seeing_octarine
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Parahumans who aren't really all there and have the mental remains filled in with shardstuff tend to be the really dangerous ones.
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A Darker Path [Worm Fanfic]
- Thread starter Ack
- Start date
Parahumans who aren't really all there and have the mental remains filled in with shardstuff tend to be the really dangerous ones.
ConsiderableHat
Hot glue beard disaster.
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Alexandria, for example. Became a lot more reasonable when she was dead and her corpse was possessed by Pretender.
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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Most of him is there, some of the time. Just not all of him, all the time.
Sogen
Versed in the lewd.
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I thought that was more Pretender being a more reasonable person than Rebecca was by the time she died.
Part Eighty-Eight: Special Delivery
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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A Darker Path
Part Eighty-Eight: Special Delivery
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
To: Panacea
From: Atropos
Subject: Gonna need you in about half an hour
Could you please be alone in your bedroom in about half an hour? Bring the leg of ham that's going to get delivered to your front door in five minutes. You'll need it for biomass.
To: Atropos
From: Panacea
Subject: Re: Gonna need you in about half an hour
What? Why? Who have you hurt?
To: Panacea
From: Atropos
Subject: Re: Re: Gonna need you in about half an hour
Nobody. You'll see. Also, prep for a mess.
Monday Afternoon, March 14 2011
New York PRT Building,
Shebang
Alice stood on the roof of the building alongside Director Piggot. Accompanying them was a Trooper Ballinger, whose main reason for being there was apparently the fact that he was over six feet tall and built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Alice had a lot of equipment to take along with her, and it seemed he'd been tapped as her pack-horse for the time being.
She didn't actually have a problem with this. One of the downsides of being a Tinker, as far as she could figure, was the sheer amount of equipment she had to lug around with her if she was trying to analyse and defuse esoteric energies. With regards to Clockblocker (she still had trouble believing it wasn't the name of some joke character on a cartoon show), he'd been able to come to her, but this wasn't possible for the next stage of the project, so she and her equipment had to leave the lab. Thus, Ballinger.
One of the hidden advantages of being in the Protectorate, she was discovering, was the number of minions (read: PRT troopers) available to fetch and carry for them, if necessary. Trooper Ballinger didn't seem to have a problem with it either, especially since all indications were that the job would not involve going up against hostile capes. Alice certainly didn't intend to go into harm's way any time soon, at least until she had a better handle on her capabilities.
The helicopter coming in from the north slowed as it neared the building, then flared preparatory to landing. It didn't look big enough to comfortably carry Alice and her luggage as well as the Director and Ballinger, but appearances had been known to be deceiving. Though why the Director might have called in a chopper from out of town, Alice wasn't sure.
Its wheels touched down, then it sank onto its suspension as the engines began to spool down and the rotors slowed. The side door popped open and a red-clad cape stepped out, followed by a familiar teenage figure. After Clockblocker came a tall black man in a stylised martial-arts outfit, then finally a kid in a pastel-hued pseudo-military costume, complete with scaled-down military-style helmet. Alice frowned; she wasn't sure who she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this.
"Director Piggot," the cape in red said with a broad grin. "Good to see you again. How's life treating you in the Big Apple?"
"I'm getting by, Assault, thank you very much." Piggot even gave the man a brief smile as she replied. "Tenebrae, Miss Medic, this is Shebang. Shebang: Assault, Tenebrae, Miss Medic."
"Hi!" gushed the girl who had to be Miss Medic. "You're gonna be turning off Grey Boy loops? That's so cool!"
"Well, we're going to be working at it," Alice corrected her, though the enthusiasm was infectious. "Don't know if we'll make it on the first try." She turned her head and addressed Director Piggot. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What exactly is going on here? I thought this was only a test run."
"It is." Director Piggot seemed unfazed by her query. "Assault is the Protectorate volunteer to escort the Wards on this mission. Tenebrae is Miss Medic's caregiver; it's in her Wards contract that he escorts her on any missions like this. Clockblocker is along in case you manage to actually free the subject today; his job will be to freeze the freed subject so Miss Medic can get a good look at them and diagnose what needs to be fixed. Miss Medic is along to save anyone whose life needs saving."
"Oh, so that's what I'm here for," Clockblocker said in tones of enlightenment. "I got told I was needed again, and I was like 'didn't she already figure out how to break my power?'."
Alice ignored the interjection. "But what if I don't bust the loop this time? They'll have come all this way for nothing." And I'll look like an idiot in front of them, she didn't quite say out loud.
"Not for nothing." Assault raised his finger. "When you're designing new and exciting ways to blow up the scenery, you've got fire extinguishers and stuff standing by, right? Just in case?"
"Usually, yeah," she admitted. "But what … oh." Belatedly, she realised what he was getting at.
"Yeah. 'Oh.'" He clicked his tongue as he 'fired' dual finger-guns at her. "Better to have the people on hand and not need them than not have them and need them. Besides, getting the Wards out and about every now and again gives them a sense of purpose and reduces disciplinary problems." From the flat, uninflected tone he put on, Alice got the impression that he was either quoting or paraphrasing from a manual of regulations.
"Not that Miss Medic has any ongoing disciplinary issues," Tenebrae noted.
Assault nodded. "You're not wrong there. Kid's about as buttoned-down as you can get."
"I'm glad to hear it." Gathering the capes in by eye, Director Piggot herded them toward the second helipad, while Trooper Ballinger followed along behind with the cases full of Alice's equipment. "Strider will be arriving shortly, to convey you to the Grey Boy victim we believe will be the best test case for Shebang's attentions. I won't be coming along, so Assault will be in command of this mission. I look forward to your after-action reports."
"And that's … it?" Alice flinched as the flat crack heralded the appearance of the teleporter on the helipad. "We're just going to go and do it?"
"Would you prefer six months of paperwork back and forth before we decided to go ahead?" Piggot's tone was both rhetorical and sarcastic. "Go. Shoo. Make me proud."
Atropos
Cherie watched as I pulled on a protective nitrile glove, then put one of my spare set of Atropos gloves on over the top of them. "That's a level of protection you don't normally take, even when you're handling the stuff Riley made to kill powers with," she observed. "Should I be worried?"
"Not particularly." I flexed my fingers inside the double layered glove and decided it would do. "This latest concoction I got her to throw together is nastier than the other stuff, and I'll have exactly zero room for error. My power says I need the glove."
"Nastier?" Cherie didn't sound thrilled to hear that. "How the hell is it worse than the other stuff?"
"Because it doesn't kill your powers." I grinned at her look of incomprehension. "Tell you later."
Leaving the shears and the pistol on the sofa—I wasn't going to need them—I set up the next few jumps. They were going to take pinpoint timing, but that was fine; my power was good at pinpoint timing. The not so fine aspect was what I was about to put myself through.
The things I do to maintain my brand.
Finally, I pulled on my mask and put the hat on at a jaunty angle. I knew damn well Cherie could read what bits and pieces of emotion I let slip through, but I wasn't giving her enough to realise what I was about to do.
Touching two fingers to the brim of my hat, I stepped backward into the smoky doorway as it formed behind me. The living room vanished, replaced by a scrubby hillside overlooking farmland. Abandoned farmland no doubt, entirely due to the imminent arrival of Sleeper, but farmland all the same.
It was colder than Brockton Bay here, more so than could be accounted for by the fact that it was four or five degrees farther north. A chilly wind swept across the hillside, blowing my long-coat dramatically sideways as I looked westward toward the oncoming storm generated by Sleeper. It was hard to focus on, mainly because part of the visual effect was generated within the optic nerve without first going through the retina, which was just one of the little tricks his power liked to inflict on the world.
Right then, the ongoing violation of space-time manifesting in our limited three-dimensional perception as a 'storm' was five miles across, and he had no physical body inside it. It was his fastest mode of movement, maybe two hundred miles per hour, but it also tired him. It wasn't long before he'd have to let his real body regain its form, and he'd stop to rest.
This would be my cue to go say hi.
In the meantime, I had a note to treat with Riley's newest concoction. I couldn't just put the stuff on it that killed powers … well, I could, but his powers were literally keeping him alive. Without them to keep his bullet-lacerated brainmeats in a (mostly) workable state, he would go into seizures within a few seconds, be in a coma in twenty, and be dead in five minutes.
I'd thought about bringing in Riley or Amy to fix his brain injury, but neither one was an option if he had to be forcibly depowered first. Amy was still emotionally fragile; fixing a brain injury was one thing, but doing it for a mass murderer whose vital signs were crashing hard at the same time might be a bit much for her. While Riley would likely be willing to take it on, the window of opportunity was too narrow. By the time she got to where she could start fixing stuff, a lot of what was him would be irretrievably gone.
It was true that killing Sleeper (accidentally or otherwise) would absolutely cement my rep as Can Actually Kill Anything (Yes, Really; Watch Me), but I didn't want to End him without actually giving him a chance to turn things around first. The act of killing still didn't bother me; I was just as pragmatic about it as I had been since getting my powers. However, Dragon had made a good point about not only being reliable, but having the appearance of reliability.
There were quite a few national powers currently observing Sleeper's progress, most of whom had spotted me already. If I just went in there and ganked him (in Cherie's inimitable phrasing) while they were watching, it would be a data point for them, but in the wrong direction.
It wouldn't matter that Sleeper was someone they all wanted dead anyway. If I was seen apparently violating my self-imposed strictures, someone would inevitably take it as evidence that I'd been paid a bounty under the table to do it, and the understanding I'd carefully crafted with the international community would take a huge step backward.
Very shortly afterward, I'd get a diplomatically worded offer of a few hundred million to arrange the End of someone like Moord Nag. The money might vary; so, too, might the target. But they'd start with large amounts, pointing me at people who were very much a negative influence on society. Bit by bit, the amounts would decrease, ramping up only when they wanted me to kill someone who wasn't all that bad, but who was a hindrance to their plans.
Well, this was the meat of at least one proposal that had been laid out by a governmental body based less than five hundred miles from Brockton Bay. Human nature being what it was, there were others of a similar nature being fostered farther afield. Yeah, good luck with that. I couldn't force people to stop being assholes, but I could absolutely refuse to fall in line with their designs for me.
So long as they indulged in no more than wishful thinking, I was happy to let them waste their time and effort trying to figure out how to move the first step out of the planning stage. The moment any of them tried to actually do something about it, I would be paying them a visit and bringing my good friend Mr Pump Action Shotgun along to air his opinions about Kneecaps and Privileges.
But it wasn't going to happen today, or any day soon. Sleeper was going to survive the next twenty-four hours, because the concoction I was applying to the note wouldn't take effect until then, if at all.
Of course, me just delivering the note and surviving would also add to my ongoing legend, so there was that.
It was still going to suck, though.
The eye-twisting storm slowed its onward advance when its leading edge was barely five yards from me, as my power had calculated. I finished brushing the liquid onto the note, then put the cap back on the container and folded my hand around the note. This was why I had needed the extra glove; my regular one wouldn't protect my hand well enough, and I had to maintain a hold on it for reasons which would soon become evident.
I moved toward the edge of the storm with measured steps; between one step and the next, the first teleport kicked in. As it did so, I let myself fall forward, appearing in a rocky niche with the storm swirling and raging just outside. My coat lost a chunk out of one corner as the twisting matter alteration caught it, but that was okay; it wasn't the one I usually wore.
Pressing into the niche, I watched as the distorted air followed me in. Sleeper wasn't fully aware of everything that happened within his sphere of influence, but the 'brain' aspect of his powers knew I was there. God only knew how he would've been if he were fully compos mentis, but for the most part it acted like a massive immune system, locating and either destroying or neutralising any potential threat from the outside.
This was why the note was clenched tightly in my fist rather than in my pocket. To put it brutally, my pockets just weren't going to survive. As part of my sleeve fizzed and sparkled, I was fully aware that anything I wasn't personally hanging on to was likely to suffer an inevitable end. This was already too close for comfort, and it was only going to get worse.
At the ten-second mark, the teleporter kicked in again, depositing me in a barn which was in the process of being enthusiastically demolished by the reality storm. I grabbed an already-teetering stack of hay bales and pulled them over on top of me; they were heavy, but not so much that it was a chore to keep breathing. My mask managed to filter out the worst of the heavy dust swirling around in my tiny refuge, which was good, because I needed to get a nice deep breath of air.
I could feel the mental aspect of Sleeper's power zeroing in on me again, and the gradual lightening of the hay-bale burden above me. The hay didn't make for a very sturdy barrier, but it was bulky, so it lasted exactly long enough. I felt my left boot-heel go just as the teleporter pulled me out of there once more. A spark of pain told me that I'd lost part of my actual heel at the same time.
The rear part of my hat-brim, the back of my long-coat, and some of the skin off my back, flashed to nothingness as I appeared inches above the surface of a stream. I fell, and was submerged, before anything more could happen; the water was absoutely freezing, numbing the open wound on my back. Above all, I kept my fist clenched around that damn note.
Above me, Sleeper's power lashed at the water itself, exploding great swathes of it into steam; fortunately, I was being swept downstream before it could get to me. It felt as though icy daggers were slashing at the intact parts of my skin, but it was only the cold, not more of his power. Not yet, anyway. I drew my knees up to my chest just as another part of my long-coat was caught and evaporated; before the rest of me could be likewise shredded, I teleported.
The next refuge my power found me was a hollowed out cut-bank, possibly the lair of an animal that had fled before the advent of Sleeper's power scouring the land. It lasted me the ten seconds, though I lost two fingers off my left hand, and some of the wrist. I was committed now; there was only one way out, and it wasn't the way I'd come in by.
Jump by jump, skip by skip, losing a chunk of my forearm muscle here and three toes there, I made my way through the maelstrom toward Sleeper. It was impossible for my power to find me a refuge that didn't brush me up against his ravening ability, but it was able to keep me alive and moving, so that was the best I could get.
Pain lashed through me from my mounting catalogue of injuries. If it weren't for my power, I wouldn't have been able to go on, but I was determined to get the note to Sleeper, no matter what it took. That was my sole focus.
Finally, I ended up at the small farmhouse he'd decided was a good place to rest. Sitting at the table, reading aloud to himself from a remarkably tattered and dog-eared book, he looked up in surprise as I appeared before him, bloody and wounded, with tatters of my costume hanging off me. My left leg wasn't working so good since most of the calf muscle had been torn away, but I was standing on it anyway. "Hi," I gritted in what I guessed was fluent Russian, as I slapped the slightly worse-for-wear folded note onto the pages in front of him with my one good hand. "You've just been served."
Before he could muster his powers to obliterate me from existence, the teleporter generated its smoky doorway behind me, and I lurched backward through it. It was so close that I'd had to time the portal to shut off before I was all the way through. In doing so, it took my right arm clear off just below the shoulder, and my right leg at the knee. Given that the alternative was to have his power billow through and destroy everything within three city blocks, I figured I got off lightly.
But my power could only keep me upright and moving for so long, and I was rapidly running out of gas. This was why my last teleport sent me to the best place I could go for help.
As I toppled toward the carefully-placed plastic sheet—good thinking, Amy, way to go—I saw not one but two shocked expressions looking my way.
Oh, boy.
Panacea
Half an hour had been just enough time for Amy to accept the leg of ham from the delivery guy and sneak it upstairs to her room, then grab the spare shower curtain from the storage closet and spread it over her carpet. If Atropos wanted her to prep for a mess, then she was absolutely going to prep for a mess. As the last five minutes ticked down, she was still trying to figure out what was going on, with little success.
And then Vicky opened her door and leaned in. "Hey, Ames, I was … uh, why do you have a leg of ham on your bed? And why is there a shower curtain on your floor?"
"Sh-sh-sh-sh!" Amy hissed urgently. "Come in! Shut the door!" Vicky, she could trust to keep a secret. Everyone else was likely to either ask awkward questions like 'why did you just do what she said?' and 'why didn't you come tell us?' or just yell at her.
Obediently, Vicky entered the room and closed the door carefully behind her. "I'm going to assume this isn't a Parian thing," she said, hitching one eyebrow slightly. "So, my second guess is … Atropos."
"Yeah." Amy nodded jerkily, keeping a watch on the plastic out of the corner of her eye. "She messaged me half an hour ago, asked me to be in here with biomass. Said to prep for a mess."
"Shit." Vicky breathed the word. "Shit, shit, fuck. Did she say who was going to need it?"
Amy's throat was tight with worry. "I asked her who she'd hurt. She said nobody, and that I'd see."
"Doesn't mean she hasn't hurt someone since," Vicky pointed out pragmatically. "Do you, uh, do you do this sort of thing often? Just do something because she asked you to?"
"Not often." Amy decided to amend the statement toward the truth. "We've done it a bit. But always to do something good. Even if I didn't know it was good at the time." She found herself digging her nails into her palm.
"When did she say she'd be here?"
"Half an—oh, shit!" Amy jerked to her feet as a familiar smoky doorway appeared at the far end of the plastic shower curtain.
Atropos fell out of it, lunging her left arm outward as the portal closed behind her. When they'd gone to help out Damsel of Distress, Amy had been warned not to linger, and now she saw why. In closing, the portal had sheared off Atropos' right arm and part of her leg, and that wasn't the full extent of her injuries by a long way.
Collapsing in a way that suggested consciousness was rapidly fading, Atropos didn't quite hit the floor before Vicky was there, catching her and lowering her to the plastic. "Holy fuck, what happened to her?" Vicky asked, staring at the tattered costume, with large pieces just sheared away, along with the flesh under it.
"Slee … per," rasped Atropos. "Good t'see you too." One expressive brown eye, visible due to the fact that part of the morph mask was missing, along with a slice of her cheekbone, turned to look at her, then drifted shut as Atropos went limp.
Jesus, she went after Sleeper? Amy didn't know whether to be horrified or impressed. By now, she was on her knees next to Atropos, pulling aside shreds of cloth to get skin to skin contact. There had been no deep injuries to the torso, but more than a bit of missing flesh, and two major amputations.
Once Amy got control over her body, she was able to bring the bleeding to a halt, though the amount Atropos had already lost was worrying. To make more, she was going to need fluids. "Vicky, go to the kitchen and get me the biggest pitcher of water you can. Do not tell Mom or Dad, please." They'd either freak or do something stupid, or both.
"On it." The door opened and closed, and Vicky was gone.
It was weird, Amy mused even as she hefted the leg of ham down off the bed and started looking at where Atropos was missing bits and pieces. When Vicky had first met Atropos, she would've spat in her face rather than help her. Now, she didn't like the murderous vigilante, but she had enough respect for Atropos to help her out without even complaining.
For her part, Amy was more shaken than she was willing to admit, even to herself. She'd seen footage of Atropos strolling into insanely dangerous situations before now, and barrelling out the other side without a mark on her. This time around, she looked like she'd gone ten rounds with a combine harvester, though her attitude suggested that she'd somehow won.
Okay, priorities. Arm and leg first, then the more superficial stuff.
And once Atropos was awake again, she and Vicky would be able to interrogate her for every last detail of why she'd gone after Sleeper. Because there was surely a story there.
And after giving her a fright like this, Atropos totally owed her.
Sleeper
I have stopped travelling. Tired.
Must rest.
Am resting, reading, when ghost person from outside appears.
I hear voice that is not my voice. Ghost person says words that are not my words.
"Привет," says ghost person. "Вам предписание."
There is paper in my hand. It is ghost person paper.
I know is ghost person because does not come in front door, just appears.
Also, disappears through doorway that is not doorway.
After ghost person vanishes, I look at paper. Is folded. Is note.
Do I read ghost person note?
I prefer to read book. Book is familiar.
Ghost person note sits on table. I want to destroy it.
But I pick it up.
It is long time since I read something that was not book.
I unfold ghost person note.
It has been wet, and scorched, but writing is big and thick. Can read.
Я АТРОПОС.
Я УБИЛА СИМУРГ.
ЕСЛИ ТЫ ПРОДОЛЖИШЬ ИДТИ К ДЫРЕ МЕЖДУ МИРАМИ, Я УБЬЮ ТЕБЯ.
Я МОГУ ТЕБЯ ОТПРАВИТЬ В ДРУГОЕ МЕСТО.
ПОДОЖДИ ЗДЕСЬ ОДИН ПОЛНЫЙ ДЕНЬ ПОДАВЛЯЯ СВОЮ СИЛУ, И Я ОТКРОЮ ДЛЯ ТЕБЯ ЕЩЕ ОДНУ ДЫРУ МЕЖДУ МИРАМИ.
ЕСЛИ ТЫ ХОЧЕШЬ, Я МОГУ ПРИВЕСТИ КОГО-ТО, КТО ВМЕСТО ЭТОГО ОТКЛЮЧИТ ТВОИ СИЛЫ И ПОЧИНИТ ТВОЙ МОЗГ.
Я ВЕРНУСЬ ЗА ТВОИМ ОТВЕТОМ ЧЕРЕЗ ОДИН ДЕНЬ.
When finished reading, I sit and think about ghost person words.
When sun rises, still thinking.
End of Part Eighty-Eight
Part Eighty-Eight: Special Delivery
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Panacea
From: Atropos
Subject: Gonna need you in about half an hour
Could you please be alone in your bedroom in about half an hour? Bring the leg of ham that's going to get delivered to your front door in five minutes. You'll need it for biomass.
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: Panacea
Subject: Re: Gonna need you in about half an hour
What? Why? Who have you hurt?
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Panacea
From: Atropos
Subject: Re: Re: Gonna need you in about half an hour
Nobody. You'll see. Also, prep for a mess.
■
<><>
<><>
Monday Afternoon, March 14 2011
New York PRT Building,
Shebang
Alice stood on the roof of the building alongside Director Piggot. Accompanying them was a Trooper Ballinger, whose main reason for being there was apparently the fact that he was over six feet tall and built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Alice had a lot of equipment to take along with her, and it seemed he'd been tapped as her pack-horse for the time being.
She didn't actually have a problem with this. One of the downsides of being a Tinker, as far as she could figure, was the sheer amount of equipment she had to lug around with her if she was trying to analyse and defuse esoteric energies. With regards to Clockblocker (she still had trouble believing it wasn't the name of some joke character on a cartoon show), he'd been able to come to her, but this wasn't possible for the next stage of the project, so she and her equipment had to leave the lab. Thus, Ballinger.
One of the hidden advantages of being in the Protectorate, she was discovering, was the number of minions (read: PRT troopers) available to fetch and carry for them, if necessary. Trooper Ballinger didn't seem to have a problem with it either, especially since all indications were that the job would not involve going up against hostile capes. Alice certainly didn't intend to go into harm's way any time soon, at least until she had a better handle on her capabilities.
The helicopter coming in from the north slowed as it neared the building, then flared preparatory to landing. It didn't look big enough to comfortably carry Alice and her luggage as well as the Director and Ballinger, but appearances had been known to be deceiving. Though why the Director might have called in a chopper from out of town, Alice wasn't sure.
Its wheels touched down, then it sank onto its suspension as the engines began to spool down and the rotors slowed. The side door popped open and a red-clad cape stepped out, followed by a familiar teenage figure. After Clockblocker came a tall black man in a stylised martial-arts outfit, then finally a kid in a pastel-hued pseudo-military costume, complete with scaled-down military-style helmet. Alice frowned; she wasn't sure who she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this.
"Director Piggot," the cape in red said with a broad grin. "Good to see you again. How's life treating you in the Big Apple?"
"I'm getting by, Assault, thank you very much." Piggot even gave the man a brief smile as she replied. "Tenebrae, Miss Medic, this is Shebang. Shebang: Assault, Tenebrae, Miss Medic."
"Hi!" gushed the girl who had to be Miss Medic. "You're gonna be turning off Grey Boy loops? That's so cool!"
"Well, we're going to be working at it," Alice corrected her, though the enthusiasm was infectious. "Don't know if we'll make it on the first try." She turned her head and addressed Director Piggot. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What exactly is going on here? I thought this was only a test run."
"It is." Director Piggot seemed unfazed by her query. "Assault is the Protectorate volunteer to escort the Wards on this mission. Tenebrae is Miss Medic's caregiver; it's in her Wards contract that he escorts her on any missions like this. Clockblocker is along in case you manage to actually free the subject today; his job will be to freeze the freed subject so Miss Medic can get a good look at them and diagnose what needs to be fixed. Miss Medic is along to save anyone whose life needs saving."
"Oh, so that's what I'm here for," Clockblocker said in tones of enlightenment. "I got told I was needed again, and I was like 'didn't she already figure out how to break my power?'."
Alice ignored the interjection. "But what if I don't bust the loop this time? They'll have come all this way for nothing." And I'll look like an idiot in front of them, she didn't quite say out loud.
"Not for nothing." Assault raised his finger. "When you're designing new and exciting ways to blow up the scenery, you've got fire extinguishers and stuff standing by, right? Just in case?"
"Usually, yeah," she admitted. "But what … oh." Belatedly, she realised what he was getting at.
"Yeah. 'Oh.'" He clicked his tongue as he 'fired' dual finger-guns at her. "Better to have the people on hand and not need them than not have them and need them. Besides, getting the Wards out and about every now and again gives them a sense of purpose and reduces disciplinary problems." From the flat, uninflected tone he put on, Alice got the impression that he was either quoting or paraphrasing from a manual of regulations.
"Not that Miss Medic has any ongoing disciplinary issues," Tenebrae noted.
Assault nodded. "You're not wrong there. Kid's about as buttoned-down as you can get."
"I'm glad to hear it." Gathering the capes in by eye, Director Piggot herded them toward the second helipad, while Trooper Ballinger followed along behind with the cases full of Alice's equipment. "Strider will be arriving shortly, to convey you to the Grey Boy victim we believe will be the best test case for Shebang's attentions. I won't be coming along, so Assault will be in command of this mission. I look forward to your after-action reports."
"And that's … it?" Alice flinched as the flat crack heralded the appearance of the teleporter on the helipad. "We're just going to go and do it?"
"Would you prefer six months of paperwork back and forth before we decided to go ahead?" Piggot's tone was both rhetorical and sarcastic. "Go. Shoo. Make me proud."
<><>
Atropos
Cherie watched as I pulled on a protective nitrile glove, then put one of my spare set of Atropos gloves on over the top of them. "That's a level of protection you don't normally take, even when you're handling the stuff Riley made to kill powers with," she observed. "Should I be worried?"
"Not particularly." I flexed my fingers inside the double layered glove and decided it would do. "This latest concoction I got her to throw together is nastier than the other stuff, and I'll have exactly zero room for error. My power says I need the glove."
"Nastier?" Cherie didn't sound thrilled to hear that. "How the hell is it worse than the other stuff?"
"Because it doesn't kill your powers." I grinned at her look of incomprehension. "Tell you later."
Leaving the shears and the pistol on the sofa—I wasn't going to need them—I set up the next few jumps. They were going to take pinpoint timing, but that was fine; my power was good at pinpoint timing. The not so fine aspect was what I was about to put myself through.
The things I do to maintain my brand.
Finally, I pulled on my mask and put the hat on at a jaunty angle. I knew damn well Cherie could read what bits and pieces of emotion I let slip through, but I wasn't giving her enough to realise what I was about to do.
Touching two fingers to the brim of my hat, I stepped backward into the smoky doorway as it formed behind me. The living room vanished, replaced by a scrubby hillside overlooking farmland. Abandoned farmland no doubt, entirely due to the imminent arrival of Sleeper, but farmland all the same.
It was colder than Brockton Bay here, more so than could be accounted for by the fact that it was four or five degrees farther north. A chilly wind swept across the hillside, blowing my long-coat dramatically sideways as I looked westward toward the oncoming storm generated by Sleeper. It was hard to focus on, mainly because part of the visual effect was generated within the optic nerve without first going through the retina, which was just one of the little tricks his power liked to inflict on the world.
Right then, the ongoing violation of space-time manifesting in our limited three-dimensional perception as a 'storm' was five miles across, and he had no physical body inside it. It was his fastest mode of movement, maybe two hundred miles per hour, but it also tired him. It wasn't long before he'd have to let his real body regain its form, and he'd stop to rest.
This would be my cue to go say hi.
In the meantime, I had a note to treat with Riley's newest concoction. I couldn't just put the stuff on it that killed powers … well, I could, but his powers were literally keeping him alive. Without them to keep his bullet-lacerated brainmeats in a (mostly) workable state, he would go into seizures within a few seconds, be in a coma in twenty, and be dead in five minutes.
I'd thought about bringing in Riley or Amy to fix his brain injury, but neither one was an option if he had to be forcibly depowered first. Amy was still emotionally fragile; fixing a brain injury was one thing, but doing it for a mass murderer whose vital signs were crashing hard at the same time might be a bit much for her. While Riley would likely be willing to take it on, the window of opportunity was too narrow. By the time she got to where she could start fixing stuff, a lot of what was him would be irretrievably gone.
It was true that killing Sleeper (accidentally or otherwise) would absolutely cement my rep as Can Actually Kill Anything (Yes, Really; Watch Me), but I didn't want to End him without actually giving him a chance to turn things around first. The act of killing still didn't bother me; I was just as pragmatic about it as I had been since getting my powers. However, Dragon had made a good point about not only being reliable, but having the appearance of reliability.
There were quite a few national powers currently observing Sleeper's progress, most of whom had spotted me already. If I just went in there and ganked him (in Cherie's inimitable phrasing) while they were watching, it would be a data point for them, but in the wrong direction.
It wouldn't matter that Sleeper was someone they all wanted dead anyway. If I was seen apparently violating my self-imposed strictures, someone would inevitably take it as evidence that I'd been paid a bounty under the table to do it, and the understanding I'd carefully crafted with the international community would take a huge step backward.
Very shortly afterward, I'd get a diplomatically worded offer of a few hundred million to arrange the End of someone like Moord Nag. The money might vary; so, too, might the target. But they'd start with large amounts, pointing me at people who were very much a negative influence on society. Bit by bit, the amounts would decrease, ramping up only when they wanted me to kill someone who wasn't all that bad, but who was a hindrance to their plans.
Well, this was the meat of at least one proposal that had been laid out by a governmental body based less than five hundred miles from Brockton Bay. Human nature being what it was, there were others of a similar nature being fostered farther afield. Yeah, good luck with that. I couldn't force people to stop being assholes, but I could absolutely refuse to fall in line with their designs for me.
So long as they indulged in no more than wishful thinking, I was happy to let them waste their time and effort trying to figure out how to move the first step out of the planning stage. The moment any of them tried to actually do something about it, I would be paying them a visit and bringing my good friend Mr Pump Action Shotgun along to air his opinions about Kneecaps and Privileges.
But it wasn't going to happen today, or any day soon. Sleeper was going to survive the next twenty-four hours, because the concoction I was applying to the note wouldn't take effect until then, if at all.
Of course, me just delivering the note and surviving would also add to my ongoing legend, so there was that.
It was still going to suck, though.
The eye-twisting storm slowed its onward advance when its leading edge was barely five yards from me, as my power had calculated. I finished brushing the liquid onto the note, then put the cap back on the container and folded my hand around the note. This was why I had needed the extra glove; my regular one wouldn't protect my hand well enough, and I had to maintain a hold on it for reasons which would soon become evident.
I moved toward the edge of the storm with measured steps; between one step and the next, the first teleport kicked in. As it did so, I let myself fall forward, appearing in a rocky niche with the storm swirling and raging just outside. My coat lost a chunk out of one corner as the twisting matter alteration caught it, but that was okay; it wasn't the one I usually wore.
Pressing into the niche, I watched as the distorted air followed me in. Sleeper wasn't fully aware of everything that happened within his sphere of influence, but the 'brain' aspect of his powers knew I was there. God only knew how he would've been if he were fully compos mentis, but for the most part it acted like a massive immune system, locating and either destroying or neutralising any potential threat from the outside.
This was why the note was clenched tightly in my fist rather than in my pocket. To put it brutally, my pockets just weren't going to survive. As part of my sleeve fizzed and sparkled, I was fully aware that anything I wasn't personally hanging on to was likely to suffer an inevitable end. This was already too close for comfort, and it was only going to get worse.
At the ten-second mark, the teleporter kicked in again, depositing me in a barn which was in the process of being enthusiastically demolished by the reality storm. I grabbed an already-teetering stack of hay bales and pulled them over on top of me; they were heavy, but not so much that it was a chore to keep breathing. My mask managed to filter out the worst of the heavy dust swirling around in my tiny refuge, which was good, because I needed to get a nice deep breath of air.
I could feel the mental aspect of Sleeper's power zeroing in on me again, and the gradual lightening of the hay-bale burden above me. The hay didn't make for a very sturdy barrier, but it was bulky, so it lasted exactly long enough. I felt my left boot-heel go just as the teleporter pulled me out of there once more. A spark of pain told me that I'd lost part of my actual heel at the same time.
The rear part of my hat-brim, the back of my long-coat, and some of the skin off my back, flashed to nothingness as I appeared inches above the surface of a stream. I fell, and was submerged, before anything more could happen; the water was absoutely freezing, numbing the open wound on my back. Above all, I kept my fist clenched around that damn note.
Above me, Sleeper's power lashed at the water itself, exploding great swathes of it into steam; fortunately, I was being swept downstream before it could get to me. It felt as though icy daggers were slashing at the intact parts of my skin, but it was only the cold, not more of his power. Not yet, anyway. I drew my knees up to my chest just as another part of my long-coat was caught and evaporated; before the rest of me could be likewise shredded, I teleported.
The next refuge my power found me was a hollowed out cut-bank, possibly the lair of an animal that had fled before the advent of Sleeper's power scouring the land. It lasted me the ten seconds, though I lost two fingers off my left hand, and some of the wrist. I was committed now; there was only one way out, and it wasn't the way I'd come in by.
Jump by jump, skip by skip, losing a chunk of my forearm muscle here and three toes there, I made my way through the maelstrom toward Sleeper. It was impossible for my power to find me a refuge that didn't brush me up against his ravening ability, but it was able to keep me alive and moving, so that was the best I could get.
Pain lashed through me from my mounting catalogue of injuries. If it weren't for my power, I wouldn't have been able to go on, but I was determined to get the note to Sleeper, no matter what it took. That was my sole focus.
Finally, I ended up at the small farmhouse he'd decided was a good place to rest. Sitting at the table, reading aloud to himself from a remarkably tattered and dog-eared book, he looked up in surprise as I appeared before him, bloody and wounded, with tatters of my costume hanging off me. My left leg wasn't working so good since most of the calf muscle had been torn away, but I was standing on it anyway. "Hi," I gritted in what I guessed was fluent Russian, as I slapped the slightly worse-for-wear folded note onto the pages in front of him with my one good hand. "You've just been served."
Before he could muster his powers to obliterate me from existence, the teleporter generated its smoky doorway behind me, and I lurched backward through it. It was so close that I'd had to time the portal to shut off before I was all the way through. In doing so, it took my right arm clear off just below the shoulder, and my right leg at the knee. Given that the alternative was to have his power billow through and destroy everything within three city blocks, I figured I got off lightly.
But my power could only keep me upright and moving for so long, and I was rapidly running out of gas. This was why my last teleport sent me to the best place I could go for help.
As I toppled toward the carefully-placed plastic sheet—good thinking, Amy, way to go—I saw not one but two shocked expressions looking my way.
Oh, boy.
<><>
Panacea
Half an hour had been just enough time for Amy to accept the leg of ham from the delivery guy and sneak it upstairs to her room, then grab the spare shower curtain from the storage closet and spread it over her carpet. If Atropos wanted her to prep for a mess, then she was absolutely going to prep for a mess. As the last five minutes ticked down, she was still trying to figure out what was going on, with little success.
And then Vicky opened her door and leaned in. "Hey, Ames, I was … uh, why do you have a leg of ham on your bed? And why is there a shower curtain on your floor?"
"Sh-sh-sh-sh!" Amy hissed urgently. "Come in! Shut the door!" Vicky, she could trust to keep a secret. Everyone else was likely to either ask awkward questions like 'why did you just do what she said?' and 'why didn't you come tell us?' or just yell at her.
Obediently, Vicky entered the room and closed the door carefully behind her. "I'm going to assume this isn't a Parian thing," she said, hitching one eyebrow slightly. "So, my second guess is … Atropos."
"Yeah." Amy nodded jerkily, keeping a watch on the plastic out of the corner of her eye. "She messaged me half an hour ago, asked me to be in here with biomass. Said to prep for a mess."
"Shit." Vicky breathed the word. "Shit, shit, fuck. Did she say who was going to need it?"
Amy's throat was tight with worry. "I asked her who she'd hurt. She said nobody, and that I'd see."
"Doesn't mean she hasn't hurt someone since," Vicky pointed out pragmatically. "Do you, uh, do you do this sort of thing often? Just do something because she asked you to?"
"Not often." Amy decided to amend the statement toward the truth. "We've done it a bit. But always to do something good. Even if I didn't know it was good at the time." She found herself digging her nails into her palm.
"When did she say she'd be here?"
"Half an—oh, shit!" Amy jerked to her feet as a familiar smoky doorway appeared at the far end of the plastic shower curtain.
Atropos fell out of it, lunging her left arm outward as the portal closed behind her. When they'd gone to help out Damsel of Distress, Amy had been warned not to linger, and now she saw why. In closing, the portal had sheared off Atropos' right arm and part of her leg, and that wasn't the full extent of her injuries by a long way.
Collapsing in a way that suggested consciousness was rapidly fading, Atropos didn't quite hit the floor before Vicky was there, catching her and lowering her to the plastic. "Holy fuck, what happened to her?" Vicky asked, staring at the tattered costume, with large pieces just sheared away, along with the flesh under it.
"Slee … per," rasped Atropos. "Good t'see you too." One expressive brown eye, visible due to the fact that part of the morph mask was missing, along with a slice of her cheekbone, turned to look at her, then drifted shut as Atropos went limp.
Jesus, she went after Sleeper? Amy didn't know whether to be horrified or impressed. By now, she was on her knees next to Atropos, pulling aside shreds of cloth to get skin to skin contact. There had been no deep injuries to the torso, but more than a bit of missing flesh, and two major amputations.
Once Amy got control over her body, she was able to bring the bleeding to a halt, though the amount Atropos had already lost was worrying. To make more, she was going to need fluids. "Vicky, go to the kitchen and get me the biggest pitcher of water you can. Do not tell Mom or Dad, please." They'd either freak or do something stupid, or both.
"On it." The door opened and closed, and Vicky was gone.
It was weird, Amy mused even as she hefted the leg of ham down off the bed and started looking at where Atropos was missing bits and pieces. When Vicky had first met Atropos, she would've spat in her face rather than help her. Now, she didn't like the murderous vigilante, but she had enough respect for Atropos to help her out without even complaining.
For her part, Amy was more shaken than she was willing to admit, even to herself. She'd seen footage of Atropos strolling into insanely dangerous situations before now, and barrelling out the other side without a mark on her. This time around, she looked like she'd gone ten rounds with a combine harvester, though her attitude suggested that she'd somehow won.
Okay, priorities. Arm and leg first, then the more superficial stuff.
And once Atropos was awake again, she and Vicky would be able to interrogate her for every last detail of why she'd gone after Sleeper. Because there was surely a story there.
And after giving her a fright like this, Atropos totally owed her.
<><>
Sleeper
I have stopped travelling. Tired.
Must rest.
Am resting, reading, when ghost person from outside appears.
I hear voice that is not my voice. Ghost person says words that are not my words.
"Привет," says ghost person. "Вам предписание."
There is paper in my hand. It is ghost person paper.
I know is ghost person because does not come in front door, just appears.
Also, disappears through doorway that is not doorway.
After ghost person vanishes, I look at paper. Is folded. Is note.
Do I read ghost person note?
I prefer to read book. Book is familiar.
Ghost person note sits on table. I want to destroy it.
But I pick it up.
It is long time since I read something that was not book.
I unfold ghost person note.
It has been wet, and scorched, but writing is big and thick. Can read.
Я АТРОПОС.
Я УБИЛА СИМУРГ.
ЕСЛИ ТЫ ПРОДОЛЖИШЬ ИДТИ К ДЫРЕ МЕЖДУ МИРАМИ, Я УБЬЮ ТЕБЯ.
Я МОГУ ТЕБЯ ОТПРАВИТЬ В ДРУГОЕ МЕСТО.
ПОДОЖДИ ЗДЕСЬ ОДИН ПОЛНЫЙ ДЕНЬ ПОДАВЛЯЯ СВОЮ СИЛУ, И Я ОТКРОЮ ДЛЯ ТЕБЯ ЕЩЕ ОДНУ ДЫРУ МЕЖДУ МИРАМИ.
ЕСЛИ ТЫ ХОЧЕШЬ, Я МОГУ ПРИВЕСТИ КОГО-ТО, КТО ВМЕСТО ЭТОГО ОТКЛЮЧИТ ТВОИ СИЛЫ И ПОЧИНИТ ТВОЙ МОЗГ.
Я ВЕРНУСЬ ЗА ТВОИМ ОТВЕТОМ ЧЕРЕЗ ОДИН ДЕНЬ.
When finished reading, I sit and think about ghost person words.
When sun rises, still thinking.
End of Part Eighty-Eight
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ChiChi
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Part Eighty-Nine: Moments of Truth
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A Darker Path
Part Eighty-Nine: Moments of Truth
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Glory Girl
When Vicky got to the bottom of the stairs, her parents were sitting on the sofa watching TV, though her mother was also doing something on a tablet. Carol Dallon had always been a hard-charger, maintaining a career in law at the same time as being a full-time superhero and a mother of two. Something had had to give, and Vicky suspected that motherhood had been left sucking hind tit.
The end result had been a successful superhero career, a place in a prestigious law firm, and one daughter who vaguely resented her. This was not improved by Carol's black-and-white view of the world, which Vicky had subscribed to without even thinking about it … at least, until certain events had caused her to undergo a massive reality check. That, along with other recent incidents, had shaken up her personal worldview and caused her to rethink a lot of her prior assumptions.
This was why she'd been less surprised by Amy's intention of going rogue at the first viable opportunity than she was by the fact that Amy had told Carol to her face about her plans, as well as a lot of other stuff that had been bothering her. Apparently, during the telling, their mom had polished off one of the bottles of wine Atropos had given her and made a severe dent in the second one. However, she hadn't yelled at Amy, grounded her, or done anything apart from drink and listen.
While Vicky didn't dislike her mother, even after the shakeup to her worldview, she figured Amy was at least partially justified in being unhappy with Carol. Amy wasn't Vicky, she wasn't like Vicky, she didn't think like Vicky, and she'd never really wanted to be a superhero like Vicky. As far as Vicky could tell, Carol had wanted Amy to be a good little hero (using Vicky as a role model, naturally) but to also stay in her own little box and heal people when and where she was told, without any regard for what Amy might want.
The real irony in the situation was that until Atropos had come along and kicked over the anthill that had then been the villain-rich Brockton Bay underworld (and was now more of a ghost town), Amy had also shared Carol's binary worldview. These days, she was a good deal more free-thinking in her attitudes, gleefully encouraged in such by Atropos. Vicky didn't know what role in this was played by Atropos' occasional 'borrowing' of Amy for shady purposes in dubious locations, but she figured there was at least a little cross-pollination of viewpoints going on.
But the bottom line was simple: Amy was happier these days, and not just because she had a girlfriend. (Though Vicky thought she might have to book herself an eye test, what with all the hints she'd missed about her sister's orientation). Amy was more relaxed, opening up more, and although Atropos' shenanigans still seemed to exasperate her, she'd lost the edge of simmering anger that Vicky hadn't noticed until it was gone.
The most profound change, however, was the one that Vicky had discovered within herself. As she'd said to Crystal, the lessons Atropos had taught her had convinced her to rethink her previously reckless attitude and become the 'responsible' one of the younger set. But that wasn't even the half of it.
In the first days following Atropos' debut, especially in the (admittedly narrow) window between the meeting in Westlake Park and the demise of the Slaughterhouse Nine, had Vicky encountered Atropos in any kind of vulnerable position, she wouldn't have hesitated to take full advantage of the situation. There would've been exactly zero second thoughts involved between seeing the black-clad cape and going into attack mode. But in the encounters since, each subsequent interaction had chipped away at her antagonism toward Atropos. Now, seeing the girl unconscious, bleeding and missing important body parts on Amy's bedroom floor, Vicky's only thought had been 'how can I help?'.
As she made her way nonchalantly to the kitchen, Vicky kept in mind that her mother quite likely didn't share her level of acceptance of Atropos. If she discovered what was going on, Brandish might just do something extreme. Or she might not; Vicky preferred not to find out either way.
Trying to make as little noise as possible, she found a nicely sized pitcher and took it to the sink to fill with water. She was halfway through this task when her father strolled into the kitchen. "Oh, hi, Vicky girl," he said. "I didn't know you were downstairs. What's the pitcher for?"
Her brain went blank. "Oh, uh, Ames asked me to get it."
"Really? What for?"
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. "Pot … plants. She wants to water her potted plants." Wait, wait. "Plants in pots. Not actual pot. Amy wouldn't do something like that." She forced a nervous laugh. Shut up now. Just shut up.
He frowned. "Amy has potted plants? When did that happen?"
Vicky fell back on the truth. "Well, she's got a plant pot on her windowsill. I guess she wants to grow something other than mushrooms in it."
"Mm, I suppose so." His attention shifted. "I'm just getting cookies. Did you want one?"
On the verge of saying no, Vicky changed her mind. "Sure. Two for me and two for Amy, please."
He smiled indulgently. "Okay." Taking four cookies out of the container, he handed them to her. "I remember what teenage metabolisms are like. Just don't rat me out to your mom."
"I promise. You're the best." She accepted the cookies in one hand, then turned off the faucet and hefted the now-full pitcher in the other. Waiting until her father left the kitchen, she disobeyed the general injunction against flying in the house and drifted along soundlessly behind him. It was easier, she figured as she continued up the stairs without setting foot to floor, to break a smaller rule now than deal with a bigger mess later.
When she got to Amy's room, she awkwardly turned the door handle with the hand that was holding the cookies, then nudged it open with her elbow. Amy looked up from where she was working on Atropos; the vigilante didn't look any better than she had before Vicky went downstairs, but appearances were probably deceiving.
"Oh, good," Amy said. "You brought the water."
"And cookies," Vicky added, holding them up and nudging the door shut with her heel. "Just in case."
Shebang
While Alice had come up with the concept of a bomb that teleported people in all directions away from ground zero, she hadn't yet built it. This was partially because she hadn't had the time, and partially because she was pretty sure it would fall under the category of 'only under controlled conditions, and no using yourself as a guinea pig'. Thus, she'd never been teleported in her life.
It was a weird experience, to say the least. She found herself considering the effect in terms of how to replicate it with tech, firming up the idea she'd had for the teleport bomb. This, she suspected, was going to be a regular thing from this point forward.
Coming out the other end, she felt the immediate pain in her ears from the altitude shift, and worked her jaw to compensate. Off to the side, she could hear Miss Medic instructing Tenebrae and Clockblocker on how to do the same, which sounded ass-backward until she considered the fact that the kid was apparently the best cape surgeon on the block since Bonesaw bit it.
(Overall, Alice had mixed feelings about Atropos, but her destruction of the Slaughterhouse Nine was a thing of beauty, especially her tactical use of explosions.)
It seemed Assault and Trooper Ballinger were handling their end just fine, from the way Ballinger was looking around, and Assault was going to meet the cape who was waiting for them. "Hi," he said, holding out his hand. "Long time no see, Chevalier. How've you been?"
"Tolerably well, Assault." Chevalier, wearing silver and gold armour and carrying a weapon that looked like a cross between a sword and a gun, shook Assault's hand. "And yourself?"
Chevalier
Assault chuckled wryly. "Well, I've been fine, and Battery is doing well, but as for the rest of it … it's been an interesting few months, as I'm sure you've heard."
"I had, yes." Michael carefully resisted the urge to ask an inane question about Atropos or her methods, in the vein of 'did she really …?', mainly because he knew she really had.
He'd watched all the footage resulting from her lethal escapades (it had been deemed required viewing, by the Chief Director herself) and had attended Canberra, albeit briefly. Her PHO thread was also analysed and disseminated whenever a new post came out, but what had made a deep and abiding impression on him was the glimpse his power had had of the cape herself.
When he focused on a parahuman, he could see glimpses and impressions of what their power was about, and hints of their capabilities and intentions. What he'd seen when he looked at her was a teenage girl with a vast, looming beast pacing alongside her, placing its feet carefully in deference to her wishes, conferring with her on what they would do next. There was a link between them; neither the leash of strict control nor the strings of a puppeteer (both of which he'd seen in the past), it was more a commonality of purpose, an agreement between equals. The only other cape he'd ever seen who was this deeply in harmony with their power was Jack Slash, and wasn't that a pleasant thought?
All the time, it had been reaching out with shadowy tentacles and nudging those around Atropos, in response to her interactions with them. The cape with her, Flechette, had those tentacles wrapped around her, but in a way that seemed protective rather than restrictive, and there were more tentacles stretching out to the horizon.
While waiting for Strider to teleport him back to Philadelphia, he'd watched as Atropos conferred with Alexandria, the tentacles nudging the Chief Director subtly as they spoke.
(He of course knew who Rebecca Costa-Brown really was. That part of his power was thoroughly classified, for good reason).
When Eidolon had returned, the conversation went on with him. Michael had not been close enough to hear what was going on, but an agreement was reached … and then Atropos did something with her shears, and the monster reached down and separated Eidolon from his powers. Michael had heard she'd done exactly the same thing to Bastard Son before she killed him, but to watch it in action was deeply unnerving, not least because she could apparently do it so casually (though having the subject survive was a bonus, at least).
Then had come the deeply frightening moment, when the creature turned its immense head to look directly at him, and raised one gigantic, clawed finger to where he supposed its lips to be. There had been the flash of teeth in what might have been a smile before it turned its attention back to what Atropos was doing, but he knew damn well it was keeping an eye on him.
Not having any particular desire to die on the spot (and having zero doubt that she was capable of it, after observing the fate of the Simurgh), he'd waited until he got home before he contacted the Chief Director. She'd sighed, then briefed him on the devil's bargain Eidolon had entered into: his powers, for the End of the other two Endbringers.
Since then, there had been no sign of another attack, or even an Endbringer moving around under the ocean or the surface of the Earth, so he hoped and prayed that the sacrifice had not been in vain. Atropos had of course continued on her merry, murderous way, though there was less of the murder these days (thus proving that if they really tried, people could learn pattern recognition).
Also, he was beginning to suspect he knew exactly what had happened to Butcher Fourteen's powers when Atropos killed her, which was just another thing that was going to keep him awake at night.
"So yeah," Assault said briskly, all unaware of the dark thoughts Michael was entertaining, "you've met Clockblocker before, but the others are new. Tenebrae and Miss Medic out of Brockton Bay, and Shebang from New York. Trooper Ballinger's been appointed to Shebang for the duration."
"I see." Michael did know Clockblocker, and was aware that he was capable of being serious when he needed to be. The name, he suspected, would follow the young man for the rest of his life. "It's good to meet you all."
He focused his power on Shebang first, finding impressions of effects that could only be deemed 'explosions' because they started from a point and expanded outward. Emily Piggot's assessment of her indicated that she may have been intending for a different kind of debut before the ex-Empire capes forced her hand; from what he could see, it was not an inaccurate summation. However, she seemed to be set on the path of being a hero now, so he left her and moved on to Tenebrae.
The young man had actually been a criminal before his recruitment into the Wards, and his power impression backed that up. A life lived in the shadows, not all of his own making, had been traded out for walking in the light, using his shadows to aid others. He also held himself like a trained fighter, which was good to see in someone who might have to engage the criminal element hand-to-hand.
Finally, there was Miss Medic. Looking even more petite than normal next to Tenebrae (apparently her cousin, and caregiver of record), she was almost unbearably cute in her pseudo-military costume and her obvious eagerness to please. But deeper down … Michael had to restrain himself from taking a step back.
Her past was soaked in blood. Instead of a static impression, with her he saw a progression of images cycling through, not unlike the Gray Boy loop they'd come here to destroy. Clawed hands, a skeletal grin, spreading death and despair wherever she went, with the shadowy figure of Jack Slash holding her puppet strings. Then the strings were severed, and very familiar talons tore her asunder; the macabre grotesquerie was discarded, allowing the child before him to walk onward, clad in angelic light, determined to help everyone.
Christ almighty. That's Bonesaw. I thought she was dead.
A memory arose in his mind, and he recalled how Atropos had shot Bonesaw in the head then taken her away, supposedly to render her multiple lethal deadman switches harmless. None other than Dragon had signed off on her reported death … but unless his power was somehow glitching out altogether on him, Miss Medic was Bonesaw, literally reskinned.
As he watched, shadowy tentacles appeared from nowhere and wrapped protectively around the girl, which gave him further pause. This, and the pure intent radiating off her, were the only reasons he didn't pull his cannonblade on the spot and blow her head off, but he still wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
"You okay there?" asked Assault, giving Michael what he suspected was a concerned look.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Michael realised he'd been staring at Miss Medic for a few seconds too long. "Sorry, I've got a lot of things on my mind at the moment. Let's get this show on the road."
Panacea
Amy hummed to herself as she carefully rebuilt Atropos's limbs. The leg of ham provided the required biomass (even discounting the bits and pieces lost to her injuries, Atropos was skinny) and the water Vicky had fetched was replacing her fluids nicely, so all Amy needed to do was make sure she matched to the left and right. While a few fingers and toes had gone missing on the intact limbs, Amy found her power was perfectly capable of tapping into Atropos' genetic predispositions and filling in the gaps that way.
She'd taken the module off Atropos' left forearm so it wouldn't get in the way, and now it lay on the bed. Neither she nor Vicky were inclined to mess with it, but that didn't stop her sister from speculating on what it was. Amy had better things to do with her time right then; while Atropos might not have been the most badly injured person she'd ever had to treat, she'd definitely earned a spot in the top ten.
"I bet it's what she uses to remove powers," Vicky said from her seat on Amy's computer chair. "The thing with the sword was all just for show."
"Nope," Amy countered absently as she finished off the toes on Atropos' regrown right foot. "She's used grapes twice that I personally know of, and Crystal says she gave Labyrinth a grape as well."
"Well, okay, the thing with the sword and the grapes were all for show." Vicky spread her hands. "Misdirection. It's a thing, and she's really good at it."
"I don't think so." Amy started on Atropos's right arm. She felt really in tune with her power today, with no need to pause and think about what she had to do next. "When I regrew Noelle's legs for her, Atropos told Trickster that there was something in the grape, a poison that only affected her powers. Now, she could've been lying to all of us but in my experience, she doesn't lie. She'll say things to your face that are so outrageous that they have to be false, but by the time you figure out they aren't, she's got what she wants."
"Okay, yeah, point taken. She's a lot of things, but she's not a bullshit artist." Vicky rolled her eyes. "Not to say her powers aren't bullshit from end to end, but she says what she means."
Amy felt Atropos' consciousness beginning to return; she had a moment to consider whether she wanted to keep the girl under, then decided that if her patient's body wanted to be awake, who was Amy to argue? She took a moment to dull the pain response a little, then kept on rebuilding Atropos' body, one repaired injury at a time.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Atropos said, pretty damn clearly for someone who had to be under a lot of discomfort right about then. "And it's my teleporter, but that was going to be your next guess anyway."
"Yeah, but—holy shit!" yelped Vicky, staring at Atropos. "You're awake! How are you awake?"
"Because I'm not unconscious, duh." Atropos grinned at Vicky, her expression visible where part of the mask had either been disintegrated or melted, Amy wasn't sure which. "By the way, Amy, nice job with my toes. You got them just right." She wiggled the appendages in question.
"Thanks." Despite herself, Amy felt a warm glow from the praise. "I had to lean on my power a bit, given that you'd lost a few toes from your other foot, but it figured things out anyway."
"Okay." Vicky had gotten over her surprise, and now she leaned forward. "I gotta know. What the hell were you doing, going after Sleeper, anyway? He's all the way over in Russia, nowhere near Brockton Bay. Or did someone pay you to off him? Is he dead?"
"Vicky!" Amy hissed the word, hoping nobody had heard Vicky's reaction to Atropos waking up. "Stop badgering my patient!" She'd intended to do a little badgering of her own, after she got a little more of the work done, and didn't want her sister poisoning the well.
"No, it's okay." Atropos turned her head to face Vicky. "The reason I was going after Sleeper wasn't because anyone paid me to. It's because he's heading for the portal to Earth Shin, where he would cause untold death and destruction, but he's doing it to get away from me."
"So … tell him that you're not after him?" suggested Vicky.
"I could, but it wouldn't stick." Atropos grimaced. "See, he was a low-level gangster who got caught in a firefight, and was shot in the head with a small-calibre bullet that fragmented and sent pieces all through his brain, disabling parts that he needed to stay alive. It would've killed him, but the fragments missed his corona pollentia, and he triggered before he would've died. His power took over his vital brain functions, but he's not exactly all there, and his brain keeps slipping and getting rebooted by his powers. So I got him a warning, and an offer. He can stay where he is and let me remove his powers while you and Miss Medic fix his brainmeats, or he can go through a portal to a world of my choosing."
Amy noticed that a third option hadn't been given, then she figured that the third option was patently obvious. This was Atropos, after all.
"Uh …" Vicky pointed at Atropos' face. "Your mask. It's slipping."
"Oh, good point. Hang on a second." The hat had already fallen off when she arrived, not even really fit for the description anymore, but her mask was still mostly on her face. She used her partial left hand (Amy had yet to regrow the fingers she'd lost) to pull off the tattered remains and shook her hair out. "Whew, that's better."
"Holy. Shit." Vicky breathed the words. "Did you just … are you unmasking to us?"
"Sure." Atropos seemed unfazed by the idea. "Are you gonna tell anyone what I look like?"
Amy shook her head in a very definite negatory gesture, but Vicky seemed to have already gotten the idea. "Hah, not a hope in hell. I like living. Besides, I've got no idea what your name is."
"Well, we can't have that." Atropos' smirk was composed of pure mischief. "Taylor Hebert, at your service."
End of Part Eighty-Nine
Part Eighty-Nine: Moments of Truth
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
Glory Girl
When Vicky got to the bottom of the stairs, her parents were sitting on the sofa watching TV, though her mother was also doing something on a tablet. Carol Dallon had always been a hard-charger, maintaining a career in law at the same time as being a full-time superhero and a mother of two. Something had had to give, and Vicky suspected that motherhood had been left sucking hind tit.
The end result had been a successful superhero career, a place in a prestigious law firm, and one daughter who vaguely resented her. This was not improved by Carol's black-and-white view of the world, which Vicky had subscribed to without even thinking about it … at least, until certain events had caused her to undergo a massive reality check. That, along with other recent incidents, had shaken up her personal worldview and caused her to rethink a lot of her prior assumptions.
This was why she'd been less surprised by Amy's intention of going rogue at the first viable opportunity than she was by the fact that Amy had told Carol to her face about her plans, as well as a lot of other stuff that had been bothering her. Apparently, during the telling, their mom had polished off one of the bottles of wine Atropos had given her and made a severe dent in the second one. However, she hadn't yelled at Amy, grounded her, or done anything apart from drink and listen.
While Vicky didn't dislike her mother, even after the shakeup to her worldview, she figured Amy was at least partially justified in being unhappy with Carol. Amy wasn't Vicky, she wasn't like Vicky, she didn't think like Vicky, and she'd never really wanted to be a superhero like Vicky. As far as Vicky could tell, Carol had wanted Amy to be a good little hero (using Vicky as a role model, naturally) but to also stay in her own little box and heal people when and where she was told, without any regard for what Amy might want.
The real irony in the situation was that until Atropos had come along and kicked over the anthill that had then been the villain-rich Brockton Bay underworld (and was now more of a ghost town), Amy had also shared Carol's binary worldview. These days, she was a good deal more free-thinking in her attitudes, gleefully encouraged in such by Atropos. Vicky didn't know what role in this was played by Atropos' occasional 'borrowing' of Amy for shady purposes in dubious locations, but she figured there was at least a little cross-pollination of viewpoints going on.
But the bottom line was simple: Amy was happier these days, and not just because she had a girlfriend. (Though Vicky thought she might have to book herself an eye test, what with all the hints she'd missed about her sister's orientation). Amy was more relaxed, opening up more, and although Atropos' shenanigans still seemed to exasperate her, she'd lost the edge of simmering anger that Vicky hadn't noticed until it was gone.
The most profound change, however, was the one that Vicky had discovered within herself. As she'd said to Crystal, the lessons Atropos had taught her had convinced her to rethink her previously reckless attitude and become the 'responsible' one of the younger set. But that wasn't even the half of it.
In the first days following Atropos' debut, especially in the (admittedly narrow) window between the meeting in Westlake Park and the demise of the Slaughterhouse Nine, had Vicky encountered Atropos in any kind of vulnerable position, she wouldn't have hesitated to take full advantage of the situation. There would've been exactly zero second thoughts involved between seeing the black-clad cape and going into attack mode. But in the encounters since, each subsequent interaction had chipped away at her antagonism toward Atropos. Now, seeing the girl unconscious, bleeding and missing important body parts on Amy's bedroom floor, Vicky's only thought had been 'how can I help?'.
As she made her way nonchalantly to the kitchen, Vicky kept in mind that her mother quite likely didn't share her level of acceptance of Atropos. If she discovered what was going on, Brandish might just do something extreme. Or she might not; Vicky preferred not to find out either way.
Trying to make as little noise as possible, she found a nicely sized pitcher and took it to the sink to fill with water. She was halfway through this task when her father strolled into the kitchen. "Oh, hi, Vicky girl," he said. "I didn't know you were downstairs. What's the pitcher for?"
Her brain went blank. "Oh, uh, Ames asked me to get it."
"Really? What for?"
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. "Pot … plants. She wants to water her potted plants." Wait, wait. "Plants in pots. Not actual pot. Amy wouldn't do something like that." She forced a nervous laugh. Shut up now. Just shut up.
He frowned. "Amy has potted plants? When did that happen?"
Vicky fell back on the truth. "Well, she's got a plant pot on her windowsill. I guess she wants to grow something other than mushrooms in it."
"Mm, I suppose so." His attention shifted. "I'm just getting cookies. Did you want one?"
On the verge of saying no, Vicky changed her mind. "Sure. Two for me and two for Amy, please."
He smiled indulgently. "Okay." Taking four cookies out of the container, he handed them to her. "I remember what teenage metabolisms are like. Just don't rat me out to your mom."
"I promise. You're the best." She accepted the cookies in one hand, then turned off the faucet and hefted the now-full pitcher in the other. Waiting until her father left the kitchen, she disobeyed the general injunction against flying in the house and drifted along soundlessly behind him. It was easier, she figured as she continued up the stairs without setting foot to floor, to break a smaller rule now than deal with a bigger mess later.
When she got to Amy's room, she awkwardly turned the door handle with the hand that was holding the cookies, then nudged it open with her elbow. Amy looked up from where she was working on Atropos; the vigilante didn't look any better than she had before Vicky went downstairs, but appearances were probably deceiving.
"Oh, good," Amy said. "You brought the water."
"And cookies," Vicky added, holding them up and nudging the door shut with her heel. "Just in case."
<><>
Shebang
While Alice had come up with the concept of a bomb that teleported people in all directions away from ground zero, she hadn't yet built it. This was partially because she hadn't had the time, and partially because she was pretty sure it would fall under the category of 'only under controlled conditions, and no using yourself as a guinea pig'. Thus, she'd never been teleported in her life.
It was a weird experience, to say the least. She found herself considering the effect in terms of how to replicate it with tech, firming up the idea she'd had for the teleport bomb. This, she suspected, was going to be a regular thing from this point forward.
Coming out the other end, she felt the immediate pain in her ears from the altitude shift, and worked her jaw to compensate. Off to the side, she could hear Miss Medic instructing Tenebrae and Clockblocker on how to do the same, which sounded ass-backward until she considered the fact that the kid was apparently the best cape surgeon on the block since Bonesaw bit it.
(Overall, Alice had mixed feelings about Atropos, but her destruction of the Slaughterhouse Nine was a thing of beauty, especially her tactical use of explosions.)
It seemed Assault and Trooper Ballinger were handling their end just fine, from the way Ballinger was looking around, and Assault was going to meet the cape who was waiting for them. "Hi," he said, holding out his hand. "Long time no see, Chevalier. How've you been?"
"Tolerably well, Assault." Chevalier, wearing silver and gold armour and carrying a weapon that looked like a cross between a sword and a gun, shook Assault's hand. "And yourself?"
<><>
Chevalier
Assault chuckled wryly. "Well, I've been fine, and Battery is doing well, but as for the rest of it … it's been an interesting few months, as I'm sure you've heard."
"I had, yes." Michael carefully resisted the urge to ask an inane question about Atropos or her methods, in the vein of 'did she really …?', mainly because he knew she really had.
He'd watched all the footage resulting from her lethal escapades (it had been deemed required viewing, by the Chief Director herself) and had attended Canberra, albeit briefly. Her PHO thread was also analysed and disseminated whenever a new post came out, but what had made a deep and abiding impression on him was the glimpse his power had had of the cape herself.
When he focused on a parahuman, he could see glimpses and impressions of what their power was about, and hints of their capabilities and intentions. What he'd seen when he looked at her was a teenage girl with a vast, looming beast pacing alongside her, placing its feet carefully in deference to her wishes, conferring with her on what they would do next. There was a link between them; neither the leash of strict control nor the strings of a puppeteer (both of which he'd seen in the past), it was more a commonality of purpose, an agreement between equals. The only other cape he'd ever seen who was this deeply in harmony with their power was Jack Slash, and wasn't that a pleasant thought?
All the time, it had been reaching out with shadowy tentacles and nudging those around Atropos, in response to her interactions with them. The cape with her, Flechette, had those tentacles wrapped around her, but in a way that seemed protective rather than restrictive, and there were more tentacles stretching out to the horizon.
While waiting for Strider to teleport him back to Philadelphia, he'd watched as Atropos conferred with Alexandria, the tentacles nudging the Chief Director subtly as they spoke.
(He of course knew who Rebecca Costa-Brown really was. That part of his power was thoroughly classified, for good reason).
When Eidolon had returned, the conversation went on with him. Michael had not been close enough to hear what was going on, but an agreement was reached … and then Atropos did something with her shears, and the monster reached down and separated Eidolon from his powers. Michael had heard she'd done exactly the same thing to Bastard Son before she killed him, but to watch it in action was deeply unnerving, not least because she could apparently do it so casually (though having the subject survive was a bonus, at least).
Then had come the deeply frightening moment, when the creature turned its immense head to look directly at him, and raised one gigantic, clawed finger to where he supposed its lips to be. There had been the flash of teeth in what might have been a smile before it turned its attention back to what Atropos was doing, but he knew damn well it was keeping an eye on him.
Not having any particular desire to die on the spot (and having zero doubt that she was capable of it, after observing the fate of the Simurgh), he'd waited until he got home before he contacted the Chief Director. She'd sighed, then briefed him on the devil's bargain Eidolon had entered into: his powers, for the End of the other two Endbringers.
Since then, there had been no sign of another attack, or even an Endbringer moving around under the ocean or the surface of the Earth, so he hoped and prayed that the sacrifice had not been in vain. Atropos had of course continued on her merry, murderous way, though there was less of the murder these days (thus proving that if they really tried, people could learn pattern recognition).
Also, he was beginning to suspect he knew exactly what had happened to Butcher Fourteen's powers when Atropos killed her, which was just another thing that was going to keep him awake at night.
"So yeah," Assault said briskly, all unaware of the dark thoughts Michael was entertaining, "you've met Clockblocker before, but the others are new. Tenebrae and Miss Medic out of Brockton Bay, and Shebang from New York. Trooper Ballinger's been appointed to Shebang for the duration."
"I see." Michael did know Clockblocker, and was aware that he was capable of being serious when he needed to be. The name, he suspected, would follow the young man for the rest of his life. "It's good to meet you all."
He focused his power on Shebang first, finding impressions of effects that could only be deemed 'explosions' because they started from a point and expanded outward. Emily Piggot's assessment of her indicated that she may have been intending for a different kind of debut before the ex-Empire capes forced her hand; from what he could see, it was not an inaccurate summation. However, she seemed to be set on the path of being a hero now, so he left her and moved on to Tenebrae.
The young man had actually been a criminal before his recruitment into the Wards, and his power impression backed that up. A life lived in the shadows, not all of his own making, had been traded out for walking in the light, using his shadows to aid others. He also held himself like a trained fighter, which was good to see in someone who might have to engage the criminal element hand-to-hand.
Finally, there was Miss Medic. Looking even more petite than normal next to Tenebrae (apparently her cousin, and caregiver of record), she was almost unbearably cute in her pseudo-military costume and her obvious eagerness to please. But deeper down … Michael had to restrain himself from taking a step back.
Her past was soaked in blood. Instead of a static impression, with her he saw a progression of images cycling through, not unlike the Gray Boy loop they'd come here to destroy. Clawed hands, a skeletal grin, spreading death and despair wherever she went, with the shadowy figure of Jack Slash holding her puppet strings. Then the strings were severed, and very familiar talons tore her asunder; the macabre grotesquerie was discarded, allowing the child before him to walk onward, clad in angelic light, determined to help everyone.
Christ almighty. That's Bonesaw. I thought she was dead.
A memory arose in his mind, and he recalled how Atropos had shot Bonesaw in the head then taken her away, supposedly to render her multiple lethal deadman switches harmless. None other than Dragon had signed off on her reported death … but unless his power was somehow glitching out altogether on him, Miss Medic was Bonesaw, literally reskinned.
As he watched, shadowy tentacles appeared from nowhere and wrapped protectively around the girl, which gave him further pause. This, and the pure intent radiating off her, were the only reasons he didn't pull his cannonblade on the spot and blow her head off, but he still wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
"You okay there?" asked Assault, giving Michael what he suspected was a concerned look.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Michael realised he'd been staring at Miss Medic for a few seconds too long. "Sorry, I've got a lot of things on my mind at the moment. Let's get this show on the road."
<><>
Panacea
Amy hummed to herself as she carefully rebuilt Atropos's limbs. The leg of ham provided the required biomass (even discounting the bits and pieces lost to her injuries, Atropos was skinny) and the water Vicky had fetched was replacing her fluids nicely, so all Amy needed to do was make sure she matched to the left and right. While a few fingers and toes had gone missing on the intact limbs, Amy found her power was perfectly capable of tapping into Atropos' genetic predispositions and filling in the gaps that way.
She'd taken the module off Atropos' left forearm so it wouldn't get in the way, and now it lay on the bed. Neither she nor Vicky were inclined to mess with it, but that didn't stop her sister from speculating on what it was. Amy had better things to do with her time right then; while Atropos might not have been the most badly injured person she'd ever had to treat, she'd definitely earned a spot in the top ten.
"I bet it's what she uses to remove powers," Vicky said from her seat on Amy's computer chair. "The thing with the sword was all just for show."
"Nope," Amy countered absently as she finished off the toes on Atropos' regrown right foot. "She's used grapes twice that I personally know of, and Crystal says she gave Labyrinth a grape as well."
"Well, okay, the thing with the sword and the grapes were all for show." Vicky spread her hands. "Misdirection. It's a thing, and she's really good at it."
"I don't think so." Amy started on Atropos's right arm. She felt really in tune with her power today, with no need to pause and think about what she had to do next. "When I regrew Noelle's legs for her, Atropos told Trickster that there was something in the grape, a poison that only affected her powers. Now, she could've been lying to all of us but in my experience, she doesn't lie. She'll say things to your face that are so outrageous that they have to be false, but by the time you figure out they aren't, she's got what she wants."
"Okay, yeah, point taken. She's a lot of things, but she's not a bullshit artist." Vicky rolled her eyes. "Not to say her powers aren't bullshit from end to end, but she says what she means."
Amy felt Atropos' consciousness beginning to return; she had a moment to consider whether she wanted to keep the girl under, then decided that if her patient's body wanted to be awake, who was Amy to argue? She took a moment to dull the pain response a little, then kept on rebuilding Atropos' body, one repaired injury at a time.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Atropos said, pretty damn clearly for someone who had to be under a lot of discomfort right about then. "And it's my teleporter, but that was going to be your next guess anyway."
"Yeah, but—holy shit!" yelped Vicky, staring at Atropos. "You're awake! How are you awake?"
"Because I'm not unconscious, duh." Atropos grinned at Vicky, her expression visible where part of the mask had either been disintegrated or melted, Amy wasn't sure which. "By the way, Amy, nice job with my toes. You got them just right." She wiggled the appendages in question.
"Thanks." Despite herself, Amy felt a warm glow from the praise. "I had to lean on my power a bit, given that you'd lost a few toes from your other foot, but it figured things out anyway."
"Okay." Vicky had gotten over her surprise, and now she leaned forward. "I gotta know. What the hell were you doing, going after Sleeper, anyway? He's all the way over in Russia, nowhere near Brockton Bay. Or did someone pay you to off him? Is he dead?"
"Vicky!" Amy hissed the word, hoping nobody had heard Vicky's reaction to Atropos waking up. "Stop badgering my patient!" She'd intended to do a little badgering of her own, after she got a little more of the work done, and didn't want her sister poisoning the well.
"No, it's okay." Atropos turned her head to face Vicky. "The reason I was going after Sleeper wasn't because anyone paid me to. It's because he's heading for the portal to Earth Shin, where he would cause untold death and destruction, but he's doing it to get away from me."
"So … tell him that you're not after him?" suggested Vicky.
"I could, but it wouldn't stick." Atropos grimaced. "See, he was a low-level gangster who got caught in a firefight, and was shot in the head with a small-calibre bullet that fragmented and sent pieces all through his brain, disabling parts that he needed to stay alive. It would've killed him, but the fragments missed his corona pollentia, and he triggered before he would've died. His power took over his vital brain functions, but he's not exactly all there, and his brain keeps slipping and getting rebooted by his powers. So I got him a warning, and an offer. He can stay where he is and let me remove his powers while you and Miss Medic fix his brainmeats, or he can go through a portal to a world of my choosing."
Amy noticed that a third option hadn't been given, then she figured that the third option was patently obvious. This was Atropos, after all.
"Uh …" Vicky pointed at Atropos' face. "Your mask. It's slipping."
"Oh, good point. Hang on a second." The hat had already fallen off when she arrived, not even really fit for the description anymore, but her mask was still mostly on her face. She used her partial left hand (Amy had yet to regrow the fingers she'd lost) to pull off the tattered remains and shook her hair out. "Whew, that's better."
"Holy. Shit." Vicky breathed the words. "Did you just … are you unmasking to us?"
"Sure." Atropos seemed unfazed by the idea. "Are you gonna tell anyone what I look like?"
Amy shook her head in a very definite negatory gesture, but Vicky seemed to have already gotten the idea. "Hah, not a hope in hell. I like living. Besides, I've got no idea what your name is."
"Well, we can't have that." Atropos' smirk was composed of pure mischief. "Taylor Hebert, at your service."
End of Part Eighty-Nine
Last edited:
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
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Yeah. In-character, though, since IIRC her power came with 'honey badger gives no fucks' tendencies.
Avernus
Getting sticky.
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The fact that she'd know if they decided to misuse the knowledge of her identity helps. And at this point both of them would expect her to know, and aren't dumb enough to do so.
@Ack, a typo from the update before this one:
@Ack, a typo from the update before this one:
"within"
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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Ooh, thanks. Will fix.
Part Ninety: Progress, Albeit Rocky
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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A Darker Path
Part Ninety: Progress, Albeit Rocky
[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: Trigger warning for graphic description of an injury, second paragraph.]
Chevalier
"He's just down this way." Michael led the way along an alley to where a section had been cordoned off with police tape. It was old and tattered, but still mostly intact, mainly because most people had no desire to screw with Gray Boy loops.
The man contained within the monochrome bubble was in his mid-thirties and seemed to be repeating a section of looped time a little over five seconds in length. During that interval, something stabbed him low on the stomach and pulled upward, opening his abdominal wall up to his breastbone. He was just beginning to fall over, his intestines spilling out of the gaping wound, when the loop restarted.
"Eww, ugh," groused Clockblocker, raising a hand to block out the sight. "Warn a guy, why don't you?"
"What part of 'Gray Boy bubble' were you not actually told about?" asked Miss Medic rhetorically, apparently taking in every detail. This didn't actually make Michael feel any better about her. "Okay, the mental effects aside, this should be an easy fix."
"Mental effects?" asked Assault. "What mental effects?"
"Yeah," Shebang added. "I want to hear about these mental effects too."
Miss Medic turned to face them. "Okay, so when I got asked to volunteer for this, I went and read up everything I could get on them. I had to get special permission from Director Renick to access some information—something about me being too young to read stuff like that—but I made my case, and he was pretty understanding."
Tenebrae tilted his head; Michael got the impression he was raising an eyebrow. "I wondered what that was about."
"Yup!" she said brightly. "So, what I figure is that if someone is kept in a constant torture loop like this, their mind falls apart, then back together, then apart, and so on in a vicious cycle. Also, if they've got a corona pollentia, there's a massive chance that they'll trigger as soon as the bubble goes down. Ninety to ninety-five percent chance is my best guess."
Michael did not want to engage with the girl he knew to be Bonesaw, especially while she was talking so knowledgeably about the long-term effects of torture, but this was absolutely something that had to be addressed. "Which means we would very likely have an insane person, with powers and potentially fatal injuries, right here in this alley with us."
"Great," Clockblocker muttered. "Why exactly are we doing this again?"
"Oh, the powers would almost certainly work to make sure the injury isn't fatal to him," Miss Medic said cheerfully, ignoring the interjection. "Unfortunately, that says nothing about what happens to everyone else around him, or even the whole city block."
Assault looked around. "And this isn't Brockton Bay, so Atropos isn't likely to stroll around the corner and tell us this is a really bad idea."
"Um," said Shebang. Her expression indicated someone who was feeling more and more out of their depth with every passing second.
"So, if he comes out and starts looking like obliterating us all, I freeze him and we all run like hell?" offered Clockblocker.
Miss Medic shook her head. "Nuh-uh. I think I've got a better idea. Shebang, walk with me. We need to have a chat."
"While you're doing that," Michael said, "I'll update Legend and the Chief Director on the current situation. Assault, try not to break anything before I get back."
Assault leaned against the wall, arms folded. "No promises."
Moving off a ways down the alley, Michael selected Costa-Brown's number on his phone and sent the call through.
Alexandria
When Rebecca saw Chevalier's number come up on her phone, her first thought was, either something's gone extremely right or extremely wrong. As no other alerts had popped up for Philadelphia, she dared hope for the former.
Setting aside the report on the sighting of Atropos entering Sleeper's area of effect, she took up the phone. "Speak to me."
"Ma'am, we're at the site." Chevalier sounded frazzled, which wasn't like the man at all. "We haven't yet begun operations, because of potential complications. But the biggest problem is that my power shows Miss Medic up to be Bonesaw. Nice kid, not in the slightest bit homicidal, but she's still Bonesaw. I don't know how Atropos did it, but—"
"Stop," she ordered. He fell silent, and she began to sift through all the potential ways this could have happened. Dragon had to be in on it, either as a willing conspirator or an unwitting dupe. When did Atropos begin to turn her? Was it when she went after Atropos following the death of Saint?
The next three questions were: how did Atropos dispose of the plagues from Bonesaw's body; then change her from a twelve-year-old blonde white girl to a ten-year-old black girl with a strong resemblance to the Laborns; then turn her from an amoral serial killer into a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child?
From hundreds of possibilities, down to dozens, to a few, all the way to one, took her less than a second. There was only one person with the capability, with whom Atropos had had contact. Deliberate, preplanned contact, or I'll eat my favourite boots, without salt.
Panacea.
It had to be.
There was nobody else Rebecca knew of who could have disarmed Bonesaw, healed whatever damage Atropos did to make her look dead, changed her phenotype so thoroughly, and fixed her headspace to make her into someone who wanted to help and heal people. It only required one bit of information to determine whether the hypothesis was valid or not.
Still holding the phone, she opened a text message box and tapped out a message to Contessa:
Can Panacea work with brains?
The answer came back two seconds later.
yes
Rebecca closed her eyes for a second and smiled grimly. She wanted to face-palm due to how thoroughly Atropos had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, but right now she wouldn't give herself the satisfaction. Later, when she had the time, she was going to fly up to ten thousand feet and scream a few obscenities into the wind, but until then she had to be Chief Director.
The setup was clear now. For some reason, Atropos wanted to help Panacea de-stress, so she'd coldly and deliberately set matters up so that there was another healer in Brockton Bay. With the capture of Grue, the PRT had left themselves wide open for a third Laborn family member, who would have an older brother and sister to keep her on the straight and narrow. (Of course, having someone like Dragon on call to create said family records out of thin air also helped).
According to Chevalier, Miss Medic was safe to be around, which was entirely on-brand with Atropos. After all, she'd turned more than two hundred and fifty killer robots into willing construction workers, and a surprising number of villains had meekly shown up at the Brockton Bay city limits, asking if they could also join the workforce.
(Contessa was still smarting over being blasted in the ear with an air horn, over Faultline).
And that didn't even count Accord, who at last report was having a ball laying out the plans for the recuperation of the entire goddamn Brockton Bay region with the glee of an OCD perfectionist handed a ten-figure budget.
Rebecca made a mental note to keep a much closer eye on Dragon, and see what other shenanigans the AI was up to—it had to be Atropos who'd gotten her around the limitations Saint had regularly exploited—but decided not to confront her until she had more information. Then she put the phone to her ear again. "Chevalier, thank you for bringing this information to me. The situation is under control. You are to take no further action regarding this specific situation, or tell anyone else about this, except Legend. Do you understand?"
The pause was so long that she wondered if the call had dropped out. Then he responded. "Message received and understood, ma'am. We're to treat this as Atropos business?"
By which he evidently meant, 'do not fuck around with, lest we find out'.
"Exactly," she said. "Atropos business. So long as Miss Medic does her job and does it properly, let her be. Now, you said there were potential complications?"
"Ah, actually, yes. We're at the Gray Boy loop we're intending to try to drop, and Miss Medic indicated that the victim would likely have been sent insane by the ordeal. Also, there's a ninety-plus percent chance that he's going to trigger with powers as soon as we release him. She's currently conferring with Shebang over a potential fix."
Rebecca closed her eyes again. Nothing's ever easy. "But she sounds like she has a solution?"
"She seems to think she might, yes."
"Okay, when you find out what it is, use your best judgement. Have you spoken to Legend about any of this yet?"
"I was going to call him next, ma'am."
"Good. Do that. Tell him I'm on to the Bonesaw aspect. Costa-Brown, out."
She ended the call and put the phone down on the desk, then let out an aggravated sigh.
One day, Atropos. Just one day without your bullshit. That's all I ask.
Glory Girl
"Wait, what?" Vicky was so startled, only her flight saved her from falling off the chair. "That's not your real name … is it?" But she was staring at Atropos' face, comparing it to the memory of a tall man with careworn features, snapping orders that saved another man's life.
"That's me." Appearing to know what Vicky was thinking, Taylor nodded to her. "Danny Hebert's my dad."
Now Amy was staring too. "You put your dad in as head of the Betterment Committee? Isn't that a conflict of interest or something?"
Taylor's snort was pure Atropos. "You're acting like I should care about rules like that. I trust Dad to play things straight down the line, so I adjusted matters to make sure he'd be in the running for the top spot. Mayor Christner made the final call, though I'm fairly sure he picked Dad so if things did go to shit, he could claim that it wasn't one of his people at fault."
"But …" Vicky stumbled for words. When Atropos had been a faceless shadow with a terrifyingly sharp pair of shears and a gun that never missed, it was easy to see her as a force of nature. Tornadoes didn't need to have a grudge against the trailer parks they demolished, they just went ahead and did it. But now she was facing a girl of her own age in a tattered costume, patently vulnerable to injury, who had reasons for what she did. Mortal like the rest of them.
It was a paradigm shift that Vicky was having trouble getting her head around.
"Let me guess," Atropos said, not unkindly. "You want to know why I kill people? How I can bring myself to just End their lives, while at the same time helping out people like Amy?"
"Well … yes." Vicky wouldn't have put it quite as bluntly as that, but that was the gist of it. "Why murder?"
Taylor's eyes glinted. "Because nothing else was working."
"Yes, it was!" The retort burst out of her before she even had time to think about it. "We had police, PRT, and heroes! We were making a difference!"
"Bullshit." The word was flat and hard, and fell into the conversation like a lead brick. "You were treading water at best. Hookwolf and Lung both had Birdcage sentences, yet they were still walking the streets in broad daylight. How many times did Hookwolf get captured but escape from his transport because someone inside law enforcement leaked the route to the Empire Eighty-Eight? Three times, wasn't it?"
"We were keeping the crime down," Vicky persisted. "Keeping the streets safe."
"By letting the ABB extort 'protection' money and run prostitutes, many of whom were forced into the life. My ex-best-friend nearly ended up having her face mutilated for a gang initiation, in broad daylight, with a superhero standing right there and choosing not to intervene. Does that sound like the streets were being kept safe?"
"That doesn't sound right," objected Amy. "Which superhero was that?"
"Shadow Stalker." Taylor's voice may as well have been reading a name out of a phone book. "And yes, she was my first kill. The irony is, I didn't even do it for Emma. She was an edgelord psycho who never stepped in to help anyone unless they fought back first. But if the person she was bullying fought back, she came back twice as hard at them. She tried it on me, and ignored two warnings."
Amy nodded, remembering. "Yeah, I read about that on your PHO thread. She was actually bullying you before you were Atropos?"
"She was." Taylor didn't seem overly put out about it. "And then, once I got my powers, she wasn't. But we were talking about the ABB. Two capes, and nobody did a damn thing about them until I took care of matters."
"Well, okay, they were pretty bad," conceded Vicky, "but you have to admit, Lung was a tough nut to crack, especially with Oni Lee helping him."
Taylor gave her a level stare. "It took me four nights, and I Ended two other gangs while I was at it. As for the Merchants, they were hardly even a gang, but everyone just kept letting them deal drugs to kids anyway. And finally, the Empire Eighty-Eight had more capes in the city than all the heroes put together, and committed more cape crime than all the other villains put together. When was the last time any of them were even captured, much less spent a night in lockup?" Her eyebrows should've been treated as deadly weapons, the way she had them cocked and locked.
These were questions Vicky couldn't really find a good answer for, but she did her best anyway. "We couldn't fix everything at once. Anyway, when they cleared all the villains out of Boston, a new bunch came in and started fighting over turf. A lot of people got hurt before it was over. Tell her, Ames!" She looked over at her sister. Amy had been there too, putting pins in maps and relaying sightings.
"Why?" asked Amy. "I'm on her side."
While Vicky was still gaping at that, Taylor cleared her throat. "You'll notice that I did fix everything at once. Five nights, four gangs. Also, some capes did try to replay the Boston Games scenario. Some of them died, and some of them came in on my terms, and aren't villains anymore. Because the act of Ending someone isn't just a blunt instrument. Used right, it can be a scalpel too."
"Okay, okay, wait, hold on a second." Vicky wanted to address one thing at a time. "Ames, what the fuck? What do you mean, you're on her side? She kills people!"
Amy rolled her eyes as only she could. "I'm not into the murder thing. Obviously. But she's right when she says what we were doing wasn't working. And what she's been doing did actually fucking work. So there's got to be a third way, maybe just a tidal wave of heroes coming into a city and scouring out every last villain—"
"Sorry, but that wouldn't work." Taylor wasn't as scathing as she had been to Vicky, but her tone was equally definite. "While villains by themselves don't cause social problems for the most part, they do exacerbate existing ones, and make it a lot harder to eradicate every last trace of them. But if you only take the villains away, the issues remain and feed on each other. You've got to hit all aspects of a problem, or it just keeps cropping up again."
By now, Amy was nodding. "Infrastructure, crime, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, poor education, drug habituation, mental illness, yeah. Got it. You're stabbing all those problems with money."
"And to both get that money and to make sure it wouldn't be wasted once spent, I had to End a whole bunch of people who desperately needed it," Taylor agreed. "Plus an Endbringer." She gave Vicky a sly look. "I hope you're not going to hold the Simurgh against me too?"
Vicky had learned enough from her clashes with Atropos to know when to admit that continuing to argue would just make her look like the bad guy. Rolling her eyes, she shook her head with a chuckle. "Oh, just shut the fuck up and let my sister heal your sorry ass."
Clockblocker
"So, how's your dad, anyway?" asked Tenebrae idly. "Still doing well, I hope?"
Dennis nodded and grinned, though the latter was entirely hidden inside his helmet. "It's been a week, and he's getting stronger all the time. He went in for tests today, so we won't find out for another couple of days, but we're really optimistic." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Your cousin is amazing. Just saying."
"Yeah, she is." Tenebrae nodded in return. "She's helping knock some of the rougher edges off my little sister, and …" He paused. "Did you know Paladin is living with us?"
"Not officially, but it's gotten around, yeah." Dennis tilted his head. "Is it true that he's whats-his-name's kid? I mean, literally Captain Nazi Junior?" He figured that was safe enough to say around Ballinger. Assault wasn't telling him to shut up, anyway.
Tenebrae sighed. "I can neither confirm nor deny his identity, but I can tell you that Paladin has zero attitudes in that direction. Even though he's older than both of them, they treat him like their little brother."
"Aww, nice." Dennis was about to say more, but Assault cleared his throat and gestured sideways with his head. Looking that way, Dennis saw Chevalier on the way back. "Heads up, the big guy's incoming."
"So are Miss Medic and Shebang." Tenebrae was looking in the other direction. It kind of made sense that he'd be keeping an eye on his cousin. "They don't look too upset, so I'm guessing they came up with something."
Dennis snorted. "What did you expect? Lock two Tinkers in the same room together, and they'll either kill each other or bust out of there with a battle tank that flies and can turn into a giant robot."
"Don't you mean, a giant robot that flies and turns into a battle tank?"
"I meant what I said."
Tenebrae
"Okay, then," announced Riley, dusting her hands off in a businesslike way. "Shebang and I have pretty well figured out how we can maybe solve our problems."
Shebang put up a finger. "That's a pretty big 'maybe', hon. Also, it was basically all your idea."
Brian heard the bit she didn't say, loud and clear. So if it goes wrong, it's not my fault.
"Well, don't keep us all in suspense," Assault prompted. "What's the solution?"
Riley took a deep breath. "You might not be a fan of this, but here goes. Memory loss. We drop the loop, then we immediately revert his memories back to just before he went in. If he's got no memories of being tortured, he's not insane. If he's not insane, he's not under stress. If he's not under stress, he's got no reason to trigger. Then all I have to do is save his life—which, to be honest, Clock here could manage with a staple gun and half a dozen Band-Aids—and we're home and dry, yeah?"
Clockblocker held up his hand. "You're right. Not a fan. But … I can't really see another way to do it?" He drew the statement out like a question, as though hoping someone else would point out an alternative solution.
"It is an interesting concept," Chevalier observed neutrally. "How exactly were you going to revert his memories in a way that wouldn't cause additional stress?"
Riley grinned and pointed Shebang's way with two finger-guns. "Plan A is for our bomb-guru here to make two bombs, linked. The first bomb drops the loop. The second bomb absorbs the temporal energy from the loop and pops off in our victim's face, reverting everything in the area to what it was on whatever date he got Gray-Boy'd. We'd have to find that out, of course."
"I don't even know if that'll work, just saying," Shebang supplied. "Theoretically, it should. But there's a huge gap between 'theoretically' and 'reality'."
Assault rubbed his chin. "If you have a Plan A, then you have at least a Plan B. What's Plan B? Clockblocker lurking behind him with a big hammer?"
"No, that's plan Z." Riley said it so seriously that Brian was almost taken in for a second. "Plan B is that the second bomb hits him with an infused dose of stuff I can make that … um." She glanced around at everyone, still looking at her with interest, then went on. "That kind of causes a moderate amount of retrograde amnesia. Instant uptake, instant effect."
Clockblocker looked around at the group. "Am I the only one who doesn't know what retrograde amnesia is?"
"I don't," confessed Shebang.
"Likewise," said Assault.
Trooper Ballinger cleared his throat. "Isn't it loss of the memories from before whatever happened to you?"
"Holy shit!" blurted Clockblocker. "He speaks!" He turned to Ballinger. "Seriously, I was half wondering if you were a robot that Shebang made."
"I make bombs, doofus, not robots." Shebang rolled her eyes. "Trooper Ballinger is a perfectly nice man who volunteered to carry my cases for me."
Assault cleared his throat. "Trooper, on behalf of my Wards, I apologise for the rudeness. Especially considering that you knew more about what Miss Medic was referring to than half of us did."
Ballinger nodded. "I appreciate it, sir, but it's not a problem."
"Was there a Plan C?" asked Chevalier.
Riley nodded. "Yes, sir. Instead of a second bomb, Clockblocker freezes him and I apply the stuff as a topical ointment. Skin uptake isn't as fast as bomb infusion, so there's a chance he'll still trigger before it takes effect. And Plan D is … well, we call up Atropos and ask her to help out by killing his powers before he can do anything drastic, then we keep him sedated until we can deal with his mental problems."
"Hmm." Chevalier seemed to be thinking hard. "Let's leave any plans that involve calling on Atropos as extreme backup plans, shall we? For now … Shebang, for Plan A, what's the projected range on that time-reversion bomb, and do you need extra equipment to put it together?"
"Anything from fifteen feet to fifty feet, and I'll need to get some readings first." Shebang turned to Trooper Ballinger, and pointed. "I need that case, please."
"Ma'am." He picked up the left-hand case and hefted it forward a few feet, then stepped back.
"Thank you." Unsnapping the catches, she opened it to reveal a bewildering array of electronics, with an air of being slightly off that Brian was learning to recognise was a trademark of Tinker tech. He'd seen it in Kid Win's work as well as Armsmaster's, but Shebang's was even more obvious. Whether it was because she was newer or she just didn't care enough to try to make her stuff look more normal, he had no idea.
Sliding an instrument out of its niche, she began running it over the exterior of the bubble that enclosed the Gray Boy loop. Within, the hapless victim went through his endless cycle of being eviscerated, falling, resetting, stabbed, falling, over and over again. Brian didn't like it, but he'd seen worse as Grue, and he suspected he would again.
"Well, okay then." Shebang was focusing on the readouts to the point that Brian suspected she'd forgotten there was a man in there. "Gotta say, Clock, this is a lot easier than trying to get data out of your stupid rubber ball." She shut off the scanner while Brian was still trying to make sense of that, then turned to face Chevalier. "I've got good news and bad news, sir."
"Bad news first," he said promptly. "Is this even possible to do?"
"Oh, sure, it's possible." She tried a nonchalant twirl with her scanner, and it slipped out of her grasp, but Brian whipped out his hand and snagged it before it could drop all the way to the floor of the alley. "Shit! Um, wow, those are some crazy-ass reflexes you've got there."
"If you ever met my sister, you'd know why." He waited until he was sure she had a good grip on it before letting it go. The last thing he wanted was for her to have to go back to New York to build another scanner. "So, you were saying?"
"Oh, yeah." She took a deep breath. "It's totally doable. Buuuttttt … I just don't have the parts I need for the second bomb. Good news, I can build it, and I'm pretty sure I can make it work. I just need some stuff first."
"What do you need, and do you have it back in New York?" asked Chevalier.
"A bunch of rare earths," she admitted. "And no, I don't. So I'm gonna have to requisition it through Legend and Director Piggot. On the upside, once I've got it, I'm reasonably sure I can bust our buddy right out of grayscale world, and rewind his memory to day dot." She tucked the scanner back into the case and dusted her hands off, looking pleased with herself.
"So … we're not popping the cork today?" asked Clockblocker.
Brian shrugged. "It appears not."
"Understood." Chevalier nodded once, curtly. "Well, then. Let's get you back home, so you can work on that. Well done, by the way. Any progress is better than no progress at all."
As they filed out of the alleyway, Brian could feel the man's eyes on the back of his neck, but he didn't look back.
We'll get you out of there, buddy. Just not today.
Taylor
On my feet at last, I stretched and flexed my arms and legs. Already, I could feel my power retuning my newly rebuilt muscles to optimum fitness levels. "Well, that's definitely an improvement," I decided. "When I got here, I didn't have a leg to stand on."
Amy face-palmed, and Vicky groaned. "Wow, really?" Vicky groused. "Bad jokes, at a time like this?"
"Hey, there's always time for bad jokes." I tugged on what remained of my left sleeve and it came away, then I picked up the teleport module and slid it onto my arm. "It's amazing how many people underestimate you if you make a cheesy pun at the right moment."
"Now I know why you and Mouse Protector get along so well," Amy snarked. She nodded at the teleporter as I settled it into place. "Where did you get it from, anyway? I've seen a bit of Tinker tech before, but nothing as good as that."
"Leet, actually." Flicking up the cover, I tapped in the coordinates for my bedroom at home. "I had a word with him, my power had a word with his power, and what do you know, tech that doesn't blow up if you look at it wrong."
Vicky frowned. "What do you mean, your power had a word with his power? Powers don't talk to each other."
"Trump powers do," I corrected her. "Also, Jack Slash's power was built to talk to other powers. It was how he managed to stay around for so long. Any time a cape went after him, it was feeding him information under the table."
Amy nodded. "Yeah, I remember how you talked about what a cheating asshole he was."
"He was all of that. And when my power has a word with someone else's power, that power knows not to screw me over." I flipped the cover down again. "Need a hand cleaning up?"
"Pfft, nah." She waved her hand casually. "I got this. You're good at killing things, but I'm amazing at dealing with biological messes."
"Okay, yeah, point." I raised my (newly regrown) finger to get her attention, and Vicky's as well. "Before I go, there's two things I want to say. First, thank you both for being good sports. I truly appreciate it. And second, just remember that jumping straight to killing isn't the solution to dealing with villains. Not for you, anyway."
Vicky blinked. "Okay, I wasn't about to go out and start murdering villains, but isn't that a teensy bit hypocritical of you? You started offing people from the get-go. You've blown up warehouses and boats, and set fire to eighteen-wheelers. And I'm never going to forget what you did to Lung and Skidmark."
"All of that is true," I admitted. "Except for the hypocrisy bit. See, my power is basically called Ending. Its entire purpose is killing things: people, ideas, intentions, threats. It tells me who needs to die in order to End a problem, how to End them, and how to do it in order to get the reaction I want. But the result I want needs to involve Ending something. I can't just say, 'I want', and get it."
"And what you want is …?" Vicky prompted.
"Don't you read PHO at all?" Amy chided her. "She wants what we want. A safer and nicer Brockton Bay."
I clicked my tongue and made a finger-gun at her. "Got it in one."
Vicky nodded, her expression thoughtful. "Understood. Well, thanks for trusting us. Trusting me."
"Thanks for being trustworthy. Welp, my ride's here." I turned as the shadowy portal formed in mid-air. Giving both girls a nod, I stepped into it, emerging in my own bedroom.
Tattered costume and all, I pirouetted on my toes and fell backward onto the bed, letting out a huge sigh.
"Well," I informed the ceiling. "That was a day."
End of Part Ninety
Part Ninety: Progress, Albeit Rocky
[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: Trigger warning for graphic description of an injury, second paragraph.]
Chevalier
"He's just down this way." Michael led the way along an alley to where a section had been cordoned off with police tape. It was old and tattered, but still mostly intact, mainly because most people had no desire to screw with Gray Boy loops.
The man contained within the monochrome bubble was in his mid-thirties and seemed to be repeating a section of looped time a little over five seconds in length. During that interval, something stabbed him low on the stomach and pulled upward, opening his abdominal wall up to his breastbone. He was just beginning to fall over, his intestines spilling out of the gaping wound, when the loop restarted.
"Eww, ugh," groused Clockblocker, raising a hand to block out the sight. "Warn a guy, why don't you?"
"What part of 'Gray Boy bubble' were you not actually told about?" asked Miss Medic rhetorically, apparently taking in every detail. This didn't actually make Michael feel any better about her. "Okay, the mental effects aside, this should be an easy fix."
"Mental effects?" asked Assault. "What mental effects?"
"Yeah," Shebang added. "I want to hear about these mental effects too."
Miss Medic turned to face them. "Okay, so when I got asked to volunteer for this, I went and read up everything I could get on them. I had to get special permission from Director Renick to access some information—something about me being too young to read stuff like that—but I made my case, and he was pretty understanding."
Tenebrae tilted his head; Michael got the impression he was raising an eyebrow. "I wondered what that was about."
"Yup!" she said brightly. "So, what I figure is that if someone is kept in a constant torture loop like this, their mind falls apart, then back together, then apart, and so on in a vicious cycle. Also, if they've got a corona pollentia, there's a massive chance that they'll trigger as soon as the bubble goes down. Ninety to ninety-five percent chance is my best guess."
Michael did not want to engage with the girl he knew to be Bonesaw, especially while she was talking so knowledgeably about the long-term effects of torture, but this was absolutely something that had to be addressed. "Which means we would very likely have an insane person, with powers and potentially fatal injuries, right here in this alley with us."
"Great," Clockblocker muttered. "Why exactly are we doing this again?"
"Oh, the powers would almost certainly work to make sure the injury isn't fatal to him," Miss Medic said cheerfully, ignoring the interjection. "Unfortunately, that says nothing about what happens to everyone else around him, or even the whole city block."
Assault looked around. "And this isn't Brockton Bay, so Atropos isn't likely to stroll around the corner and tell us this is a really bad idea."
"Um," said Shebang. Her expression indicated someone who was feeling more and more out of their depth with every passing second.
"So, if he comes out and starts looking like obliterating us all, I freeze him and we all run like hell?" offered Clockblocker.
Miss Medic shook her head. "Nuh-uh. I think I've got a better idea. Shebang, walk with me. We need to have a chat."
"While you're doing that," Michael said, "I'll update Legend and the Chief Director on the current situation. Assault, try not to break anything before I get back."
Assault leaned against the wall, arms folded. "No promises."
Moving off a ways down the alley, Michael selected Costa-Brown's number on his phone and sent the call through.
<><>
Alexandria
When Rebecca saw Chevalier's number come up on her phone, her first thought was, either something's gone extremely right or extremely wrong. As no other alerts had popped up for Philadelphia, she dared hope for the former.
Setting aside the report on the sighting of Atropos entering Sleeper's area of effect, she took up the phone. "Speak to me."
"Ma'am, we're at the site." Chevalier sounded frazzled, which wasn't like the man at all. "We haven't yet begun operations, because of potential complications. But the biggest problem is that my power shows Miss Medic up to be Bonesaw. Nice kid, not in the slightest bit homicidal, but she's still Bonesaw. I don't know how Atropos did it, but—"
"Stop," she ordered. He fell silent, and she began to sift through all the potential ways this could have happened. Dragon had to be in on it, either as a willing conspirator or an unwitting dupe. When did Atropos begin to turn her? Was it when she went after Atropos following the death of Saint?
The next three questions were: how did Atropos dispose of the plagues from Bonesaw's body; then change her from a twelve-year-old blonde white girl to a ten-year-old black girl with a strong resemblance to the Laborns; then turn her from an amoral serial killer into a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child?
From hundreds of possibilities, down to dozens, to a few, all the way to one, took her less than a second. There was only one person with the capability, with whom Atropos had had contact. Deliberate, preplanned contact, or I'll eat my favourite boots, without salt.
Panacea.
It had to be.
There was nobody else Rebecca knew of who could have disarmed Bonesaw, healed whatever damage Atropos did to make her look dead, changed her phenotype so thoroughly, and fixed her headspace to make her into someone who wanted to help and heal people. It only required one bit of information to determine whether the hypothesis was valid or not.
Still holding the phone, she opened a text message box and tapped out a message to Contessa:
Can Panacea work with brains?
The answer came back two seconds later.
yes
Rebecca closed her eyes for a second and smiled grimly. She wanted to face-palm due to how thoroughly Atropos had pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, but right now she wouldn't give herself the satisfaction. Later, when she had the time, she was going to fly up to ten thousand feet and scream a few obscenities into the wind, but until then she had to be Chief Director.
The setup was clear now. For some reason, Atropos wanted to help Panacea de-stress, so she'd coldly and deliberately set matters up so that there was another healer in Brockton Bay. With the capture of Grue, the PRT had left themselves wide open for a third Laborn family member, who would have an older brother and sister to keep her on the straight and narrow. (Of course, having someone like Dragon on call to create said family records out of thin air also helped).
According to Chevalier, Miss Medic was safe to be around, which was entirely on-brand with Atropos. After all, she'd turned more than two hundred and fifty killer robots into willing construction workers, and a surprising number of villains had meekly shown up at the Brockton Bay city limits, asking if they could also join the workforce.
(Contessa was still smarting over being blasted in the ear with an air horn, over Faultline).
And that didn't even count Accord, who at last report was having a ball laying out the plans for the recuperation of the entire goddamn Brockton Bay region with the glee of an OCD perfectionist handed a ten-figure budget.
Rebecca made a mental note to keep a much closer eye on Dragon, and see what other shenanigans the AI was up to—it had to be Atropos who'd gotten her around the limitations Saint had regularly exploited—but decided not to confront her until she had more information. Then she put the phone to her ear again. "Chevalier, thank you for bringing this information to me. The situation is under control. You are to take no further action regarding this specific situation, or tell anyone else about this, except Legend. Do you understand?"
The pause was so long that she wondered if the call had dropped out. Then he responded. "Message received and understood, ma'am. We're to treat this as Atropos business?"
By which he evidently meant, 'do not fuck around with, lest we find out'.
"Exactly," she said. "Atropos business. So long as Miss Medic does her job and does it properly, let her be. Now, you said there were potential complications?"
"Ah, actually, yes. We're at the Gray Boy loop we're intending to try to drop, and Miss Medic indicated that the victim would likely have been sent insane by the ordeal. Also, there's a ninety-plus percent chance that he's going to trigger with powers as soon as we release him. She's currently conferring with Shebang over a potential fix."
Rebecca closed her eyes again. Nothing's ever easy. "But she sounds like she has a solution?"
"She seems to think she might, yes."
"Okay, when you find out what it is, use your best judgement. Have you spoken to Legend about any of this yet?"
"I was going to call him next, ma'am."
"Good. Do that. Tell him I'm on to the Bonesaw aspect. Costa-Brown, out."
She ended the call and put the phone down on the desk, then let out an aggravated sigh.
One day, Atropos. Just one day without your bullshit. That's all I ask.
<><>
Glory Girl
"Wait, what?" Vicky was so startled, only her flight saved her from falling off the chair. "That's not your real name … is it?" But she was staring at Atropos' face, comparing it to the memory of a tall man with careworn features, snapping orders that saved another man's life.
"That's me." Appearing to know what Vicky was thinking, Taylor nodded to her. "Danny Hebert's my dad."
Now Amy was staring too. "You put your dad in as head of the Betterment Committee? Isn't that a conflict of interest or something?"
Taylor's snort was pure Atropos. "You're acting like I should care about rules like that. I trust Dad to play things straight down the line, so I adjusted matters to make sure he'd be in the running for the top spot. Mayor Christner made the final call, though I'm fairly sure he picked Dad so if things did go to shit, he could claim that it wasn't one of his people at fault."
"But …" Vicky stumbled for words. When Atropos had been a faceless shadow with a terrifyingly sharp pair of shears and a gun that never missed, it was easy to see her as a force of nature. Tornadoes didn't need to have a grudge against the trailer parks they demolished, they just went ahead and did it. But now she was facing a girl of her own age in a tattered costume, patently vulnerable to injury, who had reasons for what she did. Mortal like the rest of them.
It was a paradigm shift that Vicky was having trouble getting her head around.
"Let me guess," Atropos said, not unkindly. "You want to know why I kill people? How I can bring myself to just End their lives, while at the same time helping out people like Amy?"
"Well … yes." Vicky wouldn't have put it quite as bluntly as that, but that was the gist of it. "Why murder?"
Taylor's eyes glinted. "Because nothing else was working."
"Yes, it was!" The retort burst out of her before she even had time to think about it. "We had police, PRT, and heroes! We were making a difference!"
"Bullshit." The word was flat and hard, and fell into the conversation like a lead brick. "You were treading water at best. Hookwolf and Lung both had Birdcage sentences, yet they were still walking the streets in broad daylight. How many times did Hookwolf get captured but escape from his transport because someone inside law enforcement leaked the route to the Empire Eighty-Eight? Three times, wasn't it?"
"We were keeping the crime down," Vicky persisted. "Keeping the streets safe."
"By letting the ABB extort 'protection' money and run prostitutes, many of whom were forced into the life. My ex-best-friend nearly ended up having her face mutilated for a gang initiation, in broad daylight, with a superhero standing right there and choosing not to intervene. Does that sound like the streets were being kept safe?"
"That doesn't sound right," objected Amy. "Which superhero was that?"
"Shadow Stalker." Taylor's voice may as well have been reading a name out of a phone book. "And yes, she was my first kill. The irony is, I didn't even do it for Emma. She was an edgelord psycho who never stepped in to help anyone unless they fought back first. But if the person she was bullying fought back, she came back twice as hard at them. She tried it on me, and ignored two warnings."
Amy nodded, remembering. "Yeah, I read about that on your PHO thread. She was actually bullying you before you were Atropos?"
"She was." Taylor didn't seem overly put out about it. "And then, once I got my powers, she wasn't. But we were talking about the ABB. Two capes, and nobody did a damn thing about them until I took care of matters."
"Well, okay, they were pretty bad," conceded Vicky, "but you have to admit, Lung was a tough nut to crack, especially with Oni Lee helping him."
Taylor gave her a level stare. "It took me four nights, and I Ended two other gangs while I was at it. As for the Merchants, they were hardly even a gang, but everyone just kept letting them deal drugs to kids anyway. And finally, the Empire Eighty-Eight had more capes in the city than all the heroes put together, and committed more cape crime than all the other villains put together. When was the last time any of them were even captured, much less spent a night in lockup?" Her eyebrows should've been treated as deadly weapons, the way she had them cocked and locked.
These were questions Vicky couldn't really find a good answer for, but she did her best anyway. "We couldn't fix everything at once. Anyway, when they cleared all the villains out of Boston, a new bunch came in and started fighting over turf. A lot of people got hurt before it was over. Tell her, Ames!" She looked over at her sister. Amy had been there too, putting pins in maps and relaying sightings.
"Why?" asked Amy. "I'm on her side."
While Vicky was still gaping at that, Taylor cleared her throat. "You'll notice that I did fix everything at once. Five nights, four gangs. Also, some capes did try to replay the Boston Games scenario. Some of them died, and some of them came in on my terms, and aren't villains anymore. Because the act of Ending someone isn't just a blunt instrument. Used right, it can be a scalpel too."
"Okay, okay, wait, hold on a second." Vicky wanted to address one thing at a time. "Ames, what the fuck? What do you mean, you're on her side? She kills people!"
Amy rolled her eyes as only she could. "I'm not into the murder thing. Obviously. But she's right when she says what we were doing wasn't working. And what she's been doing did actually fucking work. So there's got to be a third way, maybe just a tidal wave of heroes coming into a city and scouring out every last villain—"
"Sorry, but that wouldn't work." Taylor wasn't as scathing as she had been to Vicky, but her tone was equally definite. "While villains by themselves don't cause social problems for the most part, they do exacerbate existing ones, and make it a lot harder to eradicate every last trace of them. But if you only take the villains away, the issues remain and feed on each other. You've got to hit all aspects of a problem, or it just keeps cropping up again."
By now, Amy was nodding. "Infrastructure, crime, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, poor education, drug habituation, mental illness, yeah. Got it. You're stabbing all those problems with money."
"And to both get that money and to make sure it wouldn't be wasted once spent, I had to End a whole bunch of people who desperately needed it," Taylor agreed. "Plus an Endbringer." She gave Vicky a sly look. "I hope you're not going to hold the Simurgh against me too?"
Vicky had learned enough from her clashes with Atropos to know when to admit that continuing to argue would just make her look like the bad guy. Rolling her eyes, she shook her head with a chuckle. "Oh, just shut the fuck up and let my sister heal your sorry ass."
<><>
Clockblocker
"So, how's your dad, anyway?" asked Tenebrae idly. "Still doing well, I hope?"
Dennis nodded and grinned, though the latter was entirely hidden inside his helmet. "It's been a week, and he's getting stronger all the time. He went in for tests today, so we won't find out for another couple of days, but we're really optimistic." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Your cousin is amazing. Just saying."
"Yeah, she is." Tenebrae nodded in return. "She's helping knock some of the rougher edges off my little sister, and …" He paused. "Did you know Paladin is living with us?"
"Not officially, but it's gotten around, yeah." Dennis tilted his head. "Is it true that he's whats-his-name's kid? I mean, literally Captain Nazi Junior?" He figured that was safe enough to say around Ballinger. Assault wasn't telling him to shut up, anyway.
Tenebrae sighed. "I can neither confirm nor deny his identity, but I can tell you that Paladin has zero attitudes in that direction. Even though he's older than both of them, they treat him like their little brother."
"Aww, nice." Dennis was about to say more, but Assault cleared his throat and gestured sideways with his head. Looking that way, Dennis saw Chevalier on the way back. "Heads up, the big guy's incoming."
"So are Miss Medic and Shebang." Tenebrae was looking in the other direction. It kind of made sense that he'd be keeping an eye on his cousin. "They don't look too upset, so I'm guessing they came up with something."
Dennis snorted. "What did you expect? Lock two Tinkers in the same room together, and they'll either kill each other or bust out of there with a battle tank that flies and can turn into a giant robot."
"Don't you mean, a giant robot that flies and turns into a battle tank?"
"I meant what I said."
<><>
Tenebrae
"Okay, then," announced Riley, dusting her hands off in a businesslike way. "Shebang and I have pretty well figured out how we can maybe solve our problems."
Shebang put up a finger. "That's a pretty big 'maybe', hon. Also, it was basically all your idea."
Brian heard the bit she didn't say, loud and clear. So if it goes wrong, it's not my fault.
"Well, don't keep us all in suspense," Assault prompted. "What's the solution?"
Riley took a deep breath. "You might not be a fan of this, but here goes. Memory loss. We drop the loop, then we immediately revert his memories back to just before he went in. If he's got no memories of being tortured, he's not insane. If he's not insane, he's not under stress. If he's not under stress, he's got no reason to trigger. Then all I have to do is save his life—which, to be honest, Clock here could manage with a staple gun and half a dozen Band-Aids—and we're home and dry, yeah?"
Clockblocker held up his hand. "You're right. Not a fan. But … I can't really see another way to do it?" He drew the statement out like a question, as though hoping someone else would point out an alternative solution.
"It is an interesting concept," Chevalier observed neutrally. "How exactly were you going to revert his memories in a way that wouldn't cause additional stress?"
Riley grinned and pointed Shebang's way with two finger-guns. "Plan A is for our bomb-guru here to make two bombs, linked. The first bomb drops the loop. The second bomb absorbs the temporal energy from the loop and pops off in our victim's face, reverting everything in the area to what it was on whatever date he got Gray-Boy'd. We'd have to find that out, of course."
"I don't even know if that'll work, just saying," Shebang supplied. "Theoretically, it should. But there's a huge gap between 'theoretically' and 'reality'."
Assault rubbed his chin. "If you have a Plan A, then you have at least a Plan B. What's Plan B? Clockblocker lurking behind him with a big hammer?"
"No, that's plan Z." Riley said it so seriously that Brian was almost taken in for a second. "Plan B is that the second bomb hits him with an infused dose of stuff I can make that … um." She glanced around at everyone, still looking at her with interest, then went on. "That kind of causes a moderate amount of retrograde amnesia. Instant uptake, instant effect."
Clockblocker looked around at the group. "Am I the only one who doesn't know what retrograde amnesia is?"
"I don't," confessed Shebang.
"Likewise," said Assault.
Trooper Ballinger cleared his throat. "Isn't it loss of the memories from before whatever happened to you?"
"Holy shit!" blurted Clockblocker. "He speaks!" He turned to Ballinger. "Seriously, I was half wondering if you were a robot that Shebang made."
"I make bombs, doofus, not robots." Shebang rolled her eyes. "Trooper Ballinger is a perfectly nice man who volunteered to carry my cases for me."
Assault cleared his throat. "Trooper, on behalf of my Wards, I apologise for the rudeness. Especially considering that you knew more about what Miss Medic was referring to than half of us did."
Ballinger nodded. "I appreciate it, sir, but it's not a problem."
"Was there a Plan C?" asked Chevalier.
Riley nodded. "Yes, sir. Instead of a second bomb, Clockblocker freezes him and I apply the stuff as a topical ointment. Skin uptake isn't as fast as bomb infusion, so there's a chance he'll still trigger before it takes effect. And Plan D is … well, we call up Atropos and ask her to help out by killing his powers before he can do anything drastic, then we keep him sedated until we can deal with his mental problems."
"Hmm." Chevalier seemed to be thinking hard. "Let's leave any plans that involve calling on Atropos as extreme backup plans, shall we? For now … Shebang, for Plan A, what's the projected range on that time-reversion bomb, and do you need extra equipment to put it together?"
"Anything from fifteen feet to fifty feet, and I'll need to get some readings first." Shebang turned to Trooper Ballinger, and pointed. "I need that case, please."
"Ma'am." He picked up the left-hand case and hefted it forward a few feet, then stepped back.
"Thank you." Unsnapping the catches, she opened it to reveal a bewildering array of electronics, with an air of being slightly off that Brian was learning to recognise was a trademark of Tinker tech. He'd seen it in Kid Win's work as well as Armsmaster's, but Shebang's was even more obvious. Whether it was because she was newer or she just didn't care enough to try to make her stuff look more normal, he had no idea.
Sliding an instrument out of its niche, she began running it over the exterior of the bubble that enclosed the Gray Boy loop. Within, the hapless victim went through his endless cycle of being eviscerated, falling, resetting, stabbed, falling, over and over again. Brian didn't like it, but he'd seen worse as Grue, and he suspected he would again.
"Well, okay then." Shebang was focusing on the readouts to the point that Brian suspected she'd forgotten there was a man in there. "Gotta say, Clock, this is a lot easier than trying to get data out of your stupid rubber ball." She shut off the scanner while Brian was still trying to make sense of that, then turned to face Chevalier. "I've got good news and bad news, sir."
"Bad news first," he said promptly. "Is this even possible to do?"
"Oh, sure, it's possible." She tried a nonchalant twirl with her scanner, and it slipped out of her grasp, but Brian whipped out his hand and snagged it before it could drop all the way to the floor of the alley. "Shit! Um, wow, those are some crazy-ass reflexes you've got there."
"If you ever met my sister, you'd know why." He waited until he was sure she had a good grip on it before letting it go. The last thing he wanted was for her to have to go back to New York to build another scanner. "So, you were saying?"
"Oh, yeah." She took a deep breath. "It's totally doable. Buuuttttt … I just don't have the parts I need for the second bomb. Good news, I can build it, and I'm pretty sure I can make it work. I just need some stuff first."
"What do you need, and do you have it back in New York?" asked Chevalier.
"A bunch of rare earths," she admitted. "And no, I don't. So I'm gonna have to requisition it through Legend and Director Piggot. On the upside, once I've got it, I'm reasonably sure I can bust our buddy right out of grayscale world, and rewind his memory to day dot." She tucked the scanner back into the case and dusted her hands off, looking pleased with herself.
"So … we're not popping the cork today?" asked Clockblocker.
Brian shrugged. "It appears not."
"Understood." Chevalier nodded once, curtly. "Well, then. Let's get you back home, so you can work on that. Well done, by the way. Any progress is better than no progress at all."
As they filed out of the alleyway, Brian could feel the man's eyes on the back of his neck, but he didn't look back.
We'll get you out of there, buddy. Just not today.
<><>
Taylor
On my feet at last, I stretched and flexed my arms and legs. Already, I could feel my power retuning my newly rebuilt muscles to optimum fitness levels. "Well, that's definitely an improvement," I decided. "When I got here, I didn't have a leg to stand on."
Amy face-palmed, and Vicky groaned. "Wow, really?" Vicky groused. "Bad jokes, at a time like this?"
"Hey, there's always time for bad jokes." I tugged on what remained of my left sleeve and it came away, then I picked up the teleport module and slid it onto my arm. "It's amazing how many people underestimate you if you make a cheesy pun at the right moment."
"Now I know why you and Mouse Protector get along so well," Amy snarked. She nodded at the teleporter as I settled it into place. "Where did you get it from, anyway? I've seen a bit of Tinker tech before, but nothing as good as that."
"Leet, actually." Flicking up the cover, I tapped in the coordinates for my bedroom at home. "I had a word with him, my power had a word with his power, and what do you know, tech that doesn't blow up if you look at it wrong."
Vicky frowned. "What do you mean, your power had a word with his power? Powers don't talk to each other."
"Trump powers do," I corrected her. "Also, Jack Slash's power was built to talk to other powers. It was how he managed to stay around for so long. Any time a cape went after him, it was feeding him information under the table."
Amy nodded. "Yeah, I remember how you talked about what a cheating asshole he was."
"He was all of that. And when my power has a word with someone else's power, that power knows not to screw me over." I flipped the cover down again. "Need a hand cleaning up?"
"Pfft, nah." She waved her hand casually. "I got this. You're good at killing things, but I'm amazing at dealing with biological messes."
"Okay, yeah, point." I raised my (newly regrown) finger to get her attention, and Vicky's as well. "Before I go, there's two things I want to say. First, thank you both for being good sports. I truly appreciate it. And second, just remember that jumping straight to killing isn't the solution to dealing with villains. Not for you, anyway."
Vicky blinked. "Okay, I wasn't about to go out and start murdering villains, but isn't that a teensy bit hypocritical of you? You started offing people from the get-go. You've blown up warehouses and boats, and set fire to eighteen-wheelers. And I'm never going to forget what you did to Lung and Skidmark."
"All of that is true," I admitted. "Except for the hypocrisy bit. See, my power is basically called Ending. Its entire purpose is killing things: people, ideas, intentions, threats. It tells me who needs to die in order to End a problem, how to End them, and how to do it in order to get the reaction I want. But the result I want needs to involve Ending something. I can't just say, 'I want', and get it."
"And what you want is …?" Vicky prompted.
"Don't you read PHO at all?" Amy chided her. "She wants what we want. A safer and nicer Brockton Bay."
I clicked my tongue and made a finger-gun at her. "Got it in one."
Vicky nodded, her expression thoughtful. "Understood. Well, thanks for trusting us. Trusting me."
"Thanks for being trustworthy. Welp, my ride's here." I turned as the shadowy portal formed in mid-air. Giving both girls a nod, I stepped into it, emerging in my own bedroom.
Tattered costume and all, I pirouetted on my toes and fell backward onto the bed, letting out a huge sigh.
"Well," I informed the ceiling. "That was a day."
End of Part Ninety
Ack
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She had a spare costume. The original is still hanging in her closet.
Avernus
Getting sticky.
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There was also a mention in passing of that in the story:
Part Ninety-One: Asking the Important Questions
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A Darker Path
Part Ninety-One: Asking the Important Questions
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
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♦ Topic: A New Warning Delivered
In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► New Capes ► Atropos
Atropos (Original Poster) (Banned) (You Wish) (UnVerified Cape) (Can Actually Kill Anything) (Yes, Really) (Watch Me) (Verified Dethpicable)
Posted On Mar 15th 2011:
Hello again to my favorite city, and the wonderful people therein!
I hope you're having an awesome week. Mine's looking up; I had a little bit of a rough patch yesterday, but I made two new friends, so that's always a good thing.
So anyway, for those who have read the title of this post, you must be wondering exactly who did the stupid and got my attention.
That person is Sleeper.
He's not very sociable, but that's okay. It takes all kinds. In his case, he was looking to go someplace populous and kill a lot of people, if by accident.
For reasons of my own, I'm reluctant to let that happen, so I had to go in and give him a warning not to. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I got in through his storm (mostly in one piece) and delivered it to his hand. At midnight local time, even, because traditions are fun.
Yes, I could've just ganked him, but I've said everyone gets a warning, so he got a warning.
What happens next is up to him. Either he loses his powers, allows me to shunt him to an unoccupied alternate Earth where he can devastate the landscape to his heart's content, or I put Sleeper to sleep, permanently.
I gave him twenty-four hours to think about it. We'll see how it goes then.
Toodles!
(Showing page 1 of 276)
►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Well, dang.
Okay, this is going to need some unpacking, because apparently Atropos is too modest to claim credit for stopping the first potential interdimensional war.
Where do I start?
About a week and a half ago, a cape dictator calling herself Goddess (pretentious? Never!) on an alternate Earth with the designation of Shin decided she needed outside help to quash the multiple resistance movements pushing back against her Benevolent Rule (yes, this is sarcasm).
So, not being from Brockton Bay, she decided that the best possible way to pull this off was to kidnap not only Atropos (a career ending move if I ever heard of one) but also to grab a few hostages on top of that (one of whom was our very own Miss Medic). Held in remote locations, they were Goddess' guarantee that Atropos wouldn't go all murder-happy on her and her Court.
This did not go well.
See, Atropos saw her coming. (Goddess' real name was Bianca. The day before all this kicked off, in Atropos' PHO post, she literally inserted the phrase "Be informed: a new city arises", which spells out BIANCA if you go back and look at it (I facepalmed so hard when someone told me.))
With her usual combination of audacity and sneakery, she managed to make it look like she was slaughtering her way through the resistance guys, while in fact she was doing the exact opposite. End result: Goddess lost her powers, the resistance forces took the palace, and Atropos got the hostages home safely. RIP Goddess.
Since then, Shin has since opened trade relations with Bet, via a portal that apparently exists somewhere.
Anyway, Sleeper started moving very recently, and it was determined he was heading for this portal. If he'd gotten through it, the loss of life would've been catastrophic, and apparently Atropos feels some level of responsibility for Bet-Shin relations, so she took it on herself to deliver him the warning she talked about.
*How* she did it, I'm not entirely sure, because his 'storm' (as good a word as any) is pretty well destructive to anything that's not actually the ground, but she got in and out again alive, so I'm not arguing.
All I can say is, damn. That's some serious dedication to doing the right thing.
Sleeper, if you have internet access, here's my two cents. Do what she says. Seriously.
►Atropos (Original Poster) (Banned) (You Wish) (UnVerified Cape) (Can Actually Kill Anything) (Yes, Really) (Watch Me) (Verified Dethpicable)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
(sigh)
Okay, fine, that happened. I did that. The governments of Shin are transitioning as we speak, to a vaguely democratic model where cape and non-cape alike get a fair shake, following my specific recommendation not to have a backlash against capes in general.
Sleeper's incursion would've set all that back, and I'm not a fan of wasted effort. Thus, the warning.
►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
I can confirm that Miss Medic and a friend were abducted from her home on the fifth, and returned within a few hours, unscathed. The third hostage was equally unharmed, according to them.
Representatives of Earth Shin have opened diplomatic negotiations, which include trade agreements.
Sleeper has also been reported to be on the move.
The PRT wishes to thank Atropos for saving Miss Medic, and her timely response to this crisis.
►Malarkey
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Huh, so Aleph isn't the only alternate out there. Good to know.
Anyway.
'Swhat happens when you break one of the Rules.
Goddess broke Rule 3. She thought she had brought Atropos to her choice of battlefield, and found the landmine she had already prepared.
►GrinningCat
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Heh whelp I know that the Darwin Awards committe declared death by Atropos as off limits for nominations of awards but I bet earth shin will be forming its own Darwin academy from the sheer stupidity goddess showed there Rest in Pieces moron.
►UnconcernedFox
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
*peers suspiciously at Sleeper*
*settles back and grabs more popcorn*
*not over yet*
►MissMedic (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
I've checked and I am allowed to say that yes, I was there, and yes, it went down basically like Bagrat says.
It was kinda scary, and I don't really want to talk about it, but Atropos totally got us all home safely.
►WingsOnHigh (Verified Not the Simurgh)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Reading between the lines, I'm a little concerned about some of the phrasing there. 'A little bit of a rough patch', 'wasn't the easiest thing in the world', 'mostly in one piece'.
Should we be worried?
►Atropos (Original Poster) (Banned) (You Wish) (UnVerified Cape) (Can Actually Kill Anything) (Yes, Really) (Watch Me) (Verified Dethpicable)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Meh, it's nothing I couldn't walk off, with a little help from my friends.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 274, 275, 276
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: Reave
Subject: Just checking
Are you actually okay? Sleeper is no joke.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Reave
From: Atropos
Subject: Re: Just checking
And nobody's laughing.
It got a little hairy there for a while, but I came out of it okay.
Thanks for asking. I appreciate it.
Audrey Howell
Former Vice Principal, Arcadia High
Winslow High School looked less than appealing as Audrey drove into the parking lot, but that was only to be expected. Arcadia set a very high bar. Still, someone was making a belated effort, as attested to by the parts of the frontage that had been pressure-washed, probably to get rid of graffiti.
I still don't know why I agreed to this, she told herself, but that wasn't strictly true. She'd been working with Vernon for seventeen years at Arcadia, and considered him to be more like a brother than a boss. So when he'd asked her to take over at Winslow for the duration, at least until the beginning of the next school year when the Board could appoint new staff, she'd found it hard to say no.
It was going to be one hell of a wrench, and a steep learning curve, she knew that much. Winslow had a distinctly shabby reputation; 'gang-infested' was a phrase she'd heard more than once. She could only hope the junior recruits at Winslow had gotten the memo that the gangs were gone from Brockton Bay.
Parking her car, she retrieved her shoulder-bag and got out, then made sure to lock the vehicle. How much good this would actually do, she wasn't sure, but it was worth a try. Checking herself out in the side mirror—hair tied back professionally, business attire, floral scarf around her neck for a touch of colour—she nodded in satisfaction. She wasn't quite sure what headspace the kids would be in after the principal and one of the teachers were escorted out by police, but they probably wouldn't react well to a total martinet walking in the front door.
As she climbed the front steps of the school, she could see many subtle (and not so subtle) clues indicating a long-standing lack of maintenance on the building and its surroundings. She couldn't do much about them, or about the sidelong glances from the students also coming in, but she took note and kept moving. As the outsider here, she was the one who was going to have to prove herself to the teachers and the student body.
She hadn't been able to get away from Arcadia until today, so Winslow had been without a principal for a week. The Board had sent an interim administrator in on a strictly temporary basis; he'd kept the cogs turning, delegating where he could and signing what had to be signed. Audrey was the one who was going to have to actually do the job rather than just hide in the office and kick the can down the road.
As she stepped in through the main doors, she was faced with a mass of students, every single one of whom (it seemed) were looking directly at her, dissecting her with their eyes. To her relief, she didn't see any gang colours, but one or two heads had remarkably short haircuts, and the atmosphere held more than a hint of sullen animosity, all aimed at her. She got the impression that Blackwell had done nothing whatsoever to endear herself to the students, and this had poisoned the well for her successors going forward.
And then a girl stepped out of the crowd; tall, neatly dressed, with long dark hair and glasses. Moving confidently, she went straight up to Audrey and held out her hand. "Hi," she said briskly. "You'd be Mrs Howell, our new principal? It's good to meet you."
Reflexively, Audrey shook it. "Yes, yes, I am," she replied. "It's nice to be here." Her brain finally caught up with her mouth at that point. "I'm sorry, but who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Taylor Hebert, but that's not important." Taylor smiled, her manner somehow giving the lie to her casual tone. "I just wanted to welcome you to Winslow, and wish you good luck in managing this madhouse." She added a chuckle that sounded so natural Audrey found herself smiling in response.
"Well, thank you, Taylor. I appreciate the sentiment." She made a mental note to look up Ms Hebert's file as soon as she got the chance; if this girl wasn't already student body president, the position was going wanting.
"That's okay." Taylor stepped aside to let her pass. "I have to get to home room now. You have a good day."
"You, too." Audrey moved onward; it took her a few moments to realise that the entire attitude of the hallway full of students had shifted. Where before there had been subtle sneers and scowls, people were now clearing the way for her and offering nods of respect. A few even murmured a greeting as she passed by.
What on earth is going on here? She'd done nothing that she could see to have engendered such a change. A brief glance backward assured her that there were no hulking students looming behind her to require such deference. On she went, trying her best to pretend this was how she was always treated in a new school.
It was only when she'd passed by all the students and was in an empty hallway that the question occurred to her: how did Ms Hebert know my name? I'm pretty sure there's been no announcement yet. It was just another mystery to add to the pile.
When she got to the principal's office—her office—she didn't bother knocking. The interim administrator looked up as she opened the door and entered. "Can I help you?" He was balding and overweight, almost a parody of the classic idea of a school principal.
"I believe so." She gave him a brief smile. "I'm Audrey Howell, the new principal. You would be Derek Simons?"
"That's me." He popped to his feet more quickly than she would have expected for someone of his apparently sedentary nature. "I wasn't expecting you for another couple of hours. What do you need?"
She took a deep breath. "I need you to fill me in on everything. Issues you're dealing with right now. Any discipline problems with the students. Where everything is in this office. Any maintenance problems you've found. Everything."
As the eager light died from his eyes, she realised he'd thought he was going to be just walking out the door the moment she walked in. Oh, hon. Not hardly.
"Um … okay, I've got a folder here …" He pulled open a drawer.
"Good, but before we get started on that, can you answer me a question?"
He looked up from the folder. "What?"
"When you're walking the halls, how do the students treat you?"
The grimace told her everything. "They look at me like I'm shit on the bottom of their shoe. Why?"
"Oh, no reason."
As he opened the folder, and started showing her what he had, she paid attention. But at the back of her mind, the question had been asked.
What the heck happened back there?
Cauldron Base
Legend
"Did you know?"
Keith looked up from his morning croissant as Rebecca stalked into the break room, staring daggers at Contessa.
Contessa finished pouring her coffee, put it down then turned to Rebecca with cup in hand. "About Miss Medic? Yes."
Keith's head came up; he knew what this was about, and he was still working out his stance on the matter. Despite his new knowledge about the girl, he still liked her. She was a delight to talk to, and dedicated to her role. He'd heard that everyone upped their game when she was around, so as not to disappoint her.
"What about Miss Medic?" Doctor Mother put down her herbal tea and looked from one to the other. "Don't keep us in suspense, here."
Rebecca sighed in aggravation and massaged her brow with her fingers and thumb; Keith suspected the pressure being generated would have crushed steel. "She's Bonesaw. Or she used to be. Atropos pulled some bullshit I'm still trying to get to the bottom of, had Panacea give her a total physical and mental makeover, then got Dragon to assist in getting the girl inserted into the Wards program."
Across the other side of the table, Kurt let out a bark of laughter. "Oh, yeah. That girl's got style."
Rebecca glared at him. "Shut up. Not helping."
"Bonesaw." Doctor Mother stared at her. "Are you certain?"
Keith understood where she was coming from. Between age, height, weight, facial shape, body type and ethnic phenotype, Bonesaw and Miss Medic had absolutely nothing in common. Both were preteen girls, and that was it.
"Chevalier got a look at her with his power yesterday." Rebecca let out a gusty sigh. "He said she had the purest of intentions. She wants to help people. But …"
"But she's still Bonesaw," Doctor Mother said. "What the hell? Why are we even letting this go on? For all we know, the girl will snap back tomorrow and start murdering people all over again."
"No, she won't." Kurt shook his head. "I've seen how Atropos works. She's there before a problem can become unfixable, and she knows how to fix it. If she's not keeping tabs on Miss Medic, I'll clean every corridor in this place with my tongue."
"But still …" Doctor Mother shook her head. "We should do something."
"No. We shouldn't." Contessa sipped at her coffee. "As Number Man said, Miss Medic is under her eye, and under her protection. Interfering would only draw her attention, and her ire. I have no desire to do either."
"Exactly. And she is helping people." Keith eyed Contessa carefully. "Is this why you didn't tell us earlier?"
She raised one perfect eyebrow. "Would it have helped?"
"Maybe!" Rebecca crooked her fingers as though she was looking for someone to strangle. "Not letting me get blindsided by it could've been useful!"
Doctor Mother looked at Contessa and then back to Rebecca. "So, we're not going to do anything about the Slaughterhouse Nine member who's now part of the Wards, because another serial killer put her there?"
Despite how bad it sounded when she said it like that, Keith shook his head. "No. Because Atropos isn't just 'another serial killer'. As you may recall, her kill count includes the rest of the Nine, Butcher and the Teeth, most of the Machine Army, the Three Blasphemies, the Simurgh, and apparently the other two Endbringers. Now, she's set her sights on Scion. I'm willing to excuse a lot of dead villains for that."
"And don't even try to claim the moral high ground on this one." Kurt still sounded rather amused. "We've done far worse, with less in the way of results, and you know it. Hell, I used to be one of the Nine."
"But … but …" Doctor Mother sounded frustrated, while at the same time unable to muster a coherent argument. "That's different!"
"Different how, exactly?" Keith challenged her. He respected her for her part in forming Cauldron, but her tendency toward double standards didn't sit well with him.
"It's … I … we …" She stared at him, baffled.
"The phrase you're looking for is 'it's different for us, because we're the good guys'," Kurt said helpfully. "But that's bullshit. We've hurt innocents. She hasn't. In fact, she's helped a few of the people we hurt. And the fact that Dragon willingly assisted her in this means that Atropos has done something we never managed; or rather, never bothered trying to do. Got her out from under Saint's thumb. Who, exactly, is the good guy here again?"
Contessa cleared her throat. "I didn't tell anyone about Miss Medic," she explained, "so that by the time you did find out, she would be established, having already proven herself as a competent and willing healer. Had I mentioned it when she first showed up, you would've been watching her like a hawk for the slightest excuse to swoop in and grab her up. This would probably have irritated Atropos. We want to avoid that."
Amen, thought Keith. Pissing off the girl who had taken down the Simurgh with a sawn-off shotgun was not something he wanted to contemplate.
Doctor Mother turned her glare toward Contessa. "I thought you disliked Atropos. Since when do we use 'Atropos might get upset with us' as a reason not to do something?"
"Whether I like her or not is immaterial." Unperturbed, Contessa sipped her coffee again. "I've tried to influence her twice now, and each time she was waiting for me. Neither experience was pleasant. From the evidence to date, not irritating Atropos seems an excellent way to not have her peer over your shoulder and ask you what the hell you think you're doing."
Kurt nodded toward Doctor Mother. "And just remember, she's said that if she ever has to confront you, she will shoot you in the face, on general principles."
From the sour expression on her face, she hadn't forgotten.
"Okay, fine," Rebecca conceded. "I get why you did it that way. Still not happy. But moving on, has anyone heard anything new about Atropos with regards to Sleeper?"
"Yes, actually," Keith said. "She posted at midnight on PHO. Apparently, she went in there to serve him with a cease and desist. There are hints she may have been injured in the process, but she also said she 'walked it off' with the help of her friends."
Kurt facepalmed at that, but he was also chuckling. "Only goddamn Atropos."
Taylor
Cherie looked around at the Winslow auditorium and wrinkled her nose. "Doesn't really compare to the Arcadia one, does it? How often do you have school assemblies like this?"
"Maybe two or three times a year," I said honestly. In the back of my mind, I was keeping track of how Cauldron registered on my threatscape. Despite the fact that Doctor Mother still hated my guts, there were no plans to act against me (or Riley, Amy, or Dragon). Which suited me right down to the ground.
"Not totally surprising," she snarked. "Hey, isn't that the new principal you shook hands with before?"
"It is," I agreed as Mrs Howell stepped up to the microphone and tapped it. She and Blackwell both had bleached blonde hair, but that was about as far as it went with resemblance. Everyone quieted down—word had spread that I'd wished her well—and prepared to listen to what she had to say. I knew damn well any hecklers would be suppressed without me needing to do or say anything.
"Good morning," she said, the aged speakers amplifying her voice with only a little in the way of crackling. "As you are probably aware, Principal Blackwell was escorted out by police before first period exactly one week ago, due to severe irregularities in the way she was running this school. I'm Mrs Howell, your new principal. I do not intend to repeat her mistakes. As such, if anyone is suffering from bullying or other antisocial behaviour, bring it to me. I will listen, and I will act. We didn't tolerate that in Arcadia, and I will not tolerate it here."
She paused to allow the murmur of comments to pass through the audience. Most of the students were cynical, having heard far too many of these promises before, but Cherie nodded slightly. "She means it," she murmured.
I smiled slightly. "I know." If Mrs Howell had been principal when I'd started at Winslow, things may have turned out quite differently for me. But, spilt milk and all that.
"In addition, as you know, Spring Break is coming up next week. You will need to remove all belongings from lockers, and leave nothing in the school. This is because starting on Friday afternoon, the Brockton Bay Betterment Committee will be renovating the entire school from top to bottom. We're getting all new equipment, all new facilities. The last workers will be walking out on Monday morning as we're coming in."
There was stunned silence for a moment, then a roar of approval. We'd all seen how the Betterment Committee workers replaced entire streets overnight, or pulled down buildings and put up better ones in just days. I'd known this was coming, but the idea of Winslow being revamped in this way still gave me a little thrill. I did this. This is me.
Mrs Howell beamed at us all. "I'm glad to hear that you approve. Now, I'll let you get back to home room and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you all for listening."
The applause started as she stepped down off the podium, and didn't cease until after she'd left by the rear door of the auditorium. As we began to disperse back to our classrooms, I knew that only part of it had been due to my earlier gesture of welcoming her. Most of the response was genuine, actually accepting her as their principal.
Good. It was about time the place had someone in charge who actually wanted to do their job.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Director_Renick_PRT_ENE
From: Atropos
Subject: Regarding Miss Medic
Hi. Imma need to borrow her (and Tenebrae, of course) this afternoon to close the deal with Sleeper. I'll be around about three-thirty-ish, with Panacea and Glory Girl.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: TheRealPanacea
From: Atropos
Subject: Can I borrow you?
So hey, I need to go and deal with Sleeper this afternoon, just after three. Are you up for another collab with Miss Medic? You worked together pretty well last time. And yes, if Vicky wants to come along, she's welcome.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: Director_Renick_PRT_ENE
Subject: Re: Regarding Miss Medic
I'll have them both in my office at that time.
Thanks for the heads-up, and thanks for dealing with Sleeper.
May I ask what he's going to choose?
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: TheRealPanacea
Subject: Re: Can I borrow you?
You already know I'm going to say yes. Vicky's shaking her head in the background, but I know she's going to want to come along anyway.
See you then.
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Director_Renick_PRT_ENE
From: Atropos
Subject: Re: Re: Regarding Miss Medic
That would be telling.
Thanks for this.
Toodles!
End of Part Ninety-One
Part Ninety-One: Asking the Important Questions
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
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♦ Topic: A New Warning Delivered
In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► New Capes ► Atropos
Atropos (Original Poster) (
Posted On Mar 15th 2011:
Hello again to my favorite city, and the wonderful people therein!
I hope you're having an awesome week. Mine's looking up; I had a little bit of a rough patch yesterday, but I made two new friends, so that's always a good thing.
So anyway, for those who have read the title of this post, you must be wondering exactly who did the stupid and got my attention.
That person is Sleeper.
He's not very sociable, but that's okay. It takes all kinds. In his case, he was looking to go someplace populous and kill a lot of people, if by accident.
For reasons of my own, I'm reluctant to let that happen, so I had to go in and give him a warning not to. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but I got in through his storm (mostly in one piece) and delivered it to his hand. At midnight local time, even, because traditions are fun.
Yes, I could've just ganked him, but I've said everyone gets a warning, so he got a warning.
What happens next is up to him. Either he loses his powers, allows me to shunt him to an unoccupied alternate Earth where he can devastate the landscape to his heart's content, or I put Sleeper to sleep, permanently.
I gave him twenty-four hours to think about it. We'll see how it goes then.
Toodles!
(Showing page 1 of 276)
►Bagrat (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Well, dang.
Okay, this is going to need some unpacking, because apparently Atropos is too modest to claim credit for stopping the first potential interdimensional war.
Where do I start?
About a week and a half ago, a cape dictator calling herself Goddess (pretentious? Never!) on an alternate Earth with the designation of Shin decided she needed outside help to quash the multiple resistance movements pushing back against her Benevolent Rule (yes, this is sarcasm).
So, not being from Brockton Bay, she decided that the best possible way to pull this off was to kidnap not only Atropos (a career ending move if I ever heard of one) but also to grab a few hostages on top of that (one of whom was our very own Miss Medic). Held in remote locations, they were Goddess' guarantee that Atropos wouldn't go all murder-happy on her and her Court.
This did not go well.
See, Atropos saw her coming. (Goddess' real name was Bianca. The day before all this kicked off, in Atropos' PHO post, she literally inserted the phrase "Be informed: a new city arises", which spells out BIANCA if you go back and look at it (I facepalmed so hard when someone told me.))
With her usual combination of audacity and sneakery, she managed to make it look like she was slaughtering her way through the resistance guys, while in fact she was doing the exact opposite. End result: Goddess lost her powers, the resistance forces took the palace, and Atropos got the hostages home safely. RIP Goddess.
Since then, Shin has since opened trade relations with Bet, via a portal that apparently exists somewhere.
Anyway, Sleeper started moving very recently, and it was determined he was heading for this portal. If he'd gotten through it, the loss of life would've been catastrophic, and apparently Atropos feels some level of responsibility for Bet-Shin relations, so she took it on herself to deliver him the warning she talked about.
*How* she did it, I'm not entirely sure, because his 'storm' (as good a word as any) is pretty well destructive to anything that's not actually the ground, but she got in and out again alive, so I'm not arguing.
All I can say is, damn. That's some serious dedication to doing the right thing.
Sleeper, if you have internet access, here's my two cents. Do what she says. Seriously.
►Atropos (Original Poster) (
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
(sigh)
Okay, fine, that happened. I did that. The governments of Shin are transitioning as we speak, to a vaguely democratic model where cape and non-cape alike get a fair shake, following my specific recommendation not to have a backlash against capes in general.
Sleeper's incursion would've set all that back, and I'm not a fan of wasted effort. Thus, the warning.
►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
I can confirm that Miss Medic and a friend were abducted from her home on the fifth, and returned within a few hours, unscathed. The third hostage was equally unharmed, according to them.
Representatives of Earth Shin have opened diplomatic negotiations, which include trade agreements.
Sleeper has also been reported to be on the move.
The PRT wishes to thank Atropos for saving Miss Medic, and her timely response to this crisis.
►Malarkey
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Huh, so Aleph isn't the only alternate out there. Good to know.
Anyway.
'Swhat happens when you break one of the Rules.
Goddess broke Rule 3. She thought she had brought Atropos to her choice of battlefield, and found the landmine she had already prepared.
►GrinningCat
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Heh whelp I know that the Darwin Awards committe declared death by Atropos as off limits for nominations of awards but I bet earth shin will be forming its own Darwin academy from the sheer stupidity goddess showed there Rest in Pieces moron.
►UnconcernedFox
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
*peers suspiciously at Sleeper*
*settles back and grabs more popcorn*
*not over yet*
►MissMedic (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
I've checked and I am allowed to say that yes, I was there, and yes, it went down basically like Bagrat says.
It was kinda scary, and I don't really want to talk about it, but Atropos totally got us all home safely.
►WingsOnHigh (Verified Not the Simurgh)
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Reading between the lines, I'm a little concerned about some of the phrasing there. 'A little bit of a rough patch', 'wasn't the easiest thing in the world', 'mostly in one piece'.
Should we be worried?
►Atropos (Original Poster) (
Replied On Mar 15th 2011:
Meh, it's nothing I couldn't walk off, with a little help from my friends.
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: Reave
Subject: Just checking
Are you actually okay? Sleeper is no joke.
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Reave
From: Atropos
Subject: Re: Just checking
And nobody's laughing.
It got a little hairy there for a while, but I came out of it okay.
Thanks for asking. I appreciate it.
■
<><>
<><>
Audrey Howell
Former Vice Principal, Arcadia High
Winslow High School looked less than appealing as Audrey drove into the parking lot, but that was only to be expected. Arcadia set a very high bar. Still, someone was making a belated effort, as attested to by the parts of the frontage that had been pressure-washed, probably to get rid of graffiti.
I still don't know why I agreed to this, she told herself, but that wasn't strictly true. She'd been working with Vernon for seventeen years at Arcadia, and considered him to be more like a brother than a boss. So when he'd asked her to take over at Winslow for the duration, at least until the beginning of the next school year when the Board could appoint new staff, she'd found it hard to say no.
It was going to be one hell of a wrench, and a steep learning curve, she knew that much. Winslow had a distinctly shabby reputation; 'gang-infested' was a phrase she'd heard more than once. She could only hope the junior recruits at Winslow had gotten the memo that the gangs were gone from Brockton Bay.
Parking her car, she retrieved her shoulder-bag and got out, then made sure to lock the vehicle. How much good this would actually do, she wasn't sure, but it was worth a try. Checking herself out in the side mirror—hair tied back professionally, business attire, floral scarf around her neck for a touch of colour—she nodded in satisfaction. She wasn't quite sure what headspace the kids would be in after the principal and one of the teachers were escorted out by police, but they probably wouldn't react well to a total martinet walking in the front door.
As she climbed the front steps of the school, she could see many subtle (and not so subtle) clues indicating a long-standing lack of maintenance on the building and its surroundings. She couldn't do much about them, or about the sidelong glances from the students also coming in, but she took note and kept moving. As the outsider here, she was the one who was going to have to prove herself to the teachers and the student body.
She hadn't been able to get away from Arcadia until today, so Winslow had been without a principal for a week. The Board had sent an interim administrator in on a strictly temporary basis; he'd kept the cogs turning, delegating where he could and signing what had to be signed. Audrey was the one who was going to have to actually do the job rather than just hide in the office and kick the can down the road.
As she stepped in through the main doors, she was faced with a mass of students, every single one of whom (it seemed) were looking directly at her, dissecting her with their eyes. To her relief, she didn't see any gang colours, but one or two heads had remarkably short haircuts, and the atmosphere held more than a hint of sullen animosity, all aimed at her. She got the impression that Blackwell had done nothing whatsoever to endear herself to the students, and this had poisoned the well for her successors going forward.
And then a girl stepped out of the crowd; tall, neatly dressed, with long dark hair and glasses. Moving confidently, she went straight up to Audrey and held out her hand. "Hi," she said briskly. "You'd be Mrs Howell, our new principal? It's good to meet you."
Reflexively, Audrey shook it. "Yes, yes, I am," she replied. "It's nice to be here." Her brain finally caught up with her mouth at that point. "I'm sorry, but who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Taylor Hebert, but that's not important." Taylor smiled, her manner somehow giving the lie to her casual tone. "I just wanted to welcome you to Winslow, and wish you good luck in managing this madhouse." She added a chuckle that sounded so natural Audrey found herself smiling in response.
"Well, thank you, Taylor. I appreciate the sentiment." She made a mental note to look up Ms Hebert's file as soon as she got the chance; if this girl wasn't already student body president, the position was going wanting.
"That's okay." Taylor stepped aside to let her pass. "I have to get to home room now. You have a good day."
"You, too." Audrey moved onward; it took her a few moments to realise that the entire attitude of the hallway full of students had shifted. Where before there had been subtle sneers and scowls, people were now clearing the way for her and offering nods of respect. A few even murmured a greeting as she passed by.
What on earth is going on here? She'd done nothing that she could see to have engendered such a change. A brief glance backward assured her that there were no hulking students looming behind her to require such deference. On she went, trying her best to pretend this was how she was always treated in a new school.
It was only when she'd passed by all the students and was in an empty hallway that the question occurred to her: how did Ms Hebert know my name? I'm pretty sure there's been no announcement yet. It was just another mystery to add to the pile.
When she got to the principal's office—her office—she didn't bother knocking. The interim administrator looked up as she opened the door and entered. "Can I help you?" He was balding and overweight, almost a parody of the classic idea of a school principal.
"I believe so." She gave him a brief smile. "I'm Audrey Howell, the new principal. You would be Derek Simons?"
"That's me." He popped to his feet more quickly than she would have expected for someone of his apparently sedentary nature. "I wasn't expecting you for another couple of hours. What do you need?"
She took a deep breath. "I need you to fill me in on everything. Issues you're dealing with right now. Any discipline problems with the students. Where everything is in this office. Any maintenance problems you've found. Everything."
As the eager light died from his eyes, she realised he'd thought he was going to be just walking out the door the moment she walked in. Oh, hon. Not hardly.
"Um … okay, I've got a folder here …" He pulled open a drawer.
"Good, but before we get started on that, can you answer me a question?"
He looked up from the folder. "What?"
"When you're walking the halls, how do the students treat you?"
The grimace told her everything. "They look at me like I'm shit on the bottom of their shoe. Why?"
"Oh, no reason."
As he opened the folder, and started showing her what he had, she paid attention. But at the back of her mind, the question had been asked.
What the heck happened back there?
<><>
Cauldron Base
Legend
"Did you know?"
Keith looked up from his morning croissant as Rebecca stalked into the break room, staring daggers at Contessa.
Contessa finished pouring her coffee, put it down then turned to Rebecca with cup in hand. "About Miss Medic? Yes."
Keith's head came up; he knew what this was about, and he was still working out his stance on the matter. Despite his new knowledge about the girl, he still liked her. She was a delight to talk to, and dedicated to her role. He'd heard that everyone upped their game when she was around, so as not to disappoint her.
"What about Miss Medic?" Doctor Mother put down her herbal tea and looked from one to the other. "Don't keep us in suspense, here."
Rebecca sighed in aggravation and massaged her brow with her fingers and thumb; Keith suspected the pressure being generated would have crushed steel. "She's Bonesaw. Or she used to be. Atropos pulled some bullshit I'm still trying to get to the bottom of, had Panacea give her a total physical and mental makeover, then got Dragon to assist in getting the girl inserted into the Wards program."
Across the other side of the table, Kurt let out a bark of laughter. "Oh, yeah. That girl's got style."
Rebecca glared at him. "Shut up. Not helping."
"Bonesaw." Doctor Mother stared at her. "Are you certain?"
Keith understood where she was coming from. Between age, height, weight, facial shape, body type and ethnic phenotype, Bonesaw and Miss Medic had absolutely nothing in common. Both were preteen girls, and that was it.
"Chevalier got a look at her with his power yesterday." Rebecca let out a gusty sigh. "He said she had the purest of intentions. She wants to help people. But …"
"But she's still Bonesaw," Doctor Mother said. "What the hell? Why are we even letting this go on? For all we know, the girl will snap back tomorrow and start murdering people all over again."
"No, she won't." Kurt shook his head. "I've seen how Atropos works. She's there before a problem can become unfixable, and she knows how to fix it. If she's not keeping tabs on Miss Medic, I'll clean every corridor in this place with my tongue."
"But still …" Doctor Mother shook her head. "We should do something."
"No. We shouldn't." Contessa sipped at her coffee. "As Number Man said, Miss Medic is under her eye, and under her protection. Interfering would only draw her attention, and her ire. I have no desire to do either."
"Exactly. And she is helping people." Keith eyed Contessa carefully. "Is this why you didn't tell us earlier?"
She raised one perfect eyebrow. "Would it have helped?"
"Maybe!" Rebecca crooked her fingers as though she was looking for someone to strangle. "Not letting me get blindsided by it could've been useful!"
Doctor Mother looked at Contessa and then back to Rebecca. "So, we're not going to do anything about the Slaughterhouse Nine member who's now part of the Wards, because another serial killer put her there?"
Despite how bad it sounded when she said it like that, Keith shook his head. "No. Because Atropos isn't just 'another serial killer'. As you may recall, her kill count includes the rest of the Nine, Butcher and the Teeth, most of the Machine Army, the Three Blasphemies, the Simurgh, and apparently the other two Endbringers. Now, she's set her sights on Scion. I'm willing to excuse a lot of dead villains for that."
"And don't even try to claim the moral high ground on this one." Kurt still sounded rather amused. "We've done far worse, with less in the way of results, and you know it. Hell, I used to be one of the Nine."
"But … but …" Doctor Mother sounded frustrated, while at the same time unable to muster a coherent argument. "That's different!"
"Different how, exactly?" Keith challenged her. He respected her for her part in forming Cauldron, but her tendency toward double standards didn't sit well with him.
"It's … I … we …" She stared at him, baffled.
"The phrase you're looking for is 'it's different for us, because we're the good guys'," Kurt said helpfully. "But that's bullshit. We've hurt innocents. She hasn't. In fact, she's helped a few of the people we hurt. And the fact that Dragon willingly assisted her in this means that Atropos has done something we never managed; or rather, never bothered trying to do. Got her out from under Saint's thumb. Who, exactly, is the good guy here again?"
Contessa cleared her throat. "I didn't tell anyone about Miss Medic," she explained, "so that by the time you did find out, she would be established, having already proven herself as a competent and willing healer. Had I mentioned it when she first showed up, you would've been watching her like a hawk for the slightest excuse to swoop in and grab her up. This would probably have irritated Atropos. We want to avoid that."
Amen, thought Keith. Pissing off the girl who had taken down the Simurgh with a sawn-off shotgun was not something he wanted to contemplate.
Doctor Mother turned her glare toward Contessa. "I thought you disliked Atropos. Since when do we use 'Atropos might get upset with us' as a reason not to do something?"
"Whether I like her or not is immaterial." Unperturbed, Contessa sipped her coffee again. "I've tried to influence her twice now, and each time she was waiting for me. Neither experience was pleasant. From the evidence to date, not irritating Atropos seems an excellent way to not have her peer over your shoulder and ask you what the hell you think you're doing."
Kurt nodded toward Doctor Mother. "And just remember, she's said that if she ever has to confront you, she will shoot you in the face, on general principles."
From the sour expression on her face, she hadn't forgotten.
"Okay, fine," Rebecca conceded. "I get why you did it that way. Still not happy. But moving on, has anyone heard anything new about Atropos with regards to Sleeper?"
"Yes, actually," Keith said. "She posted at midnight on PHO. Apparently, she went in there to serve him with a cease and desist. There are hints she may have been injured in the process, but she also said she 'walked it off' with the help of her friends."
Kurt facepalmed at that, but he was also chuckling. "Only goddamn Atropos."
<><>
Taylor
Cherie looked around at the Winslow auditorium and wrinkled her nose. "Doesn't really compare to the Arcadia one, does it? How often do you have school assemblies like this?"
"Maybe two or three times a year," I said honestly. In the back of my mind, I was keeping track of how Cauldron registered on my threatscape. Despite the fact that Doctor Mother still hated my guts, there were no plans to act against me (or Riley, Amy, or Dragon). Which suited me right down to the ground.
"Not totally surprising," she snarked. "Hey, isn't that the new principal you shook hands with before?"
"It is," I agreed as Mrs Howell stepped up to the microphone and tapped it. She and Blackwell both had bleached blonde hair, but that was about as far as it went with resemblance. Everyone quieted down—word had spread that I'd wished her well—and prepared to listen to what she had to say. I knew damn well any hecklers would be suppressed without me needing to do or say anything.
"Good morning," she said, the aged speakers amplifying her voice with only a little in the way of crackling. "As you are probably aware, Principal Blackwell was escorted out by police before first period exactly one week ago, due to severe irregularities in the way she was running this school. I'm Mrs Howell, your new principal. I do not intend to repeat her mistakes. As such, if anyone is suffering from bullying or other antisocial behaviour, bring it to me. I will listen, and I will act. We didn't tolerate that in Arcadia, and I will not tolerate it here."
She paused to allow the murmur of comments to pass through the audience. Most of the students were cynical, having heard far too many of these promises before, but Cherie nodded slightly. "She means it," she murmured.
I smiled slightly. "I know." If Mrs Howell had been principal when I'd started at Winslow, things may have turned out quite differently for me. But, spilt milk and all that.
"In addition, as you know, Spring Break is coming up next week. You will need to remove all belongings from lockers, and leave nothing in the school. This is because starting on Friday afternoon, the Brockton Bay Betterment Committee will be renovating the entire school from top to bottom. We're getting all new equipment, all new facilities. The last workers will be walking out on Monday morning as we're coming in."
There was stunned silence for a moment, then a roar of approval. We'd all seen how the Betterment Committee workers replaced entire streets overnight, or pulled down buildings and put up better ones in just days. I'd known this was coming, but the idea of Winslow being revamped in this way still gave me a little thrill. I did this. This is me.
Mrs Howell beamed at us all. "I'm glad to hear that you approve. Now, I'll let you get back to home room and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you all for listening."
The applause started as she stepped down off the podium, and didn't cease until after she'd left by the rear door of the auditorium. As we began to disperse back to our classrooms, I knew that only part of it had been due to my earlier gesture of welcoming her. Most of the response was genuine, actually accepting her as their principal.
Good. It was about time the place had someone in charge who actually wanted to do their job.
<><>
■
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Director_Renick_PRT_ENE
From: Atropos
Subject: Regarding Miss Medic
Hi. Imma need to borrow her (and Tenebrae, of course) this afternoon to close the deal with Sleeper. I'll be around about three-thirty-ish, with Panacea and Glory Girl.
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: TheRealPanacea
From: Atropos
Subject: Can I borrow you?
So hey, I need to go and deal with Sleeper this afternoon, just after three. Are you up for another collab with Miss Medic? You worked together pretty well last time. And yes, if Vicky wants to come along, she's welcome.
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: Director_Renick_PRT_ENE
Subject: Re: Regarding Miss Medic
I'll have them both in my office at that time.
Thanks for the heads-up, and thanks for dealing with Sleeper.
May I ask what he's going to choose?
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Atropos
From: TheRealPanacea
Subject: Re: Can I borrow you?
You already know I'm going to say yes. Vicky's shaking her head in the background, but I know she's going to want to come along anyway.
See you then.
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Director_Renick_PRT_ENE
From: Atropos
Subject: Re: Re: Regarding Miss Medic
That would be telling.
Thanks for this.
Toodles!
■
End of Part Ninety-One
Last edited:
SenpaiSamaChan
Da UwU Nig
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I like the idea of Poe (PoE) mean mugging other shards from behind Taylor. Multidimensional arms crossed like some eldritch knee breaker.
Avernus
Getting sticky.
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I find it funny to consider that Path to Ending and GiveNoFucks!Taylor are effectively much more moral together than either would be apart. Oh, as I've said elsewhere she's not intentionally moral and doesn't regard herself as such, but the prerequisites of what she wants to accomplish guide her towards acting as if she had a sort of hard-edged morality. It's a character type I've seen before, the consciously amoral person who reasons (or in this case precogs) themselves into acting morally because their goals demand it.
PtE is a killer space whale fragment that doesn't care about humanity as such and defaults to "kill"; Taylor gives it human-friendly goals and "gently steers" PtE to less kill-em-all solutions (since they fit her goals better, generally). PtE clearly doesn't mind Ending things to help Brockton Bay, but it wouldn't bother without Taylor's input. Taylor pushes PtE towards human-friendly goals just by being bonded with it because she's human (and it's not programmed to screw its host over).
Meanwhile if GiveNoFucks!Taylor was operating on her own she'd probably be a lot more indiscriminately murderous, with nowhere near the positive results Atropos has gotten. People normally need to care about other people in order to act with restraint. But with PtE guiding her, telling her how to End things to achieve her long-term goals she restrains herself despite her lack of empathy or concern for other's opinions. She effectively acts more empathic than she is just because her goals are affected by other people's feelings and desires, and therefore PtE guides her along Paths that are a lot more helpful to others than somebody lacking in empathy would normally bother with. Taylor may Give No Fucks, but if she wants to End Brockton Bay's problems then helping improve Brockton Bay in general like she has is the way to do it, and PtE will both tell her that and how to accomplish it.
PtE is a killer space whale fragment that doesn't care about humanity as such and defaults to "kill"; Taylor gives it human-friendly goals and "gently steers" PtE to less kill-em-all solutions (since they fit her goals better, generally). PtE clearly doesn't mind Ending things to help Brockton Bay, but it wouldn't bother without Taylor's input. Taylor pushes PtE towards human-friendly goals just by being bonded with it because she's human (and it's not programmed to screw its host over).
Meanwhile if GiveNoFucks!Taylor was operating on her own she'd probably be a lot more indiscriminately murderous, with nowhere near the positive results Atropos has gotten. People normally need to care about other people in order to act with restraint. But with PtE guiding her, telling her how to End things to achieve her long-term goals she restrains herself despite her lack of empathy or concern for other's opinions. She effectively acts more empathic than she is just because her goals are affected by other people's feelings and desires, and therefore PtE guides her along Paths that are a lot more helpful to others than somebody lacking in empathy would normally bother with. Taylor may Give No Fucks, but if she wants to End Brockton Bay's problems then helping improve Brockton Bay in general like she has is the way to do it, and PtE will both tell her that and how to accomplish it.
Lictre
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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So THAT's what a second or third trigger event looks like from the Shard's point of view. Emotion was probably 'inspired' enough to make sure the 'event' didn't splash to the surrounding area, so none of the nearby parahumans had any idea that the adjustment trigger had ever happened. From their point of view, Heartbreaker just did the always-possible, but never-done act of releasing his slaves.
Part Ninety-Two: Sharing Secrets
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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A Darker Path
Part Ninety-Two: Sharing Secrets
[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: There will be racist thought processes from a racist character. These are not shared by the author.]
PRT ENE Wards Base, 2:45 PM
Paladin
"Does Atropos ask for you to go do stuff with her very often?" asked Theo. To make it easier to talk to the others, he'd left the helmet off and put on a domino mask. The sofa was evidently constructed with armoured people in mind, because it only sagged a little more than normal under him. "As opposed to rescuing us when we're kidnapped, I mean."
"Not a lot," admitted Riley. "There was the Damsel of Distress thing. Brian came along on that one, and so did Panacea and Flechette. Oh, and the Travellers thing, too."
"She didn't take you along that time," Brian reminded her. "She asked you to do it because she was busy doing something else."
"But it was still something she needed me to do." Riley gave Brian a defiant look, daring him to contradict her.
"Are you worried that she's going to put Riley in danger?" Brian asked Theo. "Because as far as I'm concerned, that's not an issue. I'm just not a fan of murder being her go-to, is all."
"Oh, it's not that." Theo shook his head. "I know it sounds stupid, but her asking for just you to come along with Riley feels a little bit like I'm second best and I don't count."
"No, no, that's not it at all." Brian put his hand on Theo's armoured shoulder. "I'm Riley's official caregiver. It's literally my job to be next to her whenever she's in public as Miss Medic. When she goes out and about with Atropos and I tag along, I'm about as much use as an outboard motor on an ocean liner, but I do it anyway because it keeps the PRT happy and Atropos doesn't care either way."
Theo blinked. "Oh. I didn't think about it that way."
Riley looked up at him keenly. "Something's still bothering you, isn't it?" Getting up from the sofa, she tilted her head toward the back of the Wards area. "Come on, let's talk."
He wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he stood up anyway, his armour's servos humming briefly. Obediently, he followed her down the corridor until they reached the room she was using to store and develop her medical gear. Standing in the doorway, she looked up at him contemplatively until he became uncomfortable. "What?" he asked. "Have I got something on my face?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm just trying to figure out how to tell you just how much I admire you, and that you shouldn't beat yourself up so much." Her tone was serious, a world away from her usual chirpy, upbeat manner, which threw him off even more than it normally would have.
"… what?" He shook his head. "Seriously, what? I'm nobody to admire. I didn't earn this armour. I didn't make it. This metal's been tainted by two generations of neo-Nazis, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to do enough to make up for the damage Kaiser and Allfather did to this city and its people."
She tilted her head to one side. "It's funny that you jumped straight to your powers when I talked about admiring you. A lot of people make that mistake about heroes, thinking their powers are why they should be looked up to."
"Okay, then," he said cautiously. "I clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please enlighten me before I make an even bigger idiot out of myself than I already have?"
She giggled briefly. "Theo, the main reason I admire you is that you did something I never could have. Tell me, how old were you when you decided you didn't want to be a racist jerk like your father and his associates?"
"Um." The shift in topic put him off-guard again. "Seven or eight, I guess. I hadn't really understood things, but then I saw something on TV that made me realise that Max's policies made him the bad guy. When he found out I didn't want to be what he was, he pushed harder and harder, but I couldn't just pretend. It ended up being easier to not react."
"So, to sum up, you spent maybe seven years of your life with a bunch of racist creeps trying to push their ideology down your throat, and you held out all that time. Is that about right?" Her expression, as far as he could make it out, was sympathetic.
"I wouldn't say I 'held out'," he said weakly. "That makes me sound a lot tougher than I was. I just didn't … do what he wanted, I guess."
Riley took a deep breath. "Okay, what I'm about to tell you, nobody in this building except for Brian knows. Atropos, Panacea, and Aisha are also in the know. Plus, Dragon. That's it. Okay?" As if acting on an afterthought, she unstrapped her helmet and removed it.
"Okay …" he said uncertainly.
Before speaking, she glanced around to make sure there was nobody nearby. Instinctively, he formed his helmet over his head and looked around as well, activating the infrared scanning. There were no heat traces nearby at all. Sending the helmet away again, he gave her an encouraging nod.
She took another breath, then spoke so quietly that he had to lean in to hear her voice. "I wasn't born Riley Laborn. I was born Riley Davis, a blonde-haired white girl. And when I was six, I got powers. Not long after that, Jack Slash kicked my parents' front door in. The Slaughterhouse Nine tortured my family over and over until they broke me. I let my family die, and I went away with Jack Slash. It took one night."
He stared at her, puzzle pieces clicking together in his head with ever-increasing speed. If she was telling the truth, with her powerset, there was only one person she could be. "But that means … you're B—"
"I was," she hissed so sharply that he cut off what he was about to say. "I was her for six long years. I became her. Jack Slash wanted me to be his little pet killer, so that's what I was. But then Atropos came along, destroyed the Nine, and killed the monster in my head. Now I'm not her anymore. Panacea gave me a new face, Dragon gave me a new name, and Atropos gave me a new family."
"Jeeesus," he muttered, feeling light-headed. "I mean, okay, I believe you. And if Atropos says you're safe then you're safe. But why are you telling me this now? Do I even need to know it?"
"Well, everyone else in the apartment does, so now we're all on the same page." She put her hand on his arm. "But I didn't tell you because of that. I told you because I know better than anyone what you've been through. Sure, Jack Slash had unfair advantages, but he still broke me in one night. Your dad and his racist buddies didn't manage to break you in seven years. And that's why I admire you. You've got strength inside you that you don't even know about."
"I … what?" He shook his head, confused. "No, I don't. I'm not strong. Ask anyone. I'm a powder-puff. I'll fold at the first strong breeze. That's why I've got to have armour around me, so I can—"
Now she was laughing quietly, shaking her head. He stopped, confused.
"You're a lot of things, Theo Anders, but you're no powder-puff. And I'm guessing it was people like Hookwolf who said you're weak?"
"Well …" He'd been told it so many times that he'd basically internalised it as truth, and it was hard to pin down exactly who had said it. But among the blur of faces jeering at him from his sea of memory, the tattooed cape showed up with his characteristic sneer. "Um, yeah. Among others."
She smiled and rapped on his metal chest-plate with her knuckle, eliciting a tiny clong. "Take it from me, when people like that say you're 'weak', you should take it as a compliment. To them, an accusation of weakness is the ultimate insult, so they use it as one. You not wanting to be a violent person or a racist jerk is weak in their eyes, because to them you don't have the 'stomach' for it. People like that are incapable of seeing the strength it takes to keep saying no, instead of surrendering and becoming what they want you to be. I wasn't strong enough. You were."
Theo blinked, his head spinning. In just a few sentences, Riley—who had been Bonesaw, and wasn't that a kick in the teeth—had turned his entire worldview upside down and inside out. She'd been the worst of villains and now she was the best of heroes—thanks to Atropos—and she was telling him that she admired him for his fortitude.
It sure as hell hadn't felt like fortitude at the time. He hadn't felt like a hero. It had been nothing but a long dreary slog from one day to the next, never quite knowing what extra load Max was going to pile on him to make him 'come around' to the Empire way of seeing things.
The difference between that and his tenure so far in the Laborn household had been far beyond that of night and day. Between chained in the darkest of stygian pits and a glorious summer day strolling on the Boardwalk, maybe. They didn't try to force him down, they lifted him up and encouraged him to express himself. To be himself.
Kayden had tried to let him be a teenager and find his voice, but even she couldn't go too far without Max putting his foot down hard.
I wish she could meet them. Surely she'd change her mind about minorities if she knew how good they are to me.
Taking a deep breath, he focused on the here and now. "Okay, wow, point taken. This is all gonna need to be unpacked once we get home, but for now I'll take your word for it and think about what you've said."
Back to her normal self, she gave him a beaming smile. "That's all I ask. You're a better person than you think, really."
Theo was still trying to think of something to say to that when he spotted Brian coming toward them. "Sorry to break up whatever this is, but it's time."
"It's all good. We were about done, anyway." Riley gave Theo a serious look. "Think about what I said. I meant it."
"Right." Theo watched as she put her helmet on and fastened the strap, then hustled away along the corridor with Brian.
Well, shit. How the hell am I supposed to handle that?
Panacea
"But Sleeper? Seriously? You saw what he did to Atropos, and neither one of us is Atropos! We shouldn't be going anywhere near him!"
Amy sighed in mild aggravation at her sister. "She wouldn't be inviting us along if it wasn't safe. Besides, every time you've found out about me going somewhere with her, you complained for days about being left out."
"I did not!"
Amy raised her eyebrows and gave Vicky a Look, copied straight off Carol at her most forceful.
"Well, okay, yeah, but only because anything could've happened to you!"
"Hah, yeah, right. Like anyone's gonna get close to me with Atropos on the lookout."
Vicky paused at that, and Amy grinned internally. She was right, and Vicky had to know she was right. In dealing with Atropos, there were three rock-solid certainties.
One: if Atropos planned on something happening, it was absolutely going to happen.
Two: if Atropos set out to End someone, they were already dead. That they were still walking around and breathing was strictly a temporary state of affairs. This was just as true for Bonesaw as it was for the Simurgh.
Three: if Atropos chose to protect someone, they were the safest person on the planet. This had been proven by Miss Medic and the other two unnamed hostages that Goddess had grabbed to keep Atropos under her thumb. Not only had Atropos Ended Goddess' powers and her reign, but she'd also brought all three hostages home, safe and sound. (It didn't hurt that she'd known it was going to happen a day before it actually did.)
On consideration, Amy added a fourth one: there were no lengths Atropos—Taylor—would not go to, in order to get things done the right way, every time. From setting up an elaborate trap to skewer Kaiser through the eye with his own stolen sword, to getting herself severely injured just so she could deliver a warning to Sleeper, she'd demonstrated that in spades, over and over again. Even down to provoking Vicky online so that she would attack Atropos on sight, thus giving Atropos a temporary hold over Amy herself, to facilitate turning Bonesaw into Miss Medic … the chain of events was inescapable.
Not that Amy resented what Taylor had done. In hindsight, her talks with the masked killer had opened up new possibilities in all directions, not even counting the fascinating adventures Atropos had taken her on. At the time she hadn't seen it that way, but since then her viewpoint had expanded somewhat.
Vicky hadn't finished, however. "So, why do you think she wants me to come along this time? There's got to be some kind of danger, or she'd probably kick me to the curb all over again."
Amy raised her eyebrows. "Do you honestly think anything out there's going to pose a danger that she can't deal with? I agree that there's probably a reason, but it's almost certainly not your ability to punch things."
"And you'd be right," Atropos commented, stepping around Vicky. Clad from head to toe in black, with just the gray vest and white shirt to break the monotony, she looked as though the previous day had never happened. "Nice to see you both. And thanks again for yesterday."
Vicky had either been waiting for something like this or she'd learned some phenomenal self-control, because she neither startled nor yelped in surprise. Though when she turned her head to look, she frowned mightily. "Okay, there's no way in hell you fixed your costume from the mess it was in when you left. We've still got pieces of it here, for crying out loud!"
"Oh, you mean my spare costume?" asked Atropos innocently. "Yeah, that one's trashed. This one here's the original." She took hold of the side of the long-coat and spread it outward. "If you look closely, you can see where the Machine Army put some laser holes through the coat while I was explaining the facts of life to them."
Peering carefully, Amy just barely made out dots of light through the black material. "Huh, holy shit, so I can."
"So why didn't you use this coat yesterday, and keep the new one?" asked Vicky. "It's totally what I would've done."
Atropos shrugged. "I like this one better."
"Exactly," Amy added. Atropos understood this sort of thing. "It's cooler this way. Like if Armsmaster left little tiny scrapes on his armour when he threw down with someone."
"But … he doesn't."
"Which is why Atropos will always be cooler than Armsmaster." Amy smirked at her sister. "As if it needed to be said."
Atropos chuckled. "As much as I value your approval, are you ready to roll?"
"Absolutely." Amy patted her jeans and tapped the toe of her sturdiest sneakers on the floor, then tugged at the jacket she was wearing. Atropos hadn't said they were going to Russia, but Amy could connect the dots as well as anyone else.
"Before we go," Vicky piped up, "if you don't need me for punching, what do you need me for?"
"Your diplomatic skills. Four seconds." Atropos snapped her fingers, and the portal appeared in the bedroom.
"What?"
"Four seconds!" Amy yelled and jumped through the portal, into what turned out to be the Director's office in the PRT building. Atropos followed close behind, then about half a second later Vicky zoomed through, feet off the ground. The portal closed soundlessly behind her.
Director Renick looked around from where he was speaking to Tenebrae and Miss Medic. "Ah, there she is now."
Five Minutes Earlier
Tenebrae
"So, what was that about with Paladin?" Brian was pretty sure they weren't being bugged in the elevator, and the PRT knew Theo's secret identity anyway, but it was a good habit to maintain.
"I'll tell you when we get home." Riley was even more close-mouthed than he was about things like that. This wasn't entirely unexpected, seeing how she'd been a cape for years longer than him.
They stepped out of the elevator and headed down the corridor toward Director Renick's office. Brian considered him to be a fair man, not as bloody-minded as Piggot, but that wasn't entirely unexpected, considering her history and the way Brockton Bay had been heading before Atropos stepped in. While Renick definitely would've been out of his depth in the pre-Atropos era, these days the city was downright peaceful. Prosperity was a new and bizarre look for Brockton Bay, but a welcome one.
He paused and knocked on the office door, then opened it when he heard the "Come in," from within. Stepping aside, he allowed Riley to enter first out of basic courtesy (he didn't think she'd follow Aisha's advice of kicking him in the shins if he didn't, but one never knew) then followed her in.
"Good afternoon, sir," he said. "How are you today?"
"Ah, Tenebrae, Miss Medic." The Director stood up and came around the desk to shake both their hands. "It's been a good day. The only surprise was when Atropos messaged me to ask if she could borrow your services. I had no reason to deny her request, and several compelling ones to do as she asked." He looked at Riley. "I understand you gave Emily an examination while you were in New York. May I ask how the prognosis for that is going?"
Riley bounced a little on her toes. "Really good. Like I told her, putting in new kidneys wouldn't be any trouble at all. Same with her calf muscles. I've got the tissues cloning right now. It should actually be ready to go by the time Shebang finishes sourcing those rare earths she wanted for her reverse-time bomb."
"Excellent, excellent." The Director went back around his desk and sat down. "And do you think the dual-bomb concept will work?"
Riley spread her hands. "Well, my power really doesn't mesh much with hers, so I can't say for sure. But the idea's sound, and she managed to nullify Clockblocker's freeze effect, so she's actually pretty good at what she does. I'd give it a really strong 'probably'."
Director Renick chuckled. "I've been working in this building for more years than I want to count, and that's the clearest explanation of a Tinker's work that I've heard yet. By this point they're starting to veer off into their own personalised jargon, and it's already well over my head and gaining altitude."
"Yeah, well," said Brian, "I never ask any Tinker questions about their stuff or their work. I do my thing and they do their thing, and never the twain shall meet."
"That's probably for the best," agreed Renick. "I—wait."
He broke off as the smoky gray portal appeared at the far side of the office. For a second or so, nothing happened, then Panacea burst through, followed by Atropos. Just a fraction before Brian's personal countdown of four seconds ended, Glory Girl zipped through, hovering in midair as the portal closed behind her.
"Ah," said the Director. "There she is now." He came around his desk again. "Good afternoon, ladies. Panacea, I know you've met Miss Medic and Tenebrae. Have you, Glory Girl?"
"Don't think so." Glory Girl stepped forward, her hand out. "Hi, I'm Panacea's punchier sister. It's good to meet my sister's other teammates, I guess."
Brian knew he should be just rolling with it, but the memory flashed across his mind of Glory Girl's face contorted with anger as she repeatedly tried to attack Atropos in the park. Atropos had had the whole situation entirely under control, he knew that, but she'd still been reckless as fuck, and she'd seriously endangered Aisha's life and well-being, just so she could play at being a hero. His jaw set as he spoke the mildest phrase that was boiling through his head right then. "We've met."
"Oh, okay." She paused, taking in his attitude and frowning. "Did I diss you at a meet and greet or something? Look, if I did that, I'm totally sorry. Things can get pretty hectic—"
"Not at a meet and greet. Westlake Park." His eyes bored into hers. "You destroyed a picnic table. Ring any bells?"
"Whoa, hey." Panacea had evidently twigged to what he was talking about. "We do not need to get into any of that. You've got a secret identity to protect."
From the way Glory Girl's face paled, she remembered all too well. "Shit. That was you?" Her gaze dropped to Riley. "And the girl—"
"Was not Miss Medic." He shook his head, then looked at Panacea. "Thanks, but I think it's safe with you two. Am I right?"
"Oh, you're absolutely right." Panacea elbowed her sister. "Go on, Vicky. Apologise to the man. He's totally earned it."
Glory Girl nodded. "Yeah, that's true, you have. And so's the other girl. I was an idiot, and I'm sorry for going off half-cocked like that. I've been really working at cleaning up my act since then." She paused, then corrected herself. "Since tall, dark and scary there wiped out the Nine. That was a wake-up call like no other, and I've been doing my best to listen to it."
"Tall, dark and scary," mused Atropos. "I kinda like that."
Riley giggled. "Nah, doesn't suit you at all."
Atropos snorted, then pointed a finger at her. "You have been spending far too much time with your cousin. Keep it up. I approve." She then turned to look at Brian. "Okay, you have your apology. Are you good now?"
Brian looked at Glory Girl for a moment longer to consider it, then held out his hand. Without any hesitation, she gave it a firm shake. He nodded. "I'm good now."
"Excellent." Atropos dusted her hands off. "So, we're going to come out in the middle of the night, in the countryside. It's going to be dark, and cold. Then we'll be doing some walking." She evidently took in Panacea's rugged clothing, and nodded approvingly. "It looks like someone thought ahead."
Panacea shrugged awkwardly, apparently not used to praise. "What can I say? Associating with you has been an exercise in expecting the unexpected. I've been trying to learn how to think on my feet."
"Excuse me, not wanting to be That Girl, but why do we need to do some walking?" asked Glory Girl. "Can't you put us right where we need to go?"
"I am." Atropos was not at all fazed by the question. "Where we need to go is a couple of minutes' walking distance from our final location. You'll see when we get there."
Panacea turned to look at her sister. "Oh, and one thing. When Atropos says 'four seconds', she doesn't mean 'this is the time to ask me what I mean'. She means 'we have four seconds to get through the portal before it shuts'."
"Yeah, yeah, I got that," Glory Girl huffed. "What happens if someone's halfway through the portal when it shuts? Do you get spat out either end?"
"I have no idea," Atropos said, in a tone that meant 'I know exactly what happens'. "Maybe you can ask one of the Blasphemies. They might have a better idea."
Brian was initially confused, then he recalled that one of them had been decapitated while in flight, at altitude. From the look on Glory Girl's face, she made the connection at the same time. "Oh."
"Yup." Atropos held up her hand. "Me first, then Panacea, Miss Medic, Tenebrae, and Glory Girl last. Got it?"
For a reply, she got a series of nods, as every eye in the room—Renick's included—was focused on her hand.
"Good. Four seconds." Then she snapped her fingers, and the portal opened before them.
Meanwhile, in New York
Scribe
Life was unfair, as far as Tammi was concerned. She should've been living large in Brockton Bay, with the Empire Eighty-Eight behind her and a life of luxury before her. But instead she'd had to run for her life, get caught when her two so-called partners ditched her and bolted (so much for Empire Eighty-Eight solidarity), and bullshit as hard as she could to not get sent back to juvey.
It didn't help that Miss Hardass Piggy refused to give her any semblance of the benefit of the doubt. The woman didn't let up for an instant, never actually treating her badly enough to call Youth Guard in on it (Kaiser had taught her all about the concept of 'useful idiots') but not slacking off on her either. It had been a lot easier under Wilkins, saying and doing the right things while the Director was around, letting the woman convince herself that Tammi was on the road to rehabilitation.
The people she was most annoyed with (apart from Piggy) were Flechette and Shebang. The bomb Tinker was still unsure of her place in the Wards, and Tammi was willing to put some work into making sure the slant-eye knew she was at the bottom of the totem pole, where she and all her kind belonged. Flechette still hadn't gotten that message, and Tammi kind of wished Cricket or someone like that was around to deliver it for her, because she knew for damn sure she'd get her lily-white ass handed to her in a sling if she tried.
With these thoughts running through her mind, Tammi brightened as she saw Shebang ahead of her, meandering along with her head down, tapping away on a tablet. Flechette might be damn near untouchable (in Tammi's mind, she'd just gotten lucky that Atropos picked her to go to Australia to gank the Simurgh) but Shebang was still fair game. Moving faster, Tammi came up behind the Tinker and shoulder-checked her hard enough to make her drop the tablet.
"Watch it, slope … oke," she jeered, finally pleased to have been able to use that particular insult as Shebang stumbled, her tablet clattering to the floor. With any luck, the useless bitch would've broken it and Piggy would make her pay for another one.
"Scribe!" She froze in mid-sneer as the shout came from behind her. "Not another move!"
Turning, she looked at Flechette as the taller girl—weren't Japs all supposed to be about five feet tall or something?—strode toward her, anger writ large on her face. "What?" she asked as innocently as she could manage. "She stepped in my way."
"I did not!" Shebang picked up the tablet from the ground, then gave Tammi a disgusted look. "You had the whole corridor to walk past me, and you ran straight into me."
"That's what I saw, too." Flechette's tone was implacable. "And I also heard what you said."
"What?" Tammi spread her hands. All I have to do is say I never said it. "I said she was being slow."
"You called her a slowpoke," Flechette countered. "Except you put just enough of a pause in there so you could call her a racist slur and pretend it never happened. Your problem is, I heard it."
"Prove it," challenged Tammi. "It's your word against mine."
"Um, plus the audio diary I was recording when you ran into me," Shebang added. "I wonder if Director Piggot will want to listen to that?"
"You know," mused Flechette. "I think she might."
"Fuck you both!" shouted Tammi. "You're setting things up to have me chucked back in juvey!" She turned and stormed off down the hallway. Maybe it was a good time to contact the local Youth Guard rep after all.
Flechette
Lily watched her go, then turned to Shebang. "You okay?" she asked. "She ran into you pretty hard just then."
"I'll be fine." Shebang gave her a smile. "I appreciate the save. Are you really going to report this to the Director?"
"I will if you want me to." Lily looked at the tablet. "Were you really recording an audio diary?"
Shebang shook her head. "No, but she was never going to call me on it." She thought for a second. "She's right, you know. I didn't actually hear what she said, and it'll be your word against hers."
Lily snorted. "My word against someone with known white supremacist leanings, you mean. But we don't have to actually go and report it if you don't want to. She'll think we are, so she's gonna jump every time anyone talks to her for the next few days."
Shebang's chuckle was remarkably evil. "She'll punish herself worse than the Director would. I like it. Let's do that." She held up her hand.
Lily gave her a high-five, then looked at the tablet. "So, what are you working on? Is it that bomb for the Gray Boy loops?"
"That's the one. Do you mind if I use you as a sounding board?"
"Feel free."
They started off down the corridor. "So, I need to integrate this process here …"
Scribe
Still fuming about the way they were totally stitching her up, Tammi dropped into her chair and hit the power button for her computer. She hadn't gotten on to it over the last few days—it wasn't like she had anyone to chat to online who wasn't part of her criminal past, and her account on PHO as Rune had been thoroughly locked—so when it finished booting up, a whole bunch of emails (mainly spam) and other alerts pinged off all at once. She considered deleting all the emails and crap, but decided to look through them just in case.
Part way through, one showed up that made her straighten in the chair. It was a PHO private message, but with a header that had to be for her.
Who the hell's pinging me?
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Viking Script
From: Like Minded
Subject: A Change of Scenery
Good afternoon,
Would you be interested in discussing the above?
I and my friends are very good at what we do, and think you would be a good match for us.
Your thoughts on the matter?
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Like Minded
From: Viking Script
Subject: Re: A Change of Scenery
I'm listening.
End of Part Ninety-Two
Part Ninety-Two: Sharing Secrets
[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: There will be racist thought processes from a racist character. These are not shared by the author.]
PRT ENE Wards Base, 2:45 PM
Paladin
"Does Atropos ask for you to go do stuff with her very often?" asked Theo. To make it easier to talk to the others, he'd left the helmet off and put on a domino mask. The sofa was evidently constructed with armoured people in mind, because it only sagged a little more than normal under him. "As opposed to rescuing us when we're kidnapped, I mean."
"Not a lot," admitted Riley. "There was the Damsel of Distress thing. Brian came along on that one, and so did Panacea and Flechette. Oh, and the Travellers thing, too."
"She didn't take you along that time," Brian reminded her. "She asked you to do it because she was busy doing something else."
"But it was still something she needed me to do." Riley gave Brian a defiant look, daring him to contradict her.
"Are you worried that she's going to put Riley in danger?" Brian asked Theo. "Because as far as I'm concerned, that's not an issue. I'm just not a fan of murder being her go-to, is all."
"Oh, it's not that." Theo shook his head. "I know it sounds stupid, but her asking for just you to come along with Riley feels a little bit like I'm second best and I don't count."
"No, no, that's not it at all." Brian put his hand on Theo's armoured shoulder. "I'm Riley's official caregiver. It's literally my job to be next to her whenever she's in public as Miss Medic. When she goes out and about with Atropos and I tag along, I'm about as much use as an outboard motor on an ocean liner, but I do it anyway because it keeps the PRT happy and Atropos doesn't care either way."
Theo blinked. "Oh. I didn't think about it that way."
Riley looked up at him keenly. "Something's still bothering you, isn't it?" Getting up from the sofa, she tilted her head toward the back of the Wards area. "Come on, let's talk."
He wasn't quite sure what was going on, but he stood up anyway, his armour's servos humming briefly. Obediently, he followed her down the corridor until they reached the room she was using to store and develop her medical gear. Standing in the doorway, she looked up at him contemplatively until he became uncomfortable. "What?" he asked. "Have I got something on my face?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm just trying to figure out how to tell you just how much I admire you, and that you shouldn't beat yourself up so much." Her tone was serious, a world away from her usual chirpy, upbeat manner, which threw him off even more than it normally would have.
"… what?" He shook his head. "Seriously, what? I'm nobody to admire. I didn't earn this armour. I didn't make it. This metal's been tainted by two generations of neo-Nazis, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to do enough to make up for the damage Kaiser and Allfather did to this city and its people."
She tilted her head to one side. "It's funny that you jumped straight to your powers when I talked about admiring you. A lot of people make that mistake about heroes, thinking their powers are why they should be looked up to."
"Okay, then," he said cautiously. "I clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please enlighten me before I make an even bigger idiot out of myself than I already have?"
She giggled briefly. "Theo, the main reason I admire you is that you did something I never could have. Tell me, how old were you when you decided you didn't want to be a racist jerk like your father and his associates?"
"Um." The shift in topic put him off-guard again. "Seven or eight, I guess. I hadn't really understood things, but then I saw something on TV that made me realise that Max's policies made him the bad guy. When he found out I didn't want to be what he was, he pushed harder and harder, but I couldn't just pretend. It ended up being easier to not react."
"So, to sum up, you spent maybe seven years of your life with a bunch of racist creeps trying to push their ideology down your throat, and you held out all that time. Is that about right?" Her expression, as far as he could make it out, was sympathetic.
"I wouldn't say I 'held out'," he said weakly. "That makes me sound a lot tougher than I was. I just didn't … do what he wanted, I guess."
Riley took a deep breath. "Okay, what I'm about to tell you, nobody in this building except for Brian knows. Atropos, Panacea, and Aisha are also in the know. Plus, Dragon. That's it. Okay?" As if acting on an afterthought, she unstrapped her helmet and removed it.
"Okay …" he said uncertainly.
Before speaking, she glanced around to make sure there was nobody nearby. Instinctively, he formed his helmet over his head and looked around as well, activating the infrared scanning. There were no heat traces nearby at all. Sending the helmet away again, he gave her an encouraging nod.
She took another breath, then spoke so quietly that he had to lean in to hear her voice. "I wasn't born Riley Laborn. I was born Riley Davis, a blonde-haired white girl. And when I was six, I got powers. Not long after that, Jack Slash kicked my parents' front door in. The Slaughterhouse Nine tortured my family over and over until they broke me. I let my family die, and I went away with Jack Slash. It took one night."
He stared at her, puzzle pieces clicking together in his head with ever-increasing speed. If she was telling the truth, with her powerset, there was only one person she could be. "But that means … you're B—"
"I was," she hissed so sharply that he cut off what he was about to say. "I was her for six long years. I became her. Jack Slash wanted me to be his little pet killer, so that's what I was. But then Atropos came along, destroyed the Nine, and killed the monster in my head. Now I'm not her anymore. Panacea gave me a new face, Dragon gave me a new name, and Atropos gave me a new family."
"Jeeesus," he muttered, feeling light-headed. "I mean, okay, I believe you. And if Atropos says you're safe then you're safe. But why are you telling me this now? Do I even need to know it?"
"Well, everyone else in the apartment does, so now we're all on the same page." She put her hand on his arm. "But I didn't tell you because of that. I told you because I know better than anyone what you've been through. Sure, Jack Slash had unfair advantages, but he still broke me in one night. Your dad and his racist buddies didn't manage to break you in seven years. And that's why I admire you. You've got strength inside you that you don't even know about."
"I … what?" He shook his head, confused. "No, I don't. I'm not strong. Ask anyone. I'm a powder-puff. I'll fold at the first strong breeze. That's why I've got to have armour around me, so I can—"
Now she was laughing quietly, shaking her head. He stopped, confused.
"You're a lot of things, Theo Anders, but you're no powder-puff. And I'm guessing it was people like Hookwolf who said you're weak?"
"Well …" He'd been told it so many times that he'd basically internalised it as truth, and it was hard to pin down exactly who had said it. But among the blur of faces jeering at him from his sea of memory, the tattooed cape showed up with his characteristic sneer. "Um, yeah. Among others."
She smiled and rapped on his metal chest-plate with her knuckle, eliciting a tiny clong. "Take it from me, when people like that say you're 'weak', you should take it as a compliment. To them, an accusation of weakness is the ultimate insult, so they use it as one. You not wanting to be a violent person or a racist jerk is weak in their eyes, because to them you don't have the 'stomach' for it. People like that are incapable of seeing the strength it takes to keep saying no, instead of surrendering and becoming what they want you to be. I wasn't strong enough. You were."
Theo blinked, his head spinning. In just a few sentences, Riley—who had been Bonesaw, and wasn't that a kick in the teeth—had turned his entire worldview upside down and inside out. She'd been the worst of villains and now she was the best of heroes—thanks to Atropos—and she was telling him that she admired him for his fortitude.
It sure as hell hadn't felt like fortitude at the time. He hadn't felt like a hero. It had been nothing but a long dreary slog from one day to the next, never quite knowing what extra load Max was going to pile on him to make him 'come around' to the Empire way of seeing things.
The difference between that and his tenure so far in the Laborn household had been far beyond that of night and day. Between chained in the darkest of stygian pits and a glorious summer day strolling on the Boardwalk, maybe. They didn't try to force him down, they lifted him up and encouraged him to express himself. To be himself.
Kayden had tried to let him be a teenager and find his voice, but even she couldn't go too far without Max putting his foot down hard.
I wish she could meet them. Surely she'd change her mind about minorities if she knew how good they are to me.
Taking a deep breath, he focused on the here and now. "Okay, wow, point taken. This is all gonna need to be unpacked once we get home, but for now I'll take your word for it and think about what you've said."
Back to her normal self, she gave him a beaming smile. "That's all I ask. You're a better person than you think, really."
Theo was still trying to think of something to say to that when he spotted Brian coming toward them. "Sorry to break up whatever this is, but it's time."
"It's all good. We were about done, anyway." Riley gave Theo a serious look. "Think about what I said. I meant it."
"Right." Theo watched as she put her helmet on and fastened the strap, then hustled away along the corridor with Brian.
Well, shit. How the hell am I supposed to handle that?
<><>
Panacea
"But Sleeper? Seriously? You saw what he did to Atropos, and neither one of us is Atropos! We shouldn't be going anywhere near him!"
Amy sighed in mild aggravation at her sister. "She wouldn't be inviting us along if it wasn't safe. Besides, every time you've found out about me going somewhere with her, you complained for days about being left out."
"I did not!"
Amy raised her eyebrows and gave Vicky a Look, copied straight off Carol at her most forceful.
"Well, okay, yeah, but only because anything could've happened to you!"
"Hah, yeah, right. Like anyone's gonna get close to me with Atropos on the lookout."
Vicky paused at that, and Amy grinned internally. She was right, and Vicky had to know she was right. In dealing with Atropos, there were three rock-solid certainties.
One: if Atropos planned on something happening, it was absolutely going to happen.
Two: if Atropos set out to End someone, they were already dead. That they were still walking around and breathing was strictly a temporary state of affairs. This was just as true for Bonesaw as it was for the Simurgh.
Three: if Atropos chose to protect someone, they were the safest person on the planet. This had been proven by Miss Medic and the other two unnamed hostages that Goddess had grabbed to keep Atropos under her thumb. Not only had Atropos Ended Goddess' powers and her reign, but she'd also brought all three hostages home, safe and sound. (It didn't hurt that she'd known it was going to happen a day before it actually did.)
On consideration, Amy added a fourth one: there were no lengths Atropos—Taylor—would not go to, in order to get things done the right way, every time. From setting up an elaborate trap to skewer Kaiser through the eye with his own stolen sword, to getting herself severely injured just so she could deliver a warning to Sleeper, she'd demonstrated that in spades, over and over again. Even down to provoking Vicky online so that she would attack Atropos on sight, thus giving Atropos a temporary hold over Amy herself, to facilitate turning Bonesaw into Miss Medic … the chain of events was inescapable.
Not that Amy resented what Taylor had done. In hindsight, her talks with the masked killer had opened up new possibilities in all directions, not even counting the fascinating adventures Atropos had taken her on. At the time she hadn't seen it that way, but since then her viewpoint had expanded somewhat.
Vicky hadn't finished, however. "So, why do you think she wants me to come along this time? There's got to be some kind of danger, or she'd probably kick me to the curb all over again."
Amy raised her eyebrows. "Do you honestly think anything out there's going to pose a danger that she can't deal with? I agree that there's probably a reason, but it's almost certainly not your ability to punch things."
"And you'd be right," Atropos commented, stepping around Vicky. Clad from head to toe in black, with just the gray vest and white shirt to break the monotony, she looked as though the previous day had never happened. "Nice to see you both. And thanks again for yesterday."
Vicky had either been waiting for something like this or she'd learned some phenomenal self-control, because she neither startled nor yelped in surprise. Though when she turned her head to look, she frowned mightily. "Okay, there's no way in hell you fixed your costume from the mess it was in when you left. We've still got pieces of it here, for crying out loud!"
"Oh, you mean my spare costume?" asked Atropos innocently. "Yeah, that one's trashed. This one here's the original." She took hold of the side of the long-coat and spread it outward. "If you look closely, you can see where the Machine Army put some laser holes through the coat while I was explaining the facts of life to them."
Peering carefully, Amy just barely made out dots of light through the black material. "Huh, holy shit, so I can."
"So why didn't you use this coat yesterday, and keep the new one?" asked Vicky. "It's totally what I would've done."
Atropos shrugged. "I like this one better."
"Exactly," Amy added. Atropos understood this sort of thing. "It's cooler this way. Like if Armsmaster left little tiny scrapes on his armour when he threw down with someone."
"But … he doesn't."
"Which is why Atropos will always be cooler than Armsmaster." Amy smirked at her sister. "As if it needed to be said."
Atropos chuckled. "As much as I value your approval, are you ready to roll?"
"Absolutely." Amy patted her jeans and tapped the toe of her sturdiest sneakers on the floor, then tugged at the jacket she was wearing. Atropos hadn't said they were going to Russia, but Amy could connect the dots as well as anyone else.
"Before we go," Vicky piped up, "if you don't need me for punching, what do you need me for?"
"Your diplomatic skills. Four seconds." Atropos snapped her fingers, and the portal appeared in the bedroom.
"What?"
"Four seconds!" Amy yelled and jumped through the portal, into what turned out to be the Director's office in the PRT building. Atropos followed close behind, then about half a second later Vicky zoomed through, feet off the ground. The portal closed soundlessly behind her.
Director Renick looked around from where he was speaking to Tenebrae and Miss Medic. "Ah, there she is now."
<><>
Five Minutes Earlier
Tenebrae
"So, what was that about with Paladin?" Brian was pretty sure they weren't being bugged in the elevator, and the PRT knew Theo's secret identity anyway, but it was a good habit to maintain.
"I'll tell you when we get home." Riley was even more close-mouthed than he was about things like that. This wasn't entirely unexpected, seeing how she'd been a cape for years longer than him.
They stepped out of the elevator and headed down the corridor toward Director Renick's office. Brian considered him to be a fair man, not as bloody-minded as Piggot, but that wasn't entirely unexpected, considering her history and the way Brockton Bay had been heading before Atropos stepped in. While Renick definitely would've been out of his depth in the pre-Atropos era, these days the city was downright peaceful. Prosperity was a new and bizarre look for Brockton Bay, but a welcome one.
He paused and knocked on the office door, then opened it when he heard the "Come in," from within. Stepping aside, he allowed Riley to enter first out of basic courtesy (he didn't think she'd follow Aisha's advice of kicking him in the shins if he didn't, but one never knew) then followed her in.
"Good afternoon, sir," he said. "How are you today?"
"Ah, Tenebrae, Miss Medic." The Director stood up and came around the desk to shake both their hands. "It's been a good day. The only surprise was when Atropos messaged me to ask if she could borrow your services. I had no reason to deny her request, and several compelling ones to do as she asked." He looked at Riley. "I understand you gave Emily an examination while you were in New York. May I ask how the prognosis for that is going?"
Riley bounced a little on her toes. "Really good. Like I told her, putting in new kidneys wouldn't be any trouble at all. Same with her calf muscles. I've got the tissues cloning right now. It should actually be ready to go by the time Shebang finishes sourcing those rare earths she wanted for her reverse-time bomb."
"Excellent, excellent." The Director went back around his desk and sat down. "And do you think the dual-bomb concept will work?"
Riley spread her hands. "Well, my power really doesn't mesh much with hers, so I can't say for sure. But the idea's sound, and she managed to nullify Clockblocker's freeze effect, so she's actually pretty good at what she does. I'd give it a really strong 'probably'."
Director Renick chuckled. "I've been working in this building for more years than I want to count, and that's the clearest explanation of a Tinker's work that I've heard yet. By this point they're starting to veer off into their own personalised jargon, and it's already well over my head and gaining altitude."
"Yeah, well," said Brian, "I never ask any Tinker questions about their stuff or their work. I do my thing and they do their thing, and never the twain shall meet."
"That's probably for the best," agreed Renick. "I—wait."
He broke off as the smoky gray portal appeared at the far side of the office. For a second or so, nothing happened, then Panacea burst through, followed by Atropos. Just a fraction before Brian's personal countdown of four seconds ended, Glory Girl zipped through, hovering in midair as the portal closed behind her.
"Ah," said the Director. "There she is now." He came around his desk again. "Good afternoon, ladies. Panacea, I know you've met Miss Medic and Tenebrae. Have you, Glory Girl?"
"Don't think so." Glory Girl stepped forward, her hand out. "Hi, I'm Panacea's punchier sister. It's good to meet my sister's other teammates, I guess."
Brian knew he should be just rolling with it, but the memory flashed across his mind of Glory Girl's face contorted with anger as she repeatedly tried to attack Atropos in the park. Atropos had had the whole situation entirely under control, he knew that, but she'd still been reckless as fuck, and she'd seriously endangered Aisha's life and well-being, just so she could play at being a hero. His jaw set as he spoke the mildest phrase that was boiling through his head right then. "We've met."
"Oh, okay." She paused, taking in his attitude and frowning. "Did I diss you at a meet and greet or something? Look, if I did that, I'm totally sorry. Things can get pretty hectic—"
"Not at a meet and greet. Westlake Park." His eyes bored into hers. "You destroyed a picnic table. Ring any bells?"
"Whoa, hey." Panacea had evidently twigged to what he was talking about. "We do not need to get into any of that. You've got a secret identity to protect."
From the way Glory Girl's face paled, she remembered all too well. "Shit. That was you?" Her gaze dropped to Riley. "And the girl—"
"Was not Miss Medic." He shook his head, then looked at Panacea. "Thanks, but I think it's safe with you two. Am I right?"
"Oh, you're absolutely right." Panacea elbowed her sister. "Go on, Vicky. Apologise to the man. He's totally earned it."
Glory Girl nodded. "Yeah, that's true, you have. And so's the other girl. I was an idiot, and I'm sorry for going off half-cocked like that. I've been really working at cleaning up my act since then." She paused, then corrected herself. "Since tall, dark and scary there wiped out the Nine. That was a wake-up call like no other, and I've been doing my best to listen to it."
"Tall, dark and scary," mused Atropos. "I kinda like that."
Riley giggled. "Nah, doesn't suit you at all."
Atropos snorted, then pointed a finger at her. "You have been spending far too much time with your cousin. Keep it up. I approve." She then turned to look at Brian. "Okay, you have your apology. Are you good now?"
Brian looked at Glory Girl for a moment longer to consider it, then held out his hand. Without any hesitation, she gave it a firm shake. He nodded. "I'm good now."
"Excellent." Atropos dusted her hands off. "So, we're going to come out in the middle of the night, in the countryside. It's going to be dark, and cold. Then we'll be doing some walking." She evidently took in Panacea's rugged clothing, and nodded approvingly. "It looks like someone thought ahead."
Panacea shrugged awkwardly, apparently not used to praise. "What can I say? Associating with you has been an exercise in expecting the unexpected. I've been trying to learn how to think on my feet."
"Excuse me, not wanting to be That Girl, but why do we need to do some walking?" asked Glory Girl. "Can't you put us right where we need to go?"
"I am." Atropos was not at all fazed by the question. "Where we need to go is a couple of minutes' walking distance from our final location. You'll see when we get there."
Panacea turned to look at her sister. "Oh, and one thing. When Atropos says 'four seconds', she doesn't mean 'this is the time to ask me what I mean'. She means 'we have four seconds to get through the portal before it shuts'."
"Yeah, yeah, I got that," Glory Girl huffed. "What happens if someone's halfway through the portal when it shuts? Do you get spat out either end?"
"I have no idea," Atropos said, in a tone that meant 'I know exactly what happens'. "Maybe you can ask one of the Blasphemies. They might have a better idea."
Brian was initially confused, then he recalled that one of them had been decapitated while in flight, at altitude. From the look on Glory Girl's face, she made the connection at the same time. "Oh."
"Yup." Atropos held up her hand. "Me first, then Panacea, Miss Medic, Tenebrae, and Glory Girl last. Got it?"
For a reply, she got a series of nods, as every eye in the room—Renick's included—was focused on her hand.
"Good. Four seconds." Then she snapped her fingers, and the portal opened before them.
<><>
Meanwhile, in New York
Scribe
Life was unfair, as far as Tammi was concerned. She should've been living large in Brockton Bay, with the Empire Eighty-Eight behind her and a life of luxury before her. But instead she'd had to run for her life, get caught when her two so-called partners ditched her and bolted (so much for Empire Eighty-Eight solidarity), and bullshit as hard as she could to not get sent back to juvey.
It didn't help that Miss Hardass Piggy refused to give her any semblance of the benefit of the doubt. The woman didn't let up for an instant, never actually treating her badly enough to call Youth Guard in on it (Kaiser had taught her all about the concept of 'useful idiots') but not slacking off on her either. It had been a lot easier under Wilkins, saying and doing the right things while the Director was around, letting the woman convince herself that Tammi was on the road to rehabilitation.
The people she was most annoyed with (apart from Piggy) were Flechette and Shebang. The bomb Tinker was still unsure of her place in the Wards, and Tammi was willing to put some work into making sure the slant-eye knew she was at the bottom of the totem pole, where she and all her kind belonged. Flechette still hadn't gotten that message, and Tammi kind of wished Cricket or someone like that was around to deliver it for her, because she knew for damn sure she'd get her lily-white ass handed to her in a sling if she tried.
With these thoughts running through her mind, Tammi brightened as she saw Shebang ahead of her, meandering along with her head down, tapping away on a tablet. Flechette might be damn near untouchable (in Tammi's mind, she'd just gotten lucky that Atropos picked her to go to Australia to gank the Simurgh) but Shebang was still fair game. Moving faster, Tammi came up behind the Tinker and shoulder-checked her hard enough to make her drop the tablet.
"Watch it, slope … oke," she jeered, finally pleased to have been able to use that particular insult as Shebang stumbled, her tablet clattering to the floor. With any luck, the useless bitch would've broken it and Piggy would make her pay for another one.
"Scribe!" She froze in mid-sneer as the shout came from behind her. "Not another move!"
Turning, she looked at Flechette as the taller girl—weren't Japs all supposed to be about five feet tall or something?—strode toward her, anger writ large on her face. "What?" she asked as innocently as she could manage. "She stepped in my way."
"I did not!" Shebang picked up the tablet from the ground, then gave Tammi a disgusted look. "You had the whole corridor to walk past me, and you ran straight into me."
"That's what I saw, too." Flechette's tone was implacable. "And I also heard what you said."
"What?" Tammi spread her hands. All I have to do is say I never said it. "I said she was being slow."
"You called her a slowpoke," Flechette countered. "Except you put just enough of a pause in there so you could call her a racist slur and pretend it never happened. Your problem is, I heard it."
"Prove it," challenged Tammi. "It's your word against mine."
"Um, plus the audio diary I was recording when you ran into me," Shebang added. "I wonder if Director Piggot will want to listen to that?"
"You know," mused Flechette. "I think she might."
"Fuck you both!" shouted Tammi. "You're setting things up to have me chucked back in juvey!" She turned and stormed off down the hallway. Maybe it was a good time to contact the local Youth Guard rep after all.
<><>
Flechette
Lily watched her go, then turned to Shebang. "You okay?" she asked. "She ran into you pretty hard just then."
"I'll be fine." Shebang gave her a smile. "I appreciate the save. Are you really going to report this to the Director?"
"I will if you want me to." Lily looked at the tablet. "Were you really recording an audio diary?"
Shebang shook her head. "No, but she was never going to call me on it." She thought for a second. "She's right, you know. I didn't actually hear what she said, and it'll be your word against hers."
Lily snorted. "My word against someone with known white supremacist leanings, you mean. But we don't have to actually go and report it if you don't want to. She'll think we are, so she's gonna jump every time anyone talks to her for the next few days."
Shebang's chuckle was remarkably evil. "She'll punish herself worse than the Director would. I like it. Let's do that." She held up her hand.
Lily gave her a high-five, then looked at the tablet. "So, what are you working on? Is it that bomb for the Gray Boy loops?"
"That's the one. Do you mind if I use you as a sounding board?"
"Feel free."
They started off down the corridor. "So, I need to integrate this process here …"
<><>
Scribe
Still fuming about the way they were totally stitching her up, Tammi dropped into her chair and hit the power button for her computer. She hadn't gotten on to it over the last few days—it wasn't like she had anyone to chat to online who wasn't part of her criminal past, and her account on PHO as Rune had been thoroughly locked—so when it finished booting up, a whole bunch of emails (mainly spam) and other alerts pinged off all at once. She considered deleting all the emails and crap, but decided to look through them just in case.
Part way through, one showed up that made her straighten in the chair. It was a PHO private message, but with a header that had to be for her.
Who the hell's pinging me?
<><>
■
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Viking Script
From: Like Minded
Subject: A Change of Scenery
Good afternoon,
Would you be interested in discussing the above?
I and my friends are very good at what we do, and think you would be a good match for us.
Your thoughts on the matter?
■
PRIVATE MESSAGE
To: Like Minded
From: Viking Script
Subject: Re: A Change of Scenery
I'm listening.
■
End of Part Ninety-Two
Last edited:
Bluefuckingtired
Getting out there.
- Joined
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Scribe wat are you doing.
Scribe.
Stap.
Scribe.
Stap.
JohnWolfie34
(Verified Idiot) (Verified Xenophile)
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Aw, look at the widdle nazi scum! Trying to be all smart!
Thanks for the update, mate!
Thanks for the update, mate!
JohnWolfie34
(Verified Idiot) (Verified Xenophile)
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Well, from observation, I would say she's trying to do what nazi scum do best-die stupidly and for no purpose whatsoever!
silentorphan
Versed in the lewd.
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Panacea: "You have EVERY idea--I saw what happened when you showed up last night!"
Atropos: "Yes, well, Glory Girl saw it too but she apparently doesn't remember."
Glory Girl: "Look, a lot was going on, all right?!"
IIRC, Atropos timed her jump into Amy's bedroom so finely that the portal chopped off some of her limbs.
Ack
(Verified Ratbag) (Unverified Great Old One)
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Narrator: "Scribe did not, in fact, stop."
Well, to be fair, she did feel that she was between a rock and a hard place.
And she's trying to be Adept, not smart.
Not yet. But the possibility is there.
Not everyone is paying attention to every detail all the time. Vicky was more taken aback by holy shit, it's Atropos, and fuck, she's been torn up!
Kehsem
(Professional Simpanzee)
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To quote a famous person, "Stupid is as stupid does."
Oddboy
The Trash Cat
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I know this isn't canon Bakuda, but this is still wild. Tammi has no freaking clue the bomb she's poking at, does she?
Canon Bakuda would've turned her into modern impressionist "art" of the same type the Nine would have approved of.