Fourth

Chapter 11

Fall Out

Armsmaster stomped into the medical ward with an unusually visible storm on his face. He ignored Miss Militia trying and then failing to stop him so much she had to jump out of his way. His very, very angry stomps ended promptly next to the bed Sophia lay back in, slight shudders of pain still echoing through her body.

"What the hell did you do?" was all he said. Flat, but not emotionless. The man was pissed off.

Sophia studied his set jaw for a moment, then tried to sit up. A flare of agony raked through her and she collapsed back to the medical bed. "What the fuck do you mean? I shot a threat and and you just let her walk out-"

Armsmaster cut in over her voice with the tone that every Ward dreaded, the one that said he was entirely, totally fed up with your shit. "You shot her, and disregarding how much that was a truly colossal fuckup for the history books on your part; Shadow Stalker, Taylor is one of the beings who gives us Parahumans our powers in the first place-" at this Sophia's face paled, in contrast to Armsmaster's own furiously flushed white… despite her new glow, and gasps rang out around the room, "so she had no reason to even care. She probably would've just pranked you in retaliation, at most, given her psychological profile. Unless, of course, it was personal. We know enough about her already to know that. So, I don't want to hear your excuses, whatever you make up to save yourself is irrelevant. No, what I want to know is what you did to her personally that made her crack your fucking power in half!"

Sophia, even as afraid and filled with agony as she was, still had some defiance left in her. She pushed up her chin and glared into his visor. "My power is fine-"

Armsmaster's suited hand grabbed onto the edge of the bed and forced it to make the shrieking sound of warping metal as he clenched his fist. He leaned down towards her, body language absolutely screaming that he'd rather throttle her, so much so that even Miss Militia and the other Wards around her were looking worried. "YOU ARE SPARKLING. BRIGHT. FUCKING. PINK. SOPHIA!" he nearly growled.

Despite the gravity of the situation her fellow Wards couldn't help but snicker at her… condition.

"I- I didn't do anything-" she tried.

Armsmaster cut her off. "Big lie."

Sophia scowled into his visor, a pout on her lips. "I hate that damn thing."

"Are you going to answer me, truthfully, or am I going to have to get Watchdog to interrogate you?" Armsmaster demanded.

For a moment, Sophia wanted to tell him to go fuck himself… but some tiny part of her, somewhere, somehow spoke up against everything she had ever believed- and said it might be a good idea to go along with the angry man in the suit of power armor half an inch from her face.

She wasn't out of defiance, though, so she redirected it one last time. "I- I'm not worth that-"

Armsmaster's response cut her off, and it was almost saccharine. Oh yeah. He was mad. "You're right! However, there is this being out there who was getting very friendly with the Protectorate, and myself, who can probably detonate the planet if she wanted to, and you made her angry enough to fundamentally violate your power and almost break you. Now, will I talk to her about that? Probably, it's not okay to do things like that, but I cannot fucking even begin if she won't talk to me because of my association with you, Sophia."

Miss Militia's eyebrows were at maximum, from what Sophia could see. And despite herself, she could see his logic. So she sighed, fell back to the pillows, and groaned. "I… I messed with her in school for a while… and probably made her trigger," she quietly admitted.

Everyone was silent. They all stared at her. In horror, in disgust, in shock… even a little betrayal from Vista, that surprised her.

"What the fuck, Sophia?" Dennis broke the silence first.

Sophia glared right back at him, twitching slightly. "You don't get to complain about how I handle that shitshow of a crap pile they call a school, Arcadian," she bit out at him.

"Yes I do. For this? Yes I do." Dennis glared death at her, all his jovial nature hidden under something she never got to see him be; truly, fully serious. "Triggers are bad. We all know it. Causing one…" he shook his head at her, got up, and left the room.

She would never admit it out loud, but that hurt. Not very much. Just a little. But it hurt.

It took a lot to make Dennis angry enough that he felt the need to remove himself.

"Sophia, what exactly did you do?" Miss Militia asked her, her eyes stern and a very obvious frown on her face, even under her bandana.

"I-" she tried, looking around for support.

There wasn't any.

With her admission, everyone had turned against her.

Even Vista.

"Just spill, Sophia," the littlest Ward declared. Her mouth was set in a firm line, and she was looking at Sophia with the one thing that truly threatened to destabilize what little remained of her ego. "Cut the crap and spill."

Disappointment from Missy and Hannah.

Anger from Armsmaster, Chris, and a now absent Dennis.

Sadness, from Carlos.

They all added up, no matter how much she tried to avoid those feelings, their effects on her.

Sophia looked down at her skin, the color of which she could barely see below the ever present, constant, and gaseous bright pink covering her whole body, and the aggravating sparkles wafting off her skin to dissipate in the air, reminding her that her power had been trivially twisted into a mocking opposite to the shadows which she'd integrated as part of herself… and she broke.

She told them everything.

Miss Militia was silent for a long moment afterward. Then she spoke, quiet but cutting.

"You're lucky she was better than you, Sophia. Because if she wasn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation in a hospital - we'd be in a graveyard."

No one said anything after that. Even the background noise of the monitors and the HVAC felt muted by the weight of it.

Sophia looked away. And no one looked at her.


"What the fuck happened, Armsmaster? How did a tour turn into me having to abort a lockdown and send out orders not to even try to detain one of the most powerful capes on record?"

"...Acting Director, sir. Taylor is more than a cape. Or rather—more than a parahuman." Armsmaster paused, grimacing. "I'll get to that. But first, it's my duty to report that one of our... one of my Wards caused her to trigger."

Renick stared at him for several long, intense seconds.

Then he collapsed into his chair, legs giving out, and buried his head in his hands.

"Continue," the thinner man managed.

"My full report will be filed soon, once I finish putting out fires. But here's the base-level summary." Armsmaster stood straighter, squaring his shoulders. "Taylor informed me where powers come from. My own power confirmed it, after she informed it that such a thing would no longer violate protocol. She was able to do that because, as it turns out, she is a newly awoken member of the alien species whose body parts... provide our abilities."

Renick looked up slowly, disbelief mixing with something more primal. "You're joking."

Armsmaster didn't answer immediately, but he did answer. "She called them Shards. Not powers. According to her, and now confirmed by my own… whatever they are, we're dealing with an extant alien lifeform beyond any classification we've ever encountered. Thankfully, Taylor has retained her human perspective - likely due to spending most of her life as one."

A tense, silent moment passed, while Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick stared at Armsmaster like he had lost his mind.

"This new state is also why she was able to suborn the Endbringers and transform them. That, and unlocking my own power, was no more difficult for her than entering a password and clicking a button," the armor clad hero finished his report, deadly serious.

Renick's expression didn't change, but his hands gripped the edge of the desk tighter. He blinked once. Then again.

"You're not joking," he muttered. It wasn't a question.

"No, sir," Armsmaster replied.

Renick leaned back, staring through the wall more than at it. His mouth opened like he meant to say something, but no words came. Not yet. He was a man used to reading reports about impossible things. He was not used to living them.

"This," he added after a pause, voice quieting, "is the being who Sophia Hess, our Ward, both caused to trigger and also attempted to shoot in the Wards HQ."

"Yes, sir."

Renick was quiet for a long time as he processed that. Then he began swearing under his breath, sometimes at reality, most of the time at a woman named Emily - whom Armsmaster was fairly certain meant Director Piggot - and occasionally at Sophia.

Finally, he looked up. "So let me be 100% sure I have this straight," he said. "One of our Wards triggered the single most terrifying being on the planet, maybe off it. That same being came here in good faith and chose to heal Director Piggot, who, by the way, drank herself into a coma after hearing about her existence, and then got attacked in our own base by one of our own heroes. And said hero likely tortured her enough to cause a Trigger Event."

"Correct," Armsmaster confirmed.

"Have I left anything out?" the Deputy Director asked, tentatively. He clearly didn't want to know the answer, but he was forced by duty to ask.

"Don't forget that her Trigger is, ultimately, something we let happen," Miss Militia brought up, heat in her tone. This entire situation had obviously gotten to the normally very measured cape. She continued on to add more fuel to their fire. "And that Taylor didn't just heal our Director. She left without asking anything in return." Her voice cracked slightly at the end. Whether from anger, guilt, or something else entirely, no one asked.

The silence that followed was thick with shared failure.

"Yet," Armsmaster supplied helpfully, after a while.

Renick sighed again, quieter this time. "Right. Great. She saved the Director and she didn't gloat. That's... terrifying." He looked up at both of them, eyes tired. "We may have lost the moral high ground before we ever knew we were in a fight."

There was a silence. The air shifted slightly, tension thinning just enough for the weight of reality to settle deeper.

"And Piggot's stable?" he asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it.

Miss Militia nodded, meeting his eyes. "Taylor healed her completely. New and old injuries."

Renick groaned into his hands, sagging back into the chair. "She's going to be furious when she wakes up."

"Which means she's alive," Armsmaster said dryly.

Renick dropped his hands with a glare towards Armsmaster. "Easy for you to say, you don't have to deal with her," he deadpanned, leading to chuckles from the two capes in front of him. He sighed and shook his head.

He sat up straighter again, refocusing. "What about the way she did the power modification? What she did to Hess - it wasn't just brute force, right? My reports say she is… bright pink. Considering her previous power's appearance, this sounds very controlled. Precise. She reshaped the... Shard. Sophia's power."

Miss Militia's jaw tightened. "She never told us she could do this, but... it fits. And yes, I can confirm that Taylor didn't just break Sophia's power. She rebuilt it. As punishment. And the way she did it sent a message. She is…" the woman shuddered then, shaking her head. "Very pink now."

Renick just stared at her, at both of them. "I was hoping you would tell me these reports were wrong," he declared, gesturing to the scattered pages piled and thrown across his desk. "This honestly sounds like something out of a cartoon."

"It does," Miss Militia agreed. "But it's not. And that's the terrifying part."

Armsmaster nodded. "Given her demonstrated control, I believe Taylor can directly modify powers and is not merely acting as an administrator. Sophia's altered state confirms this. If the Endbringers truly are her… Friendbringers… as we were humoring previously, and as Legend has now validated, then she clearly possesses high-level constructive control as well. My own Shard was fully unlocked with only a thought - no command, no gesture. As of this moment, she's demonstrated not just control, but advanced construction and reconstruction of powers and whatever Shards actually are. The implications are… enormous."

Renick leaned back and stared at the ceiling, as if hoping for divine intervention. "I feel like I keep repeating myself, but for completeness' sake: We've got someone with Endbringer-tier or higher potential, full authority over these… Shards and thus the powers of every Parahuman, and absolutely no obligation to follow our rules - who healed Piggot out of guilt. And one of ours responded by pulling a gun."

"Unfortunately," Armsmaster said, voice flat, "yes."

There was a pause. Something unspoken lingered in the air.

"I am not paid remotely enough for this," Renick deadpanned.

"Are any of us?" Armsmaster jokingly followed up, with a light chuckle. The only options they had were to laugh, or wallow in the misery of the situation their Ward had put them in. Colin would always choose laughter, if possible and time allowed for the loss of efficiency, like it did then.

While Renick groaned to the air, Miss Militia had a question for him, however. "Are… you certain, Colin?" Miss Militia asked softly. "That you now remember what Shards… what powers are?" There was something strange in her voice - hopeful, almost pleading.

"Yes." Armsmaster turned his head, raising his eyebrows. Her hope seemed out of place; which meant something else was going on. "My power provided confirmation, as I said. Surface-level for now, but it's fully cooperative after being granted permission."

Miss Militia exhaled like a dam finally cracked. "So you saw them too. The worms."

Armsmaster blinked. "The what?"

Then his eyes glazed slightly. His Shard fed him something. "Oh. Yes. I suppose the greater organisms do resemble worms of massive size when in flight."

He turned toward her fully, noting the relief in her face. So that is what was happening. His subordinate and friend had somehow been aware of the true state of powers without Taylor's interference. That merited investigation. But they were all on edge, especially the other two as they had not had as much interaction, nor stress testing, of Taylor as he did, so it was on him to tamper down the severity of the conversation. "It's good that both of us remember. That will make it easier to investigate and ultimately, learn about this new look at the world we've been dealt. I'm curious, though - how do you recall it? According to Taylor, and to my Shard, she had to disable memory suppression protocols for me to even understand her."

Miss Militia's smile was small and tired. "I… I don't know how I remember. I am a Noctis cape, so that might be it? I remember more than most do," she reasoned. "But Colin, you have no idea how good it feels to finally tell one of you… and to have you remember."

She hesitated - just a moment. "I thought I was going crazy."

Armsmaster didn't respond at first. For a moment, even his armor felt too still.

The idea that she'd suffered alone while standing beside him every day wasn't easy to digest.

He straightened, sympathy in his gaze and evident in his face. He made sure of that, given how they were partially costumed at the moment. "How many times have you told me?"

"I… I honestly lost count," she admitted, looking down at the floor.

Colin winced. Oh, that was very bad. "I… though it was not my own doing, I am sorry you got put through that with me as the perpetrator," he stated, attempting to provide the limited empathy he was capable of expressing.

Miss Militia, no… Hannah, shrugged. "I got used to it," she lamented, "though I won't pretend it wasn't lonely."

The room fell quiet again. Not the tense silence from earlier, but something slower. Heavier.

Armsmaster looked over at her, the sharp edge of his helmet tilting slightly. "If I had known, I would have tried to help."

"I know," she said, voice soft. "You were probably trying to help the only way you knew how, even if you didn't know what was happening. Remember your memory recall devices?"

Armsmaster grunted. "The ones that didn't work? Yes. Immaterial. I should have adapted faster."

She gave him a tired half-smile. "You were dealing with a… Shard lying to your brain every second of the day. I can't fault you for not seeing through that."

"Still." He shifted his weight, boots clicking faintly on the tile. "It won't happen again."

"It better not," she replied, and though her tone was light, there was a warmth in it now. Something newly repaired.

Colin looked at Hannah for a moment longer, nodded to her with a smile, then turned his head toward Renick. The man hadn't moved, but his fingers were steepled in front of his lips now, his eyes locked on nothing. He was calculating. Mourning something intangible.

Finally, with the faintest exhale, Renick sat forward. His movements were steady now. Methodical. Something had shifted behind his eyes - not acceptance, not resignation, but resolve forged in the furnace of exhaustion. He was far more composed now. The stillness in him wasn't peace - it was steel locking into place.

"Get me everything on Taylor Hebert. Every word. Every signal. Every building she's walked into. Every sighting. Every public record. I want timelines, incident logs, contact reports, and cross-reference data on everyone who's spoken to her. We need to understand what we're dealing with - before we're dealing with it, her, again."

Armsmaster nodded. "I'll have the data compiled and ready within the hour."

Renick didn't respond right away. His eyes drifted to the ceiling again. His voice was quiet when it returned.

"Let's just hope she doesn't decide we're not worth the effort, and make sure we don't lose anything else."


Elsewhere in the building, back in Wards HQ, the team sat together in uneasy silence. It was the same room. The same lights. The same walls. The same reinforced glass door they'd walked through as a group not even a full day ago, laughing awkwardly with Taylor, trying to be kind, trying to be normal.

The same room where Sophia Hess — masked and calm — had fired shadow-phased lethal crossbow bolts into Taylor's chest.

The Wards had been behind her. Almost directly behind her. They'd watched the bolts land, and had seen how Sophia was originally standing. Not with hesitation, not in panic. With purpose.

Now, the space felt wrong. Too big and too small at the same time. Every breath in the room felt borrowed.

Sophia's usual chair sat untouched near the end of the table. Nobody looked at it. Clockblocker had turned it sideways a while ago without comment, then exited to the rest of the PRT building.

The earlier judgment — all the second-guessing, the tension over Taylor's arrival, the whispered speculation — was gone. What remained was a brittle kind of silence, stretched so thin it felt like it might snap if anyone dared to speak too loudly.

Vista sat cross-legged on one of the chairs, manipulating a broken, twitching distortion of spacetime between her fingers. The ripple of compressed space kept slipping away from her, collapsing over and over like it didn't want to be held.

"Did she really... like, rewrite Shadow Stalker's power?" Kid Win asked, finally. His voice was small. Tired.

"More like tore it in half and stitched something else into it," Gallant muttered. His gauntlets were unpowered. His helmet rested on the table beside his arms. "The readings I was getting from her were nonsense. No known signature. No baseline. As far as my power is concerned? She wasn't Sophia. Nothing matched."

"She turned her pink," Aegis added. His voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was heavy. "That… that's not just symbolic. That's a cosmic-level 'fuck you.'"

Vista didn't look up. Her fingers twisted sharply, collapsing the last remnant of warped space in her palm.

"Sophia brought it on herself," she said. "But that? That was art."

They all nodded. Slowly. Mutedly. Not just in agreement, but in resignation.

None of them had moved when the bolts were in the air, as Sophia had pulled the trigger right before their door, previously a bastion of safety, was open. They weren't fast enough. Wouldn't have gotten in the way in time. Carlos had stepped forward, to at least try, as he was trained and his power let him survive. Missy had shouted. Chris had frozen. Dennis had reached forwards. But other than that, they'd all just stood there, too shocked, too uncertain.

Taylor hadn't even flinched. When the bolts hit, she just stared down at them - calm, almost curious, and said something wholly normal. Anyone would've said it, really, when they got shot in the chest with ineffective weapons unexpectedly.

But then she had looked up at Sophia - standing tall, proud, for a moment, before realizing the bolts had done nothing - and at that moment she wasn't scared. She wasn't just angry.

She was something else entirely.

They'd never forget how she bellowed out Sophia's name, like something way beyond any mere mortal.

And now, that memory hung over the room like a stormcloud no one wanted to admit was still forming.

The chime for the door sounded out, but none of the Wards bothered to move to put on any masks. Missy was frankly ready to just turn the entrance into a reverse portal so they didn't have to bother. Thankfully, when the door opened, they realized that what little worry might have existed wasn't needed.

Miss Militia stepped in, posture composed, voice steady. She didn't raise it. She didn't need to.

"Taylor Hebert is not to be approached, antagonized, or contacted unless under direct instruction," she said. "This is not punishment. It's protection. For you. And for her."

She walked to the center of the room and took a breath.

"She's not a Ward. I doubt she'll even consider it, after today. And she is not just a parahuman. What she is now… we're still learning. And until we understand it, we treat her with the same caution we'd treat any unknown. Because if something goes wrong, it won't just be another PR nightmare. It'll be unrecoverable."

She let that settle.

"She's not the enemy," she added, more softly. "But she is beyond anything we've ever classified."

Silence followed.

"She already knew, didn't she?" Vista asked after a moment. "About Sophia. About everything."

Miss Militia's eyes met hers. There was no pause this time. Just a small, solemn nod.

"Yes," she said. "It's likely she's known for a long time. I don't think she expected to find out we… considered her tormenter a hero, but… she probably knew a lot more than us the moment she set eyes on the building."

That hit harder than Sophia's confession.

Dean closed his eyes. Chris shut off his gauntlet. Missy spatial construct didn't reappear.

Miss Militia gave a few more brief orders - protocols, lockdown changes, discretionary clearance adjustments - then left. Her boots were the only sound as she walked out the door.

They didn't move. Not for a long time.

Then the door opened again.

Dennis stepped in, slow, quiet. His visor was up. His eyes were red.

He didn't say anything. Just crossed the room, sat down at the edge of the table, pulled out a water bottle, and drank.

No one asked him where he'd been. They didn't need to.

After a few long, unbearable minutes, he finally spoke.

"We have a lot to think about," he said.

Nobody disagreed.