Just a Phase [Worm]

She's able to make that choice, because she's able to make the choice to not comply with her probation requirements, at which point, either she's not actually on probation except for getting reduced pay, or they have to send her to Juvie, to serve the sentence she got put on probation as an alternative to serving.

Your guardian can maybe decide, that you will take 100 hours of community service instead of a week in Juvie, but they can't enforce it if you would truly rather the week in Juvie, because you can refuse to do that community service, and then you're going to get sent to Juvie, but wont have been forced into community service.

 

Well if she keeps up her non-compliance while on probabtion eventually they are going to find something she can't afford to lose or someway of containing her because while her power may seem absolute there are always work arounds to those things.

Also I am not sure if this is true or not but refusing to comply with a plea deal will lead to additional punishments stacked on top of the original punishment and I don't believe that Taylor would want to spend the rest of her teenage years in prison.

 

One of the factors that the PRT/Protectorate needs to take into account when dealing with Taylor is the fact that she is sixteen. From one side it means they can make a lot of her short term choices without her input, but in the long term it means that all binding agreements made on her name unilaterally end when she is 18yrs old. If they do things like forcing her on the Wards with a probation agreement that agreement will end with her age of majority and then they will have a legal adult bitter at the Protectorate, with a very valid case of abuse of authority regarding her time as a Ward of the State, pending lawsuits for previous illegalities and no reason whatsoever to work with the authorities or even to keep confidence of non-classified matters. As a PR issue it would be even more damaging that she already has on them and long term a villain with her capabilities and a bone to grind against the government would be a far greater risk than whatever short term benefits of railroading a juvie trial could gain them, in particular since holding or tracking her with her powerset is already a nightmare so any plan that relies on capture is very unreliable unless they call Eidolon for constant containment.

So I would say that even the hawks in the PRT would be hard pressed to justify any attemt to put her under probation under false or overblown charges without failing to give a pausible containtment plan at the short and long term, preferably one that doesn't need to keep the best Trump in the country acting as a truant officer.

 

I think that's up to the judge, and most judges are probably not going to stack additional punishment on someone, if they explicitly refused the plea deal, then had it signed anyway by their legal guardian.

And yes Taylor wouldn't want to spend her teenage years in prison, but she's stubborn enough, that if they screwed her over, by getting her sentenced to years of Juvie or probation, for a crime that even hardass judges tend to assign less than a months stay in Juvie for, and most judges just punish with a fine or community service, I could see her insisting on the Juvie punishment, because she would rather be a prisoner than a slave.

 

If the PRT really wanted to give her no choice she might not even get the option of Juvie they might just go wards probabtion or we stick you with fines that you will pay for the rest of your life.

 

For what? Seriously, unless they want a major media story, about how they pressganged a minor by way of bullshit extreme fines, they need actual justification for fines, they can highball those fines, but it's one thing to go fines for this crime are recommended to be between 10 dollars and 100 dollars, so make it 100 dollars, so we have more fines we can forgive in return for her agreeing to probation, it's quite another to go, fines for this crime are recommended to go between 10 dollars and 100 dollars, but screw recommendations, make it a hundred thousand dollars, and do the same to the other dozen minor fines we could get to stick to her.

 

Just saying that if the PRT really wanted to force Taylor onboard they can go to some great length and that is just their semi-legal options, because remember the PRT/Protectorate is backed by Cauldron in areas outside of Brockton Bay so who is to stay that if Taylor becomes a bit enough problem they won't step in with a unknown master who makes Taylor believe she wants to comply or something.

 

If it escalate all the way to Cauldron then yes, but that would be some serious escalation, Cauldron don't even master villains into joining the Protectorate, unless Contessa determined that recruiting Taylor was essential to the path, Cauldron certainly wouldn't interfere because a teenage Parahuman want to be an independent hero instead of a Ward.

The PRT can theoretically escalate to extremes, but they're unlikely to do so, they don't escalate that much for actual villains, would they really do it for a recalcitrant Ward?

 

It could be that they determine Taylor's immunity to thinker powers warrants the response, best to keep the anti-thinker on hand in case the need ever arises and having her as an independent with a grudge against the PRT would make that difficult.

The PRT could escalate to that extreme if they thought letting Taylor go off on her own would spell a large amount of trouble for them, because what she has against them could hurt more than most villains.

 

Also they can't get her for under the table work until after April 15 the next year. She has plenty of time to file the paperwork with the IRS. They can bust the employer for accepting a minor without proper documentation and filing the proper paperwork with the IRS, but not the minor in question. There they can only get her if she fails to pay taxes on her wages, and if they don't set up things properly by filing the paperwork (I-9 form among others), it's up to her to report the income the next year. If she reports it, she hasn't committed any crimes.

Can a Guardian make a plea deal when the minor says they didn't commit the crime and wants to fight the charges?
If the minor then refuses to comply with the community service, can they demand their day in court or are they sent to jail because their guardian decided they are going to jail even if they claim to be innocent?
In any case, that wasn't what happened here, that was Implacable.

 

Yeah it wasn't what happened here, my point was more, if Taylor was sentenced to a week in Juvie or 200 hours of community service, and the PRT decided to use their authority as her guardian to change that sentence to probation in the wards, I seriously doubt the judge would stack major additional punishment on her, for not complying with that deal, they would require her to go to Juvie or complete that community service, but if made clear the deal for probation in the Wards was made against her will, I don't think the judge would add additional punishment for not following the deal.

 

Some things that most people forget about plea deals in the US justice system is that first cops can’t offer a plea deal, just give their recommendations to the guy DA in charge of the case or cases. Also that federal charges, state charges and local charges can only be offered by the DA’s in question for those crimes so someone who commits those three crimes needs to negotiate each deal with a different DA. And finally that neither cops nor DA’s have the last word on a plea deal, that is the privilege of the judge carrying the sentencing even if is seldom used due to political and procedural complications, who can and has in occasions nullified a deal when he decides its against the interest of justice.

Frankly depending on the judge he might actually exclude probation as part of a plea agreement the moment he sees Taylor isn’t on board. Punishments of a minor are with the strict purpose of reformation, not punitive, and they are supposed to take into account the welfare of the juvenile criminal. Service in the Wards on the other hand carry a not inconsiderable amount of risk so a judge might see during sentencing the obvious reluctance to enter the Wards and decide that forcing a non-violent teen to serve her sentence in law enforcement when her original crimes were done specifically to avoid serving against her will would be counterproductive and instead offer alternative forms of probation and community service.

 

That's actually what happened in Implacable now that I think about it the PRT sent the situation to the DA he said wards probabtion, but the problem was that Taylor never saw her day in court because of Piggot trying to stall the investigation.

 

I think it was more that Danny got pressured into settling out of court, where the charges against Taylor would be dropped in return for her becoming a probationary Ward, which still would allow Taylor to renege on the deal and get her day in court, but Danny taking that plea deal, meant he had already pled guilty on her behalf, so her chances of not being sent to Juvie if it went to court was really bad, as they had a guilty plea her father made on her behalf, as proof that she was the guilty party.

 

It also didn't help that Piggot was working against getting it to court so as to keep her pet psycho on the team, which is a shame she could have avoided the mess she ran into and kept Taylor on the team maybe even on probabtion as well if she had just done her damn job and arrested Sophia when it became clear what happened.

Also since this story is based on Implacable who wants to bet that some of the things the YG is digging up in the ENE department are the same as in that story.

 

I agree on that

 

Honestly the PRT as a whole could have avoided Taylor being non-compliant in this story as well if they had actually punished Sophia and Emma instead of just shipping Taylor away like she was the one who did something wrong, hell they might not have had to lose Emma just put her on probabtion to show that she is being punished and send Sophia to juvie for violating her probabtion to show Taylor that something is being done to her tormentors. But unfortunetly the ENE devison is run by the worst mathematician (Piggot) who thought having two unstable wards was better than having one relatively stable ward or a ward that is less likely to cause a massive incident in the long run.

 

Piggot calculations ran less towards having or not extra parahumans, after all Wards are barely considered additional manpower even in BB, and more about not having to deal with a PR disaster and another potentially rebellious Ward under her command.Frankly from a practical perspective is quite likely that even instant and overzealous punishment of Emma and Sophia wouldn't have changed the new recruit's mind, and the most likely outcome is that while Sophia could have been seen as breaching parole and thrown back to juvie Emma's punishment would not have reached the point of jail, her parents wouldn't approve for moving her towards Boston so she would be under probation in BB and having two hostile Wards in the same place is still a terrible idea.

In that sense the urgent relocation of the new unbranded Ward with a father who isn't a lawyer manage to accomplish Piggot's short-term goals since she was able to keep the scandal out of the newspapers and sending Taylor to Boston meant that she is not the one having to deal with that particular headache. From her PoV the only problem she has is that Taylor managed to unleash the YG against her command despite the distance so she has a lot less freedom for using the Wards against minor threats and for patrolling relatively safe areas (not to mention the fines and paperwork) which is stil better than having YG do an investigation after one Ward is send back to jail.

 

Man, this thread is still alive and going? It's been months since the last update. Any good omakes drop to keep this going or something?

Well, not to overly defend the ENE PRT, because, well, you're right, but it does kinda make sense that Piggot would refuse to sacrifice any Parahuman under her command, if that ol' fanon in regards to the Cauldron Experiment meaning that Alexandria refuses all support requests to the ENE is true here. IF it's fundamentally impossible, given Piggot's experience, that she'll ever get proper support from the greater PRT infrastructure, it's logical that she'd do fucked up calculus of "Okay I can lose two parahumans, and gain one completely untested parahuman that may well keep holding a grudge against us, or I can send her the fuck away, and keep both tested parahumans with decent arrest records, while also ahving something to hold over their heads for-fucking-ever".

I mean, it's still fucked up and kind of dumb, but given the caveat of Cauldron fucking about, or Piggot wanting the sheer numbers to try and hold the Empire/ABB/etc. all in check despite the VAST parahuman numbers disadvantage, it's not entirely illogical. I can see ways to reason out why she did it beyond the regular Piggot brand "bitches be crazy, yo".

Though that relies on fanon, and I can't recall if greater PRT support was cut off canonically or not, or if it was just implied via the 'experiment' in canon.

This too, yeah. If not for Taylor managing to grab the YG, her only other way to fuck over the PRT would be going villain, which would be something the PRT could spin positively for themselves.

In the short term, it was a good move in the sense of "I keep two wards that I now have even more ironclad control over, and a massive PR problem is kicked the fuck out of my city", and in the long term, it's pretty tough for it to bite her on the ass since it relies on Taylor proving PRT was assholes (*Laughs in PR departments*) or Taylor going villain (which would give the PRT reason to discredit anything she says).

It's fucked up all around, but I can see a chain of logic there. Fucked up logic, but logic nonetheless.

 

There is nothing she "can't afford to lose" that they aren't required to provide for her or else they're the ones in trouble.

That's why the mentorship would be as dumb as the pizza party and tour. Taylor doesn't care, and if they try and make her she can literally do exactly the same thing there and there's nothing they can do about it.

Especially because she's not an actual Ward proper, and therefore can't be compelled to play pattycakes the way a reluctant Kid Win might with Armsmaster.

That the YG portion of the PRT Quest documentation specifically states that putting Wards in situations that exacerbate their trauma is explicitly one of the things that will attract Sauron's eye, makes them all the more self-destructive a proposition.

Unless it's an au element that has only been revealed in a comment only over on A03 after I started reading the fic here, she's not sixteen for some months yet. The dates are part of the chapters, after all.

Which, given the recency of her trigger event, is why I'd say she also has a pretty definitive case for abuse of authority given aforementioned Youth Guard thoughts on trauma and their charges.

Danny got pressured into signing her up for the Wards instead of her getting taken to court for eventual jail if not Birdcage. There are still things that have to happen and people that have to be involved regardless with such a plea deal, the exact same as we have here with Taylor becoming a ward of the state.

Granted, we can see that Boston is skipping aspects just as hard as the ENE did in Implacable by the fact her guardian is never present at anything involving her, and is basically rubber-stamping things as her boss demands.

 

If it wasn't for how hard transferring Emma would be, transferring Emma and Sophia would have been a better idea, put Emma on probation, make Sophias probation stricter, and extend it some years into adulthood, then see if there's not a department who will trade her either 1 unproblematic Parahuman, or 2 problematic Parahumans for them.

The reason that plan don't work, is that Emma isn't exactly easy to transfer, if it wasn't for that, keeping Taylor and trading Emma and Sophia away, would be the far better plan, after all, it's easy to argue that if you're transferring 2 Parahumans out of your city, then you should be getting at least 1 transfer in to keep your numbers up.

And yes that would have been better for Piggot, because either she get 2 Parahumans for Emma and Sophia, leaving her with 1 more total Parahumans since she recruited Taylor, or she get 1 Parahuman for Emma and Sophia, leaving her with the same number of Parahumans, but either the Parahuman she get would be better in some way than Emma and Sophia are(either stronger or less of a discipline problem) or Piggot would get to have the director she traded with owe her a favor, since the deal gave that director more than it cost them.

If she had traded with director Armstrong for example, she might have convinced him to agree to trade Weld for Emma and Sophia(since Weld is a C53 and so don't have much preventing him from transferring) and having Weld and Taylor on her Ward team, would be much better than having Emma and Sophia.

 

Even if Emma's parents would have been willing to allow a transfer it would have been extremely hard for Piggot to find someone who would accept the exchange. Everyone knows how desperate is the situation of the ENE Protectorate and Wards, and that means that everyone would suspect something afowl with such a deal and investigate on their own before accepting, and the investigation would be enlightening, since the two girls could be defined as headaches at best and potential threats to the stability of the National Wards Program as worst.

Sophia would be labeled as an unrepentant sadist who couldn't resist the temptation to torture a civilian girl into triggering even as she was supposed to be under probation and heavier scrutiny than the rest of the Wards. Anyone who accepts her in their city would have to devote many resources to keep her constantly monitored at all times, and there would have been a relatively large chance the internal investigation would end with the girl thrown to Juvie for her transgressions, therefore being a net loss for any team who gets her. And Emma is worse, she is not under probation but a five minutes talk with her after she realized she tortured her former best friend into triggering as a psychotic form of stress management, with what would be known of her personality and with minimal psychological tests to prove otherwise she might become an active threat to any vulnerable member of a Ward team she was introduced. In other words anyone who accepts those two would not be not be paying Piggot with either a Ward or political capital, instead they would be demanding one hell of a favor from her to accept those walking legal nightmares.

And there is the issue of time, for the deal to be of any use when dealing with Phase the exchange would need to be done ASAP, with Piggot all but throwing those girls out before Taylor could get over the initial shock of her trigger and that disastrous first meeting. If she is lucky she might discover someone willing to accept one or both girls without investigating too deeply on the reasons why they are being kicked out of their hometown so abruptly, but she would not have time to negociate a profitable deal especially something that wiuld net her a serious favor, particularly since that favor would need to be used at once since once they meet the girls and have a chat with them they would probably declare that the deal was done in very bad faith and declare it null. As for a transfer moving one child from one city to another takes time to make arragements with the school, allowing them to say goodbye properly and other miscelaneous chores, even for a Case 53 without deep links within the community so a same week transfer would be just as hard and at least in Weld case it would probably be put on hold once the mess with the ENE Wards Program becomes evident. After all two out of eight Wards becoming either criminals or criminally insane without anyone noticing until there was a career busting incident is the kind of place you don't send additional minors to be corrupted.

 

Problem Wards are a thing, those 2 are problematic, but the only one who are more problematic than the average probationary cape is Sophia, and that's only because she's shown that you can't be sure she will keep to her probation without surveillance, not because she's worse than the average probationary cape, remember the only other probationary cape we know of is Assault, and his crime is breaking capes out of birdcage transports, which mean Assault let murderers like Marquis and Hookwolf free for money, that's every bit as bad a crime as Sophias and worse than Emmas.

That's why I said she could trade them for either 1 cape in good standing, or 2 other problem capes, she isn't getting 2 non-probationary capes who don't have serious problems for them, but she might get a violent vigilante from Los Angeles, and a prolific thief who is suspected to be a kleptomaniac for them, alternatively she might get 1 cape who isn't problematic for them, if she trade 2 to 1.

But Emma isn't anything special by the standard of the probation program, she's actually one of the less problematic ones, and Sophia is only specially problematic, because she was already under probation and broke it.

 

The thing is if Piggot did decide to transfer both Sophia and Emma out of ENE she sure as hell wouldn't send them both to the same department. Because if anything this has taught her is that those two can't be trusted together and will just bring out/enable the other's worst impulses and juat cause problems if they are left to work together or even interact together. So yeah if Piggot did want to transfer them out she would need to convince two departments to take them rather than one which would have taken more time and probably gotten her less in return.

 

Beggers can't be choosers, it is a certainty that Brockton Bay is not the only place hard up for capes.

Or with a cape that has become a hot potato.


Getting rid of Emma and Sophia is easy. It's replacing them with somecape useful that would be hard... but not impossible. If Piggot sets her sights low enough she is sure to replace her two problem children with two other children who'll be a different problem but not so immediately toxic.

Heck; canon Taylor world famous super-villain, major gang-leader and warlord, outright killed a PRT director and a member of the Triumvirate and there were still takers for her. Leary, reluctant but still takers.

 

Best thing Piggot can do is get two problem children from seperate departments so they don't have a preexisting relationship like Emma and Sophia had because that was the main reason why they were so problematic, well besides Sophia being a sociopath and corrupting Emma. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if Emma was also told to keep an eye on Sophia at Winslow due to her being a full ward and Sophia being on probabtion and look how that turned out.

 

They don't need to be sent to different cities, from what we have seen, they actually do good work together as capes, it's in civilian life that they're a toxic combination, so if you send them to different schools, then sending them to the same city isn't a bad idea, since from what little we have seen, they work well together as capes, so as long as you separate them in their civilian lives, letting them work together as capes is okay.

Sophia and Emma are also inherently less toxic if transferred, since then they aren't the popular girls at school, and don't have prior knowledge to maximize their cruelty, assign someone to watch them so they don't fall back into bullying, and don't send them to the same school, and transferring them to the same city is okay.

 

If its about them being good working together that may not be an issue for Piggot because based on Emma's own internal monologue during her interlude she and Sophia are on the outs due to Emma coming clean about what she and Sophia did to Taylor, also I am not sure they would be a good pairing as capes either because their powers are very opposed to each other with Sophie's weakness to electricity and Emma generating electricity so they constantly run the risk of friendly fire.

I do agree that removing their social circle would work to hinder their efforts at least for Emma but for Sophia she was always the physical one in the abuse and you don't need to know who your hitting to hit them. Honestly Sophia wpuld do best being transfered to a containment zone while Emma can just be transfered to a different city on probabtion.

 

The problem about moving Emma to another city is that from an outsider's perspective she is a big and resource intensive headache, at least from the Wards perspective. After an investigation and the much delayed review of her case by a psychologist what do they have? A traumatized teen from a barely aborted mutilation and kidnapping attempt who went years without theraphy and under the toxic influence of another traumatized teen. And the main way Emma externalized that trauma? By relentlessly physically and psychologically torturing a former friend every possible occasion for years, both as a way of stress release and as a way of bringing said friend to her level of understanding. All while keeping a fairly effective mask as a properly adapted Ward.

That by itself would say to any responsible Ward handler that Emma would need constant monitoring both at the HQ and during school, particularly since she was capable of hiding her worst instincts from faculty, PRT personnel and other Wards for an extended period. Additionally she would have to max out the budget for therapy for the next months if not years since thanks to a father who wasn't smart enough to talk about the attack with someone she has been going on for years with untreated trauma which expressed itself in the most damaging way possible short of murder. All while she is benched from patrols since again regardless of the punishments doled before for her actions you do not sent a mentally unbalanced trauma victim into patrols where there is the chance of combat, or for that matter you do not send out someone with an extensive history of traumatizing people with another teen without some close supervision in case she returns to bad habits.

And those are the reasonable precautions to what she already showed capable of. Now as an habitual watcher of the Criminal Minds tv show I can see how moving her away from BB can make things far worse. For starters one of the reasons for traumatizing Taylor was stress release. Now how would a parahuman with a power designed to find the weak points of others would deal with the stress of moving to a new city without family, friends, and her normal coping mechanisms? Will she go all out against the next pickpocket she sees and the local department will have to deal with attempted manslaughter? Will she find a surrogate Taylor in whatever school she is send and try to bully her into suicide once more? Will she try that with a Ward? After all Wards are by definition teens (and younger) traumatized by their Trigger Events and therefore with plenty of psychological weak points to abuse.

And what if she instead finds another problem child and starts another codependant relationship, part of her motivation for torturing Taylor was to make her a 'survivor' and being able to accept her into her social circle again, so if she finds someone with those characteristics or those from Sophia who says she won't start another little psycho team.

All those factors need to be considered by someone moving her to a new location, to the point that I would argue that three months of so of voluntary confinement into a psychiatric institution for evaluation and counseling would be a wiser choice than moving her to another city.

 

That's assumed true to some degree for pretty much any cape, capes aren't well adjusted people, your arguments would be good, if it wasn't for the fact that Assault is considered a valuable member of the Protectorate, and have been right from when he was recruited, since they were ready to risk pissing Battery off by asking if she would partner with him, to get him to accept probation.

Capes aren't well adjusted people, Emma is more problematic than a Ward in good standing, but not particularly problematic by probationary Ward standards, so she absolutely can be traded for a problem Ward from another city, or her and Sophia can be traded as a set for 1 non-problematic Ward.

Your argument would be good, if it wasn't for the fact that it contrast with canon heavily, any cape short of a serial killer can get in on probation(and if the serial killer had useful powers, and they believed they could contain them, I'm not sure they would say no to putting the serial killer on probation) Emma is problematic yes, but she's far less problematic than some of the capes the probation program have accepted, and can be pretty much solved, by giving her extra therapy, and assigning someone to follow her around for a few years to ensure she don't backtrack.

That amount of resources is enough to lessen her worth to them, but not enough to render her more expensive than she's worth, a thousand dollar extra monthly therapy budget is probably enough for the therapy half, and the surveilance half only require 1 person to keep watch on her, so the extra cost of having Emma on the team is probably less than 100k a year, and after a year or 2, you can scale back on extra therapy and surveilance, that's enough to make her less desirable, but it's not enough to make her not desirable.

Sophia need roughly the same amount of extra resources assigned to her, so valuing them at worth as much as 1 non-problematic cape together seems about right.