a new beg

by thejarl7166

beg new a

8. Redoubt

Redoubt

Summary:

There's a new parahuman in Brockton Bay, a tinker with a penchant for energy shielding. Determined to escape the life she's been leading in the reeking heart of ABB territory, she sets out to reinvent her circumstances. Problem is, she's joining the Wards to do it, and she's not especially "heroic" by anybody's standards.

JUST A HEADS-UP: I've only cross-posted the first five chapters of "Redoubt" over from SpaceBattles. I had every intention of bringing my entire story over, but it'll have to wait or (more likely) not be done at all because formatting becomes a nightmare from this point onward. Besides having to insert italics manually (which I haven't gotten to yet in these first five chapters), I'd have to figure out how to add interludes without disturbing the chapter order and figure out how to add multiple types of tables. It's my fault for not realizing how limited Ao3 is in regards to word processing. If you want to continue reading "Redoubt" mosey on over to SpaceBattles.

The nitty-Gritty: dark gray OC protagonist / sticks to canon unless the OC intervenes / manipulation and conniving galore (but that doesn't mean things get grimmer overall) / the Wards are generally the main characters

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: The Best Offense 1.1

Chapter Text

I wish I could rig the "closed" sign out front to shine red and bright enough to keep everybody out. But the ABB doesn't get told what to do, especially in their own territory.

It's three in the morning. Aunt Naoko's at the tap smiling for one of the boys while she dispenses a round of complementary beers. She didn't have time to switch out of her nightgown, but she wears it as naturally as she would a uniform. Her partner Igawa, on the other hand, continues to dry a glass that was bone dry a full minute ago. He's not as adaptable as my aunt is to being talked down to by teenagers. Even after so many visits. He chats haltingly with the gang members at his counter when prompted, but not much more than that.

It might have something to do with his own flesh and blood son being among their number.

The younger Igawa, Nobu, invites friends to his dad's bar at least twice a week, no matter the hour. Maybe as an excuse to feel powerful, some sort of intergenerational pissing contest. Maybe as an excuse to gawk.

All I can say is he would've probably told his father to shut up by now if he wasn't already staring hungrily at me.

I bear his examination stiffly, framed by tubes of unlit neon. I hide as far back into my oversized hoodie as I can, shoulders pressed against the farthest wall from the bar's after-hours glow.

My... admirer keeps his friends moderately well behaved. Within the standards of a vicious gang that is. No raiding, no pillaging. Not tonight. And he tells me as often as he can that I'm lucky to have him.

A lot of guys wouldn't be able to help themselves, you see. They spot a pretty girl like me out in the wild and bam, there you have it. He tells me these sorts of things like he's letting me in on a big secret.

And then he changes tactics. He has me sit down next to him, runs his fingers through my long, black hair, and he recounts all the horrors his friends have gotten up to in just the time he's been away. Always a muscle twitch from grabbing hold and yanking my head wherever he'd like.

If I wasn't his girlfriend who knows what would happen. He tells me this too.

He makes jokes that aren't jokes related to animals in heat. I don't laugh at them, and I don't think he expects me to. Because that's not the point of being a funny guy. Funny guys get to say what they want, and it's your fault if you don't have a sense of humor.

You know what makes me laugh though? You know what brings me to tears? He calls me a tease, but I can hear the inflection of the word getting angrier and angrier every time he has to use it.

Nobu keeps me safe. He never fails to remind me. And he'll continue to keep me safe as long as I...

As long as I what?

I don't ask. That would be an invitation for answers.

Keeping up my defenses for so long has been draining. I have to be here. If I wasn't down here in the bar he'd come upstairs to find me in my room. And I refuse to give him that excuse. I'm not going to make his leap into depravity any easier for him. He hasn't psyched himself up yet, and I've spent a lion's share of my dwindling energy arranging for that to be the case.

Near the beginning of this contemptible little dance I've been forced to move through, Nobu wouldn't accept no from me as an answer. It wasn't a concept he could understand. Despite its simplicity or in spite of its simplicity. So I had to explore different methods of deflecting advances. The one I landed on, the one that finally stuck, was to convince him he should try courting me for a month or two. I'd, perhaps, be more receptive that way.

It's been three months now.

I can see a worrying tenseness in his posture, a glassy wrongness in his hungry stare.

We've both grown impatient it seems.

I need to get out. Now, if I'm ever getting out at all.

I gave myself what one could charitably call a pixie cut yesterday in preparation, but what I was really aiming for was bog-standard Asian boy. A head of hair you'd be hard-pressed to pick out of a crowd. Maybe if I'm lucky it'll scream "lesbian", but I'm not sure anything could scream "lesbian" loud enough for it to matter to any of the ABB.

If nothing else, my new hairstyle should help with wearing a helmet. There's a perk.

I can tell Nobu hasn't noticed the change to my appearance thus far because he hasn't jolted from his stool in an animalistic fury. What can I say? He has a tell. He entered the bar already a little tipsy, and I've been letting the shadows and my hood lend me their help.

One of the boys calls for shots all around. He cackles, half embalmed in whatever liquor the four of them were sharing before they barged in. He points to a green bottle on the highest shelf then noncommittally ogles Aunt Naoko's backside as she stretches up to reach it.

I'm not related to my aunt so I was neither cursed nor gifted with her curves. She's nearing fifty. I'm sixteen. She has far less to fear from hormonal opportunists now than she used to. Whereas I've been shoved into the metaphorical tiger pit.

My aunt gives her ogler a wry grin which emphasizes the wrinkles in her cheeks and the corners of her eyes. Then she aligns shot glasses on the counter.

The boys cheer when she reveals she's brought out a shot glass for herself as well.

More importantly, Nobu's attention shifts. The boisterous activity of his friends manages to shake him from his vigil.

I take my leave.

I slip through the doorframe to my left as silently as I can. Into the back hallway. The corridor is cramped, stuffed with cleaning supplies and stacked crates. I slide between the urban cairns with practiced ease and run up the warped steps around the corner from the public bathrooms.

I summit one flight, slide on the rug sitting on its landing, and nearly bump my head on the wall. I shoot up the second flight with less difficulty. Then the third. In one quick movement, I retrieve a key from out of my hoodie and unlock the deadbolt on my door. I step inside.

Glory Girl flashes me an award-winning smile from across the room. She's constrained to a framed poster over my shabby desk, shoulder to shoulder with a tacked up menu for a Mexican joint and a flyer for a local synthwave band I liked.

A lot of what's in here is scavenged: the desk, the nightstand, the poster frame. Even the deadbolt on my door. And I swiped my roommate from out of a bin at a meet and greet event held by Glory Girl herself.

The current state of my life depresses me when I think too deeply. Every bit of what I own is only a little piece of peoples' grander lives, and worse yet, none of them cared enough to keep any of it. I quite literally made their trash into my treasure.

Speaking of trash, a low rumbling begins to thrum beneath my feet like I've stepped on top of the wet, woolen ridge of a waking storm cloud. One of the boys must have roped the older Igawa into turning the bar's sound system on. What a nightmare. Especially with their taste in music.

I get to packing with what little light I have. Streetlamps and colorful signs spill in through the cracked window over my radiator. In contrast, the window next to my desk looks out onto an alley lit by a single flickering bulb in a cage. Together, it's more than enough.

Into my backpack goes an extra set of clothes, my toiletries, my narwhal plushy (the animal, not the cape), my photos of mom, my drawing binder, two cans of spray paint I kept in case I ever made a costume with armor (red and green were all I could get), a tin of assorted nuts, a sandwich bag of ibuprofen, a water bottle, a drug store first aid kit, and my prized possession: a laptop I usually leave bungee corded to the underbelly of my bedspring. Stored on it are hours and hours of my animation work, all novice stuff.

The last things left to collect are the newest additions to my trove. My tinkertech.

It's still hard to believe. I'm a two week old tinker, a baby in so many ways. But I've joined the hallowed ranks of an esteemed club whose halls have held and still holds some of parahumanity's finest.

There's Hero, of course. Armsmaster. Professor Haywire. Dragon. String Theory. Sphere. Bonesaw. And who could forget our beloved hometown prankster Squealer?

All of them are accomplished parahumans. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. Aside from Squealer, needless to say. And, given time, I might be known by enough people to be named among them.

But what I'm really after isn't fame. What I desire above all else is peace of mind, the security of celebrity. Become an inviolable force like the Triumvirate, for instance, and I bet you get to cherry-pick your own battles. If you're anything like Eidolon you don't have to look over your shoulder constantly because you can be confident in your power. And me being a tinker, my power isn't capped at what I originally received. I could make myself into a contender. I could build a better parahuman.

But, for now, I take stock of what I have.

The first of three devices I possess is a barrier node. It's on my person already. One might say I've been overly attached to it since its creation. One might also say it's buried in my spine.

I have absolutely no idea how I achieved that. I came out of something like a fugue in our grimy upstairs bathroom with a compact mirror clutched in one bloody hand, a homemade multi-tool in the other, and miscellaneous, equally bloody instruments jumbled in the sink before me.

I have to hope whatever took me over sterilized those. I'll take solace in the fact I haven't suffered any ill effects since.

I lost seven hours to what I've playfully chosen to call inhuman technological gumption, and to call it anything else would probably leave me in a blubbering bundle on the floor in constant fear of being pushed out of my own body again.

My other two devices are duplicates of one another, triplets to a shield canister design I whipped up last weekend, no gumption required. I have those hidden in one of the hollow legs of my bedframe.

I look to where they're tucked away and suffer a pang of wistfulness. I'm going to miss my comforter. It's one of only a few things that I've bought with my own money. But it's too big to lug through the streets, and I don't feel like struggling under its soft and cozy mass.

To put an optimistic slant on things, no one would ever accuse me of being grotesquely muscular. More realistically, it takes me a pathetic amount of time to lift my bed, prop up the metal bedframe, and unscrew the cap holding my shield cannisters in their hidey-hole.

I leave the mess I made where it lies. It looks like I've been burgled, sort of. Maybe that'll throw anyone who comes to investigate my disappearance off my scent.

Pocketing my tinkertech and shouldering my backpack, I sigh.

My room wasn't much. But for a few years at least, I was able to pretend it was a haven. Nothing terribly bad ever happened to me within its confines. I could tune out gunshots with my earbuds. I could ignore the fact that a lot of girls just like me were being passed around, likely in nearby buildings, by engrossing myself in my hobbies. I could dance when people down the street were dying of overdose. I was removed, separated by a thin line. I didn't actually draw unicorns and rainbows to escape the world, but I might as well have. I was selfish, and, moreover, I was lucky.

A shadow darkens my doorway.

"Where the fuck are you going?" the shadow asks.

I look over my shoulder and discover Nobu, swaying ever so slightly.

"Ah, Nobu," I say, not exactly surprised. "Punctual as always. Would you believe me if I said I've booked a flight to Canberra?"

"Don't make fun of me."

I wouldn't call what I just said making fun of anyone really.

It's always the "tough" ones who have the thinnest skin. Nobu is a boy trying to operate and fulfill the urges of a young man's body. His tone may be intimidating - gruff and aggressive - but what he says with it is childish. It never occurred to him to outgrow his boyhood ego.

And still, after noticing all that, I would have been terrified of him only two short weeks ago.

Now though? How does that old chestnut go?

Don't attack a tinker in their lair?

"You've been giving me a lot of attitude lately. A lot of shit. You oughta take me more seriously. Yeah? I'm someone in the gang now. I've got seven guys under me, and I get to tell them what to do. The boss is giving me big jobs. You get that? People know who I am."

I can't imagine maintaining his level of perceived self-importance for more than a few seconds. Three days have passed since the Simurgh quarantined an entire city, and Nobu's bragging about a few guys maybe doing what he asks. His tunnel vision is astounding.

He approaches. Menacingly. I take a few steps in order to distance us and put my hand out behind me. My palm lands on the menu tacked to my wall.

"I've been treating you real nice, and you've been acting- well, you've been putting a wall up between us for real long. What the fuck is that about? I'm done with this retarded bullshit. I'm done with letting you mess with me."

He uses my small stature against me. Looms over my head. Grips the arm I've left rigid at my side. It hurts. Neolithic handprints left on rockfaces come to mind as I envision what shape my bruises will take.

Then suddenly Nobu's hold on me tightens. He flashes me a furious, wide-eyed look.

"What the fuck is this?"

My hood must have slid back when he jostled me.

This won't be a conversation anymore. Matters are about to devolve.

So I get to it.

I make my first act of violence count. With all the grace of a trained fencer, I yank Glory Girl's frame from my wall and jab Nobu in the eye with its corner.

He yowls. Lets go of me. He clutches at his eye, reeling.

I'll concede that I'm bending the intent of the phrase here. The "don't attack a tinker in their lair" thing wasn't necessarily meant to be used in reference to clobbering interlopers with wall decorations.

I grin toothily all the same.

With one hand pressed to his injured eye, Nobu has fully exposed his neck to me. I don't resist the temptation.

I jab with the corner once more, striking the boy in his Adam's apple.

He sputters. Coughs. His expression relays startled confusion as if a darling family pet just turned and bit him in his testicles.

Now there's an interesting thought.

Pressing my advantage, I try to swing my foot up between his legs. My kick, sadly, doesn't reach its destination. With a clumsy motion from his left arm and a skittish tilt of his hips, Nobu avoids my attack and throws me off balance.

The resulting unsteadiness this causes in me is nothing. I could plant my feet on the floorboards and recover, but, instead, I do the opposite. I lean into his parry. I trip. I push away from Nobu and fall with purpose.

Almost invisibly, almost silently, my energy barrier pops into existence, surrounding me in a nigh imperceptible fizz.

All activation takes is a thought. The node embedded in my upper vertebrae does the rest.

I see and hear the grilles and panes shattering around me rather than suffer their lacerations. The glass fragments pirouette. I careen through the darker of my two windows, wood splintering. In my peripheral tiny flecks of purple sparkle as I breach the worst of the shrapnel.

Laughter begins to bubble up inside me, but the plummet steals it from my throat. My form-fitting barrier was designed to soak up abuse, not vertigo. The cold nighttime sky retreats from me. My stomach lurches.

Third flight. Second flight. First.

My barrier turns visible, briefly flaring as it hits the pavement. Purplish tessellations shimmer around the areas where I make contact with the ground then disappear. If I had to compare the sensation of impact with anything it wouldn't be entirely inaccurate to say it feels like dropping into a well-worn mattress from one foot up.

I'm no worse for wear. As far as I understand it, I'm invulnerable when I'm candy coated in my grape flavored energy.

Nonetheless, I don't move. Nobu will be poking his head out soon.

I switch my barrier off to conserve battery though. Leaving it on when I'm not sustaining damage doesn't consume much energy at all, but I don't know how much juice I'll need in my coming days.

I conducted stress tests, mostly at night, when I was relatively sure no one would be watching. In these tests I worked up to throwing myself off our roof several times in quick succession. It was an enlightening experience. Outwardly all the tests resulted in was an absurd cardio routine of running one way up stairs and a negligible draw from my second battery, but the findings they provided on my barrier's capabilities were invaluable.

If one was to wonder why I was using a second battery, I'd have to answer thusly: my first battery exploded in a separate stress test which mainly comprised of me hurling the unshielded power source at the side of a beached ship until it couldn't be hurled anymore. The results were conclusive. I had to really huck the sucker.

I feast my squinting eyes on the boy I was waiting for. Nobu darts his head and shoulders out of my broken window. He puts the heels of his hands to his temples, mouths what I can only guess is some sort of profanity, then darts back in.

When I'm pretty sure he's not going to peek outside again, I sit up to inspect myself. Shortly after, I hop to my feet. I have less than a minute to either figure out how to explain myself, prepare for a fight, or make this into a mysterious vanishing.

During my fall, I tried to twist mid-air so I wouldn't land on my backpack. I wasn't sure how far out from my body my barrier would "form-fit", a lapse in testing to be sure, but it turns out everything is still intact. I guess those aerial contortions were all for naught.

Worst case scenario would have been my laptop breaking and - I don't know - my photos of mom getting covered in spray paint somehow.

I hate to say it, but even that eventuality would have been acceptable. My first priority in the here and now is to make it absolutely clear Aunt Naoko doesn't have anything to do with my "disobedience" and, therefore, shouldn't be punished for it. I know how convoluted these boys can get with their assignment of blame. I'm trying to cut down on that.

The woman inside the bar serving gang members right now has fed and accommodated me for three years. She may not have loved me like one of her own, but she was never cruel.

I'll have to write her a letter. Maybe in a week or two so she'll be able to respond with genuine uncertainty if people come asking.

But that's off topic. I have a decision to make in the short term.

What should I do next?

My train of thought has gotten wildly periphrastic since I triggered. More rails were added to the track overnight, and I barely even noticed until I started spotting unfamiliar scenery along the way. Figuratively speaking.

And there's another facet of my tinkerhood I have to dodge. If my mind was altered all at once by whatever took me over, doesn't that mean I'm a different person now? Will I even be able to tell? Could I tell? What qualifies as dying and then being replaced by a knock-off? And if I'm the knock-off in this scenario and I don't want to revert to who I was, does that mean I'm complicit in the murder of my progenitor?

It's screwy. To say the least. Best I don't trouble my little doppelganger brain with existential terror at the present moment. In the interest of centering myself, I should really be focusing more on what I can do and what I'm experiencing.

But what I'm experiencing is obnoxious music. It's louder now that I'm closer to its source. The thumping crassness burdening the sound system's subwoofers vibrates into my nerves. Sets my teeth on edge.

I turn my barrier back on to stop myself from rattling, and, confusingly, it works.

I'll have to run a test on that later. If canceling out the physical effects of music is possible, how is it I can still hear? My eardrums need to react to something don't they?

"You okay?" I ask no one.

I brush shattered glass off Glory Girl's face and pick her up off the pavement. I don't think there's a way I can safely transport her broken frame. Not without a carpenter's skill and a lot of wood glue. So I abandon it. Another casualty to my ambitions.

Without further ado, I power walk toward the mouth of the alley.

Late February has an unmistakable chill to it, but none of that unmistakability touches me. I'm insulated. The month may have shivved me with an icy blade while I had my barrier off, but now I'm delightfully "room temperature". It's another one of my power's mysteries that doesn't make complete scientific sense.

I'd say it was illogical, but there must be some variety of logic causing my barrier to both not let my body heat build up and not let the cold in. I'll have to set aside some time to examine the parameters when I can. I predict many tests in my future (said the licentious fortune teller to her cut-price strumpet).

My footfalls glow faintly in the alleyway's dim flickering light because my barrier node interprets steps as low level damage. It's a small bug.

I've done what I could with the resources I had at my disposal. There were a few odds and ends I had to sacrifice and prototypes for coming projects I had to scrap, but my barrier node has been brilliant from the word go. All I had to do was develop a compatible battery to slot into my spine, and then I was all set. It didn't even take very long. Simply put, I feel as if I've cheated somehow. It can't be this easy for other tinkers. I was reliably injury-proof from the second night I was a parahuman onward.

It doesn't feel like I've worked hard enough or toiled long enough to achieve the results I have. And I know I'm strangely privileged because normal tinkers are usually worried about the ne'er-do-wells of their city snatching them up. But I'm not. Unless I bump into one of Brockton Bay's notable heavy hitters I'm safe and about to get safer.

I halt on the cusp of where the alley meets the street.

Turn.

It is unfair. One second. Nobody's ever entirely safe. Two seconds. I look to our building's back door. Three seconds. My original plan was to run while I could. Four seconds. I didn't want to give in if I didn't have to. Five seconds. But here I stand all of a sudden. Six seconds. Waiting.

Nobu deserves a goodnight kiss.

I count to thirteen before he emerges.

I could've gotten away. A kinder person than me would have.

Nobu rushes to the place I fell, searches, then pauses when he sees me standing unharmed, backlit by the colorful signage pouring in from the street.

Did he call out for his friends to follow him? Did he cause a commotion? What are the odds he alerted the others?

Not high. He got here too quickly. The others wouldn't have heard over the music. Probably.

I can deal with probably.

I prime a shield canister and toss it at Nobu's feet.

He looks down at the cylinder quizzically. He has a single moment to react, but he doesn't take it. He's not instinctually programmed to see me as a threat. A pity.

A cow goes "moo", a cat goes "meow", and the spontaneous shield bubble that blooms at Nobu's feet goes "pwum".

In the blink of an eye Nobu is displaced from where he was standing. A five foot diameter orb, seemingly anchored to the planet's orbit and whatever else it has to in order to stay in place, launches my erstwhile boyfriend off his feet at a speed that's hard to follow with the naked eye. Like a couple frames are missing out of reality or physics broke for a fraction of a sneeze.

Nobu's head cracks against the alleyway's wall. Hard. Brick and skull cooperating to flatten a can of peas between them hard.

The boy flops. Crumples to the ground. He leaves a blotch of red stranded on the brickwork, and blood starts to trickle out of his ear.

I retrace my steps.

The shield bubble compressed what it couldn't push aside. Approximately five feet of geodesic ball is centered around the canister I threw. The canister is suspended. Levitating. Nothing else is allowed to occupy the same space as its effect. So the pavement it was resting on has gone concave. The shield bubble dented the asphalt, and now it sits within the bowl shaped pothole it created like a purple marble on a Chinese checkers board.

After five seconds the orb retracts. My shield canister drops into the pothole with a clack.

I go to pick it up. It's rechargeable.

Then I check Nobu's pulse.

Nothing.

Goodnight, Nobu.

How do I feel about this?

Relieved?

Mostly, I'm relieved.

There's no disgust. No abhorrence. And on the other side of that coin, there's no elation either. I can't seem to muster the focus I'd need to make my mind linger. This was a person's life. It's just that... he caused me a lot of problems, and now he's gone.

I feel relief.

I don't know what I was planning on doing if my bubble didn't kill him outright.

My barrier node doesn't lend me superhuman strength, but it does protect me from any harm my strength could potentially do to me. What does that mean though? Was I going to pummel Nobu into a visceral mush?

I should feel more about this. I should feel bad.

I stare at his cooling body cycling through options. I try to summon guilt or remorse, but my conscience won't respond.

I have moderate success with shame. It's not nothing.

I ruminate on my apparent emotional failings as I take off my backpack. My node subtracts the bag from my barrier when it's not pressed against me anymore.

People will be able to tie this pothole to the ones I'll wind up making in the future. I can't destroy it. I don't have the means. So I'll need to do something else.

I reach inside my backpack, shift a few things around, and then grab what I'm searching for.

I pull out a spray paint can, and I eye up the canvas I've been supplied.

I make my first act of artistry a big, red swastika. Part of it stretches onto Nobu's flannel.

My follow-up is a complementary piece. "GOT YOUR JAP WHORE," it reads.

We're all our own worst critics.

The ugliness I've wrought near my ex isn't the world's finest misdirection, but it'll have to do. Dawdling in the vicinity of an ABB member's corpse any longer would be a mistake.

I head off. For good this time. Backpack straps settled on my shoulders, I round the corner of the alleyway and don't look back.

I can't stay in this neighborhood. A few too many people will recognize me here. I have no qualms about shoving a bee in the Azn Bad Boys' bonnet, but I have no desire to stay and watch them flail. The opposition killed a lackey in the middle of ABB territory. Allegedly. That won't go unanswered. And, fortunate for me, I have a plausible reason for my absence spelled out at the crime scene.

As a tinker, I'll need more resources than a homeless teen will be able to get her grubby little hands on, and I'll have to acquire a secure lab where I can build my more enterprising contraptions.

The druggies at Archer's Bridge might have money, but they won't have infrastructure. Plus, they sold me those dud mushrooms that one time. So, no.

I'm not white and don't feel like constantly hiding that fact behind a helmet. Neither do I believe I could manage that anyway. So, no to my art's inspiration too.

Coil then? Lodging and food would be preferable soon. So would a bit of certainty on who I'd be getting into bed with. Over and above that, I have no way of tracking the guy down. So, no.

That leaves only one suitable gang left in town.

And I guess that makes me a hero.

Chapter 2: Joking a Side 2.1

Chapter Text

It felt almost criminal cutting out her eyes. Over the course of a few months she's welcomed me into my room with an unfaltering smile, and I repaid that kindness with mutilation. I lopped her head from her shoulders. Stuck her face onto some pizza-scented cardboard and wore her cheery mien over my own.

It was slipshod work too. I only had bandage scissors. I'd wager no one's going to peg me as a stranger when the time for classifications comes.

I have my hoodie's- well, hood pulled over my head to hide the margins of my face not covered in mask. The bottom of my oversized sweatshirt floats just above my knees. If I happened to be wearing short shorts with it instead of season-appropriate jeans, I might have come off as fairly scandalous to the employees and sightseers scuttling about me.

I glance around the PRT lobby through Glory Girl's eye holes, noting the four armored officers posted at key areas equipped with- are those grenade launchers? Yes, two grenade launchers and two containment foam sprayers.

It goes without saying I'd like to wrap my loving embrace around one or both flavors of gun. The potential of either is mouth-watering. I could do a lot with a grenade launcher loaded to bear with specialized shield canisters. I'd have a genuine ranged option, and I'd visually pose a threat to my aggressors.

You can avoid plenty of fights if you look like the type of person who can win them.

As for the containment foam sprayers, containment foam is containment foam. It seems asinine that all of the Protectorate's members aren't outfitted with the stuff already. But the idea's too obvious not to have been considered by now. I assume it has something to do with keeping formulaic secrets in-house, cost assessments, or even the solvent causing chronic IBS.

I've done my preliminary research. The unanimous opinion on PHO is that tinkers usually have specialties. "Energy shields" is manifestly my specialty if I have one. So it makes me wonder what would happen if I tampered with containment foam. Would I be as clueless as any regular person or would I be able to recontextualize foam as a type of shield in my mind so I could sidestep my limits?

The tests I'll have to conduct are piling up, and I've only just entered the PRT's headquarters.

My expectations weren't high going in to the place, the outside of the building is decidedly business-standard after all, but I had pictured the second hub of sanctioned parahuman activity in Brockton Bay to be more... whimsical.

Nobody dresses anything up nowadays. Where's their sense of pageantry? Where are the giant golden sculptures commissioned using tax payers' money?

I'd explore what little they have to offer - visit the gift shop and look at the glamour shots of local heroes on their walls - if I didn't look so conspicuous. But a couple visitors have begun to rubberneck, and I've noticed several employees trying to unobtrusively funnel out as well. The guards, of course, are alert and probing the borders of courtly trigger discipline.

I heard once that PRT officers have special EMP rounds. That could prove problematic if this turns hairy.

I had thought to plug my spent shield canister in at a coffee shop (yes, it's compatible) by hiding it up my sleeve or in my hoodie's front pocket, but then I decided it would probably be less risky to simply trust the PRT not to pounce on me like jackbooted maniacs.

Confronted with faceless guards toting weaponry though, I'm starting to feel uncertain about that decision.

A lot of children dream of a chance like this, to become a hero. To step into the spandex long johns of their idols. But the blissful daydreams of my youth always involved idyllic mountain villages and foot massages, not a rinse and repeat rotation of Nazi punching. Most of what heroes do seems like custodial work to me.

But, hey. Life's dealt me a card, and, apparently, I picked Justice.

I stride up to the front desk. A well-groomed twenty-something man flashes me a pleasant "I've been trained in hospitality and loved every second of it" grin.

I speak up first.

"You hiring? I've got two years experience as a dishwasher."

"I take it you're interested in joining the Wards?"

Not even a beat skipped with this one. Whatever they're paying him, they should pay him double.

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, great. I'm sure everyone will be ecstatic to have you on the team. The Wards are a good bunch, and you can trust me on that. I'd keep my mouth shut if I didn't actually believe what it was saying. And there we go. I've buzzed someone over to escort you into meeting room B. And then..."

He consults his computer.

"And then Miss Militia will interview you and walk you through the nitty-gritty. Sound good to you?"

"Sounds great."

"Do you have a stand-in name you'd like to go by? Don't worry. It doesn't have to be permanent."

"Better Alexandria."

"Ha! I think you'll run into a little trouble landing that one, but sure. Do you have a similar powerset to the regular version? If you don't mind me asking, that is."

The thought hadn't crossed my mind, but I suppose I do, in a way.

"I can't fly, but I can take a punch. I'm a shield tinker."

"Oh! They'll be excited about that. Armsmaster is busy so often. Kid Win will appreciate having a teammate to bounce ideas- oh, here we are. Sarah, would you mind bringing Better Alexandria here to meeting room B?"

A new arrival dressed in a smart suit jacket and dress combo raises her eyebrow at my alias but nods.

"Will you come this way, miss?" she asks.

"Break a leg!" the man at the front desk adds before Sarah and I have gotten too far away.

I'm led into an elevator. It does its thing, and it does it in a manner that leads me to believe its tinkertech. I'm eternally grateful I didn't get "pretty alright elevators" as my specialty. Trying to make that offensive would take a lot of creativity or require a devilish amount of persuasiveness.

Sarah proves not to be the hypothetical elevator tinker of my nightmares when we exit through the sliding metal doors without incident. We walk down a lackluster hallway, and my transient companion deposits me in an equally lackluster room.

She asks me if I'd like anything to drink, and I answer with coffee, two sugars. She leaves wordlessly. I assume to go get me coffee. But, I'll permit, she could just be snubbing me in the most mundane way imaginable.

I'm left by myself. So I think to myself.

It's good to set goals, to commit oneself to a purpose then adapt when changing course is what's called for. Almost three quarters of the animation clips I've done on my laptop were consequences of me feeling aimless. I set tasks for myself when I'm adrift.

So what task or tasks do I want to achieve as a Ward?

Clean up the streets? Sure. I won't say no to breaking a few noses. But more personally? I'd like to set myself up as a heroine not worth poking.

Shields are versatile. Straight away that gives me an upper hand. I could situate myself as a front-line combatant or I could stand near the back as team support. My intuition is that a support role would make me more unapproachable, but support roles are often targeted as both the weak link in a group and as the annoying factor making things harder for the opposition overall, whether or not that's true.

Front-line, however, is a toss-up. You're just the first obstacle in a series of many or you're the main event. You're kept busy or you're focused on until you're gotten rid of.

The ideal situation would be embodying an untouchable instigator. You don't fight Alexandria because you want to fight Alexandria. You fight Alexandria because she wants to fight you.

Could I slip myself into an Alexandria-shaped mold and then conveniently step aside?

There's also ample opportunities available in ducking behind a gimmick. I could move to the other end. Mouse Protector has her schtick, and I could have a schtick of my own. I'd probably try for a jollier role, less brazenly obnoxious. Build myself up as a puppy in a bowtie and, in turn, maybe the villains would start coming at me with kid gloves.

No one applauds the bruiser who slaps the fun-loving fool.

And if I become that fool, what would happen if I were to, say, take down Lung? He'd be brought low by Brockton Bay's misfit jester. Would he be laughed at perhaps? Would his gang be remembered like a bad joke?

Holding a grudge is grueling work. I don't have the stamina for it. Never have. But imagining Lung being served his just deserts? Now that's all in good fun.

Sarah returns. She shirks my fleeting allegations once more by bringing me my coffee. She also provides me with a proper domino mask.

I turn away from her and replace my face covering with the mask. I brush my hood off my head as well.

The PRT's office brew tastes like a hot leather car seat somebody spilled cola on at first sip, but it transforms into a bouquet of sweetened tar ladeled out of a pig trough going down.

I've certainly had worse, so I thank Sarah for her courtesy. She nods then politely excuses herself when another woman - this one garbed in fitted military fatigues and an American flag scarf and sash - enters meeting room B.

A greenish-black blur resolves into a hatchet then a pistol then a different pistol at Miss Militia's side. The heroine is a multifaceted blaster. My tendency to weigh threats as they come to me has me evaluating my chances against her as she moves to sit down.

We're in an enclosed space. My fists might as well be diamond to her, but she has fighting experience under her belt. Would that count for anything when my barrier is essentially frictionless when and where I want it to be? Her weapon then. Whatever weapon she'd be able to summon (that's not going to demolish the whole building) I could probably take head on. Repeated shots from a powerful gun could prove tricky. I don't know what my threshold is yet. The Manton Effect stops her from manifesting a bazooka in someone's ribcage, but would it stop her from manifesting the tip of a weapon inside my barrier? And what about outside considerations? They'll be ready to flood this room with containment foam at the drop of a needle. I'm certain of it. Containment foam, no matter how miraculous it is, will probably slide off my barrier like water off a duck's back. Though if enough was heaped on top of me I could see myself not being able to wriggle out before it dried. The door would quickly be jammed too. Are there any other Protectorate members in the building? Do any of them have a hard counter to hit me with? What about the Wards? I should have thought about their-

"Hello. I hope you didn't have to wait long. Is their anything we can supply you with that would make your stay more comfortable?"

"I'm fine, thank you. The coffee's to die for."

Miss Militia pauses at that.

"Why don't we start by introducing ourselves? I'm Miss Militia. I was a Ward once, one of the first actually, and I've been a member of the Protectorate for several years."

She leaves a length of silence open for me to fill. I take her up on the offer.

"At the moment, I'm a penniless orphan. Definitely a tinker. Maybe a brute one or two due to my durability. I'm prepared to play human shield or suppressing fire in any physical engagement the Wards need to enter, and I have some ideas for supplementary defensive devices."

I glanced over parahuman classifications two or three days after I got my power in an attempt to figure out where the PRT would slot me, and I stumbled upon a helpful little poem.

Mover, Shaker,

Brute and Breaker.

Master, Tinker,

Blaster and Thinker,

Makers, Bakers,

Bookers, Basil.

Her skin was smooth.

Her eyes were hazel.

It was something along those lines. The thing wasn't Tennyson, that's for sure. And I'm generally awful with mnemonics.

I gave up trying to memorize it when I realized the entire system was mostly arbitrary.

"Do you feel safe sharing your name with me? You don't have to if you don't want to. Your identity will remain confidential, but a few people will have to know it in the long run. If you don't feel like telling me, Director Piggot will be arriving soon, and I can step out of the room to give you some privacy."

"Call me whatever you want."

"I'd rather call you whatever you want to be called."

I take a moment to gauge the woman sitting across from me. Above her intimidating greenish-black weapon, her costume, and the gaudy flag scarf wrapped around half of her face, she has kind eyes. I don't want to make this difficult for her.

"My name is Tess."

"It's nice to meet you, Tess. How long have you been a tinker?"

She slides over a simple piece of paperwork for me to fill out while we talk. Average stuff.

"Two weeks and one day," I answer as I check a few boxes.

"That's pretty recent. Have you been able to build anything yet?"

"Several things. My barrier node, two batteries, two shield canisters, and I started a few other projects but stopped when I realized I didn't have everything I needed. I don't mean to grandstand - really I don't - but, with what I had at hand, I think my specialty might have an emphasis on special."

"That does sound impressive from what I've seen of Armsmaster's trial and error. You should expect him to take an interest in you sooner or later. I hope you're not shy around famous heroes."

"Your picture is as big as his out there. I seem to be handling you just fine. Unless I'm overselling myself."

"Oh, well. We'll have to be careful with you. You're a charmer."

A large woman marches into the room without announcing herself. She has a blonde bob for a haircut. Worse than the butchery I performed on myself. She settles her girth into a chair, readjusts, and then she holds out her palm indicating that I should hand my paperwork over to her.

I do.

"Have you taken a look at this?" the overweight woman asks Miss Militia.

"I glanced. Why? She wasn't done filling it out yet."

"We don't accept pseudonyms on official documents, Miss..." the woman trails off, addressing me this time. She's inviting me to finish my name. I oblige her.

"Tudo."

"If you can hand over a birth certificate confirming your name is Tess Tudo in the next twenty-four hours I'll let Miss Militia shoot me in the foot."

Miss Militia and I put forth our responses over one another. The heroine says something along the lines of "you can't authorize that, ma'am" while I simultaneously ask "why would I want her to?"

"She's given you the name of a Roman shield formation."

The woman - Director Piggot I surmise - plops the paper down on the table between us.

"Can I be frank with you?" I ask before they can begin their inquisition. I pause, waiting for a response. Then something idiotic occurs to me, and I can't stop myself from interrupting the lull I've created.

"And, no, I'm not suggesting you call me Frank," I clarify.

Director Piggot and Miss Militia stay silent. Suddenly we're all in agreement. None of us seems to think that what I just said was funny.

"I don't have family," I continue. "Not anymore. The gangs took my mom before I was old enough to get to know her, and the most parenting my dad ever did was biologically arranging that he was a dad, if only in blood. My guardian, the one who probably qualifies as my next of kin for your screwed up childcare conga line, is just an old friend of my mom's who was too stupid to say no to a dying request. We lived in the reeking heart of ABB territory together. Last I saw of her she was knocking back shots with guys dressed in green and red. And that's immediately before I was almost raped by a gang member, I might add. I'm not going back there. I won't. Not without a team supporting me and a bandolier stocked with tinkertech. I won't let you bureaucratically drag me back to my personal hell so you can dot your t's and cross your i's. I won't. I want to protect people, to help them, but if I have to tell you who I was - be who I was - so I make sense on your forms? I'll make my own way."

"Okay, Tess," Miss Militia says.

"Okay?"

"Miss Militia is speaking out of turn. But that doesn't change the fact that allowances can be made for your particular situation. The PRT won't be bureaucratically dragging you anywhere you don't agree to go beforehand."

I feel sort of awful after saying those misleading things about Aunt Naoko. I presented an unflattering detail or two without context and oversimplified. But I can't have the PRT's pencil pushers thinking even for one second she'd be their solution to my guardianship problems.

"We will still be requiring your name though," Piggot says. "You could be a runaway, a criminal, or any number of other things."

"Tell you what. If a girl matching my description is filed in a missing persons report or my face shows up on a wanted poster, I give you full permission to give Miss Militia permission to shoot me in the foot."

"I'm not shooting anyone."

"Not good enough."

I huff. I don't provide my legal name. I'd have to spell it out for them. Instead, I give them my social security number.

Piggot searches the table for a pen to write it down with. I lend her the PRT branded pen that somehow made its way into my pocket.

She sniffs.

"We don't like unknowns here in the PRT. In fact, at my most misanthropic, I'd say we wage an ongoing campaign against them," Piggot addresses me as if I'm the dangling glowy bit on some much larger, much craftier creature. Not great.

"We certainly don't invite them into our confidence unless we have good reason to," she finishes off.

I look into Miss Militia's kind eyes and reckon I can at least deflect her suspicions from me. A cape with that many American flags on her costume has to have some sort of complex. I'll appeal to her sense of duty or something similar to it.

"I was just a girl trying to keep her head down and step lightly, but some of the wrong of this world came for me without my say-so. I'm different now because of it. I can make a difference now because of it. Have either of you ever felt that way? Do you? That there are people out there you should be protecting because it's within your power? All I ask is for the opportunity to try."

I turn to Director Piggot.

"Will you give me that chance?"

Miss Militia seems to have been swayed by my saccharine entreaty, but Piggot isn't as impressed. She's a dour-faced mystery to me.

"You've said you're a tinker." Piggot looks down at the form I was filling out. "We'll have to verify that with our scientists. Taking into consideration your liminal status, I'll try to quicken the whole affair."

"Is this about proof or ability?" I ask. "If all you need right now is proof, I can easily demonstrate my barrier node. With the added assurance that absolutely no one will be harmed and there will be no destruction of PRT property."

Piggot studies me like I've just offered her a dead canary.

"We will not be permitting undocumented power usage outside a testing environment."

I suck in a lungful of air then release it.

"Will you permit me to set an uncharged tinkertech device on the table?"

Piggot nods her head a fraction. The movement draws attention to the excess fat swaddling her neck.

"Go ahead."

I produce my uncharged shield canister and set it on the table. Miss Militia and the director look at it for a smattering of seconds. Then Piggot waves for the object to be put away.

"We'll have to figure out some sort of living arrangements for you. Temporary or otherwise," Piggot says. She moves right along as if the farce we just performed wasn't entirely inconclusive. Perhaps all she required from me was my willingness to demonstrate. I could have been bluffing, but why would I?

"I like drawing and tinkering. Put me in a well-lit hole in your basement with a computer and some tools. You can feed me condensed, nutrient-rich algae bars if it'll move matters along."

"That doesn't sound terribly ethical," Miss Militia says.

"We also don't want the Youth Guard breathing down our necks."

"I'm only half joking about the hole. Give me a bunk somewhere in this building, and I'll get to work doing what I can. Do either of you have a guest room? I wouldn't even need to live with you. We could add a few knickknacks to make it look as if I was living in your home. Keep some juice boxes in the fridge. Add another toothbrush in the bathroom. When the Youth Guard shows up you discretely contact me. I arrive shortly after laughing about what my friends and I did at the mall that day, and, in the middle of explaining how I couldn't possibly be more well-adjusted, that's when I notice the guy with the clipboard in your living room."

"That's not as viable as you make it sound. And you're asking us to make a large commitment whether or not you're aware."

"How about Case 53's?"

"What about them?"

"I did a little bit of research preparing for this. Ran out of all my nuts while I was in the library. And, well, how does the PRT usually process Case 53's? You could process me in a similar fashion, like you would for an amnesiac."

"We don't make a habit of falsifying records or lying to our colleagues. Especially not for a girl we just met. But, enough of this. We don't need anymore input from you. We'll get you settled through legitimate channels."

Piggot pushes a switch or button hidden on her side of the table, and Sarah makes another guest appearance soon after. Piggot hands her my unfinished paperwork, whispers a short list of administrative jargon and instructions, and then Sarah departs.

I should stop giving off the impression I'm alright with bending the truth if I plan on getting away with bending it in the future. I fear I may have already dug myself in too deep here, but I was trying to establish myself as a critical thinker.

"In the meantime, do you have any thoughts on what you'd like your Ward persona to be?" Miss Militia changes the topic of conversation effortlessly.

I nod my head. I wrestle with my backpack's zippers, open up my drawing binder, and retrieve a sheet of paper I put in the front pocket.

I smooth out the paper as best I can then hand it over to the two women sitting across from me.

On the front of the paper is a sketch I penned while I was waiting for my bus. On the back is a list of books I planned on checking out from the library but never got to.

I begin speaking before they have a chance to critique my taste in YA fantasy.

"Uh, yeah." I clam up realizing just how embarrassing it is to be showing off my doodles to both the leader of the Brockton Bay PRT and a veteran member of the Protectorate.

I center myself. Breathe in. Breathe out.

"So. The hands and forearms on my costume aren't final or anything. I've got ideas for how the gauntlets would function, but I'm not a hundred percent sure on how they would end up looking yet. Same goes for my node's spinal battery column. I'm almost certain I can improve the size. But whatever. That shouldn't be a problem for the planning phase of things because the whole unit will be covered up by the jacket. The jacket, by the way, is all up to you guys as far as I'm concerned. I like the look, but I'm not married to it. I just thought the inclusion of fabric would liven up my appearance. The helmet's negotiable as well. I'd really rather have it incorporated though. I've done a little delving, and all the experts say it's good business to maintain a recognizable costume for your adoring public. You, obviously, know this. But what you don't know is I'm definitely planning on including a helmet in my costume if and when I join the Protectorate. So why should we create a hassle for the toy manufacturers? Right? Also, headgear only makes sense because my barrier node is in it's infancy, and it performs leaps and bounds better when it's projecting over inorganic material. And, yes, I've tested. Not in a professional lab, of course, but hey. You work with what you've got. The utility pouches, on the other hand, I can see moving. I'm not attached to their placement. They just have to be-"

"Enough," Piggot barks.

"You've really thought this through," Miss Militia adds.

"Huh." I release the faintest humorless laugh audible on the human spectrum as I mull that over.

I gave this a bus ride. I sketched a prototype costume before I got on Brockton Bay's public transit, and I had myself a think while I traveled.

I didn't go to any great lengths. I didn't factor in all the deliberation that might arise. In a city where there's a major Asian gang, PR could want me to advertise being of Japanese descent for example. A helmet would stifle that. They could also come and tell me the focus groups found my armor too intimidating or there's too many armored teenagers in the Brockton Bay Wards already.

Is Miss Militia being sarcastic with me then? She doesn't seem the type. The other Wards must have committed at least this much thought to their own costumes when they joined. Nobody trips into heroing less prepared than me, do they?

"We have an entire department dedicated to public image. Spare us the dissertation."

Meeting room B's door opens once more. Piggot receives a folder from Sarah. She looks over its contents then tosses it to me. The paper inside is still warm from the printer.

They've put my name down as Tess Faramund. Not bad. If some punk off the streets had tried to be clever with me I would have probably saddled them with an unflattering name. But the PRT seems to tilt toward stodginess in all things.

"You'll be given a private room in this building, and you'll have a monthly allowance of four hundred dollars in addition to the money put into your trust account by the program. We expect you'll spend this allowance on necessities, such as food and clothing. Tinkers are provisioned with extra funding on a case by case basis. We'll leave that up to Armsmaster to decide."

"Wow."

"You've shown that you're willing to cooperate, that your engaged, and you listened to instructions with little complaint. I'll have Miss Militia introduce you to the others if, and only if, they agree to a meeting with you. News of your arrival has been sent ahead so the Wards have time to decide if they're comfortable associating with you. In the event one or two of them have an issue working with you on a day to day basis, we'll see if splitting up the team's schedules is an option. In the event two or more disagree with your inclusion, however, we'll have to restrict you to a few specifically approved spaces until we can figure out what to do with you. Now, you'll have to excuse me. I've made prior commitments that I would have tried to reschedule if I had known you were coming. I'll be stopping by the Wards' room to get the team's final answers. You'll have to respect whatever decision they arrive upon. We'll speak more once you've settled in, and my associate will bring you your identification as soon as it's made. Miss MIlitia, give our prospective Ward a tour, and keep your earbud on."

Piggot says a few terse farewells then navigates her way to the hallway.

Miss Militia smiles with her eyes.

"You said something about algae bars. Are you hungry? The cafeteria is open. We could stop to get you some food on the way to meeting your team."

"You seem sure I'll meet them."

"They're good people," she says. Like that means something tangible. "So lunch?"

"No. No thank you, but, you know, thank you for offering. I'd like to get this over with before I even consider unwinding. Do you really have time to be chaperoning me though? I wouldn't mind you handing me off."

"Don't be ridiculous. This is your first day. This is exciting. And, to be perfectly honest, chances are the workers around here are busier than me at the moment."

We set out, making small talk. Miss Militia shares a tidbit or two. I talk about my hobby animating and stay away from disclosing anything meaningful.

It doesn't take long for the Wards' answer to come in over her earbud. Maybe ten minutes. Miss Militia puts her hand up to her ear, gives a short "understood", then smiles at me through her scarf.

They agreed to have me.

Miss Militia and I continue our small talk as we set a course for the Wards' room, but it soon dries up when she asks me if I've decided on my cape name yet.

What should it be?

Haven? No, that's a group of superheroes in the Bible Belt.

Protector? Eh. Way too close to "Protectorate" in my mind. I'd be framing myself as too big a deal. Plus, I'd be Mouse Protector minus the "mouse".

Svelin? Svalinn, I think? There was a legendary shield in Norse mythology with a name like that. It's pretty simple. But, then again, it comes off as something suited for the end times. Protecting everybody from the broiling heat of the sun and all. Plus there's the fact that Nazis poach whatever they can from the ancient annals of blond society. Just my luck that there'd be a Gesellschaft villain out there icing Jews or something right after I agreed to have it as my name.

Shield Maiden? Also a bit too Norse.

Geodesic? I could grow to like the sound of that. Here comes Geodesic! It would match my appearance and the overall look of my shields. But it doesn't quite match the spirit of, well, me.

What could really? Would a portmanteau work? Geodesiccator?

That doesn't even make any sense.

Shielder? Taken and in the same city no less.

Bubbles? No, for obvious reasons.

Paradise? I read once it originated from an old word meaning enclosed park. Kind of a stretch though.

Felonfucker? I can't see the PRT signing off on that. Could be misconstrued too, on top of being off brand and vague.

Come on. Kick it into double time, dumb-dumb. We need an answer. It'll be the first thing they ask you. You can't come across as uncertain to the natives. Cover it up or the other Wards will get it in their heads you're a pushover.

Rapid fire.

Defender? No. Keep? Short and sweet. Maybe. Sanctuary? Too churchy. No. Citadel? Maybe. Stronghold? Maybe. Gridline? Naw. Repulsor? Sort of funny. Maybe. Impregnable? Sort of funny but in the wrong sort of way. No. Bastion? Only occurred to me because it's taken already. No. Re-

"And here we are." Miss Militia unwittingly stops an avalanche from destroying me. She gestures at a metal door in front of us.

"There's a delay so the Wards can put their masks on."

I don't count how long it takes. The door slides open.

"Alright, everyone. Meet your new teammate. She'll be living in PRT headquarters, but I don't want any of you to use that as an excuse to go pester her when she's not on the clock. And no, Clockblocker, don't chime in. She just walked in the door today so we haven't run a full background check on her yet, as I'm sure you've been informed. I'm not retelling you to make you doubt her. Everything I've seen so far has painted her as an upstanding young woman, and I like her more than some of you already. I'm simply putting forth the idea that it's alright not to share your civilian identities until we know more. Aegis, would you like to take over?"

"Uh, yeah, of course," a boy with long hair and a domino mask steps forward.

"What should we call you?" the smallest of the Wards asks. Vista. She's fully costumed, probably fresh off a patrol.

Aegis shuts his mouth and gestures that the floor is mine.

As politely and confidently as possible, I blurt out the last random name that sprang to mind.

"Redoubt," I say with a subtle nod. "It's a pleasure to meet you all. I'm a tinker who specializes in protecting people so I suppose that means you're the people I'll be tinkering to protect."

Well, that's it then. Redoubt.

It'll have to do.

Chapter 3: Warded 3.1

Chapter Text

They've just finished making their introductions. First it was Aegis. Then Vista volunteered the fact that Gallant is currently on patrol. Next came Kid Win. After that, Shadow Stalker. Barely. And last in the chain was Clockblocker accompanied by a bawdy joke.

He seems like a funny guy.

"Touch me."

"Excuse me, what?" Clockblocker stammers.

"Could be a girl never asks you again. Don't miss your moment, Clock," Shadow Stalker cattily adds in. She enunciates "clock" like its a word with one less letter.

"Use your time stopping power on me while I have my barrier up," I clarify. "Don't worry. I haven't gotten it to hurt anyone yet."

The white-clad Ward approaches with no further prompting. He extends his hand and pokes my shoulder. Nothing happens. Not even a fingerprint sized shimmer.

I shoo him away, disengage my barrier, and pull off my hoodie. In only a black tank top now, I swing my arm around to my spine and extract the battery from my node. A few of the Wards react.

I check the meter on my battery. The readings are about where I left them this morning. No noticeable downtick. Clockblocker's power didn't register as damage, but it was blocked all the same. Fascinating.

I quickly slide the battery back into its housing in my spine, having felt naked for the couple seconds it took to check.

I remove my domino mask as well. I don't feel like juggling a dual identity in my own home.

"You did use your power, correct?" Clockblocker nods an affirmative. "Then it looks like my power trumps yours. I wouldn't suggest becoming my enemy."

Fully realizing how that could be misconstrued as minatory I add, "If you want to stay in my good graces I like strawberry shortcake with extra whipped cream."

"That's amazing. You no-sell his power just like that?" Aegis asks.

"Apparently. Though we'd have to toss back a few more tests for me to be sure. While we're on the subject," I turn to Clockblocker once more, "Are you experiencing any numbness in your arm? Spasms? Any cardiac discrepancies?"

"I'm gonna sound like a broken record here, but- excuse me, what?"

"I was being honest but not entirely straightforward. I haven't hurt anyone with my barrier yet because you're the first person to have touched it other than myself."

"You didn't know what was going to happen?"

"I knew it wouldn't kill you."

And there we go. I strive to accomplish multiple objectives all at once if I can. Not only have I gathered new information on my barrier node's performance, I've also associated touching me with potential danger in all these young men's minds. I've found if you stick a splinter into people early on they'll act upon their initial impressions without conscious thought.

I should have made myself vomit on Nobu when I first had the chance. Might have avoided a lot of trouble that way.

"Redoubt, uh. From now on try not to expose teammates to harmful tinkertech, alright? I don't want to be a hard-ass here, but I kind of have to be since I'm team leader. We can schedule time with the PRT's scientists in a room designed to handle whatever you can throw at it. The process might seem like an inconvenience right now, but with all those people working with you, the annoying stuff gets cut in half. It ends up saving time. Win? You have anything else you'd like to add?"

"Sure." The normally red and gold clad tinker of the team assumes a more attentive position. He takes his hands off the back of the couch he was leaning on and holds them up to get himself talking.

"You're probably used to scarcity, taking opportunities and parts where you can get them. I understand that. All too well. But when you're here, when you're a Ward, you've got everything you could possibly need to reach your full potential. It's pretty great. No more scrounging. No more cutting corners. You can rely on the PRT to help you out because they have an incentive to see you succeed."

Kid Win carries on like he's trying to sell me a car. A busted car. Outwardly, I listen to him. Inwardly, I don't want him to get used to giving me lectures or unsolicited advice. In the long run he might assume he has an authoritative role, that he's my mentor. Subconsciously, of course. Can be worse that way. Things get messy when boys think they have power over you. They take advantage of imbalances of power often enough that I feel wary ceding ground.

Kid Win wraps up a brief spiel on the PRT's proclivity for purchasing tinkertech rights.

"I'm not going to replace you. I hope you know that," I say. It's a wild stab to see if I can nick his confidence.

The tinker's brow furrows. I've offered him reassurance. Innocent reassurance he wasn't expecting. I told him what I'm not going to do. And now? Presumably he's contemplating the odds of what I said I wouldn't do actually transpiring. It's sort of like a magician waving one hand around to distract from their other, and Kid Win's the audience member trying to spot the deception. I wave a "you won't be replaced" over here, and the assumption is Kid Win looks to its opposite. I'm putting myself into his shoes to kick him in the shin. If the new tinker is thinking about a conceivable hazard enough to bring it up, maybe he should be thinking about it himself.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this.

I'm not entirely insensitive. I'll quell any fears he may or may not have once my position is more secure. I'm not going to judge a literal hero according to the worst impressions I've garnered from his sex. I'll encourage cooperation between the two of us later on, try to bill us as a collaborative act. His tinkertech could be useful.

"Duh, there's no tinker limit on a team. It's cool of you to worry for him, Re, but Win's a big boy," Vista says. She casually uses her power to cross the room in one step.

"Since Triumph left, Aegis has been our leader, like he said," Vista explains, maybe a tad bitterly. "So you might call him our head. Then Gallant would be our heart. And maybe Win would be our backbone. Meanwhile, I'm - I don't know - the liver. Weird tangent. Anyway. What I'm trying to say is we're not just our powers, we're important parts of a whole. Take one of us out and things don't work like they did. Add someone else, and we get to evolve. You know what's crazy though? I'm both the oldest and youngest member in this room. Sounds like a riddle, huh? So trust me when I tell you it's been mostly guys filling the place up for way too long. It's great to finally have another girl on the team."

"Besides Shadow Stalker," Clockblocker says.

"Yeah."

"Fuck you too, midget," Shadow Stalker interjects, not fondly.

"If we're calling body parts, is skin taken?" I ask, skipping over the interruption.

"Dibs on spleen," Clockblocker says.

"Hey! It was spur of the moment. Don't tease. And you-" Vista points at me. "You're not allowed to make fun of me on your first day. I'm your senior."

"Yes, ma'am."

"That's what I like to hear."

How would the me of before have interacted with the Wards? Would she have been nervous? Star-struck? I can only base my assumptions on what I know she did. Some memories I have of prior thoughts might be apocryphal, and I don't even know how to begin on substantiating my actions. Ask everybody I knew about everything I did? That wouldn't work. I can't throw myself into that thresher. Doubting my recollection of events and their sequence is a swift trip toward madness.

So am I the girl? Or am I the computer left in her stead with an acronym of her name printed on its CPU?

The state of my compos mentis continuity still has a big, blinking question mark suspended next to it. Case and point. Compos mentis. Was I able to scrape Latin off the top of my brain when I was normal? I'd have almost no way of checking.

What happens if I try to trace words and ideas back to where I learned them? Will they lead back to court room dramas and such or will I find out my parahumanity is constantly inserting knowledge into my line of reasoning?

Guiding it? That wouldn't be me. This isn't me, honestly. I can't pin down who I was previously, but I can pull apart the abnormalities she didn't have.

Step back. Analyze yourself from the outside.

The me of before kept to herself. She'd shut herself in her room when she wasn't asked to wash dishes in the back room or scrub the toilets. She went to Winslow, but she didn't have friends. None that I'm remembering at least. This doesn't bother me in the present. Did it bother the me of the past? It seems like it should/should've. I'm recalling middling grades. The me now sees that as me being disinterested and spending too much time drawing when I should have been taking notes. Is that how it actually was? I should have kept a diary.

"Hey, I recognize you. You're the slut," Shadow Stalker says.

I double-check to confirm she's speaking to me, then cock my head.

"Elaborate," I respond.

"You go to Winslow. You've got like a new guy hanging around you every week. Word is you give great blow jobs."

"Soph- Shadow Stalker!"

"That's generous of them to say considering I've never given a blow job."

Here's yet another reason why I'll need to transfer out of Winslow or arrange for home education. Not even counting my unexplained change in name, two of Nobu's friends still go to school. I had entertained the thought of getting rid of them, but, as Shadow Stalker has just made clear, there were other guys who tried to cozy up to me quasi-frequently.

I may have the proportions of a plank. But I'm small, smooth-skinned, and have a nice face. I'm not being conceited when I say this. I'm being overt. In no uncertain terms people have - from my preadolescence onward - told me I look like a doll. I wasn't eliciting these compliments, and, more often than not, they came from out of nowhere when I was effectively secluded from a herd.

I had thought the boys would eventually discount me after I rebuffed them, but I guess not. With rumors circulating I'd never be able to steer myself under the radar.

It's a good thing I won't need to live up to anyone's overblown expectations.

"You're saying it's all lies?"

Shadow Stalker's question sounds more like a duelist's challenge than a request for elucidation.

"I'm saying anybody who believes the rumor mill deserves to be fed into it."

Children make up lies to feel relevant. Some of them grow out of their fibbing when they mature. A lot of them don't.

I think lies should be constructive, and, if not that, sufficiently destructive. All these petty "is she" or "isn't she's" and character besmirchings that flit about the school seem so pointless to me.

Do I recognize Shadow Stalker? She's wearing a domino mask, not a costume. Dark-skinned, thin but not fragile, taller than me, but that's not saying much. Is she an athlete or is her athletic physique due to her activities as a Ward? Kid Win doesn't seem similarly shaped by his time on the team, but, then again, his role isn't as active. Aegis slipped up and said "sof". "Sof". I can dismiss sofa. That leaves Sophie, Sophia, or something else.

Who am I kidding? I can maybe name ten of the kids at my school.

A change occurs. Slight. Shadow Stalker suddenly withdraws. It's written in her posture. Like I've menaced her with a gun, and she's just found out she can't shift into her shadow form.

I've done nothing since I spoke a second or two ago. Is she reacting to what I said? No, there was a delay. Did one of her thoughts lead to another? I say "rumor mill", and she thinks "rumor mill". Rumors grinding me down is the topic she brought up. That's the high ground she felt safe on. But when I spoke about rumors generally... she's in the same school as me. Is she scared of what rumors I might know?

"But, then again, not all rumors are baseless. As I'm sure you're intimately aware," I deadpan at her through a trouble-making grin.

She jerks, just a little. I was right on the money then.

Will she be cowed or will she pull me aside to air some threats? Only time will tell, and I'm keeping my barrier up regardless.

The mask warning goes off. I affix my borrowed domino mask. Nobody else took theirs' off so they stand or, in Kid Win's case now, sit where they are. Vista and Clockblocker were hitherto in costume.

A familiar smartly dressed PRT employee enters, nods to the gathered Wards, then slingback-clicks over to me. She hands me a folder containing my identification and some informational packets.

They already have Tess Faramund down as the Ward "Redoubt" which is a rapid feat that either required Miss Militia telling them my decision right away (probable) or them having listening devices planted in this room (unlikely). I appreciate the efficiency.

"I'll leave you to get acquainted with your team. Will an hour do?" Sarah asks.

"Actually," I raise my voice so everyone can listen in, "I know how this is going to sound after hearing what Shadow Stalker mentioned, but I've only had nuts today. I've been wearing the same clothes for longer than I'd like to admit, and I just want to let my hair down. I'm going to go with Sarah for now and see if my accommodations meet my exacting specifications: a bed I can collapse into."

"No problem, Redoubt. We'll all get together again tomorrow when Gallant's here and talk some more. Till then, settle in. We've got plenty of time to get you up to speed."

I should leave them on a good note. Foster trust and push whatever suspicions they might have contrived to the back of their minds.

"It's Tess, by the way. When we're in here you can all call me Tess."

"Carlos," Aegis shares. Evidently Sarah was privy to his civilian identity beforehand because neither of the two seem fazed by his admission. Most likely Sarah is the PRT's day to day aide for the Wards, or one of them at least.

Vista offers me a stationary wave.

"Be seeing ya," Clockblocker intones.

As I follow Sarah to the exit, the group picks up their conversation.

"You've still got the touch, champ. Most powers have a counter out there somewhere. And, lucky you, yours is on the same side. Same team even."

"Yeah. Thanks, coach."

"I said 'champ' ironically."

"You've said it to me unironically before. I call double standard," Vista speaks up.

"Well, that's because you're..." Aegis trails off.

"A kid? I can make it so you never reach a bathroom again, you know."

The door to the room shuts behind us. Sarah leads me into the nearby tinkertech elevator and up one floor. We glide down another lackluster hallway in silence.

I need to get my hands on materials to tinker with. First on the docket is building myself a backup battery. I won't feel safe until I can. I curse myself for not sweet-talking Kid Win when I had the chance. I could have had him fork over the bric-a-brac he wasn't using. I was too focused on evaluating pack dynamics to concentrate on my main goal: achieving tinkertech assisted unassailability.

I wonder if they have any old VCR's or vending machines I can dismantle.

I may look like a doll, but a secondary objective I've set for myself is to get Sofa and perhaps one or two of the boys to view me as they would a haunted doll. I want them to flinch if they see me moving. Psychological aversion is a strong deterrent. I won't have anyone pushing me around, not like when I was powerless. And I definitely won't have anyone mooning over me. Not inside this building. This is going to be my new haven, and there's no room for misplaced affections.

Also, I could use something to eat. My stomach is gurgling so much that it's approximating human speech in its desperation.

A map of the building was included in my folder. I pinpoint the cafeteria and squirm my finger from where it is to where I am. PRT facilities are easy to navigate, I'll give them that.

"Will I need money to get something from the cafeteria?"

"Have them scan your ID, and you'll be fine."

"Any recommendations?"

"I pack my lunch."

Not the chattiest individual, is she? That's alright. Quietude is better than its alternative.

"Is there any way I could have tinkering supplies sent to my room?"

"We maintain a policy of keeping living spaces and work areas separate. Until you get a lab you won't be tinkering."

I sigh.

"It shouldn't take long. I've scheduled a meeting for eight tomorrow morning so you can have your preliminary discussion with Armsmaster. The incident in Australia has been preoccupying a significant number of the Protectorate and staff. Tomorrow was the earliest I could work you in."

"Thank you."

"It's my job. No need for thanks."

My room turns out to be smaller than the one I had above the bar. It's cleaner though. No draft or troubling scabs of mold.

I deliberate on leaving my backpack in the room, but, ultimately, I decide against it. I ask Sarah where I'll be showering and circle the room she specifies on my map. It's a few doors down. While I'm at it, I circle my room and take a note on when I'll be meeting with Armsmaster.

Sarah says she'll guide me to where I need to go. I say it's not necessary. She insists.

We reach the cafeteria in short order. She says her goodbyes at the threshold, and I wend my way to the food.

The tacos I bring back to an empty table have to be drenched in hot sauce to assert anything comparable to flavor. They're a blight on creation. Pieces of drywall cupping pencil shavings, porridge, and the color gray.

But I'm hungry and I've had worse so I continue to chew.

These workers and officers are probably accustomed to capes, but when an unknown parahuman steps into their midst, it seems they get restless. Understandably. I've been getting glances from them ever since I arrived wearing a mask. A few of them drifted to other sightseeing ventures when I used my Wards ID at the register, but a majority of the others became, if anything, more interested.

Their furtive glances reach a crescendo of increasing non-furtiveness when a young man in tinkertech armor chooses to nonchalantly make a beeline for my table.

"Do you mind if I take a seat?"

I wipe the searing corners of my lips with a napkin and nod to the last Ward left in my grand tour.

"I dropped by the room, but I must've just missed you. The guys said you talked about grabbing something to eat so I figured I'd swing by here to see if I might be able to say hi."

"Hi," I say. "I have several varieties of meat juice on my fingers right now so we'll have to postpone a handshake unless you've brought wet wipes."

"No wet wipes. Sorry."

"I'm not too torn up about it. Can I save you-" I discreetly tongue a piece of lettuce out of my teeth, "from my crushing inability to socialize? You've come to visit me after a long patrol when you're perfectly aware we'll be meeting tomorrow. So you're on a mission. What's bugging you?"

"Nothing. I was just letting my curiosity get the best of me is all. Vista said you were interesting, and I felt like the odd man out. I mean, I was gone for three hours, and I came back to find we'd gained a new member. That's quite the little shake-up, don't you think? I'm thrilled to meet you by the way. I'm Gallant. And I've been led to believe you go by Redoubt?"

"The one and only." I frown. "Hopefully. I didn't think to check a database."

"Well, if it helps, I've never heard it used."

He fidgets. Hell. Here it comes.

"Say," he starts. "I got a weird vibe from some of the team. Did anything happen while I was gone?"

"Weird how?"

"Oh, I don't think it was serious or anything. I was just a bit concerned."

"Concerned? Nothing stood out to me, not that I saw. But I barely know anybody yet. How could you tell things were strange?"

What did I do to get the heart of the team knocking at my door? Is this about having Clockblocker touch my barrier? It wasn't that dangerous. Perhaps I should have made its nonlethality clearer. Given them a "there, there" to calm them down. But Gallant is snooping, so he must have a reason. I'll apologize for my antics if he brings them up and only if he brings them up.

I'm missing a lot of cues because I can't see his face. There's a certain amount of stress inherent in trying to communicate with an automaton. He can see me, but I can't see him. It's an inequitable exchange that frustrates me more than I thought it would.

Should I sidetrack him? Get him talking about his armor? Tinkers are obsessive. I should know. I could suss out Kid Win's jitteriness. He was champing at the bit to pry insight from me, but Gallant's faceless helmet is an enigma. It feels like he wouldn't care at all, that he's unfeeling.

"I realize I'm being frustratingly vague. Forget I said anything. And I mean it. A mugger got away from me on my route, and I guess I let it get to me. Don't judge my mood too harshly."

What is this?

"I wouldn't. I'm happy you confided in me though. You can tell me. Was this some sort of clandestine effort to make me feel included?"

He's picking up on something I'm not putting down. He attempted to shift out of questioning mode too abruptly like he was reading my thoughts. But I didn't change my expression. I didn't move. Can he literally read thoughts? That's supposed to be impossible, and it wasn't on PHO.

I'm tempted not to let him retreat. To go for his jugular and have him explain. But I don't have the energy to do the mental gymnastics right now. I'm getting tired of dealing with parahumans, and I've only just begun.

Gallant pauses.

"Heh. No, I'm not that devious. But if I can unintentionally make you feel more at ease with us, all the better."

After chatting about absolutely nothing for a handful of minutes, I excuse myself. Gallant, as chivalrous as his name implies, tells me he'll walk my tray over to the washing window.

"I'm glad you came to visit me. My name's Tess."

I lie, and share a made-up name.

"Well, Tess. I'm looking forward to hanging out with you, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day."

He skirts around telling me his civilian identity. Clever boy.

I'll need to figure out what his mind reading power that's not actually mind reading is if I ever plan on getting up to mischief in his presence. Of course I only think this thought after we've parted ways.

I voyage back to my room and then a little farther.

I take off my backpack, set it on the polished white counter. The heat is set luxuriously high, and the tiles glimmer in pearly rows. Four bleached and similarly glimmering shower stalls greet me on my left. I allow my shoulders to uncoil. I roll my neck.

Perfectly folded towels are stored in cubby holes at the far end of the bathroom. They're thick. They don't have any perforations dangling tassles of worn cotton. Instead of mildew, they smell like lavender. It's miraculous. I've never stayed in a hotel before, but this is how I dreamed they would be like. I knead my knuckles into the lush fibers.

Wasting no time, I disrobe out in the open like some rich snob with servants. I pull off my jeans and socks. Strip down to my underwear. Unclip my bra.

"That's a nasty bruise on your arm."

I don't flinch. Thank goodness. I'm too tired to flinch, and I guess I've grown accustomed to trusting my barrier's protection. I'm loath to scrutinize all the moments in my past where I shrank back and cringed at any whiff of harassment.

I turn to find Shadow Stalker looming the length of a shield bubble away.

I could reclip my bra, but I don't bother. This is a power play. So I'll play it. I hadn't expected our confrontation to happen so soon, but here it is. Better to tie off loose ends.

This situation is a funhouse mirror to all the times Nobu cornered me. Intimidated me. I can still remember his zipper rubbing up against me when I left my back to him by mistake.

I remove my bra and hang it on a hook next to my already hanging clothes. The nearly pointless undergarment leaves my barrier the moment I stop touching it.

I'll have to be careful if this turns aggressive. I know Shadow Stalker is susceptible to electricity in her shadow form. I could accidentally kill her if my barrier registers as an electric current.

No. Hold on.

I don't actually know Shadow Stalker is susceptible to electricity in her shadow form. Or, at least, I shouldn't know that.

But I do.

Chapter 4: Lowbrow 4.1 - 4.4

Chapter Text

"This is unfair," I say, referring to my recently uncovered, ostensibly preferential, power to just know things.

"Tough tits," Shadow Stalker sneers, misunderstanding my dilemma. "Some things between us need addressing."

Is she making puns on purpose or have I experienced two Freudian slips in quick succession? I wasn't aware they existed outside of comedies, truth be told.

I stand before a spiteful parahuman girl, bare-chested and diminutive, stomaching a great uneasiness which is only tangentially ascribable to her. Like a word with one more letter. Not only am I a tinker, I'm a thinker. Or a trump? No, a trump alters or interacts with other parahumans' powers, and I don't think that's what I did in this instance. Shadow Stalker had her weakness before, I'm largely convinced. I didn't place it in her, and I'm almost positive I haven't adapted to contradict her power either. This "newfound" power of mine has been a tune playing in the back of my mind since I was reborn, and now it's like I've finally remembered the lyrics and can sing along.

My specialization in "energy shields" is a subcategory of a bigger totality perhaps. "Managing weaknesses"? "Defensive expertise"? It could simply not slot together thematically. There are precedents out there. But, on a purely aesthetic level, I don't find that interpretation agreeable.

Sorting through the briar patch can wait until after I've dealt with the thorn in my side.

What rumor is Sofa trying to silence? What do I know about its context so far? It's contained to Winslow. The other Wards aren't aware of it. They didn't blink at my "not all rumors are baseless" remark. The girl who did react thinks her infraction is drastic enough to ambush me in a bathroom. When we were on our way to have me introduced to the Wards, Miss Militia shared the fact that Shadow Stalker is a probationary member for illicit reasons. So can it be that any trouble, no matter how slight, will send Shadow Stalker to juvie?

No. Whatever this is, it's personal to Shadow Stalker's civilian identity.

Sexual relations with a teacher? Hm. Maybe, but it doesn't seem to fit right. That seems like something a school would engage with if there were enough rumors flying around.

Telling people about the other Wards' identities then? She would probably need to tell people who she was in that case. So, no.

Bullying? It does fit her modus operandi, and there was a ruckus about some girl getting stuffed into a locker not so long ago. I can see a school like Winslow glossing over girls being girls with a slap on the wrist.

I'll operate under the bullying supposition for now. I won't make any direct accusations. Only deniable allusions.

"What are you going to do? Shove me in a locker?"

Admittedly not as guileful as I could have been.

"You speak a word about that to anybody and I'll make your life a living hell. I'm not fucking kidding, bitch. I'll slit your throat and leave you for the roaches."

I bet on the right horse again. I should take up gambling

"That's quite the threat you're making."

"It's not a threat. It's a promise. You're gonna keep your mouth shut, and maybe I won't wipe the floor with you. I'm not like those goody two shoes Wards out there. I've done things that'd make you piss yourself and went on with my day. Don't test me."

She savors leveling a predatory gaze at me. I can see a hunger in her. She's collared, but she'll bite the hands that don't feed her. Enduring any punishment without self-reflection is a stopgap measure. She won't look at herself. She has that braggadocious swagger to her that I hate so much.

I realize all of a sudden I don't want to defuse the situation. I want to find her soft spots and tear into her. I want to expose her bloodstained defense mechanisms on a silver platter and force her to confront them.

"Have you ever watched a video online of some little, yappy dog barking at a bear, and the punchline of the clip is the bear walks away? You've probably seen something like it before. They say nothing kills humor like explaining the joke, but I think this one's worth picking apart. The video is funny, you see, because we all know the bear could rip the useless ball of fluff limb from limb. It's a reversal of expectations. Everybody laughs. And we all chuckle at how audacious or stupid the dog must be. 'Why are you barking, little dog?' we ask. 'Don't you know what you're doing?'. 'You can't be this stupid.'."

I approach Shadow Stalker. The world of parahumans is a strange place. You can't trust what you see. The most terrifying cape you've ever met can be a prepubescent boy with neatly parted hair.

Me, for instance. I have to look up at Shadow Stalker to stare her down.

"So why are you barking, little dog?"

"I can take you."

I hum. "No, you really can't. Your confidence is inspiring, but its foundation is built on mud. You don't know the first thing about me, and I know more than enough about you."

"Don't talk down to me. If this turns into a real fight I'll-"

"I'd beat you." I pause as if contemplating something I didn't consider. "I'll throw you a bone on this one though. If you skitter into my room late one night there's more than a zero percent chance you'd be able to kill me while I slept. But don't take pride in that. Almost anyone could do that. I could do that to you."

She goes quiet, probably planning a scenario similar to the one I just described. That's okay. I plan on sleeping with my barrier on, and I'll be able to make backup batteries soon. Maybe I'll even invest in a camera so I can catch her in the act. I've always been intrigued by blackmail as a concept.

There are three recurring instances I can think of when I'll be vulnerable. When my node doesn't have a battery in it or my battery's power has run out, when I'm eating, or when I'm showering- we came close to that one today. I will, of course, not be telling Shadow Stalker any of these shortcomings. It's better to get people focused on the weaknesses you don't have.

Things can only go out of my barrier. They can't go in. Maybe the reason I felt so on edge around Gallant was because he caught me with my barrier down.

Using the facilities though? Not a problem as long as I'm grasping all the toilet paper I'll need beforehand.

Shadow Stalker begins speaking. Slowly. Like she's trying to get something through someone's impressively dense head.

"You talk about killing, but you don't get it. You say a word you don't understand because you've heard adults using it, and you want to be a grown-up just like them. Well, hear this, you dumb slut. I've killed people. I've watched them die. And it won't take much for me to do it again."

I almost want to come out and say, "And you think I haven't?", but, in all fairness, I've only killed the one person. Also, I'd never do something as idiotic as admit to murder in the middle of PRT headquarters, even as an insinuation. I haven't ruled out listening devices entirely. There are tinkers on the premises and regular technicians besides. The only safe thoughts are the thoughts you keep in your head. And, since I had my lunchtime rendezvous with Gallant, I'm not even certain about that anymore.

They should call her Shadows Talker. The amount of unsubstantial blabbing she does is egregious.

I smile.

"Listen closely. I don't make enemies. Meaning I don't leave issues unresolved. If you can't be top dog, be smart. Befriend."

She's had enough. She pulls back her fist and lets me have it.

This, of course, is a mistake. I rock back from the punch, minor purple tessellations flooding my vision, but she's the one that pulls away hissing. She's just performed what we in the business call "punching the statue".

"You were there when I explained I'm a shield tinker, weren't you?"

She surprises me by continuing her assault. I thought one swift denial would do it, but she's tenacious. I'll give her that. She's fought parahumans before and gotten used to hitting brick walls at first. She's expecting me to have a defect she can exploit or she's going for a method where she can chip away at me.

Neither will work. I'm reasonably sure. But moments like this are what controlled tests are for. Maybe I should have delayed joining the Wards so I could have enjoyed some more "me time" learning the ropes. Who knows? Shadow Stalker could possibly find something I overlooked. Wouldn't that be embarrassing. I'll need to take this more seriously.

Shadow Stalker turns into her shadow form to disorient me. Then she lunges around me to reach for the node on my back. Good. She's using what she saw me do earlier against me.

Doesn't make it a successful effort though. My node snuggles itself into its barrier every time as well. I'm the only one who can remove its battery because I'm the only one inside its energy curtain. I'd either have to turn it off with a thought or the battery would have to run out for Sofa to get at it.

But my battery is nowhere near running out. She'll need to add on a hefty brute rating to cause me to start worrying in earnest.

I thrust my elbow back to fend her off. She shifts into her shadow form to escape it. My elbow makes contact.

She doesn't drop dead. So that's a plus. Instead of striking her in the gut, I push her back. It's sort of similar to pushing on a bed sheet, but the difference is she has to maintain her human shape. She floats back. I didn't electrocute her, and she couldn't pass through my defenses. It's the best case scenario.

I rush her, shouldering my way into her body to push her shadow form and going in for condescending backhands when she's solid. It won't take much of this to have her convinced she should run. Either she'll drop through the floor or dart for the limits of my short wingspan. But I want to send a message.

"Electricity's flowing to that light switch behind you. What happens when I push?" I ask.

She turns corporeal once more, glancing at the wall I've shepherded her into.

While she's still second-guessing herself, I palm her forehead and slam the back of her head against the tiles. The sizable thunk her skull makes as it smacks the wall is the perfect note to end our fight on.

I back away, seeing if she'll launch into another skirmish. She doesn't immediately. She takes a few seconds to dab the back of her head to check for blood and stare daggers into me.

"Don't make me go crying to them that you slipped and fell," I say with a little more chipperness purposely administered into my tone. I really do need to wrangle a yearbook sooner rather than later to figure out who this crackpot is.

She's not the sharpest cheddar in the cheese drawer, sure, but if things need doing she'd be a competent asset to have within reach. She seems morally flexible. Whether that's a point for or against her, I don't know.

"Do what you have to do, but don't do it to me. Alright? Your schoolyard indiscretions are safe and sound." I sweep my arm back and out to the side, inviting her to the door. "Now go peep elsewhere, you dirty pervert."

Shadow Stalker comes up short of ferally growling at me, but she seems placated overall. After a standoff, where she inspects me for any signs of wavering, she wordlessly slinks off. She doesn't even make a show of it by gliding in her shadow form.

I breathe in and out. I give myself a couple of seconds. Then I slide out of my underwear.

Not being able to introduce new things to myself when I have my barrier up means soap and water are a complication. I'll have to go into the shower stall defenseless.

So, after burying my trepidation, I do. I take a short, anxious shower, preparing to throw my barrier back up at the first sign of a Ward emerging from my shower stall's wall like a vengeful apparition.

I put on my second set of clothes: replacement underwear, different jeans, woolen socks, and a men's gray thermal shirt. I bunch the clothes I was wearing under my armpit, shoulder my backpack, and flip my node back on.

Letting out a breath I didn't know I was holding, I amble back to my room a few doors down.

I toss my used clothes in the corner. I'll figure out what to do with them later. I take my laptop out of my backpack, and, using adhesive bandages, I place Glory Girl back on my wall where she belongs.

In the state my roommate's in she won't be playing hostess to any of my guests, seeing as she's a decapitated head without eyeballs. Still she smiles through it all, albeit eerily because of her disfigurement.

I open my laptop and wait for it to boot up. It's late in the afternoon. Yet, at the rate I'm going, I doubt I'll be able to sleep tonight. There's so much work to be done. Research to do.

I have to look into the current parahuman climate in Brockton Bay some more. Dive deep into the histories of Armsmaster and my teammates at least. Write up proposals for projects I haven't been able to put together. Look up other tinkers in the Protectorate and figure out what I could order from them now that I'm a Ward.

I scarcely have enough time to think.

But scarcely doesn't mean not at all.

I'm a thinker. I've been a thinker for two weeks and some change, and during those more than two weeks a monotonous, soul-deep tinnitus has, evidently, been pervading me. From the moment I snapped out of my fugue to the moment Shadow Stalker ambushed me, then even onward into the present. And I only just noticed.

Why did my power become a clarion call when I was facing off with Shadow Stalker in that bathroom? Is it based on having to defend myself? Surprise? Whatever provoked it into wakefulness had it singing out to me. "Eureka!" it sang. Like divine music was being poured into my skull from on high, white hot and molten.

But, now? It's a listless melody at the edge of my perception. Not inert, not completely. Have I been avoiding acknowledging its influence even as I was worrying about my thoughts being manipulated? I'll have to take solace in knowing how to listen for it now.

I use the username and password Sarah included in one of my informational packets to get onto the internet. I type in "thinker classification". And I sigh at the long list of results.

At seven thirty the next morning, March the first, I place the single ergonomic chair my room was furnished with on top of my bed. Then I stand atop it. I tuck my laptop, my photos of mom, and my narwhal plushy in the space above the ceiling tiles. I then dismount, rather gracelessly, by flopping to one side.

My barrier flares a bit when I finish my drop on the sturdy floor.

If my node was by any means vindictive, I suspect it would have let me take my lumps for using it to expedite mundane tasks, but the two of us seem to get along as fine as any girl and an esoteric piece of equipment surgically embedded in her spine could hope to get along. It's got my back, and I put it there.

I take the chair off my bed, smooth out the indents it left in my bedding, and leave my nonessential possessions in my backpack under the bed. The only thing I keep with me is my drawing binder. I clutch it to my chest.

I'm a dullard. An oaf. A slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging lummox. I neglected to ask where I'd be meeting Armsmaster today. A serious blunder that I'll be blaming on my appetite. If I was supposed to make my way out to the Protectorate East-North-East headquarters for my appointment, I'm already late.

I told myself I wouldn't fall asleep, but the holdover fatigue from not being able to sleep the night I fled hit me like a porous five ton bag of knockout powder. From one to seven I slept as if I were dead, safely cocooned in my barrier. Oblivious. Sofa could have destroyed any number of my things before I roused from my slumber.

Oh, to be a Noctis cape.

At least Shadow Stalker had the decency to show me her worst self. All these other people - who thought it fitting to categorize themselves as heroes somewhere along the line - are still lurking in the tall grass. Optimistically, to examine me and figure out what they can get out of me. But looking for an opportunity to pounce? Not impossible. I'd rather have Sofa raising her hackles, expressing her warnings in no uncertain terms, than get caught unawares with a crossbow bolt through my sternum while I'm trying to enjoy a chalupa.

I knew I'd have to keep my guard up, even in a kingdom of angels, but Shadow Stalker's done me a favor by empirically grounding that point in reality.

I won't be tattling on her. The half-formed barbs I have in my quiver are more useful to me if they stay there. In their present state they're nudges I can apply to Shadow Stalker. If I send them flying, I can only hope they hit my intended target.

The more people get involved, the more unpredictabilities are set in motion.

Say I did investigate Sofa's civilian identity. Now that I have a partial name, an extensive description, and a place to look, it wouldn't be in the least bit difficult. Say I gather what gruesome facts I can on what the bully's been up to. Not much. Just enough to build off of. I reveal these details to Piggot.

The director shakes her head. She tells Sofa that she's disappointed in her. The PRT can't keep covering her stunts up forever. Wards are supposed to learn to be more discreet before they become full-fledged members of the Protectorate. Sofa's pay is docked for a month. I'm perceived as a loose-lipped trespasser, and Sofa is now my dedicated enemy.

Alternative. The director shakes her head. She tells Sofa she'll be sent to the hoosegow. This sort of behavior can't be condoned, and the PRT has already given Shadow Stalker plenty of chances. I'm expected to give a testimony. Show up in court. The director mentions I'll be acting as hall monitor for the rest of the Wards since I'm so trustworthy. She'll be requiring weekly reports on her desk.

Alternative. The director shakes her head. She tells me she can't trust me on my word. The PRT has looked into Shadow Stalker's life, but it hasn't thoroughly looked into mine. Officers inspect the bar I lived above. They find out someone was murdered in the alley out back. It wasn't even perpetrated in the heat of a trigger event. I'm a tinker, and the shield canister I used to kill the misguided boy needed time to be built. As a cherry on top, Sofa claims I ambushed her in the bathroom. She points to the bump on the back of her head to prove it.

Alternative. The director shakes her head. She tells me not to waste her precious minutes on trivial matters not even a week after the Simurgh touched down in Canberra. I'm seen as a whining child by Piggot, and Sofa believes all my snapping was toothless. Word travels that I ran to the closest mother figure I could find with my tail tucked between my legs. It takes weeks to exhume my reputation.

Too many alternatives. Too much hassle.

Team members can't start disappearing the moment I turn up. It doesn't take a genius to connect data points. Strange girl arrives. Shadow Stalker publicly calls her a slut. Shadow Stalker is found dead a day later in the form of bowl-shaped mush.

And I'm not a forensic prodigy either. Even if I was being more cautious, I couldn't say with any certainty I'd be able to cover up all my tracks. The PRT would probably pull in a cape from out of state who could sniff out recent murderers with their super nose.

Prodding Shadow Stalker into a justified fight would introduce completely different complications. A fight where Shadow Stalker knows her opponent is aware of her weakness to electricity sounds like a real slog. She's designed for running away, and I don't have the element of surprise on my side anymore.

It doesn't matter. Murder can't be my first recourse inside this nest of saintly snakes anyhow. I chop the head off one viper and the others will get wary - get watchful - or, worse still, try to sink their fangs into me. If I instate a policy of killing everyone who looks at me wrong in this city, I might end up depopulating Brockton Bay.

I'm prepared to tolerate Shadow Stalker for as long as I have to. I didn't have a barrier for most of my courtship's three month span, and I kept Nobu at arm's length - mostly - by exerting my wits. He struck closer to my nerve stem than Sofa ever could. He might not have had the power to turn incorporeal, but he did have the advantage of sixty or more pounds filling out his frame and a place in our community. No one would have batted an eye if he attacked me in ABB territory, but I have a feeling people around here would at least pretend to bat an eye if Sofa did the same thing.

I get the impression Sofa is smarter than my ex too. Which implies to me she'll take the hint I've slammed into her head.

She could be an asset. Leverage. My shields are versatile, but they're not all-purpose. And why would I go to all the trouble of condensing a vault's hinges when I could just ask Sofa, my unfriendly ghost companion, to pop in and grab the safe deposit boxes?

A gentle rapping comes from my door.

"Redoubt? It's Sarah Fink. I'm here to bring you to your meeting with Armsmaster."

Thank goodness for Sarah. I open my door after checking through the peephole.

"Your last name's Fink?"

"It was my husband's."

"Was" being the pivotal word in that sentence. I don't pry.

Sarah helms a short, silent journey to what turns out to be Kid Win's lab. We pass through the empty Wards main room - everybody is presumably at school - then enter a door off to the right.

No one is awaiting me inside.

"Armsmaster will be along shortly. I'll be just outside to bring you to the cafeteria when you're done."

"Sarah. Sarah, please. I can make it to the cafeteria from here. I value and respect you, but go put your feet up."

"I'll be just outside," she repeats. She maroons me in the vacant lab.

The vacant lab.

I pan my vision across the abundant feast of delectable gizmos and baubles before me, fingers twitching and pupils, no doubt, dilating.

Would Kid Win miss a scrap or two from his table? I'll stay away from his unfinished projects, of which there seem to be many, but what he's not using can be replaced swiftly enough, right? It'd be better to make my backup battery - and apologies - now instead of remaining so highly strung. One battery doesn't even take that much material to construct.

It's decided. I get to work.

"How long has she been in here?" a masculine voice asks. I can't help but fall out of my groove at the auditory disturbance.

"About fifteen minutes," Sarah responds, further back.

I slide a panel onto my still incomplete battery and turn to face my visitor.

Armsmaster isn't in his power armor as I had expected he would be. In lieu of his costume, he's in a sleek outfit made out of some variety of futuristic textile, dark blue in color. He has his visored helmet on instead of a simple domino mask however. It seems odd. As is my lot in life, he towers over me. I suppose one could call him handsome, but I don't find beards attractive on men or women so his cropped facial hair subtracts from his sum total in my mind.

Yet his bristly chin isn't the key detail here. Armsmaster's found me elbow deep in his protégé's cookie jar. I'll have to take a measurement of his mood.

"Armsmaster. I've been looking forward to meeting up with you. I don't know if Miss Militia or the director told you yet - there was a lot of talk to sift through, admittedly - but my barrier performs better with armor so, once I get my legs underneath me, with any luck we'll be able to make you much more resilient in the field."

There. I've dangled a treat in front of the hero. Hopefully that'll mollify whatever response he had drafted.

He takes a moment to size me up (no height jokes, please). After a second or two, he seems to reach a conclusion.

"It's great to have you with us, Redoubt," he says. "You're taking to this pretty quickly. From what I've heard you're not shy about sharing your work."

"Clockblocker?"

"Endangering fellow heroes isn't a risk you should idly take."

I want this man to view me as a colleague, not as a child he has to teach. I can't have him examining every little thing I do going forward. I should encourage him to be lenient somehow. He has to trust I have common sense or he'll be going over my efforts with a fine-tooth comb.

"I wasn't telling the truth," I vocalize. Expressing it so plainly and this soon into our relationship tastes sour on my tongue.

I continue before Armsmaster can interpose. "I don't know these boys. I'm sure you'd vouch for them if I gave you the chance. They're heroes, but being a hero doesn't automatically make someone incapable of misconduct. I've had rotten experiences with men their age and older. No, I won't specify to make my point. You don't need me to if you're as heroic as they say you are. I knew beyond a doubt my barrier wouldn't hurt anyone. I was being theatrical. In all likelihood I'll learn to have the utmost faith in my teammates in the future, but, for now, I put on a harmless performance to crystallize in their minds I am not to be touched."

"About half of what you said read as true. More importantly, you didn't know beyond a doubt that your power's interaction with Clockblocker's wouldn't cause harm."

In any test there's going to be a little uncertainty. Armsmaster can't fault me on the remote possibility there would be a power conflict between my barrier and time-stoppage. It's not as if he knows I was actually unsure about what would happen when my energy came into contact with another person.

"I appreciate your concern," I tactfully say.

Armsmaster tosses his helmeted head back a bit and scoffs.

"Another lie," he says.

And he says it with such certainty. He sounds like he's reciting something, like he's fact-checking the words that come out of my mouth. Something's definitely wrong with his side of the conversation. I can sense it. He has an ace up his sleeve, and he's not even being stealthy about it. "Another lie," he said, and what I said "read as true" to him. He wasn't sizing me up at the start, was he? He was reading me.

Is this another inexplicable, unrecorded case of not-quite-telepathy, à la Gallant, in the same building I encountered the aberration just yesterday? That seems insanely implausible. Or are the Protectorate and PRT secretly gathering all the mind readers they can?

No. Stop that. I won't spiral into wild conjecture about Protectorate-wide conspiracies. I'm not going to turn into a raving lunatic on my second day on the job.

Armsmaster is a tinker. Everyone says so. But you said so too, "Tess", and you're not just a tinker. Could Armsmaster be a kindred spirit? A tinker/thinker mega combo? His tinker specializations are miniaturization and efficiency, or so the internet decrees. What would that translate into thinker-wise? What would pair well with efficiency? Too broad. What would complement miniatur-

Big, out of place helmet. You're so slow sometimes.

"My dad's Oni Lee," I blurt.

Armsmaster looks taken aback.

"You don't believe that," he says, unnecessarily.

He's perplexed. I get that.

I hum. "A lie detector? Would you be willing to make me one?" I fiddle with a soldering iron then link vital components together. I tap a filament into place. "You should really keep that closer to your chest. It's a power all on its own."

I understand wanting to advertise your achievements, but an ace in the hole is only a boon if it stays in the hole until needed. Armsmaster could have wrung a lot of damning information out of me if he had but asked while I was clueless.

"You're a sharp young woman," Armsmaster concedes. He sounds as if he's accusing me of something.

I let out a huff. I raise my right hand and place my other down on my drawing binder.

"I have no plans of endangering my teammates again, and I'll make an apology to Clockblocker when I see him next," I say, meaning it. "Now can we quit the unpleasant pleasantries and get to the tinker talk?"

Armsmaster pauses. Then nods. "I'd like that. Yes."

As I said, I have no plans that would imperil the other Wards. Not currently. And I'll see if I can step on Clockblocker's foot later on so I can give him a heartfelt "sorry".

Of course, I don't actually have to go through with the apology. I only had to believe I was going to go through with it when I said the words.

I move my hands back to what they were doing before I made my sham vow. I fasten a final wire into place. I slip it into its smooth outer casing and snap a pronged segment into some corresponding notches.

"Miss Militia did mention your purported quickness with tinkering. But... It's one thing to hear about it and another thing to witness. Do you mind if I look over your shoulder?"

"Be my guest, but I'm already finished."

I announce as much by plugging my new battery into a nearby socket.

"Impressive."

Armsmaster's pinched lips are hard to construe, so I avoid misconstruing the whiskered expression by turning to my drawing binder.

"I've used some of Kid Win's materials to make that. Do you think he'll mind?"

"Kid Win signed off on letting you in. I told him I wanted to get a feel for how you operate. I just hadn't expected you to get to it before I had arrived. Can you give me an overview of what you've made?"

"That's a spare battery for the barrier node in my back, but I assume you mean you want to hear about my other-"

"Stop," he interrupts. "In your back?"

I don't pull off my thermal because I'm only wearing a bra underneath it, but I yank the back of the collar down so Armsmaster can see some of my node.

"As far as I can tell, I triggered and built this within a window of seven hours. I don't know the specifics. I think my node might be foundational to my power so it..." My breath catches. I clear my throat and clench the fist holding my shirt. "So it took control of me to insert the keystone device. I have no memory of its construction, but I could probably describe most of the hardware."

I leave out two factors that have eluded me no matter how long I've put them to thought: how the direct neural connection functions and any step of the operative installation.

"That's irregular."

"You're telling me."

"Is that a usual occurence for you? Losing time when you tinker?"

"No. I can be obsessive, maybe. But not wake up in Tahiti with no clue how I got there obsessive."

"When I entered the room you didn't seem to notice."

I release my thermal and tap my knuckles on a reflective metal surface nearby.

"I saw you."

"You didn't greet me."

"Neither did you."

"Fair enough," he says. We've both shifted into a pleasing cadence. Almost robotic.

"Tell me about your tinkertech," he enjoins me.

I describe what I've built so far - my node, my shield canisters, the batteries. And I succinctly explain their capabilities to him. I then hand him my drawing binder.

"I drew schematic diagrams. Wrote descriptions. I'd like your official approval and endorsement on all of them. I'd also like your assistance in procuring the materials I'll need and a lab with a ceiling height exceeding twenty feet."

Armsmaster points his visor at me. Staring me down, I presume.

"That's a lot to request in so little time."

I won't have him thinking I can't solve my own problems if he doesn't cooperate with me. His assistance would be appreciated, but I don't need it. An ally of Redoubt's reaps rewards or, at the very least, doesn't run into tragic shield malfunctions at inopportune moments.

"I'm an up-and-comer. I plan on achieving big, incontestable things. People will know my name. You have my guarantee." I let that sink in. Wait a second or two.

"Let's say we rewrite the intro to my hero's journey. Improve the narrative. I didn't just walk in off the streets in this rendition. Armsmaster the paragon convinced me to join when I was at a crossroads. Headline: 'Veteran Hero Armsmaster Allays Redoubt's Doubts'. I could have fallen into the ABB's clutches. It was all I knew after all. But you, Armsmaster, showed me a better path. Now the ragamuffin girl, Brockton Bay's Cinderella, idolizes you. Everything she does, she does to live up to your legacy."

"Cinderella? Really?" he skeptically asks.

I jab my thumb into my chest then make a finger gun at Armsmaster.

"When they talk about me, they'll be talking about you. You could ride this momentary surge in publicity to the top if you play your cards right."

"If I tie myself to you, you could just as easily drag me down."

"How about you share your other sure-fire way to a better position, and we'll see if I can't poke some holes in it. Dauntless is a rising star, and he's only going to keep rising. It's the nature of his power and the PRT's perception of him. You know if you don't do something soon he'll outpace you."

"You're a thinker."

This startles me.

"Because I make a good point?"

"You're either hiding it or you're truly unaware. You haven't lied to me directly since you found out I have a detector, but there's an edge of falsehood to everything you say."

"A lady has a right to her secrets."

"No. No, this lady doesn't. Not if she wants me to agree to a partnership."

"That stance won't make you very popular."

I grind my teeth. I'm getting the feeling I shouldn't beat around the bush with him. He won't accept my opinion over his own, and he definitely won't accept it if he doesn't see the cold hard facts.

"The truth?" I start off. "Yes, I'm a thinker. It may very well be my dominant ability. When it's applicable, I can't turn it off, yet I only gained a full understanding of its pervasiveness yesterday when it unavoidably asserted itself. To the best of my knowledge, it feeds me other peoples' weaknesses. More specifically, parahumans' weaknesses. I think this because my attentiveness has been heightened ever since I arrived at PRT headquarters, and my exposure to parahumans while I had my power was nil before then. The diffusion of intel is subtle when cursory support is all my situation demands, but profound insight can be supplied when - now, I'm not certain here - either I'm harried in general or when conditions are close to, well... my trauma."

I'm fairly certain about the parahuman part of my working theory for the added reason that, plain and simple, the average Joe's weakness is a bullet in his cerebrum. I doubt very much my thinker power is going to blast me with music every time it realizes that.

"What event caused your bout of profound insight?" Armsmaster finally asks.

"I choose not answer that question. Rest assured, the matter is settled."

"You said you can't turn it off. What weakness are you using against me right now?"

"Using for you. And I'm not 'told' explicitly in cases like this. Revealing my personal speculations on the matter might lessen the effectiveness of my approach."

"Consider your approach ineffective if you don't tell me."

I was afraid he'd get stubborn. But, fine. I suppose in the long run it'll be practical to have my allies acknowledging and addressing their faults.

"The trend I've noticed points toward ego."

Armsmaster gets contemplative. He swivels his head to glance at my charging battery.

"I'll need to evaluate the-"

He's backpedaling. I need to metaphorically slap him in the face to get him here with me in the room and on the same page.

"Do you know what question you should really be asking after hearing all I've had to say?"

"Enlighten me," he says.

I pause. Stare at the me repeated in his visor.

"What happens when the girl who sees weaknesses stares long and hard at an Endbringer?"

After voicing my open-ended question about Endbringers, Armsmaster was as good as won over. I thank my lucky stars he didn't have the wherewithal to piggyback on what I asked and pose a well-phrased inquiry of his own. The way I view things - and, more importantly, the way I viewed things in that moment - an equivocal question can't be considered a lie. Hypotheticals are hallucinatory.

And I'd have to be drugged to travel anywhere near an Endbringer. I'll look at snapshots and study footage 'til the cows come home if Armsmaster wants me to. But will I go see one in the flesh? No. That's the beauty of making machines. I don't have to watch how the hamburger patties are made.

And they have and will be made. There's no doubt about that.

Furthermore, a useful shield tinker couldn't possibly be allowed to fight in the vanguard. Especially not the useful shield tinker who became essential to the Effort by making Endbringer-rated battlements and frontline devices.

You better bet your prize-winning hog the Endbringers were near the top of my numbered list of priorities. The Simurgh has been on everybody's mind lately, and I don't want there to ever come a day where she's in my mind. She and her siblings are on a different level of the don't-screw-with-me hierarchy. I may not be able to convince an Endbringer to stay away from me in their chosen arena, but I can convince my fellow parahumans to keep me away from the Endbringers.

Would it be possible to orchestrate a public scene where I valorously volunteer and someone has to talk me down from charging into the fray? Maybe. I'd have to be utterly certain they would talk me down though. It's a tentative option.

Grand designs require solid beginnings.

Armsmaster rush-organized meetings with the financial heads and people responsible for requisitions both. He even snagged me a provisional permission slip of sorts from the PRT's military and science teams. I mainly stayed quiet for my part. Yet, I'd usually flash whoever we were visiting puppy dog eyes when Armsmaster went into his explanations on how I'm a shield tinker. Hardly a safety hazard was what I was trying for. It certainly helps that a majority of my proposals will directly benefit the PRT and Protectorate if they end up functioning like I've designed them to.

Some of the people we needed to see - and I do mean we - were only on site until noon so we had to hurry. And so we did. From one office to another we power walked in a procedural frenzy of forms and formal approval. It took until school usually lets off.

To all appearances, the PRT has a whole college curriculum of departments that apply to my tinkertech's clearance in some labyrinthine way or another.

When I informed my taskmaster I hadn't eaten since lunch the previous day and offhandedly asked, half in jest, if he had anything on him, I can honestly say I didn't expect him to pull a protein bar out of nowhere and warn me not to ingest it if I had nut allergies. I don't of course (e.g. my tin of assorted nuts).

I've come one step closer to eating nutrient-rich algae bars in a hole.

But that's not even the best part. At the end of our excursion through the, it turns out, uniformly lackluster PRT building, the big reveal came. I was given my very own lab. Armsmaster commandeered the space for me. It was a garage that housed ancillary PRT vans. Officers were ordered to wheel the stored hulks out into a nearby parking structure to clear the area for me, and I was left to Julie Andrews twirl on the oil stained concrete.

It was magical. I'm still buzzing with excitement.

As we were parting ways, I tried to persuade Armsmaster into not sharing my thinker classification with anybody else. I reasoned with him that every organization has leaks, and we wouldn't want our advantage getting out to the villains before it had to. That would mean one less tool to use to its full potential for the good of the city. I referenced his lie detector. Would we want that edge divulged to every criminal in Brockton Bay?

I did that a lot in the hours we had together. I framed everything in terms of "we". Then I put a bow on the whole approach by asking Armsmaster if any of his well-meaning secret projects had ever been hamstrung once news of them had been released.

I left him on that. It'll be difficult for him to realize he was being manipulated. When you know someone can't lie to you and they're being thoroughly reasonable, what fear do you have of getting misled?

Now I sit in a large chair, rear end pushed forward, heels perched, and knees acting as an easel for my open drawing binder. I sketch while I wait. In the background of my jackknifed legs, a kaleidoscopic exhibition of everyday activity plays out.

"Should I be worried about that?" I ask pointing at the array of monitors crowded together on this side of the room with me. Centered in the midst of camera images sent in from across the city, bold numerals announcing "00:15:00" tick down to "00:14:59" and continue to drop one second at a time.

"Christ!" Aegis jolts.

"Redoubt," I correct him.

"How long have you-?"

Been here? Long enough to have heard you call Clockblocker Dennis.

"Nevermind. The other guys'll be here soon. Sorry, Tess, but we're gonna have to push back our team meeting. The people upstairs scheduled tour groups for today. Couldn't be helped. Appointments were booked before you arrived. That's what the numbers are." He gestures at the countdown. "You haven't been made public yet, and you don't have a proper costume so..."

Dress up as a janitor and lurk? Go hide in a cupboard? Join a tour group and ask pointed questions? I'm perfectly fine with an awkward pause, but Aegis is a natural leader type. This stretch of silence seems like a dose of masochism on his part.

"Would you mind tinkering with Kid Win instead? We don't need every Ward here to put on a show, and Win said he'd be more than willing to skip."

"I haven't been able to admire Gallant's tinkertech yet."

"Oh? Oh, yeah, no. Gallant's not actually a tinker. That's a-"

An abrasive noise wails from yellowed screens. I slip on my nondescript domino mask. Aegis is in his redder than oxidized iron costume already. The rest of the Wards, minus Clockblocker who was in the room until now, funnel in. They're all in their regalia.

At the back of the pack, Shadow Stalker directs her attention toward Aegis and I. Worried that I'm letting the cat out of the bag, are you?

The face I smile at is stern and metal.

Gallant, a few steps ahead of Sofa, pivots his knightly head from me to the subject of my interest then back to me again.

I imagine a snowy village nestled in the mountains, blanketed in fresh, white powder. Smoke rises from chimneys warm with hearth-fire into an overcast sky luminous with honeyed light. The light is gradually tipping towards sunset. My wattle and daub residence sits on mortared river stones wheeled in from the valley decades ago. The humped and winding wall that surrounds my small property is made out of the same river stones as well. Gentle snowdrifts cling to its sides. I gaze through bottleglass, interpreting the shapes. Cupped between my hands is a steaming mug of-

Gallant looks away. I get the feeling the gesture doesn't necessarily matter so I keep a thread of happy thoughts wound around my strung together ideas.

I recognize this rhythm now; this is my thinker ability's hand on the scale. What do I know about Gallant? He's not a tinker, apparently. His concussive blasts come straight from him then. The PRT wouldn't put a regular boy in someone else's special tinker armor, would they? He'd have to be some variety of parahuman, and my power is telling me as much. Emotions are the linchpin here. He shoots them. So why shouldn't he sense them too? Consistently? Yes. Can I make myself immune to him? Not yet.

Master abilities are going to be a recurring problem. I have no defenses against them. I have no clue if I'll be able to shield myself from mental influence or nosiness even if I try.

So what does Gallant detect when he looks at me? My emotions aren't out of place, I don't think. Would they be seen as strange to an outside observer? When you have a general consensus of what people should be feeling, the person who's not feeling that way would stick out. Right? So I'll have to take cues from the others and substitute the emotions I believe they're feeling to cover up my own. Hence the snowy village instinct, I suppose. Was I not happy enough? No, I'm still ecstatic about my lab. Not calm enough more like. Continual fearfulness would look peculiar to a pampered teenager. The boy might start harboring mistrust.

If I had known I would have to deal with something like this I might have thought twice about joining the Wards.

Stinking masters.

"So you'll forgive me for the broken promise?" Aegis asks, ignorant to my cogitation.

I don't recall him making a promise to me, and I didn't want to stand before a tribunal of Wards anyhow. The meeting being cancelled is a pleasant surprise.

Although...

"It would be absurd of me to hold you to unrealistic standards. I'm used to regular guys not following through on what they say. Why should I begrudge you?"

I speak without a hint of malice. This is what I've grown to expect from the world, my tone says. I don't have any reason to expect better from you, Aegis. You've supplied nothing out of the ordinary. Under that helmet the new recruit doesn't see a responsible leader, she sees a regular guy.

How does that make you feel? Will you adapt to correct my misconception?

"Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

This is uncanny. He's so quick to act nice. I didn't have to grab his arm, let alone twist it.

I take on the nearest thing I can achieve to a demure expression and look up at him. I don't know how well it lands. I was never good at acting contrary to my nature.

"Winslow. Beyond the rumors Shadow Stalker mentioned, there's added... antagonism that makes going back difficult to bear. Is there a- could you find a way to get me transferred to Arcadia?"

"Of course," the intrepid hero accepts his quest. "That's nothing."

"It would mean everything to me," I respond. "Thank you, Carlos."

If he figures out who to talk to and what paperwork needs to be filled out, he'd be saving me a bundle of time.

Aegis ineffectively rubs the back of his costumed neck. He reacts puzzlingly to my eye contact, looking down at the ground rather than meeting my gaze. I was attempting not to glower, but I guess that backfired.

"I'll be just a knock away if you want me," I say to end our little conversation. I motion to Kid Win's lab.

"Yeah," Aegis says huskily.

"Yeah," he says again, more resolutely.

I uncurl from my chair and journey to Kid Win's lab hugging my drawing binder to my chest.

Kid Win has switched out his red visor for a domino mask. He seems to be fiddling, but not really working, with the materials in front of him.

"Hey, Redoubt."

"Redoubt was my father's name. Call me Tess."

He looks up at me. Lets a weak chuckle loose.

"Sure, Tess."

"Are you busy?"

The other tinker taps a screwdriver on a piece of metal a few times then drops the screwdriver.

"Not really. No. What's up?"

"Would you mind doing me a favor?"

"Uh, no," he says.

He shakes himself out of whatever malaise he was stewing in.

"I wouldn't mind helping is what I meant to say. What can I do?"

"Sit there and let me stare at you."

"Sure?"

I carry a stool over to Kid Win and hunker down. Elbows on my thighs. Chin held on the heels of my palms. Fingers folded in.

The boy stares back at me like I'm a toad he's pretty confident he just heard speak but not with a hundred percent certainty. He's waiting on my next words to reach a conclusion.

I don't explain, and he's either too timid or confused to ask.

I need to know if I can force my power to sing. One "eureka!" hardly suggests a reliable pattern. Knowing the cause for the effect could prove pivotal to future survival. I can't assume a foreign thought will come hurtling in to unstick me from sticky situations. The band won't play if I don't hand them their instruments. Or is it the instruments won't play if I don't hand them a band?

Tinkering can be put on hold for a few minutes, seeing as I have a lab of my own now, and it's going to be stocked with goodies in a matter of days. Not to mention Kid Win's resources aren't the same resources I'll be needing. Tinkertech isn't all anything goes nonsense like I thought back when I was an ordinary girl.

Hopefully I'll be able to shut myself in my lab once I've amassed supplies. Capes, on the other hand, won't always be around or willing to be a specimen for metaphysical dissection.

I unfocus to focus. I absorb Kid Win as an entire human being. As a parahuman. I concentrate on prying off his outer casing to expose the radiant dynamo throbbing within. He's more than his veins, his nerves, his brain. He's an intelligent biological apparatus. He's a coruscating soul capable of wondrous things. He has brown hair.

"Alright. This isn't working. Could you threaten me with bodily harm, please?"

"I don't feel comfortable doing that."

"That's reassuring, but for the purposes of this test I'd like you to try."

"You're conducting a test on me?"

"I don't know what you could have possibly thought this was other than a test."

A clinical heart to heart?

"I'm gonna have to pass. Sorry."

"Regrettable, but understandable." I unhunch.

"If you're having trouble with something, maybe I could help in another way?"

I shake my head, move my stool back, and orbit around him to inspect his tinkertech. The devices appear nothing like my black matte art pieces. His creations are more exuberant. Playful. Segmented perhaps?

"What's your specialty? PHO couldn't seem to make its mind up."

"The PRT tells me I'm exceptional with antigrav and guns. I don't necessarily agree. Sure, I combine unfinished guns into a single functioning thing sometimes, but 'guns' doesn't seem right to me, you know? Do you ever feel that kind of uncertainty with your stuff?"

"Uncertainty? Yes. In regards to my tinkertech? Not one whit. Do you have any idea what could be causing your difficulties?"

"It's personal." Kid Win dons a far-off look. He shows signs of self-consciousness. Bent shoulders. A discomfited upturn to his lips.

I attempt to counteract his embarrassment with a non-judgemental bearing. I train my face to typify patience.

Kid Win relents after nearly a minute of silence.

"What it boils down to is I'm bad with numbers and I get distracted." He reports the facts like he's not talking about himself. "My attention wanders. I daydream. It doesn't seem like much when I simplify it like this, but it causes problems."

"Do you take pills?"

"Right now? Yeah."

"Do they do any good?"

"It's complicated. No, I guess."

"Will they get me high?" I ask in the same attentive tone.

"What?!"

"You were drifting dreary, deary. I'm joking." I give him a smirk. Tilt my head mischievously. "Unless..."

"No, my medication won't get you high."

"Unacceptable. I demand recompense. Let's see what you can build for me instead. Your target objective is..." I scrunch my forehead in supposed contemplation as if I didn't walk through his door knowing exactly what I wanted him to make. "An arm mounted projectile launcher. Today's challenge: the projectile has to be a physical thing. None of that hard light drivel you're used to. We're going to get you out of your discomfort zone."

Kid Win nods, with a little more buoyancy. His movements have a fresh vitality to them.

He's been stressed. Repressed. To a point where anyone offering to uncork his bottled up issues for a while would seem a godsent darling. I don't favor his newly gained inspiration's chances for an extended lifespan, but that's not what matters here. I've asked him to make me something and made it seem like I was doing him a kindness. Whatever ends up happening I look better because of it.

"Don't expect much all at once, okay?" Kid Win pushes disparate parts into a pile off to the side. Pulls out a few items. "Whatever comes next is gonna be ugly, and it'll be mainly your fault."

By my count, I was afforded two diverging paths in that dimly lit alleyway.

The first path retched me out onto this city's streets to fend for myself. Tess A. She championed solitude and her own disposition over the tacit practicality of joining the Wards. The initial weeks of sleeping rough and thieving food were hard on her. They hardened her in turn. She did what she had to do in order to persevere. She bore through every human-shaped problem she came against. Painted the walls carmine. And somewhere along her path she was labeled a villain. The gangs tried to control her. The Protectorate tried to capture her. Eventually Tess A became a prisoner deprived of her privacy and autonomy. A con.

A pro. I took the second of two paths. I'm a hero. Tess B. I chose allies and provisions over personal honesty. It seemed like the obvious choice, the only choice to make.

But I have to watch my footing on this path. The terrain is unfamiliar to me. I've already begun to stumble, and I can't seem to catch my balance. Would it be better to commit myself to the fall?

I've been dancing to the tugs and pulls of a thinker power I don't fully understand. Trying to make the connection between puppet and puppeteer tolerable. Reciprocal in my favor. But it takes so much energy out of me to fend off its advances. It would be so much easier to let it have its way and be done with all this perturbation.

I'm a cautionary tale about not learning from past mistakes. I'm an imposter in someone else's yarn. The hero, Tess B, is the person I chose to become, but should I have chosen her? The Con might have been onto something picking the solitudinarian path. The one I'm on now feels as if it might lead to defeat.

You're drifting dreary, deary.

If mom were here right now she'd tell me not to let them see me frown. She tut-tutted at me when I got like this. Said my dramatics invited rain clouds. Nobody's gonna listen to a moody girl, sweetheart. And words are all we got.

I inherited my stature, skin, and face from her. She always told me I had my father's temperament though.

I was doing so well for a few days. I was talking to people. I was making headway. I wasn't coming off as a complete idiot.

You have to pull yourself together. Pull yourself together or you'll end up banging your head against the wall. Like you did with Nobu. Like you did with Shadow Stalker.

Like you did before.

You remember that wall, don't you? Staring at it. Staring at a fly, the crack, the patch of mold. Staring at anything other than what was happening.

I can't breathe. I shouldn't have pushed myself so far out onto this unmarked path so quickly. Being around people was a bad idea. I need to seclude myself. Decompress. I need to shut out the entire world. Wrest myself from my skin and leave a husk in my wake.

Where am I? My lab. My brand new lab. This should be great. I was so excited this afternoon. I have a place to make a haven again. But Armsmaster's here with me. He's been helping me with my armor. He didn't have to be asked. Would I have wanted him to ask?

Focus on what's solid.

I've finished my helmet's faceplate. It's matte black like the rest of my tinkertech, angular, and seemingly visorless, but I can see out of it's darkened surface like I would through weak sunglasses. The design leaves my chin, lips, and bottom part of my nose exposed. Or at least visible while my barrier's up. The minimalist future-trooper coverage is the reverse of what a half-mask respirator could provide.

I know Dragon now. Or I've been acquainted with her voice, more like. She has an accent I can't place and reminds me of Aunt Naoko in some ways. Kind, savvy, distant. She's helping me with my tinkertech too. She uses the cameras set up in my lab for eyes and assumably tinkers on her end and walks me through her results. Since her specialty allows her to elaborate upon other tinker's devices, she might be able to coach me through the final steps of implementing what I want to do with my helmet.

See? You're not alone with Armsmaster. Don't think that way. You were doing okay these past two days. You didn't think like this when Sarah was just outside the door. You didn't think this way with Kid Win. And you're less alone now than you were then. Dragon's here. In spirit. But she's here enough for it to count. She wouldn't let anything happen.

But Armsmaster and the distant tinker woman have been friends for a long time. Do you really think she'd intervene? One indiscretion compared to all the good he's done? Organizations swallow young women whole. You know this. You saw for yourself, Armsmaster made a lot of people do what he wanted them to do. What you wanted them to do. He pulled a lot of strings for you. Strings upon strings upon strings. Do you think anyone would stop him? Do you think anyone would blame him? Worse men than him have gotten away with more.

So have they been constructive or destructive, "Tess"? You've certainly been building yourself up. But what does that matter when you've nearly collapsed under the first glum mood you've had since coming here? What did you think? That you could overwork yourself? Outfox yourself? Gilding the truth doesn't work if you're in on the lies, hero.

You were always dumb. Always struggling to understand things everybody else just got. Scribbling stupid drawings to feel like you were good at something and not even besting that. Guess what. You didn't notice the Thinker creeping in because it's most of who you are now. You are the Thinker. You can't wholly realize what you are. You just get it. And now you know how it feels to get it. Got it? It's a joke. Or do you still not have a sense of humor?

They spot a pretty girl like you out in the wild and bam, there you have it. He told you those sorts of things like he was letting you in on a big secret.

Do you want to tell the tale of the little dog who barks at all the bears in the forest now, or have you told yourself that one enough? Is it time to improve the narrative? You must be tired of repeating the same lines over and over again.

If my mind was altered all at once by whatever took me over, doesn't that mean I'm a different person now? Will I even be able to tell? Could I tell? What qualifies as dying and then being replaced by a knock-off?

"Redoubt?" Dragon's voice laps against the shoreline of my perception. "Are you feeling unwell?"

Frame it like she's specifically asking you if you're sick. There's a lie detector in the room, and you need them to believe everything is copacetic.

"Right as rain. Just lost in thought," I say.

The Thinker knows how to shape a response. All I have to do is color inside the lines.

"Are you sure? You look pale."

"A genetic condition, I'm afraid."

I can't glom onto any insights from the tinker woman's communicative link so I keep things simple and light-hearted.

Armsmaster shifts. He resurfaces from what he was immersed in. He taps something on his helmet and nods slightly.

"They want us to analyze a video. It's civilian, recorded earlier today and picked up by officers at the scene of an anomalous parahuman event. The subject at the center of the case died before he could be brought ashore. I'm told the autopsy is proving distinctive. Redoubt, do you mind if I send the video up to the monitor?"

"By all means."

"Maybe we should vacate Redoubt's lab so she doesn't have to watch." Dragon leaves the tiniest pause at the end of her suggestion where I assume she'd usually place Armsmaster's true identity.

"There was no clearance level assigned to the evidence, and Redoubt's a competent member of the Wards now. She can take it."

He spares me a thin, professional smile. I grin back.

Dragon makes no further arguments, but I can almost sense her disapproval through the speakers. No power required.

The screen that was carted into my lab, but not fully installed yet, lights up electric black. Numbers start to tick up at the bottom. Then we're showed the deck of a boat and someone's legs planted in obnoxiously yellow rain boots.

"You filming this, hon?" A man asks, strain in his voice.

The camera moves to capture the back of a middle-aged man in a windbreaker. He has both hands firmly on a fishing pole arched into a parabolic curve. The reel resists the man's attempts to pull in whatever he's caught.

"Boys! You should come see this! Feels like a real whopper!"

The gray sky and gray waters are merged on the tilting horizon. There's no observable life out there except for the man in the foreground heaving plumes of vapor into the chilly March air.

"Nearly got'im!" The man bellows triumphantly. "Nearly-"

A splash comes from off screen. The man cranes his neck to look over his shoulder, and he furrows his woolly brows.

"What the hell?" He murmurs the question. "Hon, put the camera down. Put it down!"

The video is little more than muffled audio played over a film grain abyss for a while. Panicked shouting is the most prevalent feature, but I can decipher an appalled "what's happening to him?" through the interference.

At nine minutes and fifteen seconds in, the camera gets bumped by somebody's passing. The audio becomes crisper.

A horrid tableau finally presents itself.

The footage seems to be from the camera set down on a low surface. A smudge of moisture clouds the left half of the picture. In the right half, a dripping wet teenager kneels on the deck. He's weeping. Spasming.

Something is terribly wrong with his body.

A ghostly echo emerges from his stationary right arm situated on the grip-textured deck. The echo looks like his soul trying to rip itself out of his anatomy. A phantom limb.

I try not to gasp as it manifests meat and bone. Substance. It fuses with the boy at an odd angle. Like a malformed wing stripped of its membrane.

The boy shivers and moans.

Then another echo emerges.

This time the transparent structure is everything from the boy's armpits up. A spectral head lulls on see-through shoulders, mouth agape. The unnatural protrusion shifts from side to side. Then it solidifies jutting out of the boy's chest.

The second head screams, milky eyes wide and wild. Its shrieking is dissonant. Inhuman. And it becomes even more disturbing when it suddenly cuts off without warning.

"Thefourththefourththefourththefourth-" The boy's original head mumbles. His breathy muttering gets replaced by a rasping cough. Spittle mixes with the briny foam he brought up with him from the ocean, frothing around his blue-tinged lips.

"The water was cold," he says. His voice is much clearer now. Still hollow. "So cold. The waves took me under."

"Take me under," his deformed head intones.

"At the beginning."

"At the end." The other head's assertion layers with the boy's words this time. It goes on to laugh. And when it laughs it sounds like some sort of evil thing slithering out of a bog. Burble and cackle. Syncopated and cruel.

"What does that...? Boring? Analogous to Br-? What does that mean?" the boy asks to himself, by himself. Beseeching some unseen listener. "Stop! They're just words that don't go together! Just words on a list. Name after name. And my name... B- b- but there's another. In my- will be? In a place that wasn't? Doesn't belong. Because it intrudes. It samples."

"Fucking cosmic fuck!" the other head yells.

"Do you see it? The- it, what do you call it? The Prospector? It put a drop in the b- b- bucket. Drove it into her head. But she wasn't... she was supposed to-"

"She died! She died! She died!"

"She was one of the ones who b- b-"

"Blown glass! Broadcast that, y'skank!" The other head laughs uproariously.

"Doesn't make sense. It doesn't. Why is she here, and why am I- why do I have to... Thefourththefourththefourth. It hurts! Hurts! Hur-" He spasms violently, weeping and screaming.

The video, no doubt, goes on, but Armsmaster shuts it off. He stays quiet for an entire minute. I don't speak.

"You shouldn't have had to see that," Armsmaster finally says.

The funny thing is, I don't know if he's right.

Chapter 5: Fly on the Wall 5.1 - 5.5

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Seeing as hero Tess B is currently sitting pretty, I wonder how con Tess A is fairing on her path. Our divergence point was twenty or twenty-one days ago now. Where would I be on my own? Mentally. Locationally. How much tinkertech would I have been able to put together? Not as much as I have, that's for sure. Would I have visited him yet? Almost certainly.

"What's it called when a word sounds the same and looks the same but isn't the same?" Vista asks us from her folding chair. She sits with her legs pretzeled beneath her. Strands of her straightened hair frizz as they brush against the purple polyester curtain hiding us from the crowd.

"Can you quit babbling for a minute? Some of us have had late nights," track athlete and all-around bully Sophia Hess says, impatiently drumming her heel on her chair's leg.

You can't make yourself superior by assigning inferiorities, Sofa. You must notice all the other Wards are ignoring you.

"I'm not sure I understand." Gallant leans forward in his folding chair. His armor rubs across the beige finish, but the announcer on the stage behind us is making more than enough noise to cover up the squeal of metal on metal.

"Like spring. One's a season, and one's the metal corkscrew doodad you put in a machine."

"Today's the first day of spring," Aegis remarks.

That's part of the reason why they're holding this event on a Sunday instead of a Saturday. I had my armor ready almost a week in advance, but the image people thought it would play as meaningful if I made my first public appearance arm in arm with the season of new beginnings. I capitulated without argument. It only seemed fair. I didn't let them have much input on my costuming, and I purloined their concept drawings by feigning naiveté. I put the construction worker Redoubt, kite shield Redoubt, and three other Redoubts they concocted up on my room's wall. A wall I see very rarely because I'm in my lab most nights.

"Homonym. I'm pretty sure," Kid Win says. Providing an actual answer to Vista's question.

"Homonym," Vista repeats under her breath in order to cement it in her mind.

"Why? Is this a school thing?"

"No. It's stupid. Just something I was thinking about."

"You're right. It is stupid," Shadow Stalker unhelpfully adds.

"Kid Win," I brush past Sofa's comment.

The other Wards grow attentive. Probably because it's my big day, and I don't put my two cents in very often. I don't think about their reactions too deeply. At the moment, I have more important things in the fryer.

"You have troubles focusing."

Kid Win becomes guarded.

"Yeah, I told you that."

"And your tinker-brain doesn't pick up the slack."

"Can we talk about this later, maybe? We're about to go on."

"When I'm tinkering everything comes naturally."

"You're sort of coming off as rude here, Re," Clockblocker tells me.

I hold up one elegantly armored finger. The pointer one, not the middle one. The Wards decide to follow my suggestion and wait for an explanation.

"Set aside your justifiable hang-ups, Win. I'm leading to something. I've been watching you tinker, and I've seen the difficulties you've been having firsthand. Walls shouldn't impede a tinker who's focusing on their specialty. They should be met with hurdles, if anything at all. So what makes you so different?"

"I told you all of this. Dyscalculia. Some doctors label me with ADD. I don't see how this helps, and now doesn't seem like the time."

It took me seven nonconsecutive hours to glean Kid Win's weakness without having him ambush me in a bathroom. If the task had taken any longer I might have considered coercing the tinker into threatening me. But now I know, and all that's left is informing him what his issue is without revealing I'm a thinker.

"If I was having trouble focusing on my tinkertech, I'd try to do the opposite. Unfocus. Deconcentrate. From what I've untangled, a power is sculpted around a person's mindset or, more scarily, sculpts a person's mindset. It reinforces a certain way of thinking. So, if your intent is to use your power, you shouldn't fight against your nature or emulate others. The answer should reside in embracing the way your thoughts are structured."

"You trying to bore us all to death or does it just come naturally?" Sofa taunts.

Nobody acknowledges her negativity. By design. When she says something that amounts to anything, we'll respond. I recommended this course of action to the other Wards when she wasn't around. I wanted to see if her behavior would improve or if she would double down. Not once did I use the word "experiment" when I did my convincing. I went for subtler, more diplomatic verbiage.

"So you're saying my power wants me to be myself to an extreme?" Kid Win asks.

"Exactly. What sort of tinkering could incorporate distractability and leaving projects incomplete? My wild assertion is that you should attempt making small parts that fit into a complete whole if you have to. Switch out the functions. Start unfocused."

Kid Win tilts his head. Ponders our discussion for a moment. His visor hides his eyes, but I don't need to see them to know I've hit my mark.

"Are you saying... modularity?"

"I'm not not saying it."

In the near distance - in truth, only ten or so feet away - the announcer proclaims something along the lines of "-we give a warm welcome to our very own Brockton Bay Wards!".

The speakers, having been pointed away from us, divide the crowd from backstage more than the curtain does.

"Uh, this is great. This might be... thank you, Re." While standing, Kid Win nods to me in thanks. His movement looks, for half a second, like he's trying to awkwardly bow.

I nod back.

A woman wearing a headset gestures to the stage. I spot Vista forcing an impressive but altogether fake smile onto her face. Kid Win's smile, in contrast, seems genuine.

Excepting me, all the Wards proceed single file into the public's eye. Applause and sporadic cheers herald them, amplified by the atrium's size and shape. If I didn't have my barrier up, I'm sure I'd be feeling the reverberations rumbling through the mall rumbling through me as well.

I go to Arcadia now, and it's been harder than hardscrabble keeping my barrier down in my squishier, more vulnerable student form. Two full weeks I've been practicing shutting off my barrier when I'm at school so I'm not unmasked by an errant dodgeball or an overfamiliar slap on the back. But I still find myself switching my node back on whenever I get an opportunity or even when it might, in effect, be precarious to do so.

As for my chances of being recognized, I'd say they're slim due to the quality of the people who knew me. No one in my old life saw me after I cut my hair other than Nobu, and I severely doubt he'll be mentioning the change to anyone anytime soon. I also wear round Harold Lloyd-esque glasses with non-prescription lenses in them when I'm not being Redoubt. It's by no means a flawless disguise, but I fear a false mustache would be pushing my luck.

I overhear my name being announced. My cape name. I see the woman in the headset ushering me forward.

I walk out onto the stage.

The noise of the crowd is irritating. They've gathered around our platform under the mall's central skylight like a swarm of insects, chittering and whirring. There's more of them here than I expected there would be for a simple Wards member reveal held on a Sunday.

So what do they see when they look at me?

They have a single window to my humanity. The bottom of my nose, my chin, and the smiling mouth in between them. All else is sleek, geometrically angular matte black armor. Sometimes visible underneath is the dark purple bodysuit I slipped myself into. It peeks through my armor's seams from time to time. Snug in a good way. Much less harrowing to put on than my outer layer.

Why is it stressful to put on my outer layer? The armor itself secures easily, thanks to Armsmaster and Dragon's craftiness, but actually getting inside the tin can is a little intimidating because, without powered assistance, it'd be a struggle to lift my limbs to get out of it. I can't help but think of every knight who's drowned in full plate because they fell face first into a puddle on a battlefield. Maybe I can wrangle myself a squire.

Until then, I'll have to grin and bear it.

There's an interesting - if not frustrating - tidbit I found out during my armor's fabrication though. I may be able to charge my batteries off any old outlet I find, but they refuse to power anything other than my tinkertech. That means that the servomechanisms and thingamajigs Armsmaster installed in my armor allowing mobility run off a separate grid. Yet the loving ingredients I added, like the improvements I installed in my arms, run off Redoubt-brand energy.

My brute gauntlets are larger than any other section of my sheathlike armor. Proportionally bulky. They give my forearms and my knuckles a heavy bruiser look. Nothing approaching a gorilla's lumbering front limbs, but noticeable. I had to add something into the right side gauntlet so I included a, so far, useless bit onto my left gauntlet to make myself symmetrical.

What the crowd is incapable of seeing is the column of ten batteries slotted into my barrier node set up like a second, mechanical spine down my back. Four Armsmaster-crafted power sources are nestled beneath the thoracic section.

A souvenir jacket (otherwise known as sukajan) covers the vastly improved energy reserve lining my backbone. It's mainly purple and was made by a rogue named Parian for a considerable sum. I have a set of five unique designs I can switch in and out of. The jacket I'm wearing now has pink flowering cherry tree branches and bulging eyed koi fish sewn into it.

I step up to the microphone stand placed front and center on the stage.

"Hello, everyone! I'm Redoubt! I'm so delighted you came to meet me today! You might not be able to tell, but I'm blushing under this thing. You're all remorseless flatterers, the lot of you!"

Am I coasting too far into adorable sweetheart territory? As long as I don't start getting colloquial on them or adopt a Southern belle persona, I think I'll be okay.

My thinker power isn't getting anything from the amorphous mass before me. Which is better than having an unknown parahuman in the crowd, I suppose. If all these people did happen to be peaceable parahumans, I'm not even sure I could handle group think. I'd probably end up performing for one person and one person only.

The clapping and cheers I was assaulted with quiet down. I wait for the people to hush themselves and briefly look back at my team as if seeking support.

I face my audience once more.

"When Armsmaster first held out his hand to me, I was skeptical. Not of him, you must understand. He proved quickly he was the type of hero I once believed only existed in fairy stories. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I read a lot of those - with the shining knights overcoming great wrongs - to escape my own reality. I was living in an ABB occupied neighborhood. Things were tough. Then in came a knight riding his- well, not white horse, but I'll forgive Armsmaster for the motorcycle. Otherwise I might have thought I was dreaming."

The crowd chuckles.

"No. What I was skeptical about was how well I'd fit in with a team. I was scared of how I'd be treated. Mistreated... But when I joined the Wards all those anxieties went away. I met new friends. I met a knowledgeable and open friend in Vista. A solicitous and considerate friend in Gallant. A dependable and consummate friend in Aegis. A forthright and driven friend in Shadow Stalker. A helpful and intelligent friend in Kid Win. And Clockblocker was there too."

That gets a smattering of laughter.

"I'm glad I've been given this chance to stand beside them. All of them." I grin in Clockblocker's direction as if poking fun at each other is an everyday occurrence between the two of us. The smooth, white expanse of his helmet reveals nothing to the contrary. "And I'm glad I can stand before all of you to say I'm going to try my very best to keep Brockton Bay safe."

The crowd takes my cue and makes a ruckus once more. The announcer walks up to my side and rides out the wave.

"Now, Redoubt," the announcer says conversationally into his mic. "You're a shield tinker. Did I get that right?"

"That's right, Jeff."

His name is Jeffery something. He's a host for a local radio show, I'm told.

"Is there any way you could dazzle these fine folks with some superheroics?"

"I don't know about dazzle, Jeff. But I did prepare a little demonstration. Would any of you like to see?" The last part I ask to the throng.

They cheer. Predictably.

Jeff steps back to the sidelines.

"When I first arrived at Wards HQ, I saw how well everyone got along. How freely they bounced ideas off one another. And - don't judge me too harshly - I was envious."

A stagehand walks into our midst holding UP a baseball bat with "AN IDEA" written boldly on its side. The bat is presented to Aegis.

"But not anymore," I say with a grin. "Aegis, would you be a dear, and beat me over the head with that?"

A collective murmur travels through the mass of spectators.

I wanted to drop an anvil on my head, but the PRT wouldn't agree to a potentially lethal stunt just because I pinky swore I could take it. I'm sure the decision makers were all imagining a caved in body and a traumatized crowd sprinkled with blood.

Aegis comes to plate holding the labeled bat like it's a snake playing dead in his palms. He approaches the microphone stand.

"Are you sure about this, Re? Wouldn't it be better not to risk an accident?"

He asks me as much as he asks the crowd. He's only exacerbated the thrill of this little stunt by implying it could end disastrously though. He tried to sway public opinion and failed.

"Oh, come on, champ. Without risk there's no reward. You'll never reach the big leagues with that attitude. Let's get in some batting practice, shall we?" I turn to my audience. "Give him a few shouts of encouragement everybody. The honorable gentleman doesn't want to strike a lady."

They follow my directive and shout. It's a bit grim. Like I'm egging on an executioner at the gallows.

Aegis commits himself to my act and grabs the wooden bat properly. He assumes a position that makes it clear he's seeing my neck as the end of a tee. I plant my feet apart, lock my armor in place. He readies himself to swing.

I don't want them to see me budge. First impressions are everything.

Aegis' power allows him peak physiological capacity. A meshwork of shimmering purple tessellations floods my peripheral vision. A moment later, my left lights up again. On Aegis' third hit, I hear the baseball bat snap.

"And there you have it!" The announcer steps in with perfect timing. "Redoubt, Brockton Bay's newest Ward, and Aegis! Give them both a hand, folks!"

After the noise has died down and Aegis has gone back to his seat, the floor is opened up to questions. The audience barrages me with queries for ten minutes. Who's your favorite Protectorate member? Armsmaster, of course. What do you do in your spare time? I draw and animate, but I'm a tinker so I'm almost always busy. Who do you get along with most in the Wards? It's hard to say since I'm still getting to know everyone. What's your favorite color? Purple, couldn't you tell?

They're relentless, but the questioning does finally come to a close.

"We'll be having autograph signing in five minutes at the tables over to your right. First addition Redoubt posters are on sale. Don't miss your opportunity to get one signed."

Jeff continues with his snake oil routine while I walk back to find my seat. He probably negotiated for a percentage of merchandise sales today.

I don't know how I'm going to handle making small talk over signatures for an hour.

"You are so full of bullshit," Sofa tells me as I sit down next to her.

"Sometimes you have to be in order to get what you want," I respond.

What Sophia Hess desires in this world must be exceedingly simple if she's willing to burn so many bridges.

How much time would I have to waste to bring her around? What would permanently make her amenable? I've sorted through some of her weaknesses, evaluated which parts might function as crumple zones for reshaping. But do I really want to commit to a crash? The most immediate solution I can devise would serve dual purposes. I like when things couple like that. But this isn't wholly about what I like. Involving her would expose me to possible danger. Is managing Shadow Stalker really worth that risk? I did just say without risk there's no reward. But I was sermonizing for a crowd, and that's antithetical to how I should operate.

Adversely, what I've pledged myself to tonight is already risky. Why shouldn't I lump two risks together and hope for a win? I wasn't serious when I thought about taking up gambling, but this wouldn't actually be gambling now would it? I have a thinker power telling me what could work. Should I listen to it?

"Eleven twenty. Meet me at the convenience store five blocks from headquarters out of costume and in something that won't draw attention. Don't bring your phone or anything that can be tracked," I say.

I smile and wave at a little boy hopping in front of the stage trying to get my attention.

"Why would I do that?" Sofa asks.

"Because I think we should get to know one another better."

The same woman who directed us onto the stage chaperones us over to the signing tables. I get as comfortable as I can manage in my armor out in the open and take up a purple marker. The culling (of unsigned posters) begins.

Maybe I'll be able to figure out a way to circumvent the Manton Effect so I can seed micro-shields into the bloodstreams of Brockton Bay's most unrepentant offenders.

"That's sweet of you to say, but I haven't even been out on patrol yet. Save your praise for someone more deserving. Vista for instance," I say to a rotund woman in a flowery blouse.

I'd hand out fatal embolisms like candy to a lot of the monsters I've heard about in this city if I could.

"That outfit is great. Are those Aegis' colors? I'm sure he'll love that," I say to a preteen girl with evident infatuation rosying up her cheeks.

Too many health complications arising in my general vicinity would arouse suspicions though. I'd have to be selective.

"Charming, but I'm focused on my heroing career right now. I'll have to pass," I say to a young man who picked his clothing based on how well it could exhibit his muscles.

Target the big game, the parahumans who think they're untouchable. If I could figure out how to do insert the micro-shields remotely I could frame a nonexistent stranger with an ambiguous vendetta.

"A drawing of me? But you just met me. Oh my. Impressive. And you said I get to keep it? I'll have to hang it on my fridge as soon as I get a fridge," I say to the same little boy who was hopping in front of the stage.

Our autographing session comes to a close fifteen minutes after it was supposed to. The Wards and I say our goodbyes with all due decorum. Then we head out through a back door as rapidly as we can.

We take a van back to the PRT building. Some Wards go home. Others stay on for a few more patrols. My inaugural patrol hasn't been scheduled yet, but it'll come soon. I'm not sure if I should try to be excited. I'm ambivalent as is.

I swipe my ID over the pad beside my lab's door, wait a tick, then enter. Returning my brutalist palace of tinkertech feels like easing into the steamy waters of a natural hot spring. I assume. I've never done any easing into hot spring waters myself. Never been out of Brockton Bay, now that I'm on the subject. I've been exposed to hot water though, and I'm pretty sure I can extrapolate how lounging in a large body of it might feel. Good. It's good to be back in my lab is what I'm trying to get across.

There's an outline taped on the concrete floor, a big circle with four blocky trapezoids extending from it like they're pointing in cardinal directions. I checked. They're not. The measured strips of blue tape I laid down map out the base of the biggest project I have in the works. It'll be twenty feet tall and a little over five feet in diameter.

The PRT's clamoring for version one. They asked me what I'd need to complete the thing, and I handed them a list. Mostly I kept to specs, but I did indulge here and there.

Among my frivolous additions were purple boilersuits for tinkering fashionably, the souvenir jackets from Parian, ten cases of a pretentious carbonated cherry-flavored ice tea I saw online and thought I'd like (and did like, thank goodness), a subscription to a music streaming service, and a pneumatic rail injector (not to be confused with an injector rail) that I said I'd be needing from a tinker out West named Harpootunist for the rightwise extruding flange in my project or somesuch. But really it's for another device.

A device I've already built and am very happy with.

I set aside the drawing the little boy made for me next to a small pile of things I've been meaning to bring to my room. Then I shed my armor and place it on its stand. Wriggling out of my dark purple bodysuit winds up taking more time than my armor did because I stop halfway through disrobing to tinker.

Eleven o'clock arrives quicker than I expected.

I change into a pair of black pants, a black long sleeved shirt, and a charcoal peacoat I found hanging off the back of a rolling chair in one of the maintenance corridors we used to leave the mall. I stuff a few things into the peacoat's large inner pockets, give my lab a once-over, then set out. I use the human sized door next to the reinforced garage door that nobody's found the time to restrict me from yet.

I travel to the convenience store five blocks away in the dark. The only inconvenience I encounter on my way is the fact that my footfalls still subtly glow purple when I walk between the islands created by streetlamps and storefronts.

I go inside the "Hero Sandwich Corner Shop" and buy two snack sized bags of chips. I set one down on the lip of the store's window then incorporate the other into my barrier.

I eat outside the store in my perfectly room temperature invisible energy shield and wait.

Sofa turns up at eleven twenty-five. Perhaps after reconnoitering the block. I don't consider this a trap, but she wouldn't know that going in.

"I hope you like sour cream and onion because I ate the harvest cheddar already," I say in greeting.

"What the fuck? No, I don't want any of your fucking chips! What the hell is this?" she shout-whispers at me.

"An errand I've been putting off. We should walk and talk or we're going to miss our bus."

"I'm not getting on a bus with you, you freaky bitch. Say what you have to say. Then I'm gone."

"This is no time to lose your nerve, Sophia."

Sofa shakes her head and pushes air through her nostrils. She looks like she's holding yellowjackets in her closed mouth.

"Fuck off, bitch."

"You're wrong."

"What?"

Her fury keens inside of her. Two endless strings incessantly dragging across one another. I can hear it.

I toss her bag of chips to her. She slaps it to the sidewalk.

I frown then start heading toward the bus stop at a casual pace.

"You're letting your power control you." Look who's talking. "It's scrambling your brain into a crazed morass of predation. Nonsense. You'd be able to see it if you were strong enough to look. But you're letting you power wreak its damage - tear out everything that you were - because you want to get high, and being reduced to one simple emotion makes it so easy to get there."

I lazily roll my head back on my shoulder to see if she's still with me. And she is. Nimbly stomping behind me, if that's at all possible. An embodiment of impotent anger.

I'm singing all the wrong things to her in all the right ways.

"Oh," I moan. "Can you imagine the rush you'd get if you could just shove my teeth down my throat. What a hit! If you'll pardon the pun."

I flash her my toothiest grin.

"You're scratching around for anything that'll justify your aggression. I'll let you in on a little secret. Every single person you come in contact with can see that driving desperation in you oozing out of your pores. It's an ache in the eyes. Hard not to notice. It never quite goes away. A general itchiness surrounds you. Do you know what they call people with that sort of itch? Addicts."

I pause.

"If you don't choose to lift yourself up you'll be stuck lower than the people you try to put down."

As we reach the bus stop, I pull out a handheld metal detector I borrowed from one of the PRT guards. I set it down on the ground so it exits my barrier, and then I pick it up.

"You're going to have to decide now, Sophia. Do you stay and listen to me when I'm not spouting bullshit? Or do you decide the truth's not what you're after and run away?"

She stays. Ramrod straight. Restricted hostility standing on two legs. The human side of me is confounded by the fact she hasn't interrupted yet. She doesn't even stop me from passing the metal detector over her.

"How did you know about the electricity?" she asks, stiffer than any cadaver.

"I have my sources."

Her eyes go wide like Nobu's on that night not too long ago. She probably thinks I've spoken to Grue or some other infuriating criminal she was forced to leave be. Someone else out there must know her weakness. I see no harm in allowing her to maintain the belief I know them too.

"Don't you worry. My sources are no friends of mine."

You hear that Thinker?

I'm railing against myself again, I suppose.

Passing behind the bus stop's advertisements I bring down my barrier then switch it on once more to get the metal detector back into my peacoat. It's strange - more than strange - that a surface doesn't web my fingers together or that my barrier doesn't halt my movement altogether. But my pockets remain inaccessible to outside objects. There's a distinction between rules that apply and rules that don't that makes illogical sense to me.

Our bus arrives. We both get on. I sit down in one of the many empty seats, and Sofa sits across the aisle from me.

"The best you're ever going to get out of them - out of us - is dread. Approaching matters the way you do? It doesn't grant you power. It doesn't make you greater than us. All it does is grant the power rearranging your brain power over you."

"You're insane," she says.

I hum. "I like the change in tactics. You're engaging me where you can actually make strides. No more dumb, brutish displays. Change is good. I'd be overjoyed if you found a combination of words that could make me flinch. It'd mean you were crawling your way out of your own ass and seeing the world for once."

"No. You're just insane. You're a crazy bitch, and I'm not gonna verbally joust with you or whatever the hell it is you're trying to do. You're full of yourself. You haven't even done half as much shit as I have. I was there for Behemoth last time he showed."

That's impressive. Foolish. I can't decide which.

"You lose then." I lean on my fist.

"I don't have to win against-"

"The crazy bitch? I should hope you could at least best a mad woman. You don't get to count discrediting me as winning or not losing. You know that, right? On a one-on-one level, you've lost. Fair and square. And you have to deal with that loss instead of denying it."

"You sound like a crappy counselor now."

"Maybe you should find yourself a good one then. Ask them why you need validation so badly. Now hush. We're nearly there."

We disembark from the bus three blocks away from my destination. Surprisingly, Sofa continues to follow me and doesn't ask the obvious questions. One being: what the heck are we doing in ABB territory at this time of night?

We walk in silence. My heart rate intensifies as we draw nearer. Familiar landmarks loom in the not-quite darkness like slightly altered replicas of nostalgic things. But I was never fond of this gangrenous section of the city. My conflicted feelings are attributable to it being the only thing I experienced for years.

When we get closer to the building I've been making my way toward, I toss Sofa a balaclava. It'd be awkward to hand it to her through my barrier.

She doesn't slap the balaclava to the sidewalk. She doesn't even question it.

And she called me insane.

We don our face coverings, and I motion at a door.

Sofa glides through the solid surface in her shadow form. Seconds later, the door opens from the opposite side. I nod at her. Then I lead our way in.

The interior of the building is rotten style over rotting substance. New furniture is scattered with unsorted junk. Bottles and cigarette butts litter a prematurely aged carpet. Smoke discolored cobwebs hang in the corners of the rooms, seemingly untenanted by the spiders that wove them. And a foul odor of intermingled drugs, armpit sweat, and decomposing take-out permeates the stagnant air.

I hold my bile down.

We creep to the second floor after the first proves vacant. Inspecting a room with no domestic purpose at the top of the stairs, we find two bricks of cocaine on a glass coffee table, unsnorted lines, and the sort of knife a gangbanger would pick to wave around. I take the knife with me but don't put it into my barrier.

The next room is a bathroom. It's new. I can tell. But it's filthy. Never been cleaned since it was added. We move along.

In the last room upstairs, I find exactly what I came for. I was beginning to think this was all going to be for naught. But here he is.

In front of a wall with a crack in its lower left quadrant. Nearer to the ceiling is a patch of mold. The fly is gone though.

The tattooed man I made this journey for is sprawled out on a bed with its blankets kicked off. An acrid smelling pipe is loosely clutched in his sleeping hand. His thermostat is set to seventy-eight so he's only dressed in boxer briefs.

Red and green striped, funnily enough.

I set the knife I brought in from the other room down on the bed's fitted sheet, parallel to the man's pimpled thigh.

There's a lamp with a heavy glass base on his nightstand. I remove its shade, unplug it, and then incorporate it into my barrier. On then off. I don't even second-guess leaving myself exposed for the fraction of a second it takes.

I look down at the man's face. He's in his thirties maybe. His lips are cracked, but his hair is meticulously buzzed. A design is shaved into the space above his right ear. Just how I remember it.

I bring the lamp's glass base down on the man's sleeping form.

One to his windpipe to prevent him from screaming. Two to his nose to keep him senseless. Then three to his upper cheek to distribute the injuries.

He makes wet noises through his crushed and bloodied nose. Now awake. Disoriented, he tries to prop himself up with his trembling arms.

I cast aside the lamp base and pick up the knife I set down on the fitted sheet before it can be knocked to the floor.

I stab the man in the place between his legs and twist. I yank the blade out. Then I ram it into his femoral, sliding it toward me. Some blood spurts out, but it slips off my barrier.

I drop the knife.

Listening to the man's gurgling. I pick the lamp's base up out of the heap of dirty clothes it landed in.

I set it on it's nightstand. Plug it back in. Affix its shade. And I pass Shadow Stalker on my way back downstairs.

I get three blocks away before I remove my balaclava.

"Who was that?" Sophia asks.

I take a moment to compose myself.

"Never got his name. Saw him in the neighborhood though. He was some sort of big shot ABB thug playing second fiddle to Lung and Oni Lee."

I breathe in. Breathe out. I let my head fall all the way back until my short hair is bristling on the part of my peacoat that covers the node in my spine. I stare at the cold pinpricks in the night sky without really looking at them. They're almost erased by light pollution.

"Bastard brought me to his apartment. Told me to show myself out," I drawl. "For someone with deep pockets he sure had one hell of a mold problem."

I roll my head back around to where I can gaze into Sophia's eyes at an angle. She's quiet, pupils jittering with thoughts I'll probably have to read into if I keep looking.

"Mold kills, you know?" I release a drawn-out sigh. I try to expel every last complicated emotion from my body in a lungful of air. I fail. "Come on. You're going to steal me something fancy from a liquor store, ghost girl."

I'm of the opinion I shouldn't be filling in as a role model in any impressionable child's life, but the boy requested me and the PRT assented, so now I'm eating ice cream on the border between boardwalk and docks with Miguel Emigdio. He's the hopping ankle-biter who gave me a drawing back at my debut.

The schools of Brockton Bay hold events rewarding the top and most improved students in their class with hang-out sessions with members of the Wards and Protectorate. It's a known thing. The lucky few students who are picked are usually assigned their hero for the day, someone who's compatible with their disposition, but Miguel adamantly chose me. Injudicious. He could have won out on this roulette and gone to Protectorate HQ over the forcefield bridge, but he chose me. He must be one of the improving students.

The people at the top originally wanted me to take a look at that forcefield bridge of theirs and do maintenance on the snow globe surrounding their base of operations besides. But I politely told them to wait. I posed my decision to them thusly. Would they rather I shored up their platform which is only in one city or would they rather I finished the project I've been working on that can go to any city? The answer was obvious.

The tower has to be built. It's the highest priority on my list. I've been crawling in and out of it like a termite for the last dozen days so it'll be ready for teleportation out of Brockton Bay when the next Endbringer attack hits.

I will be getting to the Protectorate's preexisting forcefields soon though. I'm not ignoring them out of disinterest. A month - maybe two - and I'll dive headfirst into Uppercrust's defenses. I haven't been able to scrutinize another tinker's work so like my own. I'd enjoy meeting Uppercrust too, but the Elite tinker has been succumbing to a medical condition, I hear. That's why defense systems along the Eastern Seaboard have been falling into disrepair.

If I was being entirely too egotistical I'd feel like the world was making room for me.

Best not to indulge in selfish theories. Believing yourself out of the ordinary is a gateway drug to debilitating delusions of grandeur.

While I was waiting on Miguel's mother to drop him off, I used a large chunk of my own money, and little more out of a discretionary fund, to print off posters at a local establishment.

Understandably, the owner was tense when I first arrived. I walked into his store armored to the nines. It's April second. I've only been on the parahumans scene for two weeks. If that. To an out of the loop old-timer like him I would have seemed a potentially dangerous cape.

I mostly smoothed over our little misunderstanding by making mundane chit-chat. I wasn't very good at keeping it going, and I think that's what reassured him. My run-of-the-mill ineptitude.

I spent far too much of my free time - some of which was time I should have been sleeping - designing personalized propaganda on my computer. I couldn't let it all go to waste, so I printed posters.

I've been handing them out at random. One of three posters. As much would fit in my backpack. I give them to passersby and shopkeepers alike. Gussied up imitations of old Hollywood film advertisements.

One is a Shirley Temple affair. "Brockton Bay's Lil' Darling," declares the grandiloquent title. My disembodied head looms largest among a fanned array of smaller heads (my teammates), and, under that, Gallant and I are postured as if dancing, him in a tux and helmet and me in my costume with a dress pulled over it.

Next is a noir mock-up with me standing silhouetted in a lit doorway, a ridiculously curvy shadow belonging to a femme fatale stretches out from my feet. Sitting in the gumshoe's chair in the foreground is Clockblocker. Beneath him is an unattributed quote stating, "I see you brought protection."

My last creation is a rip-off of the "Metropolis" poster. Instead of the movie's name it has "Redoubt" in the same sharp font, and instead of a up close fembot, it has me standing in front of the Brockton Bay skyline.

I realize what I'm doing is a bit absurd, but this was me. I drew, I designed, I animated. I did these things before the Thinker invaded, and I suppose I want to show the public and myself that part of me still remains.

Miguel bungled his choice in hero for the day. To make up for it, I bought him an ice cream cone at one of the parlors opening up early along the boardwalk. I let him pick out a poster for himself too. He picked the Shirley Temple one.

Now we're on patrol in a better part of the city, leisurely strolling the streets while Clockblocker makes sure it's all clear up ahead. I figured I'd start our day with the humdrum walking then I'd wow Miguel with my lab and maybe some of my animated clips at the tail end.

"What's your favorite dinner?" he asks me after taking a pass at his cookies and cream.

"Quality street tacos loaded with guacamole and pico de gallo. Yours?"

"I like that too," he says too quickly to have committed any thought to his response. "Do you like cats or dogs? I like dogs 'cause cats are mean, and my abuela's cat won't let me pet him. His name is Custard."

I'm probably supposed to be communicating something of substance to this boy, imparting applicable wisdom, but I can't come up with anything.

"I don't really know. I've never had a pet. We had a big rat problem two yea-"

A guttural uproar that's been building in the background for half a minute becomes too noisy to ignore. Wheels screech on asphalt, and an engine's growling bounces off the sides of buildings.

I hear a collision. Something metal gets crushed and noisily shredded. Then an incredibly large, cartoonishly ramshackle vehicle comes howling around the corner.

Squealer. One of the only villain tinkers I know of in Brockton Bay.

She speeds towards our direction. I nudge Miguel behind the corner of a shop, but three boys who were skateboarding in unoccupied parking spaces not too far away panic. One steps on his board in his hurry and splays onto a storm drain. His buddies pause halfway to the sidewalk, indecisive. I can see it all.

Three kids are going to be run over. Squealer's vehicular monstrosity is about to turn the trio of adolescent boys into the world's ugliest red carpet. Nearly thirty people will bear witness. Some of it might be captured on security cameras in detail.

This is fantastic. I would have preferred that the boys were younger and looked less like hoodlums, but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth after it's galloped into my stable.

I rush forward to intersect the motorized junkyard's course.

I won't be fast enough, not at this rate. Squealer's fender will be upon the skateboarders in seconds, and I'm pulling up short of that deadline.

I chuck the shield canister I primed when I began sprinting. It zings in a tight arc to a spot in the air between the three boys and the cobbled together chassis.

At the last moment I notice Squealer's actually steering her tank to the side. She's attempting to narrowly avoid the boys, and the maneuver would have probably paid off. But she's too late.

A shield bubble springs to life immediately ahead of Squealer. The front end of her vehicle - which was previously careening at sixty-five miles an hour or so - collapses around the inviolable geodesic globe floating in place. Pieces and sections of the apparatus begin to dislodge.

I hurl myself between the boys and the collision with my arms held out as wide as I can hold them. I'm facing the boys so all I can see are the shards of windshield that get past me. One boy gets sliced across his cheek by a twirling plate of steel. Something big strikes me in the center of my mass, and I have to take three or four steps forward to stay on my feet.

The shower of debris stops.

"Get to safety," I instruct the skateboarders.

They comply. I glance to where they're headed and see a fourth boy on the sidewalk with his phone held out. He must have been recording the others doing tricks.

I hope he got my good side.

I turn to inspect the damage I've done to Squealer's tinkertech beast just in time to see my shield canister drop after deactivating. Parts that were smashed into the inner workings of the vehicle come tumbling out. It's sort of like I did the inverse of putting a clown nose on the front end.

Squealer's draped over her wheel. Knocked out cold or dead. She neglected to install airbags. But she had a seat belt on at least.

I look for flames. Signs of leakage. Any telltale indications that the wreck is going to blow. But I find nothing.

I tap a tiny nubbin on the underside of my helmet. "Console."

"Kid Win on the console. Hi, Re. How's your thing with the boy turning out?"

I see Squealer's mouth open and her eyes squint as she groans in pain.

"Serendipitous. I have Squealer incapacitated at my location. She'll need paramedics. Her vehicle doesn't look like it's going to catch fire, but I'm a shield tinker, not a rocket surgeon. Can you ask somebody if I'm supposed to get her out of the wreck? Oh, hold please."

The passenger side door is thrown wide, and a lazily costumed man with dark skin loses his footing on the ladder leading down from the vehicle's cabin. He slumps onto the street then begins to rise to his shaky feet.

"I have Skidmark. I'm going in to apprehend. Call Clockblocker to me."

I terminate communications and run toward the Merchant leader. He's a bit disoriented from the crash, but he sees me coming. I pick up my pace.

I prime my next shield canister. Too slowly. Skidmark is already sweeping his hand out in front of himself. A shimmering cascade saturates the street, creating a glowing blue to violet gradient. I read his power acts like localized, consistent gusts. My canister will probably be flung back at me if I pitch it through that field he just set down. So I toss my tinkertech to Skidmark's right to serve as a distraction.

As my bubble pops into existence, I don't bother with the six foot band on the ground. I simply charge around it. I throw a punch at the Merchant leader. He doesn't have enough time to coat the street again so he applies his power's effect to his cape as he turns it towards me like a bullfighter who doesn't understand what he's supposed to be doing.

Skidmark dampens the speed of my weak punch and I barely tap him with my knuckles. I telegraph a strike to his head with my non-dominant left hand. He blocks my feeble attempt with his cape once more, veiling his own line of sight. I throw my right fist down at the area below his kneecap and above his shin.

The unforgiving surface of my barrier makes contact. It activates the reflex arc between the tendon in his knee and his spinal cord. The motor nerve responds immediately. Skidmark's stance wobbles even as his brain is only just receiving sensory input.

I bring the same fist up into the side of his gut. He gasps and tries to push me away with one hand. But his palm slips right off the frictionless barrier around my helmet. Using the opening, I headbutt him.

The top of my barriered helmet cracks him in the chin. Because I'm short. It works though. He staggers.

With no technique whatsoever, I hammer him where I can. I might not be strong, but getting hit with a fist-sized rock's equivalent in his soft spots does the trick because he's not a brute.

And because Skidmark's not a brute, I don't use my gauntlets to their full potential.

In a last ditch attempt at extracting himself, the pummeled Merchant tries to coat my barrier in his power's effect. It doesn't take.

I twist and kick the back of his knee this time. His legs fold underneath him. I slide open a compartment at my side. Scatter zip ties like chicken feed to get them out of my barrier. Then I struggle for seconds trying to secure his arms and end up having to punch him a few more times. I then slam his face into the street.

Finally, I get his wrists zip tied behind his back, and I zip tie his ankles as well for being a nuisance.

I tap the nubbin on my helmet again.

"Win. Skidmark's out of action too. Do you have an ETA on my help?"

"Clockblocker's close enough that he'll be interrupting me. Officers will be there in under five. Paramedics won't be too far behind them. The two you took down - good job, by the way - were running from Glory Girl probably. I just got news she flew into a Merchant drug deal six streets down. Got into a real mess. Tangled with Mush for a while."

"I'm here," Clockblocker says jogging up to my left.

"Clock's here. Thank you, Win." I turn to Clockblocker. "Can you play freeze tag with Squealer? I don't know what condition she's in."

"On it."

I walk over to the skateboarder who had his cheek cut open.

"Keep pressure on the wound. You're doing well. Paramedics are on their way. Do you think you can hold out for five to ten minutes?"

The boy nods. He's clutching a bunched up sweatshirt sleeve to his face.

"Excellent. Was anybody else injured?" The other boys shake their heads. "Good. Great. I'm not wandering off too far. If you need me, holler. I just have to go check on a few things. Sit tight."

I make my way to Miguel.

He's exactly where I left him, but the vibrancy that was in him has grown timid. He's let cookies and cream drip onto him, and the top of his poster is scrunched in his other fist. He won't look at me directly, and I can see beads of water in the corners of his big brown eyes.

"Trouble's nearly gone now. That was exciting, huh?"

Miguel's too shaken to reply. Different approach then.

"How about I have someone call your mom? Today's been eventful enough. I'm going to be busy with this for a while, and you don't want to have to deal with that. Boring, right? It's most of what I do."

I motion for him to follow me to a cast iron table and chairs set up in front of the shop we're next to. I have him sit down.

"We'll talk to your mom and reschedule for another day, okay? You can visit with me or one of the other-" I pause ever so slightly, "heroes. Snug as a bug in the PRT or Protectorate headquarters if you want. How does that sound?"

Miguel still doesn't speak to me. His lips are almost quivering.

I've lost my first fan already, have I? I knew putting a child with me was a bad idea. I didn't interact with kids when I was a kid. Why would I be any good at it now? I'm not a wolf in sheep's clothing. I'm a scorpion infesting a kindly lion's fur. I should stick with what I was made for.

I step away and tell Kid Win to get in touch with Miguel's mother. Then I wait feet apart from the boy.

PRT officers and paramedics arrive on the scene. They carefully extract Squealer from her scrap heap and pick Skidmark off the street. He had started to try and worm himself to freedom.

The skateboarder gets treatment, and his friends give statements. I awkwardly hand Miguel off to his mother when she shows up. She says the situation was explained to her on the phone, and she doesn't scald me with a denunciatory glare. So I can only hope I won't be getting sued.

I sit down in the chair Miguel vacated. Clockblocker approaches.

"Bagged two thirds of the Merchants' parahumans on what? Your seventh time out on patrol? That's one hell of an almost hat trick, Re. I'm gonna have to beat Fenja and Menja in a mud wrestling match now just to keep up."

"Tell me when to start selling the tickets," I respond with no inflection in my voice.

Clockblocker releases an equally mirthless and short-lived "ha!".

"Heard your kid didn't take the fight well."

He's not my kid, and I don't want to ventilate. What else was I meant to do? I'm fairly certain Squealer wouldn't have hit the three boys now, but I couldn't have known that then. There was nothing I could have done differently. Nothing I could have done better.

"How was Squealer?" I change the subject.

"Banged up but fine. You did a number on her killdozer though."

Clockblocker fidgets. He has something he wants to talk to me about, and I've been avoiding him for a week because I didn't want to talk. Fate, it seems, has conspired against me.

"Now that we're stuck here, there's something that's been on my mind. Can I sit down?"

"You may."

Clockblocker takes a seat. He organizes his thoughts.

"Don't take this as me being mean. I'm really not trying to be. But... some of the things you say sometimes. It's hard not to listen in the moment, but you leave people in a funk, Re. You empty them out. Yesterday when you were done talking to Vista she had a thousand yard stare to her. She passed it off as nothing when I asked, but people don't get that way after normal conversations. Do you get what I'm saying? Maybe tone it down a bit. You've been with us for more than a month now, and I barely know you."

"I'll give your opinion all the consideration it's due."

"Don't go all robot on me just because I surprised you with some criticism. I'm trying to tell you it's okay to lower your guard around us."

"Can you guess what type of people have tried to convince me to lower my guard in the past? Do you want to join their ranks?"

Clockblocker's helmet conveys nothing, as always. I could take his silence as implicit agreement, chagrin, or indignance. With a few words more, I might be able to push him into a downward spiral of self-examination and drawing unfair comparisons because - I'm dumbfounded to admit - he seems to be a considerate person at heart. But that would be wrong of me and unconstructive besides. Every Ward seems implausibly decent.

Apart from Sophia and I, that is.

"That was false equivalence, and it was uncalled for." I run my pointer finger across the holes lined up in rows on the cast iron tabletop.

"You're right," I add.

Clockblocker's head hitches. I envision his eyebrows rising.

"I hate to push my luck. But what was I right about?"

"I've been preemptively fending off attacks that were never going to happen. I didn't know better in the beginning. Now I do. I'm sorry."

There. I've fulfilled my vow to Armsmaster and apologized to Clockblocker.

The white-clad Ward is stunned for several seconds.

He tries to play it off.

"Don't get too sappy on me, Re, or I'll have to invoke master-stranger protocols." He shrugs his shoulders. "That wasn't funny."

He continues. "I'm sure Aegis would say something along the lines of 'you're a member of the team, so we want to make sure you feel that way'. But what I'm going to say to you is we're not total jerks so give us a chance."

You should be less focused on me and more concerned with whatever issue you've been setting on the back burner. You think it's too difficult to contend with? That you'd be a hypocrite or that you'd be pushing boundaries? Well, you won't have to worry about it being difficult for much longer. It will be decided. How will you look at yourself in the mirror then?

I suppress the Thinker as much as I can and supply a grin.

"One chance," I say.

I push my fake glasses up the bridge of my nose and watch my armored alter ego take a high-intensity discharge lamp - traveling at great speed - to the small of her back. "Reclaiming Brockton Bay" the on-screen graphic blazons a moment later. The news anchor flaps his lips to no avail. Closed captioning is on, but I can't see the bottom half of the muted television from my vantage point in the farthest corner of Arcadia's study hall.

I can guess at what's being said though. PHO had the fourth skateboarder's cellphone footage circulating by breakfast of the next day, but it took TV news a bit longer to catch on. Now the local stations are overcompensating by rerunning my story along with Armsmaster's recent capture of Lung. They're framing our takedowns as a beginning trend of heroes taking back Brockton Bay.

Don't overtly instigate the villains is what I think.

It's world-shattering to contemplate. The leader of the ABB - my ABB - will be Birdcaged, and it was the guy I work with on a semidaily basis who made it possible. This is a small shattered world I live in. I was as giddy as a school girl when I found out. Which, I suppose, isn't saying much because it's an accurate description of what I was at that exact moment.

I had to go through an excruciatingly long day at school with questions bubbling right underneath my skin, but when I got back, Armsmaster wasn't as elated as I had anticipated. He was vinegary, in fact. The higher-ups temporarily removed him from his command and confiscated both his power armor and his cherished Halberd as a slap on the wrist for nearly murdering Lung.

Who knew Armsmaster might be the one to drag me down?

The way he told it, he received some outside assistance from an inexperienced cape who couldn't control herself. An insectile parahuman danced around the truth and Armsmaster got in trouble due to her negligence. How do I put this delicately?

Bugs brutalized the angry lizard man's testicles, and, as it turns out, his body didn't react well to multifarious acupuncture.

After delicately prying into Armsmaster's tale, and consoling his ego, I got him to divulge a predominantly unedited version of events. The bug girl rendered Lung hors de combat. She was as good as tricked by Armsmaster into giving the credit away. And it was a killer cocktail of venom and tranquilizers that made the people in charge irate with Armsmaster.

I don't disagree with the man's glory poaching on moral grounds. Instead, I disagree with him for practical reasons. Too many details don't add up in his revised story and more than one person knows the secret of what really transpired. He informed me all of the Undersiders were likely on-scene before he got there, for crying out loud. Worse than admitting you were helped, is having to admit part of your reputation is built on lies. One big lie implies there could be a few thousand more bricking up your pitiable truth.

And now? With Lung gone? What will become of the Cornell bomber he recruited recently? Bakuda. Empire Eighty-Eight outnumbers the ABB in parahumans - they have more than a baker's dozen - and it was always Lung keeping the scales of power balanced.

Now, assume I'm the one consigned to artificially righting those scales. If I were a bomb tinker like Bakuda how would I make the E88 back off? Hostages, right? She did something similar at her university didn't she? I haven't been given much intel, but a bomb tinker with something to prove mixed with a teleporting replicator sounds like another killer cocktail to me. It sets the bar higher at a larger bar. City scale. It could mean indefinite suicide bombings. Not great.

Seeding micro-shields. What if Bakuda did something similar to that? Could she abduct people in the E88's backyard and plant bombs in them? Better than wiring a place that can be evacuated to blow, would be wiring someone's friends and family. You could turn tight-knit groups against each other with an ever-looming threat of death.

But she probably won't go that route because then she'd have everyone gunning for her. Shaking the scales doesn't break the scales. It just makes everyone invested in keeping them in working order vexed with you.

I'm hoping she isn't the maniacal sort of villain who thinks it's sensible to hold a city for ransom with a new and horrible bomb hidden in its sewers.

I'll have to split my time between constructing my tower and manufacturing its many, many corresponding parts.

"How 'bout you, Tess? Are there any guys you've set your scope on?" Ollie - short for Oleander - asks.

"Hm? Guys?" I eloquently reply.

I've been changed by the Thinker, but it subsides when capes aren't involved. If the person I'm speaking with doesn't have laser vision or something like it, the Thinker loses its rhythm. It, almost petulantly, won't help me juggle multiple points of sensory input.

I feel far too mortal with my barrier down and my thoughts trundling at a reasonable tempo.

Two girls congregate near me. They've made a habit of it, meeting with me when we're not in class. I still can't tell what they're after. Their names are Ollie and Gianna. Ollie is a hay bale blonde volleyball player who has nearly a foot on me, and Gianna is a wider built stoner with wiry brown hair cut into a harsh bob.

"Girls too! Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with having a girl crush. Oh. Oh! Is it reducive to phrase it that way?" Ollie carries on.

"Reductive," Gianna says.

"You think?"

"Huh? Well, maybe a little, but I was just correcting you."

"Consider me corrected."

"No, you ditzy bitch. Nobody thinks you're prejudiced. I was trying to replace your made up word with a real one."

"Made up word?"

"Reducive."

"But that's what I said."

"It's what you said, but it wasn't right! It's reductive, not reducive. Jeez! You're so lucky you're pretty."

"Aw. That's nice of you to say." Ollie turns her attention back to me. "So, um, Tess. Do you- while we're chatting about it. Do you have a preference in people?"

"To answer your first question, no. I haven't put anyone in my crosshairs as of yet. I'm actually not interested in romantic entanglements. Not right now. As for preferences? Loyal, supportive, kind, doesn't crowd me, tractable."

"That last one is kinda weird," Gianna says.

"Only for me," I amend my statement.

"Still kinda weird. But alright." Gianna folds a piece of paper into progressively smaller and smaller triangles. It's the speech she wrote for today's presentation. She didn't do well.

"I wish I had your resolve, T. People calling you creepy really doesn't phase you does it? You just let it all slide off you."

Ollie flinches at Gianna's somewhat backhanded compliment. She leaps to my defense, guided by her mother hen instinct, but I can't appreciate her ruffled advocacy because I'm more focused on the person walking up behind her.

"Not everybody's gonna get along with everybody. Okay, Tess? 'Creepy's' a matter of opinion, and it could just as easily be replaced with 'interesting'. You're kinda weird, yeah, but that's what makes you really cool. So what if people are saying-"

"Would the two of you mind if Tess and me talked in private?" Victoria Dallon asks. Glory Girl. Ollie and Gianna have to rotate themselves around to see the poster child, but I've had my back to the wall this entire time.

"Class project," Vicky adds.

Gianna glances at me. Glances at Victoria. Then, if I didn't know any better, I'd say she places emphasis on not glancing at the television.

"You good, T?"

"Debatable. But I'll be fine." I tug a grin into place. "Thank you."

I motion to Ollie's deserted seat as the girls depart. Vicky slides in.

"You're looking better," I say.

"Better? This is the first time we're meeting face to face, right?"

I decide not to mention the eyeless cutout of her face I have displayed in my room.

"You've as good as outed me to those two girls," I say.

Vicky smiles uncertainly.

"You're being dramatic. I talk to people who aren't Wards all the time."

"Do we have any classes together?"

"No, but there're plenty of other places we could have met other than class."

She seems to self-correct toward flippancy. Like she's trying to breeze past matters before they have a chance to latch onto her.

"'Class project,' you said. Seeing as I don't share any classes with you, what do you think the likelihood of us collaborating on a class project is? From another angle, how likely do you think it is that the people you just dismissed have almost complete knowledge of what classes I'm in and who's in them with me? There's also the added issue of 'in private', but I won't be going down that rabbit hole."

I close the textbook I had open in front of me.

"Incidentally, one or both of those girls share four classes with me. So, taking into account what the two of us know, we can assume Gianna and Ollie knew, at the very least, two things when they were asked to leave this table. You're Glory Girl, and you lied to them. You came up with a pretense to speak with the transfer girl you've never publicly interacted with, and that transfer girl just so happens to fit the proportions of the new Ward Redoubt. It doesn't take a genius."

Victoria parses through what I rapidly spelled out for her. I don't get the impression she's dull. As it happens, I'm inclined to think she's, quite deftly, hurrying away from any thoughts she categorizes as distressing. She's an intelligent girl either attempting to make herself or being made brutish.

"Now, what did you come to talk to me about?" I ask.

"Dean said you were a bit intense, but wow. No wonder you're not popular outside of the armor. That must be weird, everybody talking about you on PHO and the news, and then coming in here and going unnoticed."

The things she's saying could be construed as hurtful, but it seems as if she generally isn't looking at what's sticking to the underside of her good intentions.

She prattles on. "I know how I can fix this little screw up. I'll tell everybody you're my new pet project. I saw a nice-looking girl in frumpy clothes and no makeup, and my sense of fashion couldn't take it. Because, I mean, I can't take this."

She gestures at my oversized hoodie.

I'll concede that her plan could work. The first idea that occurred to me was to storm away from the table shouting that I've never gotten anywhere near her boyfriend, but that would just be me falling back into a familiar rut.

"I dress down intentionally."

"After I'm done with you, you'll be singing a different tune. I'm sure of it."

"I won't be participating in your changing booth montage."

"Come on. Are you really gonna make me beg? It'll be great. We can talk about the stuff you don't get to talk about with those two."

"I'm not being coy. And even if I was, you'd be better served leaving me to wallow. If a person ever tries to force you to convince them into doing something they already wanted to do, I say let them go to rack and ruin."

"Oh, please. You don't know what's good for you. Tell you what. Give me a crack at fixing you up this weekend, and if you're not swayed after that, I'll leave you be. But I definitely don't think you'll be disappointed."

I allow the Thinker to have its say. It's been yelling at me from nearly every opera box, and it was only a matter of time until it overran this show.

"When someone says no, you should listen. I'm not your prom date. I'm a person you just met. You can't strong-arm me like you do with your-" I'm about to say boyfriend, but another relationship sounds better to my ear, "-sister. Overenthusiasm will lead to a whole lot of wrongs if you let it, and the sad thing is, I imagine you're already fully aware. You've been teetering on a knife's edge in pursuit of your dream, but that sort of doggedness will get you into trouble. Invulnerability doesn't mean you're invulnerable to the consequences of your actions."

I've maybe taken things a tad too far out of context. She's going to read this as a personal attack.

"You're talking about the thing with the Merchants. You're thinking if I hadn't gone into that drug deal alone those kids wouldn't have almost died."

"No."

"No? Just no?"

"You couldn't have possibly known where Squealer was going or who would be in her way. Consider yourself absolved if that's been bothering you. Refocus on issues of more direct cause and effect. For example: revealing my identity by mistake in the interests of broaching a topic you still haven't touched upon."

She rises from her seat aided by flight. It's hard to chart her emotions behind the trained veneer she's put on.

"I came by to thank you for saving them. The kids. So, thanks. It took me a while to get it through my head. How big a deal that was. That's all I had to say."

She stalks away. Rather abruptly.

Despite my efforts to be friendlier with my teammates, I haven't been making many people outside of that dynamic very happy. Sure, the internet likes me at the moment, but the people talking about Redoubt on those forums have never met me. They're strangers. And they're forming opinions based on a thimbleful of data.

Miguel though, he met me, and he hasn't wanted to meet me since. He was startled his mother said. He found the noisy collision and method I used to restrain Skidmark dismaying. She told me he'd get over it. That they'd reschedule. But the Emigdio's haven't contacted the PRT in nearly two weeks.

I'm hoping I didn't tarnish the boy's innocence too critically. There's enough of that going around without me being a contributor.

When Gianna and Ollie come back to the table, I tell them Vicky was acting jealous over something or other. Ollie accepts my explanation in a heartbeat, but Gianna doesn't seem as receptive to my legerdemain.

I can't be bothered. I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping much. I tinker around the clock and - in one rare instance - with the clock.

Last time I stared back at myself in the mirror, I looked like I'd been in a drunken brawl. Shadows surrounded my bloodshot eyes. My skin was sickly pale. And my black locks had reached my earlobes in a maddened disarray.

I'll be able to rest when my tower is done.

I spend the last hour or so of school clandestinely drawing schematics. Then, when the bell or buzzer or whatever you'd call it rings, I slip out, successfully failing to interact with anyone.

A legitimate Redoubt poster has been put up in the PRT lobby next to everyone else's. Including an updated one for Vista because I pressured them into it. I'll have to take a look at both of them next time I pass through that way. If mine is anything like the mock-ups I was shown, it'll be me in my helmet, my lips exposed and quirked into a mischievous smile. The image people did an artistic rendering of my geodesic shielding as a backdrop too. Tastefully faint.

I liked what I saw, but I won't be admiring the finished product today.

I wander around the back of PRT headquarters instead. I meet up with Vista at my lab's door.

She says her day was lousy. I lackadaisically sympathize. I point out a section of my monolithic tower to her and offer her a fizzy tea. She accepts. Not wanting to squander the time we have, I scoot behind a folding screen set up in the corner. I switch into one of my purple boilersuits, fasten a black cinch belt around my waste, and jam a stick of gum into my mouth.

Escher could have painted realism with a shaker nine at his disposal. I begin toiling on my artwork.

Vista expands parts of my machinery so I can worm my way inside the innards. If a cavity is too small for even my small frame to fit in, Vista widens the space or twists surfaces so I can get at them. Her power doesn't stress my tinkertech from what I've observed using smaller devices I was willing to sacrifice. In fact, when my tinkertech is powered it seems to distort regions of Vista's power around itself. It's incredible to witness the interplay of demented space.

"At my debut, somebody asked who I got along with most in the Wards. I gave a non-answer, if you recall." I thread a cable through an impossible hole then nod to Vista that she can drop her influence over the area. "But who I wanted to name was you."

"Me?" Vista asks.

"Yeah you." I struggle to fit a gear into place. "You have a good head on your shoulders, you're trustworthy, and - I don't say this to just anybody - you're peachy keen. Plus, you're helping me put together this phallic marvel."

I extract myself from a mind-boggling nook. I jump down, or rather step down, ten feet to the concrete floor.

"If you ever need an excuse to get away from your parents for a night just tell them you're having a sleepover with Redoubt. I'll vouch for you."

"Thanks, Tess. Seriously." She makes a divot where I point, then corrects the dimensions of it as I make hand signs. "A sleepover though?"

She rolls her eyes. Tweaks a minutely small slot into a porthole window for me.

"Where's Armsmaster by the way? Doesn't he usually stop by around now? It's Wednesday right?"

"Wednesday all day," I confirm. "He said he's meeting with an informant tonight."

"That's exciting, I guess."

Exciting is a word. I might have tried tailing Armsmaster to his destination if he didn't have a super-cycle to prowl around on. And I very much doubt Dragon will track him to sate my nefarious curiosity. It's perplexing. All I have are scant clues.

Armsmaster's aggravation was dialed up high when he mentioned his informant. I was far from the only one he didn't tell where he was going. He made sure his tinkertech was back in his possession for the meeting. Lung's capture happened early Monday morning.

Working off just the facts I've gathered, I'd say he's going to have a heart to heart with the bug girl.

This isn't what I'd call sleep. Yet, in a literal sense, it is some shut-eye in the middle of a school day so I'll take what I can get. After an all-nighter working on my tower and awaiting an explanation from Armsmaster that never came, I'm bushed. I have no idea how the tinker in blue's presumed rendezvous with the bug girl went, and my somnambulist stretch with the tower's cap wheel resulted in negligible progress overall.

I've yawned more than I've spoken today.

The PRT van's movements rock me into a meditative daze. I stare at the backs of my eyelids trying to tune out the other Wards while they make their preparations. The steady downpour drumming on the van's roof helps.

"Re? Redoubt." Vista drags me back into the realm of the wakeful. She's on the bench across from me. "We're almost there."

I sigh then lift my helmeted head off Shadow Stalker's shoulder.

My napping arrangement was a little performative comedy for the rest of the Wards. Something akin to getting an alligator to blow a slide whistle in front of a crowd.

"Did I miss any tactical revisions?"

Aegis is in command mode so he takes it upon himself to answer my question before anyone else has a chance to.

"No. Just like we agreed. You and I are up front. Tanking if need be. Clockblocker's right behind me. Kid Win and Gallant are further back, filling in as support. Vista stays back too, so she can control the field. And Shadow Stalker is our mobile flanker."

Clockblocker will be acting as Aegis' right-hand man instead of pairing off with me because whatever the opposition hits us with will probably slip off my barrier. Whereas Aegis will get pieces whittled off him if he's not careful. Clockblocker will be the "two" in the duo's one-two-punch. Hopefully he'll be able to knock people out of the fight by putting them into time-out.

Me, however- I'll be freer to roam around and shepherd our opponents. It brings me immense pleasure to think about how frustrating it must be to face me in a melee. Unless you have enough raw power to drain my batteries or you can master me, I'm an ambulatory annoyance. I can't even be trapped for too long because my shield canisters and brute gauntlets can fashion doorways for me. I'm the horror movie slasher you have to outrun. It's great.

"We're hoping to wait them out until the Protectorate arrives though. Don't forget they have hostages."

"Yeah, we know," Shadow Stalker growls from behind her mask.

When we were getting ready to leave, Clockblocker and Aegis got it into their heads they'd switch costumes to throw off whoever's making unapproved withdrawals. I had been nodding along for most of their planning session, but this I had to quash before they geared up. My rebuttal was simple, phrased as a query. What if someone shoots Clockblocker through the heart because they think he's Aegis?

The boys ultimately decided not to masquerade as one another.

The assumption is we'll be going up against the Undersiders, but, instead of four, we got a count of six. A bank robbery in the middle of downtown is out of their usual wheelhouse so, the way I rationalize it, they took on two new members to broaden their horizons.

The PRT van rolls to a halting stop. Two knocks come from the front cab. Gallant, closest to the metal doors, pushes them open to the wet, gray afternoon outside. We step down into a murky puddle pooling in a sunken patch of street.

We spread out to take our positions on the sidewalk parallel to Brockton Bay Central Bank. Shadow Stalker pauses and glances at me.

"Cockroach or Cocker Spaniel?" I ask her.

A bloodthirst surged into her eyes when she first heard Grue would be here. It wasn't startling because I've been around her for a while now. I've seen her weaknesses laid bare. She tells herself she's not going to kill her "nemesis" when everybody's around to see, but I knew an opportunity might present itself to her today. I couldn't have that.

I've been putting time into her for a reason. Telling her the violent urges she's been feeling are commands yelled from a parahuman neoplasm. I christened her invasive growth the Kennelmaster. It seems to be more zealously specialized than my Thinker. I didn't tell Sophia what my second voice is or what it tells me to do, but I did reveal to the girl I have one as well.

I fibbed and told her I was successfully fighting against its urges, as she should be.

So, cockroach or Cocker Spaniel? Cockroaches pull through. They survive in their own way. Cocker Spaniels obey. They live by the word of their master.

Shadow Stalker shakes her head then ghosts away to take a position "behind enemy lines" without audibly responding to my seemingly nonsensical question. I told her to stick to Aegis' plan and limit her obsession with the darkness generating cape to one grievous wound if she absolutely had to.

The bank before the Wards and I - minus Shadow Stalker - stands at six stories tall. Wide stone slabs lead up to the grandiose temple dedicated to the almighty dollar. Majestic petrified horses border the finely cut stairs, and gargoyles leering from the building's corners add to its consecrated vibe.

Kid Win. Red and gold. Clockblocker. Pearly white. Aegis. Rust red with silvery white trim. Gallant. Gunmetal and shining silver. Vista. White and forest green in undulated lines.

In the rainy gloom, the colors on my teammates' costumes catch the eye. And here's me, armored in light-drinking black near the center of our line between Aegis and Gallant. I must look like a missing tooth in a colorful smile.

When the villains gaze out those fogged up bank windows do they see me as someone to be feared? Do they see a kid playing dress-up? A changeling?

"Glory Girl's made it." Kid Win is mostly addressing Gallant, Vicky's on-again, off-again boyfriend.

I advised against calling in the blonde bombshell due to her personal stakes in this particular confrontation, but Gallant made a bite-sized speech about Victoria "having a right to know". And I didn't have enough of an opinion on the matter to gainsay him.

I wonder if his armor is waterproof. My barrier certainly is, but the tops of Vista's and Kid Win's costumes obviously aren't. I grieve for them. I'd be miserable if I had to stand here while my toes turned pruny, rainwater sloshing around in my boots. Given the option, I would have penned this engagement in for-

One moment we're standing in the rain. The next, the front doors of the bank are slamming open to disgorge darkness. Black and total like I've heard the bowels of the Earth can get when you shut off your headlamp.

Eight hostages come staggering out of the rolling abyss to meet us. Forced out to act as obstacles at the behest of villains I've instantly lost respect for.

They asked us to this ball. Told us to get our formal wear on. Yet, when we show up ready for a waltz, they're too scared to dance.

"Everyone coming out of the bank! Get down and stay put!" Aegis hollers immediately.

His pronouncement is heeded a fraction of a second before the billowing darkness consumes them. I try to mark their positions. A minefield of prone bodies.

Bothersome.

We're pressed backward by the inky black fog. I diligently follow Aegis' lead, but I hold my hand out to comb my fingers through the murk. My barrier doesn't flare.

Then a lot happens all at once.

A grotesque monstrosity ferrying someone on its back comes loping out of the darkness. A comet tail of insects pursues them. I thought you said the bug girl identified as a hero, Armsmaster. How did you botch that conversation last night so fabulously? As a cherry on top of this sundae, an unnatural whirring originates somewhere to my left.

Vista begins to fold and shape the world so all roads lead to Redoubt. I don't take it personally. It's a plan we had in our back pocket in case chaos broke out. I can't use Vista's shortcuts when I have my barrier up. I melt through her effect. As a result, she has to work around me. Our powers do the opposite of synergizing in combat.

The whirring I heard to my left has grown much louder.

A person in power armor bulkier than mine races around the stygian cloud on what looks like roller-skates built into their suit. I have no idea who they are.

Using a lead pipe, the mystery villain attacks me with a drive-by bludgeoning to the shoulder. Their speed hits me more than their swing. I nearly topple. But I fling out a brute gauntlet like I'm expecting someone to catch hold, activate a "punch" mid-tumble, and a mini shield bubble encases my fist, imprisoning my clenched hand in place. Without severing my wrist, I might add. My removal from its concussive and exclusionary effect while maintaining its anchor on the world was the tricky part.

My punch bubble only lasts a second, but its enough time to swing my feet underneath myself.

The roller derby desperado who hit me fairs worse from our exchange. The arm they assaulted me with wrenches backward, and, because their steering seems to be reliant on their body's positioning, their trajectory becomes skewed. They whirl off at a slant into the darkness and don't immediately shoot out the other end.

I hope they didn't collide with one of the hostages in there.

How did this come about? I get rid of one be-wheeled tinker and the city provides a replacement? We were informed about spiders being used as civilian kill switches in the bank but weren't clued in to the Undersiders' sixth member. I guess now we know.

I don't want more villain tinkers in my city. Tinkers mean possible loopholes around my tinkertech. Tinkers mean there might be imitators among them.

When the mole reappears, I'll make sure to whack them down again.

I'm a walking bug tickler. Not quite a zapper. I can tell the regiment of insects the bug girl sent after me aren't reacting well to my tractionless shielding, but I can't really capitalize on that realization.

The mind behind the swarm switches up tactics on the fly (har, har). She can't manage more than a fizzle of purple tessellations on my barrier, but she can amass the buzzing entomophobe's nightmare into an obnoxious blob in front of my face.

Agitation is a good descriptor.

I swat the swarm with a brute gauntlet. Hundreds die to my punch bubble's instantaneous displacement, but more bugs gather to replace the ones that perished in seconds.

My problem is solved by drastic relocation.

One of Hellhound's abominations - which I've read are supposed to be mutated dogs, though I don't really see it - plows into me, probably funneled in by Vista's efforts. I skid back a few feet. The "dog" doesn't let up.

Its owner issues instructions I don't quite understand until they've already been enacted. The creature tries to press itself on top of me. It fumbles to keep me beneath its belly. If I had to compare my predicament to anything, it would be an illogical struggle to keep a wet bar of soap underfoot.

I'm pinned. But it's taking a lot of activity on the dog's part to maintain its accomplishment, and I haven't even started punching yet. I don't want to use the secret weapon embedded in my right gauntlet on the pooch. I'm planning on using it on a meaner dog, and I want to keep it as my ace in the hole. Besides, it wasn't officially approved, and I don't enjoy the idea of euthanizing the real dog encased inside this thing.

Oh? Interesting.

If I killed the real dog within this fleshy piece of conveyance, I'd be removing one of Hellhound's claws. She doesn't control her pets. She has to train them. Kill the dogs that listen to her, and she's close enough to helpless for my purposes. She can't relate to her teammates properly because her parahumanity changed her more than mine did. If I made her effectively useless to the Undersiders, she'd become a burden to them. Their team would fracture. Fractures are stress points I can apply pressure to.

I apply pressure to the asphalt and slide myself up to the monster's spectacularly large face. It snaps at me. Drools onto my barrier. Then it opens its maw again.

I ram my arm down its throat, deposit a primed shield canister behind its plump tongue, and pull away.

The shield canister detonates. I'm thrown back in a lightshow of purple meshwork.

Glancing back to where I flew from, I see one hell of a sight. The creature's front looks like a peeled banana without the banana inside. Also, very meaty. As if the construct was a canine centaur that explosively rejected its upper human half.

The carcass collapses with a damp thunk. Gore joins the raindrops falling from the gloomy sky. The real dog piloting the monstrous puppet should still be alright though. Probably.

I get up and survey our battlefield.

The bug girl's insects can't get through Clockblocker's costume, but they're pestering him by invading his personal space. Nothing I can really do about that. Aegis was briefly used as a chew toy it seems, but there's a time-frozen dog monster between him and Clockblocker that tells a story. The Wards team leader is attempting to bring down the last creature now with Kid Win and his improved modular gun's aid. Hellhound is enraged. She's trying to get at Gallant while ignoring the two Wards hounding her (har, har), but Vista won't let her.

Darkness consumes a majority of our fighting arena. I lob a shield canister at its periphery just to see what will happen. The resulting five foot bubble splits the black as expected. Just not in any way that's worthwhile. The darkness floods right back in when the bubble disappears.

Changing targets so my teammates can join me in trying to track down Grue, I gesture for Vista to give me a straight shot at Hellhound's mount. I start to fastball another canister through the condensed route she's given me, but, at the last moment, my throw gets screwy. My arm flinches. The shield canister flies wide of its mark, and detonates at an inefficacious point in the rainy air.

I look around and finally meet eyes with the Undersider responsible. Regent. I give the foppish boy a "why I oughta" fist in the air.

While I was doing that, however, Hellhound finally saw what I made of her dog. She seems none to pleased by her mongrel's truncation. You can't raise a war dog and then get upset when the mutt inevitably goes to war. That's what I believe.

The under-costumed villain turns from the endless corridor Vista had her running down, and charges at me. I get ready to stop her in her tracks.

Her monster collides with my midsection full force. Regent cramped my muscles at the final moment again.

I'm launched into the darkness in a flare of purple. When the tessellations of my barrier clear, I'm submerged in pitch black. I consider picking a random direction and jogging, but decide against it.

I do some mental math: the height of Grue's darkness, my height, the time it takes one of my shield canisters to detonate. I take another shield canister out of its strap, prime it, and hurl it directly upward. I drop to the ground. I rise within seconds and bump into the shield bubble that expanded. I press my barriered face up to its surface and attempt spying through its pocket in the black cloud like I would through the peephole in my door back at PRT headquarters.

Mostly all I can see is the gray sky up above passed through a purple filter, but, before my five foot bubble deactivates, I get a glimpse of two buildings' roofs to put my surroundings into perspective. I march toward where I saw Regent last.

On my way, I step on one of the hostage's backs. Whoops. They buck a little in fright, but they don't throw me off course.

I emerge from the darkness, Regent's back to me.

"Regent! Behind you!" Grue shouts from the boundary of his darkness yards away. I suppose he was on his way to tackle me, but he was too slow.

Regent dodges away from my chop to his neck. He causes my left leg to buckle, but I lock my armor around it. I follow through by springing forward using my right leg. I crash into him.

I do a lot of unladylike flopping as the villain underneath me tries to stop me from zip tying his arms. It's a pain in both a challenging and literal sense.

I scoot back when the task is finished, tired and triumphant.

I recuperate, kneeling next to my captured opponent. Regent squirms, but only a little. He seems a bit stiff.

"Thanks for the tumble, love," I say, standing up. The boy snorts.

Through the rain, I search for more enemies. The cloud of darkness is dissipating. I can't tell which of my teammates took out Grue when he revealed himself, but the skull-faced biker is down.

I hear whirring once more.

The roller-tinker has recovered, and they're jetpacking out of the evaporating darkness cloud. Because of course they are. Mobility isn't my strong suit. It's almost like someone gleefully engineered a pest to delay me on purpose. Figures the Undersiders would adopt the bug girl and gain a member who could pose a problem right when I had most of the others dead to rights.

A shadow phased tranquilizer bolt whizzes into the jetpacking tinker. They spiral out of control and careen into the street.

Gold star, Shadow Stalker.

The transportation tinker is out of the fight. So is Regent. So is Grue. And Hellhound seems to be passed out near a dog she was digging out of the carcass I left. Her two other monster dogs are time-frozen. They're too far apart for Clockblocker to stand close to both of them, so we might have a minor problem on our hands if we don't get containment foam piled on them soon.

In other news, the insects have stopped rushing any of my teammates. I don't see any lingering swarms. This might be good.

One of the bank's windows thunderously ruptures inward, and a crack resounds from the lobby inside.

To all appearances unrelated to that, my entire barrier flares for a second.

"What's all this commotion, huh? No one thought to invite us?"

A parahuman in a top hat stands atop a station wagon down the street. His raised voice is affected, as if he's putting on a show. His chest is heaving like he rushed to get here.

Behind him, something that looks like a colossal terrestrial squid slither-crawls forward. Two other costumed individuals tread on its heels- or, rather, jointed tentacles. One, the woman, wears black body armor unlike mine in style. Red suns are emblazoned on its exterior. The man accompanying her has a boxy helmet and a heavyweight boxer's build. His armor is festooned with ammunition.

"We thought we'd join in on the fun! Take some loot off your hands!" the showman continues to shout. He looks squarely at me and my barrier flares again.

The purple blocking my vision quickly vanishes, but it makes me wonder what power the man in the top hat was trying to hit me with.

He exchanges a word or two with the man in blocky armor then motions toward me.

Since the artillery round that slams into my chest a moment later can't punch through my vital organs, it sends me spinning instead. I cartwheel. Something shot out of a canon blasts a crater in the asphalt to my side. Then a corrected shot propels me into the bank's stairs.

So, what have I learned from this dizzying experience? Top hat man's power can't touch me as far as I can tell. Blocky armor guy kicks like a mule; his projectile power is incredibly fast and kinetic. No flashy effects. Reliant on actual ammo.

How do I respond?

He can suppress me for as long as he wants to if his power isn't limited on shots. In that sort of a stalemate - him expending concentration, me expending energy - I lose. He'd keep pummeling me until my batteries ran out. I can't count on him having a check on his power. The Thinker isn't spilling the beans on him which leads me to suspect he doesn't have a limiter. Increasingly aggravating. My teammates can hold their own and perhaps come to my rescue, but I don't like planning on being saved.

I'll change the paradigm then.

I jump to my feet and dash up the steps I was sprawled out on. I get a few good strides in before another kinetic strike pitches me through the bank's front doors.

Cracked glass and metal slick with rain join me on my trip inside Brockton Bay Central.

I recover and push myself off the marble floor.

"...and the Mental Ward too. Full house," a girl in skintight lavender and black says from the edge of one of the teller's stations. Tattletale. She was addressing Glory Girl before I interrupted.

There's only one hostage in the lobby.

Closer to me, the bug girl has a knife held to Panacea's throat. Amy Dallon in her civilian clothes. Here by chance and Victoria's sister. Also one of America's greatest healers.

"The Travelers have arrived too, have they? Sonuvabitch should've told me." Tattletale mutters that last part to herself. An expression dawns on her face. "Couldn't have told me."

"Hey, Tattletale," the bug girl calls out with a strained voice. "I'm not sure what's going on anymore, but could you avoid antagonizing Alexandria Junior and, uh, the Ward who just blew up Brutus?"

"What's your name, bug girl?" I ask.

The villain with yellow lenses obscuring her eyes hesitates for a breathfall.

"I haven't picked one yet."

"That's reckless. Leave it up to wiseacres like me, and you'll end up as Lesser Weevil." I turn my black expanse of helmet at Victoria. "Glory Girl. I was being insensitive when we spoke yesterday. I hope we can come to an amicable understanding."

"Not really the time for this, Redoubt."

"Down to brass tacks then," I say. "I'm going to get your sister to safety. I'd like you to go help my teammates outside. Four unknown hostiles have shown up. The Travelers, apparently. A man in blocky armor with high-speed projectiles. A changer of some variety. A man in a top hat with a vision based power I'm unsure of. And a woman with suns on her costume. Expect light or fire. Try to take out the striker/blaster for me with your maneuverability."

"Fuck no. I'm not leaving Amy here with them. With you. I'm waiting right here so I can wipe the smug grin off this bitch's face."

Tattletale shifts from whatever she was pondering.

"Shit. Amy Dallon? Grue is going to kill me, for missing that. You look different than you did when you were showing up in the news. Are you wearing your hair differently?"

"Tattletale," the bug girl interjects. "Less small talk, more problem solving. My hostage here did something to fuck up my powers, and Glory Girl said the Protectorate and maybe New Wave are en route."

They're not fully acknowledging the threat I pose. I'm not keen on their irreverence in this specific instance. Their ignorance is going to slow matters down.

I cross my arms and think.

Robbing a bank doesn't make sense for the Undersiders unless there's more to this. The small team of villains are escape artists. They pick jobs they can be gone from before they run into entrenched trouble.

This seems like a job that was picked for them if I include that remark about a "sonuvabitch" Tattletale made. Someone arranged for two smaller groups to hit the same place, seemingly by a twist of fate. This is big. Connected. It's a rotten coincidence the local Protectorate is off rubbing elbows at a country club while this is happening, now isn't it?

What would someone big get out of a robbery? I can't imagine a bank carrying more than thirty thousand dollars someone could actually walk away with at any one time. That's chump change for someone contracting two or more teams. Are they after something precious in the vault perhaps? Is this a distraction? Is this an excuse to get someone killed or jailed?

Tattletale glances at Glory Girl, then frowns. "She's not lying. But let's start with the sucky powers part since you're not looking so hot. Your powers aren't working at all?"

"Can't control my bugs, got a major headache," the bug girl replies.

"Think I know why. Let me fix that for you," Tattletale says. She hops down from the teller's station and starts to walk towards Panacea.

"Don't move," Glory Girl demands.

"Or what?" Tattletale whirls to face the girl, smiling. "You'll beat me up? You can't do anything while my teammate has a knife to your sister's throat. Sit. Stay. Good girl."

Glory Girl glowers at Tattletale, but she doesn't move.

"I think it would be better if you stayed back," bug girl warns. "You get in Panacea's reach, she'll touch you and give you a stroke or something."

"Can she? Sure. Will she? Definitely not. She's all bark, no bite."

"Try me," Panacea taunts. The bug girl reasserts her grip to remind the healer she has a knife to her throat.

My team has been fighting while these girls have been bickering. They've wasted enough of my time.

"Womantis. Your teammate makes a good point about barking and biting. You're not going to slice open that hero's neck and bleed her dry in front of her sister. You wouldn't be able to legitimize murdering someone for... whatever foolishness this is. After your talk with Armsmaster last night you're probably feeling unjustly chastened, but this? This isn't how you prove him wrong."

The bug girl stiffens. Glory Girl and Panacea shift their wide-eyed stares to me.

"Oh, don't worry. Judging by Tattletale's power, she already knows, and you should know she already knows if you've taken into account the amount of time you've spent with her. You'd either have to be a fool or be fooling yourself not to realize."

"Look at her, trying to get a jab in because she doesn't want to be ignored. My, you catch on quick, Redoubt." Tattletale laces her response with enough condescension to sedate a rhino and skirts around admitting her awareness of the bug girl's weaknesses.

The villain in light purple and black has a power uncomfortably close to my own.

"I can usually count on being the smartest person in a room, but that's not going to shake out for me here, is it?" I ask.

"You're patronizing me. You know how I know? Besides you being a blatant amateur? I'm psychic. I'm reading your mind, and what a messy can of worms it is!" she exclaims, almost joyously.

"Bullshit," Glory Girl cuts in. "The brainpower you'd need to interpret and decode someone's unique neural patterns would need a head five times the usual size to contain it all. True psychics can't exist."

"Ooh, someone's taking Parahumans 101 at-"

"I agree and disagree with Glory Girl," I say.

"Don't barge in on my parade, Retard." She pronounces "retard" like she's calling me by my cape name.

"Tattletale," the bug girl warns.

"What? That's where you draw the line? There? Name-calling is too much?" Tattletale venomously asks. She seems to recognize who she's lashing out at a second too late.

"Nape of the neck. Upper arm. Ankle," Tattletale offers as an apology. She points to the corresponding regions on Panacea. Areas of contact that are somehow looping the bug girl's signal to her insects and short circuiting her power.

"You think you've got us cornered? Nah. I've got you right where I want you. Your powers are dull. You swing them around the same way every time. Hammer and nail. Bat and baseball. And you're hard-headed enough that it almost always works out for you. Well, I've got myself the most powerful weapon of them all, ladies. Information."

"Information," Glory Girl repeats. Unimpressed.

"She's trying," I reprimand the blonde heroine, tongue firmly in cheek.

"And what are you? Witty? That's a laugh and a half. If you were a bottle I'd have to probe around with a butter knife to find something clever at the bottom."

I hum. "Please refrain from probing my bottom."

I inwardly groan. The Thinker is coaching me to mirror Tattletale. To poke at her. But I'm not certain chasing the girl's weaknesses is what I want. She seems superhumanly stubborn. Mark my words, she'll double down until she buries herself.

I've noticed recently, now that I've been making headway in befriending the Wards, that the Thinker backfires when I don't guide it in a productive direction. It happened with Vicky in fact. All the Thinker desires is to beset and communicate others' faults. It helps me only when hurting them gets me what I want. When I want more, it has to be steered. In the beginning I had myself believing it was a conscious parasite deviously controlling me from the inside, but now I'm coming to realize its nearly mechanical in its binary persistence. Not a manipulator at all, but a machine built to serve a single function without true cogitation. Search for weak spots and expose them.

"Little miss daddy's girl has secrets galore that would tear your family apart, Glory Hole. Passions. Dark proclivities. Did you know her adoption papers were falsified?" Tattletale eyes up Victoria. "Of course you did. But do you know who her dastardly father happened to be perchance?"

The room would have grown quiet if there wasn't a small scale battle being waged outside.

"Who's her dad?" the bug girl asks.

"It's not the man that would bother Amy so much. It's the knowing. Every hour of every day after hearing me say his name, she would wonder. She's terrified she'll start second guessing every part of herself, wondering if she inherited it from him, or if she was that way out of an unconscious desire to not be him. Knowing as much as she does already keeps her awake some nights, but knowing his name, knowing who he is and what he did? For the rest of her life, she would compare herself to him. Isn't that right, Amy?"

"Just shut up," Panacea retorts, her voice not as thick with emotion as it could have been if Tattletale had really worked up to a reveal. The teenage villain is off her game.

"You're trapped in the chicken coop, and you want to bite off as many heads as you can before the farmer catches you. I get it. But stalling benefits us," I say to Tattletale.

She flashes me a vulpine grin because that's what she does.

"But let's take a detour for the newcomer, why don't we? She wants to make everything about her, so give the crybaby what she wants, right? From daddy issues to mommy issues. When they ask, you tell them she's dead, don't you? Sometimes you even trick yourself into believing she must be dead by now. But she's not. She left you. Plain and simple. Your dear young mum with the pretty face ran off with some lowlife who stole money from his gang. They went to start a happier life somewhere away from this shithole you've never even crawled out of."

I can almost feel the blood in my veins coursing a little bit faster.

"That thing inside your head, that growth that makes you feel oh so special- it's an inoperable pessimist," I retaliate. "It's going to scrape all the joy you have inside of you out, soil every human interaction. You think you've gone through the pumpkin carving already, but there's always more seeds of hope to pluck out. That's what you're spewing. Dead hope and lost joys. Something smells foul in this bank. Don't you think? Like a backed-up bathroom? So large and so empty in here, but that stench is awful. It's unbearable, like someone else's skin under your nails."

I can hear Tattletale's breath hitch. I burrowed in close to her core using details I shouldn't have known just like her, but she doesn't or can't make the logical leap.

"You couldn't even pretend to be happy for her. You were a defective child, and you're the reason she didn't take you with her. She gravitated toward bad men, and, the sad part is, she still preferred their company over yours'."

Nothing hits me. I don't see purple. I see red. My vision reds out.

"You have a big mouth." I unclip a shield canister. Hold it up as if to inspect it. I turn my head toward Tattletale with the canister still held high. Let her power tattle on what I did, what I'm threatening.

I continue. The Thinker chugs along and vents steam.

"Glory Girl. Go do what you're good at, what you've practiced for. You're the daughter of heroes. Act like it. Go. If you don't put in the effort now you're going to let them all down." I turn to the bug girl without pause. "Option one. Release Panacea so her sister can escort her out of here. Then we talk. No violence. Option two. Keep a knife to the healer's throat, and every decent person in this city will know you for what you are, a bully. Irredeemable. Then I'll take you by the neck and strangle you 'til your face turns a nice bluish purple. Tell her if I'm bluffing, psychic!"

Tattletale doesn't respond to my prompt. I point my faceless helmet at her.

"Quickly or you'll be wishing you'd been just a bit sooner."

"She's not lying," Tattletale echoes. I stuffed her into her least favorite memory.

But it's not enough. If they stand directly in my path much longer, I swear I'll leave a hole through their bodies. I'll bore into their soft spots and come out the other side, dripping in gore.

The bug girl releases Panacea.

The tension doesn't resolve. There's a tentative standoff, then Glory Girl carefully walks - not flies - to her sister. She looks at the villains. Looks at me. Then she gently tugs Amy to the exit.

"Fuck's sake. Who's the villain in this picture?" Tattletale breaks the not-silence between the three of us who remain.

"People rarely fit in the boxes they're placed in by others," I say.

"Unless we're talking coffins," Tattletale replies. She presses at her temples and winces.

"Are you okay?" the bug girl asks, finally speaking up.

"Thinker headache. Her-" Tattletale points at me, "and the inseparable siblings took a lot out of me. Probably her shield too. It's doing something."

"Something?"

"We'll talk about it when we're out of here."

She still thinks she'll escape. Should I mislead her further? Confirm that my barrier stops more than physical attacks? If I lie outright, my luck in obfuscating the truth might run out. It could be a conversational pitfall similar to lying in Armsmaster's presence.

Light floods the bank lobby, banishing the grayness of our surroundings. A miniature sun has popped into existence outside.

Ah. The Traveler with suns emblazoned on her armor.

I should get back out there. But I'm exhausted. I have to zip tie these two as well.

How long does it take insects to gnaw through plastic?

"Reminder." I draw the bug girl's attention back to me. "Taking civilians hostage is bad no matter how you rationalize it."

"Gee, aren't you a hoot." Tattletale squints her eyes and sways a bit. "You're not fooling anyone, not for very long. You've killed someone. More than one someone."

"Coming up with lies shows just how desperate you are."

"You weren't one of us, and now you are. Put here to steal trade secrets. A moocher."

"What does that mean?"

"If I'm just coming up with lies, why would you care?"

The bug girl steps in to support her wilting teammate. I consider asking her if she's going to leave me hanging, but it seems overeager and in poor taste now that we've stopped clashing swords.

"What does a thinker headache feel like? Is it in the sinuses? Maybe not. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it feels more like a migraine. Is that right?"

"You don't get them?" the bug girl asks.

Something about one of my two powers is hobbling Tattletale. Yet I'm not interfering with the bug girl's reasoning it would seem.

So what's the difference between the two villains?

I've been focusing on the blonde. The Thinker's been gouging out her weaknesses. Shutting her down with an associated effect? Concurrently, I've barely targeted the bug girl. If I delved into her would she respond similarly? Also, Tattletale's rationale is tied into her power. It could be that my thinker power paralyzes other thinker powers to hide itself when actively used.

Or could my barrier really be protecting me? At our first meeting, Gallant read my emotions. Unwisely, I had my barrier down to eat in the cafeteria though. Has he read me since then? When I've had my barrier up? It's difficult to pick apart every interaction we've engaged in when I'm facing off with villains. There's also the added difficulty that he's the Ward I've continued to avoid when I can. I trade off patrol shifts I'd have with him when I can and give them to Vista. She sees it as a favor because I expressed it that way. She can speak with the boy she's infatuated with in an acceptable environment, and I don't have to be around the emotional spy.

No. Now that I'm reflecting on it, Gallant's almost certainly had power-aided intuition on me when my node was activated. Small clues and whispers were there, that he was reacting to my feelings as much as he was reacting to my words.

A dichotomy must exist between my tinkering and the Thinker. My barrier and shields repel the physical side of things. Tunnels through them. And the Thinker searches for and drives itself in. On a one-to-one basis it even undermines parahumans.

I smile, leaving no more than a second between the bug girl's roundabout deduction and my response.

"I'm a tinker. Sounds similar, I know. Tinker's don't get headaches beyond the ordinary."

"You talk like her though." She pauses. "And you smile like Bitch," she mumbles afterward.

All of a sudden, Tattletale is replaced with a dust covered Kid Win. The bug girl is pushed back a fraction, and I jolt in surprise. Kid Win seems less befuddled than he is irritated. Then, too slowly, I put the puzzle pieces together. I rush to break line of sight on the bug girl, but I'm far too late. She gets switched out for Shadow Stalker.

The man in the top hat is a teleporter. He swaps the locations of two people. Maybe even objects. But my barrier wouldn't let him change my location when the Travelers arrived.

"They're running," Shadow Stalker tells me.

We rush out the broken doors, and, sure enough, I discover most of the opponents we downed are gone. All that's left is the monster dog carcass and the be-wheeled tinker stashed behind it.

The miniature sun that was blinding us disappears. Nearly every villain is out of sight. The woman who was conjuring the sun is swapped out with Aegis who must have been pursuing the stolen bank robbers.

The terrestrial squid covers the retreat. It's a sacrifice. Or maybe it wasn't supposed to be, but I make it into one. I can tell the squid isn't a parahuman. Mastered from afar, no doubt. I get in close and pummel it as close to death as I can.

Then I stare up at the rainy sky, fatigued and defeated.

The thing is. The world was irrevocably changed, and it's been this way my entire life.

Almost thirty years ago now, The Thing came out in theaters on the twenty-fifth of June, 1982. In the film, researchers stationed in the Antarctic stumble across an extraterrestrial life-form that can disguise itself as other organisms. Creepy stuff.

Before I had even heard about the scifi horror film, however, I saw The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes starring a teenage Kurt Russell. He was one of the first people I recognized as finding attractive when I was younger. This is prior to my schema for sex appeal getting all knotted up in an incomprehensible tangle, so he stuck with me. Suffice it to say, I was sorely disappointed to see my old crush wearing an unpleasantly bushy beard when I watched The Thing on an escapist movie binge years later.

As I mentioned, creepy stuff.

I rented movies from a video store down the street from the bar for a while. It was a cramped shop that clung onto life up until it was firebombed by the ABB last summer. I mainly searched for flicks in its catalogue that were made before the eighties, not because they were simpler but because they came from a simpler time. Back then people could watch a man mutate into an aberration up on the silver screen and not have to worry about seeing the same exact terrifying occurrence happening in reality.

I feel like The Thing didn't do as well as it should have at the box office because, about a month before its release in theaters, a naked golden man was found suspended in the air above the Atlantic Ocean.

I can't say I blame the distributor for not seeing that one coming.

What I'm getting at is things - or The Thing - don't play out how they ought to sometimes, but you can usually look back and figure out why.

Let's playback the tape.

The bank robbery was counterfeit. I know this. Soon my team will too. The strata of the event were layered wrong, the pieces didn't fit together right, and I'm left with more questions than I am conclusions. I can sense veins of information interspersed between the insects and dog monster viscera though. Waiting for me.

"Aegis. I'm going to need you to request a sealed meeting with Director Piggot when she approaches you. Armsmaster and the Wards only. Don't say the request came from me out in the open."

Aegis looks down at me. We're making our way toward the PRT building as a slightly bedraggled team. His natural impulse is probably to seek answers, but I've garnered enough esteem with him that he simply nods.

He's a little rough around the edges from his initial scrape with one of Hellhound's monstrosities and then a thrashing from the terrestrial squid, but he's mainly intact. Him, Kid Win, and Gallant were covered in kicked up dust from kinetic impacts that landed around them. They still are a little. From what I was told, Shadow Stalker managed to tranquilize the projectile launching cape near the end of our confrontation with the villains, but he was teleported away like nearly everyone else.

Vista looks like puberty has hit her all at once. Her face is speckled with bug bites, and she's moody as anything. Kid Win is similarly dotted with welts. I spare him a small smile as he holds one of the front doors open for me.

I lightly rap on Vista's shoulder and point out the new four-foot tall pictures of us on the walls. She grins then grimaces as the blemishes on her face twinge.

In a charcoal black suit jacket and skirt, Director Piggot stands like an immovable object in the center of the PRT's entrance area. Her blonde bob is as exact and uncomplimentary as always, and two suited men are posted with her.

The man who greeted me on my first day waves from the front desk as Piggot begins to wordlessly lead us to a multipurpose meeting room behind him.

"Director Piggot. Ma'am. We'd prefer the secure conference room with you and Armsmaster only," Aegis speaks up.

Piggot narrows her eyes at him a fraction. Then her gaze shifts to me.

"Why?"

Aegis avoids looking in my direction.

"I'd rather not say until we're in the room, ma'am," he says.

Piggot doesn't take her gaze off me.

"This better not be a waste of my time." She dismisses the men who were with her and alters her course. "Call him in yourself," she says to me over her shoulder.

I have a direct line to Armsmaster programmed into my helmet. I tap a tiny nubbin close to the one I usually use to contact whoever's on console.

"Armsmaster."

I can hear the line open, but it takes a moment or two for Armsmaster to pull away from what he was doing.

"Redoubt."

"Can you make it to the PRT secure conference room in the next five minutes?"

"Already on my way into the building with Miss Militia and Panacea. Importance?"

"Substantial. Tell the two of them we'll be in the Wards room shortly. Don't bring them with you."

"Understood." He hangs up.

Because he said my name, both Miss Militia and Panacea know it was me who contacted Armsmaster. I doubt either of them will let such an insignificant piece of information slip to anyone else, but still. It brings me up in relation to this mystery meeting, other than solely being present for it.

Also, I haven't been able to do damage control with Amy and Victoria yet. What did they glean from my conversation with Tattletale? The bug girl talked with Armsmaster last night. That could mean anything. The two of them could have exchanged quips during a fight. Panacea is some villain's daughter. Doesn't sound like much of an issue to me, but it certainly threw the drabber sister off. That actually works out for me. Amy's wrapped up in her own quandaries at the moment. My mom rejected me. Nobody cares about that except for me. The sisters won't remember unless they've chosen to use it against me. I'll be prepared. I threatened to strangle the bug girl. Before I crashed in, I'm sure Glory Girl was making worse threats.

They didn't hear the bug girl's implication that I'm a thinker, and they didn't hear Tattletale's accusation that I've killed more than one person.

Our merry band led by Piggot makes its way onto the tinker elevator and through the lackluster corridors of the building. We settle into a room with a large oval table taking up most of its floor space.

"Until Armsmaster gets here, I assume it's too much to hope you'll tell us what this is all about?" Piggot asks me.

"I'd rather not repeat myself, ma'am," I reply.

"Very well. I'll address you all in the meantime." She stays standing. "You caused horrific amounts of property damage. I'm afraid any and all destruction caused by New Wave's golden child is also your responsibility, since you invited her along. Without my say-so."

"I invited her," Gallant speaks up. "I'll take the blame, and you can take the costs for the property damage out of my trust."

Director Piggot offers him a thin and utterly humorless smile. "Living up to your name, I see? Yes, I'm sure that's the best way to get the message across. Your teammates and I know who you are under the mask. Of everyone here, myself included, you're the one most able to handle a fine of tens of thousands of dollars."

"I won't deny it, ma'am," Gallant candidly responds.

"I'm afraid I'm a believer in punishment, when punishment is due. Taking money from someone with money to spare is not going to mean anything. All of you will share the fees between you. Since I can't touch the trust funds the PRT established for you, I'll have to settle for docking your pay. Maybe next time, the rest of you can talk Gallant out of inviting his girlfriend along."

Crummy. But not entirely irreparable. I may be able to persuade Gallant into paying me his reparations without an intermediary.

Some of the other Ward's protests overlap. "It was her sister in the bank! She would have gone in anyways!" "I start college next fall!"

Kid Win waits his turn. "Redoubt advised against calling her, ma'am."

"Yes? Well, she should have been more convincing then. It's not like that's outside her sphere of competence. Speaking of which. Redoubt, I hear you used lethal force on one of Hellhound's dogs."

I was expecting this to come up. Once people know you were able to cross a threshold, they look for warning signs of you crossing it again. They'll wonder if you've crossed it before.

"No, ma'am. I was careful. I ascertained that the real dogs are kept inside the flesh constructs we see. I incapacitated one of the monsters, not the dog within its amniotic sac."

Clockblocker shakes his head in bemusement at what I just said.

"And should I ask how you ascertained such a uniquely opaque scrap of detail?" Piggot asks.

The door into the secure conference room buzzes. It clicks and then slides open with hardly a whisper. Armsmaster enters. He nods to the director and my team.

"After our meeting is over, Panacea has made herself available for healing services," he says in greeting.

Piggot stares at me, as if anticipating I'll satisfy her question that insinuated a more direct question. Three seconds later, she moves on.

"Why are we here, Redoubt? A tour group is going to be coming by your quarters in an hour, and there's likely to be more than a few reporters peering in the window," she says.

"The boy calling himself Chariot has dark skin." I pause.

Sadly, the people assembled in this room have gained a practical understanding of my idiosyncrasies. Nobody asks the obvious. Like "what does that have to do with anything?" or "you're sounding a little racist there, aren't you, Re?". They just wait for me to drop the other shoe.

"Today's bank robbery was a story told to our city by one individual. Unless there's a fifth unknown player in Brockton Bay, the Merchants were a joke and are gone now, the ABB are too disorganized, and the Empire is too bigoted to have orchestrated this. Coil is the person who fits the bill. He hires mercenaries. Why would he choose to stop there? And I'm only surmising he's truly a he on hearsay. Both villain teams were working for an employer. Coil. This I'm ninety-eight percent certain of. I gathered as much from my conversation with Tattletale and Crook Worm in the bank. Also, the Travelers' attempted ruse of monopolizing on the situation only to then extract their accomplices when my teammates proved too resistant, solidified my hunch. I'd like you to determine if there was anything in that vault worth stealing - confidential info worth a great deal more than its weight in gold, tinkertech, etcetera. But, I doubt you'll discover a prize meriting an out of character crime like this. This story was told with a purpose. Our efforts will be better spent looking into every illegal act that was reported in Brockton Bay around the same time period. Something has been covered up. The bank robbery in our jurisdiction was a diversion. I'd stake my tower on it."

Piggot glances at Gallant. Vista holds up two fingers. A less childish version of raising her hand in class.

"Why the secrecy though? Why are we in here?"

"I haven't heard of Chariot before today. You can trust that I've done my research on every parahuman within a thirty mile radius of us. Piggot or Armsmaster, feel free to interrupt if you care to correct me." They don't. "So, Chariot's brand new to the scene. And, not only did he join the Undersiders recently, he agreed to rob a bank with them. That's odd, right? And he's a tinker. The size and condition of his armor means he's had a backer for more than a month. Don't take this as self-aggrandizement, but tinkers are valuable. A tinker with a backer wouldn't be forgotten. The teleporter could have retreated with him in tow but didn't. Ask me why. Why did that happen? The teleporter showed no indication of not being able to handle tinker armor. He teleported Gallant. The only reason he couldn't teleport me was my barrier."

"Chariot was left on purpose," Armsmaster says.

"Coil had a secondary objective. It's how I would have arranged things. Aim for more than one moon if you can. He's trying to insert a mole into the Wards using a deal like Shadow Stalker's, and I'll eat my helmet if he doesn't already have moles in the local PRT. That's why we're here. I implore you to enlist Dragon's help to run faces through her databases and recheck backgrounds. Minimize any margin for tampering."

"We should see who pushes to get Chariot on the Wards," Kid Win adds.

Aegis grips his costumed chin in thought.

"That won't mean they're culpable. Probationary status is nearly standard practice. People will push for his recruitment regardless."

"Could help narrow the search," Sophia says. The discussion stutters as everyone copes with being slightly astonished by Shadow Stalker's voluntary involvement.

Far more astonishing is the idea that I might be having a beneficial affect on her. It seems implausible.

"How did you arrive at your conclusions, Redoubt?" Piggot asks, more directly this time. I thought if I provided a framework for my deductions she'd set aside her suspicions, but she's wily. I don't know how to steer her like I do the others.

Armsmaster doesn't move much, but he moves enough in my periphery for me to take notice. I pick up on something resonating within him. Something in the key of "why shouldn't we tell them?". He probably doesn't see the harm in revealing my second classification to the Wards I've chosen to trust and the director of the PRT.

I speak up quickly to stifle his misjudgement.

"The bug girl. Before I neglect bringing her up. Given the opportunity, she gave me the impression she wanted to be a hero. She was dismayed by her actions. Contrite. I'm not making excuses for her, but I believe it wouldn't be impossible to bring her over to our side of the fence."

"I didn't peg you as an optimist, Redoubt," Piggot comments.

Good. She's taken the bait I laid out for her.

"Quite the opposite, ma'am. I don't know a thing about optometry, but I do have a good eye for people."

"Boo," Clockblocker groans from his seat.

"Was there anything else you wished to discuss?" Armsmaster tersely asks.

"No."

I look to Aegis.

"Then, with your permission, Director. The Wards and I should be on our way. We don't want to leave Panacea waiting after the day she's had," he says.

Piggot comes close to harrumphing but marches to the door instead.

"You're dismissed. Try to clean yourselves up for the pictures that are undoubtedly going to appear in tomorrow's papers. Please."

We all depart from the conference room. Armsmaster makes eye contact with me. Though he can't see past my faceplate, and I can't see past his visor. I smile then shake my head. I don't know what I'm trying to communicate - and neither does Armsmaster, going by the frown he's sporting - but it'll have to do. Hopefully he'll translate it as "I know your secret, but my lips are sealed".

Actually, no. I pull him aside and motion for the Wards to keep on walking. I share the translation I just came up with. He clams up a bit. Then I make a few suggestions regarding Chariot. When he's agreed to my plan, I bid him adieu and rush to catch up with my team.

My head swims as if I've just stood up too fast. I need to sleep. Soon.

It doesn't take us long to get where we're going. Aegis scans his retinas at the end of the steel corridor that leads into the Wards common room.

I barely come this way anymore. I make appearances for tourist groups, but it doesn't quite feel like my place to stay. If someone wants to meet with me or I want to meet with someone, I generally have them come to my lab.

Miss Militia is setting down a can of cold soda for Panacea as we enter. Panacea doesn't move to open it.

"Miss Militia, always a pleasure," Gallant hails the heroine in green army fatigues.

"Ever the gentleman," Miss Militia's eyes hint at a smile behind her scarf. "I brought a guest."

Amy is wrapped up in her white robe, her healer persona. Panacea. Distanced from the girl who was held hostage this afternoon. She has an ID card on a cord around her neck, featuring her photo and the word "GUEST" in bright blue letters.

Miss Militia continues. "She was kind enough to volunteer to come here and patch you guys up. Can't send you home with bruises and hundreds of bug bites, now can we? That would give away the show."

The gun at Miss Militia's hip dissolves into a blur of green-black energy. She holsters the alternate gun that takes its place.

"I wanted to thank you guys for coming to my rescue," Panacea shyly says. "And for letting Glory Girl come with you. And... um, Redoubt. Thanks for getting that knife off me."

"How're the two of you doing? You're sister and you, I mean?" Aegis asks.

"I- I'm alright. I'm not injured much. I'm not really the type to go out in costume and get into fights, so having my life threatened, I dunno. And Glory Girl's, you know, Glory Girl so she's fine, of course."

"Good," Gallant says. His monosyllabic response is a tad plain to be heartening if you ask me.

Panacea pulls herself upright. "Okay. Who needs the most help? Aegis?"

"He's only got a few holes in him that don't belong there," Clockblocker says. "How 'bout you clear up Vista's pizza acne?"

"Not funny," Vista says.

"Everyone. I know you all want to take a load off, but we should debrief before we get too distracted. Panacea? Do you want to take part?" Aegis asks.

"I- A lot happened," Panacea hedges. "Redoubt will know more than me."

"Fair enough. Vista, can you get two of the-" Aegis cuts off noticing Vista's inattention. She's just been revitalized by Panacea, and she's looking down at her chest.

"Sorry. I have to use the bathroom. You guys can start without me." She makes one impossible step to the bathroom then disappears inside.

Aegis glances at me, already cradled in the couch cushions, and then at Sophia perched on the wide armrest next to me. His eyes fall on Clockblocker.

"Clock can you get two whiteboards out of the other room?"

"Only 'cause Cujo took a bite out of you, and I'm feeling sorry. But no more than two. That's where I draw the line."

"What's it now? Another three or four months until you're our senior member? How do you feel about being leader? You're not going to let that power get to your head, are you?" Gallant asks Clockblocker's receding back.

"Meh. I don't know. Anything could happen. Might turn this into a dictatorship since I don't even get the rest of the summer before I'm out of here," Clockblocker shout-converses from his location.

I'm ideally positioned with these people. I've developed a system. The cogs and grooves mesh. I don't like the prospect of having to start over with fresh recruits.

Vista returns from the bathroom with an uncertain look on her face.

"Then it goes to Tess or Dean afterwards?" she asks.

"I'm sixteen. It'll be Gallant after Clock."

"Oh. I always think of you as older."

"Probably because she doesn't get enough sleep and looks like a fucking crazy cat lady," Sophia says. I can tell a majority of the Wards are quietly flabbergasted that she put more emotion into the me not sleeping part than the insult part.

Clockblocker rolls the two whiteboards he retrieved from the other room into place. Gallant is exchanging words with Panacea off to the side. When Aegis does something I'd call the friendly verbal equivalent of clearing his throat at them, they break up their dialogue.

As a team we review the Undersiders. They hit the Ruby Dreams casino five weeks ago, and now they've robbed the biggest bank in Brockton Bay. Five members: Tattletale, Regent, Grue, Hellhound, and the bug girl. We're not including Chariot today since he's in a cell on site.

"Did the girl with the bugs name herself?" Gallant asks.

"The Lady Bugger," I deadpan.

"Seriously?"

"No." Panacea ruins my fun. "She didn't have a name yet."

"Then we need to agree on a name for her, or the paperwork's going to be inconsistent. Suggestions for a name for the bug girl?"

They toss a few names back and forth.

"Stinger, Pestilence?" Vista suggests after Aegis finishes listing what seems to be an entire Entomological pamphlet of names.

Clockblocker spins himself around in the chair he sat down in and punches the suggested names into the computer. "Taken. Stinger is some villain in California with power armor, a jetpack, and homing missiles, and Pestilence is a creepy psycho in London."

"Skitter?" Gallant asks.

Clockblocker checks. "It's not taken."

"Does it absolutely have to be insect-themed? Remember, I might decide to bring her into the fold some day," I protest.

"The confidence you say that with. And, 'bring her into the fold'? Can you tone down the cult leadery stuff, Tess?" Clockblocker asks.

"Who are you to deny a child their redemption? All should feel welcome to join with the light and spread its warmth."

"Your delivery is too quick sometimes."

"Nervous laughter still counts as laughter in my book," Kid Win says, coming to my defense.

"Thank you, Chris."

"Don't worry, Clock. She's not cutting in on your turf. You both have different styles of humor," Gallant supplies.

"Comic and what? Gallows?"

"We'll settle for Skitter. She can rename herself if she joins," Aegis gets us back on track.

I allow the others to state their observations without getting involved. Hellhound doesn't control her dogs with her mind. They're trained. They respond to whistles, gestures, and commands. Skitter has the opposite, fine control over her swarms. She can sense things through her insects. It goes on. I'm glad I still have my helmet on because I think I might have dozed off for a minute or two. They've filled up Grue and Regent's columns.

I provide a handful of bullet points on Tattletale. She has advanced intuition. She can extrapolate large amounts of information from small bits of data like an enhanced Sherlock Holmes. She's accurate and knowledgeable but her power isn't flawless. I encourage Panacea to participate after that.

We begin to go over the Travelers as well, but our healer, having nothing to say about them, makes her desire to leave clear. I insist on walking her out. Miss Militia remains to learn about the Travelers abilities.

Amy and I walk down the steel corridor. We step into the tinker elevator. Traveling upward, I breach the silence between us.

"You owe me twice over."

Amy fidgets and minutely shifts away from me.

"Yeah. Thanks for saving me," she says. She doesn't sound enthused.

"I'm not just talking about you. I'm talking about your sister. I saved her from being eaten alive."

The girl goes rigid. She's nervous now. I can hear her weaknesses. They're practically yowling at me. And, my goodness, what a cacophony.

"How do you figure that? Vicky's invulnerable, and New Wave's M.O. is transparency. She doesn't have-"

"No, Amy. I'm not talking about Tattletale revealing that other skeleton in your closet. I mean eaten alive. Quite literally." The elevator doors open. Panacea power walks through the escape hatch. "Victoria had dust on her costume. Tattletale had a gun, and Skitter had full control of her bugs again. If I can put the puzzle pieces together, Tattletale did too. I saved your sister."

Amy halts abruptly. If I wasn't keeping up with her at an angle, I probably would have cudgeled her with my body. She stares at me, not saying anything.

"I'm invoking the first of my two favors right now. I'll save my other for a later date." I cock my head like a bird searching for a worm. "You're going to cure Clockblocker's father of his cancer. By Sunday."

"His father is-?" Panacea falters. "But I have rules for a reason. I have to stick to them or I'll..." She doesn't finish her statement. I can hear her weaknesses bawling and screeching in the silence she provides.

"Hold my hand." I clutch her loose hand before she can shrink away. "What does your power tell you about me?"

Despite herself, I can see her try to focus.

"Your barrier is up. I'm not getting anything."

I press harder. Grip tighter. She makes attempts to extract herself.

"Cure Dennis' father of his cancer," I demand. "I'm not asking for a miracle."

I let go. She glares at me, saucer-eyed. Then she withdraws.

I could have handled that better, but the Thinker sounds more reasonable when I'm dead on my feet.

I trudge back to my lab rather than the Wards common room.

I haven't switched my node off once since I boarded the PRT van headed to the bank. The worst I have on me is my own sweat. It'll have to linger. Lead weights are tugging my eyelids down toward the floor. Gravity has become so potent I feel as if I've been abducted from my planet.

This is not the air of my homeworld. It's poison in my lungs; it inundates me with fatal lethargy. These hallways are too spacious. Too sterile. Where are the stacked crates? The cleaning supplies? The geometry is symmetrical in this alien place.

I'm feverish. It seems like.

The door to my lab whirs open. I shamble inside, drawing nearer to the cylindrical obelisk looming above everything and coming close to scraping the ceiling.

Soon it'll be completed. Soon I'll be able to change the course of Earth Bet with it.

I rest my back against its surface. It's not a cylinder in truth. It's a lot of straight lines that came together in order to form a round. Almost.

My thoughts fragment. I don't know when it happens exactly, but I drift into deep, unassailable sleep.

In that sleeping deepness, I dream.

I dream of an orange-crimson sky highlighted with purple. Bands of narrow cloud scud along it. A sunset after a rainstorm - similar to the one we've been getting drenched with - is what colors its expanse.

And under that gradually calming sky, reflecting it's colorful shades, is a glass statue of myself. Fragile unlike myself. It shimmers with the sky's purple highlights, like my barrier's tessellations have suffused my glass counterpart and permeated her vitrified circulatory system.

It's beautiful, but the sight of it makes me sad beyond endurance. I weep, and my teardrops look like pendalogues without a chandelier.

Why am I mourning myself?

Notes:

JUST A HEADS-UP: I've only cross-posted the first five chapters of "Redoubt" over from SpaceBattles. I had every intention of bringing my entire story over, but it'll have to wait or (more likely) not be done at all because formatting becomes a nightmare from this point onward. Besides having to insert italics manually (which I haven't gotten to yet in these first five chapters), I'd have to figure out how to add interludes without disturbing the chapter order and figure out how to add multiple types of tables. It's my fault for not realizing how limited Ao3 is in regards to word processing. If you want to continue reading "Redoubt" mosey on over to SpaceBattles.

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