Earning Her Stripes (Worm AU fanfic)

Earning Her Stripes

Part Nineteen: Hostage Situation

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Taylor

I knew the bad news as soon as the expression on Emma's face changed. "Shadow Stalker," she snarled. "Leave my parents out of this. This is between you and me."

There was a pause as Sophia answered; I could just about hear her voice, but not what she was saying.

Emma shook her head. "No. We told the police and PRT nothing. All they know is that Shadow Stalker tried to kill Danny Hebert, and we don't know why." There was a brief pause. "Nothing about this is fine. Surrender, and we'll get you the therapy you need. My parents don't need to be any part of this."

It was a good try, but even I knew it wasn't going to work. Sophia Hess? Surrender? In what universe? Emma had to know it too, but she gave it her best try anyway.

It wasn't good enough.

"Got it," she said curtly. She drew breath to say something else, but Sophia must have ended the call because she didn't speak. The hand holding her phone dropped to her side, her expression bleak. "She wants us to meet her at Winslow. We're supposed to bring you and your dad, or Mom and Dad die."

"I'm pretty sure that's my cue to ask, 'what does she want me there for?' quipped Dad, "then for someone else to say, 'nothing good'."

I shook my head. "This is no time for jokes, Dad."

"Wasn't joking. Can you think of even one good reason for her wanting me at this meeting?" He shook his head. "Because I can't."

"I can't either," Emma confessed. "She can't want extra witnesses. And she's already got my parents as hostages."

"She won't want him as a hostage." I was certain of that. "She's tried to kill him once already. Whatever else she has in mind, I don't trust her not to try to pull that shit again."

"I hate to say you're right, but ... you're right." Emma looked at me with pained eyes. "So, what do we do? If Madison and me don't bring you and your dad along, she will kill one of my parents."

Snapping at her that all this was her fault really wouldn't have helped anything. Instead, I tried to think of a solution. Preferably, one that didn't end in anyone I cared for getting hurt.

"The way I see it," Dad said, "we've got three choices. First, we do exactly what she says, and try our best to sidestep any bad endings."

I didn't like that idea at all, but he wasn't finished.

"Second, we bring the PRT in on this and hope they don't fumble the ball so badly that Alan or Zoe die."

Emma looked extremely dubious at that, and I didn't blame her. How were the PRT supposed to contain someone who could walk through walls, much less prevent her from coming back for a second try?

"Third, we pretend to co-operate, and spring a trap of our own." He rubbed his forefinger across his lips. "Now, I'm going to assume Sophia is familiar with your capabilities, and Madison's as well."

"Yeah." Emma nodded. "She's been doing her best to outshine us any way she can, but we've been pushing back. I can kick her ass in any kind of straight fight, and I'm pretty sure she can't phase through good steel. So, whatever happens, she'll be trying to plan around that."

The conclusion was obvious, at least to me. "She'll order you to disarm and lose the armour, for starters."

"That's for starters," Dad acknowledged. "But what's her endgame? And what's the point of trying to kill me? I've never even met her before."

"It's not about you." Madison stepped in through the back door and closed it behind her. "It's about Taylor. Now that Emma and I have come to our senses, she's the only one left riding the Taylor hate train, and she's determined to stay on until the last stop."

"I think you've got it," Emma agreed, then turned to me. "She wants to keep you as the designated villain for the Real Thing, but there are problems with that. The major one being, the original plan to paint you as a villain kind of fell through."

"And that's why she was using the carving knife instead of an arrow!" It all became clear to me. "Murder Dad, frame me with the knife. Either I submit to arrest or go on the run, looking for the real killer. Meanwhile, as the real killer, she's also part of the superhero team that's hunting me down. I'd almost be impressed if I didn't want to kick her face in so badly."

Madison frowned. "I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be hard to clear you, but I'm also certain Sophia doesn't spend much time reading up on police procedures and forensic investigation."

"Let's not test it out, shall we?" Dad shuddered theatrically. "How about we just take it as given that she's got yet another flawed yet grandiose self-serving plan cooked up that involves me dying, Taylor being forced into the life of a villain and her coercing the two of you back into being her meek little pseudo-superheroic minions? I happen to be violently opposed to the very first step in said plan, so I suggest we work on a way of cutting it off at the pass."

I remembered the way that my powers seemed able to selectively ignore the laws of physics as needed, and I smiled. "I think I have an idea. But I'm going to need you two to protect Dad until I can take Sophia down for good."

Madison's head came up at that. "You figure you can take Sophia down? I'm the one with good steel, remember?"

"See this?" Again, I formed the black and white glove covering my hand. "I don't think anything can get through it. Anything. And with it, I'm as strong and fast as I need to be."

"Really." Madison reached down into her boot and pulled out a foot-long blade made of the same shimmery-gray metal that the Blockade suit was composed of. "This is the smallest weapon I'm able to make out of good steel, but you could run over it with an Abrams tank and not even scratch the finish." Flipping it into the air, she caught it by the tip of the blade and offered it in my direction.

"Well, okay then." It seemed to be the time to put my money where my mouth was. Reaching out, I accepted the knife and looked it over. It was sleek and deadly, and the edge looked sharp as fuck. "Um, what if I break it?"

She smiled confidently. "You won't break it. Even if you did, I can make more. But you won't. I had a long and involved argument with Armsmaster over that very topic."

I had a momentary shiver of doubt—she seemed very sure that her 'good steel' could beat anything I could throw at it—but then I quashed it. Winslow was a heap of rubble, and Dad was alive, because of my powers. If I didn't have faith in myself, what could I have faith in?

Putting the point against one palm and the pommel against the other, I began to press my hands together. Emma clenched her teeth, sucking air inward as she watched, apparently certain that I was about to impale my hand. That wasn't going to happen; the instant I felt pain, I would stop. But I had to do this. I had to prove that I was strong enough to stand up to anything Sophia or the others could throw at me.

At first, nothing happened, and Madison's shoulders relaxed slightly. I applied more force, seriously impressed at the tensile strength this stuff was showing. "Wow," I said. "If this thing was normal steel, it would be crumpled in a ball by now."

"I'm impressed with that white covering," Emma confessed. "Good steel doesn't play. It should've gone straight through by now."

"It is kinda tough, yeah, but—" Madison began, then stopped as the knife … creaked.

I was applying more force with my power than I had ever used before, magnitudes more than I'd needed to rip Winslow off its foundations. This was actually an effort. While I could do it, I couldn't guarantee that I was able to rip through any thickness of good steel like I could with ordinary steel, concrete or anything else I'd tried it with. Where normal matter crumbled or shredded with barely any resistance, this stuff pushed back.

Slowly, as Madison's jaw dropped from sheer disbelief, I pushed my hands together, the knife blade bending until it formed a half-circle. And then, with a kpang, it snapped; the pointy end rocketed straight down so fast I was pretty sure it broke the sound barrier. It hit my left foot and stopped dead when it hit the protective covering that formed in front of it, then fell over onto the floor with a clatter.

Still holding the pommel end of the knife, I bent over and picked up the pointy end. It was bent over right at the tip and the rest of the blade had a more gentle curve, as did the remainder of the blade on the other half of the knife. "Here," I said, handing both halves back to Madison. "That stuff's tough as hell. I can see why you thought I wouldn't be able to break it. I nearly couldn't."

"Jesus Christ," whispered Emma. "I wouldn't have thought that was possible."

"It shouldn't be." Madison stared at the broken ends of her knife with the expression of someone whose entire worldview has just been tossed down an elevator shaft. "Nothing breaks good steel. Nothing."

"If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure my power just says, 'More force? Yes,' when it's trying to do something like that." I raised my eyebrows. "Anyway, are you satisfied that I'm stronger than I look?"

"Uh, yeah," Emma said, then elbowed Madison in the ribs. "Mads?"

Madison blinked and then looked at me. Where before she'd been contrite, now she was showing active respect. "Yeah, I am. So, what's your plan?"

I drew a deep breath. "So, we need to make Sophia think we're doing exactly what she wants us to …"

<><>​

Alan Barnes

"Okay, pull over here." Leaning forward between the car seats, Sophia gestured with the pistol she'd grabbed from the centre console where Alan had dropped it. While it didn't make her any more lethal than she already was—he'd seen her in action—it made for a handier weapon than the crossbow in close quarters.

He obediently stopped the car where he'd been told, then applied the park brake and turned off the engine. "What now?"

"Pass the keys back here." His heart sank; with the keys out of the ignition, using the car as a means of getting away from the clearly unbalanced cape was no longer on the cards.

He was smart enough not to try to toss them in her face; her mask would take the impact, then she'd probably shoot him somewhere painful, just to make a point. As he was passing them back, he caught sight of his wife's terrified face. "Listen, you can let Zoe go. She doesn't know anything damaging about you. If I told her not to say anything to anyone, she'd stay quiet."

"How very fucking noble of you," Sophia snarled. "You don't get out of it this easily. She gets to share in the consequences of the mistakes you've made, and this way, if you make a break for it? I shoot her. Is that clear?"

"I get it, I get it." Alan wished she'd stop reiterating the threat about shooting either one of them. It honestly sounded like she was working herself up to doing just that, and she just might pick Zoe to make an example out of. "But remind me again; what mistakes have I made that she's paying for?"

"Emma." Sophia sounded like she wanted to punch something. "You totally failed to teach her to never betray her friends. She's stabbed me in the back, and I am going to make sure she understand how big a fucking mistake that was."

"I apologise for her actions," he said at once. "What did she actually do to harm you?"

"She stopped me from doing something that needed to be done, to set things right." That sounded alarmingly vague, but he wasn't sure if he wanted her to clarify it. The less she talked about her crimes, the less danger Zoe was in. "Which means that it's her job to get it done, this time around. That way, nobody needs to say a fucking word about anything that's not their goddamn business. Understood?"

"Totally." He spoke with his warm reassuring courtroom voice, the one he used to convince sceptical judges that his clients were as pure as the driven snow, your honour. "And then Zoe and I get to go home, right?" It was a long shot, but if he could plant that idea in her head as early as possible, she might even go through with it.

"Yeah, probably. If you behave." That wasn't totally reassuring, but he had to hope she'd keep her word, or that Emma would somehow be able to pull off a miraculous rescue. "Okay, out of the car. And Barnes, remember: if you run, I shoot wifey."

"I won't run." He climbed out of the car and waited as Sophia zip-tied Zoe to the passenger-side door, passing the tie through the open window. Off to the side, dimly illuminated by the distant city glow, the heap of rubble that had once been Winslow lay like a slain giant. Not for the first time, he wondered who had blown it up, and why.

Just as Sophia was fastening his wrists to the driver's side door, he heard a distant thunder in the night sky, steadily getting louder. She tilted her head and he heard the triumph in her voice as she spoke.

"Here they come. Now pay careful damn attention. I want you to remember everything you see."

Leaning into the car, she fumbled with the keys before managing to turn on the ignition. Then she flicked the headlights on, illuminating an area of ground in front of the vehicle. With a self-satisfied hmh, she stepped aside, awaiting whatever that was making that noise.

It gradually got louder and louder, then cut out briefly. When it resumed, it was much louder and he was able to pick out an orange flare in the sky, apparently travelling straight towards them. Jesus Christ. He'd heard a rumour that Blockade's power armour had jump jets, but this was ridiculous.

At the angle it was travelling, it didn't seem to be going very fast, but then he noticed that the flare was getting bigger.

A lot bigger.

And louder.

He wasn't totally sure if this was due to it getting closer, or increasing thrust, but the analytical part of his mind kept insisting that 'both, definitely both' was the correct answer. It was a fascinating sight; he just wished he wasn't sitting in the front-row seats for the show, so to speak.

Dust and gravel and pieces of dead grass blew up around him as the Blockade armour came in for a landing. His ears were numb from the roar of the thrusters, and he had to use his free hand to shield his face from the flying debris, but it was still a magnificent sight.

The jets, or rockets, or whatever the suit used to propel itself, cut out just as it settled on to the impromptu landing pad. In the ensuing silence, his ears rang almost as loudly, as if they were trying to make up for the difference. Brightly illuminated by the headlights, it was even more impressive than when he'd seen it in the news, especially after that dramatic entrance.

Shadowed figures slid off the back of the suit, and Sophia stepped forward into the light. Alan guessed her intent was to be menacingly silhouetted. "You bring Hebert?" she called out challengingly. "You better have." With one hand, she straight-armed the pistol back toward Alan's face.

"I'm here," Danny Hebert said, stepping out from behind the Blockade armour. "You don't need to hurt anyone. Just let them go." There was a new dressing on his neck, which Alan connected with Emma's mention of a murder attempt.

Emma was at Danny's side; or rather, Firebird. He had to admit to himself that he never would've recognised her in costume if she hadn't outed herself to him. The metal accoutrements to her costume, especially the throwing discs on her forearms, gleamed with moving, dancing flames as she stepped forward.

"Like the man says." Her tone was hard and flat. "Nobody else has to get hurt, tonight."

Sophia brought up the crossbow she had in her left hand, aiming it at Danny Hebert's face. "Shut up. You don't get to tell me what to do." She tilted her head, apparently trying to look past them. "Where is she? Where's Hebert? I told you to bring her!"

Emma smiled. "Oh, she'll be here in a second."

"Don't try to play games with me!" shouted Sophia. "I told you what would hap—"

And then Taylor arrived.

<><>​

About Thirty Seconds Before

Taylor

It was crowded on the back of the Blockade armour, but I didn't care. While Dad clung to the hand-grip with both hands, his eyes tight shut, I maintained a hold with just one and looked around with interest. I wasn't quite sure how high up we were, but the lit-up cityscape below was fascinating.

Madison's voice suddenly crackled in the borrowed earpiece I was wearing. "Turnover in ten."

Cheating a little, I formed a shell around my face to cut the noise of the thrusters—and the slipstream—so I could reply without shouting. "Gotcha." Then I reached across and tapped Emma on the shoulder.

Emma got the message immediately and gave me a thumb's up, then swapped handgrips so she'd be closer to Dad. I waited a few more seconds, bringing my legs up under me to save time. At the same time, I pulled up the protective covering all over my body and changed the tinting to dead black.

The thrusters cut out, and the suit began to turn over. Emma grabbed Dad to make sure he stayed on board, and I ... jumped. I used all the physics trickery I'd learned my powers could pull not to drive Madison and her passengers straight down into the ground, while vaulting far higher than my legs would've been able to send me with all the training in the world. Spreading my arms and legs, I glided, virtually weightless (according to my power, anyway) while watching the Blockade armour falling away below me.

It was easy to see where we were supposed to go. There was an elongated pool of light, made by a set of car headlights near the rubble of Winslow. But I couldn't see Sophia, and I couldn't see Emma's parents. I kept gliding, assisted by tiny fins and airfoils that popped out of my arms and legs.

Madison landed the suit in the middle of the lit-up area. Even from my altitude, I could tell she'd touched down as lightly as a four-ton butterfly. Emma and Dad got off the back of the suit; the plan at that point was for Emma to tell me where Sophia was, but it got better than that. Sophia actually stepped into the light, casting a huge shadow, but with one arm pointed back into the darkness.

I'd been about to land right in front of her, but it was possible for her to still kill one of her hostages even if I punched her out on the spot, so I changed my aimpoint. Emma, at least, I trusted not to let her shoot Dad. Angling over slightly, I made my final adjustments, then told my powers that it was okay to let gravity take over for a bit now.

And I dropped, a whole lot faster than any rock. Afterward, I realised that deciding to fall was not the same as turning off the 'ignoring gravity' aspect. I needed to be on the ground, so my powers moved me to the ground very quickly indeed.

For the next half-second or so, I couldn't see a thing, then my vision cleared. I was standing next to Mr Barnes' car, and in fact next to Mr Barnes, still wearing my all-black colouration. More or less by instinct, I grabbed his shoulder and exerted my protection over him.

At the same time, I heard Sophia's voice. "—what would happ—what the fuck?"

She fired off a shot not from her crossbow (which I was kind of expecting) but from a pistol. It wasn't clear whether she was aiming at me and was just a terrible shot, or she was actively trying to pull a fuck-you on Emma, but either way the bullet hit Mr Barnes in the forehead … and flattened against the bone underneath.

Okay, I wasn't having any more of that. Surging forward, I grabbed the pistol before she could fire again, and squeezed. Unlike the good-steel blade, it squished like modelling clay between my fingers; Sophia let go just in time before her fingers would've been trapped, and stared at me.

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded, bringing the crossbow around to point at me. Not that she was waiting for an answer; as soon as it was in line with my chest, she pulled the trigger.

The arrow bounced, of course, and I caught it. Then I shifted my outer covering to the pattern I'd come up with at the bank. It looked pretty cool, I figured, even heroic.

"Your worst fucking enemy," I retorted, unable to help myself. And to be honest, as corny as the line was, it was accurate. I doubted anyone hated Sophia more than I did right then, as much for the murder attempt on Dad as for the months of torment. And whatever she did, I could counter. I was literally the worst person in the world for her to have as an enemy.

She looked down at the empty crossbow, then up at me. I dropped the destroyed pistol on the ground and reached out to grab her arm, but she'd already decided that discretion was the better part of whatever twisted value system she ascribed to. By the time I completed the action, she'd bolted for it.

"Shit," said Madison. "If she gets to the houses, we'll never catch her."

Fuck that. Free, with time to plan and room to move, she'd be an ongoing threat to Dad, Emma, Madison, and their respective parents. Emma was already prepping one of her throwing discs, but I had a weapon of mine all ready to go. Holding the arrow like a dart, I threw it as hard as I dared at the flitting shadow; as when I'd dropped out of the sky, my vision blanked for an instant. The krak of the arrow breaking the sound barrier echoed back from the distant houses … and did nothing.

I'd either missed or she'd gone to shadow at just the right moment. Okay, fine. Make me chase you.

Glancing around at Emma, I snapped, "Shield!"

She acted on instinct, bracing herself with one of the throwing discs held in front of her. I leaped up and kicked off the shield in the same way that I'd launched myself off Madison's suit. Arrowing across the open ground, I caught up with Sophia in just a few seconds. She looked over her shoulder and went to shadow again, but deep down I knew it wouldn't matter.

For a split second, I was tempted to punch her head clean off, but at the last instant I changed my aimpoint, swinging my fist low and connecting with her hip. Even though she was in shadow, I felt something break. Transitioning back to solid, she let out a shriek and fell headlong. At the same time, I let myself stop, landing lightly on my feet.

"Wow, damn," I said, looking down at the way her leg was twisted. "That looks painful."

She glared at me, then went back to shadow; I reached down and picked her up by the scruff of her ghostly neck. She struggled feebly, but I wasn't playing that game. With her alternating between shadow and solid, and not liking it either way, I hauled her back to the others.

When I got there, I saw that Mr and Mrs Barnes had been freed, and were rubbing their wrists. They stared at Sophia as I tossed her into the pool of illumination thrown by the headlights. She was flickering between shadow and solid, but she stopped anyway when Madison put out her powersuit's foot.

"Okay, you caught her," said Dad. "What happens now?"

"I don't know," I confessed. "Alive, imprisoned, she might escape and come back for revenge. Or, you know, we could put an end to her here and now."

"Do you really want to do that?" asked Mr Barnes, putting his hand on my arm and ignoring the growing bruise the bullet had left on his forehead. "It makes for a terrible precedent." He paused. "You do want to be a hero, right?"

I turned away from him. He made sense. Too much sense. I didn't want someone talking me out of erasing Sophia Hess. Everyone here had been targeted by her; they should've been talking me into it.

Sophia was fully solid now, but she wasn't snarking at us so I figured she'd passed out. It looked like she was still breathing, so there was that. Emma knelt next to her, examining the damage, then glanced up at me. "I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but I'm asking this. You want to take over leadership of the Real Thing? Mads and me wouldn't argue."

"I'm hardly a hero," I confessed. "I damaged stuff. I broke things." Like Winslow. "Right now, if Sophia gave me half an excuse to finish her off once and for all, I'd take it."

"And she'd welcome it." I hadn't noticed Madison climbing out of her suit. "Right now, crippled and unconscious, she's weak. She hates weakness. If she was conscious, trapped here in front of us, she'd do her best to taunt you into killing her. For her, it's preferable to the alternative. Juvey then adult prison, with one hip that'll never work properly again? That would be hell on earth for her. You've won. If you kill her now, you hand the victory straight back to her."

I sighed. "Okay, fine. Call the PRT. We'll hand her in." I turned and pointed at Madison. "But I will totally be taking over the leadership of the Real Thing, and I expect you assholes to do what I say. Got it?"

"Got it." She nodded seriously. "But what do we call you? I mean, I like the stripes, but there's not really a theme there."

"What, like a tiger?" I rolled my eyes. "Get real. But sure, there's a theme. My whole look is black and white."

"So, what do we call you?" asked Emma.

I considered the question. "I was thinking … Monochrome."



End of Part Nineteen

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty: Confessional

[A/N: This chapter beta-read, and vastly improved, by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Taylor

After Emma put the call through for the PRT, we all stood around awkwardly. Sophia was groaning and moving a little, but with the damage I'd done to her leg she wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry, even if she went to shadow. Madison climbed back into the Blockade suit and stood over her, ready to grab her if she did something stupid. Emma had already zip-tied her hands behind her back.

"You're fucked." It was Sophia's voice. I could hear the pain as she spoke through gritted teeth. "You know that, don't you? You are so totally fucked beyond all belief."

Emma shook her head. "I'm thinking you've got it all backward there. You're the one who tried to kill Mr Hebert, and Taylor and I are witnesses to that. You also held my parents hostage. You are going to prison. Oh, and I'm officially kicking you off the team."

I wanted to chuckle at that last bit, but I wasn't really in a laughing mood. Besides, Sophia hadn't sounded like she was just trying to make a threat. There'd been something more in her voice.

"Yeah, you go ahead and do that," Sophia gritted, her breath audibly hissing between her teeth. "The moment I'm in gen pop or whatever, I'm telling everyone who you are. Firebird and Blockade will be so totally fucking outed by the time I'm done. I'll even tell the PRT and the cops how you talked me into feeding Hebert that stupid fucking vial to give her powers so you could have your very own supervillain to kick around, because picking on Hebert without powers got too boring."

Mr and Mrs Barnes stared at each other, then at Emma, but Dad got there first. "It's a long story," he told them quietly. "I'll fill you in and you can yell at them later."

"You were the one who stole the vials," Madison said, the suit's voice emulator still making her sound like a guy. "We wanted to back off. You were the one who kept pushing forward."

Sophia chuckled harshly, then bit off a groan. "Yeah, right. Who are they gonna believe? The one who's going to juvey anyway, or the heroes trying to pretend they're as pure as the driven snow? Nope, I'm telling them everything—my way. You're all fucked. I'm gonna make sure of it."

Mr Barnes stepped forward then, and crouched down next to her. "You can do that, if you want. It might even work. But you know something? Emma and Madison have every reason to not want their secret identities out there in the public eye. Yours will be going out there; we can't change that now. But if you expose them, they've got no reason not to expose everything you've done, and give the jury a good solid motive to hang all your actions on. As it is, you broke into Danny Hebert's house and tried to murder him, and you held me and Zoe hostage. But if we can't give them a solid motive for why you did it, and we can't do that without handing everyone's secret identities over to the PRT, then they'll be less likely to throw the book at you."

"Still sending me to juvey," Sophia reminded him. "Get me out of that, and we can talk."

"Sorry, no can do." Mr Barnes shook his head. "You're in too deep. You've done too much. But if your lawyer can spin it as a one-time mental break, you'll probably be out when you turn eighteen. Premeditated attempted murder as revenge on three innocent civilians? That's bad. Exposing the identities of PRT-recognised heroes? That falls under the Vikare Act, especially if either of them gets hurt as a result. You wouldn't have a chance of getting out before you're thirty at a minimum."

She literally growled at him. "You can't tell me what to do. I can fucking say what I want, to who I want."

"No. You can't." He reached down and pulled her mask off. "I'm going to need some cloth here, so I can finally fulfill a long-held fantasy. To be able to physically gag someone who isn't following my advice."

I leaned down and tore a strip of cloth off the hem of Sophia's cloak. The cloth was tough, but that didn't matter. When I handed it over, he fastened it in place, despite her struggles and attempts to bite him.

"Sophia," he said seriously as he stood up. "Keep going the way you are, you'll just dig your hole deeper. You can spill everything you know and put yourself in prison for fifteen or twenty years just to spite Emma and Madison, or you can keep your mouth shut and tough it out for three in juvey. Just think about it."

"PRT's here." Madison pointed at the vehicles that were just rolling on to the property. Mr Barnes backed away from Sophia and went to stand next to his wife.

The PRT vans, two of them, pulled to a halt. One had red cross markings on the side, which made sense in retrospect. Emma had mentioned Sophia's injury during the call.

Half a dozen PRT troopers climbed out of the other van, along with two of Brockton Bay's Protectorate heroes; specifically, Assault and Battery. I'd always thought that was a deeply unfortunate naming theme, given that it was the name of a crime, but they seemed to be okay with it. From the other van, two PRT troopers wearing the red cross pulled one of those rolling wheeled stretchers.

"Hi," said Assault cheerfully. "Seems you folks have had a bit of a problem with Shadow Stalker. Thought she was part of your team?"

Emma glanced at me, asking silently if I wanted her to take the lead. I gave her a nod; the PRT and Protectorate wouldn't know me in my current costume, whereas Firebird was familiar to them.

This was just for convenience; as per Emma's offer and my acceptance, I would be assuming leadership of the team, sooner rather than later. There was no other circumstance in which I would be willing to tolerate their presence for one second longer than necessary, once the current crisis got dealt with. I might have had fewer fucks to give overall since I got my powers, but there was a fucking limit.

The reason why I'd even accepted her offer was equally simple. Their team, while it may have been formed under false pretenses, had actually accomplished some good things. On the downside, they'd also forced me to get powers and had (before we stopped her) nearly allowed Sophia to murder my dad and Emma's parents. It was clear to me that unless The Real Thing was to be disbanded and Emma and Madison tossed to the wolves (and trust me, I was absolutely tempted) they needed an adult (translation: me) watching them, just in case their heel-face turn wasn't as definitive as we thought it was.

The thing that finally convinced me to keep them together was the understanding that debuting as the new leader of a pre-existing team gave me a certain amount of up-front credibility, as opposed to having to start fresh as a solo hero. I'd heard that could suck.

"She was," Emma said. "Until tonight. She's been acting out for a while, you know? But we just assumed it was Stalker being Stalker. Until she broke off in the middle of our raid on the Empire and headed off to who knows where. We didn't know what she wanted in the Hebert house, but I figured it wasn't good. When we stopped her, she took off and grabbed Alan and Zoe Barnes there, and forced them to drive out to Winslow, then taunted us to come save them. Oh, and by the way, she was threatening to out us to all and sundry, so we've gagged her. Just so you know."

"Any idea why she picked those particular targets?" I got the impression Assault wasn't quite buying it. "I mean, three people at random out of everyone in Brockton Bay?"

Emma let out a small huff of breath. "You'll be unmasking and identifying her soon enough, so I can tell you that her name is Sophia Hess. She goes to, or rather, went to Winslow High, along with Taylor Hebert, the daughter of the first victim. During the fight, Taylor figured out who she was. Afterward, she told me they didn't get along. Like, at all. So my wild-ass guess here is that after Winslow got rubbled, Sophia got pissed that she didn't have Taylor to kick around anymore and just up and decided to go after her, but found her dad first?"

"Okay, I get that an obsessive type of personality might go after someone she's been bullying for so long," Battery observed. "But why the Barneses? Where do they come into this?"

Dad cleared his throat. "Alan Barnes and I are old friends. If Shadow Stalker's been … well, stalking Taylor long enough, she'd know that. So, she grabbed them to draw me and Taylor out. But I told Taylor to go stay with friends. I didn't want her in the line of fire."

"Okay, that makes as much sense as anything does with capes these days," allowed Assault. "Kinda explains why she made you drive out here too." He rubbed his chin. "Any idea what made her go off the deep end like that?"

At the same time, Battery took a closer look at Mr Barnes. "What happened to your head? Was that Shadow Stalker? Do you need medical attention?"

"Yes, it was," he said with an easy smile. "She gets a little rough when you don't move fast enough for her, so I've found. But it's just a bruise. Nothing more serious than that. Didn't even break the skin."

Emma frowned in response to Assault's question. "I'm really not sure. She's been doing this a lot longer than Blockade and I have, but maybe that means she feels more entitled to do whatever she wants? I thought I knew her, but I really don't."

There was a burst of what could've been muffled swearing from Sophia as the medical techs got her onto the stretcher, but I wasn't sure whether that was due to the pain from her hip or what Emma and her father were saying about her. I was willing to bet on a fifty-fifty chance, but at least she wasn't carrying out her earlier threats.

Something clanked when Battery kicked it, and she looked down. Bending, she picked up the gun I'd crushed. "Okay, what the heck is this? A Smith? Nine millimetre? How did it get like this?"

"Ah, that would be me," I said, stepping forward. "You can call me Monochrome. I, uh, I caught the action tonight and stepped in to help. They like my style well enough that I'm apparently replacing Shadow Stalker on the team."

Which was the most ironic aspect of all this. As the most experienced of them, Sophia had considered herself the team leader. I was the least experienced, but I would actually be the team leader, where she hadn't been.

Battery nodded and examined the crushed pistol. "Brute, I'm guessing?"

"More or less, yeah." I gestured at the ground. "There's probably a flat bullet somewhere around here. She got a shot off before I grabbed the pistol."

"There's something else you need to know about Shadow Stalker," Emma said to Assault. "She's got family in Brockton Bay; mom and a brother and baby sister. We don't want her identity as Shadow Stalker getting out to the wrong ears."

It only took him a second or so to get it. "Ah, right. Okay, we'll get them into protective custody until we're sure nothing's leaked." As a cape himself, he would definitely know about the value of a secret identity. And while the Empire Eighty-Eight had been going downhill over the last couple of years since the Triumvirate captured Night, Fog and Purity, they still had dangerous members.

"Also, Shadow Stalker knows my secret ID as well as Firebird's," Madison put in. "We'd really rather that didn't get out."

I could understand why she was saying this. As much as I disliked her, she was doing her best to fix the shit she'd helped cause, and I had to give her credit for that. While what Mr Barnes had said might stick, it also might not, so it was a good idea to reinforce it.

Assault was evidently not a stupid man, and I could see the cogs turning over in his head. "I see. I'll institute zero voice contact for all non-cleared personnel. Once she's in our custody, I'll make sure she understands the consequences for sharing that sort of sensitive information."

Emma grimaced. "We've already tried telling her that, but she's promised us that she will be shouting our secret identities from the rooftops just as soon as she gets the chance. So, if and when you do ungag her, be aware that whoever's in the room is going to learn everything she has to say. And she's got a lot to say."

"Understood. I've encountered people like that before. She'll learn, or she won't. We've got contingencies in the Vikare Act for this sort of thing." He hesitated. "However, on the off-chance that this whole thing has more to do with your secret identities than you're saying, holding back crucial information might lead to difficulties in the case against her."

"Difficulties? I don't like the sound of that word." I didn't blame Emma for saying that. Neither did I.

"Well," Assault said. I got the impression he was launching into a spiel he'd used before. "In situations like this, when cape and civilian identities are both involved, getting charges to stick tends to be a lot easier if you're willing to officially share your secret identities with the PRT. It helps us to connect all the dots and put together a coherent picture to show the DA when he's building his case. Otherwise, her lawyer might lean on how she's got minimal officially confirmed connection to the victims, especially since the school that Stalker and Mr Hebert's daughter used to go to has since been demolished, thus making it Ms Hebert's word against Stalker's. They may well even go for the Mastered defence."

"Can they do that?" I asked Mr Barnes in a low tone. "I mean, pretend to have been Mastered to get away with attempted murder?"

"There have been cases," he confirmed, keeping his voice equally quiet. "But usually, as soon as any proof of prior connection or motive shows up, that defence is discredited almost immediately."

Which made sense, but also fed straight into why it was technically a good idea to let the PRT know our secret identities.

Technically.

I didn't want to give them my secret identity straight away, mainly because I'd only had it for an hour or so. Also because I didn't know exactly what they'd do with it; would it go into a database, locked away from human eyes, or would they look further into it, and discover that I lived just around the block from where Uber and Leet had crashed their damn car into me?

If our identities came out, how long would it take before the PRT found out how the entire founding membership of The Real Thing used to bully me unmercifully? Would it kill the case by throwing doubt on Emma's and Madison's testimony? Would Sophia's lawyer then make a big thing of the fact that I was now leading the team, having kicked Sophia to the curb for having attacked my father? I couldn't help thinking that each new detail we revealed to help nail Sophia to the wall would make it harder to keep a focus on the basic facts of the case.

But the die was cast, and we'd see how things went.

<><>​

An Hour Later
Barnes Residence

Danny

They trooped inside, Madison last of all. She'd left the suit in a nearby park; the last Danny had seen it, it was doing an amazing impression of an electrical junction box. Alan, waiting by the door, pushed it shut and locked it.

"I'm making hot cocoa," Zoe said, heading for the kitchen. "Who wants some?"

"Please." Emma dropped her helmet on the floor and more or less fell into an armchair. "I have a feeling we're all going to need it."

Madison went into the kitchen as well. "I'll help you."

"We're going to need to call your parents as well." Danny lowered himself onto the sofa, while Taylor leaned on the back of Emma's armchair. "They deserve to know what's going on."

"Already done." Madison's voice floated out of the kitchen. "I rang them from the suit. They should be getting here any moment now." Almost perfectly on cue, there was the squeak of brakes from the curb outside.

"And I just sat down," grumbled Alan, levering himself back up out of his chair.

Danny eyed him as he passed by. "You're calmer than I expected, given what you've heard tonight."

Alan just chuckled wearily. "I am all adrenaline'd out, my friend. But trust me. When the time comes to yell, there will be yelling."

He opened the door just ahead of the knock; there stood two people Danny had never met. On the young side, they bore more than a passing resemblance to Madison. Or rather, she did to them.

"Rod, Marcy, come on in." Alan stood aside to allow them entry, then shut the door again. "This is Danny Hebert and his daughter Taylor. Madison's okay, she's in the kitchen, helping Zoe mix up some of her famous cocoa."

Danny got up with a grunt and shook Rod Clements' hand. "Pleased to meet you, but I can tell Madison didn't give you many details about what's going on. Trust me, I've seen that look in the mirror."

"Many details?" Marcy spread her hands in confusion. "She didn't give us any. Much less an explanation for why we had to leave the house, or why she was over at Emma's house at this ungodly hour."

Alan chuckled darkly. "Oh, yeah. I know how that feels."

"Not the only one, believe you me." Danny seated himself again. "Okay, now that everyone's here. The only people who know everything that's been going on are Emma and Madison. Taylor and I know most of it, Alan and Zoe know a little bit, and you two are more or less totally in the dark. So, let's get this started. Taylor?"

Danny watched as she stood straighter, rolling her head on her neck. The anger he'd seen in her didn't seem about to pop like a volcano, but it permeated her being, infusing her with strength. "Okay, back last year when I started at Winslow, I thought it was gonna be a whole new beginning. It was, but not the way I thought. See, these two," she gestured to Emma as well as Madison, who had just emerged from the kitchen, "decided it would be a great idea to join forces with Sophia Hess and make my life hell for exactly zero good reason whatsoever. Now, you can get the full details about that out of them, but long story short, I just basically endured it until they decided to kick the whole thing into high gear at the start of school this year." She looked at Rod and Marcy Clements, gave them a brittle smile, and leaned on the armchair with her elbows again. "Emma?"

"What she said." Nothing like the superhero now, Emma curled her back and lifted her feet off the floor, almost as if she were hiding in a foetal position from those sitting opposite her. "I was everything she said," she admitted, hiding her face in her hands. "In the beginning, I thought we were doing it to toughen her up, but that was a lie. We were bullying her, and I used everything I knew about her against her …" She climbed around and knelt up on the armchair to look at Taylor. "And I swear, if I could take it back, I would. I'd even swap with you if I thought I could."

"Me too," Madison added quietly from the kitchen.

"Keep going," Taylor growled, sounding utterly uninterested in their lamentations. He didn't blame her; as far as he could tell, this day had been a long, long time coming.

Emma bowed her head and turned to sit back on the chair. "She has every right to hate us for what we did. You see, Sophia's Shadow Stalker and…"

"Wait, what?" Rod and Marcy Clements shouted, leaping to their feet. "Emma, you can't just out a hero…"

"She's no hero," Alan snarled with a shake of his head.

"Please, please, let me finish," Emma begged, tears streaming down her face as she stared at the adults in the room. "Before I lose the courage to keep going."

The adults settled. No one was happy, but information was key and it was clear they were all preparing themselves for something worse.

Emma clenched her fists and pressed them into her eyes. "I met Shadow Stalker the night she saved you and me from the ABB. Remember that, Dad?"

Alan nodded, resolutely.

"And when she unmasked to me, I wanted to be like her. I was willing to do anything to make her like me, even turn on my best friend before that."

Emma dared another glance up at Taylor, who was still scowling down at her. "I—I can't…" She bowed her head and wept again. "I'm so sorry."

"I guess that's my cue," Madison said, coming into the living room from the kitchen with Mrs Barnes in tow. She handed out a mug of cocoa to each person, then sat down beside Emma. Emma curled into Madison, and it was Madison who squared her shoulder to support her friend.

"I came in later," she went on. "Where Emma used her knowledge to attack Taylor, I enjoyed it. At the time, it was fun to think up new ways to screw with her, but at that point, that's—" She paused and shook her head. "No, I'm not going to say that's all, because there's nothing 'all' about it. We pulled every conceivable prank on Taylor to try and break her." She looked over her shoulder. "But you just wouldn't break. It floored me that you wouldn't break."

She turned back to the adults. "And this is where it gets really bad. Sophia turned up with three vials … of which Emma and I decided to take one each. I know!" She shot out, when her parents opened their mouths to lecture her on ingesting unknown substances. "We'd figured out that the vials belonged to Cauldron. Have you ever heard of them?"

"I have," Alan said. "Thought they were a myth."

Madison and Emma both shook their heads. "No. They're real, and when we drank the liquid, we got powers and formed a superhero team with Shadow Stalker." Now, it was Madison's turn to falter, and Emma lifted her head. "The plan was that if we forced Taylor to swallow the third vial, she could become our very own villain that we could kick around at will."

Danny rubbed his brow, but the other four parents were not as non-verbal. "You…you WHAT?" they all demanded, at varying degrees of volume.

Danny stood up and went over to Taylor, wrapping her up in a tight embrace. "Baby, I am so, so sorry," he said, pulling away just long enough to kiss her forehead before dragging her in for another hug.

Emma and Madison were now hugging each other as both sets of parents railed on them. Only Mrs Barnes paused long enough to raise her hand to her mouth to cover her gasp as she turned to Taylor. "And they did it," she said, just loud enough to be heard.

Taylor nodded from inside her father's arms. "They did."

Rod and Marcy Clements then caught up. "So, all three of you have powers?"

Madison took point once more. "Yeah," she admitted in a brittle tone of voice. "I'm a Tinker, and Emma is more action packed than Armsmaster wishes he was. Along with Sophia, we became the Real Thing."

"But there was a side effect to the powers," Emma added. "Ever since we got them, we started to question what we were doing. Even when we made Taylor take her vial, Madison wanted to just offer it to her. Give her a chance to be one of us for reals. But Sophia wouldn't let us, and at the time we still followed her lead."

"It took us until recently to realise it was all sorts of wrong, and we started pushing back against Sophia," Madison cut in. "And eventually, Emma said 'enough'."

"I should have said it sooner," Emma admitted. "But when I did, Sophia and I argued over it. It was made even worse when Mads suggested bringing Taylor into the team instead of fighting her. That's when Sophia lost it. Like, psychotically lost it."

Madison chimed in, "Which brings us to tonight."

Danny stepped to one side of the sofa, walking Taylor with him. It was crazy, him thinking that he could protect her now when in actual fact Taylor was far more powerful, but his emotions were sky-high and he didn't care how stupid it looked. "I'll take it from here."

He watched as the two girls melted into the couch, probably in the hopes that no one would notice them. "From what I understand, Emma and Madison were out mopping up some Empire capes—let me finish," he insisted, as once more, the four parents surged at the new information. Inwardly he knew he might have done that deliberately, for it was one thing to know your daughter had powers. It was something altogether different to know that those same girls were sneaking out at night and fighting established villains while you think they're fast asleep in their beds.

"Shadow Stalker then broke away from them after they argued some more and came to my house. She grabbed a carving knife from the kitchen with every intention of murdering me in my sleep. I woke up to Emma busting in through Taylor's bedroom window like a bomb, before she chased Stalker off." He turned to his friend. "Unfortunately, that's when she made her beeline to you."

"Batter up," Alan grumbled, still scowling at his daughter who had the sense to keep her head bowed low. "Emma called me to warn us, but the problem was, Stalker was already hiding in our car. So when we left, we took her with us. We still had no idea what was going on at that point, but for some reason, we were taken to Winslow and held hostage. Her demands were simple. Bring Danny and Taylor to her."

"So, what happened?" Marcy Clements asked, when it seemed no one wanted to pick up the conversation.

Taylor shrugged from inside Danny's arms. "I happened. That vial they shoved down my throat? Gave me powers that let me kick Stalker's ass in very short order." She turned in Danny's arms to face the girls. "You're not my friend anymore, Emma. I doubt you ever will be again. But you've offered me the leadership of the team and fine, I'm gonna take it. You need someone making sure you don't fuck up again. But first, you've gotta survive whatever your parents have in store for you. Good luck with that."

"Indeed," Rod growled.

<><>​

Alan Barnes

Danny stepped away from what was probably going to be the scene of a double filicide, even if the girls did have powers.

"Well, Taylor and I need to get home so we can have some sleep before the night is over. But before we go, I did want to point out that although your girls have done some pretty egregious stuff, they did save my life, and they also helped Taylor save you. From the sounds of it, they've already figured out the error of their ways, so you might want to use that as a starting point." At Taylor's growl, Danny gave her a tighter hug. "I didn't say to give 'em a free ride, hon."

"Taylor," Marcy called, as Danny and Taylor headed for the door. "I'm sure we'll be saying this plenty of times in the near future, but from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry this happened to you, and that our daughter caused you this pain."

Taylor looked up from her father's shoulder. Pinching her lips together, she nodded without a word.

"Would you like us to drop you home?" Rod asked, causing them to pause again.

At that, Taylor's lips kicked up a fraction. "That won't be necessary, thank you."

"Alan. Zoe," Danny said, acknowledging each of them. He then looked at Madison's parents and nodded at them.

Out on the porch, Danny's skin and clothes turned shades of grey and Taylor was black and grey from head to toe. They stepped out onto the lawn, where she crouched slightly and then they vanished, shooting upward faster than Alan would've thought possible.

Distantly, he thought he heard his friend whoop.

"So," Zoe said, turning back to the girls who hadn't moved from the couch. "Where do we start?"

"How about in the morning?" Alan suggested with a yawn. "It's been a long night and I'm not in the mood to make it go on any longer."

Rod nodded. "You got it." He turned to his wife and child. "Let's go home."


End of Part Twenty

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-One: A New Era

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by @Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Monday Morning, September 13, 2010

Office of Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE

Emily sipped at her first coffee of the day—she could handle the stuff, if she went light on it—as she settled into her office chair. The 'skim sheet', a listing of the highlights of the previous 12 hours that she'd be dealing with, was ready to hand; she picked it up after switching on her computer. Long experience had her setting down the cup before she took in the information on the sheet. If there was anything particularly egregious on the page, she didn't want to be dealing with it and wiping coffee off her keyboard and screen.

The very first item made her thankful she followed the practice, even as she paused and read it through twice more. "What the actual fuck?" she muttered.

A vigilante before becoming part of The Real Thing, Shadow Stalker had been known for her violent tendencies for a while now, but she'd been getting better … hadn't she? Her association with Firebird and Blockade—both of whom Armsmaster had nothing but glowing praise for, for two different reasons—had seemed to be stemming the worst of her behaviour, at least until last night. But then she'd apparently gone axe-crazy in the space of hours, attempting to murder some random citizen in his bed, then holding two more hostage in the middle of the night.

It got even better. The dry, concise phrasing told her that Stalker (whose shadowy form the PRT still didn't actually know how to confine) had been captured and handed over to the PRT by her own (ex)teammates, and was currently under sedation in a cell because they had no idea what else to do with her. Armsmaster had added a note that he was working on 'countermeasures', but there were no other details.

Taking a hit of her coffee—this was going to be one of those mornings, she could already tell—she deliberately moved her eyes onto the next item on the sheet. Prior to whatever mental break Stalker had had, The Real Thing had busted up an Empire dog-fighting ring, and the PRT had been called in to scoop up Cricket and Stormtiger, both of whom had been through the wringer. Stormtiger had cuts, bruises and a few broken bones, while Cricket had first-degree burns all over her face and no hair from the neck up, as well as a moderate concussion.

As far as Emily was concerned, it was no more than either of them deserved, for all the pain and suffering both of them had handed out to their considerable number of victims over the past few years. She had to admit, The Real Thing could not only talk the talk, but they could also walk the damn walk, especially considering that they'd apparently chased off Hookwolf during the course of the fight. Hookwolf didn't normally run from battle; given the damage to Stormtiger, Blockade must have been handing out whoop-ass in industrial quantities to make him change his mind.

Emily Piggot wasn't one to personally express approval of capes applying excessive violence, but in Blockade's case she would've been happy to shake the man's hand; anyone who could make that damn Nazi turn tail and run was okay in her book.

Except Lung. Lung could go fuck himself.

With a sigh of faint satisfaction—it was nice to have at least two asshole capes off the street for the moment, however long that lasted—she went back to drinking her coffee and reading the rest of the sheet. The rest of it was somewhat more boring, but these were all details she'd have to remember to address, this being the point of the skim sheet.

At one point, as she set the cup down, it jittered slightly and she saw ripples forming in the liquid. She paused, waiting for something else to happen, but apart from a barely audible rumbling that quickly faded away, there was nothing. Making a mental note to check it out if it happened again—it was almost certainly a cape doing cape things—she went back to reading the sheet.

Her intercom buzzed. "Ma'am, Trooper Mendelsson here to see you."

She frowned slightly. Mendelsson was a solid troop, but per her recollection, he'd been rostered for guard duty on the roof. "Send him in."

The door opened to admit Mendelsson, who was carrying a cloth shopping bag of all things. "Ma'am," he said, coming to attention and saluting.

"At ease, Mendelsson," she said at once. "What's this about?"

"We just had a cape land on the roof, ma'am. Blockade, of The Real Thing. He had this for us. Said it would help keep Shadow Stalker in one place, ma'am."

Emily's interest, already piqued, increased considerably. "Really." It was both a question and a statement. She supposed that a Tinker who had spent time with the recalcitrant cape would have more of an insight on how to contain her shadow shape. Still, it was impressive work. "What is it?"

"Cuffs, ma'am." Trooper Mendelsson placed the bag on her desk, then gently eased the three items out of it. Two were indeed heavy cuffs made from a shimmering grey metal, sized for a teenage girl. To her moderately trained eye, they looked adjustable for a snug fit. They possessed no integral lock, but with their hasp-and-loop securing system, any ordinary set of handcuffs could be used to make them into a set of wrist (or ankle) manacles. While she was no judge of such things, they looked sturdy enough to hold anyone. Anyone who couldn't become shadow, at any rate.

The third was a simple block of the same metal, four inches by two by one. She frowned, eyeing it. While she could understand the utility of the cuffs, the function of the block was a mystery to her. "What's that for?" Perhaps to supply power to the cuffs?

"It's for Armsmaster, ma'am." She couldn't see Mendelsson's face, but she thought she heard a smile in his voice. "Blockade said to give that to him so he wouldn't 'borrow' one of the cuffs for testing. He said this is what he calls 'good steel', and Shadow Stalker can't phase it, or phase through or around it. Put one of these cuffs on her, and she isn't going anywhere. Ma'am."

"Ah." She'd heard the phrase 'good steel' before; Armsmaster had included it in his report to her about his encounter with Blockade. It was apparently what the suit and Firebird's throwing discs were made of, and Blockade claimed it was unbreakable. Armsmaster had expressed his doubts, but hadn't been able to secure a sample to test this out.

Well, now he had one. And the PRT also had a potential way to prevent Shadow Stalker from simply walking out of the building through the nearest wall; at least, one that didn't involve the ethically dubious method of 'keep her sedated indefinitely'. She nodded in approval. "Well done, Mendelsson. Dismissed. I'll take it from here."

"Ma'am." The trooper saluted and left her office.

Taking up her phone, Emily speed-dialled a number, connecting to Armsmaster's lab out on the Protectorate base in the bay. It rang exactly once before being picked up. "Yes?" She took no offense from the brusque tone; he got that way when he was working on anything he thought was important.

"How quickly can you get here? I've got something here I think you'll be interested in."

<><>​

Nine Minutes and Thirty Seconds Later

Armsmaster

Colin turned over the block of metal in his gauntlets, studying the play of light on the surface. "It certainly looks the same as what Blockade uses in his suit," he admitted. "And so do the cuffs. I'd have to get this back to the lab and do durability tests before I can give you hard numbers on what it can stand up to."

"Assume I'm less interested in its overall ability to withstand damage, and more interested in how well it can contain Shadow Stalker." Director Piggot hefted one of the cuffs in her hand. "For something that was constructed in the last eight hours, it looks damned good. But will it work as advertised, or will Shadow Stalker just leave it on the ground and walk away?"

If there was anything Colin was familiar with when it came to Tinkertech, it was the difference between expectation and cold hard reality. His tech rarely failed; that much he knew. When it did fall short, it was because it had encountered something (or someone) that it just wasn't rated to handle. Which was why he had three separate halberds, each with a different set of internal mechanisms, set up for different potential opponents or conditions.

Most other Tinkers were a different story. They built their tech to do something—to shine in a given area—rather than to be good in a specific way. As such, they often assumed their area of expertise made them unbeatable in that field. Sometimes it did … and sometimes it fell flat. This never ended well.

Kid Win's tech was an exception to the rule, but not in a good way. The boy had yet to figure out what his tech was intended to do, so he didn't excel at anything. Even if it was supposed to be something special—as Colin's tech was able to be hyper-efficient—nobody knew what that was, either.

Blockade's tech, as far as Colin could figure, specialised in being durable (and bulky, but mainly durable). That included the very metal with which it was constructed; as he'd explained to Colin on their first meeting, if some 'jerk villain' could break his stuff with their powers, then it wasn't strong enough.

Colin had his doubts about that. Everything was breakable, for a suitably loose definition of the word. He himself was making progress on a nanothorn concept that seemed capable of cutting through even the most durable of materials, though he was only able to make it work for a few seconds at a time. Its interaction with the block of 'good steel' would definitely be recorded and passed on to Blockade.

But that was for later. Right now, they had a pair of cuffs to test out.

<><>​

Director Piggot

Shadow Stalker, minus mask and costume, looked almost peaceful as she lay on the bed within the cell. Given her potential to spill the secrets of the members of The Real Thing, from spite or just a desire to secure some kind of deal, everyone present had signed an NDA to the effect that they would not speak of anything they learned from her to non-approved persons. Sophia Hess's own identity had been included within that NDA, because it made sense to cut down on what otherwise threatened to be ever-expanding paperwork.

Amusingly enough, if there was room in this situation for humour, Stalker had been enclosed in a full-pelvis cast to keep her hip immobilised until it could undergo proper medical attention, so for the moment it looked like she was wearing a giant diaper. This was why they were testing out the cuffs immediately; medical intervention was best left until the patient could be taken off sedation after the fact, to avoid any potentially problematic interactions.

"How do we contain her once she's awake, if the cuffs don't work?" Emily asked.

The question was one she needed an answer for before they went any further with the trial. On the other side of the polycarbonate window, right at that moment, the cuffs were being fitted, then connected together by handcuffs which were then linked by a chain to a ring-bolt in the floor. Stalker was still out to it though they'd removed the IVs, leaving just the life-signs monitoring patches under the gown they'd given her for modesty.

Armsmaster gestured at the oxygen mask dangling from the ceiling. "From my study of her activities, she never spends long inside solid objects, so my supposition is that she still needs air, no matter what form she's in. As soon as the tech exits the room, we'll be able to flush the oxygen and replace it with nitrogen in seconds, if we have to. If she wants to breathe, she'll have to use that mask. Which requires her to be solid."

"Hm. Okay. Carry on."

Armsmaster spoke a few words into his microphone, something about administering an antagonist, and the tech wrapped a Velcro band with a small device attached to it around Stalker's upper arm. He then moved unhurriedly to the airlock-style exit door and tapped in the code to let himself out.

Once he had cycled through and the outer airlock door had closed, Armsmaster said, "Commencing test."

The device strapped to Stalker's arm must have done something, because her eyes snapped open and she stared around. She tried to reach up to rip it off, but the cuffs didn't quite allow enough play to pull it off. However, this made her aware of the cuffs; half-sitting up, she looked more closely at them, then at the floor where the chain was secured, then finally at the polycarbonate window and the spectators beyond.

"What the fuck?" she demanded, her aggravated tone reaching Emily quite easily, even via the speakers. "What is this shit? Where am I? Why am I cuffed up?" She felt at her face. "Who unmasked me, goddamn it?"

Armsmaster leaned toward Emily. "She'll be able to hear you," he said softly.

"Good." Emily cleared her throat. "Good morning, Shadow Stalker. You've been unmasked because that's routine for all capes we place under arrest for criminal activity. You are in a holding cell in the PRT building, where you will remain until your arraignment. Have you been Mirandised yet?"

"No, I damn well haven't been Mirandised yet!" Stalker seemed to be building a fine head of steam. "This is bullshit! I know my rights! I'm a goddamn hero! You've got no call unmasking me like that! What even am I under arrest for, anyway?"

Emily had written down the names in her notepad, and she'd used a Miranda card as a bookmark. "You've been accused of attempted murder against one Danny Hebert, and of the false imprisonment of Alan and Zoe Barnes with threats of violence, and assault and battery against Alan Barnes. At the moment. We might have determined more charges before you see the judge this afternoon."

Stalker shook her head violently. "No! No! That's bullshit! I've been framed! They're just jealous of me, and they want me off the team!"

"Be that as it may," Emily forged on, turning her eyes to the reference card. "You are currently under arrest, and I've informed you of the charges. You have the right to remain silent. If you should choose to give up this right—"

It was just about then that Stalker must have realised she wasn't bluffing her way out of the situation. The shift to shadow form was fast, even though she still had to be suffering from the effects of the sedative. However ... the cuffs did not shift; they remained stubbornly solid, though still clasped around Stalker's ghostly wrists.

Then came the next problem; with Stalker's initial lunge off the bed, the cuffs had nothing between them and the floor, so that was where they fell with a loud metallic clatter. Instead of slipping free, Stalker went with them, her shadowy form going prone on the floor. She went solid almost at once then back to shadow again, wrenching and jerking at the cuffs. While she was in shadow form, they wouldn't budge, only moving when she was solid.

"Add a count of attempted escape in there," Emily observed, watching the proceedings with interest. "It seems to me that she can't move them at all when she's in her Breaker state. Do you concur?"

"I do," agreed Armsmaster. "This is utterly fascinating data, right here. Those cuffs should be easily within her weight limit, but even if they weren't, she should be able to slide right out of them. Why can't she, do you think?"

Emily snorted. "You're the cape and the Tinker in the room. I have absolutely no idea, and zero desire to bend my brain into pretzels trying to think of an explanation. When you figure it out, submit a report."

"I'll certainly do that." Armsmaster paused, as Shadow Stalker went solid again, inside the cell. She was lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, hair snarled down over her face, glaring at them.

"Okay, fine. Get me out of these stupid things, and we'll talk. I've got information you're going to want to know."

"The cuffs stay," Emily stated. "We're not so stupid as to just let you just drift out through the wall when you decide you want to go."

"Then get me medical attention for my hip. Get me Panacea. I'm telling you, The Real Thing isn't nearly as neat and tidy as you think they are. I can give you all the down-low, but I want healing first."

"What sort of information are you talking about?" Armsmaster didn't sound very interested. "We've already been warned that you're likely to try to disseminate the real identities of your ex-teammates far and wide. That isn't going to buy you any special treatment."

"That's only part of what I've got to tell you. And I want a lawyer, too."

"That reminds me." Emily took out the card again. "I've already advised you about your right to remain silent. If you should choose to give up this right, anything you say can and will be taken down to be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. And if you decide to answer questions now, you will still have the right to stop answering at any time until you talk to an attorney." She slid the card back into the notebook and replaced it in her pocket. "Do you understand these rights as I have read them out to you?"

Shadow Stalker pressed her lips together and breathed through her nostrils, evidently not wanting to answer, but eventually gave a reluctant nod. "Yeah, I understand."

"Excellent." Emily gave her a faux cheerful smile. "So, with those rights understood, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Get me back up on the bed and fix my fuckin' hip first, and then we can talk." Shadow Stalker grimaced. "The painkillers are really starting to wear off now, and it fuckin' hurts." She paused. "Oh, and anything I tell you about what they've done, I've got immunity for. That's how it works, right?"

Emily glanced sideways at Armsmaster. He seemed to think for a second, then nodded fractionally. She agreed with his assessment; with the cuffs proving their worth, Stalker was far less of a flight risk, so getting Panacea in to heal her hip wouldn't be nearly as risky. "If you give us good information about events we don't already know about, we'll definitely take your cooperation into consideration when it comes to the charges you'll already be facing."

Stalker shook her head. "Fuck no. Immunity down the line."

"Not how it works, and you know it." Emily gave Stalker her best 'don't try that shit with me' look. "We'll take it into consideration, and that's the best assurance I can offer. Otherwise, you can maintain your right to say nothing to anyone, until we can get a lawyer with the clearance for your specific circumstances."

Stalker turned her head away. "Okay, fine. Just so long as you listen to what I've got to say about those two-faced bitches."

"Oh, we'll listen." Whatever it was Stalker wanted to talk about, there was a good chance that the more she ran her mouth, the deeper she would mire herself in legal troubles. And Emily was always in favour of taking advantage of the mistakes of other people.

<><>​

Monochrome

The Boardwalk, A Little Bit Earlier

Emma (in her Firebird costume) and I looked up as Madison's Blockade suit came in for a landing nearby. "Done," she reported. "They should have no trouble holding her now."

"That's if they actually try it out." I didn't know if they would or not. "If she gets out again, I'll probably have to kill her, and I don't really feel like doing that." I would if I had to, especially to protect Dad, but it wasn't my go-to.

"I'm thinking they will." Emma sounded sure of herself. "After all, what have they got to lose by trying?"

I nodded. "I hope you're right. Let's patrol."

"Come on up," Madison invited, as grip-handles extended from the shoulders of her power armour. "Better field of view, and it'll look kinda cool."

Emma looked at me and I shrugged, seeing no problem with it. "Sure, okay." Leaping upward lightly, I landed on the suit's right shoulder and grasped a handle. "If you want to do all the walking, that's fine by me."

"Works for me, too." Although Emma had to do a little parkour work to get up next to where I was, she still managed it with impressive ease. Whatever changes her power vial had made to her were subtle but absolutely undeniable.

"Wait," I said before Madison could move off. "I want to try something." I'd applied my protection to various items before, but never something made out of Madison's 'good steel'. Shifting my weight, I pressed my hand flat against the armoured shoulder of the suit, and exerted my power for a moment.

"Whoa, that was weird. All my readouts just went strange."

"No shit," I breathed, lifting my hand away from the metal. "That was … I'm not sure if that's even possible, what I just saw."

"What's not possible?" asked Emma. "You just did your durability thing, didn't you?"

"Yeah." I shook my head. "Normally when I do it, stuff becomes about ten times as tough, right?"

"What you said," Madison confirmed. "What happened with the good steel? Didn't affect it at all?"

"Oh, it affected it." I stared down at the metal shoulder I was perched on. "It went from 'stupidly tough' to 'can't touch this'. I'm pretty sure that if I tried to break it when I was enhancing it, it wouldn't break."

"Well, that's definitely an interesting power interaction," Emma observed.

"Isn't it just?" Madison sounded equally intrigued. "Uh, Monochrome, if Firebird offered to teach you how to use some kind of simple weapon, like a staff or a sword or something, would you be okay with that?"

I looked across at Emma. Before I knew who she was, I'd watched the footage of her doing all sorts of fancy tricks with Armsmaster's halberd, and thought she was pretty damn badass. But if she could do that with a spear with an axe head, surely she could teach me to use something a lot simpler. "I guess. But why?"

Emma answered for the both of them. "Because no matter how strong you are, you can always do with that extra bit of leverage and reach that a weapon can give you." She paused. "Especially an unbreakable one."

That was … an extremely good point. And after all, one of the reasons I'd decided to take over the team was to ensure their strengths were put to good use. This sounded like a damn good use. "Okay, we'll see how we go with that."

"Excellent. I'll forge you up a staff once we finish the patrol."

"Don't forget we're on lawn care duty today," Emma cautioned.

"Lawn care duty?" I looked curiously across at her.

"Yeah." She hunched her shoulders. "Our dads talked to your dad, and he decided that we need to come over and do some weeding and mowing. My dad's already paying to repair the damage I did."

"Maybe by then we'll have our applications back, too." Madison sounded hopeful.

"You're both going for Arcadia, too?" I glanced across at Emma and got a nod in return. "You realise I won't stand for any more of that shit you pulled at Winslow, right?"

"Yeah." She hunched her shoulders again. It seemed to be a thing she did whenever she remembered how much of a colossal bitch she'd been to me. "And like we keep telling you, we've changed. That's not us. Not anymore."

"You told me that once or twice before, just to catch me by surprise and fuck me over," I reminded her. "So, you'll excuse me if I don't totally take you at face value this time."

"That's fair," conceded Madison. "We've made a lot of progress, but we've still got a long road to travel yet."

Emma nodded. "One day at a time."

<><>​

Armsmaster

Panacea stood in the infirmary, her hand on Shadow Stalker's arm. The ex-hero was masked up—no sense in requiring more NDAs than necessary—but she was still firmly manacled to the floor via the good-steel cuffs.

Colin had spent a little time in the lab before the New Wave healer showed up, running a few preliminary tests on the sample of good steel that Blockade had gifted him. While he still didn't believe in anything being truly unbreakable, that belief now had a few dents in it.

Nothing touched the stuff. Nothing. Not his best diamond cutting wheel, not his high-intensity laser, not the plasma blade on his primary halberd, nothing. The laser had warmed it to a fine heat, but even at max intensity, with just as much energy pouring out of it as went into it, there was no sign of weakness or deformity.

And when he'd activated the nanothorn effect and brought the block in contact with it … the nanothorns broke. He'd never encountered anything they couldn't disassemble on a subatomic level, until now.

It had to be breakable. He just didn't know what with.

"Done," announced Panacea, lifting her hand away and stepping back from Shadow Stalker. "Your hip is entirely repaired. Just so you know, I had to draw on the muscles around it for repair, so you're going to have a limp until you can build them up again."

"Hey, no, fix the damn hip properly." Shadow Stalker pulled uselessly on her manacles. "This is bullshit."

"I'm not being paid for premium service, you don't get premium service." Panacea waited until the cell door opened, then stepped through. "Just so you know, she's got another issue. Somewhere along the line, she's managed to pick up a whole lot of asbestos particles in her system. Right now it's not overtly life-threatening, but in time she's going to end up with major problems if it's not removed."

"You can't take it out now?" asked Director Piggot.

Panacea shrugged. "Sure, but it'll count as another operation. Plus, it's spread all the way through her system, including her brain. Taking it out would be a basic service, but repairing the damage it's done so far would count as a premium service with a brain charge on top, because I've essentially got to give her everything a going-over."

It was just another aspect of life in Brockton Bay that the one major independent hero team had a rogue healer in residence. Panacea charged the minimum rate that NEPEA-5 allowed, with extra for short notice. She was defined as a surgeon, and thus charged two hundred dollars per hour or part thereof. This was surprisingly affordable, considering that there were zero other charges surrounding this, and Brandish refused to allow what she called the 'medical insurance protection racket' to get its hooks into her daughter's cash flow.

Over and above all that, she had 'basic service' where the base problem was dealt with and the patient sent on their way, and 'premium service' where the client was given a top-to-toe total fix. The second took more time and more effort, so she naturally charged extra for it; also, what she called the 'brain charge' multiplied the cost of the entire operation by ten if she had to make any changes to the brain.

The Director closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. "This just keeps getting more complicated. Take the asbestos out of her. Basic service only. However she got that shit inside her, she's lived with the results of her own stupidity so far, she can keep on living with it."

"Copy that." Panacea waited until she was let back into the cell, and set to work. Moments later, she came out again, carrying a plastic baggie that contained a respectable pile of asbestos fragments. "Done. Mom'll be sending you the bill."

"Understood." Director Piggot nodded. "Thanks for coming down at short notice."

"Hey, I'm being paid overtime rates for this and it gets me out of school for half an hour; plus, I just got paid twice. Trust me, I can live with that." She gave Colin a brief wave on the way past. "See you guys around."

After Panacea had entered the elevator taking her up to the first floor, Director Piggot turned back to Shadow Stalker. "Your hip is fixed, as per your request, as is the problem you hadn't even told us about. Now, if you're going to talk, talk."

"Okay, fine," grumped Shadow Stalker. "The first thing you gotta know is that Blockade's not a guy. She's a chick named Madison Clements."

Director Piggot folded her arms. "I'm pretty certain we already warned you that blatantly outing your ex-teammates isn't going to buy you any favours."

"No, no, it's relevant, I swear." Stalker sounded genuine, so the Director nodded for her to continue. "She's friends with Emma Barnes, who you've probably already figured out is Firebird."

Colin was already doing face and body matches, and came up with a ninety-five plus percent chance that Stalker was telling the truth. "Even if this is true, you're giving us nothing we'd be inclined to act on."

"Well, no, but how about this?" Shadow Stalker leaned forward. "Emma and Madison used to bully the fuck out of another girl at high school."

"The same one you bullied?" asked the Director before Colin could. "Taylor Hebert?"

"Uh …" Stalker saw the trap looming before her, and shut up.

"You were friends with Emma and Madison before they ever got powers, weren't you?" Colin pressed. "Bullying is bad, but in itself it isn't an indictable crime. You're going to have to try harder than that."

"Okay, okay. How about how they got their actual powers? And what they were going to do with them?"

Director Piggot gestured with two fingers. "Go on."

"Well, it started when I, uh, we found some weird vials …"

<><>​

Director Piggot

As the sordid tale unfolded, Emily figured she could pick the exact spots where Shadow Stalker was eliding over her own part in the affair. There was no way, she figured, that Stalker would have taken such a passive role in the whole situation, especially given the way she'd gone after the Hebert girl's father so single-mindedly. But she didn't call the girl on the lies, preferring to let the tale play out and give Stalker all the rope she needed to hang herself.

It was interesting to learn that Taylor Hebert herself had some kind of powers, though Stalker seemed intent on downgrading them, as though Hebert didn't deserve any kind of respect whatsoever. Emily had her own theories on the matter, but chose not to air them at the moment. It would've been far too much of a distraction.

"Interesting," said Armsmaster, after she trailed to a halt. "So, assuming Ms Barnes and Ms Clements are indeed as bad as you say they are and you're the misunderstood hero in all this, why did you attempt to murder Danny Hebert?"

"I didn't!" The denial was automatic, almost to the point that Emily could have sworn that Stalker herself believed it. "That was Emma!"

"Danny Hebert says otherwise," Emily said bluntly. "And so does the arrow you left behind, with his blood on it."

"I told you before," Stalker insisted desperately. "They're trying to frame me! All of them!"

"Okay, we're done here." Emily glanced at Armsmaster and hooked her head toward the exit. They both headed toward the elevator, ignoring Stalker's swearing and shouts and excuses.

Once the doors had closed behind them, Armsmaster looked at her, tilting his helmet. "How much of that did you believe, Director?"

"The basic details, mainly." She smiled tightly. "Her account of who was responsible for that whole thing happening? Not in the slightest." But still, she'd follow up on what she could, with Taylor Hebert.

If The Real Thing was hiding anything else, she'd find it.



End of Part Twenty-One

 

Earning Her Stripes

Part Twenty-Two: Cards on the Table

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Hebert Household

Taylor

Putting down the book I'd been reading, I got up from the sofa and went to the front door. Madison was still kneeling beside the flower garden, industriously weeding. The basket we'd scrounged up from somewhere now had a lot more weeds in it, and the stretch of garden bed to her left looked better than it had in more than a year. From the back yard, I could hear our aged lawnmower chewing its way through the matted growth that Dad occasionally trimmed when he had the time for it.

The mower hadn't wanted to start at all, but Madison had partly disassembled it, made a few minor adjustments (I hadn't even known she was carrying a toolkit), then put it back together. Emma had yanked on the cord and it had roared to life, whereupon she'd set to work cutting the lawn down to size. I had to admit that building an eight-foot set of power armour was impressive, but getting that old mower to work properly was damn near miraculous.

I still wasn't sure how I felt about Emma and Madison coming over and doing our lawn care for us. Sure, they'd screwed with me for months on end without respite (along with Sophia, but she was another story). Part of me wanted them to pay for what they'd done, another part of me wanted nothing to do with them, and a third part saw how earnest they were at trying to make amends and kind of wanted to see how dedicated they were to that idea.

As the first and third parts tended to end up with the same result, the second part was usually overruled. I compromised by telling myself that I'd keep a close eye on both of them, and the first time either one tried to pull shit on me, I'd yank the rug out from under both of them. Not that I expected or hoped for this to happen, of course; I was just going to be ready in case it did happen. Whoever made up the saying 'once bitten, twice shy' had nothing on me.

The mower engine fell silent at the rear of the house, and I headed through to the back door. I didn't think it needed more fuel but I wasn't an expert on lawnmowers, or any other kind of machine. When I opened the door, I saw the reason; the lawn had been completely mowed, making it look better than it had in months. Emma, trundling the mower across the smooth green expanse to the little shed we used to shelter it from the elements, looked over and waved with a cheerful smile.

I came down off the steps and strolled over toward the shed. "It's done?" I asked, though the evidence was right there in front of me. "That was a lot of mowing."

"Not really," Emma said, expertly manhandling the mower into the shed. "It was kind of fun, actually. I haven't really had the chance to switch off inside my head since … well, you know since when. A little bit of repetitive physical exertion while I work things out in my own mind goes a long way, you know?"

That in itself was a huge difference from the Emma I'd known before. She'd been moderately fit, just enough to maintain her muscle tone for modelling, but not to the point that she would casually refer to wrestling the mower through our stubborn grass cover as 'kind of fun'. Hell, she wasn't even really sweating hard. And from what I could see of her arm muscles, she was ripped.

"Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it." I gestured at the house. "I've got some chilled lemonade in the fridge. I'll go and tell Madison she can take a break too."

"You can try, but she'll probably say no unless she's done with weeding." Emma followed me up the stairs again. "She's gotten to be really hard to budge that way. Me, I'm thinking I'll wash my hands and face before I sit down."

I nodded. "Knock yourself out. You know where the bathroom is." You should, I thought snarkily; you stayed over enough times, back when we were actually friends.

The look she shot me was full of regret, making it plain that she'd picked up on what I hadn't said. "Thanks."

Steadfastly refusing to feel bad for digging the knife in a little, I went to the front door again. As Emma had predicted, Madison was still steadily weeding away. She'd made noticeable progress since I'd last looked, and it wasn't far to the end of the garden bed.

"Come on in and have a break," I said. "Emma's finished the mowing and she's washing her face. I've got fresh lemonade."

She looked around at me from under the sun-hat she was wearing. From what I could see, she was sweating even less than Emma had been. "I haven't got far to go," she said. "I'll be done in ten minutes, maybe less."

Well, Emma had predicted that too. "Okay, I'll hold you to that. There's a half-bath under the stairs if you want to wash your hands when you're done." I went back inside and closed the door.

Again, I was struck by the sheer contrast between the Madison I'd been victimised by for at least a year, and the one currently weeding Mom's garden bed. That Madison hadn't missed a trick when it came to looking cute and appealing, from using cosmetics to make her eyes look bigger to wearing denim skirts and going bare-armed even in winter. This one had no problem with putting on shapeless gardening clothes and marring the polish on her perfectly manicured nails with garden dirt.

Heading through the living room into the kitchen, I got out three glasses, then took the pitcher from the fridge and poured two of them full of fresh-squeezed lemonade. We had cookies too, so I put some of those on a plate then sat down to wait for Emma.

She came into the kitchen about thirty seconds later, and her eyes lit up at the sight of the glasses of lemonade. "Mmm," she said, dropping into a chair and taking up the one I'd put on her side of the table. "You always make the best lemonade."

I wasn't sure if that was an attempt to reconnect with the old friendship we'd once had or just a passing comment, so I left it alone. The lemonade was pretty nice; as Emma well knew, it was a recipe Mom had once taught me.

I nudged the plate of cookies so she'd know it was okay to have one. "You've, uh … you've really done a great job on the lawn today. Dad'll be pleased."

She shrugged and took a cookie. "Like I said, it was easy. A lot easier than it would've been before I got my powers, anyway." She rolled her eyes. "Can you see me mowing any lawn, the way I was then? I was a total diva."

Well, she wasn't wrong, but I didn't want to make her think I was getting soft on her any time soon. They'd originally formed this team with the express purpose of making me into their own personal super-powered punching bag, and I wasn't quite ready to let bygones be bygones over that yet. Or over the twelve months of bullying they'd put me through prior to the Great Super-Powers Bullshit Plot.

"Mmm-hmm," I said non-committally, and picked out a cookie of my own. Taking a bite, I washed it down with a mouthful of sweet, tart chilled lemonade. Lingering over the drink meant I didn't have to say any more right then, saving me from being drawn further into the nascent conversation.

Emma must have figured out what was going through my mind, because she switched conversational gears effortlessly. "So, I think you'll like whatever Madison puts together for you. I've gotten a lot of use out of my throwing discs. No matter what I put them through, they don't bend and they don't break." She raised an eyebrow at me. "Except where you're concerned, of course."

Was she trying to draw me out and form a connection? I couldn't tell, so I nodded. "It'll be helpful." There; I'd answered the question without committing to getting deeper into the back-and-forth.

Again, she picked up on my stonewall tactic with impressive ease. She took another drink from her lemonade and sat there silently for thirty seconds or so before she spoke next.

"Taylor, this isn't going to work." Her voice was quiet and patient, not whiny or complaining or accusatory.

"What?" I looked at her questioningly. "What isn't going to work?"

"This." She gestured from me to herself, and out toward the front of the house where Madison was still presumably weeding. "You, as team leader."

"And why not?" My hackles started to rise. "You need someone there to keep an eye on you, and make sure you don't backslide. You said so yourself."

"Yeah, I did." She spread her hands and looked me in the eye. "And what's the most important quality a team leader needs to have?"

"Uh …" I was caught on the back foot for a moment. "Knowing what you should and shouldn't do?"

"That's up there, sure," she agreed. "But the most important aspect is communication. Being able to listen, and being able to make yourself understood. If you shut us out, if you shut me out, we'll never be able to communicate, and we'll never know what you want from the team. Feedback; it's important."

"Oh." I hadn't thought about it quite like that.

"I mean, I get it." She smiled understandingly. "You're still pissed at us. I don't blame you; if I could go back in time, I'd be first in line to smack my younger self upside the head. But you can still talk to us without feeling like you're letting us off easy. And we need to know what you want from us. It's not like there's any Thinkers on the team to read your mind, you know."

"Well, yeah. Good point." And it was. I took a deep breath. "Sorry, I'm still … well … trying to figure out how I got to this point, to be honest. And how to handle it now that I'm here."

"No harm done." She leaned back in her chair. "So, did you have any ideas for exactly what kind of weapon you want Madison to forge up for you?"

The front door opened and closed while I was still thinking about that. "Just me!" Madison called out.

"We're in the kitchen!" Emma replied.

"Cool, I'll just wash up!" I heard the door to the half-bath open—it was a cramped affair, with one corner of the door cut off to make way for the stairs, and the toilet under the lower section—and the sound of splashing water as Madison cleaned her face and hands.

I got up and went to the fridge to get the pitcher of lemonade. Madison's glass was already on the table, so I poured it full, then topped up Emma's glass and mine while I was at it.

Moments later, Madison came into the kitchen, looking somewhat fresher than she'd been out in the garden. "Garden's finished. You've got some nice flowers there."

"They were Mom's choice." I said it as a simple fact, not for sympathy. "I've tried to keep the garden up but …" I ended with a shrug.

"Yeah." Emma looked down at the table. "That's on us. Sorry."

"Not totally." I felt obliged to be honest about the matter. "After she passed, Dad and me … well, we got wrapped up in our own heads for a bit there. Dad took longer to come back than I did. But every time I tried to tend to the garden after that, it reminded me that she was gone, so I … just stopped doing it." I took a deep breath, recalling the conversation I'd had with Emma earlier. "Because turning your back on a problem is a perfect way of dealing with it."

"Well, I'll be happy to come over and do some weeding whenever," Madison offered. "I came up with two more designs in my head while I was doing it." She sat down and took up the glass of lemonade. "An auto-defence gun turret that walks to a spot, sits down, and defends the area, and an armoured vehicle for breaching defended buildings."

"Breaching them?" I asked. "How?"

Madison chuckled. "Drives straight through the wall. When you've got enough traction, most obstacles are visual cover only." She took a sip of the lemonade. "Ooh, this is very nice. Really hits the spot."

"I know, right?" Emma took another drink of hers. "The perfect mix of tart and sweet. I'd come over and mow the lawn just for this."

I'd just nudged the cookie plate Madison's way when the phone on the wall rang. Frowning, I got up. Dad had to know that I'd be okay at home, even with Emma and Madison there. And if it's not him, who else would be ringing here at this time of day?

Well, wondering about it wasn't answering the phone. I picked up the handset. "Hello, you've reached the Hebert residence. Taylor speaking."

"Good afternoon, Ms Hebert." It was a woman's voice, one I didn't recognise. "This is Director Emily Piggot, of the Parahuman Response Teams." The voice, no; the name, definitely yes.

"I, uh, hello, Director," I stammered. "Uh, if you're looking for my father, he's still at work. I can get you the number, if you want."

"That won't be necessary." She sounded sourly pleased with herself. "I already have that number, and I've already contacted him. However, it is you that I'd like to talk to at your earliest convenience."

I blinked. Shit, she knows everything I've done, she knows about the truck, she knows about Uber and Leet, she knows about fucking Winslow, I am so dead. Fighting to quell my raging panic, I breathed in through my nose. "Uh, I mean, what about?"

"The events of last night, for the most part." I heard a rustle as a page turned. "Also, we've gotten a statement from Sophia Hess, and we'd like to run it past your recollection of events."

Even as unobservant as I was, that sounded awfully like 'we want to see just how badly she lied'. Unless they were taking her word for whatever bullshit she'd spun for them, and they just wanted me to come in so they could arrest me.

"Um … am I going to need a lawyer for this?" This was the first time I'd ever asked this question in my life. Considering the school I'd very recently attended, I was lagging behind by several grades. But as an old union man, Dad had always impressed on me one very simple rule: never talk to the police without a lawyer present, no matter how innocent you thought you were.

"Interestingly enough, your father asked that very same question. I gave him the same answer I'm going to give you—I personally don't see any need to bring one, but do so if it makes you feel more comfortable—and I believe he was arranging that matter after we finished the call."

"Right. Thank you. Uh, so did you want me to come over to the PRT building and wait for him there?"

"That would seem to be reasonable, yes." She paused. "I have you pencilled in for three PM; that is, one hour from now."

"Okay, right, I guess we can do that. I'll, uh, I'll see you then."

"Yes." She hung up then, and I stared at the phone before putting it back on the hook.

When I turned to face Emma and Madison, Emma was talking on her phone while Madison was working to finish her lemonade. My heart rate was still elevated as I came to sit at the table. "Well, that happened."

"What happened?" asked Madison. "Is someone asking about us?"

"In a way." I clasped my hands in front of me to stop them from shaking. "That was the Director of the PRT. Reading between the lines, Sophia's made a statement that the Director doesn't believe for a heartbeat, and she wants me to come in and vet it."

"Shouldn't your dad be there too? And maybe a lawyer?"

Madison was definitely more switched-on than she'd been back in the bad times. Or maybe it was just the calm, matter-of-fact tone she used. Had the cutesy ditz persona just been an act all this time? I had no idea; nor did I much care. "Yes, and yes. She told me Dad was arranging one."

Emma finished her call and put her phone away. "He is. My dad. He says your dad's gonna come by on his way from the Dockworkers' Association offices and pick us all up. Dad's going to meet us at the PRT building."

"How does he feel about representing me in a situation that might involve getting you in trouble?" I had to ask the question.

Emma snorted. "You saw him last night. When he found out what we'd done, he was pissed."

"Yeah, true." I nodded. "Well, if my dad doesn't have a problem with it, I don't either."

"Besides," Madison chimed in, "this gives you a chance to put Sophia away for good."

I looked at her and shook my head. "I'm not disagreeing with you. It's just so damn weird to be on the same page as you guys. Like I've fallen into the Twilight Zone or something."

"Look at it from our side." Emma spread her hands. "As far as I'm concerned, the way I feel now is perfectly normal. So when I look back at how we used to be, that's the damn Twilight Zone."

Madison nodded. "Damn right."

<><>​

PRT Building, Fifty-Nine Minutes Later

Danny Hebert

Despite the fact that Taylor was (as far as Danny knew) entirely impervious to any physical attack, she still looked jittery and nervous as they sat in the conference room, awaiting the Director's arrival. Alan Barnes sat on her other side, closed briefcase on the table, looking every inch the confident, prepared lawyer. Danny wasn't quite sure what he needed the briefcase for except as a prop, but it was an effective prop all the same.

"Relax," Alan advised her quietly. "We've got this. Just remember; if she asks you anything, check with me before you give her new information. And if I say we're done here, shut up altogether."

"O-okay." She straightened in her seat and pressed her hands flat on the table. "Thanks for being here."

He let out a grim chuckle. "Hey, I'm not blameless in this little circus, so I figured I'd help out where I could."

The door opened and Director Piggot entered, followed by Miss Militia. The PRT soldier who'd been standing guard outside the door stayed where he was. Piggot stumped over to the head of the table and seated herself, while Miss Militia took up a position behind and to her left. The superhero's weapon of choice seemed to be an ornate sabre at the moment, which Danny decided wasn't too intimidating.

"Good afternoon," the Director announced. "I apologise for the delay. We'll begin with introductions. I'm Emily Piggot, the regional Director for the East-North-East department of the PRT, and behind me is Miss Militia, the second in command of the Protectorate branch assigned to this department."

Danny knew damn well she was aware of the identity of everyone in the room, but he decided to play along. "It's nice to meet you, Director, Miss Militia. I'm Danny Hebert, this is my daughter Taylor, and that's Alan Barnes. He's acting as our legal counsel today."

Piggot nodded once, briefly. "Mr Hebert, Ms Hebert. Mr Barnes, I presume you're the father of Emma Barnes?"

They'd already figured Sophia had revealed everything she could in a fit of spite, so Danny wasn't totally surprised by the question.

"I am, yes." Alan nodded. "She's down in the lobby with Madison Clements, browsing the gift shop." He indicated his phone, lying on the table. "Did you want me to call them up here?"

"Don't bother." The Director placed on the table a briefcase almost the twin of his, and snapped the latches open. "Ms Hebert, I have here the collated transcript of several interviews with Sophia Hess. I would like you to go through it and advise me of any corrections that you believe are warranted."

Taylor glanced at Alan, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod. "I, uh, sure, I can do that."

"Excellent." Taking the stapled pages from her briefcase, Piggot laid a pen on top. "If anything requires more than a simple note, tell me directly. You've already been advised that everything in this room is recorded, correct?"

Danny nodded. "We were told that, yes." Reaching out, he slid the statement over to Taylor

"Good." Piggot folded her hands in front of her. "In your own time, Ms Hebert."

Wordlessly, Taylor took up the pen and started reading through the statement. Almost at once, she snorted and made a brief correction, then kept going. Several more times on just the first page, she changed just a couple of words at a time, then stopped at the bottom. Leaning over to Alan, she had a brief whispered conversation with him, then turned back to the Director. "Uh, just so you know, anytime I change something that I didn't see for myself, I'm putting in Emma or Madison's initial so you know who I got it from, okay?"

"Understood." Piggot nodded. "Please continue."

Page after page went by under Taylor's pen, as she corrected the account already there. At one point, Alan tapped the sheet and cleared his throat. She nodded and made a few more corrections. Finally, she flipped back to the first page and nodded. "Okay, that's it."

"Thank you." The Director accepted the annotated statement back and skimmed through it. A few times her eyebrows rose, but she said nothing about what she'd seen. She kept going until she reached the end, then put the statement back in her briefcase. "I appreciate your time. Would you be able to answer a few questions for me before you go?"

Danny froze. The phrase 'answer a few questions' rarely boded well when asked by a law-enforcement officer. He glanced at Alan, who had already drawn breath to address the subject.

"Director Piggot, before my client agrees to any such thing, is she under arrest?"

Piggot shook her head. "No, Mr Barnes, she is not. She is free to go at any time. I would just like to clear up a few points of ambiguity within the statement itself, and about the events of last night."

"Very well." Alan didn't let down his guard. "What's your first question?"

"Ms Hebert." The Director leaned forward slightly. "You did not dispute Sophia Hess' statement that you and your father were involved in a traffic incident yesterday, where a pickup truck suffered moderate damage to its panelling down the right-hand side."

Taylor glanced at Alan, who nodded. "That's true," she said, her voice sounding like her throat was dry. "That was me. I stepped into the road without thinking. I'm sorry."

Danny heard Alan draw in his breath between his teeth at the unsolicited extra statement. He tensed, waiting for Piggot to land on Taylor with both feet, but instead she asked another question. "In that case, were you also involved in the incident where Uber and Leet totalled their car, not so long ago? In a suburban park, just one block from your house?"

Wait, what again now? Danny stared at Taylor, as did Alan. "Taylor?" he asked.

Taylor shrank into her seat under the sudden scrutiny. "Uh … maybe?"

"Hmm." Piggot eyed Taylor closely. "Have you been involved in any other breakages, accidental or otherwise?"

"Director." Alan spoke sharply. "If you're going to attempt to trick my client into admitting wrongdoing, I'm going to have to insist that you direct all such questions through me."

Piggot sighed. "Very well. Please ask your client if her powers involve teleportation. Specifically, the ability to teleport large masses at once."

Alan turned to Taylor, and offered his notepad. "Write the answer in here and pass it to me."

"Don't bother." Taylor faced the Director, looking her in the eye. "I don't have teleportation powers."

Piggot studied her for a moment. "May I ask what your powers are?"

"You may ask," Alan interrupted before Taylor could speak. "My client is under zero obligation to inform you about anything that cannot be derived from observation. Specifically, anything that could be used against her at a later date."

"Very well." The Director nodded in acknowledgement. "Now, about these supposed vials that granted you your powers. What can you tell me about them?"

"Very little," Taylor admitted. "I never saw them, either before or after the act. All I can tell you is that it was literally the worst thing I've ever tasted. If you spent a month wearing the same socks without ever taking them off, then strained stagnant pond water through them, it would still taste better than whatever was in that vial."

"And where they came from?" Piggot was reaching now, for anything to go on with. "What do you know about that?"

Taylor shrugged. "Apparently, Sophia claimed to have retrieved it from the site of a firefight between two groups of out-of-town capes. Of course, Sophia is provably delusional and psychotic, so I'd take anything she says with a distinct grain of salt."

"I already do," growled the Director. "Now, as for your current … ah … teammates. From Sophia's account and your lack of denial, they appear to have committed crimes against you. Do you wish to confirm that at this point in time?"

"No." Taylor didn't even hesitate. "From the way they're acting now, I would suggest you look into Sophia's powerset to see if she possesses the ability to subvert non-capes into acting like her. Maybe her smoke form has minor psychotropic effects if inhaled. In any case, from the moment they got powers, they started shaking off her influence. This is most evident in the fact that when Sophia tried to murder my dad, they acted to save him."

From the way Piggot sat back, she had clearly not thought about that aspect. Neither had Danny; he'd taken Emma's swing back toward the light as proof that she'd just gotten over Sophia's bullshit. But now Taylor's suggestion had him wondering if there wasn't actually more to it.

"That's … something we'll definitely look into." The Director touched her fingertips together. "Now, then. About last night. Why did you lie to Armsmaster and the police about what had happened? Why did you hold back information from them?"

Alan Barnes cleared his throat. "I think you will find that my client acted to preserve her secret identity, and those of her teammates, as well as the lives of myself, my wife, and Blockade's parents. When Ms Hess got to me and Zoe anyway, they acted with wit and alacrity to save our lives and bring her to justice. If you intend to hound her over a few white lies, then where does it stop? Superheroes need to keep certain things secret in order to be effective."

Taylor held up her hand, as though she were in class. "May I ask a question, Director?"

Piggot tilted her head. "Certainly."

"The cuffs and the block of good steel that Blockade supplied. How did you go with them? Blockade's gonna want to know."

The Director's eyebrows raised slightly. "That material has engendered frustration wherever it went. The cuffs worked exactly as advertised, giving us a safe method of maintaining Shadow Stalker and similar capes as prisoners. Armsmaster apparently has yet to make a mark on that block, which I find even more impressive than the cuffs. Would Blockade be interested in providing more of that sort of thing as needed?"

Taylor grinned. "I'd have to ask. Just one thing: she doesn't make stuff that's lightweight."

"So I gathered," Piggot conceded dryly. "Well, that's everything I wished to cover."

"Good." Alan Barnes gave the Director a searching look. "Is this going to happen again? Are you going to be pulling my client in for questioning, however polite it may be, every time some cape does anything unusual? Because I'm reasonably sure I can build a case for harassment out of that."

"No." Piggot shook her head. "This is not going to be an ongoing thing. Though if I ever find out that your client did have a hand in the destruction of Winslow …"

"… I will expect you to have ironclad proof to hand." Alan rose. "Okay, we're done here."

Danny stood as well, and he and Taylor followed Alan from the room. The elevator trip down again was just as quick as it had been going up. They walked out through the lobby, Emma and Madison falling in behind them.

"So, how—" began Emma as they exited the doors, but Alan snapped his fingers.

"Not here," he warned. "This is a public space."

Silently, they went on to Danny's car and got in. He started the engine and turned on the radio. Once they were out on the road and driving away, Alan drew a deep breath. "Okay, we can talk now."

"So, how'd it go?" asked Emma. "Are we in trouble?"

Taylor shook her head. "Not as far as I can tell. But the Director really, really doesn't want us to do that again."

"And the good steel?" asked Madison. "Did you find out about that?"

Taylor grinned. "Both Sophia and Armsmaster are pissed off at it."

"Yess!" Madison fist-pumped. "I told him it was stronger than anything he had!"

"Well, we get to walk away this time," Alan reminded them. "Sophia named you in her statement, but Taylor struck your names out under my instruction, which means that the Director doesn't have official confirmation, so she can't use that information against you."

"So, unofficially they know who you are, but officially they have to pretend they don't." Danny shook his head. "I will never understand cape culture."

Taylor shrugged. "So long as I can be a hero, and make sure these two miscreants stay on the straight and narrow, I'm good. Right, guys?"

Emma and Madison spoke at the same time. "Right."



End of Part Twenty-Two