting two different voices to come out of your mouth. Your phone chirps with their response.

Priority mission, call back ASAP

Dammit. With the schools closed you suppose they're free to give you day-time assignments, as it won't impact your education. Complaining is unlikely to help - even beyond the general 'everyone pitches in to help in a crisis' principle, there is probably some sentiment in the Empire that the whole situation is partly your (/Rune's/Hookwolf's/Krieg's) fault. You don't accept that. Yes, if not for you Lung would still be around to rein in the psycho - but if Bakuda wants to throw a two-digit-body-count tantrum over your actions, that's on her.

"Sorry," you tell Luke. "Priority client. If I could tell them to fuck off I would." He sighs, but nods in understanding.

You start to jog back towards your car, modifying your vocal cords as you go.

Looks like they found a use for your 'wolf senses' after all: Your mission is to escort a VIP who would rather not make his association with the Empire public. Thus they ordered you to dress in civvies and simply walk next to him - but if you spot the faintest glimmer of tinkertech explosives you're to grab him, toss him on a wolf and gallop the hell away. Survival trumps circumspection.

Personally you think walking around in a baseball cap, sunglasses and a scarf is more conspicuous than just wearing the blank mask of the incognito cape... but nobody asked you, and orders are orders.

You were told that the VIP would be waiting for you at the rendezvous point, but when you arrive all you find is a fat little boy. Teenager, whatever. Roughly your own age.

"Um, hi? I'm Theo," he says.

"Four hundred and forty-nine," you respond.

"Oh right. Um... uh... One hundred... One hundred and seven?"

"Ninety-seven," you correct him with a sigh. This is a VIP?

Theo, you quickly discover as you walk across the city and he keeps trying to engage you in conversation, is a loser. Harsh, perhaps, but you spent all of high school at the bottom of the totem pole. You recognize a loser when you see one.

Here's a secret about outcasts: Most were cast out because they're awful to be around. Not even other losers want to hang out with losers, and if they had alternatives none of them would. There is no fellowship of pariahs, they only stick together because they were thrown in the same pit.

It quickly becomes apparent that Theo isn't even a racist. You'd almost think there was some sort of mixup, and the real VIP is standing around getting increasingly impatient as he waits for you to show up. But no, Theo knew you were coming, and he (almost) knew the countersign.

He's certainly expecting you to be a racist, though, because most of the conversation is him trying to 'deprogram' you with all the subtlety of a brick to the face. And he's feeling noble about the attempt. If you were cringing any harder you'd give yourself a hernia. This little shit, who believes exactly and to the letter everything that the schools, government and media want him to believe, is feeling proud of being not indoctrinated.

He's also proud of 'tricking' the Empire, by 'subverting' his assigned escort. But he's so bad at it! He approaches it as if your supposed racism comes from somehow never having heard any arguments against it, despite having grown up with the same aforementioned schools, government and media.

Though to be fair, this is the first time you've heard anyone consecutively argue that race isn't a real thing because hereditary traits don't exist, and that all the really obvious hereditary traits that perfectly match up with classical notions of race are only skin deep and there aren't any that affect anyone's disposition or ability. Because..? He fails to specify how he came to that conclusion. Because the world would be really unfair otherwise, and the world couldn't possibly be unfair? Boy have you got news for him.

Still, you shouldn't let your personal feelings get in the way of business. He is, for some godforsaken reason, important. That means his soul price has strategic value.

Theo wants to lose his virginity.

Right, you're stupid. Teenage loser, male. What the hell did you expect? It goes in the 'achievable' bin, you suppose, but you don't have the power to grant it right now. Some would argue that you're equipped to grant it at any time, but they'd be wrong. First you need to pick up a Master power that removes any and all traces of self-respect, with a Manton limit of 'self only'.

Oh god, is he trying to convert you because he sees you as a potential mate? Do you have enough residual loser-stink on you that he can spot you in turn, and thus considers you attainable? The part of you that delights in misleading people with the truth suggests telling him 'I regret every decision that led me to this point', but the thought of letting this kid believe he succeeded at anything fills you with revulsion.

You make it to your destination unexploded. Said destination turns out to be the apartment of a mousy little woman, who is secretly a cape. Well, that neatly explains everything: Theo is someone's very special boy. Christ, not only did he completely fail at refuting the Empire's stance on race, he proved that they were right about single moms too.

You refuse an offer of tea, citing the need to get back to your regular patrol. The woman isn't using her power, so there's nothing to gain by sticking around. You do snag her soul price on the way out, though.

Kayden wants someone to uplift the lesser races so her asshole ex stops being right about them.

...you're going to need a third category for soul prices, that's labelled neither 'well-adjusted' nor 'achievable'.

You wonder who she is. Even without her using her power, you can tell it doesn't match that of any of the capes you've met before. Purity? You thought she'd left the Empire, though. Well, trying times do bring people together, perhaps she's been reconciled in the wake of everything blowing up?

Chapter 59: L.36

Chapter Text

Since you didn't need to summon Fenrir for your escort mission, you have no excuse not to show up for patrol as normal. You arrive at the bar to overhear Fake Swede complaining about his representation in the media, waving a newspaper about: "Just like jews to slander a good honest nazi!"

You feel you lips quirk up. That's... not a false statement, you suppose. But... well, you can't resist the chance to tweak his nose a bit.

"I dunno," you say thoughtfully. "My slanderous newspaper story was written by someone named K. Sandstrom - sounds more like a fake Swede than a jew to me."

"Bah!" Fake Swede scoffs. "Sure they got shabbos in the trenches, but I bet you a hundred bucks the chief editor and the owner are both Chosen."

"I wouldn't take that bet if I were you," Big Brain interjects, fiddling with his phone. "Which paper was it?"

"Uh, the Brockton Herald I think?"

He nods, and hands you his phone. It shows another educational website, that has managed to compile the entire org chart of the Brockton Herald. Complete with names, job titles, pictures... and little Stars of David in the corner wherever appropriate.

"Oh my god, it's full of stars," you exclaim theatrically. A sucker's bet indeed. "Clearly this country needs stronger affirmative action laws," you add wryly as you hand the phone back.

Big Brain and Fake Swede both chuckle at your witticism, but someone else shouts "No!" and suddenly you have a skinhead getting all up in your grill - someone you haven't been introduced to, but who has clearly introduced himself to several alcoholic beverages tonight.

"Jesus Ryan, she was just joking," you hear faintly from behind him, but he's having none of it. In a loud and passionate - if somewhat disjointed - monolog, he explains to the world in general and you in particular that he's not a far right extremist, he's a national goddamn socialist! He loves big government, and everyone else would too if it wasn't for affirmative action (several people around the room silently shake their heads). If the public sector would just hire on merit, instead of being used as stealth welfare for mentally deficient African-Americans (those were not the words he used).

"Instead it's, it's..." The poor guy is so passionate/intoxicated about his socialism that he's at a loss for words.

"'A charade designed to prop up a society based on the notion that all men are born equal, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?'" you suggest, quoting wildly out of context.

"Yes!" Ryan shouts. "Holy shit you guys, Psycho Bitch gets it!" Then he tries to drunkenly hug you.

"Careful there," you say as you sidestep the attempt. "Wouldn't want any wolves appearing indoors." This casual remark of yours is taken very seriously, and Ryan's friends hustle him off almost before you can finish the sentence. Which is good, sure, but are you really that scary? Perhaps you should try to find some way to ameliorate your Psycho Bitch reputation at least a little bit?

Rune laughs and shakes her head as you relate the incident. "I'll never understand why you keep hanging out with-"

The night air is split by feminine scream. Rune cuts off mid-sentence, Fenrir leaps onto her rock and you speed off towards the source, all levity forgotten. You feel a jittery energy infuse your body as you prepare to enact brutal retribution on the people responsible...

...only to arrive too late. The woman lies crumpled on the ground, clutching her face and sobbing in pain. Of the perpetrator, no sign.

"Shit," Rune says. She's already going for her phone to call for help, so it's up to you to render assistance. This is a terrible allocation of labor, because a) Rune presumably paid more attention during first aid class than you did, and b) you don't carry any medical supplies with you, because you don't bleed. Still, what can you do? You crouch down next to the woman and try to gently pry her hands away from her face.

"Here, let me see- oh shit." She's got a deep knife slash across her face, starting above her right eyebrow, going across her nose and slicing open her left cheek. Shit. Um. Bandages, you need bandages. Your own cape outfit is mostly leather, so...

"I'm going to need to cut up your clothes for bandages," you tell the woman.

"Purse, bandages," she manages to get out. Yeah, but- her purse is still there. Some asshole just sliced her face open and ran off, without even robbing her? What the fuck? No, focus on staunching the blood.

It's at this point Rune's end of the phone call clues you in on the fact that she's calling 911, not Ops.

"What the hell?" you demand. "Get Othala over here. Without proper regeneration she's going to be scarred for life!" (the woman whimpers quietly on hearing this, but it's not as if it wasn't obvious already)

"Othala isn't a charity," Rune says. "Her brand of health insurance is for active members only, not random civilians."

"This is on us," you counter. "We were patrolling, we were supposed to stop this!"

"I know!" Rune says angrily. "I don't make the rules!"

"Oh, for... fine!" You draw your knife, flip it over into a reverse grip, and jam it straight through your left forearm. "There! Injured cape. Get Othala out here, because I'm not in any condition to be moved." You make sure to keep bleeding for a while, for effect.

Rune stares at you, speechless. "Uh..."

"There's a giant wolf who will savage anyone who tries," you explain further. Fenrir growls in agreement.

"...right." She hangs up on the 911 operator, and calls Ops. Good. Guilting Othala into helping once she shows up won't be a problem.

You're aware that you just completely ruined any chance of lessening the legend of Psycho Bitch tonight, but you don't care.

You're not done with the perp either, whoever he was. If any other set of capes had shown up he'd have gotten away clean, but he just so happened to piss off the K-9 unit.

"Get his scent," you tell Fenrir. "Run him down, bring him back here." Fenrir sniffs around the scene for a few seconds, then dashes off. "If he's made it inside, come back here and I'll drag him out for you," you call out after him. No smaller-than-a-wolf doorway is going to save him from justice.

"You can do that?" Rune asks. "What's the range on that projection?"

Oh. Right. Most minion-conjuring Masters couldn't have done that. In your anger, you let the sandbag slip a bit. Whatever. "Miles," you say with a shrug.

Rune finishes her phone call and thankfully takes over the first aid. She must have seen how awkward you were about it, and/or didn't want Psycho Bitch any closer to civilians than absolutely necessary.

Othala is clearly unimpressed with your injury, looking between your forearm and the empty sheath at your belt and shaking her head. But she doesn't argue when you ask her to heal the victim first, because she's a good person. She's still busy with that when Fenrir returns with a captive in his jaws.

"A fucking nigger," you say without thinking.

"Well duh?" Rune says.

You shake your head. It's not that you're particularly surprised. It's that you just realized what article K. Sandstrom is going to write tomorrow: 'Bloodthirsty nazi wolf abducts innocent youth minding his own business.' This fucking clown world would have people believe that you were the one committing race-based hate crimes tonight.

It's not going to help the actual hate criminal here and now, though. Fenrir obediently drops him in front of you and holds him in place with a foot. "Do as you would be done by," you say as you draw the knife from your forearm.

"Vengeance threefold," his victim suggests from behind you, surprising you. But okay. You can work with that too.

Remember back at the start of the Bakuda crisis, when you said that the heroes could do their job for once? Boy were you wrong. Four days in, it's gotten to the point where the villains are teaming up to do something about it. You were also invited, despite not being a villain.

The conference is going to be held at a small pub called Somer's Rock. Calling it 'nondescript' would be giving it too much credit: 'Run-down' and 'shabby' would be better adjectives. Being the designated neutral ground of the city's major gangs must not pay very well. Though to be fair, you don't know how complicit the owners are - if Kaiser shows up and says 'nice place this, I'm going to hold a meeting here', who would dare argue?

Not being completely retarded, Kaiser has you go over the entire building with 'wolf senses' before showing up in person. Until the conference is over it's the single most bombable building in the city - including the PRT HQ and the Rig, because the people at Somer's Rock might actually pose a threat to Bakuda.

As you search, you can hear the skinheads standing guard outside discussing race and IQ. Their take is less straightforward than you'd have guessed:

"No shit the chinks are smarter than us," Big Brain is saying. "They built a giant wall around their country to keep foreigners out."

"Does that-"

"No, that still doesn't mean you can have an asian GF! Have some fucking self-respect!"

You miss the most of the subsequent conversation as you check the basement and attic - debating, from what snatches you overhear, just what non-IQ deficiencies caused the Chinese to invent big ships and gunpowder and then sit around with their thumbs up their asses, whereas Europeans invented big ships and gunpowder and promptly proceeded to push down and teabag the entire rest of the world, including China.

"Have you considered that not discovering Africa was a pretty high IQ move, all things considered?" you suggest as you rejoin them. "All clear, by the way."

"Good job," Big Brain says. The other guy (Steve?) just grunts and nods.

Then you leave, and wander off to find somewhere were you can change into Quicksilver. When you say you were invited, you mean on net. Kaiser specifically disinvited Low Key from attending the conference itself, because he can form a domineering retinue with only a fraction of his capes, and he doesn't want to pay more overtime than he absolutely has to. No, you got your invites from Luke ("everyone is invited") and Lisa ("it's a good opportunity to network, if there's anyone you haven't infiltrated already").

Villains, as it turns out, like being fashionably late, because when you arrive on the dot only the Undersiders are there ahead of you, seated in a booth by the wall. You pretend you don't know each other. Or at least you and Lisa do, the non-Thinkers in the group have no idea who Quicksilver is.

Though you've barely sat down in a booth of your own when Faultline shows up with Crew in tow. You spot a glint of orichalcum around her neck before you have to stand up again, because Labyrinth is rushing over to give you a hug. Faultline must have felt that the meeting was important enough to burn her daily dose of sanity on. For her sake, you hope it drags on.

Lisa-o-vision

WTF?

Labyrinth was-

No, stop, I can't afford to waste my power on figuring out Taylor's bullshit right now.

Then there's a brief lull during which you have a chance to order something to drink. The waitress, as it turns out, is deaf. Which... doesn't actually move your complicity evaluation one way or the other, when you think about it. Was she hired so the villains could talk freely, or did the villains pick this place because she already worked here?

The Travelers show up next, in sharply tailored costumes of black and red. Well, the hedgehog-quilled gorilla is technically naked, but the quills are black with red tips. Their appearance sets off whispers among the capes already present, but you knew to expect them: Once Ballistic identified himself to you, his teammates were only an internet search away. But you are surprised too, because you had assumed Genesis was the monster you spotted in their garage, or perhaps the Changer you tailed to their house. But no, the gorilla is a Master projection, with a tendril of power leading off somewhere outside the building.

Well, it might still be the monster behind it. And they're keeping the Changer secret, to have a shapeshifting spy no one knows about? Good for them if so, you can't exactly claim to disapprove of that tactic. Another interesting thing you probably shouldn't ask Ballistic about. Speaking of Ballistic, he also pretends you don't know each other, so you follow his lead.

Ballistic-o-vision

She pretends we don't know each other, so I follow her lead.

Then Coil shows up, alone. He's either the bravest person here or the most cowardly, because the guy in the snake-motif bodysuit is not a parahuman. Is he a baseline human doing the supervillain bit and calmly walking into the lion's den, or a regular villain paranoid enough to send a body double?

Next is Uber and Leet, and you'd almost assume they were dressed for a real business meeting given the suits they're wearing. But between Uber's spiky-haired wig and the ridiculous frilly neck-cloth Leet is wearing instead of a tie, they're probably video game characters you've never heard of.

Kaiser makes a grand entrance, with Fenja and Menja as arm candy and Hookwolf and Purity trailing behind. So whatever issue caused her to leave the Empire has been worked out. And you can say what you want about Kaiser's tight-fisted ways, but you have to admit your presence as Low Key would not have made his entourage noticeably more threatening.

The leader of each group takes a seat at a table in the middle of the room. There are some glances sent your way when you remain seated, but you wave them away.

"I will not take an active role in this. Strictly non-combatant. I am merely here to assure everyone that I am not working for the other side."

The discussion is surprisingly civil considering the sheer amount of power and mental issues concentrated around the table - at least until the Merchants show up and try to join in.

"Objection!" Uber shouts, standing up and pointing accusingly at Skidmark when he starts dragging a chair towards the leaders' table. He is quickly backed up by Kaiser, Faultline and Grue. People of all races and creeds agree: Merchants are shit, and should stay in their shit corner.

You roll your eyes as they start insulting each other. This is boring, because no one is using powers to back up their rethoric.

"-subhuman filth-"

"-bunch of menstruating pussies-"

"-selling to kids-"

"-will not deal with-"

They are interrupted by a snapping sound, and all eyes turn towards the Travelers' table, where a couple of flakes of paint are drifting down from the ceiling to land on Ballistic's head. The cape in question is holding a salt shaker. He carefully shakes out a single grain of salt onto a fingertip, then uses his power to fire it into the ceiling. There's another snap as it breaks the sound barrier, and another flake of paint is dislodged.

His little display completely derailed the argument, and with a few last muttered curses and obscene gestures Skidmark accepts his exile to the shit corner. Discussion resumes. But you're no longer paying attention, because Ballistic keeps firing salt into the ceiling, despite Sundancer elbowing him in the ribs and hissing at him to stop. He doesn't say anything or even look in your direction, but you know why he's doing it. You lick your lips and try not to stare too obviously.

Sundancer-o-vision

"Why did you keep doing that? Everyone was staring at us."

"They lost interest soon enough."

"That Quicksilver girl didn't. She kept staring the whole time. What was up with her, anyway?"

"Hm. I wonder."

"What's with the smug... No. No way. She's your girlfriend? And she actually-"

"No commen- Ow! What was that for?"

"For doing it in public."

You get explicit orders not to show up for patrol on Monday, because the joint operation against the ABB is scheduled for Tuesday, and you should save your wolf juice for then. This suits you fine, you'll just spend the whole day with Luke. You need to do something nice for him after what he did at the meeting. And since he's figured out a way to safely demonstrate his power indoors, well...

He is still a Case 53, you're not going to internalize his power until you've carefully inspected every inch of his body for mutations. And the easiest way to accomplish that in the context of your current relationship is to reciprocate.

"What's got you smiling today?" Dad asks.

"Nothing!" you say cheerfully. You should probably get a motel room, since neither of you would want to reveal to the other where you live. Luke has too many roommates anyway, and Quicksilver doesn't even own a house (because she sort of doesn't exist). You just hope he'll understand that a motel room doesn't mean you're looking for, you know, that kind of intimacy.

Good news: Luke is entirely unmutated. Also good news: He was very understanding of Quicksilver's unfashionable insistence that certain things ought to be saved for marriage. More than understanding, he was downright eager to help you brainstorm alternative activities that would not suffer from such restrictions. You'll have to think about some of the things he came up with. Because you'd never considered them before. It's not that you don't see how it would work, but... really? Is that a thing people do?

Perhaps it's an Earth Aleph innovation.

Chapter 60: L.37

Chapter Text

It's one thing to agree to work together on a problem, but another thing altogether to put it into practice. There may possibly be honor among thieves, but good luck getting the thieves to believe that. So when the Empire 88, Coil, the Undersiders, the Travelers, Faultline's Crew and Uber&Leet unite against a common foe, the immediate result is a giant organizational clusterfuck.

After much wrangling (that a grunt like you wasn't party to, but can infer) it was decided to split everyone up then mix them back together into new teams where no single affiliation would have a distinct power advantage. This way no one can shirk, no one gets unfair amounts of loot from a lucky strike, and there's this whole mutual hostage thing to keep people from settling old scores.

The lesser teams are no doubt arranging all sorts of passwords and fallback points and other contingencies anyway. Kaiser, on the other hand, probably didn't even have to say 'if you fuck with us in any way, I take Hookwolf off the leash' out loud. The atmosphere is fairly relaxed as the imperial troops are assigned to their units.

"Low Key, you're with Uber&Leet," Kaiser says.

"No she's not!" Rune objects. You look at her curiously. You thought you were the clingy one in your relationship.

"She is," Kaiser states with finality. "They requested her specifically, and stated that they would withdraw from the alliance if their demand was not met."

"I don't mind," you say, but no one hears you over Rune declaring "She gets double- no, triple pay!"

"Acceptable," Kaiser says, then turns to the next person as if nothing had happened. "Othala will be in the reserves, and not deploy unless another group needs backup or healing. Victor-"

"Thanks for standing up for me I guess," you tell Rune quietly. "Why, though?"

"They make everyone they team up with join in their stupid cosplay, and they record everything they do. You know what kind of outfits girls wear in video games, right?"

You are vaguely aware of the general trend, yes. "Oh." You do your best to sound... apprehensive? Appalled? Something like that, but on the inside you're dancing with joy. Uber&Leet came to you, and offered to make you their fake gamer girl and let you study their powers without you even having to make a new identity? Could you ask for anything better?

...Well, there's the 'Bakuda not killing dozens of innocent civilians' thing, you might have asked for that. Dem silver linings, tho.

"Welcome to our guest lair," Uber says as he heaves the loading bay door open. The space within is mostly empty, with a pile of computer equipment and monitors in one corner, some discarded props (whatever game they're from, you don't recognize it) in another, and a bunch of random junk and tools on shelves along the walls. Some of it is tinkertech, but most of it isn't. "It's not much, but we don't reveal our main base to outsiders. I'm sure you understand."

You hum in agreement as you enter, Fenrir padding along behind you. Uber has been doing most of the talking on the way over, Leet having come down with what you identify as 'oh my god a girl is talking to me what do I do?' syndrome. Not that Uber is entirely symptom free... But his power, which lets him instantly master any skill he wants, clearly includes 'talking to girls' in its library.

Uber wants a loving girlfriend.

Which is not to say that he's been trying to seduce you. No, his power is doing that entirely on its own. He's been nothing but professional, and hasn't even commented on the way you've been staring at him as you appraise every last twitch and fluctuation of his power with laser-like focus. Something about becoming superhumanly good at any skill speaks to you on a visceral level. The thought of acquiring such a power is like being offered a cool draught of water, when you didn't even realize you'd been lost in the desert for years.

Leet's power, on the other hand, is weird. It has the color of a Case 53, but the texture of a normal cape. You have no idea what to make of it. Nor do you really care, to be frank. Gregor might be interested, but that ship kinda sailed.

"Alright," Uber says, walking over to the computer equipment in the corner. "Going live in three, two, one..." At the touch of a button, a quartet of tinkertech drones spring into the air and take up positions around the room. One of them is larger than the others, and has a screen in addition to the camera. It's displaying text that's scrolling by too fast to read, though you manage to pick out repeated instances of 'hi', 'hello', waving hand emojis and other greetings. The stream chat, you cleverly deduce.

"Welcome, dear subscribers, to our premium backstage stream," Uber says, speaking into one of the cameras. "Tonight will be a bit different, as we briefly leave our life of crime behind to take on the brutally barbaric Brockton Bay Bomber, Bakuda!" He turns to face you with a flourish. "But first! Please give a warm welcome to our guest star: Low Key!"

You wave at the camera, and the chat experiences a renewed deluge of greetings, this time generously sprinkled with creative spellings of the word 'girl', and pictures of eggplants. That last part confuses you, until someone helpfully writes 'choke on a (eggplant) nazi bitch'. Ah. It's a compliment. The eggplant symbolizes their physiological reaction upon seeing you. How delightful.

"And Fenrir," you remind them, and chat explodes with 'doggy!'. At least what they lack in subtlety they make up for in being easily amused.

"Your costume," Uber says, retrieving a plastic bag from one of the shelves and handing it to you. A glance inside reveals a headpiece that looks like it's been carved from stone (but judging by the heft of the bag, is more likely to be made of foam) with a bright orange wig built in. "You can change in the other room."

You walk over to the indicated door and take a look inside. The room has a full-length mirror on one wall, but is otherwise almost completely bare. Almost. Thank god for sorcerer's sight, because you're having flashbacks to Casa de Dragon.

"Yeees," you say slowly. "I could do that. But first you're going to go in there and remove all the cameras."

"Haha, what cameras?" Leet exclaims, his tone strained and entirely unconvincing. "We wouldn't do something like that!"

"As an alternative, I could rip your dick off and make you eat it before you bleed to death," you suggest pleasantly. Leet freezes. "None of that was meant figuratively, by the way. Those are exactly the two options on the table right now." When Fenrir starts growling to emphasize your point he jumps away with a yelp, trips over an old costume piece on the floor and lands on his ass.

Uber chuckles as if he was in on the joke. "Sorry lads, I value the integrity of my dick higher than the stimulation of yours," he announces to the room. "Everyone who paid for the premium stream tonight will get a full refund." He then proceeds to take down the hidden cameras in the changing room.

To his credit, he does not try to leave one of them up. Rather less to his credit, he becomes a master of reading body language and checks whether you spotted them all before removing the last one. Can't imagine why he currently lacks a loving girlfriend.

"You know what to do if they try to peek," you tell Fenrir, who nods in response. You shut the door behind you and turn out the bag to see what they've saddled you with.

Well. On the one hand, it covers rather more skin than you had expected. On the other, it's a mottled black and white body stocking. It's highly debatable whether it's more or less revealing than a bikini would be. Well, such is the fate of fake gamer girls. You won't get invited back on if you disappoint the fans. You doff your padded cape outfit and start shapeshifting your curves to compensate. There's a reason you didn't want cameras in here.

When you start putting the stuff on, you discover that it clings far tighter than it has any right to. You've seen thicker body paint. Fucking Tinker materials. When you pull it up past your knee, an arcane-looking pattern lights up, glowing with a turquoise light. You pause there to make sure it's not radioactive or something, because you trust Leet's tinkering about as far as you can throw Gregor.

Thankfully it's just turning waste body heat into visible light, industry and forge wisdom informs you. You take a moment to marvel at the elegant design, you hadn't expected something like that given Leet's reputation. Then another moment to wonder how much the regular clothing industry would pay for such a material, if only the Powers That Be weren't insistent on limiting parahumans to hero and villain roles.

Then you frown as you realize that you cannot possibly wear underwear under this material without making it incredibly obvious. You'd pretend to be outraged or reluctant or something, but with the cameras gone there's no one to see your act. You're fully aware that you'd do considerably worse things to maintain access to Uber's power. Can't disappoint the fans, you repeat to yourself as you peel the offending garment off your leg and strip down completely.

At least it's just barely padded enough right at the critical points to maintain a smooth barbie doll outline, but you suspect that this was done more to remain true to the character (there's a picture included in the bag) than out of any concern for your modesty.

It ends at the neck, but the headgear has a mask built into it, displaying (what you assume to be) your character's trademark one-fanged smirk. It takes some work to bunch up your hair enough to slip it on properly, but you manage.

You take a look at yourself in the mirror. Wow, someone who couldn't shapeshift would be all kinds of insecure wearing this. You take a few extra minutes to make absolutely sure you look your best. Yes, a few. Definitely fewer than fifteen.

You return to the main room to discover Uber and Leet spray painting your wolf. You guess the character Fenrir will be playing has darker fur.

"Pretty brave, doing that without permission," you note.

Leet drops his his spray can when he sees you, and scrambles to pick it up.

"We did ask, actually," Uber says calmly. "He agreed."

You look at Fenrir, who tilts his head at you and shrugs. If you've decided that these people get to dress the two of you up, he seems to be saying, who is he to argue?

A glance at the chat shows a resurgent wave of eggplants, so you do a little twirl for the cameras, making sure your unsupported body parts sway appropriately. Leet drops his spray can again, but he might be playing it up for laughs.

"Do you have a video of my character?" you ask. "I want to get the mannerisms right."

"I'll find some!" Leet exclaims, rushing over to the computers. "Help me out, chat!"

"Not all guest stars are as enthusiastic to play along," Uber says.

You shrug in response, strategically jiggling for the cameras. "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well." If you don't get invited back, how would you steal their powers? Or, well, you're not quite sure about that plural - what if Leet's power infected your native Tinker ability with his famous shittiness? You're getting Uber's power for sure, tough.

Wait, hang on, you know the secret of men now, you could just try to date Uber instead (not that it'd get you his soul price, but as long as he doesn't notice that right away...). Old habits die hard, huh? But fucking up his show isn't how you accomplish that either.

"Actually, could you finish up here while we get changed?" Uber hands you his spray can, along with a reference picture and a stencil for a... wolf cutie mark? No, according to the picture it goes on his forehead.

"Sure."

Leet gets a video playing on the flying screen, and they both retreat to the changing room. You study your role. If you were to describe her in two words, they would be 'haughty' and 'naughty'. Trying to mimic her speech completely isn't going to work, because she speaks a made-up nonsense language with subtitles. But at least you can get the pitch and intonation right.

By the time they get back, you're lounging atop a fully painted Fenrir, inspecting your fingernails and trying to look impishly bored.

"Took you long enough," you say in the imp's singsong voice, and they stop to stare.

"You're a god damn genius, bro," Uber tells his partner.

Leet nods fervently. "This worked out even better than I had hoped."

Uber is dressed in a green tunic and hat that even you recognize, with a painted wooden mask of the famous elf boy's face covering his face from ear to ear - literally, as it's got pointy wooden ears covering his real ones.

Leet... is wearing a pale pink body stocking and a tinkertech harness of the same color, with human-sized fairy wings on the back. So they do know that their audience is laughing at them, not with them, and are milking it on purpose. You had wondered about that.

Leet fiddles with his harness, whereafter he floats into the air and starts glowing. Or not glowing exactly, it's more like a spherical area around him has turned pink. It's almost entirely opaque, even blocking sorcerer's sight somehow. All you can see is the fairy wings sticking out the back. But that's fine, you were perving on Uber anyway.

You scoot around into a more conventional riding pose and gesture towards the exit. "After you, gentlemen. And perhaps one of you could explain the plan?"

Chapter 61: L.38

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Their plan for defeating Bakuda is to wander around the city randomly, in full view of everyone.

"Leet built an exotic particle detector," Uber explains. "With the bombs we've seen, her lab is definitely going emit a bunch of those."

"No one trusted you with a real target, huh?" You concentrate on getting the tone and cadence right, punctuating the question with a dismissive flick of your fingers. Normally you'd be more polite to capes you're trying to infiltrate, but you've got a role to play here.

"Only an idiot would hide out in a known safehouse at a time like this," Uber says - which you note is not a 'no'.

"I'm sure you know best."

One peculiar upshot of this plan is the audience participation. Their normal modus operandi is more of a quick smash and grab, since they have to worry about heroes coming to arrest them. But tonight the heroes have every incentive to leave them alone, which means they have time to sign autographs and pose for pictures.

This is how you learn that Leet is actually cool and suave - when compared to his fans!

The more bearable minority just freeze up and stop functioning completely in the presence of celebrities, girls and/or cameras. Most of them very much don't. They think they have something to contribute to the show, some witticism or bon mot, or in one particularly awful case, a little dance. You never thought you'd look back fondly at the eggplant-based communication they used online, but here you are. These are the people you need to please if you want to get invited back.

It vindicates the hell out of your decision to go fully in character, though, because it means your attitude is supposed to be one of open disdain and mild bullying. When the next loser starts to speak, you yawn. Long and loud, stretching luxuriously and thrusting your chest out for the cameras. He completely loses track of what he was doing. "That was very interesting," you singsong once you're done. "You can go now."

"Oh look, another one."

"I'm curious. How do you ever commit a robbery without getting mobbed by spastics?"

Oh, did you say you missed the eggplant-based communication? Because one fan just attempted it IRL. Uber, showing great presence of mind, quickly draws his sword and interposes himself between you before Fenrir can bite anything off.

"Such a naughty boy," you comment lightly, your true expression safely hidden behind your mask. "Can you believe he once compared that little worm to an eggplant? Tut, tut, lying on the internet."

By some unspoken agreement your hosts turn towards the rougher parts of the city after that, where muggers presumably lurk and fanboys fear to thread. It works, and you get some uninterrupted quality time with Uber's power. It's so good! And he clearly agrees with your evaluation of how amazing it is, because he's never not using it to be good at something (currently: reconnaissance, to spot any suicidal muggers early). And it's only one kW difficult! Depending on how the evening goes, you may only need to come back one more time to get it.

It's such a breath of fresh air after dealing with the likes of Rune and Ballistic and their super-complicated powers. Heh, Ballistic. If he knew about the tingles his girlfriend was feeling right now, Uber would be a smear on the wall. Oh god, did you just drool a little? You did, you totally just drooled into your mask and you can't wipe it off without exposing your face to the cameras and now you have to wait for it dry on its own.

To distract yourself at least a little, you initiate conversation.

"I'm surprised you're not dressed up as the orc." you remark to Leet.

"There was a poll," Uber explains.

"The what?" Leet aks.

"You know, the pig-man bad guy. Those are called orcs, right?"

"You mean bokoblins? Or moblins? Because-"

"She means Ganon," Uber interrupts.

"Is he the one who kidnaps the princess and steals the magic triangles?" you ask.

"Ganon isn't an orc!" Leet shouts. "He's a gerudo."

"A what?"

"In some timelines he pretty much is a pig-man," Uber says placatingly.

"Don't get me started on the timelines!" Leet exclaims, and then promptly gets started on a long and involved explanation of 'the timelines', his earlier shyness completely forgotten. You don't really follow it all that well, partly because you're concentrating on studying Uber's power but mostly because it sounds like a whole lot of nonsense.

You were kinda hoping to get Leet's soul price, but you can only do that at the end of a conversation. And he won't stop talking.

("Oni Lee is dead," Uber interrupts at one point, having gotten a situation update from the other cape teams. Your own outfit doesn't even have clothes, much less pockets, so you left your phones at their lair)

"Wait, let me get this straight," you say half an hour later. "The world flooded, and this was so terrible for the fish-people that they had to evolve into bird-people to survive?"

"I know, right? That's why, in my personal timeline-" Leet then goes on to confuse you even further by launching into a completely different interpretation of events, which contradicts most of what you already heard. Which, if you understood things correctly, was the way the people who actually made the games meant things to be.

Except that maybe they never intended to tie everything together in the first place, and only made up the connections much later? Which is why everything is such a mess? And people care passionately about this? There's clearly something about this 'geek' thing that you don't understand.

You're saved from further confusion when Uber's hat sprouts a duck face and starts quacking wildly. Except the opposite of that, because what? Duck face hat? But it interrupted Leet's rant.

"Hey, listen!" Leet says. "Those are the exotic particles we've been looking for." At a second glance, the duck is jabbing its beak in a particular direction.

Hang on, the particle detector was the hat all along? Leet's tinkertech famously explodes roughly 25% of the time, and Uber was wearing it on his head? You can't believe you were so focused on his power you didn't even notice until now.

Leet wants his Tinker power to work properly.

Finally! Unfortunately Quicksilver has a somewhat spotty record of actually helping people out with these things - you'd call it a 50% success rate, with all the complications that implies for someone who has done it 3 times. And you'd have to risk studying it first.

"This is it," Leet says as you arrive behind a nondescript warehouse, far from ABB territory. "There's something odd about this wall." He hovers in front of a patch of brick wall indistinguishable from any other, even with sorcerer's sight. It might be a line from the game?

In response, Uber takes out a giant skull-decorated hammer from... somewhere. The head alone is almost as big as he is, but he swings it like it's entirely weightless (it probably is). You expect a huge crash and bricks flying everywhere as it hits the wall, but instead a Fenrir-sized area around where it hits simply puffs into smoke. You were right about the crash, though - it's still very loud, and through the smoke you spot the glowing silhouette of a parahuman jumping in fright.

The smoke clears up in a second or so, and you see that it is indeed Bakuda in there. The room is exactly the rat's nest of random electronics you'd expect of a Tinker's workshop. Several pieces glow to your vision, indicating that they're already assembled and ready to explode. The brightest one is... the one on the floor that Bakuda is staring at in horror, that she dropped when she was startled by the crash. It's getting brighter.

"Fucking run!" you and Bakuda shout in unison.

Uber reacts instantly and is already booking it by the time Fenrir gets turned around, but a few seconds is enough for you to catch up and overtake him despite his power making him a world-class sprinter. Whatever tech powers Leet's wings isn't any faster, and you leave both of them in the dust.

You hunch down low over Fenrir's back to minimize air resistance and keep up a steady monolog of swearing under our breath, pausing only to warn any pedestrians you pass by: "Bakuda bomb!" You don't have to say anything more to get people running in the same direction.

You only got the barest glimpse of the device, you have no idea what it does. Bakuda seemed to think that running was an option, which is a good sign at least. It's been what, ten seconds and it hasn't gone off yet? It was clearly building up power, you can only hope it doesn't do so faster than Fenrir is running away. You don't know exactly how fast that is - wolves don't come with speedometers - but if he was a car you're pretty sure you'd be breaking traffic laws right now.

Fifteen seconds. The longer it takes the better, right? Fenrir is running at a constant speed, but the power required for whatever the hell is going to happen should increase with the cube of the radius, right? Maybe not, though, it's not like you're dealing with conventional physics here.

Twenty se-

A sound like someone tapping a wineglass, but magnified thousandfold, makes you turn around in your lack of saddle - and then promptly recoil, pain stabbing straight through your brain and into your soul as sorcerer's sight lights up the brightest you've ever experienced. It's like staring into the sun, if the sun was twenty yards away.

You frantically turn it off, and reflexively try to blink away spots that aren't there - sorcerer's sight having nothing to do with your actual retinas. Ow your soul though. You're not going to use any more powers tonight, because it feels like they might fall off.

Without sorcerer's sight the evening gloom is undisturbed. No fires, no explosions, no strange glowing phenomena. Whatever it was, it took out every street light in its radius before stopping the aforementioned twenty yards behind you. Considerably further behind you now, because Fenrir sensibly didn't stop running.

"Stop, turn back." Unfortunately you can't be so sensible, because you need to figure out what happened. As best you can without turning sorcerer's sight back on, because ow. "Don't go any closer than the last functioning streetlight," you add. That should be safe, right?

As you get closer, the light of the last streetlight is enough to reveal... is that one of the people who were running away? It is. He's frozen in mid stride, and.. glimmering? Glimmering and purple and faintly translucent. If you were to take a wild guess, you'd say he was transmuted into solid amethyst. There are other indistinct shapes behind him, that may also possess certain gem-like qualities.

Your brain skips a few tracks as you try to calculate Fenrir's running speed, times twenty-ish seconds, squared and times pi. Times population density. Did, did Bakuda just hit a four digit body count on her way out? Above you, a pigeon flies past the last streetlight and falls to the ground as it turns into amethyst. Oh god it didn't just amethyst-splode people, it created a stable amethyst-ization field. Four digits and counting, because people are going to keep blundering into the area until the news get out.

"Let's go," you say numbly, turning Fenrir around. Not a moment too soon either, you can feel your condition getting worse just from being this close to the effect, even without sorcerer's sight active. Well, either that or you got a lethal dose from the initial blast and it's getting worse because you're about to keel over from soul hemorrhage, but you hope that doesn't happen. You need to get back to the lair and recover your phones so you can report this.

Notes:

Mechanics corner

Haha, did you really think I'd let Taylor have the First Adorjan Excellency so easily, when a big consideration of how I set up the crossover was to starve her of dice-adders? Also she cannot be allowed happiness, those are simply the rules laid down by Wildbow that I am powerless to change.

Oh, the bomb? Exalted fans will have recognized it as a canonical area-denial WMD from Creation. In addition to turning living things into amethyst, it also completely shreds all Essence in its area of effect. Translated into equivalent Earth weapon-functionality, it stops anything needing electricity from working, which is why the streetlights are out.

It still shreds Essence too, which is why Taylor's Essence-esque parabiology hurts from the near miss. She'll be fine, though.

Stream-chat-o-vision

daemonette_lickr: they'll be fine right?

ryu6969: course they'll be fine. Cockroaches don't die

goatyballz: omg omg omg omg omg omg