Roots 2.1

That was a lot of cameras.

I was standing up near the ceiling of the PRT's press conference room. They had a platform bolted to the back wall next to the tech booth, I guess for introductions just like this one, and I was able to see every one of the dozens of cameras, microphones, and reporters between the stage and myself.

"...previously unknown cape…"

We'd only had time to practice this once, what if it all came apart? Some of those cameras were broadcasting live!

"...introduce you to this new hero."

One of the techs got my attention with a wave and pantomimed a deep breath, before gesturing toward the crowd and touching her finger and thumb together. I couldn't quite figure out what she meant, but I got the intent. I smiled at her before realizing that she couldn't see my mouth through my new mask, and nodded after a few seconds instead.

One more thing to get used to, I guess.

"Brockton Bay: I'd like you to meet Scatter."

Heart pounding, I scattered, spreading out in a wave a lot like the one I used against Fenja and Menja. Cameras turned up towards me as I swept down over the crowd, crashing against the stage and rematerializing. Now was… right, just showing off my Semblance. Simple enough. I did it in the lab, I could do it again here. Some simple dashing around, a quick flight straight up and a teleport straight down. Enough to get people interested without giving too much away. Hopefully, anyway.

And now we had the speech. I didn't have to write it, thankfully. Someone in the tangled mess that I had apparently made of the PRT's bureaucracy must have had pity on me.

"Hello everyone. Like you've just heard, I'm Scatter."

Polite applause echoed through the room… but not as much as I was expecting there to be.

"Like you just saw, my powers let me turn into that super-fast cloud of rose petals, with… a few other tricks as well."

I had run into a lot of reporters over the years, and by now it wasn't hard to read them. There were a couple who probably hadn't been reporting for more than a couple of years, and they watched with interest, but most of the rest just seemed to be doing their jobs, like this situation was an everyday thing to them.

It was a little bizarre, to be honest.

The script suggested a smile here, and even though they couldn't see my mouth I did anyway. "For the power geeks in the audience, I'm rated as a Breaker/Mover 5, Stranger 2... among a few others." There were a few chuckles at that, mostly from the newer journalists. "I was able to take down the Empire's twins with the Protectorate's help, and in the very near future we'll be catching a few more bad guys for you."

Apparently, that didn't actually refer to any mission that had been planned, it was just meant as a general reassurance that we were still protecting people. That kind of statement wasn't uncommon when Huntsmen had to speak to the public back home, but the Protectorate seemed to operate in the public eye much more often than Huntsmen ever did. Shouldn't it be more obvious here?

The woman who had first introduced me stepped back up. "We'll be taking a few questions now. Let's start with you." She pointed at one of the newer people in the room. This was the part that I'd been drilled the most on, even if it still wasn't that much. They'd written up guidelines for how to answer certain questions that might be asked, and advised that I deflect and avoid any questions that they didn't predict.

"Bonnie Nichols, from The Northeast Sentinel. Watching the video that's been making the rounds online, it's pretty obvious you've got some experience in fighting. Have you ever operated as a cape before?"

I half-recognized this paper from reading articles on my first day here. If I remembered right, they focused on capes, so it wasn't too surprising that they'd picked up on that. "I'm sorry, but I'll need to skip that question, and any others about my background." Watching her face fall, I added, "I... will confirm that I do have some combat experience, yes." Someone might get upset with me over that. I hadn't really told her anything she didn't already know, though, so that shouldn't matter that much, right?

She smiled, sat back down, and another reporter was called on. "Guy Wolfe, Bay Times. It's wonderful to meet you, Scatter. Speaking of the video - it shows you carrying a very large weapon and using it in the fight. It doesn't look like you have it with you, but could you tell us about it?"

A grin shot across my face. "I'd love to, Mr. Wolfe. I can't tell you much right now, other than that I'm working with Armsmaster to improve the design, but you'll be hearing more about it very soon."

He raised one eyebrow, but nodded and sat back down, taking notes. Another reporter was chosen out of the crowd.

The interview continued like that for a while longer; one person getting called on at a time. One magazine asked about why my recruitment was so fast, which I honestly answered with an 'I don't know.' After a half-dozen or so hard questions, the softballs started coming in, ranging from my personal hobbies to my favorite Protectorate member. Still super strange, somehow, but easier.

The interview ended not long after, and I Scattered off the stage, through the crowd, and then up through the ceiling -still with much more enthusiasm than I actually felt - to a final round of applause. I appeared in a small room on the floor above and found Challenger waiting for me, sitting in a spinny chair and not wearing a mask.

As he noticed me materializing, he stood and held out a hand. "You might as well be on the team now, so there's not much reason to keep this a secret anymore. My real name is Jacob Hardin."

He said it in a way that made it obvious how important he thought this was. I didn't really get it, but I could play along. "Nice to meet you, Jacob. I'm..." Well, he already knew me as Ruby, so... "Scatter."

He smiled. "The interview went well, I assume?"

"I guess? I don't really have a lot to compare it to."

"Good, now we've got to get you moving. You've got somebody waiting for you." The door opened on its own - pushed by one of his forcefields, I noticed. "I don't guess you know who Alexandria is, do you?"

A woman dressed in blacks and greys, helmet covering the top half of her head and sporting an impractically long cape absolutely dominated the room. Sure, it was a typical conference room, and there wasn't anybody else in there, but still. Just the way she held herself had weight to it.

She spoke, and wow her voice was imposing. Where Piggot was intimidating, this woman was almost terrifying. "Scatter, I believe?"

"Um, yes, that's me. I guess you're Alexandria?"

She nodded, and that simple action had impact. I'd seen people with this kind of presence before, in Salem and Ozpin, and sort of with Glynda or a couple of the Maidens, but Alexandria put them all to shame. "Yes, I am. I'd like to ask you some things about your homeworld."

"Okay. I guess I'll tell you what I can." Why was she here for that? Surely somebody who worked here could do this if that was all this was about.

"I understand that your world has had parahumans for many years. How long has that been, exactly?"

Um, okay then. "Nobody knows exactly. We don't have very good records going back more than about a century." The Grimm made sure of that.

"But your people have had powers for longer than the past few decades?"

Why did that matter? Why thirty years in particular? "Yeah, Semblances have been around for… hundreds or thousands of years, at least." The only real evidence I had for that was Oscar, but he'd always been vague about his exact age. He'd had at least a couple dozen bodies though, so that sounded about right.

The shadows of her eyes seemed to stare through me, even though I couldn't tell what exactly she was looking at through her mask. "Do you know what a trigger event is?"

"Um, no? I don't think so."

"It's the term we use for the moment when a person gains their powers." She paused, as if waiting for a reaction, then continued when I didn't respond. "It is typically accompanied by severe stress and trauma, to the point that it often leaves the new parahuman psychologically damaged."

I inhaled hard and my hands went to my mouth. I… That… That was horrible. I didn't want to think about what would have happened if that were true on Remnant; the Grimm attracted to the location of anyone who found their Semblance.

Alexandria tilted her head, just enough to get across her curiosity. "I assume it works differently on Remnant?"

"Yeah, way different. It…" I struggled to find the words. "Here." Channeling my uncle's teaching, I activated my Aura and focused, letting the familiar red glow cover me as my eyes began to shine. "It starts with Aura. There are all kinds of beliefs about what exactly it is, but it's always the first power you get, usually from someone using their own to activate it. A defensive shield, some healing. It gets stronger as you learn to use it, and you get new abilities; you get stronger and faster than you would otherwise, you learn to sense attacks before they hit you, and at some point in all of that you find your Semblance."

She seemed to process that for a moment. "Your people can choose who gains their powers?"

"Um, yes?"

"Does everyone on Remnant have them, then?"

"Oh, no!" So that's where she was going with that. "You have to be really strong when it comes to using it before you can awaken it in someone else, and it gets harder every time. A typical Huntsman might awaken a single person in their lifetime, and even the best won't awaken more than a few."

She nodded, taking that in stride. "Could you awaken someone now?"

Uh oh. I should've guessed that she might ask that. "No, I can't. I awoke the-" No, wait, don't talk about her. Not yet anyway. "Someone else about a year ago. It'll be a long time before I can do it again, and that's if it happens at all."

"I see." Yeah, she did see. See right through me, that is. "You said that aura is 'usually' activated by others. That means that it can appear another way?"

"It's rare. I've only met one person it happened to that lived through it, and he almost certainly would have been killed anyway if it hadn't appeared."

"What makes it so dangerous?" Her tone had changed a little. Concern?

"You know about the Grimm, right? I told the director about them." After a moment, she nodded. "They're attracted to humans and life in general, but strong negative emotions act like a giant signal fire to them. Fear, anger, stress, they all attract them, and the stronger the emotion, the more Grimm get drawn in. When Aura shows up on its own, it tends to do so a little like how it does here, which then draws an army of monsters to the person who just got it."

She gave no immediate reaction there, speaking up several moments later. "I suppose that will have to do. Let's move to a different subject - what can you tell me about your world in general?"

That was an easier topic. "Well, we've got fou- no, five Kingdoms spread across four continents...

"I personally think we've got a pretty good setup here."

It was later in the evening, and I was starting my first shift at the 'console.' At the same time, I was being taught everything that, if I was understanding this all right, I should have been told before I even accepted the job. I'd never had to deal with bureaucracy - or shifts, for that matter - back home, but I'd heard Ozpin's horror stories.

"You'll start as a junior member with a salary of seventy-eight thousand dollars per year - that's about three times the average earnings of a typical resident of Brockton Bay, for context - which will rise to a hundred and twelve thousand after a year of service."

That didn't really sound like that much, but I guess the currency would be different here. You could get that many Lien out of just a handful of Hunts on Remnant. I'd figure it out though. "Alright. Um… you might have to have somebody explain how this all works. Remnant's money is different, I think."

Assault - Ethan, as he had introduced himself once the door was shut - grinned. He was being a lot more serious than the last time I met him, but then this was an important conversation. It was good to know that he could take things seriously when he needed to. "I think we can handle that. We're typically taking some classes in our spare time anyway, so we can probably get you some starter-level courses in history and social studies to get you caught up."

"Okay, that makes sense." What I'd uncovered with my research at the library a few days ago had barely scratched the surface of either of those topics, and I hadn't thought to look for more information since then. It had been a really busy few days.

"Now for your responsibilities." He flashed a grin. "Don't worry, you'll get eased into anything you're not comfortable with. On top of the Console," He gestured at the big set of terminals we were sitting in front of, "you'll start off tomorrow morning running a joint patrol with…" he trailed off, shuffling through papers. "Dauntless, apparently. That's good, he'll make it easy on you. The patrol's just a simple walkaround of the city, showing the flag and all that. He's super popular in town, so he'll pull a lot of attention off you. You're still a new face though, so there's still gonna be some eyes on you. You'll probably get asked to sign some autographs and have some pictures taken. We don't technically have to, but Image... greatly encourages it, if you catch my drift."

Years ago, that would've been terrifying. "I can do that, yeah. I've had to deal with that kind of attention back home. Dauntless won't always be there to draw attention, right?"

He grinned without looking at me. He was watching a camera feed, where two costumed teenagers were walking through a crowd of people, smiling and shaking hands. "Nope, sorry. You'll get a patrol with everybody at some point." The grin vanished. "Velocity excepted, of course."

"Why not him? He's a speedster like me, right? That seems like a good combination."

"Yeah, exactly." At my questioning glance, he clarified, "Protectorate leadership has been pushing for somebody to transfer to Boston for weeks. They were trying to get Challenger, and we'd all kind of made our peace with that, but now that we've got two high-speed Movers, Velocity's being swapped out instead."

Oh. I wasn't really sure how to respond to that. We sat in silence for a moment, watching those teenagers begin to cross the forcefield bridge (so cool) that connected this base to the mainland. The Wards, I guessed. Two boys, one in red and gold armor with some very familiar-looking equipment and the other in white with some kind of decoration traced out in black.

Alright, Ruby, you've got to say something eventually. "Umm… I'm sorry to hear that? I guess you two are close?"

He blinked. "Yeah. Sorry about that, we're getting a little off-topic. Let's see, money, patrolling, pee-arr… oh, you'll be going through some power testing pretty soon. Don't know exactly when, but the PRT will be bringing in somebody to make sure that your power does what you think it does. Probably not an issue for you, but it's standard procedure. I don't think it'll take long, and then we can get into sparring and real training." The grin came back. "With what I saw of that recording, that should be pretty interesting all on its own."

He was certainly right about that. I'd seen a little of how the people here fought, and with the possible exception of Armsmaster, there was much less of a focus on skill than there was on using Semblances. Even the best fighters hadn't displayed anything close to Huntsman-level training. That was sort of expected - without Aura, a lot of Remnant's training methods wouldn't apply or would be too dangerous to attempt. Still, it would be interesting to get a solid idea of how people here fought without it.

The image of the forcefield bridge cut to another, showing the boys entering the Rig. Ethan stood up, stretched, and pulled on his mask. "For now though, how'd you like to meet a couple of the Wards?"

I put on my own mask, lifted my hood, and followed him out the door.

This one took a while, sorry about that. Can't make any promises that the next one will be any faster, but a man can dream, right? It's been technically started, at least, and I'm trying a couple of new strategies for increasing the pace, so we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading, and I'll see y'all next time!