Humor AU: Young For Her Height

She swept into the room in a tornado of butterflies, bumblebees, and enforced cheerfulness. The three Wards lounging around the conference table never saw her coming.

"We're under attack!" Aegis screamed as butterflies swarmed him, covering his eyes and generally confusing him by doing absolutely nothing.

"Duck and cover!" Vista yelled, twisting space to throw empty pretzel bags at the bugs; funnels of non-Euclidean geometry followed each bag, twisting bugs in and then locking them away, for all the good it did. A hundred bugs fell, and a thousand more swarmed out from the walls.

"My one weakness, hordes of disposable minions!" Clockblocker exclaimed, screaming wildly as he froze handfuls of bees all around himself, then froze his costume.

The tornado subsided a moment after the three Wards realized the futility of their various defenses. Aegis was busy shooing butterflies off his mask, but Vista and Clockblocker were looking when the swarms all dropped to the ground.

"This has been a test of your emergency Minion-type Master Infiltration protocols," the white-suited figure who stood in the doorway, now liberally draped in motionless bugs, proclaimed. "The biggest problem I saw is that you don't have any of those. Sloppy. It's a good thing I'm here to pick up the slack now. And I'm early!"

"The notification said ten thirty," Aegis said. "It's ten fifty."

"My notification said eleven sharp," the white-suited figure remarked. "Sounds like someone got things mixed up, and since Piggot isn't here yet, it's not me. I'm early." She swung her arms out, and the myriad of bugs across the room all flowed back to her, giving her a second and third layer of living armor, and relieving the three Wards of their many-limbed attackers.

"Are you… a new Ward?" Vista sounded as if she was dreading the answer.

"Nope," the white-suited figure responded cheerily. "Full-on Protectorate member here. Full salary, no trust fund, consequences for my actions, the whole deal."

"You don't act like a Protectorate hero," Vista grumped, retrieving her pretzel-bag-traps and unwinding the space around them. The bugs inside fluttered and buzzed back to their master in intermittent streams.

"Can you keep a secret?" The white-armored figure leaned in, pulled off her mask, revealing a surprisingly unamused look on a youthful face with a wide mouth, framed by black hair. "This is a compromise with PR," she said, her voice completely level and serious. "The more humor-focused I am, the more slack they cut me with my powers and how they look. Just play along, they want me to be in character at all times." She slipped the white mask back on and stepped back from the table. "Maybe I'll be able to relax once everyone is sure I'm not going to snap and go mental because of my evil, evil bugs!" A swarm of fuzzy bumblebees orbited her head in a lopsided ring to punctuate her declaration.

"Yeah, that might take a while," Clockblocker said, sounding dazed. Aegis and Vista didn't look much better; if mental whiplash was as harmful as the real thing, they'd all be on their way to the hospital.

"You look very… young." Aegis offered.

"I missed the Wards by a few months," she replied. "I'm going to be your boss because apparently Armsmaster is getting sued by the Youth Guard for being an older man with no social skills in charge of impressionable teenagers, and Piggot wants somebody naïve and innocent in the position until that farce is cleared up."

"I did wonder why he was building a lawyer-defenstrating attachment for his halberd," Kid Win remarked as he walked in, skirting around the living mass of bugs standing in front of the table. "I was worried Brandish had gone rogue." Gallant, Shadow Stalker, Browbeat, and finally Piggot herself followed, the latter brandishing her trademark scowl like a weapon of war.

"Sit down and shut up," Piggot grunted as she made her way to the front of the room. "Everyone listen up, I'm only saying this once, and I'm only saying it at all because some people like lawsuits far too much. Weaver is a new Protectorate member. Weaver is young, hip, and totally innocent as far as PR scandals go. Armsmaster is fending off a horde of lawyers that have collectively been classified as an A-class threat to the Protectorate. Therefore, Weaver is now the one stuck dealing with you, may god have mercy on her soul and sanity. Any complaints about this should go to Weaver, Miss Militia, any other hero in Brockton Bay, the lunch ladies in the cafeteria, the janitor, Thomas Calvert, and as a last resort…"

"You?" Gallant asked hopefully.

"Find a squirrel and ask it to get Mouse Protector for you," Piggot said spitefully. "Then me, if that doesn't work. Shadow Stalker, if you kill Weaver, I'll have you shipped off to the next Behemoth fight, tied to Eidolon, and used as a distraction." Ignoring the total insanity of her threat, and the utter shock her tirade produced in everyone listening, Piggot thumped of the room and slammed the door.

"... Squirrels aren't mice…" Clockblocker was heard faintly muttering in the shocked silence. At the same time, Shadow Stalker was whispering "fighting Behemoth with Eidolon" in a small, awed voice. It wasn't actually all that silent, but compared to the constant whirlwind of bug attacks, overly enthusiastic new heroes, and disgruntled rants from Directors, two people muttering felt like utter silence.

A loud clap broke the silence; Weaver weathered their startled glares without a care in the world. "Wards! Hello! I'm–"

"Chaos incarnate?" Vista asked.

"Close!" Weaver confirmed, nodded wildly. "That's what I'm aiming for, with a side of 'harmless and occasionally bumbling' to make it less terrifying. How am I doing?"

"I, for one, and terrified," Clockblocker deadpanned. "More bumbling."

"Duly noted!" Weaver exclaimed. Everyone else flinched. "Now, as Piggot said, I'm your new boss." Everyone flinched harder, except for Shadow Stalker, who had taken out her crossbow and was doing something to the bolts.

"Is this… temporary?" Aegis asked.

"Depends," Weaver said thoughtfully. "Anyone know if bloodsucking lawyers can get through power armor? If Armsmaster falls in battle in the courts, I might be here a while."

"New question," Vista said. "Are we allowed to go help him instead of staying here?"

"If you want to be treated like the preteen you really are, sure!" Weaver assured her. "Because if you go to be a witness, they might cross-examine you, and given reason he's being sued, that would mean making sure the entire jury saw you as a little girl he helped turn into a child soldier…"

"I'll stay here," Vista said sullenly.

"Thought you might," Weaver agreed. "Now, let's go around and introduce ourselves. I'm Weaver, and my powers include controlling every bug within a several-block radius, individually. At the same time. Right now, I have over three million eyes, legs, wings, and stingers within reach, and I consider that a low number."

There was a moment of horrified silence.

"Clockblocker," the clock-themed teen volunteered. "I stop things in time, and I am feeling severely outclassed. Also, I think I might be developing a deeply-rooted fear of insects."

"I'm Aegis," Aegis added, seemingly unwilling to let the unnerving silence return. "I can fly, and my body adapts to things. Blow my eardrums out, and my toes take up the slack."

"I'm sure that's very useful," Weaver said sagely. "Next!"

"Vista, I warp space." She demonstrated by putting a football field's distance between herself and the rest of the table, then shrinking it back down to normal. "I'm also the most experienced Ward on the team, so if you're thinking about having a deputy…"

"I might be in the market for a sidekick," Weaver suggested. "You'd need to rebrand, though. Can you do cute and innocent?"

"I'm Gallant," Gallant intervened, cutting off Vista's likely vulgar response. "I see emotions…" He trailed off and gave Weaver a look. "I generally don't talk about what I'm seeing, but if you need to confide in someone–"

"No implying I'm anything other than the cheerful one-dimensional paragon of virtue in front of you now," Weaver said, waving a finger. More threateningly, a few decidedly unpleasant-looking bugs skittered across the conference table, too fast to be identified. "Whatever you may see, keep it quiet. I got a bill of good mental health from the power testing therapist, and they know everything."

"Power testing doesn't have therapists," Browbeat said quietly. "I was there last week."

"Well, one of the scientists was worried when I started testing out my public persona in front of them, so they do now!" She tapped the forehead of her mask. "I'm going to try and get the Wards their own therapist soon, it's just throwing fuel on the 'convict Armsmaster' fire to not have one. You're child soldiers, you should get to talk about your feelings on occasion!"

"Isn't Armsmaster trying to convince the courts that we're not child soldiers?" Kid Win objected.

"Yes, but you totally are," Weaver said glibly. "It's fine, that's why I'm here!" She leaned forward to put her hands on the table–

A bolt from Shadow Stalker's crossbow passed through the space where Weaver's head had been a moment ago, embedding itself in the wall. The tranquilizer head had been removed, and the shaft sharpened to a makeshift point.

Everyone stared at Shadow Stalker, who was unremorsefully pointing her crossbow at Weaver.

"I want to fight Behemoth with Eidolon," she said simply, loading up another bolt.

"Child soldier," Weaver proclaimed, pointing dramatically at Shadow Stalker.

"Oh, god," Gallant groaned, folding forward to let his forehead rest on the table. Nobody paid him any attention.

Shadow Stalker and Weaver couldn't have been any more disparate a pair, walking through a run-down neighborhood near the docks. One was clad in white with a halo of riotous colors fluttering around her, and the other outfitted in black and alone. One skulked, sticking to the shadows whenever possible, and the other walked casually in the sunlight.

One was cheerfully speaking, and the other seethed with held-back anger.

"So, the thing you need to learn," the complete newcomer to the cape scene said to the seasoned former vigilante, "is… everything. I guess it's relearning, in that case, since you think you know most of it."

"I know how to be a hero," Shadow Stalker hissed.

"No, you totally don't, but that's fine!" Weaver waved to a pair of young men skulking in an alleyway, seemingly unbothered by their general aura of suspicious activity. One waved back. "We're going back to square one, and I'm going to teach you! It's all fresh in my mind from the training seminar, so I'm the perfect one to put you back on the training wheels."

Shadow Stalker raised her crossbow and aimed at Weaver's torso, but the only thing she had in it was a tranquilizer bolt, and she hadn't taken the time to turn it into something more satisfying. She began covertly looking around for sharp rocks to maybe tie to the end, but the only thing she could find was gravel and little bits of glass too small to do the job. Or somebody to beat up. Or a thug with a gun she could blame if Weaver turned up dead in a ditch…

There were surprisingly few people around; Weaver's patrol route took them through the heart of E88 territory, a privilege Shadow Stalker was intensely envious of, but the streets were empty. The buildings were open for business, those that had a business, but she had yet to see even a covert drug deal.

"The first thing we'll cover will be interacting with the public," Weaver nattered on. She wasn't even looking in Shadow Stalker's direction, staring vacantly up at the sky as she walked… somehow avoiding tripping on the curve despite not seeing it. "Shaking hands, taking pictures, not cursing out preteens with stammering problems… You know, just generally not being a bitch." A brief shadow fell over them, but when Shadow Stalker looked up, the sky was clear, save for a half-dozen flies zipping across the street in a V-formation.

There was a broken-off broom handle jutting out of a dumpster on Shadow Stalker's side of the street; she made a show of checking out the alleyway containing said dumpster and snapped off a long, jagged splinter. That would do nicely. She was going to get that team-up; Piggot wouldn't have promised it unless she wanted Weaver to meet with an unfortunate accident.

"After that, how to behave in your civilian life to avoid tipping off the people around you to your status as a parahuman, because you would not believe how bad most people are at that," Weaver continued. "I mean, I'm amazing, but Kid Win has gotten several worried emails from teachers about how absent-minded he's been in class, Vista's friends all call her 'little miss Ward' because of how she acts whenever the Wards come up in conversation, and Aegis tells me Dennis almost got caught freezing a bathroom stall door shut because the lock was broken."

Shadow Stalker popped the bolt out of her crossbow and snapped the tranquilizer head off.

"I mean, who knows what mistakes you're making," Weaver blathered on. Shadow Stalker wasn't listening to her in the slightest. "Pissing off the gangs at Winslow, maybe, or flaunting your fitness without an excuse for it… You run track, but that doesn't explain having the arms of a brawler. Maybe you bully some helpless kid in your free time, just because you feel like it. Your hero personality is edgy and violent and people know Shadow Stalker is supposed to go to Winslow, that's like drawing a line right to yourself for anyone you piss off in either identity…"

A fat, hairy spider dropped from the sky to land on Shadow stalker's hands just as she tried to use her powers to merge the splinter and the bolt shaft together. She couldn't turn back at the right time without getting a spider lodged inside her arm, and when the spider finally fell out of her outline, both splinter and bolt were ruined, stuck together at exactly the wrong angle in a way that was so brittle it immediately snapped.

Weaver continued talking as if nothing had happened. "So there's that, and by the way, talking like I am right now isn't something you do in public unless you're sure nobody's around, and then there's the proper level of violence to wield against different types of criminal…"

Her blathering was interrupted by a shriek from down the street. A man and a woman were running toward them, the latter holding a purse and the former chasing him, slowly gaining.

Shadow Stalker had never seen such a pathetic crime in her life. In about ten seconds, the lady was going to catch the would-be thief, and judging by the thickness of her arms, she would then either beat him into the ground or just manhandle him until he was sorry.

"Here's a perfect first crime to stop," Weaver suggested. "Go out there, take the purse back, and do it without hurting the guy. He's a nonviolent offender–"

It was a pathetic excuse for a crime, but it was an excuse to hurt someone, whatever Weaver was saying. Shadow Stalker surged forward, shifting to her Breaker state to pass through a stop sign in the way, and rapidly closed the distance between herself and the criminal, who was only now realizing that he was running toward trouble.

She snatched the purse out of his hands, wrenching it to break a few fingers in the process, and used her body weight to yank him to the ground. He hit hard and rolled to a stop, just in time to receive a kick to the gut from the lady who had been chasing him.

Weaver was somehow there in an instant, blocking the kick with her own foot. "Now, now, don't give him a chance to do something stupid like sue you for assault," she chided. "You wouldn't believe the cases some lawyers will take in this town. No sense of priority, none at all." She took the bag from Shadow Stalker without even looking and handed it back.

Shadow Stalker saw her chance and faded again, quickly leaving the scene while Weaver was tied up with the woman. She could break away, go patrol on her own, find something real to stop…

But as she quickly ascended to the rooftops and began the real hunt, she noticed something.

There were bugs everywhere. Phalanxes of beetles crawling along walls, strictly-ordered regiments of cockroaches patrolling alleyways, lone butterflies watching the skies, horseflies buzzing menacingly near anyone who so much as loitered… Spiders by the thousand were busily spinning webs to wrap around what Shadow Stalker thought was a wad of cash sitting abandoned on a roof. There were footprints near the cash, and a speckling of dead bugs, freshly squashed.

Weaver was stealing every single crime worth stopping, and she was handling them all simultaneously. Shadow Stalker saw red–

Then she saw black and cracked-riddled grey, as a chunk of concrete soared right by her and crashed down in the middle of the street she had left Weaver on. Rune, nobody else bothered to ruin roads as a method of transport, and she wasn't alone. Four figures, Shadow Stalker saw as she ran back to Weaver, hopping across rooftops, were dismounting rubble. One was Rune, but the others were definitely not.

"You're ruining our territory," Krieg announced, his voice booming, "and we will not stand for it. Your vermin torment upstanding citizens." Fenja and Menja flanked him, beginning to grow in tandem. Rune levitated her rubble, hefting it menacingly over her own head.

Shadow Stalker readied another tranquilizer bolt. She'd shoot Rune first; the idiot might get crushed by her own power, and that would be worth any amount of punishment afterward.

Weaver stood in the middle of the street, bugs in a cloud around her. "Whatever you do," she yelled, "leave the Ward out of it!" A substantial portion of her swarm flew over to the rooftop, and by extension to Sophia, completely blowing her cover and ruining her clear shot on Rune. "Your fight is with me!"

The bugs descended on Rune, Krieg, Fenja and Menja, and Shadow Stalker tried to descend on them too. Tried and failed, because there were bugs everywhere, getting in her eyes, blocking her path with their little air-displacing bodies and buzzing wings, swirling in her face.

She swiped at the fat, obnoxious butterflies blocking her view and got a clear look long enough to see Krieg flailing at himself, and the twins trying to smack Weaver into the pavement like the bug she was. Then the bugs were back in her face, and she was retreating to try and escape Weaver's interference.

By the time Shadow Stalker found another rooftop out of Weaver's range – two blocks was a deceptively large distance to travel with butterflies trying to go up one's nose – and doubled back, the fight was over.

Krieg was a rolling, moaning mass of ants. Fenja was back to normal, unconscious on the ground, and Menja had her car-sized hands held up in surrender. Rune was talking to Weaver, seemingly no worse for wear.

She had missed the entire fight.

"I told you," Weaver called up to her, "you're still in training! No fighting supervillains until we get through the other stuff!"

Shadow Stalker returned to plotting murder, now with one more reason than before. Maybe she could trick the Empire into helping her… they didn't know she was black, they might be willing to cooperate. Though with the way Rune was meekly submitting to being handcuffed, she might have to look elsewhere for villainous assistance.

Gallant eyed the door. "It's barricaded?" he asked.

"Yes," Velocity confirmed. "I don't think this is a hostage situation, but that might change if you try to go in there."

"Any weapons?" he asked. He didn't want to force his way in, holdout negotiation lessons said that was the worst thing to do, but at the same time…

"She's partial to clubbing anybody who tries to get in, but no guns or obvious parahuman abilities," Velocity explained. He was standing in front of the door, blocking the way. "Any other questions?"

"Why had Director Piggot barricaded herself into her office?" Gallant asked, at a loss. He needed to ask her a few pointed questions about Weaver, and how something was obviously wrong with her emotions. The only people he'd ever seen switch between entirely different sets of emotions on a whim like she did were people with certain mental disorders, and even they had more of a lag time between personalities!

"She won't give me a straight answer," Velocity admitted. "I lower her down food from the window of the office above hers, and she slips orders under the door. You could try writing your request down and sending it with her lunch, but unless it's something she thinks is important, she'll just give you the new default response."

"And that is?" Gallant asked, wishing he had taken something for his headache before seeking out the Director. Weaver's emotions always gave him a headache, he had learned to deal with it, but the general insanity that had gripped the Brockton Bay Protectorate was making it worse.

"I said ask the squirrels," Velocity said dryly. "If it's code, nobody knows what it really means. If it's not… Alexandria called and said our priority as a branch was not making any more messes until the thing with Armsmaster is cleared up, so we're not allowed to get her replaced."

"Well... " Leaving a note wouldn't be worth it; he wanted a conversation, an explanation, not a reminder that their Director had abdicated all responsibility to the nearest rodent. "Thanks for explaining."

"It was either explain or let you find out for yourself, and Dauntless still has a concussion from when I let him find out," Velocity elaborated. "She beans anyone who gets past the door with a fire extinguisher. Or, if you catch her during dialysis, with parts of the machine. We still don't know how she got it set up in there without anyone noticing."

Gallant wandered away from the Director's office, mentally going over the chain of command Piggot had given the Wards just a week ago. At the top of the list was Miss Militia, but she had taken Vista out to a shooting range in the countryside to test 'S-class deterrence measures' and give Vista a class on handgun safety. Armsmaster was still preparing his legal defense somewhere in Boston. Velocity was literally being run ragged to cover for them, and apparently keeping people safe from Piggot's wrath on the side. He now knew why Dauntless was in the hospital. Battery and Assault had taken personal leave for some reason; they had left just before Armsmaster's thing kicked off.

Not even Dragon had been able to help; the one time he'd managed to get through on her phone line, the other end of the call had sounded like a battle in progress, and she had assured him that she had no idea what the Brockton Bay Protectorate was doing with a new hero; her interest in them extended as far as Armsmaster. Then she had hung up.

Like it or not, the only adult hero he was able to reach but hadn't yet asked about Weaver was… Weaver herself. She was his only option, unless he wanted to start interrogating the janitors and cooks. Or Thomas Calvert, whoever that was. Some subcontractor, from what little Gallant knew, but one who was barely ever in the building.

Faced with a choice between seeking out a random nobody or asking Weaver herself, Gallant decided to face the firing squad of rapid-fire emotions and ask Weaver. He spent the entire walk to her office psyching himself up. She was hurting, or insane, and neither of those things were her fault. He could look her in the eye – or mask, as it were – for more than ten seconds without wincing. He just had to ignore the way her colors shuffled around and never quite matched up with how she was acting. Like assessing a bad car crash without looking too closely at the injuries of the drivers.

The door to Weaver's office was open, granting an unrestricted view of two massive, brightly-colored plastic beehives sitting on a desk, buzzing with activity. Weaver had a gloved hand inside each of the hives, digging deep for something with her back to him. Her mask was on, and her emotions were a relatively normal mix of annoyance and interest. Then they flashed to pure amusement for absolutely no reason, like someone had told a great joke… But nothing had changed.

Gallant's head throbbed as he cleared his throat. "Weaver?"

"Yes, Gallant?" she asked, not even looking over her shoulder at him. "If you want to taste-test my new merchandise, you're going to have to wait a little longer. These fake beehives skimped on the inside texture, and sanding them by hand just isn't working very well."

"I actually had a few questions for you, once you have a moment free," he said awkwardly. This was going well, by any reasonable definition of the word. She wasn't flitting around intimidating and amusing everyone by equal margins, or dealing out assignments like a madwoman, or flinging hornets at his face. Still, he didn't feel good about what was to come. Weaver didn't make sense, and that put him on edge.

"Are they power-related questions?" Weaver asked. She withdrew her left arm, covered in gunk and clutching a bit of sandpaper in her fist, and used it to steady the beehive her right arm was still ensconced in. A small swarm of bees landed on her left arm and began eating the gunk while she worked.

"Yes," he said, throwing caution to the wind. "Could you… not? Do that?"

"You'll have to be more specific," she huffed.

"Your emotions jumping around like a toddler at Disneyland before it closed down," he said. "Is it something you can control? Because I really need to have a straight conversation with you, and Clockblocker said you were putting on a show for PR, but it doesn't look like that from my point of view."

Weaver removed her other arm from the beehive and turned around. She pulled her mask off, and all the bugs in the room landed and fell still. Her emotions settled to a contradictory mixture of patience and anxiety, though he didn't know why the latter was involved. "If that's what you need," she said neutrally. "What's the problem?"

"I want to know what's going on."

"Think you can handle it?" she asked seriously. "I can drop all of it on you right now, and you'll understand. You might wish you didn't, though."

"Hit me." He'd rather be done puzzling over her.

"I'm the boss of one of the people who caused my Trigger Event, I'm constantly aware of everything happening within two blocks so long as there's a bug there, my powers let me not feel my own emotions, I'm on a leash with my powers that means the more ridiculous I act the fewer restrictions they put on me, and when I went to Armsmaster for advice he gave me an old pocketwatch from the confiscated Tinkertech vault and told me it was something Leet made that would let me self-hypnotize myself into being able to act like a fun-loving, well-meaning lunatic whenever my mask is on," Weaver said, never even stopping for air. "I think that's most of it."

"I… Oh." That… would explain things. Quite well, actually. But she was right, he would rather not have known. "Anything else I shouldn't know?"

"I'm sixteen, but they let me into the Protectorate because I'm tall and nobody actually asked about my age," she added, picking up her mask from where she had set it on the desk. "And I think I like myself better with the mask on. Don't tell the Youth Guard." She slipped the mask on.

Then she turned to him. "Want to help me make my beehives?" Despite the invitation, the low buzzing in the background was nothing if not menacing.

Gallant fled the room. He didn't stop running until he was out of the Rig, over the bridge, and under a tree planted in the median of the road. He slumped down there, his back to its trunk.

"I didn't need to know," he moaned. He had been happier thinking Weaver was just a crazy woman in charge of the Wards. He had nobody to turn to, no higher authority to ask for help...

He looked up. A fuzzy brown creature with beady black eyes looked down at him.

"Help me, Mouse Protector," he requested, knowing even as he spoke that nothing would happen. Some random independent hero who operated in a different city wasn't going to show up and tell him what to do, not even if she could see him through a squirrel–

There was a flash of light in the middle of the street. A costumed figure appeared in the light, her hood's floppy ears silhouetted for a brief moment.

"You called?" she asked eagerly. Her emotions were a turbulent blend, switching in and out in a way that was similar and yet utterly different to Weaver-

His Thinker headache objected quite vigorously to yet another ridiculous overload of information, and he fainted on the spot.

Bonus Scene:

Armsmaster crouched behind the judge's desk, clutching the ceremonial gavel in one hand, and his sparking, half-destroyed halberd in the other. Dragon, in one of her more humanoid suits, crouched beside him. The minigun on her shoulder was out of charge, and from the way she was frantically hunting for a wall outlet, everything else in her suit was too. They had gotten to her interior reactors early, catching her off-guard with their judicious use of staplers and whatever else they could find lying around…

"Skies?" she asked him, her melodious voice sorely strained. "Could go straight up."

"Structural integrity might hold up, but there are innocents in the holding cells, we'd be dooming them," he objected. They were cut off from the internet, part of the courthouse's more effective security measures, but he had downloaded the building's blueprints a week ago. Half the place would collapse if two suits of power armor smashed a path up through the center of it. Shoddy design, really.

"Didn't know about them," Dragon admitted. "Not used to going into these things blind."

"It was an ambush, going in blind is normal," he reassured her. A briefcase flew over where they were crouching and smashed against the wall, legal papers spilling out. He took the chance and stood, firing at the shambling pack of legal hounds. They returned fire, a few wielding guns taken from the security personnel, and he was forced to duck again.

"We couldn't have known this would happen," he asserted. He'd come prepared for a war of words, not a war against an entire horde of lawyers under some variant of a Master effect.

"We-" Dragon's head tilted. "Hang on. Incoming call? It's… Gallant. I'm picking it up."

"We're in the middle of a fight for our lives!" he complained. "This is more important!" Not to mention he had no idea how she was even getting a call right now.

"No, Gallant, I don't know anything about Weaver, and I'm not in any position to check right now," Dragon said. There was a loud yell from somewhere behind them, and she took a moment to detach the last of her containment foam grenades and toss it over her shoulder. The yelling took on a far more frustrated tone. "I'm not cleared to access personnel files, anyway. Armsmaster is the only hero I know about on a personal level. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Whatever reply Gallant gave, Armsmaster missed it, as he was too busy watching a vent near the ceiling shift, the metal covering falling off and clattering on the floor. A pale hand reached out–

Dragon hung up and looked up at the vent. "This is getting ridiculous," she said. "Colin, take us out for a minute?"

"It's just getting good," he complained. This was his best version yet, it was so realistic.

"Please?" she asked. "Don't make me disconnect."

"Five minute break," he conceded, thumbing the necessary code into his gauntlet. The bloodied, besieged courthouse faded away from his visor, and his armor's systems all popped back up to one hundred percent functionality. He popped his helmet off and stepped down from the omnidirectional treadmill, blinking rapidly to accustom himself to the on-loan workshop the Boston Protectorate had provided.

Dragon's image popped onto one of the screens on the other side of the workshop; she looked disheveled, much like he felt. "I'm amazed by the way you set this up," she said, "and it's very impressive…"

"But?" he prompted. Maybe she was noticing the slight lag in the AI tactical protocols, or maybe she had a critique on the scenario itself. He was guessing the former; she had always been very observant when it came to his attempts at AI of any variety.

"But your lawsuit has its opening arguments in two days and you're spending your time perfecting a simulation where you fight a horde of lawyer zombies in the exact same courthouse you're scheduled to have your hearing at," Dragon said. "That's one of the warning signs of a school shooter, Colin. Simulating the slaughter in a similar environment."

"I'm just trying to get my finely honed battle instincts to recognize them as threats," he objected. "So I can win the war of words when it comes to that." He was proud of his simulation, it was realistic enough that with his armor taken over by the program, he almost believed it. It was going to revolutionize training programs across the Protectorate once he got the kinks ironed out.

One such kink presented itself to him, and he frowned. "You got a call inside the simulated environment," he recalled. "Were you wearing the headset I sent over, or did you end up making a framework like I suggested?"

"Framework," Dragon replied, "but now that I think about it… I didn't give it phone compatibility."

"That's strange." He pulled his helmet back on and pulled up the program interface. It was still running, still latched onto his suit's computer, still hooked into a number of outside sources…"

"Colin," Dragon said. "The Dragonslayers just set down in Boston, outside the courthouse." Her voice was laden with confusion and disbelief. "Your courthouse. They're all in the suits they stole from me… What does your program do when you tell it to apply itself to an armor system?" The visual on her screen cut off, leaving a bouncing Protectorate logo. "What… When did you make it into a virus!"

"I told you, it's self-installing," he objected.

"You sent me a virus and I opened it!" Dragon yelled frantically. "I gave it highest-level access! Administrative permissions!"

"Why did you do that?" he demanded. "It just needed to go on the suit you built for it, not your entire network!" Dragon was a careful programmer, there was absolutely no reason for her to do something so reckless.

"I wasn't sure if it would work right if I didn't give it full permissions, my systems are complicated," Dragon explained. "But that's not important, look!" A feed popped up on the screen, a live news report.

On it, the Dragonslayers were stomping around outside the courthouse, overturning parked cars and moving in a very stilted fashion. None of the three suits were flying, and one was doing its best to hop around on one leg, despite the other being perfectly fine. Some of Boston's local heroes were starting to knock them around, but they were barely responding.

"I think there's a spatial locating glitch in your program," Dragon observed as they watched the Dragonslayers bumble around on live television. "Did it fly them there?"

"The scenario starts out with an alert and a news briefing cutscene in the original version, followed by a spatial readjustment that I might have cut because it would require being at the actual scene of the scenario," Armsmaster recalled, his mind racing as he traced the potential ramifications of that particular mistake. Coding wasn't his specialty, he was more prone to mistakes when doing it than when working with physical materials, and he hadn't checked or accounted for his program getting access to anything but his own systems and an air-gapped control platform on Dragon's side of things…

"They're locked down according to the simulation, and they're seeing a horde of lawyer zombies that aren't there," Dragon reported. "They had a backdoor into my system, somewhere, and your program followed it to them and took over the suits because that's what it does… Colin, I could kiss you right now."

"I could ditch the trial and fly to Toronto," Colin quickly offered. "The courthouse is going to need repairs, so I've got some time..."

"Pick up some of Bonesaw's confiscated wetwork tools from the Ohio Protectorate vaults on the way and you've got a deal," Dragon offered.

Colin was already unhooking his armor from the treadmill, not even bothering to question her request. This would delay the trial, but Brockton Bay could do without him for a while longer.

Author's Note: This was so much fun to write. It was also so easy to write; throwing out all suspension of disbelief to be as ridiculous as I wanted was incredibly freeing. It's a little worrying, as I can't really tell whether the quality is consistent (the first scene feels like my best work, for the record, I was most 'in the zone' for that part), but… Meh. It was fun to do.

Next up, once I finish them, we'll have a few different mini-plots centered around alt-powers for Taylor. One's time-related and super overpowered, and the other is a coordination power so weak it doesn't even work on Parahumans. Both are interesting. We'll see which I finish first.