Bud 3.i

December 21st, 2010

Shadow Stalker leapt into the air, shifting into her shadow-state to gain extra altitude, shifting back long enough to brace and jump off the wall in front of her, then shifting back once more until she reached the rooftop.

She stopped for a moment, listened. The city was in absolute chaos, and she was loving it. It was a perfect playground for someone like her. She'd already intercepted half a dozen Empire gangsters since the attacks started, and now she'd finally found a real fight.

New Wave had some potential, but they weren't quite at the level they could have been. They held back too much, were too cautious. They'd released their identities to the world, paid the price for it, and were too scared of it happening again to take any serious risks.

Shadow Stalker - Sophia - had to admit, though, they weren't bad in a fight. From her vantage point, she could watch as Flashbang, Manpower, and Brandish advanced on the Empire capes that had apparently invaded their neighborhood. Considering the Empire's advantages right here, Sophia was honestly surprised that they were winning at all, but they weren't doing an awful job.

Manpower and Jotun were duking it out in the middle of the street, shocks of electricity and cold snaps crackling out across the street with every impact and pinching craters into anything their duel came across. It wasn't much of a fight, of course. Jotun was new, no more than a couple of months into his powers, and Manpower had been heroing for well over a decade. Even with Jotun's minor powers, it wasn't much of a contest.

Brandish was facing off with Othala and Victor. This was a lot closer of a fight. Othala looked to have granted Victor invulnerability, and it was letting him shrug off Brandish's energy blades. Othala herself was staying back to minimize the risk of getting sliced in two, but Victor was giving her a heck of a fight. Brandish was good, but he was better. Without her invincible ball form, she would have been in some serious trouble.

Flashbang, on the other hand, was having some serious problems. The girl he was fighting was strong, despite her lack of experience. She was standing on a rooftop, directing a trio of truck-sized boulders through the air and just barely holding back from squashing Flashbang like a bug. His spheres were doing a little damage to her rocks, but not nearly enough, and they were serving as effective barriers to keep him from hitting the girl directly. If that wasn't bad enough, she was moving the rocks to attack the other heroes whenever she had the chance.

Normally, Sophia might have left him to his fate, but this was a special case. She pulled out her crossbow and loaded one of her glass tranquilizer rounds. It wouldn't do for this girl to get too cocky.

Sophia fired from her shadow-state. The bolt shot forward, unaffected by the air and barely touched by gravity, phased through a rock that had begun to pass between them, and caught the red-robed girl in the chest. She staggered, took a half-step, then collapsed off the rooftop as the boulders fell from the sky.

Victor heard the boulders hit the ground and didn't waste a second in rushing over to catch the girl before she hit the ground. With their air support down, they began falling back, Victor running alongside Othala with the wizard-girl over his shoulder. Jotun moved to follow them, but Manpower intercepted him, grabbing both arms and forcing them behind his back. Sophia fired another shot into the easy target, and Jotun collapsed a second later.

December 23rd, 2010

"Stalker."

"What?"

Triumph sighed. "I suppose it's too much to ask for a 'yes, sir?'"

Sophia didn't respond. The answer was going to be yes for as long as he was going to be wimpy enough to ask like that. You'd think a leader would take charge more often than this, but apparently not. The PRT liked its Wards that way.

"Right. I'm not going to bother lecturing you about patrolling alone again. If it hasn't stuck the last six times, it won't stick this time, either. The Wards are meeting for an outdoor training exercise just out-of-town this evening, on some of the Stansfield's family land. The van's leaving at six from the basement garage."

Ugh. She was planning on patrolling again tonight. Something was up with the way the Empire had acted a couple of days ago was far from their usual MO. She wasn't the only one to notice, but she was the only one that was actually doing anything about it. She'd lost enough time at school today, staying late to help Emma with her prank. "I'm busy. And we both know that whatever team-building stuff they're having us do won't accomplish anything."

"I set this up myself, actually," Triumph responded. "I think you'll be interested in what we're doing. It's on one condition though." He looked around. Checking to see if anybody was around? What was he up to? "You can't tell anybody what happens there. If anybody asks, we were doing some destructive power testing where nobody would get mad at us for breaking stuff."

Hmm. Now she was intrigued. And he'd noticed it too, damnit. "Fine, I'll come. But this had better be worth it."

"It will be, don't worry. Don't be late." As if she'd be worried about something like this.

Ninety minutes later, Sophia piled into the van at precisely 6:11 PM. Triumph shot her a dirty look but said nothing as the van pulled out. She looked around at each Ward in turn, trying to figure out what they knew about all this. They were all in full costume, which wasn't too surprising if they were going to be outside but was still unusual. The Stansfields were Gallant's family, and they already knew the Wards.

Clockblocker and Gallant were screwing around, as normal. Something about testing a 'laughter' setting on Gallant's power. Why a hero would bother with something like that when they had so many better tools at his disposal, Sophia had no idea. It made them harder to read than one might think, but she didn't think they knew what was happening.

Across the center, Triumph and Vista were talking quietly. The sound of the engine drowned any hope of listening in, but it looked like they were planning something. What could Triumph be planning that involved her of all people?

Aegis, seared to Sophia's left, was unreadable as usual. He was smarter than he looked, and at least he was less obnoxious than the two clowns up front. Kid Win, to her right, was the same, but for a different reason. He was just usually daydreaming so much that he forgot to annoy her.

Nobody spoke to her during the ride. Fine by her. She spent the ride checking over her crossbows as well as she could in the van, and then fell asleep against the back wall before waking up to the sound of the van stopping a half-hour later.

They got out, and the van pulled away. The Wards were left at the end of a gravel road, with rolling hills and woods stretching out for acres ahead of them. Night had fallen hours ago, and Kid Win and Gallant lit up portions of their costume so people could see. The sound of the van faded behind them, and they were left with the sound of the breeze and nothing else.

"So… what are we doing here?" Gallant asked.

"Well. I kind of thought she'd be here by now, actually," Triumph responded. "Everybody, keep an eye out, and I guess we'll start mov-"

"Sorry, that's a failure," said a patch of darkness that had managed to avoid everybody's attention until now. Shadow Stalker had her crossbow out in a flash, and Vista had pulled a staff from… somewhere by the time anybody else really registered what was going on. As they watched, the darkness vanished, and a human silhouette appeared in its place. "You knew I was going to be here, so you should have kept looking. You've got to trust the information you have or you might hesitate at the wrong moment."

Sophia cocked her head, now very interested. "That's what this is? Another training session? Why all the secrecy?"

"Good question. The Director wouldn't be very happy if she learned that I was doing this." Scatter paused for a second. "Do any of you have a problem with that? Or with me being the one to teach you?"

Nobody spoke up. Good. Maybe they weren't as submissive as she thought they were. Or they were just scared to speak up now that Triumph was playing along.

"Alright then. Let's go, into the woods. We'll get you started with one-on-one spars, and I've already got an arena marked off."

One on ones, huh? Not exactly what she'd been expecting, but she could roll with it. Not like any of the other Wards could really stand up to her if she really tried, anyway.

Six hours later, collapsing into her bed sometime after one in the morning and too exhausted to bother checking the actual time, Sophia realized the error in that assumption. She'd fought six matches, one against each other Ward. It had started out well enough; Clockblocker had gone down instantly, Kid Win hadn't taken much longer. Then, people had started realizing that Scatter wasn't limiting them in the same ways the PRT did. She didn't mind if people left with bruises, twisted ankles, or black eyes, so long as there wasn't any permanent damage. Sophia was usually fighting just shy of that level anyway, so she didn't have much further to go, but that wasn't true for any of the others.

Sophia had started losing a lot more, after that.

She was almost proud of them, actually. Triumph, Aegis, and even Vista had all wiped the floor with her. Aegis was effectively invincible, and just kept on coming until Sophia ran out of steam a few minutes in. The punch he'd landed had put the wind out of her for long enough that Scatter called the match before she could even move. Triumph had opened with a wide-effect shout that blasted her through the treeline before she could even react, and Vista had just run circles around her and whittled her down through sheer tenacity. Just went to show how effective even these kids could be when they were off the leash.

That wasn't to say that Sophia was content to stay at that level, of course. Three wins out of six fights put her exactly at the middle of the pack, and that was the last place she wanted to be. She'd fight harder, faster, and meaner. She intended to come out on top, and prove to everyone that she still wasn't the… the prey that they'd been until now.

January 3rd, 2011

Phase through the fist, dephase long enough to kick off attacker's sternum. Backflip toward the treeline, keep out of his sight.

Shadow Stalker took the fraction of a second she was in the air to plan out her next couple of moves. She'd only recently gotten it down fast enough to satisfy Scatter, but she was all the stronger for it.

Stay phased, don't leave the shadow state unless needed.

If she was in her shadow state, then there wasn't much he could do to stop her, either.

She ricocheted through the treeline, moving quickly enough that Aegis could barely keep up. She'd dephase for exactly the instant required to jump off another tree, then be rephrased before she could be slowed down. He was a tricky opponent - he could take almost anything she could dish out, was fast enough to keep up with her when very few others could, and strong enough to keep her pinned without even really trying if she didn't phase. She'd given up trying to hit him with her crossbow after the first night - it accomplished about the same amount whether she missed or hit. A month ago, she'd have lost an actual fight against him nine times out of ten. She hadn't realized it when they'd started, but it hadn't taken her long to realize how much stronger Aegis actually was. Now, though, even after just a week...

Aegis crashed through a tree that she'd just phased through and ducked the branch she whipped toward him from midair. As he came up, Sophia failed to return to her shadow state and instead pulled out a baton. The trap was obvious, but he charged through anyway. Idiot. He could have dodged, why take a hit you didn't need to?

She waited until he was exactly the right distance away, then phased for long enough to throw the baton. Aegis didn't even try to dodge, and it reformed in the middle of his chest with an end poking out of his front and back.

It barely even slowed him down. Of course he could take that. Didn't change the fact that he should have dodged, but Sophia repeated the process from earlier, phasing and dephasing in order to keep away from him, coming up with another plan. She had a backup option, but she'd have preferred to keep it a secret if possible. Oh well.

Step one, find the right tree. Sophia wasn't enough of a nerd to be able to name different types of tree, but she knew that none of the ones around her were the right kind. She needed needles, not the thick branches she was jumping through now. She had time, at least for the moment, and they weren't limited in space like they might be if anybody else was training them.

This area didn't have what she needed, so she'd change the area. If Aegis thought she was running, so much the worse for him when she finally caught him. She actually wound up having to slow down at a couple of points to make sure he didn't lose her - not that it would matter here, but against anybody smart, she'd have to make sure they didn't know she was leading them anywhere.

She found what she needed, and jumped across a series of branches to the ground. The branches and needles were painful to reform through, but they were better than not slowing down at all and breaking her legs on the grass below.

Shadow Stalker turned to face Aegis as he crashed through the treeline down to her, only to jump and kick off his face at the last possible second, phasing through his attempt to grapple. She flew into the air, Aegis hot on her heels, and dephased for exactly the instant needed to grab onto a branch with one hand.

This was a trick that she'd learned about way back during her power testing but hadn't ever found a use for until now. She had a limit on how much she could take with her into her breaker state. It went up and down a little based on the day, but it usually hovered right around fifty pounds. If she tried to take more than that, then she'd only manage to actually phase part of it, and that wasn't usually helpful considering that the part she phased stayed attached to the rest of the object and weighed her down; she wasn't strong enough in her breaker state to actually move very much in the physical world.

Something like these branches, though, worked wonders. Sophia grabbed the branch, and the six feet on the end phased with her. The rest stayed attached, and her momentum swung her around, bending the branch almost to the breaking point. When she released, at exactly the right time, the branch reformed as it snapped back into position, just as Aegis flew upward through the exact same space.

He kept on his path even after it reformed, but wound up plowing into the tree trunk a second later with the branch fused to his torso. Sophia moved quickly, repeating the process again and again before he could break out, leaving him pinned in place by a dozen branches and finally slowing down from the amount of damage he'd taken.

"Alright, stop!" Scatter appeared on the ground below them in an instant, despite the fact that Sophia hadn't even seen her approaching yet.

Sophia was getting stronger as this went on, as were the rest of the Wards. Even just a week and a half of it had shown noticeable improvement in every one of them. She figured that they'd stand a fair chance against the Protectorate one-on-one if they played their cards right and fought smart. Scatter, however, was on an entirely different level. Sophia doubted that anyone else had seen it, but she knew what someone that was at the top of the ladder looked like, and the glimpse she'd gotten during their brief sparring match told her everything she needed to know.

You couldn't hit her; she saw you coming, moved too quickly to hit, and let your attack pass through her without any effort. Even if you did manage to somehow land a hit, and she hadn't let you land it to somehow gain an advantage, it would be stopped by her forcefield. Even that wouldn't be so much of a threat in anyone else's hands, but when the person with that power had trained at the level that the Wards had been for years, honed her skills to absolute perfection, and carried around one of the most lethal weapons Sophia had ever seen…

Scatter had power, and she was willing to use it. Not enough to march into Piggy's office and demand what she wanted - nobody short of Scion, or maybe a Triumvirate member could browbeat the entire Protectorate like that, which was why Sophia had given in to getting stuck on this team in the first place - but enough to go behind her back without worrying about the consequences.

"Nice work, for both of you. Shadow Stalker, I like this new tactic, but make sure you don't use it against anybody who can't take it. That would kill just about anyone else. Aegis, you're getting faster and meaner, but you've got to work on dodging attacks as well. One of these days, you're gonna encounter something you can't just tank." She paused for a second, looking up into the air as Aegis struggled to... extricate himself from the branches and sighed. "It's gonna be a nightmare to get all that stuff out of your chest. Are you alright up there?"

Sophia began walking back toward the camp as Scatter moved upward and started tearing at the branches. Aegis would be fine, she'd seen him take worse. More than that, she'd finally found something that would be effective against heavier targets. One more rung up the ladder.

January 10th, 2011

"Sophia Hess, please report to the principal's office."

Sophia stood from her desk. It was the first Monday back after winter break - why was she getting called in already? Had somebody actually been dumb enough to snitch on that prank this morning? Whatever. Worst case scenario, she could get Emma and Madison to back her up again. Maybe Emma would finally decide to switch to a different target for once - Sophia really didn't understand the girl's obsession, and she doubted that they'd find a way to top this, at any rate.

Once she got to the office, she realized what was happening. The woman at the door wasn't in uniform, but that was the furthest thing from odd. Laura Hopsey, her... handler with the PRT.

"Sophia, there's some unfortunate news. Your mother should probably tell you in person," Laura said. It was all useless code, designed to sound innocuous to the surrounding faculty, who all knew who she was anyway, and any students who happened by, who were all too dumb or too high to realize what they were talking about even if they hadn't been bothering to hide it. That didn't even start on the code's actual meaning. Why were they hauling her out of school for a security briefing? Not that she was complaining about skipping the last couple of classes of school, but this was one of a handful of things that might actually be worse.

"Right," Sophia responded. No point in fighting it. She'd done that enough to be dangerous lately. "You're driving me?"

"Yes. If you'll come with me?"

The ride was fast and blissfully silent - Hopsey wasn't interested in talking, and neither was Sophia. Hopsey drove as quickly as she could without breaking the letter of the law. They pulled into the PHQ's garage, and Sophia simply walked in, skipping past all the identity procedures thanks to the method of entry. They really weren't messing around here.

Once inside, she was directed to the Wards' briefing room in the basement, where she found the rest of the team seated around a pair of plastic fold-up tables. Deputy Renick was there as well, sitting at the head with the Wards gathered around the sides. Sophia neglected to take the lone empty chair to his right, instead dropping heavily into a recliner in a corner of the room.

"Shadow Stalker. Nice of you to join us," Renick opened. "Now that everybody's here, we can start. The Protectorate is receiving a similar briefing as we speak, but we felt as though this was serious enough to warrant briefing the groups separately."

In other words, they wanted to water it down to preserve the Ward's delicate sensibilities. Sophia looked at the people sitting around the table and was a little surprised to see that everyone else there looked just as annoyed as she did.

Renick continued, "As you all know, in the aftermath of the Empire's attack on the city, things have been growing more unstable. The Protectorate has been dispatched several times to deal with any appearances, and the surrounding gangs have begun pressing them as well."

Sophia hadn't been keeping track of it lately, but she wasn't surprised. That was usually what happened when a smaller gang collapsed, so seeing it in action on a larger scale wasn't unusual. The real question was what it meant for her.

"There haven't been any cape casualties yet, but a lot of gang members have been injured and a handful killed. Lung has made several pushes into Downtown, with Coil squeezing them from the other side and a handful of smaller groups or individuals making plays and robbing hideouts as well. The Empire isn't gone yet, but I suspect that they won't be lasting much longer, and their collapse is making a power vacuum."

All entirely too obvious. Sophia spoke up, leaving the 'get to the point' implied. "Who are we going to have to fight?"

Renick paused at that, but only for a second. He was used to her by now. "We aren't sure yet. Sophia, we'll be giving you half-days at school as everyone else has at Arcadia for the foreseeable future. The rest of you will be on-call for as much of the day as we can afford to give you, picking up the slack the Protectorate will be generating fighting the big threats. If… Trainwreck, or Carapacitor, or the Undersiders decide to make another play, we'll need you in place to intercept and bring them in."

Of course. The Wards weren't being put into the real fight. They'd be the sidekicks again, fighting the small-timers until the Protectorate fought the real fight. On the other hand… the Wards were a lot stronger now, even with less than three weeks of practice. Maybe not on Scatter's level, but stronger. This might be a chance for all of them to show what they could really do.

Plus, he'd mentioned the Undersiders. She might just get a chance to beat Grue into the pavement for his troubles. "I'll take the first shift," Sophia said.

The entire room looked to her in various degrees of shock and surprise.

January 12th, 2011

Scatter rode with them to the woods this time. She'd been at the front of the van with her back to the driver's cab, hidden under the window so she was out of their line of sight, having entered with her power a few minutes after they'd left the building. She'd been pretty quiet for the first quarter-hour or so, just giving the expected greetings before settling into silence with her eyes closed and occasional splashes of red forcefield or roses flickering across her body. Sophia had no doubt that she could have run ahead and beaten them there by a lot if she'd wanted, so what was she doing here?

Even once she'd finally started talking, Sophia hadn't gotten many answers. "Alright, guys, listen up. Like you heard a couple of days ago, things are about to get crazy. We might not have much more training time left before you end up having to fight for real, so we're going to have one last spar for tonight." Just one spar? What was she planning? "You've all improved a lot over the last few weeks. Some of you have passed what I would have guessed possible for someone without Aura to manage, and all of you have managed some really impressive progress."

Scatter smiled, and Sophia tensed. She was used to the smiles - Scatter did it a lot, Sophia assumed it was so that people underestimated her - but this one was different.

Scatter continued, "That's why I'm only giving you all thirty second's head start." The doors opened, and Sophia didn't waste a second in phasing through the wall behind her. The team could fend for themselves, she wasn't sticking around any longer than she needed to.

It was a repeat of the first training session they'd had, back when the Wards had all stormed out of the room in a huff. Sophia had actually agreed with them at first - why let Scatter walk all over her if she wasn't getting anything out of it? She'd been proven wrong about that, of course, but that didn't change the truth now. Improved or not, the Wards didn't stand a chance in hell, so Sophia ran. If it had been a real fight, it was better to live to fight another day than die protecting people who would die anyway.

She rolled with the landing, jumping upward and forward when she came to her feet and launching herself off the van roof. Her teammates were already out of the van, faster than she'd expected and mostly bunched up but running in a different direction. Good enough for her, maybe Scatter would go after them first.

After the past few weeks, she knew these woods like the back of her hand. She knew exactly where to go - a particularly thick copse of trees she'd spotted days before but hadn't needed to use yet.

Counting seconds wasn't easy when adrenaline was running high, so Sophia didn't bother. She just listened and gathered what information she could. She quieted her breathing, launched forward off a tree she'd just phased through, rephased and became utterly silent. Sound passed through her with everything else in this state, but she'd only recently begun to realize that she could use the sensations that the moving air carried with it to listen.

A handful of seconds after she shifted, just as she was about to hit the ground, Sophia felt the air shudder around her. She reformed just in time to catch the very end of the airhorn blast coming from behind her and caught a flash of motion shooting off into the sky directly over the van before shooting off in a direction that would take her toward the far side of the other group. It was well past dark out, and Scatter could have been a lot stealthier in terms of what direction she was going. She was still holding back, Sophia realized.

On the plus side, it seemed like her trick had worked. Sophia had left the van through it's left wall, then run toward the woods on its right in an attempt to draw Scatter in the wrong direction, and the direction Scatter had moved would split the difference between where the other group was and where Scatter thought Sophia was. A red blur appeared in the corner of Sophia's eye, and she rephased just in time for a wooden staff to pass through her at speeds almost too fast to register.

She landed and jumped again. Scatter spun with the miss and brought her improvised weapon down quickly enough that Sophia felt the impact as she began to phase, the physical pain muted by the transition to her shadow state. Spinning in midair and flying backward, Sophia fired a pair of arrows, knowing that she wouldn't have the chance to load anymore, and watched Scatter sidestep one and backhand the other out of the air without slowing down.

Scatter kept spinning, jumping up, teleporting to the ground behind her, attacking from every possible angle and direction the entire time, never stopping for even a second and kept her staff in such a constant and unpredictable motion that it was impossible to block or really dodge anything. Sophia didn't have time to think. If she dephased, Scatter would take advantage. If she stopped moving, Scatter would find a way-

Scatter swung the staff through Sophia's chest with one hand, her other hand raised behind it. Sophia caught a glimpse of yellow light growing in intensity between the woman's fingers. Her eyes widened, but she didn't have time to react before a bolt of lightning no more than a pencil's width in diameter crackled through the space she was standing in. Somewhere idly in the back of Sophia's mind, she recognized that it really wasn't even enough lightning to do more than sting someone normal, but that thought was quickly banished as the bolt cut through her in a line that burned like fire. Sophia collapsed to the ground with her shadow state canceled and groaned slowly.

"Shadow Stalker, you just put up a decent fight." Sophia would have laughed if she'd had the breath. She hadn't lasted more than five seconds. Was Scatter taunting her now? Sophia knew she wasn't as 'nice' as she claimed to be. "Do you know why I went for you first?"

Sophia didn't, actually. She guessed anyway, "So I wouldn't get a chance to hide?"

Scatter sighed and shook her head. "Because you were alone. I know we've been focusing on one-on-one fighting, but you've got to improve on teamwork as well. It's better to fight protecting your team to try and take down whatever the threat is together than to run off on your own to get taken out later."

Sophia didn't have a chance to respond, even if she'd known what to say. Scatter vanished again, and a red cloud shot in the direction of the other group. That had actually sounded serious. Surely it wasn't, right? She'd seen through Sophia's trick in an instant, taken her down in seconds. And yet she was still so wrong about everything. How did someone that naive about the world get so strong without getting taken down a few notches?

No, it was a trick. It had to be. Either she was trying to fool everybody around her, or she was fooling herself. Not that it really mattered. Scatter had the right to talk about what she saw fit. If she wanted to uphold this teamwork delusion, then that was her decision. Sophia would just have to stay out of the line of fire.

She grinned. One day, she'd get to that level. With Scatter helping her along, Sophia was sure it was possible. She'd just have to keep climbing, one rung at a time.

Whew. Sorry about the delay on this one. Motivation ran out for a bit in the middle there, but I think I'm back in full swing now.

I feel like people might have problems with this one. I was trying to avoid fanon's idea of Sophia, and I think I pulled her off pretty well. She slots people into her worldview, bending their motivations in her head to match it better; it's what she's doing to Ruby here. Please refrain from taking anything the psychopath says as gospel truth.

I haven't divided up a chapter like this in a while. It actually feels a little weird now, but it had to be done to move the timeline along. Worm may have run through twenty-two arcs in three months, but this is going to be a tad more spread out. We're getting closer to where canon picked up (for reference, Gestation 1.1 would take place on April 8th), though things are obviously going to be rather different this time around.

I don't normally reply to anonymous reviews, but I felt the need to comment on one thing that came up recently since I suspect others are wondering about the same thing - Challenger is a canon character. We knew literally nothing about them aside from their name and affiliation with the Brockton Protectorate until a recent Ward flashback interlude, so I took a lot of liberties with the character that have now been proven incorrect (for one thing, canon's Challenger was a woman), but he's not totally my own creation.

I think that's everything I've got to say this time. Next chapter coming sooner, I hope. As always, thanks for reading and reviewing, and I'll see you next time!