A couple of housekeeping items:
If you are inspired to draw fanart of my writing, more power to you. You do not need my permission (Fair use and all). That being said, I am not in the market for any art based on any of my writing. I have an artist in the family and if I am going to commission anything, it will be through them.
I suddenly find myself with 3 hours less per day, due to work changes (Telecommute changed to actual commute). Because I tend to write in the evenings on weekdays, that means I have less time to write. This means, at least for a while, I have to walk back from the once-a-week posts. I have another 30 or so chapters for this story outlined, so they will get written, I just don't have a timeline until my work situation stabilizes (It may be every other week or once a month, we just have to see).
*** Interlude ***
September 6th, 2010
Sophia stared out the window as they drove away from the school. Her handler Agent Jackson was driving her directly to the PRT headquarters so the agency doctors could have a look at her foot. The school nurse was pretty sure at least a few bones were broken. Agent Jackson had been silent for the drive so far. Any second now, she would try to reach Sophia, like some kind of episode of fucking Full House.
"Do you have anything to say, Sophia?" Jackson asked almost on queue. "I'm not sure how I write this report up."
"Hallway mishap," Sophia answered tersely, still looking out the window. Since her trigger event, it was rare for Sophia to be in a position to actually be hurt. Most of the time she could avoid injury by shifting to her Breaker state. She had even done it at school a few times when she was sure nobody was paying attention. This time, everything happened too fast. That was probably a good thing, considering the girl, Lila, that broke her foot apparently had a Tinkertech eye recording everything she saw.
"Maybe once," Agent Jackson responded, "but you need to stay away from that girl and the Hebert girl too. You're a valuable resource for the Wards, but you're on your last chance. Anything more and I report it up the chain."
Jackson was always telling Sophia that. Toe the line or I report it. The bitch didn't have the balls to report Shadow Stalker for hazing some random girl in school. At this point it was Mutually Assured Destruction. If Jackson reported Sophia, Sophia could make sure that she got in trouble for not reporting any of the shit she'd previously done. Jackson was an empty suit with a cushy job that she didn't want to screw up.
When Sophia first met Agent Jackson, she was all fire and brimstone, but it was all empty words. Sophia pressed her time and again to find out how far she could push. After a year, she hadn't found the Agent's limit yet. Maybe she just didn't give a shit.
As car pulled up to the underground entrance that the Wards frequently used and Sophia put on a generic facemask. A medic with a wheelchair was waiting for them.
"Don't need a fucking wheelchair," Sophia growled as she exited the vehicle with the crutch the school nurse had given her and began a hobbled walk toward the door.
"SHADOW STALKER!" Agent Jackson shouted, her voice echoing in the parking garage. "Protocol is incoming injuries are brought in on a gurney, or in a wheelchair. Do you want them to get a gurney?"
Sophia glared at the woman but sat in the wheelchair nonetheless. She would find some way to make somebody pay for this. She wasn't some invalid. She was a predator.
Sophia wasn't even listening as her handler gave a very abbreviated story about what happened in the hallway. Freak occurrence, accidently collided with another student. All the time Sophia was seething thinking of all the things she was going to do to this Lila girl and Hebert once her foot was healed.
Sophia sat through the x-rays and waited forever with Ms. Jackson for the radiologist to take a look at the picture of her foot, hanging right there, clearly showing a broken bone in her foot. Finally, the doctor arrived and without a word looked at the x-ray hanging on the lightboard for all of ten seconds.
"Did you drop a weight on your foot?" he asked finally before picking up her chart to look at it. "Hmmm, you just collided with another student and they fell on your foot?" he finally questioned, the obvious disbelief in his voice.
"Yeah, the stupid bi… cow wasn't looking where she was going." Sophia said, narrowly avoiding another lecture form her handler, she hoped. "Dropped right on it with her knee."
The Doctor looked at the x-ray again. "Is her knee made out of steel?" he finally asked. "It doesn't really matter, I guess. I'll just write it up as confluence of factors. Unlikely, but I guess there is no arguing with the results. How badly was the other girl hurt?" He asked, more wondering out loud.
"About the same," Ms. Jackson replied quickly. "On crutches with a swollen knee. Her mother was taking her to their doctor."
"Probably a good thing," the Radiologist replied. "I have no doubt that she'll probably need knee surgery if she hit you hard enough to do this to you."
"Good, serves her right," Sophia growled.
The Doctor ignored her grumbling. "Let's talk treatment options. I would normally say to let it heal naturally with a cast, but you're a Ward, so you'll need as close to full mobility back sooner rather than later. I'm going to recommend surgery. We can either remove the bone and replace it completely or use a tinker surgical glue along with a titanium plate to support it until it completely heals followed by some physical therapy. With luck you will be back out saving the world before Christmas."
"FUCK THAT! CHRISTMAS!?" Sophia yelled. "There's no way I'm out of action that long."
"SHADOW STALKER!" Ms. Jackson growled. "Watch your language."
"That's okay, agent," the Doctor quickly interjected. "I'd be pissed off too, having a leg out of commission that long, but it really is your best bet. If you have surgery, you can start physical therapy in a couple of weeks. If you let it heal naturally, you're looking at eight at least, with probably longer physical therapy overall. It would be February or March before you could be cleared for duty. The surgery would be the choice for a quick recovery."
"What about track?" Sophia asked. She really didn't care too much about it in the big scheme of things, but it was part of her civilian identity. If she couldn't run until the spring, she would have a harder time working her way up the ranking.
"Oh, sports," the Doctor replied. "I didn't really think about that. Not a lot of the Wards are still on sports teams. You're looking at December at best before you should put that kind of stress on your foot. Light jogging would probably be okay starting around the middle of November."
"Can't you just call Panacea and have that bi… girl heal me?" Sophia asked, but most definitely not with any type of whine in her voice. "That's what she's there for isn't it?"
"It's true that we have called Panacea in at times," the Doctor replied. "But I don't want you to get your hopes up. Those are usually when a member of the PRT or Protectorate is critically wounded. She has made it well known among the PRT doctors that we shouldn't be calling her for trivial issues. I'm afraid that this doesn't meet her criteria."
"Fine," Sophia grumbled, "let's just do the surgery then." Then grumbled under her breath, "I can't believe I'm out of commission until December."
Ms. Jackson gave her agreement to the doctor, who began looking through a calendar on his computer.
"How about a week from tomorrow?" he asked. "That will give some time for the swelling to go down. We'll put a temp cast on until then, probably sometime in the morning, to give the swelling some time to go down. You should keep ice on it through the night."
"Guess I'm staying here for the night," Sophia scowled before turning to Ms. Jackson. "You're going to call my mom to let her know I won't be home, right?"
"I can," the woman replied. "You should go down to your quarters and get off your foot. Remember, keep some cold packs on it."
Sophia got up on her crutch and the medical tech standing near the door handed her a bag of chemical icepacks on her way out of the room.
On her journey to the elevator, Sophia seethed. Some little bitch trips on her and suddenly she was out of commission for three months. She hadn't had an injury like this the whole time she was a vigilante, before she had been forced to join the Wards.
That bitch was going to pay. She'd have to get Emma and Madison in on the planning. They were the ones who came up with the best non-physical torments. Sophia was fine with tripping the bitch down the stairs or shoving her into a wall, but that just wasn't realistic on crutches.
Sophia reached the elevator and pressed the call button. And what the hell was up with Fucking Panacea. Doesn't take requests, FROM HEROES. What kind of bitch is that. She'd love the opportunity to show the bitch what she thought of her no requests policy. She stepped into the elevator and swiped her ID, letting the retinal scanner see her eye, before pressing the button for the Ward's level.
As the elevator slid open into the Ward's level, Sophia tried to do her best not to limp as she walked into the room. Lucky for her, the room was mostly empty except for Triumph, the current Wards leader, sitting at a table looking at his tablet.
"Shadow Stalker, good," the Lion-themed hero said as if she had just walked into a meeting he called, "I heard about your accident, so I want to go over your reduced duties while your foot heals."
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK! It just happened and already they were sidelining her without even trying to get some healing for her. At least one of the goddam tinkers on the team could try and build something to make her heal faster.
"Not in the mood," Sophia replied as she made a bee-line for her room.
"You were supposed to be on patrol tonight, so you can make time," Triumph replied harshly. "I've gone over the patrol schedule and I switched you over to console for the time being."
Sophia seethed as she tried to ignore the older hero. "What time am I on?" she growled at him as she continued toward her room.
"Eight-thirty, but…" he replied before Sophia cut him off.
"You can brief me at eight then. I have to ice my foot," she interjected. "Doctor's orders."
"Shadow Stalker," Triumph tried again before Sophia cut him off by simply closing her door behind her as she entered her room.
Sophia laid back on her bed and cracked one of the ice packs, then put it across her foot. She pulled out her personal phone and began texting to Emma.
Sophia: clumsy bitch broke foot, so ooa a while.
After a moment, Emma responded.
Emma: x paths after school when putting T in place bitch needs to know who's boss.
S: what she do?
E: tried to be all tough and shit.
S: Yeah, we will have to come up with something special for that bitch gtg
So now this bitch was fucking around with Emma, protecting Taylor. What the hell did she think this was. They would have to get some good dirt on the bitch. Madison was usually good for that she thought as she shot off a text.
Sophia: Busy now, C what u can dig up on this Lila bitch
Madison didn't respond for several moments, but then sent back; will do, what last name?
S: fuckin clarke
M: got it
If there was one thing being in the Wards taught her, it was that proper planning made the mission go smoother. If Madison could find some ammunition, they could be much more effective against the bitch.
Sophia managed to drift off into a dreamless sleep and was awaken by a loud siren. The noise had been drilled into her relentlessly over her summer in Los Angeles. Endbringer warning.
Sophia managed to roll out of bed while grabbing her crutch. Her foot twinged as she hurried out her door into the Ward's common room. The siren had already changed to a warbling sound, like a British ambulance, indicating the Endbringer wasn't attacking her location.
Triumph was already fielding calls from the other Wards, while typing on the computer at the console. Sophia came up behind him and watched over his shoulder as he typed. Where the hell was Tbilisi, Georgia?
As she watched each of the wards confirming or not that they were available to deploy; of course, Vista volunteered and was told, no, but surprisingly Clockblocker volunteered and was told, yes.
"Hey, boss," Sophia began, a plan only half-formed in her head. "You need search and rescue for these things, right? I would be great at that."
"Shadow Stalker," Triumph responded, still typing on the console, "you're disabled, so no way you're going into an Endbringer fight."
"Yeah," Sophia responded, "but doesn't Panacea go to all of these fights to heal people? She could heal me before we leave and I would be ready for duty before I get there."
The Ward's leader glanced up at her before typing off a message to Armsmaster, telling her to stand by.
The seconds ticked by and a countdown clock appeared in the console window. Time to teleport to the fight, eight minutes, fifty-seven seconds. The clock was counting down as Triumph began receiving confirmations for the fight. There, Lady Photon, Glory Girl, and Panacea confirmed. Sophia's plan was falling into place. The clock was down to six forty-three when the confirmation came from Armsmaster.
"You're a go, Shadow Stalker," Triumph announced, "Get geared up and on the helipad for teleport. Make sure Panacea heals you before you leave."
"Got it," Sophia responded, hurrying back to her room to suit up.
As she was trying to get her boot over her broken foot, she heard Clockblocker's loud voice in the common room. Screw it, she could put her boot on after she was healed. Sophia hobbled out from her room, still on the crutch.
"Clockblocker is in charge out there until you get an assignment," Triumph announced when he spotted Sophia. "Make sure to pay attention. Neither one of you is supposed to be fighting, so stay with the assignments they give you. Don't do anything crazy."
"You aren't going?" Sophia asked, ignoring a comment from Clockblocker. She was surprised that the Ward's leader wasn't the first in line.
"Orders," the man replied, "Velocity and the rest of the Wards are staying in the Bay, so they need me here to run the team. Everyone else is already on the way in."
"Just follow the veterans' lead and don't do anything crazy," Triumph repeated as Clockblocker and Sophia entered the elevator.
"Wait," Sophia shouted, realizing that she was missing some important information, "which Endbringer is it."
As the elevator door closed, her blood ran cold when she heard Triumph's response, "Behemoth."