August 26, 2010

I'd always expected that some time in the future, I'd have my first day working at a job.

I had not expected said job to be 'superhero'.

Dealing with the PRT had gone smoother than I'd expected. Director Piggot seemed a pragmatic woman, easing my fears of finding a sanctimonious moralizer who'd demand I heroically throw my body on the front lines. And Armsmaster came across as serious and dutiful, instead of a barely restrained battle-happy psychopath. Huh. Could it be my preconceptions about capes were mistaken?

Or maybe it was just the villains who were like that.

It occurred to me that if the heroes had been more moralizing and battle-happy, they might have tried harder to dislodge the ABB. Did that make me a hypocrite? Maybe. But if hypocrisy was the price of survival, then I'd gladly suck it up and pay it.

The full terms of the Wards contract were fine, more or less. There was a lengthy rulebook we were meant to abide by, but I knew how to follow rules. Half of them were about not getting into unnecessary combat, which was fine and dandy by me. Something about an approval process and PRT usage rights for inventions, which might have concerned me if I was a Tinker but I was the opposite of a Tinker, if anything. Also, a surprising number of clauses around image and merchandise. Well, if the marketers thought they could swindle people into buying 'Blank posters', they were welcome to try.

This time I slipped into PRT HQ through a side door, rather than using the public entrance. First order of business was sorting out basic logistics. A PRT-branded domino mask to cover my face while we figured out my permanent costume. A shiny new ID card to let me into places not on the tour route. And, to my mild delight, a bona-fide work phone—a sleek, flat-screen device that even came with Internet access. Quite an upgrade from my ancient Nokia, which approximated the shape and weight of a brick. I suspected that if I was so foolish as to whip it out in the street, I would be mugged of it within milliseconds.

That settled, the secretary who'd processed me led me out to the main lobby, where a tall, broad-shouldered boy awaited me. He was clad in a gladiator's armor, and a golden helmet shaped like a roaring lion gleamed atop his head. I was grateful for the PHO cram session I'd done to research Brockton Bay's capes. Not having a computer at home, it had been a chore to drag my healing body to a library (thankfully my new phone would make that easier), but now I knew who this was. Triumph, the Wards ENE leader, a hero who unleashed sonic blasts by shouting and sported a minor Brute package to boot.

More importantly, he was my new boss. It was 9:58 AM; he was on time. A good sign for our professional relationship.

"Blank? Glad to have you on board. I'm Triumph, the Wards leader." I knew that already, but of course it was polite of him to introduce himself, so I smiled and shook his hand. "You, uh, you didn't have to wear a suit for this."

"I don't have a costume yet. And people wear suits to work, don't they?" It was one of Dad's, in fact, though admittedly he didn't wear it to work. I didn't remember ever seeing him wear it, actually. Maybe it was the very suit he had on in his wedding photo, which would make it older than me. In any case it was musty, ill-fitting, and a serious pain to get on over my cast.

"Most of us stick to casual clothes." Triumph swiped his badge and took me through an unmarked door. "But no pressure. Dress as you like." The small vestibule on the other side contained two doors, one normal and one made from numerous overlapping plates, like a camera shutter. Triumph pressed a button. "Elevator to the Wards base." he explained. A faint hum came from behind the fancy door, steadily increasing in volume, before it suddenly stopped. We waited for half a minute in increasingly awkward silence, but nothing happened. Triumph scratched his helmet. "Uh...sounds like the elevator's stuck? That's never happened before..."

"Is it Tinkertech, by any chance?"

"Oh shit." Trumph palmed his lion's forehead. "Right, Armsmaster mentioned something about that. There are stairs too; it's only two floors down." Turning aside, he went through the normal door. As I followed him, I heard the elevator ding belatedly as if taunting us. "Why a Tinker elevator, anyways?" I questioned.

"Honestly, I think it's just to impress people." Triumph said sheepishly. The stairwell was bare concrete, and presumably a lot less impressive than the elevator would've been. "I'll ask Armsmaster to look at it. Maybe he can get it to work normally."

"Eh, I don't mind the exercise." We passed through a landing ("B1 - Holding Cells"). I was momentarily distracted by thoughts of why they'd decided to put the Wards base under a prison of all things. "So who else am I meeting today?"

"Shadow Stalker's away at a training camp, but everyone else came in. It's not every day we get a new member, you see." Wow. Five capes here on my account, excluding Triumph himself, assuming I was remembering correctly from my cram session. No pressure, huh? Hopefully they weren't annoyed about getting called to the office on the last week of summer break.

"Here we are." Triumph announced when we reached B2. There was a long hallway here, with an extra heavy-looking steel door at the end. Gesturing for me to stand back, he pressed his face to a wall scanner, after which a muffled buzz sounded within. "Retinal scanner. Pretty sure it's not Tinkertech, but let's not risk it for now. The door opens on a delay, so anyone inside can mask up if needed."

"What if it's an emergency and I need to get in?"

"There's an override button for that." He pointed out a smaller red button under the scanner. "But only for emergencies. Otherwise if you see someone's face you aren't supposed to, well, you'll be in trouble." Ah yes, the so-called unwritten rules. I hadn't realized how seriously these people took secret identities before the past few days. It was mind-boggling to consider that people like Kaiser wouldn't blink at putting my head on a spike, but would freak out if they saw me with my mask off.

Capes were weird.

There was a click as the door finally unlocked. "Here we go. You'll do fine, Blank." Triumph put a bracing hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath, and went in to greet my new coworkers.

The rest of the Wards were clad in full costume, and all of them were expectantly facing the door. Well, that wasn't intimidating at all. It shamed me to admit as much, but I barely registered Triumph introducing me and announcing me as the newest member. Since the Wards clearly knew already, I figured he was doing it mainly to make me feel welcome, so it was rather rude to tune him out. Just, it was distracting being in the same place as so many capes. I had never been a cape fanboy (to say the least) before triggering, but now for some reason I couldn't keep my attention off them. I found myself eager to see what they could do, wanting to comprehend their powers inside and out, curious to see how mine might go about twisting theirs into a metaphorical pretzel—

Okay, that train of thought was verging too far into mad scientist territory for my liking. Did everyone's powers come with intrusive thoughts like this? Forcing myself to refocus, I nodded politely as each of the Wards introduced themselves in turn.

Aegis, a red-costumed flying Brute with an incredibly robust physiology. His greeting was calm and collected. His PHO article claimed he was supposedly able to survive dismemberment and decapitation. I really hoped that was mere theorizing and not something that regularly happened to Wards around here.

Kid Win, Tinker and fellow red costume enthusiast. A slightly nervous sort, going from the way he talked. His signature accessory was a hoverboard, though he hadn't brought it with him.

Gallant, another Tinker in bulky silver armor. He sounded even more unsure of himself than Kid Win, stumbling over his pleasantries. Unlike with Kid Win, the others all turned to look at him when he did that. Was this not how he usually acted? Curious.

"Slick, Gallant." Clockblocker snickered. A time-freezing Striker, he seemed the most expressive of the bunch despite his full-face mask. None of the miniature clocks on his costume displayed the same time, which was mildly infuriating. He gave me an irreverent salute. "I'm Clockblocker, yo. You can call me Clock."

"Don't be unprofessional, Clock." sighed Vista. A little blonde girl in a green dress, she looked comically out of place. Then again, Shaker 9. From what I understood of the rating system, that was obscenely high. I made sure my nod to her was extra polite. Only Shadow Stalker, the second-newest Ward, was absent. According to PHO, she'd previously been a vigilante known for excessive force, which made me secretly grateful for not meeting her. She sounded like the sort of battle maniac that Armsmaster thankfully wasn't.

"Thank you. I hope we can all get along." I said. And that, as if I'd fired off a starter pistol, was the signal for the Wards to crowd around me and blast away with questions.

"So what's your power?" chirped Vista.

"Why the suit?" mumbled Kid Win.

"What happened to your arm?" asked Clockblocker.

"Give him space, you guys!" Thanks, Triumph. You were a good boss.

"Power: Trump, nullifies parahuman powers and effects. Suit: I don't have a costume yet. Arm: trigger event." I rattled off. The Wards collectively flinched back a couple steps. I was beginning to grasp the sheer weight those last two words carried among capes. I almost (only almost) felt guilty about not being more traumatized. Getting kicked about by gang members was no fun, sure, but it was a pretty standard bit of misfortune by Brockton standards. It didn't really seem like the sort of thing that would leave an irreversible scar on the soul.

If you're not with us you're our enemy—shut up. It wouldn't so long as I didn't keep dwelling on that drivel, anyways. I had a government job now, while he was still an irrelevant two-bit criminal.

"Shit, sorry man." Clockblocker practically cringed. There was an eye-watering distortion of space, a smack, and then he was rubbing his head, even though there was no way Vista should've been able to reach over there. "Idiot." she huffed.

"Oh! That explains things." Gallant spoke up shyly. "Um, just so you know, I'm not really a Tinker. I'm actually a Master. Not the bad kind!" he added hastily. "I, uh, can see people's emotions. Like, always on. I see it for everyone in this room, except you. You just give off...nothing. Guess that's your Trump power?"

Aegis snorted. "So that's why you were being weird." He elbowed Gallant lightly. "Dude's used to having social cheat codes, and now he's got to deal with you like everyone else."

"Ha. Very funny, Aegis."

Well, well, well. This was a new data point. "Must be." I might not exactly wear my heart on my sleeve, but I hardly considered myself emotionless either. "Except you're clearly out of range if you're sensing the others. Maybe your power relies on some, like, exotic sensory input? And mine blocks it?" I briefly wondered what a Thinker would make of me. Then I was struck by a more concerning thought. "Wait. Does this mean if you see me unmasked, you'll know it's me?"

"Uh...I hadn't considered that. But, yeah, guess so." Gallant admitted. "If you're going to Arcadia—er, you don't have to answer that. I swear I won't tell if it happens, though. Unwritten rules. Or, uh, I could unmask to you, make it fair?"

I mulled it over. "So who's unmasked to who here?"

"We all know who each other are." Triumph answered. "Well, Shadow Stalker hasn't yet, but everyone in this room."

"Right." For a moment, I hesitated. The Wards contract was very clear that I wasn't obliged to reveal my identity to anyone save the local Director and Protectorate leader. Declining to unmask when everyone else had, however, would be a clear sign I didn't trust them. As friendly as they'd been so far, they were still capes, and capes were a prickly bunch (unless that was just another stereotype). Then again, did I in fact distrust them? They would be bound by the unwritten rules, which as with most rules applied even more stringently to heroes. Plus they were going to be my teammates for the next two years, so I might as well make a favorable first impression. Taking a deep breath, I reached up to remove the domino mask. "I'm Zhou Zhiqiang. Good to meet you all."

There was a beat, and then Triumph solemnly removed his helmet. Underneath he was handsome and athletic-looking with dark brown hair. "Rory Christner. Good to meet you, Z—Zeke—"

I took pity on him. "You can call me ZQ. Or Blank, I guess." There was a rustling and clanking of headgear as the rest of the Wards unmasked too, leading to a second round of introductions. This time I made the acquaintance of Carlos, Chris, Dean, Dennis, and Missy. None of their real faces were terribly surprising, with the possible exception of Clockblocker (Dennis) being a freckled redhead. Save for the ambiguously brown and presumably Latino Aegis they were all white, which was, well, it was fine. I assumed the PRT wouldn't let a Nazi join the Wards, not that any would want to with the Empire in town.

After that, I proceeded to receive a quick tour of the Wards base, which I had previously ignored in favor of the Wards themselves. The whole place was enclosed in a spacious dome, the center occupied by a large common area. There were tables, couches, computers, TVs, even a video game console. Surprisingly homey, all things considered. A small kitchen was nestled in the back, complete with fridge and pantry. What looked like office cubicle walls surrounded this area on all sides. Apparently it was a fully moveable Tinkertech system used to create additional rooms as needed—bathrooms, showers, lockers, meeting rooms, and personal quarters for each Ward. Given that the walls didn't collapse when I got close Triumph assured me it would be safe, so long as I stayed away during the actual rearrangement process.

We were on the hook for keeping everything clean, and there was a schedule to track who was supposed to do what when. Kid Win was allegedly building a robot to do it for us, but judging from his evasive reply when I inquired about his progress, I wasn't going to count on it.

"Okay, listen up." Triumph clapped his hands for attention. "We're heading down to the testing center now, so masks on. Since Blank's a Trump, Armsmaster wants us to try as many power interactions as possible. Throw everything at the wall, see what sticks. Oh, and we're taking the stairs—elevator didn't agree with him." Their was a faint murmuring at that which never quite rose to the level of a groan. I presumed the Wards had enough physical fitness that a couple flights wouldn't trouble them.

Gallant fell into step with me as we filed out. "So are you going to be at Arcadia?" he said, sounding more confident now. "I haven't seen you around."

"Yeah, starting next week. Got transferred from Winslow."

"Nice." said Gallant. "Chris, Carlos, and Dennis go there too." Huh, so the 'Wards school' rumors were true after all. Five of eight in one place. "Plus Glory Girl, Panacea, and Shielder. But they're Vicky, Amy, and Eric at school." And New Wave too. I wondered how secret the Wards' identities really were if they went gallivanting around with a bunch of known capes. Also, I should probably thank Panacea for her advice sometime. "You're welcome at our table, ZQ. Don't be a stranger."

Clockblocker snickered. "Well, duh, he's a Trump."

"That wasn't funny the first time." complained Vista.

We walked down one more flight of stairs (Aegis flew, the show-off) to reach the testing centre. I'd half-expected to find something out of a science fiction movie, a cavernous lair crammed with arcane machinery and white-coated scientists running to and fro. Reality was far more prosaic. The center consisted of a single hallway lined with computer terminals, and windows overlooking sealed-off test chambers on either side. As for scientists, there was only one woman on duty, though at least she was wearing a white coat.

Judging by her lack of reaction to the entire Wards roster showing up to her work site, she'd been expecting us. "Here for power testing, yes?" she said, her voice carrying a faint Indian accent. "Good. The procedure is as follows. Each of you will test your powers against Blank, one at a time, in Range #3. Aegis will go first, then the rest in whatever order you please. We will run through the pre-defined scenarios," she started handing out sheafs of paper to each of us. "after which you may suggest further ad-hoc tests. We will aim to finish around eleven-thirty when Armsmaster comes to take over. Are there any questions?"

Huh. Straight to the point. She hadn't even given us her name. Maybe she thought it was unnecessary, given that her badge helpfully identified her as one Dr. Reddy. "Uh, no." I said. Clockblocker raised a finger as if to speak, before Triumph shook his head and he desisted. Probably another one of his jokes, then. I was sensing a pattern here.

Aegis and I entered the door marked #3. The test chamber was a spotless cube of white concrete, with racks of miscellaneous equipment pushed up against the walls. Its floor was another flight of stairs below the hallway, and I could see the Wards pressed up to the windows above. "Blank, stand on the red X." the doctor instructed me over intercom. The ceiling lights were helpfully beaming a red X onto the floor, which I obediently stepped onto. I had an absurd, fleeting concern about anvils falling on my head. "Is this fine?"

"Yes. Aegis, you may proceed." My test subject floated down. His job, as the doctor explained, was to measure the range of my Trump effect. Starting from the far end of the room, he flew head-on towards me, toes barely skimming the floor. A couple arms-lengths away, he suddenly dropped, wobbling a bit on the landing.

"Good. Now the same thing, but approach from 3 o'clock." Aegis repeated the test from multiple different angles, dropping at about the same distance every time. "All right. I think we can validate Armsmaster's observation of a 2 meter range. We'll check the vertical next."

Assuming a plank position, Aegis flew up to the ceiling and descended slowly, slightly off-center so he wouldn't fall right on top of me. He was still pretty high up when my power kicked in, and came belly-flopping down. The thud of his body hitting the tiles sounded painful. "Are you all right?" I said.

"3.8 meters above ground." Dr. Reddy reported, dispassionately as ever.

"Yeah." Aegis grunted. He rolled over, feeling at his chest. "Huh. Couple broken ribs, I think. Normally that would fix itself."

"You're taking this awfully well."

"Eh, never really felt pain even before I got powers." Aegis dragged himself out of my null field, whereupon his Brute regeneration kicked in and he stood, seeming none the worse for the wear. For the final test of this sequence, I ended up climbing the stairs back to the entrance, while Aegis was instructed to fly straight up towards me. He almost reached the level of my feet before falling, this time catching himself in mid-air.

"Definitely closer that time." I observed.

"Interesting. The area of effect seems to be a 2-meter sphere centered on your head." said the doctor. "Presumably, it's projected from your Corona Pollentia and Gemma. That concludes Aegis' section, unless there was more you wanted to try?"

"I'm good." Aegis directed a thumbs up at the gallery. "Only other thing I had in mind was my regeneration, and we figured that one out already." Mm-hmm. Probably for the best we'd found out the way we had. If he'd tried to test it by decapitating himself or something, that would've ended messily.

Triumph entered as Aegis exited. "We decided to go in age order." he said, by way of explanation. I went back to standing on my X, now with a circle projected around it to mark my field boundary. "Okay, baseline test first. Going to try out my shout." Triumph stepped into the circle. "AAAAHHH!"

"Sounds normal."

"Yep." Triumph agreed, sounding a little put out. He crouched down and punched the floor experimentally. "Ow. Okay, power's definitely nullified. I'll try outside the field now. You might want to cover your ears."

I did, but I needn't have bothered. When Triumph left the circle and roared at me, I could see his mouth gaping and lips rippling with sonic force. I was sure it was kicking up an incredible racket, except that absolutely no sound reached me, as if I was watching a TV program on mute. "Uh...I don't hear anything."

"Nothing?" Triumph sounded even more put out now. Honestly, I was a surprised too. "Yeah. It's strange." I said. "I mean, I can understand blocking Gallant's emotion radar, but this is just sound waves."

"Hmm." the doctor cut in. "I have a thought. Playing a recording of that test at 1x volume."

A loud, shrill shriek rang out in the room, making me wince and cover my ears anew. Noticing this, Triumph groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. "Seriously? But you heard that? I'm confused now."

"Hmm. Noting that your power seems to discriminate between parahuman and natural sources."

That was it for Triumph's scheduled testing suite, but clearly he had some bonus ideas. "Do you have any baseballs in here?" As it turned out, there was a supply closet off to the side, full of sporting equipment. How convenient. Ball in hand, my boss moved to the other end of the room. "Hold still. This'll hurt to get hit by. " He did a bizarre-looking windup, raising one leg high. Then his arm bent back at an unnatural angle and then snapped forward and fwoosh! The ball flashed past my shoulder in a blur of white. "Oh! What kind of power was that?"

"That was a normal four-seam fastball. Used to play, before I joined the Wards." Triumph said wistfully. "They don't let parahumans into MLB, though." I remembered reading that in the news a few years ago. A player had hit 80 home runs in a season or something ridiculous, only to be accused of using secret Brute powers. The whole fallout had led the league to start mandating MRI scans. "Okay. Going to put some juice into this next one."

Triumph wound up again. His arm contorted in a way that should have snapped it like a twig, and I didn't even see the ball leave his hand. It reappeared two meters away, bounced perfectly on the red circle, and rolled slowly towards me. Curious, I picked it up. It seemed like an ordinary baseball; I wasn't sure what I'd expected.

"What." Triumph said incredulously. From his tone, that obviously hadn't been his power, meaning it was mine. I couldn't help a faint smile. If my hunch was right, one potential loophole I'd been worried about had just closed. Thank you, powers.

"Powers are bullshit." Clockblocker said over the intercom.

"Please refrain from such unscientific statements." Dr. Reddy scolded him. "So, that pitch left Triumph's hand at 217.8 mph and decelerated within..." she subsided into incoherent muttering.

The blocker of clocks himself was next, as it turned out. His attempts to freeze me were fruitless, as anticipated. Next, he took a trip to the storage closet, returning with an orange cone of the type used to stop traffic. He tossed the cone high in the air, then slapped a hand to it on the way down. The cone simply stopped in mid-air, hanging there with the tip tilted downwards. Huh. That...was actually pretty cool. "Neat, isn't it?" Clockblocker seemed well aware, judging from the smug tone of his comment. He threw a few kicks and punches at the cone for demonstration; it didn't budge so much as a millimeter. "Well, do your worst."

I walked up to the cone. It fell to the floor with a rubbery thump.

I couldn't see Clockblocker's face through the mask, but I had a feeling his jaw had dropped open. I picked up the cone and swung it around a few times for good measure before he recovered. "Bullshit!" he sputtered.

I shrugged. "It's only standard physics." To me, it seemed significantly less 'bullshit' than the blatant violation of gravity and Newton's Third Law he'd pulled off, but what did I know? It was only my first day on the job.

"Well, no one's ever countered that before." Clockblocker grumbled. He raised his voice. "The doctors said it was supposed to be impossible!"

"Unpredictable results can occur when two All-or-Nothing powers interact."

We also confirmed that the cone didn't re-freeze when I tossed it away, meaning the dispelling effect was permanent. Even when Clockblocker placed a cone on the floor and applied his power, it would come unfrozen if I just walked past, not interacting in any way. Which was odd, when I thought on it more. After all, Armsmaster's Tinkertech had (assuming he wasn't lying) resumed working when it left my field. When I mentioned this, Clockblocker only shrugged. "Eh. Like I said, powers are bullshit."

"No, there are rules. I'm sure of it." It surprised me how strongly I felt about this. The idea of my power being an unpredictable force of random chaos was a deep affront, for some reason.

"Uh, if you say so, man. It's your power." It surprised Clockblocker too, by the sounds of it.

After that, I had an extra test in mind, for once. A bit of rummaging turned up a heavy-duty tape measure (seriously, how much stuff did they have here?). Each holding one end, we stretched it out to four meters before Clockblocker did his thing again. The result was that my half flopped to the floor, while his remained rigidly time-locked. It gradually unfroze inch by inch as I walked up the line. He whistled. "Damn. Never half-froze something before. Could be handy if I can do it myself."

Here the doctor interrupted with uncharacteristic urgency, to warn us against ever testing the half-freeze on another person. Apparently it could cause deoxygenation-induced tissue death or nasty complications with blood clots, depending on if their heart was in the frozen portion. So that was a bit grim, but I filed it away for the unlikely case that we actually needed to do it.

Gallant's turn came and went quickly, since we already knew I was immune to his emotion sensing. I did discover he could also shoot emotion blasts at people, which sounded a little sketchy. Anyways, it was a moot point for me, since his attempt to shoot me up with happiness resulted in a ball of light that disappeared immediately on contact with my circle. Kid Win didn't even get a turn, on the grounds that they weren't 100% sure if my power would make his inventions explode.

That left only Vista. I helped her grab more orange cones from storage, setting them up between the walls to serve as handy distance markers. Then, situating ourselves on opposite ends of the room, Vista tried to warp me closer using her power. The results were interesting, to say the least. The two cones nearest me were unaffected, the rest ended up piled up in front of her, and in between was a smear of something which hurt my eyes to look at. By my estimation, we were precisely as far apart as we had been before. "Gah!" Vista didn't seem to appreciate the eldritch tapestry the floor had turned into either. "Can I turn it back to normal now?"

"In a moment. Blank, can you walk towards Vista?" It was a surreal experience, seeing the floor slowly revert back to mundane concrete and the cones seemingly teleport across the room back to their previous spots one by one. I was almost sorry when the doctor called a stop. According to her, my power operated based on real spatial dimensions rather than Vista's warped ones. Did that mean the room existed in two states at the same time, like Schrödinger's cat? Except we were clearly observing the system, so, in short, I was confused. This was probably what Clockblocker meant regarding powers and cow manure.

The very last planned test was for her to try warping herself closer to me. Although this sounded like mere semantics, it proved quite different in practice. Suddenly Vista was only two meters away, standing behind a stack of cones. "YES!" she whooped, pumping her fist. "I actually did something! In your faces!" she shouted at the peanut gallery.

"So you did. Good to know Blank won't be completely lacking in synergy." Armsmaster's bulky silhouette appeared in the viewing window. Unexpectedly, from the way the other Wards started. I wondered how someone in armor could move so stealthily—Tinker shenanigans, no doubt. "Also, cease gloating. It is unprofessional."

"Eep."

Pro sports on Earth Bet must be interesting, no? Aside from cheating, the possibility of blowing it in a high-pressure situation in front of a large audience seems dangerous. Like, imagine if Bill Buckner triggered on the field in the '86 World Series with millions watching? Awkward.

The 'half-freeze' concept is something I came up with spur of the moment, only to realize how fucking horrifying it could be. Imagine being frozen except for your head, venous blood pooling in your neck, slowly suffocating due to lack of oxygen from your time-locked heart and lungs, and being awake for it all.

Yes, I know Schrödinger's cat doesn't actually work like that, but Blank doesn't. He may be a bright kid, but Winslow doesn't strike me as the sort of place where they teach quantum physics.