Seed 1.4

"So, you've got a few decisions to make."

"Alright…"

"The first is where you'll be living. Your first option is we set you up with an apartment in the city; it would be a lot nicer than whatever you get staying here, but you'd have to spend a lot more time maintaining your civilian identity to protect your neighbors. The alternative is staying here; you'll spend a lot less time hiding who you are, and you won't need to deal with travel time in an emergency, but your accommodations won't be quite as comfortable."

"I'll take the second one. I've slept in worse conditions before, and hopefully, I shouldn't be here for long anyway."

Not long after Challenger had made his offer, Piggot had called him to say that Armsmaster had confirmed my story. From what she had said, he wanted to have a long conversation about Dust in the near future, but that would have to wait until I was settled in. I hadn't quite realized just how much paperwork would be involved in signing on here, though they weren't making me do much of it.

It probably didn't help that they were setting up a civilian identity for me at the same time - even if I'd be staying here at the Rig, I'd need ID and legal papers.

"Alright, that'll work. We can find you a dorm somewhere isolated if that's what you'd prefer. That way you won't get woken up at all hours of the night by shift changes and the like," The man across from me said, writing on his clipboard. He'd never given me his name, instead just sitting me down

"I'll be fine pretty much wherever," I responded.

"Okay then, next question; I've been told that you don't have much to your name at the moment, so we'll ask you to set up a shopping list. That costume is all you have for clothes, right?"

"Uhh… Yeah, that's kind of a long-"

"Yep, I assume so. So, as long as you don't mind the PRT colors, we can get you a few sets of clothes to wear until you've got some stuff of your own."

"That shouldn't be a problem, my S… powers tend to keep stuff cleaner than it would be otherwise."

He whistled at that. "Dang, I'm jealous. Ah, let's see… we're pretty much done here. You'll be meeting with the Branding department as soon as we're done here to discuss your name and costume, plus a meeting with…" He glanced up at me, eyebrows raised. "Dragon? How'd you manage to attract that kind of attention?"

Dragon? Another cape? This was the first I'd heard of this schedule, so I had no idea who that was or why I was meeting them. If that was unusual though, then I could assume it had something to do with my circumstances, so best not to give that away. "Uh… I'm not sure?"

He shot me a look across the table. Yeah, there's no way he bought that. He didn't pry though, so I guess it was pretty normal for people to be keeping secrets around him. "Right. You'll be speaking with Dragon tomorrow, right after a brief bit of power testing so we can get a rough idea of your limits. The Image meeting is about all you've got left today, and then we'll get you set up. Assault should be right outside to escort you to where you need to go while I go find you a room." He stood, and I did the same.

We walked outside to find a man dressed in an armored, skintight bodysuit colored bright red, paired with a matching red mask across the top half of his face.

He grinned from ear to ear and stuck out a hand. "Hiya there, my name's Assault, I'm sure you've heard of me!"

Uhh… Okay. "I haven't, actually." I shook his hand

He slapped one hand to his chest and another to his mouth in mock offense. "Oh! You wound me. I'm forced to assume you're from some backwater nowhere; clearly, that is the only possible explanation for this tragedy!"

I was smiling now, despite myself. This guy's over-the-top infectious personality kinda reminded me of Nora. Just, y'know, saner.

As the other guy walked away to set everything up, I returned; "Oh no, I come from a great and mighty kingdom! However, it is quite a large distance from here, so that must be the reason. Please, regale me with the tales of your exploits!"

"Hah!" he responded, "You're gonna be cool, I can already tell. Nobody else gives me anything to work with there." We began walking, me following alongside him. "So! I had to sit through this whole meeting about what we could or couldn't ask you, so this oughta be an interesting conversation. What all can you do?"

I knew that feeling. I'd just gotten here that morning, but I'd just gotten out of my third meeting that day. For some reason, the Protectorate seemed to be a bit anxious to get me joined up. "What do you mean, what can I do?"

"Your powers! I pestered Armsy into showing me his recording, but it didn't tell me all that much. I heard you're a speedster?" We turned left, heading for a bank of elevators.

Oh. Well, at least that was something I could talk about in public. I wasn't supposed to use the Remnan terms for stuff, but I could deal with that. "That used to be what I thought, but I learned how to use it better over time and found out that there was more to it. I can turn into a sort of cloud of rose petals inside a forcefield that moves fast, but it turned out I can fly too, and make it so that only certain pieces of me or my gear are solid at any given time."

"Huh. How'd you bring down someone like Fenja then? Triumph said you pretty much dismantled her."

"Well, part of that is my scythe, Crescent Rose." No need to give the whole spiel now Ruby, keep it simple. "It's got a sniper rifle built into it that can fire a bunch of different types of bullets. I've been using both the scythe and my power pretty much nonstop for the last few years, so I've had some practice."

"Crescent Rose… you named your weapon?" he asked.

"Uhh… yes?" I replied as we exited the elevators into another corridor. This place was a maze, and I was becoming very glad that I'd had people leading me around this whole time.

His mask, covering little more than his eyes and chin, was pretty revealing compared to Armsmaster's opaque visor and Challenger's featureless silver expanse, and it served to show off his facial expressions. He gained a bit of a thoughtful expression, then busted out into another grin. "How much you wanna bet that Armsy names all his halberds too?"

I thought back to what I had seen of Armsmaster's personality out of public view and laughed along with him. "Alright, so, you went through something like what I am right now when you first joined up, right? What should I be expecting here?"

"Hmm… you're meeting with Branding next, right? Different departments are going to be run ."

"I think that's what he said," I answered.

"Yeah, I'm not sure how much I can help you there. I was kind of a special case when I went in for that too, so I'm not sure how much of this will be accurate. I had a bit of a history before joining up, and for various reasons, they didn't want the new me connected to the old me." That seemed like a story, but I didn't want to interrupt. "They changed up my cape name, costume, and public persona so that nobody could make the connection. They're probably not gonna go that far with you, but I couldn't tell you any details."

"Okay, thanks anyway." We made another turn "Can I ask what that 'history' is about?"

"Ah, that's a story for another time, I'm afraid. The whole deal is still pretty classified, and you're not technically a full member yet. You know what it's like, I'm sure."

I did, in fact. I had never enjoyed keeping secrets, but getting wrapped up in as much as I had back home had made it so I accidentally stumbled into a whole lot of them. I had kind of hoped that I wouldn't have to worry about that kind of thing here, but the tangled webs of clearances and confidentiality were even larger here than they were back home.

We arrived at our destination - an otherwise unremarkable door with the word 'Branding' printed across it, just beneath the window. Assault spoke up, easily sliding back into his posh accent, "And this is where we shall part ways, milady. Another should be awaiting the completion of your meeting to take you back your chambers. I bid you adieu." With a fake, cheesy bow, he turned and walked away, leaving me to enter the room.

I opened the door, knocking on the frame to let the people inside know I was here. "Hello?"

The room wasn't anything special, containing a dozen or so desks along with a large TV mounted in the back corner and posters of each of the local heroes spread out across each wall. There was very little color or decoration on the desks themselves; I wouldn't have connected it to somewhere devoted to appearances.

The room didn't have any people in it, except for one guy with dark hair and skin. He stood up from where he had been seated behind one of the desks. "Hey, how's it going? My name's Shane Lynch, I'll be leading the team responsible for introducing you to the public and keeping them happy with you while you're here. I've been cleared on your whole situation, and I kicked everybody else out, so you can speak freely if you want. Feel free to unmask if you'd be more comfortable."

Finally! I pulled my hood back down as he walked over to another desk, pulling its wheely chair over in front of his. I'd been wearing it around all day, and as much as I loved that cloak I was much happier now that I could look around. I took the offered seat as he walked around as sat back down in his chair.

"So, before we start off, do you have any questions about what you've seen so far?" He asked.

"Yeah, actually. The Resource Managment guy mentioned that I had a meeting with somebody named Dragon tomorrow, and treated it like something special. Do you know what that's about?"

His eyebrows rose. "I hadn't heard about that, but I guess it makes sense. Dragon's a Tinker, one of the best in the world. If anybody would be able to understand Haywire's tech, it'd be her.

Any other questions?"

"Just one more right now. This whole process feels rushed; is that normal, or do you guys want me on board faster for some reason?"

"That's one I can't answer for certain, I'm afraid. This is going awfully fast compared to the usual, but I couldn't tell you why. I'm just a PR guy, they don't tell me that kind of thing. They only told me about your background so that I wouldn't be caught off-guard by you not knowing everything you should when I'm prepping you for interviews and the like. If you're curious about that, I'd say you should talk to the Director."

Well then, that raised some questions. Best not to pry right now though; he was probably telling the truth about not knowing anything. "Alright, I'll be sure to do that. That's all the questions I have right now."

"Cool. So typically, when a new cape joins up, we've got to balance their parahuman persona with their normal life. Making sure that their personality or appearance can't be used to make the connection between their personas, that kind of thing. With you though, we can skip a lot of that and get down to the PR. First things first, we've got to sort out your costume. From the rumors I heard, you do just fine fighting in that outfit, so I assume you'd prefer if we didn't change it that much?"

"I'd like that, yeah." I wasn't all that happy to be handing over total control of my appearance to someone else, but I had kind of resigned myself to it; self-expression wasn't nearly as important on Earth. I appreciated him giving me a say.

"We'll need to get you an actual mask, but that outfit is already pretty distinguishable from everybody else on the team in profile. Speaking of the mask, do you have any preferences for that?"

The mask wasn't something I had really considered; my hood had been serving just as well since I'd gotten here, but if I ended up in a fight more hectic than the one against the twin giants then there was still a chance of it coming undone. To be honest, I still didn't see the point in covering my face at all, considering that I didn't have people to hide behind a civilian identity, and I'd be gone in a few months anyway, but everybody else had just been taking it for granted so I'd decided to roll with it.

"There is one thing… Back home, Huntsmen and Huntresses have unique symbols that make them recognizable. If I drew up mine, could you design a mask based on that pattern?"

He smiled. "I think we can manage that. If you want to draw that up while we talk, I should be able to get it worked into something in time for your press reveal."

I nodded, and he opened a drawer on his desk, removing a box of colored pencils and a pad of paper. I wasn't a professional artist, but this was a symbol I had drawn thousands of times before. Everyone's symbol held personal meaning on Remnant; it was almost sacred. As a tradition, they were symbols of the creativity and self-expression that Huntsmen held in such high regard. I had created mine during my time at Signal Academy, then changed it a little bit after Salem's fall. A stylized rose, to represent my name and my Semblance, traced with lines of silver to represent the power that had defeated the Grimm once and for all.

I started to draw, and Shane continued to talk. We discussed some of the slight changes that would need to be made to my uniform, slimming it down. While my power could affect pretty much anything I was wearing, several of the villains in this city could take advantage of loose clothing. Personally, I was pretty sure my Aura would keep that from happening, but after Shane told me about some of these people's powers I could see why they wouldn't want to take the risk. I managed to keep him from removing my cloak though; I could drop it in a hurry if it became a problem, and he accepted my argument that the color would make me more distinctive.

We wrapped up the discussion on my costume as another knock came from the door; after a moment, I recognized the silhouette of Resource Management Guy through the glass before I stepped to the side. Shane spoke up, "Ah, looks like your room's ready now. I'll just give you one more thing to think about, and you can tell me what you think tomorrow. What's your name going to be? What's the public going to see you as? We came up with some ideas that you can look over, and I might come up with more once I've seen your testing, but I'll give you some time to figure out some of your own. Now there's no guarantee we'll use one you give us, but sometimes you'll come up with one we haven't."

Right, I've gotta make my secret identity! Or, well, I guess my non-secret identity. Whichever. "I'll make sure to do that. I'm supposed to get a… something that will let people send me messages, right? You can send me the list as soon as someone shows me how to use it?"

He nodded. "I'll do that. We should speak again tomorrow, I'll see you then."

We shook hands, and I turned to leave.

"Uh, Ruby? Your hood?"

Oh right. "Thanks!" I pulled it over my head once more and left the room.

Hello again! I managed to get this one done in time, but by the looks of things I've found my limit. I'm probably not going to be exceeding a chapter every three weeks for the foreseeable future. School has started back for me a well, so that will probably slow me down a bit too. I'm gonna call the next chapter for September 14th at the latest, while seeing if I can get it done sooner while juggling school at the same time.

A slightly shorter chapter this time; only partially caused by the short time limit. Not a huge amount of plot development, I know, but it sets some things up for the future. The next chapter will likely be a bit longer than normal, and then we'll have a pair of interludes to wrap up the arc.

See y'all next time!