Just a Phase [Worm]

Thats the PRT's problem and no one else's. If they didn't want to get wrecked, they should have tried actually doing things like their jobs, rather than covering their asses.

 

The problem with "going nuclear" on any government agency is that it just doesn't work.

The FBI survived its early years despite J. Edgar Hoover being arguably incompetent, compromised to the point of flat-out ignoring organised crime, on a wide range of subjects frankly insane, and so utterly divorced from the idea of public service that even Nixon was afraid of him.

I therefore much misdoubt that a PRT that's not nearly as bad as the Hoover-era FBI and has two high-octane Thinker parahumans propping it up has anything to worry about. The US has tolerated much worse in its Federal agencies.

 

With the FBI it was also before a lot of the social media and faster/better communications and spread of news.

 

It was also in the era before the news could be quite so comprehensively muddied by 24-hour news cycles, celebrity gossip, social media eruptions and all the other components of the onrushing tide of Modern Media Bullshit, an era when investigative journalism was not only still a thing, it had teeth.

 

To play devil's advocate though, the Protectorate/PRT (particularly the Protectorate) is a hell of a lot less insulated from problems than most other alphabet agencies like the FBI.

The PRT can probably keep sourcing faceless goons for their swat teams, or whatever they call them, regardless of scandals. But while baseline humans with good equipment can deal with a lot of parahumans, the rare ones that they can't deal with will eviscerate them.

So the PRT needs the Protectorate, as a 'don't make us call them' option if for nothing else. And the Protectorate is hilariously vulnerable to bad PR.

Hero's aren't dime a dozen mooks, each parahuman is by definition a very scarce resource. You can't train a parahuman, you can't mass produce them. You can't even reliably find them, certainly not in their civilian identity. Which means that unlike pretty much any other organization in government service, the Protectorate needs potential members to want to join. And the pool of applicants is always going to be miniscule.

And almost all the parahumans are traumatized paranoids to some extent or another.

The FBI can afford for most of their potential recruits to hate or distrust them, because there will always be plenty of other potentials who don't care about whatever scandal they get hit with, or don't believe the evidence. The Protectorate can't afford for the tiny subculture of potential recruits to see credible evidence that they're an abusive workplace.

And the PRT can't afford for the Protectorate to stop being a strong backstop for when they run into a parahuman that can break/ignore/avoid con-foam or trivialize bullets.

Which, to bring it back to this story in particular, is the entire reason that Taylor is in the position she's in. Her superiors, however incompetently, are attempting to avoid what to them is a nightmare scenario. One of their own didn't just say a bad word in public, or get a little too expeditious with a suspect. One of their own committed a serious, direct, life threatening crime. Against a civilian.

That might not destroy the organization. But it getting out would certainly mean at least a few potential heroes and/or potential wards staying on the fence rather than signing up. And given how precarious the hero/villain balance is supposed to be? That's probably several local disasters, at least.

And then the commander on the scene made it so very, very much worse for them.

 

Or worse they might get a few applicants like Sophia who see membership as a do whatever you what card, and while they are hurting for recruits I bet they don't want recruits like that.

 

Nah. They're a government agency. They'll keep anything and everything under wraps so long as they money keeps flowing and the status quo stays inviolate. What are the lives of the populace compared to keeping the institution in charge?

 

Thing is, that if word got out that a Ward, that was given the choice of joining the Wards on probation in the hopes of salvaging a villain-in-the-making or going to jail then blew her second chance, and the PRT/Protectorate promptly threw her in jail for throwing away her second chance, most people would say "She was a stupid teenager that was given a second chance and a golden opportunity to turn her life around, only to blow it." The blowback on the rest of the organization would be minimal.
However, that isn't what happened, and why it would now be a major scandal.

Except I just realized in this story it was TWO Wards, not just one, which might change things even if one was on probation. Actually that might be worse, since they would say the one on probation corrupted the other one.

 

Basically Piggot did simple math and thought why would I get rid of two Wards for a new untrained parahuman when I can just send her way and keep the more experienced Wards. Unfortunately she forgot to take into account the long term effects and just how petty and determined Taylor could while also neglecting to think about the political ramifications of what would happen if the story got out.

 

I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t come out yet, the PRTs infosec in Brockton usually resembles that of a funnel. Info goes into the PRT and goes straight to the gangs. Coil, asshole that he is should have seen what a golden opportunity to murder Piggots career this is if he blew the whistle on “two wards almost murder someone, victim forced into wards program and shipped to Boston”

 

He's probably thinking "damn if this had only happened a few months later I would have been positioned to exploit it." Man's fundamentally a coward, taking the opportunity for a bold stroke isn't him.

 

He could be saving the information to use later when he is in a better position, because a coward he may be he is still smart enough to save his cards for when they will be most useful.

 

My point is that these cards are most useful now, he's just lacking in the testicular fortitude to play them absent the rest of the deck stacked to his personal liking.

Oh, he'll tell himself that this is best saved for later, but he's waiting for the perfect plan next week when a good plan violently executed now will do him a lot more good. Get the incumbent out, take advantage of the pro tem replacement, plot to make the actual replacement - even if it's the same guy - look like an utter chump and then suggest that perhaps he might be of some assistance...

Coil has to have monsters snapping at his heels before he'll take decisive action on a sudden opportunity. Without that sort of do-or-die urgency, he focusses on building a perfect hand of capes and waiting for some hypothetical perfect moment. It's how he came undone in canon, only actually unleashing his pet disaster out of spite when he knew he was about to die.

 

Personally I would say that the cards he has been given would also be most useful when Taylor decides to pull a runner, which considering how things are going might be sooner rather than later, because at that point it becomes a scandal where not only did the PRT/Protectorate cover up a crime but also drove the victim out on to the streets with their treatment of her. Especially if Taylor decides to go to the press with her story and suddenly the heroic Thomas Calvert arrives with the evidence to support her claims.

 

That would be the royal flush that Calvert is waiting for on the River, meanwhile he’s sitting on a full house in his hand.

 

Consider that Tattletale has already made (one-sided) contact with Taylor. Coil is already aware.

If Taylor gets pushed a little more, Coil can easily make her an offer she won't want to refuse.

 

To be fair the problem is he needs to have his cards right or he is screwed. His past means most anyone would be a better choice for prt director so he has to make it a dumpster fire no one sane would touch to have a chance and if he does get someone else in the seat he is back at square one but now with someone he does not know how to handle and not a neurotic mess he can run circles around. He has one shot because once people realize he is a real player not a no body he is in real trouble.

 

Not just Taylor. With this act Piggot shot the team cohesion of the Brockton Bay Wards in the head and didn't even have the decency to bury it in a shallow grave. (why do I hear this said by Assault?)

The team knows two of their own are dirty. They know the leadership is aware of this, and instead of dealing with them and helping the victim? They are covering it up and ran the victim out of town.

That is a huge hit for the question "we are heroes, aren't we?" for them. Also anyone who patrols with either Ampere or Shadow Stalker once they get back on patrol, will be watching their back. Because not only can't they trust either girl to do it? But at the back of all their heads, with their last chew toy/human stress ball taken away? How likely and long till one of them becomes the replacement stress ball?

Or he attempted to, and like in "Sharp Reflections of a Diamond"? Using this is simply too toxic. Word getting out means the PRT at the national level has to burn the whole local branch down. Scatter anyone not fired to the four winds with a severely negative employee review that will inhibit them every advancing any further or being trusted with unsupervised responsibility. Then finally bring in an entire division's worth of people from out of town, all with impeccably clean records. A whistle blower simply won't make the cut, (why didn't you speak up sooner?) even one without Tommy's questionable past.

Tommy wants a fender bender that will get Piggot out of the driver's seat so he can take the wheel.. He doesn't want a crash that will total the car, which this scandal in the making is.

 

Why do I feel like this is Piggot's justification:

Piggot: "I don't see what those brats are complaining about, Calvert basically did the same thing and I still work with him so suck it up you brats and act like adults or I'm cutting your pay."

 

Plausible, and another reason why Costa-Brown doing what she did re: the Ellisburg survivors was a terrible idea institution-wise.

 

And made no sense like many things Wildbow did. Piggot should have been down checked from further service just from her physical injuries. She was in no condition to do anything stressful. Full medical disability and retirement with honors. And thats before she was down checked for PTSD and related trauma. Does the prt have no psychologist's save for those who rotate through a week and check off boxes before heading to their next post?

Calvert? He gloated about what he did apparently. Even assuming he was assumed to have cracked from what he experienced because i cant see him actually lasting in any competent military through basic training they had sufficient for what I have heard is called a "big chicken dinner". The fact he threaten to tell all if they dared prosecute him is even more absurd. He should have been remanded to a mental hospital or Leavenworth for life. If not just executed.

 

IIRC, it was some kind of political freebie to make her keep quiet about the whole "Every cape we sent fucking ran like a little bitch and that's why Ellisburg is fucking dead" thing.

Not sure why he wasn't immediately executed beyond some kind of coverup, but later on it was almost entirely because he was at least illuminati-adjacent given he got his powers from Cauldron and was a strong part of their inane idiotic "PaRaHuMaN fEuDaLiSm" thing.

 

Which is fucking hilarious, really. Given the investigations that would be launched, Piggot is now absolutely complicit when Costa-bitch lies through her teeth in front of Congress.

Which, admittedly, is kind of a sideshow, what with Costa-cunt and the rest of the retard brigade being excommunicate traitors to all humanity. But it would still be both funny and cathartic to see Piggot get absolutely wrecked when it all blows open.

 

Which is itself pretty bizarre, but we only have the word of someone Piggot talked to in her flashback that that's literally what happened. I still think it's more likely that some or all of the capes were ordered out (which is certainly something the PRT would want to cover up), or that most of them died and the survivors only ran after that happened.

 

Costacunt likely chose the representatives from the grandstanding spandex brigade at the behest of Cuntessa with an eye towards them being the first to break and run. Then capitalized on Piggot being a bullheaded idiot with delusions of grandeur to set up Brokton Bay and all the people in it as an expendable experiment in the of Fucking Saucepan's "greater good," as envisioned by a group of barely-intelligent, jumped-up college student morons and their bronze-age oracle.

AKA: Wildebeest is a fucking idiot incapable of writing anything whiteout a halfassed grimderp conspiracy and narrative depth that makes Bible Black fanfiction look like War and Peace.

 

Which makes no sense because again any doctor would take one look at her and declare her unfit for duty and they could easily just say the capes and troopers were ordered out when the government realized the town was lost and the civilians already dead. From what I can tell Piggot even lasting a few months in the position without collapsing or cracking harder should have had them looking to see if see was a parahuman.

Wildbow being Wildbow? Calvert was crazy and literally had no leverage so Contessa interference for some plan makes more sense than anything. She cant see triggers though so has no reason to know he would buy a useful power to then squander playing bond villain though.

 

Maybe she was and they just didn't tell her because her power didn't make her useful as a Protectorate member (and the Thinkers predicted that her reaction to finding out would make her useless for their plans).

Pretty much, yes.

 

So, Piggot has been complaining that the Youth Guard has effectively shut down her Wadds program as a result of Taylor's complaints. Taylor has continued to file complaints as a form of stress relief, meaning the Wards aren't likely to get back on the streets anytime soon. Shouldn't the fact the Wards haven't been seen in Brocton Bay for weeks be raising questions? Has there been any official statements about why?

 

Great story. Really well done with Taylor and the YG interactions. I like it so far and hopefully will see more

 

The law enforcement part of the program is for all intents and purposes on thin ice and basically suspended until further notice but if anything the rest of the program is catching up to standards. PR tours, training and courtesy visits to different cities, are more likely than not being pushed to the front by Young Guard instead of their regular schedule so if anything the ENE Wards are more visible than ever as they do anything other than patrols and police work.

That said, most of those (except psychologist visits and the more onerous PR duties) will be restricted for Emma and Sophia whose full Ward hours are used for punishment so people who actually care will ask why those two are having a different treatment.