Events build to a head.
Warning: this chapter is not kind to Dean Stansfield (as I've said, I don't like him) and also treats Armstrong as a morally gray character. Readers beware.
More of a transitional chapter, I was butting up against some writer's block bridging the gap between the Butcher fight and the start of court from Taylor's perspective, so I figure this might work a little better for me.
The events of this chapter do not accurately reflect the state of the legal system. Santa Claus doesn't particularly have to rely on it to begin with, and also Brockton Bay is corrupt as all hell anyways.
So, just so we don't misconstrue the third scene: I have no plans to write Amy/Vicky in this story. Any and all cuddling is purely platonic on pain of me hunting you down and pouring glitter in your sock drawer. You've been warned.
Saint Nicholas of Mari settled his old bones down gently in his chair. As much as he enjoyed getting out and about as Wonderworker, even the massive repository of advanced technology he could stuff into the red, fur-trimmed suit he still wore out wasn't enough to ease his joints' aching after all these centuries.
He brushed off his robes, allowing the familiar action to switch his mentality from mid-level Tinker hero to judge, then sighed and buzzed the door open, allowing Jonathan, one of the elves who'd joined him away from the North Pole, to enter his chambers. The elf's perfect memory had served him well as his aide.
"Ah, Jonathan. How goes the preparation for Hades' client's suit against the Protectorate?"
"Quite well," replied the elf, raising the folder in his right hand. "Thanks to judicious applications of your ability, I believe that the Protectorate's legal team is over their existential crises."
Nicholas chuckled. "And their actual preparations for the court date on Monday?"
"As well as could be expected, I think," replied Jonathan. "They look to be focusing on throwing blame at the school for their negligence, which… while not undeserved, in my opinion, isn't going to be enough to protect them. At least Armsmaster has the excuse of having handed authority over to Piggot, which won't protect him entirely from the consequences of his actions, but he's not going to go to jail for criminal negligence like Piggot will probably end up doing."
"Good. And Hades?" asked Nicholas.
Jonathan gave his boss a level look. "He has more lawyers available to him than exist in the entire United States. If he wasn't prepared, I'd be disappointed."
"I thought as much," chuckled Nicholas, "but it would be irresponsible of me not to check."
"Indeed, sir."
"Right… what else is there… I know there was something… ah, yes! What has Ratnick been up to, the rat bastard? He's more than earned his way onto the permanent parts of the naughty list, so he's got to be up to something…" He frowned, thinking.
Jonathan raised an eyebrow, then sighed. "He's sitting on the Canary case until the Simurgh attacks to exploit their visual similarities and use his pet prosecutor to consign her to the Birdcage, in addition to various violations of her rights such as freezing all her assets and preventing her from communicating with anyone."
Nicholas' face reddened with fury. "What a perversion of justice," he spat. "Let's see… Hades is tied up with helping Odin's successor, and Brandish is… unsuitable for the situation… do you know, offhand, if Calle has any major cases at the moment?"
"Not since clearing up the last suit between Coyote's new protégé and Disney-Aleph for copyright. Are you looking at setting him up to take on Ratnick?"
"Well, I won't be able to send him coal for another ten months, so just to tide the man over…"
Jonathan nodded. "Understood. I'll tell him to feel free to destroy Ratnick's career."
"It's no less than he deserves."
Jonathan nodded. "Understood." I'll let Calle know." And with that, the elf left the room, leaving his boss to sigh at the size of his inbox.
Paperwork was the bane of all professions, after all, and the judiciary was no exception.
Flechette knocked on the door to Director Armstrong's office. "You wanted to talk to me, sir?"
"Ah, Flechette! Come in." Flechette pushed open the door to the director's office, revealing the dark-skinned form of Director Armstrong behind his desk and the lithe, brown-skinned and gray-bodysuited form of Clay from the New York branch sitting in one of the two comfortable chairs across from the director.
"Director. Clay, good to see you again." Flechette sat down on the empty chair. "If I may ask…"
"Ah. Well, you're being transferred. Both of you, that is. Clay is here to take you down to Brockton Bay."
Flechette blinked repeatedly at the director. Then, once she was sure that they hadn't flown in one of Satyrical's clones for a prank, she burst out with "Are you fucking kidding?"
"No," said Director Armstrong, "I am not."
"Okay. Okay! Cool. Why the fuck are you sending two queer women of color to Nazi Fucking Central, where one of us is a minor?"
"She has a point," said Clay, her low voice lending a weight of rationality to the younger cape's outburst.
"Well," said Armstrong, "the official reason is that both of you have relevant, recent experience with the Teeth."
"...and the unofficial reasons?" asked Clay, a glimmer of grayish-brown force field materializing momentarily on her hands in what was presumably a nervous tic of some sort.
"There are a significant number of those. For one, there's a certain contingent of PRT officials that have… shall I say, taken offense to the way that Director Piggot has decided to run operations in her city. This is at least partially a response to that in that we're trying to provoke those Nazis into overextending themselves so we can crush them."
"Great," sighed Flechette. "We're fucking Nazi bait. What else?"
"In my defense," said Director Armstrong, "I voted against the idea, but most of the directors hate Piggot and treat capes as assets and not people."
"We're not blaming you," said Clay levelly, "It just sucks ass. What else?"
"Director Piggot is possibly about to lose Shadow Stalker on top of Vista and needs to capitalize on reinforcements before being knocked back down to their current team size. Also you two are… relatively reasonable, so Legend and I were hoping you could help moderate Piggot's relationships with independent heroes and New Wave while I try to muster the political will to oust Piggot from the director position. Also if you just so happened to come across information that might point to some level of malfeasance in ENE…"
Clay nodded. "Ah, I see. So this is at least partially an infiltration mission. Understood."
Flechette sighed. "For the record, this is an absolute dick move and given the legal right I'd slap the shit out of anyone who had anything to do with this decision, but I will go under protest."
"Thank you, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry. We've got a moving agency ready to have your things in Brockton Bay and you should be all ready to start in ENE on Monday."
Flechette sighed again. "Yeah, yeah. I'll get my personal effects in order, I know the damn drill." She shoved herself up and stomped off to her room.
Clay gave Armstrong a knowing look.
The man sighed, running his hand through his thinning hair. "Look, if I had any better options than to throw you and Flechette at Volur, I'd take them. As it stands, it's either Flechette or Bastion that I'm allowed to and can afford to transfer and after his performance earlier this month I wouldn't trust him with food for a potluck, let alone keeping an eye on a cape that Hunch thinks is the most powerful cape this side of Legend.
"As long as you accept that your choices have consequences," said the woman, standing up to leave the room. "At the end of the day, just make sure you can sleep well at night after all is said and done."
She left the room, leaving behind a man with no good options left.
Vicky slammed the door hard enough that it rattled the house and stormed upstairs, slamming her own door out of Amy's eyesight.
Across the living room from her, her father looked up lethargically, then sighed and returned his focus to his book.
Amy bit back a sarcastic retort, then shoved herself up off the couch, pausing the game of Hyper Bash Sisters she was playing, and followed her sister up the stairs.
"Vicky, what'd he do this time?"
After a moment of sullen silence, the door popped open and Vicky dragged Amy inside. A moment later had the two of them lying on the bed, with Vicky clinging to Vicky like a teddy bear.
"So, I uh… I take it he screwed the pooch?"
Vicky sighed. "Yeah, yeah he did."
"You want to talk about it?" asked Amy.
"Not really."
"Too bad. Talk, or I superglue your shoes together, and I do mean all of them."
"You're bluffing," said Vicky.
"I would. Better yet, I'd just move the roots of the tree in the back of the house and bury them so I can tell Carol you threw them out."
"You wouldn't dare…"
"Wouldn't I?" asked Amy.
"Fine!" Vicky huffed. "I just… finally saw all the shit in his personality that makes him a not great match for me, I guess," she said.
"...well, to be honest, I kinda saw that coming at this point," said Amy.
"What do you mean you saw this coming?" demanded Vicky, a little shrilly.
"Vicky. You know I love you, as a sister thank god, but your taste in men has always been horseshit. I mean, even if I didn't listen to Girl in Red, I wouldn't have been interested in any of the boys you tried to set me up with. I mean, shit, half of them, the ones who are friends with Dean, are just rich assholes who more often than not have Empire sympathies, and most of the others are either climbers looking to use me to get to you or are just generically assholes."
"You mean to say that I set you up with fucking Nazis on accident?"
Amy sighed. "Not necessarily, they're not actually Empire members. They just… well, I've seen some of their cousins and siblings hospitalized after a major ABB push. Anyways the point of that was to get at the whole 'you can judge a man by his friends' thing."
Vicky sighed again. "Yeah, I get your point."
"Yeah, well. Apply Trigger Theory to his power, what do you get?" asked Amy, not a little caustically.
"Uh… primary empathic Tinker… trouble relating to people, with a Blaster secondary… at a distance… so the situation involved some sort of social threat from a distance?"
"Yeah, pretty much. So, he's separated from his peers by way of being a rich kid, and as such didn't develop entropy to the point where the alien space whales that give parahumans their powers, the ones with trouble connecting to humans on a social level, decided 'hey, I could do this better than you' and decided to give him the ability to understand his peers better… and he barely fucking uses that part of his fucking power."
"...you know, I've never thought of it like that," said Vicky quietly.
"Yeah. Not to be all 'your blind spot sabotaged your dating life' but your dating life was definitely sabotaged by your blind spot around Dean.
"Yeah… you're not wrong…"
"Yeah, and also he thought of me as a 'project' to fix. Like, he saw my incredibly unhealthy and fucked up emotions around the two of you and he tried to fix it, but he didn't know what he was doing with the interpersonal relationship, he didn't try to learn, and he didn't bother to get help. If I had to bet, I'd bet that I'm not the only one he did that to."
Amy could feel Vicky's lips press together through her power. "Yeah, in hindsight I can see how that's… kinda fucked."
"Good." Amy squirmed around until she was facing victoria and knocked their foreheads together, not particularly enjoying the slick feeling of her force field between the two of them. "I love you, Vicky, but sometimes when you shove your head in the sand like that, it can get kind of annoying."
Vicky sighed. "Yeah, yeah, I'll do better in the future."
"Good." Amy shoved herself out of Vicky's grasp and knocked on her sister's forehead. "Now use that shit between your ears as more than a fuckin' hat rack."
"Yeah, yeah, Amy," grumbled Vicky, floating upright.
For just a moment, the sun coming in through the window illuminated Vicky from behind, and for a moment she appeared to be wearing armor vaguely resembling Taylor's and a cloak of some sort of bird feathers, but once Amy blinked it was gone.
"Hey," said Vicky, a sly grin making its way onto her face, "so now that we're talking about romance together properly, let's talk about you."
Amy raised an eyebrow, viciously quashing the impulse to blush. "What about me?"
"You and Taylor, huh?"
Amy sighed. "I will neither confirm nor deny-"
Amy's response was cut off by a squeal as Vicky lunged forwards and scooped her up, dumping her on her bed. "Time for you to spill, sister dear," she said, no small amount of smugness apparent in her voice.
Amy sighed, despairing for the next hour of her time.
Lustrum: Parahuman Villain or Political Victim?
Published Monday, February 21, 2011.
Lustrum is, as of now, known as the radical feminist villain who made her reputation on castrating men and forcing them to dress as women. Her crimes were, apparently, numerous enough and heinous enough to merit an immediate Birdcage conviction, bypassing the normal "three strikes" rule by which such convictions are usually handed down by.
But what, exactly, were her crimes?
Well, the media would have you believe that they were centered around the aforementioned castration of men and forced crossdressing.
This is not the case.
Andrea Campbell (not her birth name, but there is no reason to print that here) is one of Lustrum's alleged victims. Andrea, when asked to discuss what she underwent at the hands of Lustrum and her single parahuman ally (a wet Tinker known by the name of Chiral, who was killed by Allfather himself approximately three months after Lustrum was removed from the picture), reported that they had, in fact, allowed her to properly medically transition her physical body to match her gender.
That's right- instead of being a radical misandrist group, Lustrum ran a pro-trans support group in Brockton Bay, perhaps the Nazi capital of the USA today.
In that light, the necessity of the group being led by a parahuman capable of facing off against Behemoth makes sense- after all, Nazis (neo or otherwise) have never been known to be accepting of anyone falling under the "queer" umbrella. As such, it is no surprise that she was arrested on trespassing charges on public property and only slapped with the other, more "serious" charges of bodily mutilation and severe reproductive harm, after the fact. This is especially unsurprising given that even in a regular city the FBI has declared a potential threat of an active infiltration of local law enforcement by white supremacists groups such as the Empire 88 (the local neo-Nazi organization in Brockton Bay).
Judge James Ratnick, Andrea Campbell's father and the judge presiding over the Bad Canary case at present, in conjunction with Dash Triumph, brother of the deceased wife of Max Anders Heith Anders and prosecutor of the Bad Canary case at present, sent Lustrum to the Birdcage in a trial not entirely dissimilar to the reports of Canary's treatment (assets frozen, prevented from communicating with their wet-behind-the-ears lawyer, bogged down in unnecessary Brute-rated restraints). The sentencing of Lustrum to the Birdcage, a prison known for its inescapability, was both a massive tragedy and also a foregone conclusion in this case, unfortunately.
In short, the trial of Lustrum was nothing short of a targeted political assassination of a movement, leaving the state of the trans community (both in the Bay, with the intensely localized transphobia in the city, and nationwide, thanks to the media spotlight on Lustrum and the fearmongering surrounding her supposed castration of men) in dire jeopardy.
The picture of the Lustrum trial, painted almost fifteen years after the fact, paints a grim picture of the state of the justice system in the Parahuman Age. The fact that an innocent woman was sentenced to the Birdcage, alongside the likes of Crane the Harmonious and Acidbath, in what can only be described as a targeted attack on both Lustrum and the movement she espoused. The similarities to the Canary trial of today, which focuses on a rising feminist star accused of deliberately castrating men, cannot be understated, and we must be vigilant lest a similar miscarriage of justice be perpetuated again.
Written by Merriam Alessandria.
And that's that!
If Flechette is out of character, I'm sorry, but it's been a Hot Minute since I read anything involving Flechette, let alone canon. Also slight AU element: Flechette transferred from New York to Boston at one point in mid-2010. No that's not because I don't want to look up the New York director's name shut up
So, uh… honestly I picked Clay because I needed an adult Protectorate member to transfer in too and liked both her power and that she's a relatively blank slate. No idea how important she's gonna be, I just wanted someone who I could play around with as a Protectorate member who's relatively rootless.
I'm gonna be honest and say that I lost track of the timeline as a whole for this fic and specifically all the timeskips I intended, so I'm going to make an executive decision and say that the Monday that the suit starts on and that Flechette and Clay start in ENE is February 21.
I'm actually considering writing Vicky/Taylor right now (well, not now now, but after Vicky gets over Dean some and maybe takes on the legacy that Milarqui and I discussed)... thoughts? Like, it wouldn't be a super huge thing, but just, like, a couple of scenes here and there (an eventual spinoff focused on the ship might be something I'd consider later on, but like I've said elsewhere I don't like the idea of having more than one longform fic in one fandom at a time). Other prospective ships include Pillbug and Taylor/Flechette.
Yes, I know Girl in Red didn't debut until 2018. Just pretend that in Bet it happened in 2008 instead.
That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!
