Bud 3.7

"People, I need to know what the hell happened tonight."

We were gathered around a big conference table in the PRTHQ. The entire Protectorate, Triumph, several PRT section heads, Director Piggot, Deputy Director Renick, and a woman I half-recognized as a member of New Wave were all there, running the spectrum from angry to tired to depressed. The amount of negativity in the room was almost stifling. Challenger had apparently been healed by one of the New Wave crew, as had a handful of others, but this 'Panacea' apparently couldn't save everyone.

Renick was the first to speak up. "At our current count, we have fourteen dead and three injured PRT agents, fifty-five dead and seventy-two injured civilians." What? How had I not heard about that!? "Hero casualties were minimal, obviously, and the damage to the Rig alone is looking to be somewhere in the vicinity of a one-point-five million dollars. In exchange, the Empire lost strength - thirteen unpowered gang members were arrested and five were killed by police forces or rival gangs, in addition to the capture of Alabaster, Jotun, and Crusader, the recapture of Fenja and Menja, and the deaths of Night and Fog."

Half the room glanced toward me as he finished, then quickly looked away. The New Wave woman, Photon something if I remembered right, watched me warily. What did she think, that I was gonna be doing this often?

Piggot nodded. "Right. Be under no illusions, people, we lost this fight. Even if they have lost over a third of their capes, the fact that they managed something like this under our noses is going to shatter public perception for a while." She looked to her left. "Lynch, how are we going to handle this?"

I hadn't even noticed Shane sitting over there. He normally dressed much nicer than this, and he didn't look totally rested. It was after midnight, how much rest had he gotten? "We'll be fine in the long run. This isn't the first time we've had a scenario like this. We all remember when Lung first came to town." A collective wince went around the room. Who was Lung, again? "We'll play up the villain captures, focus on the places where we succeeded most heavily. If we can keep them in prison, all the better. Crusader is…" He spoke through his yawn, "on his third strike, yes?"

"Only his second, unfortunately," Renick said. "We'll leave containing them for the end of this meeting. Let's start from the beginning. Collins, unless I'm mistaken, the Empire only had eleven capes last week, not counting Fenja and Menja. They attacked tonight with fourteen, and that's with neither Kaiser not Krieg making appearances. Where did they find the extra firepower?"

A man I hadn't met before, seated two spots to Shane's left, responded. "Four of the five new faces are ones we've seen before. Purity, Crusader, Night, and Fog were all part of the Empire two years ago, then split up. To our knowledge, they were part of their own internal faction within the Empire before they split off for unknown reasons. Purity stayed in Brockton, claiming to be a hero, the others remained villains and moved to Boston and New York. We currently don't know why the three of them returned, but we've reserved Think Tank time for the problem and I'll keep you in the loop. As for the telekinetic that attacked New Wave, I believe Lady Photon can tell us something."

Ahh, that was her name. She was the only cape I'd met here who wasn't wearing a mask, and I wasn't quite sure why. She was one of the people who was fighting Purity, if I remembered right. "The girl called herself Rune. She was a powerful Shaker who wore robes in black and red. She was capable of telekinetically throwing around chunks of pavement the size of trucks without much apparent difficulty, but she only had three, no more than two of which were usually moving at any given time. Our guess is that she's limited in the number of objects she can move, as well as in selecting new objects, though we're not sure on details beyond that."

She gave the report professionally, like she'd done much like it a thousand times before. Renick said, "Even if she's limited to two at a time, that gives the Empire a lot more mobility than they've ever had before. You implied she was fairly young?"

"Yes," Lady Photon replied. "Between her height and voice, she couldn't have been a day over fifteen."

"Right. We'll keep an eye on her, see if we can't take her in and rebrand into the Wards," Piggot said. Nobody batted an eye at that. How common of an occurrence was this? "Now, unless anyone else has anything to add, we'll move on to the next question."

"Erika Herren." The entire table turned to look at another man, quiet so far, sitting to Collins' right. "Age thirteen, almost fourteen, triggered in juvenile detention in central Pennsylvania two months ago and broke out immediately afterword. Displayed a telekinetic power that allowed her to rip the walls off of her cell and ride them away from the prison before anyone knew what was happening. Has not been seen since. Five-foot-one, blonde hair, sound familiar?"

Woah, that was fast. I guess the prison records helped, but how had he managed that so quickly? Lady Photon nodded as Piggot replied, "Good, we can use that. We'll collect what we know about her power, costume, and personality later and send out a memo with identity details redacted. Next item of importance - where were Kaiser and Kreig during this mess? We received no reports of appearances from either of them all night, unless something has changed, there."

Collins spoke up again. "We don't have anything concrete, only theories. We had no idea that Night and Fog were back in town and the fact that they came back on such short notice is very strange if Kaiser wasn't going to show up himself. Why call in out-of-town firepower if you're not planning on showing up yourself? Our running theory is that he wasn't the one to bring them over here."

"What are we looking at, then?" Piggot asked. "A coup within the Empire?"

"No, we don't think so. Like I said before, we've known that the Empire had internal factions for years, and we know roughly who fit into each one. With the possible exception of Hookwolf, none of those factions really stood to gain anything from this except for Kaiser's own.

Collins' partner spoke up again. "Plus, even if somebody did wrest control from Kaiser, one would think that they would be talking about it. Hookwolf in particular isn't exactly the most… subtle of villains, as was amply demonstrated tonight. We haven't finished counting the bodies on Lord's street, and that's without even touching the casualties among the ABB once they made it there."

I started at that. "They made it that far? I thought they were going to retreat once I did. What happened?"

Piggot and Renick exchanged glances; Piggot's unreadable, and Renick's vaguely uncomfortable. The latter was the one to respond. "We were mistaken in our assumption. As far as we know, once you left, they pulled themselves back together and continued on their way. While you were fighting Night and Fog, Lung engaged Hookwolf and pushed the trio back out of their territory."

No. No way, they said it'd be fine. "How many civilians died after I left?"

Renick was slow to respond, so Piggot took over. "It doesn't matter. If you hadn't retreated, then Night, Fog, Fenja, and Menja would all be free, the Rig would have suffered even greater damage than it already did, and-"

"I don't care," I interrupted. "How many people died because I ran-"

"And we would almost certainly have lost three of our Wards!" Piggot finished, talking over me with practiced ease. "Aegis was severely injured as it is. We contained the damage as well as we could, given the circumstances." She looked to the rest of the table in turn. "Remember that. We are not omnipotent. We are not capable of stopping every death in the city." She turned back, looked me in the eyes, and said, "We do all that we can, but we don't blame ourselves for failing to stop the inevitable."

There were a few moments of silence after that. I didn't really know how to respond, and neither did anyone else. I… wasn't sure After a minute, the Director spoke up again. "Now. We've covered the lead-in and a possible motive, albeit with some problems. Now for the attack itself. Do we have a progression of events?"

Collins responded this time. "At twenty-two-thirty-one hours, Purity took flight from her usual location, in the general vicinity of the Towers. She made a run directly for the Rig bridge and took it down in her first shot, then ran before anyone could react. She stayed in the air for long enough for New Wave to engage her, then kept their attention for as long as she could before falling back. Within a minute of her initial appearance, Crusader's ghosts emerged from the ground surrounding the Rock street police station, Gleipnir and Munin attack smaller stations, Hookwolf's trio begins making a run for ABB territory, and Alabaster attempts to break into a hospital. When New Wave begins their chase, Jotun, Othala, Victor, and Rune ride one of Rune's rocks into their neighborhood and start making a mess. The police station and hospital attacks were over by twenty-two-thirty-five, with two captures and two escapes. Hookwolf's trio encountered Lung at twenty-two-forty-three and was beaten back with severe burns by twenty-three hundred hours. New Wave's ground fighters encountered the Empire's capes at twenty-two-thirty-five, and were being forced out of the area by Rune until the appearance of Shadow Stalker."

"Wait, what?" Triumph interrupted, mirroring my own thoughts. "Why didn't I know about this? How did she get out there?"

Lady Photon spoke up. "Stalker told Brandish that she was simply 'in the area.' I would imagine that she was on yet another solo patrol." She looked the Director in the eyes as she said it.

Piggot sighed slightly. "Shadow Stalker is over the age at which we allow Wards to patrol solo. She told us roughly where she would be, so this doesn't violate her probation." Probation? I hadn't heard about this. "We'll give her another safety reminder, but frankly we can't afford to take her off the streets for something this comparatively minor. She did not inform us that she would be engaging, which is somewhat more serious, but also forgivable given the circumstances and her success."

Lady Photon was clearly angry, but she didn't say anything more. I could tell that was a conversation they'd had before.

Piggot continued, "For those unaware, Shadow Stalker arrived at the scene of the fight several minutes after it started and landed a shot on Rune with a tranquilizer arrow. Jotun was captured in the resulting confusion, while the other three escaped."

Huh. Shadow Stalker was apparently pretty competent. She'd been the best fighter among the Wards before I got here, from what I could tell, but she was offputting in a way I couldn't really define. If I could figure out what her deal was and maybe help her out, then she could be really helpful. Especially if her power was as similar to mine as I suspected.

"Now. Miss Militia, Dauntless, if you could give us an explanation of what happened during your engagements?"

Their explanations were fairly straightforward. Munin was some kind of 'Combat Thinker,' and apparently a relatively strong one with some odd, poorly-understood limits. He'd done some damage, then escaped as soon as Dauntless showed up. Gleipnir was a lot simpler. He was strong and tough, and could fly to boot, with the quirk that people he punched grew slower and weaker the harder he hit them. Miss Militia had basically hard-countered him, and he'd been driven off easily. Then it was mine and Challenger's turn.

"Now for Crusader's attack. Note that this was the only attack on a station with major casualties, with eight officers injured and three in critical condition. From what we understand, this occurred in the opening wave, and Scatter's appearance drew the majority of the remaining ghosts out of the building. Scatter?"

I gave my own explanation then, followed by Challenger giving his side of the story. They were surprised at Crusader's ghost's ability to simply phase through my Aura; apparently, Challenger and I were exceptions to the rule when it came to that. Lady Photon confirmed that her forcefields could keep them contained, which was a little weird.

"Shouldn't all forcefields be pretty similar? They are on-" I cut myself off, remembering that there were people here that didn't know about Remnant. "They all do pretty much the same thing, right?"

"Not really, Scatter," said another man that I vaguely recognized but couldn't quite place. "Without taking us too far off-topic, even very similar powers tend to work in different ways, at least as far as we can tell. It's one of the mysteries of parahuman science."

"Back to the original point," Piggot said, "You said he landed a hit on you, correct? You seem to be fine now."

"It wasn't my first time fighting while injured, and I healed it pretty quickly anyway. It wasn't that bad of a hit."

"Nonetheless, the fact that he only landed one is… somewhat unbelievable. Would you care to explain exactly how you managed that?"

What was she looking for, here? "I pulled the same trick that I used against Night and Fog later. I can keep myself scattered for a really long time if I need to, and the only cost is going blind and deaf while I'm doing it. That's not a problem with my Aura, so I just reform whatever I'm attacking with, make the hit, then scatter it again once the hit is over."

The same man who'd talked about forcefields earlier spoke up then. "We learned that this was possible during power testing, and it was part of why I recommended a higher classification number during my initial report." Oh, he was the guy in charge of the intensive power testing I'd gone through a few weeks ago. I mentally facepalmed when I made the connection.

"We'll consider it, but that's far from a priority right now," said the Director. "Now, let's run down the events that took place on the PHQ. Collins?"

"From what we know, at twenty-two-thirty-seven hours, Night and Fog reach the base of the Rig and start climbing their way up. It was a foggy night over the Bay, so they likely used that to cover their entrance. We didn't know they were here until cameras started going dead at twenty-two-forty hours. They knew exactly where they were going - how they knew this is a serious question, by the way - and managed to avoid any hallways until they were forced to emerge when a trooper on the lowest level heard them scraping around. Fog eliminated the camera, then Night presumably moved in to kill him." His delivery had been professional for the most part, but here Collins paused for a moment. "They… didn't leave any bodies, I'm afraid. We're not sure what exactly became of them."

Several people in the room winced, but I was impressed at the level of control. There was sadness, of course, but considering that some of the people here had probably lost friends and teammates, there wasn't nearly as much as I might have expected.

"At twenty-three hundred hours, Scatter made her way to the Rig. Twenty-three-fourteen, she makes first contact with Night and Fog. Twenty-three-seventeen, Scatter enters Armsmaster's lab and retrieves her weapon while Night and Fog begin moving back down toward the water level and Fenja and Menja begin moving toward the roof level. Twenty-"

"Wait," Piggot interrupted. "Scatter, just to make this clear. Now that it's been seen on the news, there isn't much point in hiding your weapon. Doing so would raise more questions, at this rate. You're still going to need to blunt it before patrolling with it and run it through the typical Tinkertech safety inspections, but once that's done I'll let you carry it somewhat more openly. Is that understood?"

I...what? I thought she was mad at me for what I'd done. Not that I was gonna complain. No looking gift horses in the mouth, at least not while the previous owner was still standing there. I was still cautious as I responded, though. "Yes, ma'am."

Piggot nodded, apparently satisfied. "Alright, moving along. What's next?"

Collins' partner - I really needed to figure out his name at some point - responded, "Focusing on Night and Fog first. Twenty-three-eighteen, Scatter engages the pair again. After several seconds, the fight begins moving, Scatter falling back and Night and Fog chasing. Twenty-three-twenty-one, Scatter enters room 217, a spare office that was unassigned to anyone at the time. After Scatter… prepared the room for the fight, camera footage ends and the first information we have afterword comes from the news helicopter at twenty-three-twenty-three. We had hopes that Scatter herself could provide some context?"

That was a lot of people suddenly staring at me. "Um. Okay. I'd realized that when I was… when I'm in my Breaker state, Fog couldn't hurt me but I was blind to Night. When Night and Fog burst through the door, I scattered and stayed that way while fighting. Night could hurt me, but I managed to dodge for long enough that she was threatened. Fog reformed, not knowing that I could tell that he'd done so, and I reformed and shot him when he looked at Night so that she'd heal. Night dropped a flashbang grenade, which I assume is what attracted the chopper, and I was blind for as long as it took to come up with the 'kicking her out the window' idea."

Piggot nodded. "That's the next thing that we'll need to discuss. I understand why you killed them. We've had issues containing them in the past, and the situation warranted it." I noticed Lady Photon and a few others being a little uncomfortable at that, but nobody said anything. "What I'd like to know is why you did it on live TV."

Wait, that was the problem? I'd thought they were mad about killing them in the first place. That was a bit of a relief. "I didn't have another way of doing it. She kept pulling out things to blind me before I could actually finish her off, and every time I looked at her the damage I'd done would reset."

"So you decided that the best way to handle this was to execute the woman in front of a news camera?"

Well okay, when she put it like that… "I didn't have many other options. It was that or let the two of them escape, and I wasn't going to do that after what they pulled tonight."

Piggot was silent for a moment, and the table was watching her. "I'll grant you that," she said eventually, "but I hope you're aware of the consequences here. You have just shattered the public's perception of you. Shane, what would you say is going to the public reaction to all this in the morning?"

Shane blinked blearily and yawned. "Uhh… one of a couple of things. Ideally, they just shift to seeing Scatter as a... badass who you should avoid pissing off, if you'll pardon the language. We'll need to change the branding, but it's not really the end of the world. But then it's just as likely that they look at this and see someone who needs to be reigned in and… more tightly controlled. She's new enough that, uh, either one is still a possibility."

"You see the problem," the Director said. "This isn't unsalvageable, but you are going to have to be clean of any future scandals. Until further notice, we'll be keeping you out of the public eye, excepting patrols with senior Protectorate members and pre-planned PR demonstrations with limited interaction."

That… really didn't seem like a punishment. Maybe I'd gotten popular among the citizenry here somehow, but I didn't want the attention anyway. I wasn't about to complain, but was that honestly the worst they were throwing at me over this? Why?

I kept my surprise under control, just in case. "Yes, Ma'am."

Piggot nodded, watching me carefully. Yeah, there was definitely something else going on there, but I wasn't sure what. She'd been really mad at me before, hadn't she? "Moving on, what about Fenja and Menja's recapture?"

Collins' partner responded. "As mentioned before, at twenty-three-seventeen, the twins are freed from confinement and begin moving up to the top of the Rig. Their exact goals are currently unclear, but it may be that they intended to damage the missile defense systems and allow Purity to take down the shield and release them to the outside world. At any rate, Captain Jenkins' squad, alongside Aegis, Triumph, and Vista had already begun fortifying the roof access, and the twins encountered them while still indoors. Jenkins, I believe you wanted to comment on this?"

A PRT officer near the opposite side of the room from me stood. I'd spoken to the captain over the radio earlier that night, but his accent came through somewhat stronger in person. "Our 'fortifications' were made up of a couple canisters worth of foam and what Vista could do with the space she had. The twins couldn't reach their full height, but that still wouldnta' even slowed them down normally. Triumph and Aegis slowed them down where they could, but really, Vista's the only reason they're contained instead of escaped or dead. And I mean Vista, not her power."

I wasn't the only one a little surprised at that. Several people made to ask questions at once, but the Director called everyone back to order. "Jenkins, if you would explain?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Intel, we've got the security footage, right? See for yourself."

I had to spin my chair around to see the video playing on a wall-mounted screen. As the video started, I found myself idly wondering why there weren't more screens at different points in the room, but that faded as I watched the scene.

Vista had clearly been at work. She hadn't been able to expand the hallway without the twins taking advantage, but she'd managed to fill it with barriers and tripwires anyway, while still stretching it out in terms of distance. It was pretty impressive, all told, but Jenkins was right about it not stopping the twins. They came charging around the corner, nine feet tall and running at a solid twenty miles an hour, and smashed through Vista's defenses in seconds. The recording had no audio, but I saw the impact of one of Triumph's shouts slowing them down, followed by Aegis moving in to grapple before getting knocked through the floor for his trouble.

Then Vista herself made an appearance, running forward after Aegis. Some PRT soldier tried to jump after her and pull her to safety, but she warped space and got ahead of him too quickly to react. Whichever twin was in front went to backhand her back down the hallway, only to swat the barrier that appeared where Vista had been standing. Vista herself was now standing behind the woman, having whirled around her leg as fast as I'd ever seen the girl move, and was swinging a combat knife like a baseball bat into the giant's back leg.

Mid-swing, the knife expanded from dagger-size to shortsword-size, and scored a small line in the twin's thigh as she jumped away. I decided to call that one Fenja, not because I knew which was which, but to make keeping track of them easier. Vista jumped back to avoid the follow up attack, rolling backward in the first move she'd picked up while sparring against me, then sprung forward off a newly-formed pillar as her knife stretched out to a full broadsword.

Her next swing shattered the blade like glass - she'd spread the material too thin, and it couldn't take the force of the swing. The shrapnel sprayed out, and Vista had to jump back behind one of the barriers that she'd already made to avoid the giant's counter. Triumph fired another series of shots, and that was enough to draw the pair's attention back toward the other defenders. The PRT troopers opened up as well, firing at arms and legs to avoid killing them, but they stopped at some unseen signal. Vista rushed out again, covering the distance in a pair of space-lengthened steps, and jump-kicked Menja in the back of the knee. It wouldn't have done much except for the complementary walls she'd erected in just the right places to keep her target from rolling with the attack.

Menja toppled, and Vista jumped on top of her. A full force jump directly into the back of Menja's head put her down for the moment, and Vista ducked under a jab from Menja before jumping backward and raising a wall to stop the follow-up. As Menja recoiled from punching the wall, more bullets tore through the already-injured hand and she started falling back.

The hallway walls pinched together at the far end of the hallway, and Menja spun around to find Vista on her again, with another knife in hand being drawn out to sword-length once more. She'd taken it from one of the PRT troopers, who had willingly given it up when she asked. It was hard to tell, but with how much slower she was taking it this time I got the impression that she was taking more care with this one than she had the previous. She held it in front of her as she ran forward and shoved it as far into Menja's thigh as she could.

If the twins had been at full size, then that wound would have been barely an inch deep. As it was, with the twins unable to grow beyond ten feet or so, even as the sword shrank the tip of the sword punched out of the back of the woman's leg. She went down after that, and the video ended as PRT troopers began moving forward with containment foam guns.

That was a seriously impressive showing, given Vista's experience. It was one thing to know that she was pretty good at this from our training sessions, but it was always a toss-up how well that translated to a life-or-death situation.

Jenkins spoke up in the silence that followed the video. "I don't quite know where Vista learned to do that, but the girl deserves a medal for it."

I was about to respond when a glare from the Director shut me down. Why was she… oh. Oh no. That was going to be a bigger problem than I'd expected. "We'll consider it," she said. Jenkins was about to respond, as were several others, but the director continued before he could. "What Vista accomplished is impressive, but it doesn't have much relevance to this discussion. More importantly, the Empire is now down a large amount of their firepower and it's lost face as well. Coil and the ABB are going to be taking advantage, and it's very possible that they won't be the only ones..."

The meeting continued on that topic for another few minutes, which could basically be summarized as 'things are about to get crazy,' which I could already have told them. When you throw that many competing factions into such a small area and then shake the box, things tend to get a little heated. There was some discussion of gangs from out-of-town that might move in, plus the possibility of a more successful breakout on the Empire's part, but it didn't seem likely that either would have much success for the moment.

I was one of the first people out of the room, feeling a little frustrated. The director had said she wanted to keep me out of controversy, but I hadn't realized what that really meant at first. She didn't want somebody who'd done what I had to be teaching the Wards. I guessed it made sense from her perspective, but still, come on!

My fuming was cut short when I caught the sound of somebody following behind me. I wasn't the only one headed for the exit, but I'd taken a more roundabout path to cool off a little before heading outside and the footsteps stood out once I'd gotten deep enough into the building. There weren't that many people moving around this late at night. I listened to the steps for a second, heard the weight behind them, and waited for them to arrive once I figured out who they belonged to.

Triumph rounded the corner a few moments later, caught off-guard when he saw me waiting. "Scatter! Uh, hi. I'm… not bothering you, am I?"

Triumph was a little odd. He reminded me of Jaune from a few months into Beacon sometimes; like he was trying his best to lead a team despite the fact that he wasn't really prepared for it, or even really good at it. Jaune had eventually grown out of it, and his team had grown into a powerhouse, so I could see Triumph managing the same given time. "No, what do you need?"

He swallowed. "You're the reason that Vista pulled that off, right? The whole thing with Fenja and Menja? That looked a little like what you were doing to us that one time in the Cube."

Huh. "Yeah, it is. She's doing really well, like you saw. Why do you ask?"

Triumph paused for a second, like he was putting his words together in his head. "She saved lives tonight. I don't think we were in any real danger, but if the twins had gone too far then I don't think they could have been stopped nonlethally."

"Yeah, from what I know of their power I think you're probably right."

"When you first told us about your 'training,' I didn't think it would actually mean much, but I think that tonight proved that it works. Vista should have been the worst Ward in hand-to-hand, but she almost managed to take those two down and it's only been two weeks." He paused again. "I want that for the rest of the Wards."

That was where he was going with that. Huh. "I don't think the Director would be too happy about me doing that at this point."

"She hasn't ordered you not to though, right?" Now that caught me off-guard. I hadn't expected him to be that willing to break the spirit of the rules. "I'm in charge of the Wards unless she or Armsmaster overrules me, and I think this is too important to ignore. I don't want to suggest keeping it quiet, but… if neither of them found out about it, then it wouldn't hurt anything, would it?"

I didn't say yes immediately. I had to think about it for a minute. I really didn't want to annoy these people. They were probably my only way home, after all, and if they got mad enough to try and arrest me then I didn't feel super confident in my ability to fight my way through all of them at once. On the other hand... I'd broken the rules on way flimsier terms than this, and I was pretty sure these kids needed this help. If they were going to survive long-term in a place like this, they needed all the help they could get.

"Alright," I said. "Here's what we're going to do…"

Aaaaaaah. This one fought me. It fought me hard. I'm still not totally happy with it and I've been trying to fix it for an extra two weeks. It's out here now, though, so we'll see how it goes.

This is the end of the arc, not counting the interludes. Actually got this done by the end of freshman year, which was a little unexpected. Summer break is starting in a couple of weeks, and my output should go up by quite a bit when that happens. I'm gonna aim to get arc four completed by the time school starts back up at the end of August, but no promises.

I'll try to have the next chapter out by August 11th. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time!