What's the Frequency, Madison? [Worm, Time Travel]

[Swordchucks]

Synopsis:

October 9th, 2009. It was a date that had burned itself into Madison's brain through months and years of obsession. It was the date when she had taken that first step to ruin. That date when she'd taken the coward's way out and clasped hands with the devil. She could fix it, though. What was the brain, if not a series of waves? Waves could travel through space and time, if you knew how.

And she knew how.

Notes:

This was my NaNoWriMo attempt for 2022 and the first one I every did "for real" by starting at the start of November and getting to the 50k word threshold by the end of the month. Now I'm going back through and editing the chapters so that I can post it in a few "real" places including on AO3. It will probably get some amount of continuation, as well.

Originally, I posted this in my drafts thread under the title Frequency, but the long title was always What's the Frequency, Madison? It's a reference to the REM song (which is about an older person trying to understand the younger generation) which is also a reference to that time Dan Rather was attacked by a time traveler from 2265 who needed to stop his television station from broadcasting signals directly into his brain.

 

[Swordchucks]

I didn't set out to become obsessed, but that didn't stop it from happening, anyway.

Brockton Bay was a hellhole. It had been a hellhole since I was a little girl, and being half destroyed by Scion's rampage hadn't done anything to improve it. My family moved out of the city after Leviathan, but we actually moved back after Scion… which was more a statement on how shitty everything else became than anything. The Bay ended up being better off than a lot of Bet because of the portal to Gimel - and all of the resources it brought with it - but only barely.

In the days after the rampage - what some called Gold Morning, I think - things got back to 'normal' with a painful slowness. I supported myself with odd jobs here and there - my family having long moved on to Gimel. Not me, though. I couldn't move on.

I didn't realize why, at the time, but it was because of the obsession I had forming inside of me.

My obsession had a name, though I didn't realize it at first. Taylor Hebert. She was the key to so much of what had happened and also a symbol of how my own life had spiraled into chaos.

When I looked back on my life and tried to understand where it all went wrong, it ended up with her. What I had done to her. How we had interacted. My sins. I wanted to make amends, but it was impossible. She was gone, as far as I could tell, and no one would even talk about her. Talking to Glory Girl that one time, once the Internet came back, had helped, but I still needed more.

Without solid leads on Taylor, I turned introspective. I couldn't find her - I couldn't fall at her feet and beg her for forgiveness or whatever - but I could look at my own life, at least. I could see where I had gone wrong.

I was bullied in middle school. That wasn't an excuse or anything, and I definitely didn't deserve pity for it, but it was a factor that shaped me.

When I got to high school, I came with a plan. I wasn't going to be bullied anymore. My house at the time had been in a little sliver of the zoning map where I would be going to a high school that wasn't the same as the vast majority of the kids from my middle school.

For a normal kid, it would have been a tragedy to be separated from her friends like that.

For me? Little, waifish Madison Clements who got passed over by the puberty fairy? It was an opportunity to start fresh.

That summer, my mom acted like I'd given her everything she ever wanted when I suddenly took an interest in makeup and clothes. Part of the reason I had been bullied in middle school was that I was a bit of a nerd and hadn't bothered with my physical appearance much. I didn't know if it was normal teenage rebellion - mom certainly loved that kind of thing and was always pushing me to wear more dresses and do my hair - or depression that kind of snowballed. Whatever it was, I resolved to change myself, so I did. Somehow.

Gone was my uniform of cheap, snarky t-shirts and jeans to be replaced by clothes that actually fit me and did a lot to disguise the fact that I had the build of an eleven year old boy. I took a bath every single day and even combed my hair and did just enough makeup to look natural. It was kind of dumb how much makeup it took to look like you weren't wearing any, but I learned the tricks.

Mom called it 'girl boot camp', but I thought of myself more as a phoenix rising from its ashes. Because I was still a nerd on the inside, no matter what the outside looked like.

Things had gone right from there. Winslow was a shitty school, but it hadn't always been a shitty school. Its equivalent in another city might have been the result of generations of racial oppression and economic depression, but the Bay's fall from grace had been relatively recent. Winslow had been a good school, once upon a time, and there were a surprising number of middle class families still sending their children there. People that were still making decent enough money to get by but not so decent that they could flee to the suburbs. If things hadn't collapsed entirely, Winslow's spiral into complete squalor would probably have completed in a decade or two, but in that moment, it was still true.

That's where I fit in. Mom and dad did their best, but they were teenagers when they had me. If it hadn't been for my grandparents, we would probably have been in abject poverty like so many of our neighbors, but we somehow bobbled along as upper lower class with dad working for grandpa and mom picking up odd jobs when she could. There was always food and I could dress well if I didn't mind shopping at thrift shops, but we weren't rich or anything. It was good enough that I could fit in with the middle class kids or the lower class kids, depending on what I needed to do.

Winslow's social landscape was mostly segregated by year levels. Most classes were divided by year, though there was some crossover, and all of the classes with primarily freshman had lunch at the same time. There were some social cliques that crossed the year divides - especially the gang kids, though they were mostly older kids - but the general population just didn't mingle like that.

That's how Emma rose to power so fast. She didn't have to compete with senior girls for popularity and only barely had to pay attention to juniors and sophomores. Sophia standing behind her as an unofficial enforcer certainly helped things along, too.

I only really entered her orbit sometime in late September of freshman year. School had been in session for a bit and I was still carving out a little niche for myself - making friends and allies and remaking myself into a popular kid. I didn't exactly like Emma at first - she reminded me too much of the bitches that had made my middle school years hell - but she was a little better at the popularity game than I was. My choices were to attempt to stand apart from her or to find a place in the pecking order that was forming under her.

Years later, I could admit that I picked the coward's option. I saw the big strong bully - because that's what Emma always was, even if she usually sugar coated it - and I decided to curry her favor lest I feel her wrath. Standing on my own would have been better, but it would also have been more dangerous and the thought of falling back into the status of a social pariah was terrifying.

I don't know if Emma picked up on that about me - the fear - but it wasn't too long before she decided to test me. I didn't remember the date before I became obsessed with that sequence of events, but it was easy enough to figure out. October 9th, 2009. It was the Friday before we had a three day weekend for Columbus Day.

That was the day I first joined in on the bullying of Taylor Hebert.

That was the day I became the very thing I hated most of all.

The things that came after that, I researched as fully as I was able. There were videos here and there, some from news clips and some off the wikis - more like shrines - that were slowly coming together to document the last days of the old world. Taylor's crimes. When she was outed. What came after.

I constantly asked myself how much of that was my responsibility. Glory Girl said she'd done some good things, but most of the information I could find was on the bad. She'd killed a lot of people, and at the end she'd done something 'controversial' that no one would talk about. I think that's what Glory Girl had been referring to when I talked to her.

What had she done? Had it been good? Bad?

My obsession only grew.

Months passed. Odd jobs were enough to get by and I managed to find a printer. I had a wall covered in pictures and articles and I pushed little pins right into the drywall behind them so I could hang strings of various colors. It was something you would expect to see in the home of a serial killer.

I didn't intend to kill anyone. I just needed to understand. No, I needed to do more than understand. I needed to fix the issue. I needed to find a way to make amends for what I had done. Penance.

I didn't go out anymore. Not socially.

I went to work, scavenged some paper or ink, paid my bills, and I researched. If I could find Taylor Hebert, what would I tell her? Would she attack me? Try to kill me? I wouldn't blame her if she did - and I wasn't even sure I would try to stop her.

It wasn't healthy, of course. None of it was. I spiraled and spiraled and eventually… I broke.

Then it became so clear.

The printer had parts I could use. So did my computer. So did the light fixture in the shitty little one-room apartment I paid too much for. So did the battered old TV that some former tenant had left that hadn't worked since Leviathan, most likely.

Brainwaves were just that - waves. Waves could propagate through any medium with enough power - air, water, even space. Waves could even propagate through time, if you twisted them just right.

Where would I send them? Well, that was obvious enough. I already knew the date. The point of no return. The time when I had stood at a turning point and let the devil take me down the primrose path.

I didn't leave my room for three days as I got everything ready. No one came to check on me because I had no one.

My obsession became a manic effort and it wasn't until I had the 'helmet' seated on my head that I realized this might not be the best idea. I'd turned a plastic pasta strainer into a framework for the electrodes that would be collecting my brain waves for their trip into the past. I had no idea if it was safe, and with the kind of voltage I was working with - thank you, old TV transformer - it almost certainly wasn't.

That moment of clarity ran headlong into the fact that I just didn't care if I lived or died.

I pushed the button.

 

[Swordchucks]

My first thought wasn't very helpful, but in retrospect it was very amusing.

I remembered Emma as being prettier.

It was certainly a petty thought, but it was also a true one. For a young teenager, Emma was reasonably attractive, but she just wasn't the dazzling supermodel my memories had painted her to be. Part of that was probably my foreknowledge of what an evil, rotten individual she was, but part was probably just the shadow of adult perspective putting things into context.

Emma definitely dressed well and played the part, but that was all it was. She was still only fourteen and a bit gangly. Her features were nicely symmetrical and she was bursting with potential, but even then beauty was only skin deep and all that.

The experience of hurtling my brain waves through time had not been pleasant and I wished - far too late - that I'd targeted a time when I wasn't standing in the middle of a crowded public space. I was left reeling - dizzy - and more than a little nauseous. The lunchroom was too loud. There were too many people. You didn't see crowds like that on Bet anymore, and here it was just a normal day in a high school lunch room. Two, three hundred kids in a big room and that was perfectly normal.

I put a hand on the back of a nearby chair to keep from falling over.

"Well, are you going to do it or what?" Emma asked again, her eyes cutting meaningfully toward my hand. I followed her eyeline and realized I was holding a bottle of juice from the vending machine, the top already twisted off.

Oh. This.

This was the moment.

This was the point in time where I had taken that plunge into evil that I didn't surface from for almost two years.

This was that point in time that I had wished, time and time and time again that I could take back.

This was my first contribution to creating the monster that was the Warlord Skitter.

How many died because of this? How many of the black marks on my soul could be traced back to this very moment.

"Why?" I asked. My thoughts were running wild and I was starting to feel a little faint. Something about time travel did not agree with me. At all.

"Why what?" Emma asked, her manicured eyebrows arching in confusion. "You show that you have what it takes to put that slut in her place, and you're in."

"Did she cheat on you?" I asked, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. "You're always calling her a slut and a whore… is that why you're so mad?"

Someone tittered from the side and I realized that we weren't alone. There was a small group of six or seven girls standing there, waiting for me to dump the juice all over our collective punching bag. Sophia was behind Emma's heel, looking like she would have stabbed me with her eyes, if she had been able. Fortunately, that wasn't her power.

Wait, power? Oh, yeah, she was Shadow Stalker. Maybe a Ward? Maybe not. I couldn't remember the details or the timeline. I definitely hadn't been obsessed with her. I had never actually been told that she had powers, not officially, but it hadn't been hard to figure out with all of the rest. She and Emma were frankly shit at hiding it and only the absurdity of it kept more people from connecting the dots.

"What?" Emma hissed, her voice as sharp as Sophia's stare. It was a dire warning, and the person that had laughed made a soft 'eep' sound as the venom in her voice somehow cut through the cacophony of the lunchroom.

"Some of your insults are very telling and she seems - well, she's weird, but she never actually seems to do anything bad. Like, if she wasn't fucking around on you, why do you even care?" It had been a working theory I developed after everything went bad, and while it did fit the facts as I knew them, it could also have been incredibly off the mark. Unfortunately, Emma's reaction didn't clarify anything. Some part of me - the part that wasn't punch-drunk from having itself slammed itself into the brain of my fourteen year old self - was telling me to shut up. Screw that part of me. "Like, she'd have to be an idiot to step out on you, but you're way out of her league. We could just get you a better girlfriend - oh, wait, are you and Sophia an item now? That would exp-"

I never even saw Sophia move. The next thing I knew, I was airborne, which wasn't great with the rest of me already feeling like I was floating. Light as I was, I was probably only off the ground for a split second before I sprawled across the table behind me, scattering trays and food in all directions. The juice bottle was gone from my hand and people were yelling.

It was definitely not how I had planned for any of this to go.

oOoOoOoOo

"I didn't do anything," I whined. Mom was giving me the evil eye any time she wasn't watching the road as she drove me home. After the incident in the lunchroom, I had seen the nurse to make sure I wasn't going to die and was then promptly marched to the office. Two days suspension for fighting for both Sophia and myself. Weren't zero tolerance policies just the best?

"The principal said you started a fight in the cafeteria." She paused for a moment as she made a turn. "And then lost."

I winced. The second part really wouldn't help my reputation at Winslow. Nor would the black eye I could feel forming.

"It wasn't much of a fight. I got sucker punched for standing up for someone," I mumbled, though it was half-hearted. I was still a little out of it, but the truth was that I had been on a kind of numb autopilot. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised that I had managed to trigger a Sophia explosion, and I had a feeling that I'd put myself permanently on her shit list.

I closed my eyes and pushed my face against the window. The glass felt nice and cool, though I had a feeling mom would make me scrub my face print off the window later.

"You can stand up for someone without getting beaten up in front of an audience," mom grumbled some more, but there was no real heat in it.

Our relationship had been different since the end of middle school, when I had started my Ugly Duckling Transformation plan, but I still felt like it was too easy for me to disappoint her. She never really said so, but I had a feeling that if I hadn't been born, her life would have been very different. She'd talked about wanting to go to college a few times - back in the future that was now my past - but she never had. Given that she'd finished high school and gone into labor during the same week, there was no real mystery as to why her life hadn't gone that way.

As badly as I had screwed up with Emma and her crew - I had wanted to redo things, not make myself her number one target - getting out of school early was probably a good thing. I was still rattled and disoriented, and I certainly could have made a bigger mess than I had.

Mom's old beater burbled to a stop in our driveway, and I limped inside to collapse onto my bed. Mom had to go back to work, though I could hear her making a phone call downstairs - probably to let my dad know what a horrible thug I had become and that I was grounded forever - as I slowly drifted in and out of lucidity. The nurse had pronounced me free of a concussion, but that didn't mean I lacked brain damage. It was just self-inflicted.

My thoughts slowly stabilized themselves and I got more lucid. Mom poked her head into my door and sternly told me not to go anywhere before disappearing back to work, and I had nothing better to do than think.

Having two sets of the same memories, one much fresher than the other, collapsing into each other was disconcerting even without the future memories, but that wasn't surprising. Not being entirely sure which version of me that I was - future me or present me - was at least kind of unexpected. I would have expected to be future-me in a younger body, but I really felt more like present-me with some extra memories.

The fact that future-me had become an obsessive shut-in that hadn't really been living probably didn't help with that feeling.

The other major thing I discovered was that my powers were gone.

I had no clue how that worked, but somehow… I had un-triggered. I supposed it made sense if I was really present-me with some extra memories that I was now before I had triggered, but I hadn't made an in depth study of what made capes into capes. I would have thought that my powers wouldn't let me build something that would do that, but that was exactly what happened. I had a bunch of jumbled, somewhat disconnected memories of working on a device and knowing how it worked at the time, but in retrospect none of it made any sense.

I'd wanted to go back in time to fix things, and that was exactly what I'd managed to build a machine to do. However, without my powers I couldn't even begin to understand how that had been possible.

When I got bored of resting in bed, I found a notebook and started doodling out a list of what I could remember. Unfortunately, my unhealthy obsession with Taylor Hebert had been overly focused on what transpired between us and then how her life had gone afterward. I hadn't been in my right mind at the time. If I had, I would have done something useful like memorize winning lottery numbers or something.

That left me with few resources. I was cute - when I wasn't sporting a black eye - and people tended to like me. In the other timeline, fully half of Emma's followers had actually been my followers, though I preferred to think of them more as friends than minions. Unlike some people, I wasn't a villain in training.

I had some vague knowledge about a lot of future events - unless they changed - and some very specific knowledge about future events I was pretty set on changing - which would hopefully be worthless. I was mildly horrified to realize that manic future-me hadn't thought to ask some important questions before trying to change the past like 'does this mean Scion is going to kill everyone'. Given how my attempts at finding out what had happened during Gold Morning had gone, I didn't have much confidence that I would have actually found answers to that question if I had gone looking, but future-me hadn't even paused to ask.

Another asset that I had was that I had confirmation that I was capable of gaining powers. If I could figure out how that actually worked and the fact that I knew I could gain powers didn't somehow make it impossible for me to gain said powers and… well, that was a circular thought pattern.

I also knew about Sophia's powers, though that was a dubious asset. She was a psycho and would almost certainly kill me to keep me quiet. Which might lead to me getting powers… but those wouldn't be of much use if I were dead.

More immediately, I also had my phone and quite a few people were texting me about what had happened. Future-me had always been good about playing innocent and with a little planning, I could use that to my advantage. In truth, I was never sure why Emma had hated Taylor so much. I was nearly positive that it wasn't because they dated, but it was one of the more rational explanations for what had happened.

I considered pushing that as the official story, though only for a moment. 'Outting' Emma that way would also 'out' Taylor and it seemed like a bad idea to 'out' anyone in a school with a sizable Nazi presence. It would probably make Taylor's life worse than just joining in on the bullying, I decided. Thus, I mostly just played dumb as I responded to messages about why Sophia had hit me.

Dad came home at some point and asked me what had happened. I gave him a short version of what happened - leaving out how I'd kind of drunkenly wandered into that minefield. He'd done that thing where he said I shouldn't fight, but he'd also given me a fist bump because I'd apparently gotten into a fight for a good reason.

Later that evening, I realized that mom was more annoyed that I lost than that I had gotten into a fight, which told me a whole lot about how mom's high school days had gone.

oOoOoOoOo

I decided that, in retrospect, if I was going to get suspended, picking the Friday before a three day weekend was a pretty good time to do it. It was the following Thursday before I was back at school and my black eye was no longer the swollen mess that it had been for most of the weekend. A little more makeup than usual and you couldn't even tell that I had the thing. It had looked absolutely atrocious in the middle there, but now it was just a couple of purple spots.

Emma had clearly attempted to do some damage control of her own, but I'd sown enough doubts via text messages during my absence that it hadn't been entirely effective. My reappearance set the rumor mill into overdrive and I used that to my advantage.

"Maybe it's all Sophia after all? She just sees Hebert as competition?" I whispered into one ear. I wasn't going to 'out' people as a primary theory, but a few whispers couldn't hurt too much.

"I hear Emma is on medication that's making her unbalanced," I snarked to another.

"You know, the stress of keeping those modeling jobs is getting to her and she's been really temperamental lately," I intimated, making a barfing motion. "Gotta keep that weight down somehow."

Emma really didn't understand how dangerous I was. The first time through, I had been more than happy to be her minion, but I'd blown that all to hell this time. Now, she was going to deal with a me that she'd helped create with skills she hadn't even learned yet.

Of course, my words couldn't stop Sophia from getting physical with me. She was still learning all of the tricks she had perfected in the other timeline, too, and the shoves and trips were far from subtle, which got her in trouble again before the week was out. I tried to make sure there were plenty of rumors about why she was like that, as well.

One week and only a single full school day after I arrived back in the past, the seemingly inevitable march of an aspiring queen bee to unite the freshman class under her control had stalled. Fractured camps arose as Emma's soft underbelly was exposed. I was sort of the leader of one, though I really had no desire for leadership. Were this the first time through, I might have, but it just felt hollow to me.

It was only the next day - Friday - that I finally had a chance to talk to Taylor Hebert again.

Spoiler: Notes

One of the guiding 'features' of worm is that powers rarely provide real fixes to the problems that spawned them. In fact, a lot of powers double down on aspects of the trauma so that it never really gets better. The dynamic here is a little different, but mostly in the sense that the 'solution' the power gave Madison might be worse than no solution at all.

 

[Swordchucks]

"Is it true?" Taylor asked, surprising me. I had forgotten one of my favorite pens in English and went back for it after the last bell. Finding it hadn't been hard, but by then most of the kids had cleared out, giving Taylor a perfect chance to corner me. Well, not exactly 'corner' me, but talk to me alone.

"Is what true?" I asked in return, suddenly nervous. I'd been carefully avoiding interacting with the object of my obsession since I came back in time. I wasn't sure if it was out of fear that I'd screw it up as badly as I had my first interaction with Emma or something else. In retrospect, such an encounter was inevitable and the fact that I hadn't come up with a plan for it in the week of time that I had already spent in the 'past' was dumb. Realizing that reality didn't make a plan appear out of thin air, however.

"That you picked a fight with Emma over me." There was a spark in her eyes that I had never noticed as a kid, and I had to wonder if I had just missed it or if it was something that the bullying had extinguished.

I held out my hand and wiggled it from side to side in a vague gesture. "Kinda. She wanted me to dump juice on you, and I thought that seemed really shitty. I might have said a few things after that which made Sophia mad, which isn't particularly hard."

Taylor nodded, the light glinting off her glasses as she did so and I could almost see a little steel settling into her spine. "You didn't have to do that… but thank you."

She was hard to read, but it seemed genuine so I gave her a nod of acknowledgement and we stayed there, staring at each other for a moment. I had no idea what else to say and apparently she didn't, either. Then, she dropped her eyes down and to the side and her posture slumped again, as though whatever motivation she had found had just as suddenly departed.

Before she could shuffle away, I felt like I had to say something. This was my chance to really make amends for what I had done in that other, horrible timeline. "Wait," I said, not even really knowing what I was about to say. "You don't have to… you know."

She looked back at me, blinking in confusion.

"Sorry," I mumbled as I tried to find my verbal footing. "What I meant to say is that you look like you could use a friend. We should hang out sometime."

Her posture withdrew a little more and I realized I wasn't making anything better. High school had only been going on for a month and a half, but Emma was relentless. A month of her ire would probably feel like an eternity if you couldn't fight back, and it had obviously affected Taylor. She'd obviously learned not to trust vague platitudes.

I hastened to change tactics, silently cursing myself for not planning this encounter out beforehand yet again. "You remind me of me," I blurted out, which again gave her pause. "I mean, last year. I wasn't in a good place last year. I got picked on a lot and I ended up changing schools to get away from it." Truth, of a sort. "I think you could probably change just a few things and you'd fit in with the popular girls in no time."

That got me the ghost of a wistful smile. "I'm not really interested," she mumbled, but I could tell that her rejection wasn't forceful. I had just offered the wrong thing and had to push a little more in a different direction.

"Tomorrow's Saturday, right? Why don't we go out for the afternoon and maybe go shopping or something."

"I can't really afford-" she started but cut herself off while looking decidedly embarrassed. I was sure she was thinking about Emma's shopping habits since they had been friends for a long time.

"Oh, no, you can. I- well, my family isn't very well off. I mostly hit thrift stores and do some of the alterations myself. I don't think I own an article of clothing that I paid more than ten bucks for. Well, there's probably a winter coat and a pair of boots that I got for Christmas, but nothing I bought personally."

The ghost of a smile returned to her face as I babbled. "I… alright, maybe. If I don't have plans."

It was a start, I decided.

oOoOoOoOo

"I don't like to admit that the movies exist," I declared. Taylor and I - well, middle school me - had a lot in common, including our love of the Maggie Holt books. It was fun to let myself be that girl again, even if it was only for a little bit.

Taylor snorted. "Me, either. Mom refused to let me watch them before I read the books. It made the movies even worse, but at least they didn't ruin the books for me." She looked away, sadness crossing her face, but it was only for a moment. I knew her mom died, but I couldn't remember any of the details. Well, none of the useful details. I remembered some of the crap that Emma used to spew about it and that made me feel bad. If I was a better person, wouldn't I have wanted to come back in time and save her mom?

"How about this?" I asked as I pushed my dark thoughts aside and plucked a top off the rack before twirling it so that it was facing her.

"Maybe," she hedged. She was warming up to our thrift store trip, but it was slow going. I was guessing that she lost her mother before Taylor really got interested in clothes and makeup which was an odd similarity we shared. Not that my mom died, thankfully, but that neither of us had been interested in being girly when we were in middle school.

"You should at least try a few things on. You might like it. Or not. The downside to thrifting is that some days it's a lot of hunting for nothing," I intimated like it was some big secret.

"I guess…" she hedged again but it didn't really take me much more effort to get her into the rickety changing booth in the back of the store. The woman running the shop kept a sharp eye on us in case we were shoplifters intending to pilfer two dollars worth of used clothing.

"How is it going?" I asked after a minute and got a muffled reply. It took another minute before Taylor cracked the door open to show me that we'd really misjudged the sizing on the first shirt and it hung off her like a tent. I snorted. "Well, not that one, obviously."

She giggled and shut the door in my face which just made me roll my eyes and smile. She was relaxing and that was great.

I wasn't entirely sure where I was going with this second chance at life, but it seemed alright. Keeping Taylor from becoming… whatever she had become the first time was good. I hadn't done any damage to her in this life, but I still felt responsible for making sure she was set on a better path. I would never learn the answers to many of the mysteries that surrounded the life of the future version of Taylor that I had once been so obsessed with, but that was a price I was more than willing to pay. It was my penance.

In the end, she did end up with a couple of new shirts that worked for her and not much else. I had a denim skirt that I remembered finding and loving in my last go through. It took several hours, what with taking the bus between places but neither of us ended up spending more than ten dollars and we had fun.

I counted that as a win.

oOoOoOoOo

I didn't suddenly find myself in one of those shitty Aleph teen comedies where one whirlwind shopping montage solved everything. We definitely had a good time, but on Monday, Taylor was more or less the same as she had been on Friday. She did say hello back when I greeted her at one point, but that was the only change. We weren't suddenly best friends or anything, but I hoped that she'd recover a bit more if I could keep Emma off her back.

My plan for that appeared to be working well enough. Emma was certainly distracted away from Taylor by my efforts, which gave the girl some breathing room. I knew the social landscape of Winslow better than Emma did due to my future-knowledge, and we weren't even really playing the same game. Future-Emma had been able to do truly absurd things to Taylor because she'd achieved complete social dominance over our grade level, but I had no real desire to establish myself as the 'queen bee'. I just wanted to make sure that Emma wasn't in charge and it was a lot easier to keep your opponent from winning than it was to win yourself.

I had mostly forgotten the details of high school, but between what I did remember and my more experienced perspective, I had a great deal of insight into people and events. I didn't have the heart to use it to destroy people - not anymore, anyway - but those same skills could be used for good.

Someone was struggling with math? I put them in contact with someone that I knew liked to tutor. Someone was going to a big party that I remembered getting raided? I suggested they might want to skip it because it seemed sketchy. Someone was getting picked on? I did what I could to defuse it. It seemed like everyone had a problem, and a large number of them could be solved with a friendly ear and a few connections.

By the end of the month, Emma's frustration at my popularity was visible and I started taking precautions against her inevitable retribution.

Acts of petty spite - like tripping in the hallway or glue on my seat - were easy enough to avoid. After living through the end of the world, there were few insults that could rile me up, and having a generally positive reputation blunted her attempts at starting rumor campaigns against me. Worse for her, her bitchiness turned off some of the people that might otherwise have flocked to her side, especially when the target was someone that had a reputation for just being a nice person.

No, Emma wasn't the one I was worried about. I could handle Emma. What I was more concerned about was Sophia.

It didn't take too much effort to avoid using my locker. I ended up cleaning it out and finding people that didn't mind sharing books in a couple of classes so I didn't have to try to carry everything all the time. Just to be sure, I even took the lock off the door and had the school office remove it from my name in the system. That probably violated some policy somewhere, but the secretary hadn't actually seemed to give a shit and did it anyway.

Present-me hadn't originally noticed, but it had been funny exactly how many kids tried to stand up to Emma or Sophia only for it to be discovered that they had drugs or other contraband in their lockers shortly thereafter. It certainly was strange how often that happened to the enemies of someone that could phase through solid matter. Very suspicious, and that was in addition to all of the more direct physical assault she got away with.

Thus, I did my best to inoculate myself against it. I didn't leave my stuff unattended. I didn't maintain control over locked spaces which could be used to plant things. I didn't walk down stairwells without checking my surroundings. For the most part, I was saved from the physical bullying because I was barely five feet tall and a petite five feet at that. Reputations aside, she wasn't going to be earning any macho points by beating me up, and I was quite good at playing up minor injuries for maximum sympathy.

I had to suffer through a few scrapes and dings in the process, but eventually it got through to the duo that knocking me around was just damaging their reputation more than it was helping.

By mid-November, things had settled into a kind of cold war. Emma and Sophia had their little core of followers that collectively hated me almost as much as they hated Taylor, but I had a much bigger circle of casual friends that kept it in check and contained. It wasn't so much that we were competing factions as I was acting as a kind of vaccine against the rot of Emma's bitchiness so that the student body didn't get completely overrun.

And that was a metaphor that definitely would have needed more work if I ever intended to say it out loud.

"I already hung out with you," Taylor whined. She seemed different from a month ago. Calmer. Lighter. She didn't look like she'd scurry back under the cabinets if the lights came on.

"That was like a week ago. Two. It's been a long time and I want to hang out again." I had several reasons for trying to stay close to Taylor. The obvious one was that I still felt guilty for what I had done to her in that other timeline, and I wanted to make sure it didn't happen again. I had shed the worst of my obsession along with my suicidal time traveling, but I still found myself paying more attention to her than I otherwise would have. I had been fixated on her for a long time and it was hard to shake that kind of thing.

A second reason was that I didn't really have a good shopping buddy - not that I really had one in the first timeline, either. The truth of the matter was that my family was entirely too close to the poverty line, even by the standards of Winslow, and I disguised that fact by spending a lot of time hunting for bargains. It helped that I could get away with shopping in 'kid' sizes half the time which tended to be cheaper, but the most of it was because I dove through thrift stores like they held hidden treasure. Taylor's family was in just the right level of poverty to appreciate it without looking down on it for one reason or another.

The third and least expected reason was that I found that I actually liked her. My Ugly Duckling plan involved taking those pieces of my middle school life that would have made me unpopular - like my nerdy love for books and entirely too much knowledge about Internet culture - and burying them deep down inside where no one would ever see and use them against me again. That didn't mean they were gone, just well hidden. I found myself sharing those bits of myself with Taylor, too. I kind of thought we could become good friends and make each other better.

"I'm not above offering bribes," I declared. "I have a gift certificate for two movie tickets and I need to use it this weekend. I don't think I can use it for just one ticket at a time, so I need a plus one." The certificate was one of the random things mom got as a tip from one of her odd jobs. If I had to guess, someone had gotten it for Christmas a year before because the expiration date really was just before Thanksgiving.

"What movie?" she came back after a brief hesitation, and I knew I had her. I normally avoided the mall during November - and the rest of the year, for that matter - but this seemed like it would be a fun day. We could even hit the food court. It was going to be great.

Spoiler: Notes

And everything was wonderful and they all lived happily ever after. The end.

 

[Swordchucks]

Even after living in the Bay for most of my life, I still felt physically rattled by the sheer loudness of gunfire.

No matter what the Internet says, even the Bay doesn't have roaming firefights going on night and day. Hearing the sound of gunshots in the distance wasn't uncommon at night, but actually being right up close to it, especially in an enclosed area, was still rare.

Perhaps I should back up.

I invited Taylor out for another Saturday afternoon. It was two weeks to Thanksgiving, but that just made it better. With big crowds around, there was much less chance we would randomly run into Emma or one of her bitch squad. That was great because I kind of liked having Taylor as a private friend.

I kind of felt like our relationship was equal parts project, penance, guilty pleasure, and genuine friendship. The project was obviously where her 'big' sister Madison helped her figure out how to get out of her own ugly duckling phase. The penance should have been obvious as I still had a massive karmic debt to pay off to the version of Taylor from my original timeline. It was a guilty pleasure in the sense that Taylor and middle-school me would have gotten along really well, and the friendship part was self explanatory.

"So, the mall is still useful, even if you never plan to buy anything," I lectured as we walked around. "Fashion doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."

Taylor bumped her shoulder into mine, which was a bit of an accomplishment. She was almost a foot taller than me so she had to duck to give me the nudge. "You did not just butcher that quote like that."

I giggled. "It's true, though! A few months ago, stuff from the mid nineties was all the rage and if you looked, you could find tons of it in thrift stores. It wasn't quite the same, but if you can claim something is 'vintage', you get extra points!"

That made Taylor snort softly before she stifled her own laughter. Getting her to poke her tiny beak out of her shell was sometimes easier than others. Emma had burned her, but not too deeply. Even if I had technically played no part in it this time, I still felt responsible for making sure she recovered from even that much.

Plus, if I was being really honest with myself, screwing with Emma was fulfilling. After what she'd done in the other timeline and what she'd convinced me to do, she deserved to have someone foil her plans. Sophia did, too, but there wasn't a lot I could do with a cape. Maybe if I was still a cape there would have been, but that ship had sailed.

I had briefly considered trying to get my powers back, but I wasn't entirely sure how it had happened the first time. There was no single event that stood out… I was absolutely obsessed with the wrongs of my past - with Taylor and what I had done with her - and then one day, I just woke up with a solution in my mind. A little internet research showed that Tinkers were prone to tunnel vision, especially at the start, and I didn't entirely realize I had powers until I was almost done building that probably-suicidal time travel device.

I really hoped that what I was experiencing was real time travel and not some sort of alternate universe thing because if it was just a different universe, my other-timeline parents were going to hear about my crispy corpse eventually. Wasn't that a pleasant thought?

Regardless, there wasn't anything I could do to fix the situation so I had to put it out of my mind.

I checked my watch. "The movie is in like an hour. Want to hit the food court? My treat?"

Taylor rolled her eyes. "Yes, but I'm paying for myself. Dad gave me a twenty this morning and told me to have fun. If we keep hanging out, he's going to want to meet you, though."

I very carefully schooled my features at that. Other-me had met Mr. Hebert once and only once, and that had been at that kangaroo court of an administrative hearing where Blackwell dug in her heels. I'd gotten an earful from my parents after it was all over and it had been one of those moments I obsessed over in the coming years. Faced with a chance to confess to being a little shit, I had denied and covered it up, but it was one of the few times I realized what I was doing was bad. Not long afterwards, it had been Leviathan, and it hadn't seemed to matter… but it did.

"That'd be cool. Parents love me," I airily declared, instead.

oOoOoOoOo

Back to gunfire. You heard it on the wind most weekends in the Bay. It was there, distantly, and you hoped it didn't come close to you. Sometimes, you'd find a bullet lodged in a wall or a doorway in the morning - daylight was almost always safer - but otherwise you didn't think about it too much. It bred little habits like making sure there was heavy furniture along your outside walls and sleeping far from windows, but other than that, you tried to ignore it and hoped that it would ignore you.

When you're in a packed food court and some psychos start shooting? That's a lot harder to ignore.

In school, they teach us to get under our desks at the first sign of danger, and that is great advice for the first moments, but at a certain point, it just leaves you trapped. During the shooting drills, they assume someone can get to and lock the door to keep the gunman out.

Food courts don't really have doors. Not useful ones, anyway.

Fortunately, we didn't dive under the meager cover of the tables. We were walking around after tossing the trash from our lunch, and when the screaming started, we were standing close to the Burger Hut counter. It only took a second or two of hesitation before we dove through the little swingy door at one side of the counter and took shelter with the two workers who were just as terrified as us.

"Is there a way out of here?" I hissed at one of them after I got my shaking under control enough to form words. The worker I was talking to shook her head but couldn't seem to find words to elaborate.

"Not from here. The Taco Shack next door has an exit," the other worker hissed back, but by then the screaming on the other side of the counter had faded.

Against my better judgment, I raised my head up behind the cash register and leaned to the side enough to see that the majority of the crowd had stampeded out of the food court, leaving just a handful of people wearing masks in its wake. I immediately ducked back down.

"There are still guys with guns," I whispered forcefully and we exchanged frightened looks as we cowered closer together. In theory, we should either hide better or make a break for the nearest exit, but none of us were willing to move.

I looked to Taylor, hoping some of that steel that made her a warlord would somehow shine through, but it didn't. It was too early or she just wasn't that person yet. Maybe she would never be that person, I realized. Hadn't that been my goal? Well, it seemed like stopping someone from turning into a homicidal badass meant that you didn't have a homicidal badass around when you needed one.

"What you doin' back here?" a rough voice declared and one of the workers we were hiding with whimpered. "Come on out. All of you."

We stayed frozen for a moment and he must have pulled the trigger on his gun because there was suddenly a horrific burst of noise and the smell of something burning. Crashes and impacts sounded as the bullets hit the wall in the back of the Hut. Someone screamed and I had no idea if it was me or not.

"Move it or I'm litin' up the fuckin' counter next!" the voice yelled and somehow we managed to find our feet and the four of us shuffled fearfully out from behind the counter. There were maybe a dozen people being herded toward the middle of the food court by a handful of goons while more watched on and others took up posts to view the main body of the mall which led away in a couple of directions from the open area we were in.

"Put 'em in the middle!" a guy in a shitty costume commanded. It wasn't clear if he was a cape or just an asshole that thought he was in a band from the 80s, but the amount of puffy hair and do rags dangling from his body made him a fire hazard. "It's time to get this party started!"

I tried not to look at the handful of bodies that were laying unmoving on the floor. There was a stage area which had been done up for pictures with Santa, though it was empty at the moment. There were maybe twenty of us in all - people too scared or hurt to run or that had taken cover in dead ends like we had - that got herded to the area in front of the stage. They forced us to sit with our hands on our heads as the thugs organized things.

There was a hiss of pain beside me and I realized that the blond girl was familiar. She was clutching her side and her face was drawn in clear pain. Another girl, shorter with darker hair, was fretting over her and looking just as upset.

Things clicked in my mind as a fact floated up in my future-memories. Glory Girl. She'd been shot in some sort of attack on a mall around this time. It had been a big deal in the news because the aftermath had seen an up and coming gang wiped off the map like it had never existed. I hadn't remembered the details, but I knew a bunch of people died both in the attack and after. The fact that the other girl must have been her sister - her sister that I knew went to the Birdcage for something I was never quite clear on - didn't help anything.

Glory Girl must have caught my look of recognition because she nodded weakly. She mouthed something that looked like 'play along' and I gave her a nod back, though I wasn't sure what I was playing along with.

I pointedly moved my eyes to the side so that I wasn't looking at her. Whatever she had planned, I didn't want to ruin it by drawing attention to her. Given how badly she was bleeding, I wasn't sure she'd accomplish much more than bleed to death, but she hadn't in the other future.

A couple of the gang members held up phones toward the stage and the guy in the shitty costume jumped on it.

"Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen! We are the Chorus, and I'm your master of ceremonies… Screamer!" I winced at the last as his voice hit an impossibly high note and my whole body felt like it was vibrating for a second. It was horrible. "Maybe you know or maybe you don't, but the Bay's shittiest - that is the BBPD and their asshole friends - grabbed a few of our boys last week, including my gal pal Power Ballad. We are demanding their immediate release! You have twenty minutes to give us a call-" he rattled off a phone number "-or the show will really get started!"

Something cold coiled in my stomach. I had been afraid before, but this… this sounded horrible. The only thing we seemed to have on our side was an injured Glory Girl. I risked another glance at her and found that she had her eyes closed. Her sister was crying even harder than she had been before.

If I had my powers, I could have… well, nothing, probably. I'd been a Tinker. Tinkers were useless if they didn't build something ahead of time. That's why there were so many memes about taking them out early and avoiding their lairs. If I was a brand new Tinker with no gear, I would have been just as useless as I was right then.

My eyes drifted to Taylor, who was just as terrified as me. I tried to send comforting vibes, but I really had none. Instead, I risked grabbing her hand in mine, probably squeezing too tightly. The goons weren't really enforcing the 'hands on the head' thing anymore after none of us had fought back.

Minutes passed and one of the phones held by the gang rang. There was a hushed angry conversation that went on for some time, but didn't seem to be going anywhere. Eventually, Screamer got back on the stage and more cameras came up. "I guess no one is taking us seriously! It's time for a demonstration!"

The goons shifted, most of them pointing guns at our group. One of them, a big guy with a bandana over his face, moved forward, heading for me. I steeled myself for getting singled out, but he instead grabbed to my side. I was ready to be murdered by these idiots, but what happened was even worse.

He pulled Taylor to her feet and said something to her about her father in a low angry voice. She shrank back from him and he hauled her forcibly to the stage.

It was too much.

Somehow, I found my courage and sprang to my feet. I screamed like the crazy person that I obviously was as I ran forward with no real plan other than to try to stop what was happening. That plan only lasted until one of the gangers hit me across the face with a pistol. I felt something in my face crack, and I fell to my knees, blood streaming from my nose and all of my thoughts fleeing. My ability to form rational thoughts was severely diminished and my body was in too much shock for me to do much more than make groaning noises.

I heard Screamer start to scream again and then Taylor screamed, too. It went on for a horrible moment before I passed out.

Spoiler: Notes

Oh, it's that mall event. If it's cliché by this point, that's probably at least partially my fault as this is the third time I'm using it in a story. However, here's the fun part. Anyone want to guess what powers come from these conditions?

 

[Swordchucks]

I woke up to someone yanking on my arm pretty hard. It was unpleasant and everything was really loud.

"Come on," was yelled into my ear and the sound of fighting and screaming wormed its way through the groggy fog that had filled the space between my ears. I forced myself to wake up a little.

The mall.

The food court.

The events before I passed out hit me like a truck, but that ultimately didn't help me understand what was going on very much. Part of that was no doubt from my recent head injury - though it wasn't really hurting anymore - and part of that was from the fact that everything was positively alive with moving lines that were giving me an intense sense of vertigo.

"We have to move," was yelled again and I turned to the side to find Taylor. She was even more alive than everything around her with the strange moving lines. They were positively radiating off of her in swirls and waves and it was mesmerizing and nauseating at the same time.

I closed my eyes and took a breath. When I opened them again - to more frantic pulling - I was able to focus well enough to get to my knees and crawl behind Taylor away from the worst of the noise. Shifting position reminded me that someone had very recently done their best to redecorate my face with a hard object as a bit of blood dripped down my face and onto the floor. It didn't hurt anymore - probably shock, I realized - but the sight of it was almost as nauseating as the weird lines that were crawling across everything.

There was actual fighting going on past the stage - on into the mall a little - but some positively radiant sheets of light and wiggly lines provided a barrier between those and us.

There were other people around us, some not moving and some looking for cover and some waiting for the curtain of light to flicker out - which happened from time to time - so they could go in or out of the fighting.

My case of overwhelming vertigo became a little less overwhelming, though it was easier if I looked at the floor than if I looked at people - especially moving people. There were so many lines and so many layers of lines that it was dizzying. I didn't know how I could process that much input at all, even if I was doing a bad job of it.

We found shelter behind one of the stands that held the trash cans and napkins. It wasn't much - especially not when you considered the bullet holes already in it - but it was better than trying to hide under one of the tables or something. Hiding behind a counter would probably have been better, though that hadn't worked out very well for us before, and there was a lot of empty space between us and the nearest restaurant. The cover from the little stand, a fair distance from the fighting, and staying low would have to be good enough for the moment.

A blur moved past us and I very nearly passed out again as I was positively bombarded by data as lines exploded around it. Distantly, I realized that it had been a person moving at a high rate of speed. Wasn't there a speedster in the local Protectorate?

"She's hurt." A voice said. Taylor? Yeah, probably. I'd been with Taylor.

"Shit, you're covered in blood," a new voice said and I felt a bloody hand settle on my neck. That drew my attention and there was a face I was vaguely familiar with staring at me. "Actually, you're fine."

"You're kind of cute, too," I said in response, my words barely slurring. It seemed like the polite thing to do. It was true, and she had just called me fine, after all.

Her eyes narrowed, though I could see some faint lines moving around that led to some redness on her cheeks. "No, I mean you aren't injured." Oh, that was Glory-Sister. Panacea.

"What about the blood?" Taylor asked and she seemed to be giving off even more lines than before. She touched my cheek, too. "You're right. She must have healed somehow."

Panacea looked at Taylor in confusion and I realized that the lines were kind of dancing between the two of them, almost playfully. "Pretty!" I declared and impulsively reached out to run my fingers through them. Instead of lines, I ended up putting my hand on Taylor's face, too.

"What's wrong with her, then?" Taylor asked and Panacea shrugged. "It's like she's drunk."

"No clue, but I don't see anything wrong with her. Not really. Her brain is really active, though," she said, like I wasn't sitting right there. They could just have asked me.

"Everything is pretty lines," I whispered to them, loudly, like it was a secret but a secret I wanted them to know about. "The last time I got powers, it was nothing like this. Everywhere, waves and lines and currents. They're dancing around you two like little angels, if angels were lines. Angels that are angles? Maybe that's Biblically accurate?"

"Yeah, alright," Panacea said and pointedly didn't look at me. "She's definitely acting like she's high and I can't see a reason for it - I don't think so, anyway. That seems like something I should be able to tell. I think. Can we get her to move? We are way too close to the fighting," she said and shuddered. I didn't blame her. One brush with death was enough for a day, in my opinion.

"She's been agreeable so far. There's supposed to be a way out at the back of the Taco Shack."

Amy leaned around the side of the trash cans and looked around for a moment before retreating to rejoin us. "Too far. Aunt Sarah's shield is down, and even if they have the assholes pinned down for the moment, it's too exposed."

"You're smart," I told her. "I'm glad they let you out of the Birdcage." She rudely swatted my hands away when I tried to poke at her cheeks. I had a feeling she'd be adorable with dimples.

The dull roar of combat was getting easier to pick apart. There were occasional explosions - which I think someone in New Wave could do - and there were screams from the asshole that had tried to kill Taylor. There were also plenty of bullets being fired, though so far they hadn't impacted our current cover. Then again, it was only a matter of time before that became a problem.

Or it was a problem for right the fuck now.

Two guys in bandanas skidded around the corner and ran behind the trash cans we were cowering - I mean, that we were strategically positioned behind. One of them actually went sprawling when he tripped over my legs. Which totally hurt. Rude.

"FUCK!" the one that didn't trip screamed, and I recognized the guy that had singled Taylor out earlier. The one that had picked my friend for death. Suddenly the lines dancing around everything didn't seem so funny and I started to reach out for them.

Before I could do anything - which was mostly a matter of deciding which of the many, many waves around the man I wanted to grab and YANK - Taylor jammed her hand into his face, and he fell down, apparently unconscious. Meanwhile, Amy snatched up the gun that the other one had dropped and a very specific set of waves around it suddenly went very still. The gun dissolved into gray dust. My eyes went to the still conscious guy and I idly wondered if I could do the same thing to him that Amy had just done to the gun. I could see the waves and I felt like if I reached out, I could make them do what I wanted them to.

The realization of what I was considering sobered me up pretty quickly. Melting a dude by semi-accident wasn't how I would want my day to end.

"I give up," the guy whined as the gray dust from the gun drifted to the floor.

Taylor poked a finger into his face and he immediately fell unconscious.

oOoOoOoOo

I was mostly sane - or, at least, much saner - by the time the Protectorate and New Wave finished beating up the remaining gangers. Or was that gangsters? I wasn't sure I knew the right term, but I always avoided saying gangbangers because of the internet.

Apparently, when the three of us had triggered - because that is definitely what had happened - something about it had made Screamer zone out for almost a minute. When he had gone slack-jawed and unresponsive, the other gang… members had panicked. In the confusion, the PRT struck before it could get even more out of hand.

By some miracle, there were no deaths beyond three people killed during the initial attack. Several of the gang members were going to be in the hospital for a while, as were quite a few bystanders, but they were all alive. Fortunately, the injured people didn't include Taylor or myself.

I quietly exchanged contact information with Pana-err… Amy Dallon before she was swept away by her family. She didn't stick around to heal people or anything, but I realized that wasn't so strange. Back in the other timeline, she had been Panacea, the well known and trusted healer - up until she ended up in super prison for some reason. Here, she was just a kid fresh to her powers that no one really understood yet. They'd probably make Glory Girl get checked out in the hospital, too, since it was only because of Amy's work that she wasn't in critical condition from a gunshot wound, and I doubted that anyone would trust that her healing worked as well as it did without some proof. I remembered that being a thing in the other timeline for a while - most healers were nowhere near as good as she was.

Before we could go, we had to give statements to the BBPD, but eventually we were let go with the rest of the innocent bystanders. They wanted to call our parents for us, but I just needed to be out of the mall as soon as humanly possible and Taylor seemed to have the same thought. I was sure that if they hadn't been so overwhelmed by the sheer number of injured people, they would never have let us go without an adult, but we managed to convince them - mostly by sneaking away while no one was looking at us.

"So, that happened," Taylor said woodenly as we settled into a seat near the back of the bus we caught away from the scene.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Should we…" she started and then trailed off.

"We should probably talk, yeah. My place?" I asked. "Dad is probably home, but he won't bother us."

"Alright," she said and then there was silence for a while as stops came and went. A certain tension built with it, but it wasn't entirely unpleasant.

I should have been figuring out what I was going to say to Taylor. Instead, I was watching the pretty patterns come and go past the window. Everything was wreathed in many layers of lines though I was getting a lot better at functioning while observing them. Not only were there a lot of lines, but they came in all sorts of varieties, though I was starting to pick up on a few patterns. Some lines only seemed to be active around things that were alive, and some only moved around objects. There were so many kinds of lines that I would likely have to do a lot of work to figure out all of them, and I almost wished for my old power back.

I hadn't really enjoyed Tinkering that much - not that I'd had a ton of time in which to do it - but it had been a lot simpler. I could have done without the feeling like my power was the one driving my body while I was building stuff, but it hadn't required me to figure things out on my own in the same way that I felt like this one would.

During our bus ride, I did make one important observation. I could 'see' the lines inside of objects, but not inside of people. I was pretty sure there was some rule about powers doing that - working on living things or on objects but not both - but I couldn't remember the specifics. Given that I could still see all of the lines immediately outside those living things, I suspected it wasn't necessarily much of a limitation, but it seemed like an important one.

After I sobered up a little, the memory of what Amy had done to that gun was enough to make me hesitate before messing with any lines, myself. That certainly hadn't been a power Panacea was known for back in the other timeline, though I was pretty sure I could replicate it. She had just made certain lines around and inside the gun go flat instead of rippling and curling like most lines did.

"Dad, Taylor's here!" I declared as we swept through the front hallway of my house. It was very small and with two working parents - and a fairly lazy me - not exactly 'clean' but it also wasn't dirty enough to keep me from bringing friends over. Dad was in the kitchen, doing dishes in preparation for dinner.

"You're supposed to call if you're bringing guests!" he yelled as we scurried past. "Nice to meet you, Taylor!" he offered with just a tinge of sarcasm as we ran up the narrow staircase and into my room.

I shut the door and then collapsed face first on my bed. Fortunately, the paramedics had given me wipes to get the blood off my face and the mess that was formerly the front of my shirt was dry or I would have ruined my bedding in the process.

"Uh-"

"Just a second," I mumbled as I lifted myself up enough to pull a pillow under my face. I proceeded to press my face into it and scream as hard as I could. It helped a tiny bit.

I was breathless when I rolled over and sat on the end of my bed. "Holy fuck, what happened today?"

"Well, we went to the mall," Taylor started, a tiny, brittle smile playing across her face like she was wrestling with the insanity of it all. "Then some guy tried to murder me because my dad got him fired from the union 'for no reason' which I'm sure is going to turn out to be a really, really good reason if I ever ask dad about it. Then you and I both became parahumans along with Amy Dallon, who is apparently Glory Girl's sister. Then I figured out that my power is pretty much a copy of Amy's power, which is this amazing biological thing that can heal people or knock people out with a touch. Only I don't think that's really my power because I can kind of feel your power, even though I don't think you've used it yet, and I feel like I could copy it if I wanted, which means that the other power was a copy, too. Oh, and Amy can make a gun turn into dust with her bare hands, which kind of felt like it was a separate power which I could also have copied if I had wanted to. I sort of felt like your power was gearing up to do something before I knocked out that last guy. Oh, and you recovered from a broken nose like immediately. Then we had to talk to the police and came here."

"Oh," I said, my voice small and distant. "Is that all?"

"Well, I think you might have been flirting with Amy when your brain was all messed up right after waking up."

"Oh, god." I could feel all of the blood in my body rushing to my face.

"Possibly me, too."

I just whined.

"I mean, I'm flattered, but if that's best you can do, I'm not sure-"

"Please stop," I whimpered.

"I think I'm going to absolutely freak out as soon as I let myself stop talking," she said very matter-of-factly. "I almost died today and holy shit."

I reached out and pulled her into a hug. It was kind of awkward because she was a lot taller than me. "It's going to be okay," I lied.

I was now well and truly out of my depth.

Spoiler: Notes

So, I realized that my invitation to guess powers wasn't entirely fair given that I didn't precisely follow the rules.

Taylor has a trump power, in no small part because QA cheats and used the fact that she was being targeted by a power as an excuse. She isn't aware of any distinct secondary powers yet.

Amy got her canon power plus a secondary power that's apparently derived from Stilling. Instead of "fuck off" beams, she can just dissolve molecular bonds in touch range. It's kind of minor, but when you consider her main power, it's much more terrifying. She doesn't know what, if anything, she got from QA yet.

Madison got a different expression of Stilling than she had before along with a secondary power that gives her regeneration. QA may also be responsible for her being able to process the sheer amount of data that Stilling feeds her, too.

I didn't really do anything with pings from Screamer or the Protectorate members in attendance, in no small part because too many powers tends to lead to chaos when trying to write the story.

 

[Swordchucks]

I was overwhelmed by the fact that nothing was simple.

When you watch an episode of Chicago Wards or Protectorate 911, they don't dwell on exactly how traumatized you have to be in order to get powers. Honestly, I doubted that the writers of those shows really understood it in the first place, and even if they were, I was certain that they wouldn't want to put that on screen.

Shows about government sponsored parahumans were always… clean. That was a good word for it. Episodic was also a good word for them. People got injured or upset and it was all wrapped up in an hour. If it was a two-parter, it might take two hours while they milked it for ratings, but it still got resolved pretty fast.

People on those shows didn't fall the fuck to pieces in their bedroom while one of the people that they had shared the traumatic experience with clung to them doing the exact same thing. On the rare occasion that they did hint at something like that, they would cut away and it was mostly better by the time the camera was on them again.

In real life? Not so much.

I had been… I could barely begin to untangle the mess of emotions within me. There was disgust with myself for not being more useful during the attack. Helplessness at the randomness of it all. Terror at how close I had come to getting myself killed trying to save Taylor. Anger at those assholes for causing the situation in the first place. A general sense of disgust with the world because no one had swooped in to save us.

I realized that the last of those was unfair both because of the danger that an ill-timed attack could have put everyone in, and also the fact that the Protectorate had moved in with as many capes as they could bring to bear at the first opportunity. That didn't stop me from feeling that they should have come in sooner… even if it wasn't logical.

All of that and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't identify came bubbling out as I hugged Taylor who was shaking and crying quietly, too. The hug helped, a little, but the weight of what had happened was so great that it just wasn't stopping.

We were still like that an hour later when my dad came to check on us.

"Madison can you-" he'd started as he opened my door. Then he stopped to stare at us in confusion. Then he must have realized how much of a crying heap we were and he came to put a hand on my back. "Girls… what's wrong?"

Taylor didn't say anything. She wouldn't look at him or me, really, she just kept her eyes on the floor. I started to talk for the both of us.

"Did you see on the news? The thing at the mall?" I ventured.

"Were you two…" he started, but our faces must have made the answer clear. "Oh, no."

"Yeah, we were in the middle of it. The-" I edited myself out of habit since swearing around dad usually got me rebuked "-guy tried to kill Taylor. I got hurt a little, too, but not so bad." More details spilled out, though nothing about powers. I still barely knew what my real power was and if I admitted it to him, the next step would be admitting that I had no idea what to do with it. Not in the 'how to use my powers sense' which I also didn't know, but in the 'how to be a person with powers who does things' sense which seemed like a bigger question.

Dad, bless him, just let me talk and when I was done, the first thing he said was "What can I do to help?"

"I should call my dad," Taylor said after a while. She sounded small and lost, which made me hug her tighter.

"Taylor, right?" dad asked and went on when I nodded. "You can use my phone or get Madison to let you use hers. We don't have a landline because-" he paused and thought better of it. I knew the story. There was an issue with the wiring in the house. The phone company wanted too much money to straighten it out so we didn't have a landline until we either paid for that or dad got a chance to straighten it out himself. In the last timeline, it had still been unresolved when we moved away, but It was neither the time nor the place for those kinds of details. "We both have cell phones."

"Okay," she said softly and some time later I was awkwardly repeating the slightly sanitized version of events in our living room to her father who had rushed over and my mom who had just gotten home from work. They were both equally horrified and there was much sympathetic crying and hugging to be had.

It was nothing like how they introduced a new character on Chicago Wards, but it was probably the best I could have hoped for.

oOoOoOoOo

I was feeling a little better the next day. I wasn't better by any means, but I felt more human. Taylor had gone home on Saturday night and we'd met up on Sunday afternoon for a while, but we didn't really do much. There was a very small conversation about powers and a little discussion about next steps.

Taylor lost Amy's power when she went to sleep on Saturday night, though she was able to get it back with a moment of concentration on Sunday morning. She was rightfully wary about trying to copy my power because of how much it messed me up when it first appeared. I was quickly getting used to the massive amounts of input it fed me and I was starting to get a very vague idea of what the various lines correlated to, but I had to be careful not to get overwhelmed.

My first experiment with actually using my power to manipulate the lines resulted in a small disaster which set a hairclip on fire. Apparently the lines I chose to adjust had been temperature or thermal energy because when I 'turned them up', it made the thing burst into flames. After that, I decided that I would only be doing experiments outdoors and only on entirely disposable targets. I just hadn't found much motivation to do that yet.

The only other thing I had really tried was pricking my finger with a sewing needle which resulted in the tiny wound vanishing after a couple of seconds. It was admittedly nice that the regeneration stayed around and even if it turned out to just be a weak healing effect, I was very happy to have it. It was a rare person that would turn down anything that made them heal faster.

We talked about those power effects, but more importantly, we talked about what our next steps were going to be as people. As capes.

"We're going to need to tell someone," I suggested. I wasn't really thrilled with the idea, but it needed to be said. I didn't trust myself to keep Taylor accountable. I had seen what she could become and that possibility terrified me. I also knew exactly what I could become, and that wasn't any better.

"Do we have to?" Taylor asked weakly. She was still just as shaken by the incident at the mall as I was and seemed especially bothered by loud noises. I supposed that was natural.

"Not immediately," I hedged. "But do you want to just sit around forever and not use… them."

She frowned. "No, I don't… we could do a lot of good stuff. Even if all I could do is copy Amy's healing, that's a good thing to be able to do."

I nodded. I had been thinking about it a lot, too. Parahumans were notorious for getting into fights. It was almost a stereotype, but everything I saw in the other timeline told me it was an earned one. Even the capes that weren't physically violent tended to be fiercely competitive in other ways. I didn't know if it was because the powers themselves pushed to be used or if powers only went to people that were going to use them in the first place. The last time I had triggered, I hadn't hesitated for a moment, so it could have been either.

Finding a path for Taylor that wasn't becoming an all-powerful warlord and ruling the city with an iron fist was now one of my life goals. Worse, I had decided that I was responsible for her to the point that if she did go that way… I'd have to be her chief minion. I felt responsible for the whole mall thing. It had been my idea, and I should have done… more to keep her safe. I knew it was irrational, but I was never especially rational.

"I think…" I stopped because I knew this one was going to be hard. "I think we should tell our parents."

Taylor went still and I was afraid I had made her mad or traumatized her more or something. "I don't want to." It wasn't an argument, just a statement of fact. It was also a weak statement like one makes when they know that they should do a thing but really dislike it.

"Me, either," I admitted. "But I think we need to." The idea of sneaking around with powers would probably have appealed to me the first time I was fourteen, but now it made me sick to my stomach. I knew how bad my decision making could be and how quickly I could fall under the sway of a bad influence. I was paranoid that the girl that could have become the warlord would be just that.

Taylor didn't answer, she just grunted. I kind of agreed with that in spirit.

"We should talk to Amy's mom, first. Her mom's a lawyer and part of a parahuman team that isn't the government. I bet she knows our options better than anyone." It had been a topic of conversation in my limited texting with Amy after the incident. She was just as out of sorts as we were - more, probably, since she was dealing with it without one of us to lean on. Given her family, I had expected her to have it more together, but getting powers sucked universally, even if you grew up around them. "Not because I think she'll tell us not to tell our parents, but because if we present a plan when we tell them, they're more likely to let us do things the way we want."

"I… alright. Yeah, that's probably okay."

oOoOoOoOo

No one showed up to haul us off to prison for being secret capes by the end of the weekend and we - the parent-child collective - decided it was safe enough for us to go back to school on Monday. I wasn't sure I was up for it, emotionally, but the idea of sitting at home alone - or even alone with Taylor - seemed like it would be much worse.

If nothing else, it would provide a distraction. Hopefully, it would also allow us to gain valuable intel on the situation in the form of the rumor mill that ran throughout the student body.

There were videos out on the internet of the incident at the mall, but they were all shaky footage taken with shitty cell phones or really poorly angled security cameras. The guy with the best view of Taylor's attack had been one of the gangba- members and seemed more interested in making Screamer look like a badass than getting a good shot of his victim. As soon as the Protectorate assault had started - several seconds after Screamer zoned out - he'd whipped his camera around to that and promptly dropped it.

If you didn't already know that Taylor was the victim and that there were a bunch of people getting powers by blacking out to some degree, it seemed really unlikely that you could guess that from the videos. The fact that people that already had powers seemed to get hit with the same effect that had knocked me all the way out was an interesting factoid I filed away for another time. That seemed like the kind of thing that could cause a problem later.

In any case, going to school on Monday was hard. For one thing, the more people I could see moving around, the more waves I had to be disoriented by. For another, Emma was being Emma and my temper was in tatters. I had a feeling that making my debut as a cape by setting her hair on fire was probably a bad thing, though the idea did help keep a smile on my face as I waded through her bullshit.

I was pretty sure that I couldn't affect the waveforms directly inside living things since I couldn't see them, but I was pretty sure I could affect the lines that were really close to their skin and I'd recently figured out which ones related to thermal energy. That just made me wonder what insane reason my power had for that specific limitation. What was the real difference in setting someone on fire and setting all of the air around them on fire? It seemed arbitrary.

In any case, I managed to avoid a lot of conversation that day by simply saying that I was at the mall on Saturday and that it was really bad. I leaned into my 'cutesy' look out of necessity, but it had some fringe benefits when I needed to look vulnerable and upset. Not that I was acting, at all. I had been at the mall, and I also really didn't want to talk about it.

The fact that I could use that to make Emma look even worse for picking on me than normal? That was just a bonus.

After school, Taylor and I went to my house. My parents and her father had all offered to take some time off and let us stay home from school to recover, but we'd declined because somehow school was better than being alone with our thoughts, even if we were alone together. Being together did help, and our parents felt like us hanging during the period of the afternoon where no parents were home from work was a good thing.

It was definitely nice to have some company, but we mostly used that time for plotting.

"Sophia's a cape," Taylor announced as soon as we were in the relative security of my room.

I turned to stare at her with wide eyes. "How can you tell?"

Taylor shrugged. "I can just kind of feel capes, I guess. Not so much if they aren't using their powers, but she must have done something with them in the hall while I was in class and it stood out like a neon sign. After that, it was easy enough to figure out it came from her."

"Wow, that's-" I paused as I fumbled for a word. Powerful? Convenient? Dangerous? "Be careful who you tell. A lot of capes would literally kill you to keep their identities quiet."

Taylor nodded like she'd already realized that. "I'm just telling you, not everyone."

Another thought hit me. "Did you try copying her power?"

Taylor shook her head. "I was in class or in a crowd every time she was close enough. I was worried that it might be obvious if I just grabbed it, and I think I have to be pretty close to copy a power. The first time, at least."

I was glad Taylor was so restrained, I supposed, though I would have liked to know more. I really wanted to experiment, but the melted hair clip reminded me that I should be patient.

Somehow, we ended up with Taylor sitting at the little bench in front of the cheap silver vanity I kept my makeup on. It had a big mirror and good lighting, but more importantly it had a backless stool which let me walk around her easily. I used that freedom to brush her hair out rather thoroughly. It was a little weird and a little intimate.

"My mom used to do this," she admitted as I worked the brush through her long, dark hair. Even at the height of our bullying in the other timeline, she might have been apathetic toward her clothing and makeup, but she had always taken care of her hair. I'd always kind of wanted to run my hands through it and now that I got a chance, I found that it was even silkier than I had expected.

"Is that bad?" I asked. The repetitive motions were soothing to me. It was really nice to feel the occasional locks of it brushing against my fingers.

"No, no, it's… comforting. It reminds me of good feelings."

I made a humming noise. My hair was limp and fine, not really worth brushing like this. In fact, if I had an extended brushing done to me, half of my hair would probably get yanked out as it tied itself into knots at every opportunity. "Well, you have amazing hair for this," I said and put down the brush so I could shamelessly run both hands through it.

Taylor blushed, but she didn't stop me.

I smiled at her in the mirror and started weaving ribbons into her locks. It kept my hands busy and helped keep me distracted from things I didn't want to think about.

"After dinner, dad's going to take us over to Amy's," I noted as I worked. "Her mom knows we're coming, but not why, exactly."

"Okay," Taylor said softly. I could tell that she was nervous about talking to an adult about this, but we needed to understand our options.

Personally, I was the kind of coward that would hide away forever if I could, but that wasn't really an option anymore. I was responsible for Taylor, and I was going to make sure she didn't do something dumb. Amy, too, while I was at it. I couldn't remember what she'd done to get into so much trouble the last time, but I was pretty sure I could help her, too. I just really hoped that someone could help me not be so dumb, too.

Spoiler: Notes

As someone pointed out in a comment, last chapter didn't really end with the appropriate amount of trauma for trigger events. That was because they were in shock. Here, we see the shock wearing off. Plus Madison has some lingering trauma from her other life that's messing with her, too.

 

[Swordchucks]

What's the Frequency, Madison?
06

The fairly limited texting I had done with Amy Dallon had been awkward. I definitely didn't want to admit to having powers over a conversation that was being recorded under my name on a cell phone provider system somewhere, and there was only so much apologizing I could do for being high as a kite during the fighting. That left fewer topics than I would have liked.

In person, things were awkward for different reasons. One of those was that Glory Girl was hovering - both literally and figuratively. She insisted that we call her Victoria since she wasn't in costume or anything, but that didn't mean we needed her intruding when we really needed to have a private talk.

"So, Amy never mentioned how the three of you met…" the blond said sweetly. We were piled into Amy's room, which was smaller than I imagined but quite a bit bigger than mine. There was a little bench in front of the window with a disheveled pile of stuffed animals beside it that Taylor and I claimed while Amy sat on the bed. The animals had most likely lived on the bench until just before we arrived and Amy realized her lack of seating options.

The Dallons were securely middle class, which was something of a rarity in the Bay. They lived in a modest four bedroom house in one of the old 'nice' parts of town which was now much faded after more and more people with the means fled to the safer suburbs. It was a lot nicer than where I lived - and where I assumed Taylor lived - but it certainly wasn't a sign of the kind of wealth that 'lawyer' conjured up in my mind.

It was kind of sad that little things like street lights that all still worked and a general lack of burned out cars on the side of the roads was all it took to mark it as a good part of town. That was just the way urban decay worked, though.

"No, I didn't." Amy rejoined. It was a complete sentence the way she said it and we stayed quiet as we watched the interplay between the two sisters.

"So, how did you three meet?" Victoria asked as though that was the perfectly natural thing to ask after having her previous angle shut down. Amy looked like she was going to double down, but I decided to defuse the situation as best I could. I didn't know what was going on between the sisters, but Amy looked exhausted and frazzled.

"It was at the mall. We shared a hiding spot during the fighting. She took care of my broken nose and checked out what happened to Taylor." It was nice and neutral and true, after a sense.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry. I think I remember you now. I was… distracted at the time," she said sheepishly. She'd been distracted with the whole 'dying from a gunshot wound' thing, as I remembered it. "Oh, wait, were you with her when she took out those two guys?"

"We helped," I declared. This had been a very minor topic in our text exchanges. Amy was claiming 'credit' for knocking those two guys out to hide the fact that we had powers. If she was going to be 'out' that would take the attention off of us. Taylor hadn't cared since our role had been minor in the grand scheme of things, and she was still afraid of having her dad find out before she was ready to tell him. "One of them didn't see me and totally tripped over me. He fell flat on his face."

"A win is a win," she said and gave me an exaggerated wink and a cheesy thumbs-up.

"We're going to talk for a bit before Carol gets home," Amy declared and pointedly looked toward the door.

"What are we talking about?" Victoria asked innocently. I couldn't tell if she was trying to be a jerk, was worried about leaving her sister alone with us, if she was just teasing her sister, or if it was multiple of those at the same time.

"The three of us are going to talk. Without you," Amy clarified, emphasizing the second word.

"Alright, alright. Just scream if they try to murder you," Victoria held her hands up in surrender and left. Amy shut the door behind her and turned the little locking knob which was almost certainly more symbolic than functional with a super strong sister involved.

"Sorry, she's been… I think there's something about invulnerable capes that get hurt. They take it really, really personally, and she hasn't wanted to let me out of her sight since then." Amy collapsed back on the edge of her bed.

"I think she's worried about you," I said, still looking at the closed door.

"Yeah, but it's still annoying. I'd almost take Carol-" she stopped, her eyes closing as she took a deep breath. "Never mind. I'm just tired. You didn't come here to listen to me bitch."

Taylor and I shared a look and stood up together. We stepped closer to Amy and separated a bit. "Can we hug you?" It was a sudden urge, but it felt right.

For a moment, Amy looked confused, but then nodded stiffly. The pair or us settled on either side and arms shuffled around for a moment before we found something comfortable.

It was nice. Tension I didn't even know I had seemed to flow out of my body as the three of us hugged each other. It felt warm and safe and wonderful. I almost melted into the girl beside me. The girl I had talked to for maybe five minutes in my life.

"This isn't normal," I said after I started to realize exactly how strange this situation was. I didn't release the hug.

"I'm aware," Amy noted from beside me as she also made no move to disentangle herself. "I've been researching and… apparently mental changes are common with multiple-triggers."

"Multiple-triggers?" Taylor asked from the other side.

"Yeah, sometimes, when multiple people get powers at the same time, they get kind of mixed up. The big obvious thing is the multiple powers," Amy noted. "But there are a bunch of studies that indicate that there are some mental changes, too. Mostly it's weird bullshit like a nonsmoker suddenly getting a craving for cigarettes while the heavy smoker suddenly doesn't care anymore. Most of them are pretty benign, but there are enough important changes for the studies to claim it's statistically significant."

"I don't have multiple powers," Taylor said, but I had a feeling she was just trying to distract herself from the scarier possibilities. I wasn't exactly eager to think that one, either. "Not that I've experimented much."

I could feel Amy shift beside me and I found myself nuzzling into mousy brown hair. "Sometimes they're really distinct - like my sudden ability to mess with people's insides and the disintegration thing - and sometimes it's more subtle. Sometimes, it's just that one person's power gets some tweaks because of the others. Sometimes, there are more powers than people - at least, as far as anyone knows. It's only a tiny fraction of parahumans that get this kind of thing so it's all case studies and anecdotes."

Amy really could use some of whatever conditioner Taylor used. Her hair wasn't quite as fine as mine so it had some potential, but I had a feeling she didn't take as much care of it as she could. It smelled nice, though.

I froze and very carefully stood up.

"I think we can worry about the powers later. I'm… I…" I stared at the other two as I lost my ability to form coherent words. They looked like they were pretty close to each other. Like, 'we're about to make out' close.

As I stared, they seemed to realize it, too, and split apart.

The three of us spread out as much as we comfortably could.

"Well, it could be worse?" Amy offered weakly after a moment of awkward silence. "At least whatever it is appears to want us to be… friendly?"

"There are other options?" Taylor asked, her voice somewhat distant as she wrestled with whatever she was feeling. I was having to remind myself that no, I didn't want to fall into a cuddle puddle with those two right now. Taylor was somewhat understandable - I had been obsessed with her for years in the future - but I had only just met Amy and knew almost nothing about her.

"Yeah, something like half of the clusters studied had at least one attempted murder within the first year of the triggering event. The… opposite was only like a quarter."

"It's… manageable," I said. "I'm upset about the fact that I'm not upset about how natural it feels, but that's… It still feels natural."

Taylor sighed heavily and I could see something shift. There was a signal that I hadn't picked out before, a faint thing back behind the normal noise of reality that radiated from each of us and stretched to the other two. There was a ripple in the signal and suddenly I felt a bit of pressure release as it faded away.

"What did you do?" I asked, staring at her. Amy looked at me and then seemed to realize that something had changed as well.

"I just… thought really hard about how it was too much? That we were going to be good friends, but pushing us together so hard was actually going to make it more difficult for us to work together? I don't know what happened after that." Taylor seemed just as confused by it as the rest of us.

I tried to relax and look at the other two in turn. I still felt a confusing mix of emotions with Taylor - but that was nothing new. I had a generally positive feeling toward Amy, but it no longer felt like I was being forced toward her like I had before. I couldn't find that signal anywhere in the background noise.

"So… do you think that it's a hidden master power or something else?" I asked in confusion. Neither one seemed like a great option. "I could see it, but only after it started to go away. Maybe I just didn't know what to look for, but whatever that was, it's gone now. I'm pretty sure I'll know if it comes back."

Amy nodded from her side of the room. "That's good. Great, even. I, ah, I still feel like you two are great and everything but it's a lot more… normal now."

"But… what the hell was that?" I asked nervously. "It wasn't just from one person. It was like we were all three radiating it toward each other."

"I can research more," Amy offered. "Twinned powers happen, too, but they're usually treated as separate from multiple-triggers. Or it could be something else entirely. There are all sorts of theories about powers and where they come from. There are too many data points that point to some sort of intelligence behind them to dismiss the possibility entirely. Maybe… maybe you asked the intelligence and it agreed?"

Scion. I remembered the golden light. The devastation. Scion was supposedly the source of all powers and maybe he was the one Taylor had just - for lack of a better word - prayed to. Why would he want us to work together, though? It didn't make sense, but none of this made sense.

Compared to the other timeline, Taylor seemed to have a more potent power. She'd done something huge last time that no one would talk about. Some people I had talked to hated her for it. Some had respected her. Some had just been sad, but it had always been short on details. How someone with bug control - even if she was the equivalent of a Biblical plague - could do something to help win against the creature that had all of the powers, I had no idea, but she had.

Panacea had been a big deal last time, too, but she hadn't been able to disintegrate inorganic matter with a touch. It seemed almost like a strategic upgrade so that physical barriers could no longer stop her from touching you. That implied a degree of intelligence in the selection of powers.

As for me, I wasn't a Tinker anymore, but I hadn't ever really explored my Tinker powers in that other timeline. I built one thing - which was admittedly amazingly impressive considering that it had managed to successfully send my memories back in time several years - and it was far beyond any other accomplishment I'd heard of in Tinkertech. My powers were definitely different now, but they still seemed to deal with fundamental forces in a way that seemed like it would turn out to be at least as strong as it had been before.

Something - Scion or something similar - was watching over us and that was too terrifying to say out loud. What made it even worse was that knowing was almost useless because we didn't understand why we were being pushed together. Was it to our benefit? Our detriment? Without more information, it wouldn't help anything to worry about it.

"Unless we can figure out a way to test it, I'm not sure that it matters right now," I suggested in order to divert the conversation. I really didn't want to have an existential crisis on top of everything else. "As long as it stops trying to play matchmaker, we can play along until we know more. I don't… I won't object to having another good friend."

Amy blushed lightly and nodded. "Yeah, that's… I guess that's alright. I don't have any reason to doubt your motives - I know Madison wasn't faking at the mall and Taylor isn't a good enough actor to pull that off."

I laughed lightly as I caught sight of Taylor's pout. Again I found myself trying to match the mental image of my friend Taylor and the terrifying Warlord Skitter I had heard so much about and coming up short. How had that even happened? Had the bullying we had done really changed her that much? That thought sobered me up and I stopped laughing. "We should, ah, we should talk about what we want to ask your mom. Maybe you have some ideas we've missed. I think we should tell our parents, but I don't want to just drop it on them and let them decide. I kind of want to know what our choices are before we do that."

Amy nodded, looking relieved to be talking about absolutely anything else. "Aunt Sarah runs New Wave, but mom does more of the advocacy stuff. I'm the third New Wave kid to trigger, so it's kind of assumed that I'm going to join the team, but you two are in a really different situation."

With the conversation on a much safer topic, we talked for another half hour or so before Carol showed up.

Spoiler: Notes

Shards are bad at people-ing. Shards are like "I want you guys to work together really closely, so..." mashes faces together "get to doing gross biological things or something."

 

[Swordchucks]

"So, in summary," Carol Dallon said as she wound down from our rather lengthy discussion of the possibilities. "I agree that you need to tell your parents, and I want to emphasize that you should not, under any circumstances, attempt to 'fight crime' without the support of an appropriate team. The risks are simply too high for it to be worthwhile."

I fidgeted nervously. We had been a bit vague about the situation - leaving out the whole 'our multiple trigger make us into snuggly bunnies but also maybe mind controlled us' thing - but Ms. Dallon was a font of useful information, anyway. She'd even agreed to term our meeting as a consultation, which would attach some attorney-client privilege to it in the unlikely event that such a thing would be useful in the future.

"In the Bay, there aren't a lot of appropriate teams for teenagers to join, unfortunately. I assume that since you had the good sense to talk to me before doing anything, you aren't considering a life of crime, which cuts the possibilities to just two. Of those, New Wave isn't a good fit for a number of reasons, the big one being that we don't have the resources or skills required to keep our member's identities secure. While most capes won't target a hero in their private life or go after their families, that is just a social convention. The truth is that some capes will do that and worse as long as they think they can get away with it, or they are the type that doesn't care about the ramifications of getting caught."

I remembered that New Wave had lost someone a few years back. A sister, maybe? The story I had heard was that Kaiser himself had killed the guy as a peace offering afterward, but Carol was right. Even if it was true, Kaiser had only done that much after they'd gone to all-out war against his cronies, and even then, killing that guy hadn't really fixed anything. No amount of retaliation brought back a lost loved one, and I didn't want to think about what I'd do if mom or dad got caught up in this mess because of me.

"There are a few small mercenary outfits that might be options, but parahuman mercenary work isn't exactly legal in the first place. Add to that the fact that the kinds of people that hire mercenaries usually don't want you doing good things and you can see why I don't recommend that, either. Any group that would hire teenagers… well, it's just a bad idea to put yourselves into that position. Nothing good will come of it and you'll just end up right back in the government's hands but under worse circumstances."

Carol sighed and took a drink from the sparkling water she'd opened when she sat down at the desk in her study for this talk. "That leaves the only real option that's workable - in the Bay, at least - that being to join the Wards." It almost seemed like it pained Carol to admit that fact. "New Wave works with the Protectorate and Wards on occasion, and while they have a lot of restrictions on what they can do, they are generally very competent at their jobs. It is far and away the safest option and they take the protection of identities very seriously. More importantly, they have the resources and skills to actually allow you to function while maintaining two identities."

"What if we don't want to use our powers?" Taylor asked. The question surprised me after what I knew about other-Taylor, but it made more sense when she clarified. "Or, I mean, what if we don't use our powers to fight people?"

Carol considered that question for a moment. "Well, there are two questions there, so let's break them down. Having powers means being constantly tempted to use them. I know you said that Taylor copied Amy's powers at the mall… and if you knew that you could help people in an emergency by doing it again, would you really pass up that opportunity? The level of responsibility you are showing by coming to me for advice leads me to believe that you likely couldn't."

Taylor and I shared a look. "You're right," I admitted. As attractive as it sounded to just forget about the whole thing, I didn't think I could hide under a rock if I could really help in an emergency. I remembered those days right after Leviathan in the other timeline, before my parents and I had moved away, and I would have had to help out if I could have.

"That's the first question answered, and I think you're being honest with yourselves by admitting that you will end up using your powers on at least some occasions. The second question is whether you can keep your power use to a minimum and not endanger yourselves. In the Bay, there are always groups looking to recruit capes, and some of them won't take 'no' for an answer. Whatever you decide to do would have to be far enough removed from your real identities that Thinkers couldn't put the pieces together… and Thinkers are annoyingly good at doing just that."

"What about if we became rogues? People that use their powers to make and sell stuff and don't fight?" I asked. Parian had yet to open up her shop in this timeline, but I remembered her as being pretty alright. I think she'd ended up a minor warlord in the aftermath of Leviathan, but the list of capes that didn't do that was pretty short.

"Unfortunately, there are a number of laws that make it difficult to use powers for commercial purposes. It isn't absolute, but the only way to be entirely safe from lawsuits is to sell your services to the government as a contractor, which has many of the drawbacks and few of the benefits of directly joining a Protectorate or Wards team." She sighed heavily and sat back. "Even New Wave has to jump through a number of hoops so that we can accept donations, including some restrictions on what we can volunteer to do for free."

I frowned. "That sounds like a mess."

Carol nodded. "It is a mess. My advice is that you should talk to your parents and then have them talk to me about your next steps. You shouldn't just march down to the PRT building and ask to sign up if you want a good deal. There is a lot of room for negotiation, so long as you don't do anything stupid and need to make criminal charges disappear. They have a lot of leeway in the specifics of the contracts, and I'm sure that you can find something you can live with."

oOoOoOoOo

"Everything okay?" Amy asked when we were finally free of the lawyer's den. She seemed more anxious than she probably should have been, but I had picked up on some in-family tension earlier that probably had something to do with it. It was also possibly related to the whole mind control thing from earlier. Being Mastered was disconcerting, even if it was presumably our own powers doing it.

I nodded. "Yeah, your mom basically wants us to join the Wards."

Amy sighed a little. "I had kind of hoped she'd have a way for you to join New Wave…"

My heart fluttered slightly but I forced the feeling down. I didn't feel like I was being forced to have a thing for her, but the lingering affection it had left behind was a little annoying. "This is like being in an arranged marriage," I blurted as soon as the thought popped into my head like an idiot.

Amy went still and then slowly nodded. "Yeah, I guess it is. Kinda."

"At least it's better than trying to kill each other, right?" Taylor chimed in, and it was a good point. This wasn't the best situation but there were positive aspects to it. It certainly could have been worse.

"Do you ladies need a ride home?" Victoria interrupted as she stepped into the room and jingled a set of keys at us annoyingly.

"I think Taylor's dad is coming to get them in a bit," Amy returned and waved her sister off.

"Aw," Victoria pouted as she pocketed the keys. "You ruin all of my fun."

Amy let out a heavy sigh and turned back to us like her sister wasn't even there. "Someone just hit the six month mark on her license and now she can have other teenagers in the car with her. She's been dying to subject more people to her driving for the last few weeks."

"Is it bad?" I asked Amy, also ignoring Victoria which earned an indignant squawk from her.

"She drives exactly like someone that spends most of her time invulnerable and flying."

Taylor giggled at the description and I had to try hard not to laugh, too.

"She's exaggerating. I am a very safe and conscientious driver and I look forward to helping my dear younger sister learn when she is of age." Victoria could pull off indignation very well. "In any case, how did your meeting with mom go? Care to clue me in on the big secret?"

Amy seemed to weigh the possibility for a moment, then turned to Taylor and me again. "If you want to tell her, it's probably fine. She's good at keeping a secret, despite appearances."

I looked at Taylor who shrugged at me. After a second's hesitation, I nodded. My talk with Glory Girl had been a very important event in my last life, and I knew she wasn't as vapid as she appeared on the surface. In fact, my future-conversation with her had indicated that she was extremely mature and responsible, no matter her reputation. In just a few short interactions with her in the present time, I had decided that people most likely mistook her enthusiasm for a lack of intelligence, when it really wasn't.

"Let's go to my room for a bit of privacy," Amy said after another brief hesitation.

No sooner was the door closed than Victoria demanded, "Alright, talk!"

"Ah, well, we said we met each other at the mall on Saturday, right?" I started before Taylor could get started. I figured that I'd be able to give a more concise version. "When Amy got her powers, we got powers, too. We took those two gang members out together - though my only contribution really was that one of them tripped over me. My powers were pretty disorienting at first - they still are, but I'm coping better."

Victoria gave an emphatic nod. "That was my first guess, anyway. You guys aren't very good at hiding the fact that something is up… and really, this is the least bad thing it could have been, considering you wanted to meet with Mom." I didn't entirely follow what she was hinting at, but it was probably either criminal or dirty. Or both. Victoria wasn't done talking, either. "So, what are your powers? Are you going to join New Wave? Join the Wards?"

"I can copy powers," Taylor said, breaking in. "I've only copied Amy's so far, and that was kind of an accident, but it seems to work pretty well. There are… probably a bunch of rules to it that I don't understand, yet."

Victoria's jaw dropped. "Even if it's really restrictive, that's a big deal. Power copiers aren't the rarest thing in the world, but they're still pretty rare. Being able to copy a healing power like Amy's just makes it even better." She looked in my direction and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not actually sure, to be honest. I can… see all sorts of forces and manipulate them as long as they aren't inside people. I tried messing with a few the other day and set a hair clip on fire so I'm resisting the temptation to practice in case one of the things I can affect makes things explode. I can also do the disintegration thing." I had a feeling I was underselling exactly how vast the forces I could control were, but I really was afraid to touch them without taking some serious safety precautions.

"Disintegration thing?" Victoria asked and I made the mistake of looking at Amy. She grimaced.

"Yeah, I might have left that out," Amy declared and picked up a stubby wooden pencil from her desk. "Behold…"

Over the course of half a second, the pencil turned gray and floated away as particles of dust that faded into nothing within another half second. This time, I was in my right headspace and saw exactly what Amy did to accomplish it. Those forces were definitely things I could control.

"I thought your-" Victoria started.

Amy cut her off. "We're a multiple-trigger. A cluster. It's where you get a bunch of powers kind of spread around several people. Each person usually gets a primary power and then some weaker ones that correspond to what the others get. Maybe. It's pretty rare from what I was able to find on the Internet, and it varies a lot between cases."

Victoria nodded. "Ah, I see. So you all got extra stuff, too?"

I nodded. "I can heal fast. I don't know how fast, but it fixed my broken nose at the mall. I also poked myself with a needle and it closed right up, too, but that was mostly just to confirm that it was still there."

Taylor was less certain. "I haven't noticed anything else, yet, but Amy says that they can be subtle. I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually."

"Oh, wait, you copy powers, right? Want to copy mine?" Victoria asked, suddenly excited again.

"Ah… sure?" Taylor said, not sure how to deal with enthusiasm on that front. I'd expected capes to be more territorial, but maybe that wasn't going to be universal?

Spoiler: Notes

Fics are all over the place on the subject of capes and secret identities. Most of them just kind of hand-wave it and assume that a couple of teenagers can stick on domino masks, patrol in a circle around their home, and no one will ever suspect anything if they don't get unmasked in a fight or something. Some go the entirely opposite angle. This story doesn't take an extreme take either way, but it does try to realistically point out what the options would be. New Wave, for instance, hasn't tried to maintain secret identities in a decade and really doesn't know how to do it for teenagers. That really just leaves 'going independent' and 'Wards' as options and there's no way a lawyer is going to recommend illegal vigilantism as the best course of action.

 

[Swordchucks]

Revealing the fact that we had powers to our parents was weird. The leadup to it - the anticipation - was horrible, but the actual event was pretty anticlimactic. It took us until the following evening to get everyone together to have The Talk.

"... we have powers."

"Oh," mom said, sitting back and looking more relaxed than she had a moment before. "That's…"

"That's not so bad," dad offered.

Mr. Hebert looked a little less certain about it, but I found myself getting annoyed.

"That's it? We are capes now. We have to deal with that for the rest of our lives." I kept my voice even, though it wanted to get screechy. I hated when it did that.

"Have you accidentally killed anyone with them? Or destroyed something expensive?" That was dad.

"What? No! When would we have had a chance?" I sputtered. Taylor seemed just as confused as her father.

"So that's good, then. You're telling us so that's a good thing, and you haven't already done something stupid with them so we can figure it out together. It isn't like-" he cut himself off.

"It isn't like what?" I asked in confusion.

"Well, Madison, dear… the way you asked to talk to us, we thought one of you was pregnant," my mother gently offered.

Taylor made a high pitched squeaking-laughing noise and I sputtered some more. "What? No! Why?"

"Well, you are in high school now, and you hear all sorts of horror stories…" dad defended weakly, though his eyes drifted to my mother and I was reminded of exactly how young she had been when I was born. I forcibly stopped myself from thinking about exactly when my parents would have needed to have sex in order for me to be born the same week they graduated.

"Well, we're not." I was very emphatic on that point. I didn't bother asking why they'd thought that with the two of us wanting to talk to both our sets of parents together. Parents were weird.

"So, powers, huh?" Mr. Hebert broke in with the air of a man used to forcing topic changes in uncomfortable conversations.

"Ah, yeah, powers. It's… well, it's complicated…" That was Taylor. She apparently knew how to pick up her father's hints and started moving the discussion away from the whole pregnancy thing.

Over the next few minutes, Taylor and I rehashed what our powers were and the general nature of our cluster trigger with Amy Dallon. We both naturally avoided any mention of the… compulsion we had initially felt or the residual mind-fuckery we were still dealing with.

"So, when you two went over to the Dallon's yesterday, that was…" my father asked leadingly.

"We wanted to talk to check in on Amy, but we were mostly there because we wanted to talk to her mom. She's an attorney and she gave us some good advice on what our options were. We wanted…" I trailed off and Taylor picked up.

"Dad," she said firmly. "You know how you always say that if you bring the boss a problem, you should bring a solution, too? Well, we wanted to do that. She's probably the closest thing to an expert on this that we were going to be able to talk to, and she walked through our options with us."

"You're joining New Wave?" mom asked as she realized who we were talking about.

"Ah, no, they aren't… She said that New Wave wasn't set up to help members keep their identities secret. In fact, the only real option she suggested was joining the Wards, but she also thought that we should make sure we didn't just walk in off the street and ask to join. She wants you guys to call her so you can talk more." I pulled out the business card which I had been nervously fidgeting with for a while. It had a phone number and time on the back in neat handwriting. "Here."

Mr. Hebert was the one that actually took the card. "That's… actually, I'm surprised that the two of you are being so mature about this - not that I know you that well Madison, but you're still a teenager."

"I'm not offended," I offered, kind of hating myself for sounding so meek.

"We know that we want to help people, but we also don't want to put our families in danger," Taylor broke in. "I… even if all I could do was copy Amy's healing ability when they needed it to fix up their heroes, that seems like something the Protectorate would put a premium on."

Yesterday, when Taylor had copied Victoria's power, her access to Amy's power had ended. This morning, she didn't have either power active, but she could select either if she wanted to. Once she selected one she could switch to the other, but she couldn't switch back.

She seemed to be restricted to one power at a time and only one use per day for each power. Whether or not she had an upper limit to the number of powers she could have access to, we didn't know, but it did seem to require her having copied them once and we really had no idea on the limitations of that, either. Clearly, more testing was required.

The adults were silent as they took that in.

"There's probably more, too," I offered. "She suggested we figure out our powers more before we start talking to them about joining the program. It's apparently the best leverage we can get, especially if we're working through an attorney."

That really just left the question of how we were going to figure things out.

oOoOoOoOo

"I'm cold," I whined and pulled off my mittens so I could stuff my hands up under Taylor's coat and absorb some of her delicious body heat.

"Gah," she yelped and jumped, but I wouldn't be deterred. It wasn't like she could go far in the back of my dad's car, anyway. "Are you even still alive? Stop it, you vampire."

"Warm meeee," I whined some more, but I couldn't avoid giggling for long.

"Everything alright back there?" dad asked as he adjusted the rearview mirror pointedly.

"Yes, Mr. Clements," Taylor declared. "Your daughter is made of ice cubes, though."

He chuckled. "She gets that from her mother. Sit on her hands if you have to. Hatch them like a chicken." Then he made an embarrassing clucking noise and mom gave him a light swat on the arm for it.

Taylor laughed and we wrestled a little bit before I gave up and put my mittens back on to suffer the rest of the drive in icy aloneness. It wasn't that cold, but I got chilly easily.

I stared out the window and contemplated the way the week had gone. After we'd revealed our parahuman status to our parents on Tuesday night, they'd contacted Mrs. Dallon a number of times to set up the thing we were doing on Saturday - today. If we were going to try to get the best deal out of the Protectorate, we needed to understand exactly what we were working with, and that meant testing powers.

Due to the potential for collateral damage, we didn't want to do it in any one's house or even backyard. If we were already part of the Wards, it would probably have been easy enough to arrange a session with one of the universities that handled that kind of research, but the logistics were significantly more difficult because we needed to protect our identities. In the end, Danny called in a favor with an old friend of his father's that had a hunting shack a couple of hours up into New Hampshire and it became a day trip for our families and most of New Wave.

That was how I ended up freezing my proverbial balls off in the middle of a small field on the first Saturday in December while I watched Taylor playing aerial tag with Lady Photon, Glory Girl, and Laserdream. Our parents, Brandish, and Manpower watched on. The fact that we were all wearing ski masks to both help with the cold and provide a little identity protection on the off chance that we needed it just made it even more surreal.

"There must be some sort of understanding of how to use the powers that comes along with her copies," Manpower was commenting to my father as we watched them go. "It took Victoria a while before she could fly like that."

My father started to say something in return, but Amy stepped over to me and I stopped listening in. "Do you want to see what you can do? I think they're going to be at that for a while, to see if she has some sort of limit on how long she can actively use her power. Then they'll probably change over to Aunt Sara's power and see if she can throw lasers."

I nodded, nervously. "Okay. I've been kind of avoiding it, but I guess I need to."

Amy found a stump to sit on while I set up some rocks on a patch of ground away from everyone else. I stepped away from my stony victims until it felt like I couldn't affect them anymore and then walked back until I could. "How far is that?" I asked, completely unsure of exactly how far away I was and not really eager to pace it out and then guess based on that.

"Maybe a hundred feet? Heck if I know." Amy commented as she looked between me and the rocks. I wished I had brought a long enough tape measure.

"Okay, so… first…" I concentrated on one of my targets and after about a second, it dissolved into gray dust. "I can do the disintegration trick."

"Copied my whole power, just like that, and from range," Amy groused, though I could see that she was grinning. I didn't get the feeling that she was that competitive, just naturally a bit grumpy. It was kind of endearing in a way. "What else do you have?"

"Well, there is this…" I did what I had done to that hair clip and ramped up the thermal energy inside the rock. It almost immediately turned red and after a second or two started to melt into a puddle of glowing hot goo, little bits of it smoking or bursting into flames as the non-rock bits reacted to the heat. Then I reversed it all and turned the thermal energy as low as I could get it. I couldn't actually get it to go all the way down like I'd done to the energy to make that other rock disintegrate, but the wavelength got really, really long. The rock solidified and the area around it visibly froze solid. In fact, the freezing effect spread out from the rock and into the ground so fast that I got nervous and turned the heat back up after just a few seconds.

"That's… don't ever do that near a person," Amy said as she stood up from her stump to back away a bit more. "I don't… Did you heat it back up or did it warm up on its own?"

I thought back to what I had just done. "While I was focusing on it, it didn't change at all. I turned it back up to normal…" I looked at it again. "And now it's slowed down again. The ground must be making it colder."

"That's… energy isn't supposed to work that way," she commented, frowning at the patch of frozen and likely very dead grass around my target. "But powers don't make sense most of the time, anyway."

"What're you girls doing?" Mr. Hebert asked as he wandered over with my mom.

"I'm trying to figure my power out and so far it's kind of…" I trailed off.

"Scary is a good word. She pulled off disintegration then she melted a rock before making it extremely cold." Amy seemed thoughtful as she listed it off.

"It's not that bad. That was just two kinds of energy. I have access to… well, lots and lots more. Some of them might be less… destructive." I shifted uncomfortably. When kids think about getting powers, they always think about stuff like Alexandria - nice, honest flight and super strength - or something like pretty rainbows - which half of New Wave seemed to have mastered. Untraceable death rays weren't really it.

Well, not for normal kids, anyway. Empire kids probably wanted those.

Emma would probably have killed for them, too, now that I thought about it.

"I'm sure there's something you can do that won't result in murder, honey," my mother encouraged me. She seemed annoyingly pleased with the devastation I was causing. "Give the next one a try."

That ended up being my whole day. The sheer number of energy types I could manipulate was staggering and figuring out what some of them actually did was difficult. At least half the time, turning a wavelength up or down didn't actually do anything visible to the target. The other half of the time, it was very obvious - and often would have killed someone if used too close to them. My powers were - thankfully - limited to working on non-living targets, but air was a non-living target. So was someone's clothing. I might not be able to make a person explode, but I could certainly make anything in their vicinity a serious problem.

There were useful effects mixed in with all of the things you only did if you wanted someone dead. I could make rocks fly - rather violently if I adjusted the waves too far up or down - and I could make them invisible. I also had several ways to make rocks invulnerable to other rocks being thrown at them, though I wasn't entirely sure on how the mechanics of all of those worked. Functionally, all of the effects were achieved the same way, though I was definitely manipulating different forces by touching different lines.

The other big thing was that I figured out that I could manipulate more than one thing at a time and on more than one target at a time. In fact, I seemed to be able to make a lot of things happen as long as I had a distinct idea of each individual manipulation. Something like making a set of stairs out of the air that I could walk up was easy enough once I thought of it. As was making a disc of air to fly around on, though my control was jerky at best.

Taylor's day was equally productive as she tried out the powers of each present member of New Wave - which was really everyone except for Flashbang. She could only copy one at a time, and once she had copied one, she couldn't use it again that day, but that seemed to be the only real limit. If there was some upper number of powers she could maintain the connections to, it had to be higher than the six she currently had in her arsenal. Getting a new power took several seconds, but changing between ones she had already used was near-instant.

My power was potent, but hers was a full level beyond that. Plus she could copy my powers if she wanted to. The main weakness that both of us had was going to be choosing the best option for a given situation. Her issue was probably worse, in some ways, because once she used one of her choices, she couldn't switch back to it that day. I didn't have that limitation, but I was still spoiled for choice for things to manipulate.

By the time the day came to an end, I was exhausted but happy. It was going to take a lot of work for me to get the most out of my power, but if I did, it seemed like a lot of things would be within my reach.

Spoiler: Notes

I hope that's less tedious than most power testing chapters go, though Madison is far from done figuring out how hers actually works.

 

[Swordchucks]

There was remarkably little for us to do after the 'power testing' session on Saturday. The following week was Thanksgiving and Mrs. Dallon warned us that the government would be moving at a crawl for the rest of the year. She would be approaching them on our behalf, but as we weren't in any kind of rush, it was in our best interest to let it all play out on a regular schedule.

My family was going to be spending the holiday with my grandparents while Taylor's family had their own plans with friends. I wished that Taylor had a phone so I could text her, but she didn't. I'd never actually asked why, but I assumed it was money because we were in the docks and everything was about a lack of money.

The side effect of that was that I ended up texting Amy a lot. She was… I didn't want to say charming, because she absolutely was not charming, but there was something about her grumpiness that I found myself liking.

Of course, Amy was busy over the holidays, too, and I mostly ended up alone for the week. It was relaxing in a way, and I spent some time refining the 'safe' uses of my power I'd found.

Because I could hold a waveform steady, I could effectively create barriers within my range that didn't allow themselves to be changed in specific ways. I had only really tested it with kinetic energy - which stopped a thrown rock like a brick wall - but theoretically, I could do the same for any of the other types of energy I could manipulate, as well.

My power let me create so many different effects at the same time that I was starting to think that my mysterious third power was related to that. Other-Taylor had controlled a billion bugs at the same time so, if I assumed that she got a reworked version of the same power like Amy had, maybe that was the key? How controlling bugs and copying powers related, I had no idea, but powers didn't always make sense, as Amy was fond of saying.

Regardless, I could have a lot going on at one time, from shields to flying platforms to whatever else I figured out how to do. If it was inside of my radius of just short of one hundred and nine feet - or thirty three point two meters - there wasn't a lot I couldn't do to it. I just didn't understand what half of those things were as of yet and I was kind of afraid to experiment too much in case one of them gave me cancer or something. Amy could probably fix it, but she'd tease me mercilessly in the process.

The more I fiddled with using my power, the better my control got - up to a certain point, anyway. I could generate similar effects more smoothly once I'd practiced with them a bit, but I seemed to have a minimum size limitation. Once objects - or areas of air - got down to about the size of my littlest finger, controlling all of the individual attributes got progressively harder. I couldn't really do much at all for items smaller than my pinky nail.

I had a feeling that I would be working with barriers in a fight more than I would be directly manipulating most objects. I doubted I could manipulate the forces acting on a bullet while it was flying, but it was easy enough to grab a swath of air and make it into a bulletproof shield - most likely, anyway. I hadn't exactly tested that and I really didn't intend to without some serious safety protocols in place first. That'd be something for after joining the Wards.

Joining the Wards… well, Carol was on the case. At its heart, the Wards were kind of a combination of an afterschool program and a public relations job. The core duties of a Ward were all public outreach - which was mostly going to schools and talking about how gangs were bad and going on 'patrols' in safe, tourist-heavy areas of town. The standard contract spelled out a fairly low level of commitment, too, at twelve hours a week spread across three four hour shifts. The actual pay scale was salary which meant that we were free to 'donate' more time if we wished, though it was technically voluntary except in crisis situations.

That's where Carol was going to earn whatever payment our parents had negotiated with her on. If nothing else, Taylor's healing abilities and the likelihood that they would be pulling her in at all hours to deal with emergencies meant that she needed that specifically spelled out as an additional item in her contract. A big open question was whether or not Taylor could copy Tinker powers, but Carol was putting in provisions for things like that, as well, just in case. It cost us nothing to codify sections in the contract that wouldn't be activated.

Not everything was straightforward and smooth, of course. Carol suggested that we should work out the extent to which we would be willing to assist with Endbringer attacks and similar high-level events and put that into the contract, as well. Normally, Wards needed parental approval to engage in such risky activities, but it wasn't unheard of for a Ward to personally volunteer and for their parents to be unreachable. More than once, that had led to the Ward ultimately going against their parents wishes and attending only to get seriously injured or killed. Having a default position written out in the contract prevented that ambiguity.

Taylor and I both wanted it to be entirely our decision. I knew I wasn't going to go rushing into a fight I couldn't handle, but having the option completely barred to me felt wrong. If nothing else, I wanted to be able to help handle cleanup. Being able to disintegrate rubble alone would make me a huge help during the immediate aftermath, and that said nothing about Taylor's healing or whatever crazy powers she picked up to go with it. Our parents, on the other hand, wanted us nowhere near that kind of destruction at all.

I was probably jaded by my other-timeline experiences with Leviathan hitting Brockton Bay, but I felt like I had to help if I could. Taylor probably shouldn't have followed my lead on the subject, but she did.

Eventually, we negotiated with our families that we would not be allowed to attend major threat events but would be allowed to assist with post-battle emergency response. That would mostly be medical and rescue type activities, which weren't as flashy as fighting an Endbringer, but were mostly safe - physically, anyway.

The direct monetary compensation for Wards was not amazing and Carol warned us that negotiations were not likely to change that. Sudden major changes in finances were a red flag to any Thinkers looking into a person's background and at a minimum would make us stand out as suspicious. Instead, Wards were given a stipend that amounted to what a teenager could legally bring home from a good minimum wage job with hours limited by their age, though it did get a lot better after the first year. The rest of the money went into a trust fund that could be discharged in increments after separating from the Wards. It was commonly considered a 'college fund', but using it for education wasn't required.

The main reason for joining the Wards was safety, of course, but the money didn't hurt.

Dinner with my grandparents on Thursday was great. They were getting older but were still fairly young - one of the fringe benefits of mom having me at such a young age. We didn't bring up anything involving capes or mall fights, so it was just a nice day.

Friday, however, I got a text from Amy and called her after only half reading it.

"What's going on?" I asked sharply.

"I need your help with something," she said, sounding less certain than she usually did. She didn't sound upset or in trouble, though, so I realized I might have been overreacting a little.

"Okay? What with?" I asked more softly.

"My sister is dragging me along tonight to go out to dinner with her boyfriend. Every time she does this, she tries to set me up with someone and…"

"Oh, yeah, that would suck. Do you… need me to go with you?" I asked, hating the fact that I was feeling more nervous than I should have. Stupid residual emotions. "A-as a friend?"

"I… uh, yeah, I'd like for you to go with me. As a- uh, as a friend." She sounded less sure of the last bit and I held my phone away from my ear and stared at it for a moment like it was an alien creature.

I put the phone back to my ear. "Sure, what are friends for?" I said, trying to sound airy. I sort of succeeded.

"Okay, ah, great," she said and she did sound a little happier. My stupid heart skipped a stupid beat. "I'll text you the info, but you could just come over here by five and we'll go together."

"Alright," I agreed and we ended the call after a little more smalltalk.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. The conflicting emotions going through my head were wide and varied.

For one thing, I was a little worried that Taylor was going to get annoyed that Amy and I were meeting up without her. She and her dad had disappeared to New York State to visit her maternal grandmother, though, so she wasn't around to invite. They would be back either later Saturday or on Sunday. I hadn't gotten the whole story, but apparently Taylor's dad and grandmother didn't get along that well and the whole thing was spur-of-the-moment, possibly sparked by Taylor's near death experience at the mall.

For another thing, part of me was way too old to be dating a fourteen year old. It was kind of tempered by the fact that a big part of me felt like it was still a fourteen year old, but it was still weird, at best. Then again, dating didn't have to mean anything physical would happen, or at least nothing seriously physical.

Yet another part of me was annoyed at the artificial emotions that had been left over after the more active Master effect faded. I barely knew Amy and while I was starting to genuinely like her, I had started from a place of unearned affection that I knew wasn't natural.

The last part… I was just excited to be going on a date. Or a friend-date. Whatever it was, I'd certainly get to hang out with someone I liked being around and maybe do something fun in the process. In my last life, I'd been social, but I hadn't really ever dated. I'd flirted a lot - with mostly boys but occasionally girls - but it had never been more than that before Leviathan. Afterwards, I'd been dealing with a lot of stuff, including the revelation that Taylor was a cape and that it was likely my fault.

As an added bonus, it got me out of the house on what was probably going to be a very quiet, boring evening. Mom and dad had each picked up a seasonal shift at one of the bigger stores downtown and had been dealing with Black Friday shoppers at four in the morning. It was unlikely that they'd be doing much other than sleeping to recover and then going to bed early so they could do another shift in the morning.

I wasn't joining the Wards for the money, but it would be a lie to say that it wasn't welcome. Even if I was only pulling in an amount that was carefully calculated to not be suspicious, it would still be enough money to move the needle on our living situation. Anything that could take a little bit of the stress off of my parents could only be a good thing.

For now, though, I needed to decide on what to wear.

oOoOoOoOo

"Madison, this is Dean. We're going to have our one year anniversary in a couple of weeks. Dean, this is Madison. She is Amy's… friend." Victoria announced and she intentionally stretched it out to make it sound suspicious. She'd caught us holding hands while we were waiting for Dean to pick us all up and we had, admittedly, looked guilty about it so she'd decided to tease us.

"Nice to meet you," I said with a little wave.

He gave me a smile and a polite nod in return. "And nice to meet you, too."

"So, where are we going?" Amy interjected, apparently tired of the boring introductions.

"I was thinking about getting pizza and going bowling down on the boardwalk," Dean suggested, which drew an affirmative noise from Victoria.

I glanced at Amy who shrugged. "Alright, that's fine. Let's just get it over with."

Dean caught my eye and winked. I wasn't entirely sure why he was doing that, but I found myself blushing in response anyway. He seemed to find that even more amusing.

Before I knew it, I was bundled into the back of Dean's very nice - but very small - car. If I were a full-sized person, I have no idea how I would have fit in there with Amy, but fortunately, I wasn't. Instead, it was just a really tight fit and I found all of those artificial snuggly feelings lighting up as I was kind of 'forced' to share closed quarters.

"Sorry about this," Amy whispered, looking genuinely apologetic. "I doubt Victoria told him I was bringing a friend or he would have brought a different car. Or we could have just met them there."

"Your sister is a stinker," I commented just as softly. My hands wormed their way around in a half-hug that helped maximize the space available to us. It was for no other reason.

Amy snorted. "You swear like a little old lady," she whispered back, giggling softly after she said it.

"I'm sorry, gosh darn it," I whispered back. It was an old habit I had rediscovered after coming back in time. I looked younger than I was, physically, and using childish not-swears almost fit the image. I cranked it to eleven sometimes, though, just because I found it amusing. "Cheese and rice."

Amy giggled again and I realized exactly how close we were. It was ni-

"You two okay back there?" Victoria asked, twisting her head around to look at us. The car - a sports car, really, had molded seats that made it hard for her to look at us.

"We're fine!" I supplied. Then, under my breath, I added, "Jiminy Cricket."

That just set Amy into another giggling flit.

It seemed like the night was off to a good start.

Spoiler: Notes

This went fluffy for... reasons.

 

[Swordchucks]

Despite what might be natural to assume from the general state of the Docks, the Boardwalk was one of the safer areas of town. The Enforcers - basically a gang that the various shops of the boardwalk 'contracted' with for security - kept the rabble in check and the bigger gangs had no interest in scaring off the tourists in the first place. Tourists meant jobs for the locals which in turn meant money they could spend on drugs or various other gang rackets. Gangs were scum, but the successful ones were smart enough to understand basic economics.

On the other hand, I wouldn't exactly call it bustling on a rainy day after Thanksgiving. There were people around, but they weren't really crowds. That was probably a good thing, I realized a bit late, as dense crowds would probably have exceeded my limits on data processing. I was getting by alright at school, but holiday shopping crowds could be even crazier than crowded hallways.

"I didn't know you could bowl," Amy commented as I sat down. I wasn't exactly getting a perfect game, but it was going pretty well.

"It is but one of my many hidden talents," I declared cockily. I wasn't even using my powers to cheat or anything - the end of the lane was well outside my range and adjusting the ball's kinetic energy directly would have been even harder than just being good at bowling - I just knew how to bowl pretty well because it was cheap enough for my family to have done it semi-regularly.

She bumped her shoulder into mine. "So humble, too."

I bumped her back, grinning, and was about to retort when I heard a giggle that drew my attention.

Victoria had her phone's camera pointed at us and was smiling like an idiot. "Don't mind me. You two are adorable," she declared when she saw that I was staring at her. I blushed. "Please continue."

"Vicky," Amy almost growled, and I found it kind of attractive.

Something about the way Amy said it cut through Victory's good mood and she put her phone down. "Sorry, sorry, it's just… sorry."

Amy glared at her for another few seconds then apparently decided to let it go. "I'm sorry about her. She's not normally like this, but… she gets ideas into her head sometimes and it would take a truck to knock them out."

"Well, sugar cookies," I mumbled, which made Amy stare at me for a moment before snorting at my mock swearing. It made me grin back.

"Fine," Victoria groaned, and I saw Dean hand her phone back to her. He saw me looking and gave me a thumbs-up. I rolled my eyes at him while grinning.

"Dean seems nice," I commented to Amy.

"He is," she grumbled. I got the feeling there was some history there. "Too nice, sometimes."

Definitely history. I let it go since that wasn't what I was interested in at the moment. "Isn't it your turn to bowl?"

She rolled her head around in a circle to loosen up her neck. "Fine…"

Watching Amy pretend not to have fun was more enjoyable than I would have expected. She rolled the ball down the alley and nailed the lead pin at a weird angle, leaving three pins down the right side for her to try to get with her next go. She claimed the ball from the return and managed to get two of them.

Before she could make it back to her seat beside me, Victoria grabbed her by the arm. "We're going to go check out the snack bar!" she declared and sort of tugged her sister in that direction. Amy didn't put up much of a fight but gave me a little wave as she went.

Meanwhile, Dean came over to sit near me. "So, Amy's having a good time," he noted casually.

"Despite her best efforts, yes," I agreed. I watched the two sisters head for the restroom, which was probably for the best. Bowling and then eating without washing your hands in between seemed like a really gross idea, so a detour on the way to the snack bar was definitely in order.

"Have you two known each other long?" he asked after a moment. I got the feeling that he was feeling me out for some reason.

"We met at the mall a couple of weeks ago. During the-, you know." I left it vague because I really didn't want to talk about it.

It must have come across in the way I said it because Dean winced sympathetically. "Ah, yeah. That. I'm sorry."

"It's… well, it's not okay, but it is what it is and only the people responsible are to blame. Victoria didn't tell you about that?" I asked curiously.

Dean shook his head. "I know how she can come across, but Victoria isn't one to gossip about people. Not really. People mistake her being energetic for her being flighty, but she's actually very smart."

"You're her boyfriend," I mused, though I wasn't really arguing. "You have to say nice things like that."

He grinned and laughed lightly. "I do, but it's still true."

Eventually, the Dallon sisters came back - suspiciously without food - and we finished our game before heading home. I hadn't quite decided what I thought about the night, even by the time I'd ridden the bus home from their house. Dean had offered to give me a ride, but I didn't want to impose on his time with his girlfriend.

oOoOoOoOo

"So, I heard you were making out with some girl in public over the weekend, Maddy. Decided to become a dyke since the only boys that go for you are pedos?" Emma hissed venomously. Mondays were never fun, much less a Monday after a four day weekend. Emma was just the icing on the shit cake.

"Are you looking to upgrade from Sophia? I'm afraid that I'm not interested. Have you considered some of the truck stops over by the highway? I'm sure some big Bertha would be all over you if you begged just right. You'd better hurry up before your looks start to fade, though, because your personality," I leaned closer and stage whispered the rest. "It's just not going to cut it."

Emma's eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared. If I didn't dislike her so much, I might have considered it attractive. If I got Amy that riled up, I'd probably enjoy the attention… and I added that to my list of 'trouble to create' for later. Not that an innocent person like me would create trouble or anything.

In any case, Emma kept butting heads with me, which was amusing to say the least. I knew a ton of her weak spots from my first time through all of this, and I wasn't afraid to poke them. If I wanted to become the 'queen' of the freshmen, I probably could have managed it with what I knew, but I wasn't really interested. Odds were that I would be strapped for free time before long and high school politics seemed so pointless.

She had enough self control to not embarrass herself further with a half-baked response. Unfortunately for her, the warning bell rang before she could find a properly biting retort and I used the excuse to hustle off to my next class. I didn't spare Emma a second glance, though I did wonder a little about where Sophia was hiding. She hadn't been Emma's shadow for that confrontation, and it was rare to see Emma doing her little power plays alone. She wouldn't bring a big crowd along, but a couple of trusted cronies were usually on hand to witness any victories.

I sank into my seat in English just after the final bell, but I'd beat it into the room, which was all that really counted.

"Everything okay?" Taylor whispered. We had adjacent seats in this class, which made that easy enough. We didn't actually associate for most of the day - in part due to my initial efforts to not draw extra attention to her in my war against Emma and in part due to just having different classes.

Past-me hadn't been the best student, though current-me was doing really well just because of my increase in maturity. Spending an hour studying didn't seem like that huge of a sacrifice after living in a post-apocalyptic hellhole for a while.

"Just Emma being herself," I grumbled back.

Taylor nodded and the teacher cleared her throat to get everyone's attention so we had to be quiet. A little later in the class, I passed her a note asking if she wanted to hang out after school and she agreed. I had things I wanted to ask her about, and I had been struggling to figure out exactly how to approach them ever since Friday night.

I'd eventually decided that there was nothing as effective as just bulldozing straight ahead and inviting her over. It was the kind of thing that was best done sooner than later.

Back in my room, we somehow ended up with me brushing her hair again. It had been a few days, so there were bits that were tangly. I couldn't have my hard work go to waste, plus it was quite soothing, even if there was a chance that it was something left over from our powers mindfucking us.

"How was your grandmother's place?" I asked as I worked the brush.

"Good," she replied, almost reflexively, but she then continued more thoughtfully. "Well, good but also tense. Dad and Gram… they don't get along too well, but I think dad's kind of shaken up about the whole cape thing. He wanted to make an effort for my sake, I think, and Gram was… more accommodating than I remembered. So it went well enough."

"That's good, I guess. Did you end up telling her about…"

"No, it never came up and I wasn't going to interject it. The way… well, I feel like when one of us starts talking, it gives information about all three of us. I know Amy's going to end up announced publicly at some point, but you and I aren't."

That had been a point Carol had raised, and it was ultimately decided that there was no point in announcing that Amy had powers until she got through whatever healer verification the PRT was going to insist on. There was apparently a standard testing process they used but with the holidays and the need to arrange volunteers, it wasn't happening very quickly. Taylor would likely have to go through something similar if she wanted to use Amy's powers for healing the general public, but exceptions could be made for internal PRT and Protectorate patients.

"That's good, I guess. I've not told anyone, either." I changed the subject. "Things around here were pretty boring, for the most part. It rained a lot."

There was a bit more smalltalk before I finally just went for it. "Taylor, uh, I need to ask you a question. I mean, it's not a big deal either way, but how do you feel about girls?"

"Girls?" she asked and met my eyes in the mirror. "In what way? I mean, Emma's kind of a bitch right now."

"I mean, like, for dating," I clarified.

"Oh… I haven't really thought much about it?" she tried, but from the blush on her face I could tell that she wasn't telling the whole truth.

"How about in general? Does it bother you if two girls are dating?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I mean, you don't really see it much, but… It's fine with me." Unspoken was the issue of the Nazis. Lesbians were not as oppressed as gay men, by any stretch, but quite a few Empire kids had really gross opinions on gay women, too. They just tended to be a little slower to go for violence against them.

"And personally? Are there any girls you're into?" I asked, trying to figure out why she'd turned bright red a moment ago.

"Well, ah, I normally don't like… uh, well, ever since I met her, I can't stop thinking about Victoria." She admitted in a rush.

"Okay," I said and gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. "She is kind of cute, but her boyfriend is super nice so I'm not sure you'll get anywhere."

"It's just a crush, I think. She's nothing like my normal type. I like… well, really strong guys. She's… not that. At all." Taylor seemed to be fighting through embarrassment to make these admissions.

"It's alright," I assured her. "I'm… well, I like both, at least a little. I was… okay, so Amy and I sort of went on a date on Friday. It was really casual but it kind of felt like a date."

"Oh. That's cool. Are you two…"

"No idea. It was fun, and if there really is some sort of agenda our powers have that require us to work together, we're going to have to be allies in the future so maybe that's in the cards, anyway. I don't want to risk being stuck working with someone after a big relationship mess, but I also don't want to say no in case it turns out amazing, right?" I knew I was babbling a little so I made myself stop talking.

Taylor was grinning at my reflection. "That's adorable. You should totally date her."

I felt a little something inside me relax at the 'permission'. In the other timeline, I had been obsessed with Taylor, but I didn't think it was romantic - probably - and she had certainly never looked twice at me. This time, things were much more complicated, and I was just glad that I wasn't going to make a complete mess of things.

Probably.

Spoiler: Notes

I have gazed into the abyss so long that it has gazed back. In my heart is the inky black of pure despair which makes mortals weep and tear at their own flesh begging for a merciful god to end the suffering. But no god does.

(I watched a high school production of Grease today.)

 

[Swordchucks]

Following the directions that Carol Dallon had given me for Thursday made me feel like a spy.

The weather was turning cold enough that my nondescript hoodie wasn't out of place, even with the hood pulled over my head and down in order to make it hard to see my face. The bus trip was kind of long because I made several transfers to confuse my trail, in case it was necessary, and then headed for the alleyway I had been directed to. There was a nondescript door with a keypad which I pushed the buttons for with my gloved fingers and it clicked open.

The inside was mostly empty except for a section that looked like a small locker room and an old-style telephone hanging on the wall. I ignored the former and picked up the latter.

"Accounts payable, Marvin speaking." The voice sounded almost bored.

"I never got paid for the carpet we delivered on Tuesday." It was dumb, but apparently the PRT loved their cloak and dagger games for things like this.

"The check is in the mail. Call back in six business days if you haven't received it."

The line clicked as the guy on the other end hung up. What he had said was nonsense, but the important part was the number. Six minutes until pickup.

There was a mirror along one wall of the room, and I stared into it while I adjusted the ski mask I had on under my hoodie. Hood, gloves, mask. There wasn't a lot I could add to that to make myself look more suspicious if I were walking into a bank… but it kept my identity pretty well hidden and it wasn't too out of place on the bus given the weather. I'd reverse the hoodie and remove the mask after I made my first transfer on the return trip. Whenever that was.

Six minutes was just long enough for me to wish that Taylor was with me, but for obvious reasons, we were making our first visit to the PRT building individually.

Five minutes later, I started looking out the little window set beside the other door to the room. It led out to a street on the opposite side of the building from the alleyway and it wasn't long before I spotted an unmarked white van pull up outside.

Trying my best to calm my nerves, I stepped out the door, pulling it shut behind me, and walked up to the side of the van. The door slid open revealing a fully kitted PRT trooper in the back. He gave me a quick glance and nodded, moving aside so I could get in. Once I was seated and the door closed, he gave two raps on the cage separating us from the front and I felt the van go into motion.

It felt a little tense, but I decided against trying to make small talk. Fortunately, the ride wasn't that long and I eventually felt us lurch to a stop before the door opened to reveal more troopers and a man in a red suit that I would recognize anywhere.

"I hope the ride wasn't too rough," Velocity said and offered me his hand. He had one of those costumes where only the top half of his face was covered, so I could see the strong jaw line and easy smile that went with it.

"No, it was fine," I managed and shook his hand in return. My tiny hand was almost engulfed by his, but that was nothing new for me. "Nice to meet you."

"And nice to meet you. I'm supposed to give you a quick tour and then get you up to the suits for the real interview. Your lawyer will be meeting you there," he said, that same smile still on his face. I couldn't tell if he approved of me bringing my lawyer along or not.

"That sounds good," I admitted. I'd taken the public tour one time in middle school along with pretty much every kid in the Bay, but we'd just seen one of the Wards and none of the Protectorate heroes on that visit. This was obviously going to be a better experience.

The tour was interesting, in a general sense. The PRT building was a confusing labyrinth of corridors and security checkpoints by design, it seemed. It was also one of the buildings with the most sublevels in the entire Bay area.

The sublevels were taken up with the extensive motor pool that the PRT commanded - supplemented by several response stations around town - and a few low security cells for criminals awaiting transport. Much of the rest was a mix of offices, training facilities, conference rooms, armories, and all of the other things that it took to keep the PRT running from day to day.

"Protectorate ENE is structured slightly differently from most divisions. Normally, the Wards are under the direct command of the Protectorate commander, who in turn answers to the Director of the local PRT, and the two chains of command don't really mingle in between. Because of the impracticality of getting Wards out to the Protectorate base on a regular basis, the Wards are stationed in the PRT headquarters and most of their day-to-day operations are under the purview of the local PRT. Technically, the chain of command for the Wards still goes through the Protectorate and the PRT is being afforded a professional courtesy, but it seems to work well enough."

I tried to make sense of that and thought I mostly had it. "So, even though the Wards aren't really under the PRT, they're sort of in charge, anyway?"

Velocity nodded. "That's it, in a nutshell. We all answer to the PRT director, one way or another, so it's mostly just formalities and a concession to convenience. There are ways to go above the local division Director, but you had better be sure you know what you're doing before you try that."

I fidgeted nervously at the idea. I wasn't really intending to rock the boat, but it sounded kind of daunting.

"That's not really why you're here, though. Let's see if any of the Wards are in. They're always interested in meeting new people." He stopped in front of a door with a complicated-looking panel beside it. He hit a few buttons and a little yellow light started flashing. "There's a thirty second warning for those inside so that they know they need to mask up if they aren't already."

"The Wards unmask to each other?" I asked as that idea settled in. I didn't know why that was surprising. I'd been led to believe that every aspect of identities were kept as closely guarded secrets, but that also seemed like it would be very awkward within a team.

"It isn't required, but it is allowed. I would urge you to get to know them a bit and then make your own decision." It sounded reasonable and if I did end up spending a lot of time in the building, it would almost certainly be more convenient. As long as I could trust them, anyway. A nasty little part of my mind reminded me that Sophia had been a Ward and she had been the last person I would want to trust with my secrets.

"I'll keep that in mind." I didn't know yet what I would do, but I couldn't remember any serious incidents with the local Wards being unmasked to the public in the other timeline, even with an obvious bad apple amongst them.

"There we go," he declared as the light shut off and the door slid into the wall to the side like something out of a sci-fi movie.

We walked inside and my first thought was that it looked like a slightly more comfortable version of half of the break rooms I had been in while working retail and odd jobs in my last life. There was a sofa, a television - no, two televisions - a gaming console that looked like it was well used, a small kitchen area, a series of computer terminals along one wall, a couple of large tables, and a lot of chairs. There were some other things I couldn't immediately recognize, as well, and a couple of doors leading deeper into the area.

The only two people inside were immediately recognizable. Triumph's lion theme made him stand out as did the short stature of Vista who seemed to be alternating between bouncing around and looking deadly serious.

"Wards, I'd like to introduce you to a prospective new member," Velocity said and gestured to the two in turn. "This is Triumph, the current leader of the Wards East-North-East, and Vista, who is one of our newer members. Team, this is Frequency."

"Name subject to change," I mumbled, which got me a grin from Vista.

"Yes, name subject to change, though I suspect they'll let you keep that one as long as the PR team doesn't find an obscure villain that has been using it for a while. In any case, I'm going to go check on things and give you guys a few minutes to say hello." Velocity bowed out and left the room.

"Are you really thinking of joining?" Vista asked with so much hope in her voice that I almost laughed. "The guys on the team are great and all, but…"

"But it gets awkward being the only girl, I'm sure," Triumph cut in neatly. "It is nice to meet you. I hear that you're coming straight to us instead of doing the normal routine of being a vigilante for a while, almost dying after a takedown went wrong, and then deciding that maybe the Wards are a good idea, after all."

That made me chuckle. I was never entirely clear on how Sophia had been a Ward, but I wanted to believe she'd almost died as part of it. It was more likely that she'd gotten caught committing some serious crimes and needed a way to stay out of jail.

"Yeah, I make good decisions occasionally. I… well, I almost died once this year, so I didn't want to repeat it." That earned some serious nods from the other two. One thing I'd picked up about cape culture in general was that no one liked talking about the trigger event that gave them powers. A vague reference was all you needed and most capes picked up on it and wouldn't ask followup questions.

"Anyway, what do you do? Music powers?" Triumph asked. "Or something with sound waves, maybe?"

"No, it's a little… I can see lines attached to things and if I adjust the way those lines move - change the frequency of the waves, for instance - stuff happens. Or it doesn't happen. I can use it defensively to stop stuff from changing. Oh, and I can manipulate air to let me fly, sort of. I'm not very good at that, yet."

Vista pouted and I was reminded that she was probably younger than me. I didn't remember exactly, but I recalled that she was a Ward for a long time in the other timeline. "No fair. I want to fly… the best I can manage is taking really big steps."

That caused Triumph to chuckle. "Vista is underselling herself, but I agree that flight is one of the powers that absolutely everyone wants and all of us that don't get it are jealous of. It sounds like your power is versatile, which is great. There are a lot of resources that the Protectorate and PRT can offer to help you get the most out of your powers, including connections with the Parahuman Studies division at Brockton Bay University. If it's something too complicated, they can even call in help from Boston. They might sell it as doing you a favor, but the universities fall all over themselves for a chance to study powers. The main thing the PRT contributes to the arrangement is to make sure that you can get them involved without accidentally giving away your identity."

I smiled and gave Triumph a nod. He was trying to find ways to sell the Wards to me, and I had to respect that. It was certainly more respectable than any of the times I'd had to try to upsell someone on a warranty package they would never use while working retail. "So, uh, how do you two like being in the Wards?" I asked, intentionally giving them an opening for something I genuinely wanted to hear them talk about.

"It has been a great opportunity for me," Triumph declared. He had to have had classes in public speaking at some point because he was good at it. "I'm already looking forward to transitioning to the Protectorate once I'm of age and the Wards program has helped me make that decision. There are challenges to being a professional hero, and not all of them are much fun. The Wards program lets you experience a lot of those challenges in a relatively safe environment so that you can learn the ropes and make decisions on your later career with better information."

"It's a bit boring," Vista grumbled, and I raised an eyebrow at her. I don't think she meant for me to hear that and when she realized she'd blurted it a bit louder than intended, I saw the exposed parts of her face redden. "I mean, he's right that it's safe, but sometimes it's a bit too safe. They don't let us take patrol routes in the parts of town where most of the crime happens, and they rarely let us engage even if we walk right into something."

I filed that away in my head. "That's… I can see why that would be frustrating," I offered. Not that I would personally mind much if I didn't get into many fights, but it seemed pretty common for capes to seek out conflicts. I had to look no farther than Sophia to find an example of that.

"That's not a bad thing, though," Triumph defended. "The statistics show that injury rates for Wards are only thirty percent of those for teenage parahumans as an overall group, and the rate of serious injuries is even lower. Protectorate members that spent at least a year in the Wards program are also eighty percent less likely to be seriously injured within their first year on the job. So, while there are protocols in place that mean we don't get into every fight that we could, there are good reasons for that."

It wasn't anything I hadn't heard before, really. PHO was littered with statistics that showed exactly how dangerous it was for independent parahumans, though there weren't really good numbers for gang members. I assumed it varied a lot by gang, but if it was bad, there was no way that they would want prospective recruits knowing about it.

There was a noise and several computer terminals in the room flashed yellow for a moment. "That'd be the visitor alarm. Someone's coming in, so if you're unmasked, you have time to get one on before we have visitors," Vista said. "There are also some private rooms in the back where you can take a nap or whatever. You can hear the alarm back there and there's an indicator on the inside of the doors until visitors leave in case you're taking a nap or something." She gestured vaguely toward one of the doors leading back deeper into the space.

The visitor was Velocity and after I said my goodbyes to Vista and Triumph, I followed him up to the office where Carol was waiting along with a man in a suit.

Spoiler: Notes

In my head, the PRT goes all-in for the cloak and dagger stuff. How effective it ends up being, who knows.

 

[Swordchucks]

Somewhat surprisingly, the actual meeting with the Deputy Director was the least interesting part of my visit to the PRTHQ. Deputy Director Renick was… fine? I had the vague feeling that he was the kind of guy that would wear his suit on vacation. Like, he would be on the beach in a full suit and tie with his slacks rolled up to his knees so he could stand in the water just a little.

Because we were working through a lawyer, the process was streamlined compared to what it would have normally been. The details of payment and support and all of that were mostly agreed upon before I ever came in, and there would be no need for my parents to directly visit the building. Despite some concerns I had about the Wards unmasking to each other, the rest of the PRT took as many steps as possible to isolate identities and leave as few breadcrumbs for outsiders to follow as possible.

In large part, that was why Taylor and I had come in separately. Having two people decide to join the Wards in a similar timeframe wasn't unheard of, but having two people that clearly knew each other beforehand do so would dramatically narrow down the number of events that could have caused us to get powers. We weren't hiding it, per se, but we were making the trail harder for others to follow.

For the first year after joining, I would be considered a junior member of the Wards. It was standard practice, and in a city with as many gangs as ours I could understand why. Junior members had limited access to classified information, couldn't lead teams, and were generally kept away from sensitive operations. Even Protectorate members had a probationary period like that, but one of the interesting quirks was that if you served out your 'junior' year as a Ward, you went straight to full Protectorate membership if you joined the big leagues. You didn't have to do the 'junior' term twice.

Wards got paid two ways, too. First, there was the trust fund, which got a base yearly allotment of fifty grand plus a nineteen percent locality adjustment. I wouldn't be able to access the funds until I turned eighteen, and then I'd only have access to a quarter of the funds each year until I turned twenty-one - at which point I'd have all of it. Most of the sources of additional income Carol had been negotiating for us would be added to the trust funds and available later.

The second form of payment was a stipend that was indexed to the most that a person my age could legally earn from a minimum wage job. As I was under sixteen, eighteen hours a week at the state minimum wasn't a ton of money, but it wasn't bad, either. It was also not a real hourly wage - it was just a salary calibrated to look like one if someone tried to look into my finances. After my junior year was over, I'd get a 'raise' which would double the stipend.

There were provisions for the stipend to be 'docked' as a disciplinary measure, but that only saw those funds instead directed toward the trust fund. While the Protectorate was a paramilitary organization, the Wards had more limitations on that front and we thus had a few more rights.

There were also allowances for things like Tinker budgets, should we have a Tinker aspect to our powers. That was more a concern for Taylor than it was for myself, though.

The single biggest item up for discussion was the prospect of transfers to Arcadia. The school was notorious in the Bay for being the school the Wards went to, and apparently that was because most of the Wards did go there. It was a 'magnet school' that pulled kids from all across the greater Brockton Bay area for a wide variety of reasons - which made it easy to disguise exactly which students were Wards - and it offered a flexible schedule that worked really well for the Wards. It was also just a few blocks from the PRTHQ which greatly simplified many of the logistics.

Almost every aspect of going to Arcadia made it easier to conceal who the Wards were, up to and including the fact that they only enrolled about eight-five percent of their students at the start of the year and added the rest in small waves at the start of each semester. No doubt there would be a bunch of short and tall brunettes finding themselves winners of the Arcadia Lottery for the next couple of semesters if Taylor and I accepted the invitation to go.

The only weird thing about that was that I knew Sophia had been a Ward and still went to Winslow in the other timeline. Had she specifically fought to stay there? That seemed a bit insane, but if you were a violent thug looking for acceptable targets Winslow did make a degree of sense.

In the end, I answered a few questions, offered a few opinions, and largely just watched Carol do her job. Eventually, she shook hands with Mr. Renick and we parted ways so that I could do the whole cloak and dagger routine in reverse to return home. All of the paperwork would go to my parents through Carol afterwards.

It was an exhausting but productive day.

oOoOoOoOo

Time passed, as it is prone to do. I didn't get suddenly attacked in the streets or anything - even with crime as bad as it was in the Bay, most people went their entire lives without being mugged or assaulted as long as they paid attention - and the process of joining the Wards slowly worked its way out. Taylor - current codename Match - had a meeting similar to mine on Saturday where she got to meet Miss Militia, Aegis, Gallant, and Vista.

There was an essay contest announced in our English class which we were quietly instructed to submit to by the PRT. It was apparently open to all high school students across the entire Bay and the rumor was that some of the winners would be getting admission to Arcadia. I strongly suspected that quite a few of the winners would be girls that looked a lot like the two of us from multiple grade levels.

Meanwhile, I didn't actually see Amy, but I did text her. A lot. She was pretty chatty over text and a little less cynical. She also seemed to be opening up to me, which was nice and I found myself looking at my phone and smiling entirely too often.

On the Saturday at the end of the second week of December, we were actually sworn in to the Wards program. There was an oath and a small ceremony with several Protectorate capes in attendance, including Armsmaster, though we only talked to them very briefly. Armsmaster, in particular, was very polite and generally nice to us, though he didn't have a lot of time to chat. He seemed like the kind of man that valued his time very highly, which was what I would have expected from a Tinker and the head of the local Protectorate.

After the swearing in, we were each assigned a PRT liaison to coordinate our activities over the next few months.

Mine was a blond woman with a short haircut in her mid thirties that introduced herself as Agent Lawson. She walked with a cane, which left me with questions I didn't feel like I could just outright ask.

"We're going to be very busy for the rest of the year," she declared as she handed me a folder. "This is the handbook and the paper forms you need to review and sign off on before we can get you properly into the access system. You'll have to go through that before we can do anything else. You would think they would include this in the sign-on package, but for some reason they never do."

I got a feel for the weight of the folder and groaned. Agent Lawson grinned. "Let's go find a cubicle somewhere and get started. That isn't going to read itself and frankly, there's a lot of stuff we need to go over before the end of today."

There was a lot to go over. Once I had the IT handbook reviewed and the paperwork submitted, she walked me through the major items on my schedule for the next few weeks. I was going to be meeting with the Branding group several times, first for a general introduction, then for costume fittings, and then for human relations and media training. That would all culminate in a press conference at some point to introduce me as a new Ward.

The other side of things was a series of classes on the law, patrol procedures, operational procedures, basic criminal investigation, firearms safety, vehicle safety, defensive tactics, emergency medical training, and a wealth of other legal and procedural topics.

"The basics go by faster than you'd think, but you're encouraged to schedule more advanced training on these and more specialized legal subjects over your time with the Wards. It's paid time and it'll help you keep from screwing up on the streets." Agent Lawson tossed me a printed out packet with a summary of the available courses and who to contact about scheduling them. "You're required to get twelve hours of general training a year, minimum, plus more if you're issued a weapon or vehicle. Doing more always looks good on performance reviews, though. If you're aiming for the Protectorate, you probably want as many of them as you can get."

I looked down the list and spotted titles like 'Drug Law Enforcement' and 'Handling Arrested Persons'. I had never really considered that Protectorate members having arrest powers made them, basically, cops, and cops needed certain skills to do their jobs without getting into trouble.

"You're also likely to spend some time running the console they have set up in the Wards area. It's something we set up to help you Wards get used to seeing things from the big picture. It's easy to get caught up in things when you're out on patrol and understanding how dispatch works is supposed to help you appreciate the importance of following procedures and communicating with the console. In practice, it ends up being pretty boring most of the time, so it gets used as a punishment detail sometimes, too. All the calls going through it are also going through the main switchboard, so you aren't likely to actually screw anything up while doing that."

I frowned at the idea. I wasn't used to being punished for much of anything, even when I deserved it. Well, I'd punished myself pretty extensively, but I hadn't had it imposed on me from the outside. It was… kind of weird, actually. I'd always been a good kid, up through middle school, and then when I had gone bad in high school, I had largely been insulated from the consequences.

"I'll try not to get punishment details, then," I noted and went back to looking over courses.

"Sometimes, there's no good choice and you will do something wrong through no real fault of your own. Mandatory console duty is a slap on the wrist that you can get from that kind of thing, so don't feel too bad if you land it. Just try to do better. If you really screw up… well, don't."

I nodded. I very vaguely recalled some Wards getting involved in high profile screw ups in my other life. It hadn't been pleasant for anyone involved, but those were all big, willful things. I wasn't going to try to get in trouble or anything.

Around then, someone showed up with a packet which included a temporary identification card, my new user credentials, and a phone.

"You'll have to set passwords for everything after the first time you use them. The phone you need to keep on you at all times and read the manual because it's a little complicated. They go out of their way to make the phones appear normal on the surface, but if you use the embedded features, you can contact the console here on a priority line and a bunch of other stuff. There's also a panic feature which you really do not want to set off by accident, but you do want to test out with the approval of the console." Agent Lawson got up at that point, leaning awkwardly on her cane. "However, now I think it's time I stopped bothering you and you got to go meet the other Wards."

"I've met a few of them," I noted, though it really was different to meet them as a Ward and not just as a prospective member.

"They'll all be on base later this afternoon. Saturdays tend to be when the Wards do any group activities like training or welcome parties." We made our way through the hallways towards the Wards area. "My number should be in your phone somewhere, so feel free to contact me if you need anything arranged. I can coordinate your schedule which will probably make your life easier than calling the console before every time you need to be picked up and all of that. Just send me a text - but if it's an emergency, call the console. That's what they're there for."

Eventually, we made it to the door I had been through before. Agent Lawson put a code into the door and paused. "The alert goes off any time someone comes in, which I'm sure gets annoying, but it's better than the alternative."

When the yellow light stopped flashing and the door opened, I wasn't surprised to find the room was much, much more full than it had been the last time.

 

[Swordchucks]

The room felt full, but that was really just in comparison to before. The Wards team in the Bay was fairly small before we joined - just Triumph, Aegis, Gallant, Clockblocker, and Vista - and I couldn't for the life of me remember when the other people I vaguely recalled had joined or left the team.

Despite the whole thing having some military trappings, non-probationary Wards could separate at any time. There were some hoops to jump through and some restrictions that would linger for years, but no one was forcing a Ward to remain a Ward. Between that, the ability to transfer between cities, and the everpresent march toward 'graduation' from the program, it resulted in a sort of revolving door for the team.

"Welcome!" Triumph half-yelled as I came through the door.

"Call me if you need me," Agent Lawson declared from behind me and didn't bother stepping inside before the door automatically closed.

"Frequency, come in and meet Aegis, Gallant, and Clockblocker." Triumph gestured to each of the others in turn. Everyone was wearing what amounted to civilian clothing with a cloth mask of some sort on top. The masks were helpfully color coded to their normal costumes and styles. " We have chips and sodas to celebrate getting new members.

"Hey, fresh meat!" Clockblocker declared, only to get a Vista shoulder in his side. "They didn't even scare you off with the boring paperwork yet!"

"Behave," she almost growled and I gave her a smile. It seemed like a pretty normal group of teenagers, so far. I could deal with normal teenagers.

"Any idea where Match is?" Aegis asked, looking toward the door like mentioning her name would make her suddenly appear.

"They split us up after the swearing in. She is probably still waiting on her credentials to come through," I offered. "It took a while."

That got a groan from Clockblocker. "Those things take forever, and do not, I repeat, do not forget your password. Or lose your phone." He leaned forward, making a face the effect of which was almost but not quite ruined by the half-mask he was wearing. "The forms… the horrible forms…"

Vista opened her mouth like she was going to interject again. Then she closed it and continued in a more even tone of voice. "Yeah, he's right. I think they make it as painful as possible so that you'll be more careful next time."

"Anyway, it's good to have you on the team," Gallant said and extended his hand. I gave it a firm shake, which he returned. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

I chatted with the team for a bit. Vista was still very excited to have more female Wards, Clockblocker was prone to turning everything into a joke, Aegis was the silent type, Gallant seemed to be genuinely nice, and Triumph tried to keep everyone in line. I kind of wondered where I would fit into the whole dynamic.

After what seemed like forever, but was really just half an hour, the visitor alarm went off and Taylor - Match - joined us. She seemed pretty frazzled but in good spirits.

"Alright, since everyone is here," Triumph declared as he got up in front of the crowd which had mostly taken seats around the room. "I just wanted to officially welcome our two new members to the team. Last year, when I joined the team, there were only two other members - Flytrap who has since moved on to the New York Protectorate and Cornerstone, who moved out to the west coast with his family. Since then, we grew to five, and now we're up to seven. We're finally big enough that we can have proper group training exercises and I can build a regular patrol schedule for the team. I believe that there are a lot of challenges that we will face as we all grow into our roles as heroes, but I also believe that we are up to those challenges. As a team."

He wasn't the most polished of speakers, but he did project a level of confidence and assurance that I found nice. As he wound down, Clockblocker started clapping enthusiastically, but soon we were all joining in - mostly unironically. Triumph blushed at the attention and gave a little bow.

"Ahem!" He raised his hands, palms facing toward us and made a 'keep it down' motion. "As I was getting to, because we work together closely, we have so far been revealing our identities to each other. This is strictly voluntary and you shouldn't expect the same from Protectorate heroes, but I think it builds trust within the team. We've all been through the background checks and sworn the oaths, plus most of us share a school."

He reached up and pulled off his cloth mask in a smooth motion. I didn't recognize him, but that wasn't really unexpected. He was handsome enough. "I'm Rory."

The rest quickly followed suit. Aegis was a powerfully built Latino named Carlos with longer hair than I would have expected. Clockblocker was named Dennis and was a bit younger and scrawnier with red hair that somehow managed to be entirely different from Emma's red hair. Vista was named Missy and was even younger than I expected, even if we had a similar height and build.

The only one that was a real surprise was Gallant who turned out to be none other than Dean Stansfield - Victoria Dallon's boyfriend. Knowing that made up my decision for me. I had been on the fence about revealing my identity up until this point, but my life would get entirely too complicated if I added these secrets into it. It was a risk, but it seemed like a small one.

"Well, that's a surprise," I said and reached up to take off my own mask. "I'm Madison."

I didn't think Dean's surprise was at all fake. "Well, that's… huh," was his intelligent reply.

"You two know each other?" Dennis asked, looking between the two of us with keen interest.

"A little," I said. "We met because I'm friends with his girlfriend's sister."

"It's a small world sometimes," Gallant - Dean - agreed as he quickly recovered from his surprise. "Does Victoria know?" When I nodded, he laughed. "I think we had a conversation where I told you she was good at keeping secrets, didn't we? Well, this would be proof of that, then. She never even hinted-"

"Uh, Taylor," Taylor interrupted and I turned to see that she'd pulled her mask off. As everyone turned to look at her, she blushed and I gave her a reassuring pat on the knee. "I mean, I'm Taylor."

"Sorry, we were breaking the flow there," I apologized. We'd kind of stepped on her turn to do the reveal thing and she'd just blurted it out impulsively.

"You two know each other, too?" Dennis asked. "I know you joined on the same day and all, but coincidences do happen."

"We both go to Winslow," I said, falling back on a version of the truth. "We both contacted Carol Dallon to represent us in negotiating our contracts."

"Negotiating your… contracts?" Dennis asked, seemingly confused by the very concept.

"The contracts that spell out the terms under which you join the Wards?" Triumph asked, looking at his younger teammate in mild confusion, as well.

"You can negotiate those?" The shock on Dennis's face would have been funny if it wasn't also a little tragic.

"Not a lot, but there are some things they're flexible on." I tried my best to smooth it out. It was likely too late for him to do anything about it now and making it seem like a big deal would be cruel. "We were mostly just making sure that our parents' wishes are known on a few things."

"I didn't know there was anything to negotiate," Carlos said with a shrug. He didn't seem at all concerned about it.

"Me, either," Vista supplied, also indifferent.

"Ah, why does no one ever tell you these things beforehand?" Dennis moaned and those of us who had thought to ask instead of jumping straight in wisely kept our mouths shut.

"Anyway, powers!" Triumph interrupted with a clap of his hands. "I imagine that you know what we do, more or less, from the PRT's public record, but in case you don't… I manipulate sound and have a minor Brute rating."

"I'm a flying Brute," Aegis tossed in. "The mechanics aren't straightforward, but that's the end result."

"I can mess with the space between stuff," Vista added, though what I'd read about her powers made them sound much more impressive than that.

"Time freezing touch," Clockblocker declared, cheering up a bit. He held his hand out. "Want to try it?"

"Not right now, Clock," Triumph rebuked. "That kind of stuff needs to be reserved for training sessions down in the gym."

"Aw, you're no fun," Clockblocker grumbled, but he didn't seem at all upset.

"I'm actually a blaster," Gallant cut in over top of his complaining. "I wear a Tinkertech suit because I don't have any defensive powers, and it seemed like a good idea to present me as a Tinker in the official releases because of it. It can pay to be underestimated."

I nodded at that. Gallant - and Dean - seemed so honest that I never would have pegged his power for something other than what it appeared to be. Still, the difference between a Tinker and a Blaster was mostly academic as long as he had his armor on.

"I copy powers," Taylor announced. "I always ask first, though. Unless you're a bad guy, I guess. After the first time I copy it, I can turn on any given power once a day, but I can only have one active at a time. I'm probably going to pick just one or two as my 'real' power and be like Gallant so that people don't expect it."

Triumph looked suitably impressed and nodded. "That's a very strong power, if you- no, let's not get into the specifics today. We're going to have to do a bunch of training together in the next few weeks, anyway, so we'll find out then."

That just left me.

"I control a lot of stuff in a certain range around me. It's… painfully complicated, but I can do a whole lot to anything inside my range. I've worked out how to use it defensively, but I'm still figuring out how to use it offensively without killing someone." I felt a little lame with just that much of an answer, but Triumph had already indicated that now wasn't exactly the best time for in-depth power discussions and mine was pretty complicated.

Triumph gave me a big smile. "No need to worry about that. Half the point of being on the Wards is that you can figure out your powers in a safe environment. We have free access to a small gym you can get through from this area, and we can reserve time in the larger facility the troopers use if we need it. The same goes for the various firing ranges if you have a power that needs you to work on accuracy or the like."

I sagged a little in relief at the offer. A firing range was almost certainly a good idea for me. My experiments with tossing rocks in the woods had shown me that my range past my bubble of control needed practice. It wasn't really the kind of thing I could work on in a populated area, either. A firing range was probably best.

"I'm looking forward to it," I declared, feeling more confident in this whole hero thing than I had in a long time.

oOoOoOoOo

The winners of the 'essay contest' were announced at the start of the third week of December, just seven school days before Christmas break started. Taylor and I, along with a half dozen other lucky people, were getting transfers to Arcadia after the break. It felt a little crappy to be getting one that I didn't really earn, but I understand all of the very good reasons for the PRT to structure things that way. If some other students lucked into transfers because of us, that seemed like a net positive in the end.

By Wednesday, I was starting to look forward to leaving Winslow behind me. My high school career had started with so much hope - and a tinge of desperation - but now I was just happy to be going to a better place. The other Wards went there - except Vista who was too young - and so did Amy. I was also bringing Taylor with me as I left, which was a good thing.

I had other friends at Winslow, but I wasn't really close with any of them. It would kind of suck to start over again, but I was really starting to find that high school politics didn't appeal to me. Without the pressure of bullying, I wasn't even sure I wanted to play politics anymore. It was awkward with my wonky perception of my age, to say the least. Even though I felt like I was my physical age in most ways, I definitely had perspective that I had lacked my first time through and so many of the things high schoolers cared about just weren't important in the grand scheme of things.

Of course, things couldn't go smoothly. News of the contest winners wasn't on everyone's lips or anything - Winslow students largely didn't care about 'nerd shit' - but the results were posted on the bulletin board outside the English classrooms and at least a few people read them, given the handful of congratulations I had received.

It was a given that Emma would find out at some point and I didn't expect that her twisted mind would let Taylor 'win' so easily. The problem was that I didn't know exactly how she would react in this timeline. Before, she would have had her social dominance to rely on, but I had done my best to make that impossible for her. Instead, she would have to attack from a different direction, and I wasn't entirely sure which directions were still open to her.

The first indication I received that something was up was when I got a text from Agent Lawson right after lunch on Thursday. It was a simple request for me to call her immediately, and I made an excuse about needing to go to the restroom to get out of class so that I could do so.

I checked all of the stalls to make sure no one was hiding inside before pulling out my PTR-issued phone and giving her a call.

"I just got word that a friend of yours got swept up in a routine locker search a few minutes ago," she stated and I knew immediately who it was and had a strong suspicion of what had happened. "Are you aware of any issues your friend might be having?"

"No, and we both know that she's not on anything," I stated flatly. We'd both had to take drug tests as part of signing up for the Wards. Failing the test wouldn't have disqualified us, but it would have meant a ton more mandatory classes and programs. "I'm pretty sure it's related to a parahuman operating around the school. Goes by Shadow Stalker and she can supposedly phase through solid objects, like lockers."

"I see." There was typing on the other end of the line. "Yeah, she's a piece of work. Eight cases of aggravated assault in the last six months, and those are just the ones that would talk to the cops. Small time bounties from the major gangs, though they're still at 'we'd prefer you to lead us to her alive' level on those. Any idea on the civilian ID?"

"If this is her work, then yeah. My friend has exactly two enemies, and I doubt one of them could throw a punch to save her life. I'll send you a name. Is T-my friend alright?" I asked, realizing I had gotten distracted with the revenge part when I should have been worried about what was going to happen to Taylor.

"She'll be fine. She's probably going to be suspended from Winslow, but we can fix that from the Arcadia end and pick up the jacket from the BBPD as part of an ongoing investigation into parahuman activities at the school. It won't be suspicious. She'll have to go for another drug test, but as long as it's clean, there should be no repercussions."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. If Taylor was suspended for the rest of her time at Winslow, that would deny Emma her target. Emma would probably be a gloating bitch about it for the rest of the semester, but when Taylor still went to Arcadia after Christmas break, she'd probably freak out. I was kind of sorry I was going to miss that part.

That reminded me… I really needed to talk to some people before I left. Just leaving the high school jungle to her control sounded like a terrible idea. I couldn't do a ton from Arcadia, but I could do a little. If nothing else, I could ask a few people to look out for each other and ask them to call me if they needed me.

If I got that call… well, I'd figure it out.

Spoiler: Notes

Just when they thought they were safe...

 

[Swordchucks]

The next time I talked to her, Taylor was understandably upset. It was Friday night, after her first day of suspension from school, and I was over at her house, presumably for a sleepover. I hadn't mentioned that Shadow Stalker was the likely culprit, but she had figured it out herself earlier in the day. Everyone involved was lucky that Taylor hadn't flown off to execute some sort of arrest in the middle of lunch. I talked her down from that plan with the fact that I already had the PRT on the case.

"You could have mentioned this earlier," she said testily.

"I know. I'm sorry. I wanted to bring you a solution instead of just a problem to feel bad about, but it's probably going to take a while. I'm surprised your handler didn't mention anything about it." I did feel bad about not telling her once I realized how much that would suck for her to realize it and be unable to do anything directly.

"All he said was that it was being investigated. He didn't give me any details," she grumbled and then sighed deeply. "What are we going to do now?"

"The smart thing would be for us to just let the PRT investigators do their job. Sophia's apparently been pulling this same kind of thing for a while now, but she's been going after the gang kids that no one would believe. There are maybe a dozen cases that share the hallmarks - no fingerprints on the drugs, there being just enough to get them into serious trouble, and how obviously they're planted are the big ones. No one seems to have cared much because they were only gang kids, right?" Taylor grumbled at the thought and I grinned slightly.

"Anyway, she messed up this time. If you were a random student, she might have still gotten away with it, but you're a Ward." It was a little sad, but being a part of the government really did have privileges. If Sophia had tried the same thing on Taylor in the other timeline, once Emma had convinced everyone that she was a junkie loner who was also, somehow, still a part of all of the gangs in town, it would probably have worked. Once more, I felt a pang of guilt for my part in making that circumstance a reality.

Now, the balance of power was reversed, and while this might have been a reasonable ploy on the part of Sophia given the information available to her, there were two major facts that she didn't have. For one, Taylor was now a Ward that the government could freely drug test to ensure that she wasn't actually using whatever the other girl had planted - and had in fact tested clean just the week before. For another, Sophia was currently a violent vigilante with no 'good standing' to speak of. From what I had heard from Agent Lawson, it sounded like Sophia had been a naughty girl lately and was destined for a prison cell if they could catch her in the act.

Taylor's nostrils flared as she took a deep breath. "Alright. Okay. So, how do we help them nail her to the wall?" she asked.

"Tell your handler that you're willing to help in whatever capacity they need you to help and then let them tell you if they need you?" I offered, but her lips set into a hard line. She obviously didn't like the passive approach. "I know it's not the most satisfying thing in the world, but she messed up. The PRT have people watching her now, and she's not smart enough to avoid getting caught with people specifically doing that. Once they have the proof they need, they will spring the trap, and she is going to be in serious trouble."

"What if they let her be a Ward?" Taylor asked, fretting with the hem of her shirt. "She tried to get me arrested."

I nodded. "I asked Agent Lawson about that. It seems like the PRT is really reluctant to throw away a cape if there's any chance they can be reformed, so it could happen." She opened her mouth to say something, but I barreled ahead. "But! But the circumstances are terrible for her. It's perfectly reasonable that we push for her to be separated from Emma, at a minimum, which probably means she can't use Daddy Barnes as her lawyer to fight for better terms. We can say a few words to Carol and she won't take the job, either, and those are the only two ways she's likely to get competent representation. Then we can push on the fact that she tried to frame you for a crime and that we both refuse to work with her. If she ends up a Ward, that will hopefully mean she's in a different city."

I sighed because I didn't like this much, either. "Even if she does end up staying in town, Agent Lawson pointed out how crappy the gig most probationary Wards get is. She'll be stuck at junior status until she turns eighteen, at a minimum, and before then she'll be outranked by everyone else on the team, including us and even anyone that joins after us as long as they aren't probationary Wards. If she decides to start something, we have leverage while she doesn't. We are free to quit whenever we want and I really doubt they're going to want to keep her over either of us. Plus, if she causes too many problems, they can ship her off to prison or worse."

Taylor closed her mouth again as she thought about it. "Worse than prison?" she asked after a minute.

I nodded. "Yeah, there are some really bad duty locations they could ship her off to, like one of the containment zones." Everyone knew about the containment zones. The PRT set them up when something was too horrible to deal with directly and didn't seem to be spreading. A combination of soldiers, PRT agents, and Protectorate capes kept the things contained from breaking out, but it wasn't a posting a regular Ward was likely to get. "Probationary Wards can choose to quit, too, but that just means they end up in jail."

"That does sound bad," she agreed. "I still don't like it, though."

I nodded. "I know. I don't, either. That girl is a psychopath and she's going to end up killing someone if she thinks she can get away with it. It's a miracle that she hasn't already."

"I hope she doesn't," Taylor said, but she seemed to be willing to let the whole matter drop. I realized that I had screwed up by expecting her handler to share everything with her, but Taylor was pretty forgiving. I again tried to compare the version of her that I knew now to the version I had heard so much about in the other timeline. I couldn't see Skitter being willing to just let something like that go. The two versions really weren't the same person, and the guilt I felt about the version in the other timeline was only diminished by the fact that I was doing everything possible to make sure that the current version wouldn't turn out that way.

oOoOoOoOo

The next morning dawned with an unwelcome surprise. Our phones started vibrating and chirping with emergency alert tones and we checked them only to find that there was an Endbringer attack underway in Wisconsin. We groggily went down to Taylor's living room and turned on the TV to find newscasters discussing the event. The Simurgh was attacking Madison.

I fumbled with numb fingers for my message app and sent Agent Lawson a text asking what we should do. I got a call almost as soon as I was done sending it. I put it on speaker.

"I'm here with Taylor," I said instead of 'hello'.

"Good, then it makes this simpler. I'll have a pickup there for you in about fifteen minutes, so be ready to go. The protocol is that everyone comes in and goes on high alert for the duration of the attack. There's almost certainly not going to be anything to actually do when you get here, but it's protocol. I'll have someone pull up some temporary gear for you, too, on the off chance that it's necessary."

"I'll tell dad," Taylor suggested, looking pretty frazzled.

"I need to call mine, too. We'll be ready in fifteen."

A phone call later and Taylor and I threw on clothes before going out to pile into a carpet cleaning van that stopped in front of her house. True to Agent Lawson's predictions, what followed was a day that was both incredibly tense and incredibly boring.

"It's like this every time," Clockblocker grumbled. "They want us here in case some idiots decide to try to take advantage of the confusion, but we're not allowed to do anything because we're just Wards."

"Has anyone gone over the rules of cape etiquette for you two yet?" Triumph asked in an attempt to distract us and break the tension that we were all feeling.

"Just what we could skim off PHO," I said. "Who knows how accurate those are."

The rest of the morning turned into something of a lecture on the 'unwritten rules' of cape life, but from a slightly different perspective than I got from PHO. Most of it was the same, though the PRT was a lot less polite about the civilian identities of criminal capes. I had mostly picked up on that with the whole Sophia situation already, but it was interesting to see that it was an official stance. They didn't go out of their way to find out civilian identities, but they also didn't tolerate capes hiding behind them while committing crimes.

The Simurgh fight wore on and the tension of the entire team grew. Part of me wished I was there helping, but a larger, more sane part of me was glad that I was nowhere near that fight. I texted Agent Lawson about the possibility of volunteering for cleanup, but she gently rebuffed me. She said that I needed more training before there was any hope of deploying to a disaster area like that, and I reluctantly agreed that she was probably right.

Eventually, the Simurgh decided that she had taken enough damage or done enough damage and withdrew. No one cheered, though there was a palpable sense of relief that the fight was over. I was reminded of when Leviathan attacked the Bay in the other timeline and realized with a growing amount of horror that I wouldn't be hiding in a shelter if that happened again. Even if I wanted to, I knew that my cape friends - even if that was just Taylor and Amy and Victoria - wouldn't, and there was no way I would let them fight alone. Not if I could help.

oOoOoOoOo

"You're good at that," Amy half-moaned as she experienced the magic of my hands. "Where did you learn that?"

I grinned and shifted around a bit to go at it from a better angle. The sounds that caused her to generate were really, really interesting. "Oh, around," I declared casually.

The truth was that I'd worked in a massage therapy place for a bit in the other timeline - one of the nice ones that never got raided by the cops. It was good money but too physically demanding for me to consider making a career out of it. A casual massage for a friend, though? I was more than capable of that.

"Well, good job on that, then," she almost purred as she relaxed even more.

"You were looking tense," I commented. We had been texting but hadn't seen each other in person in a while. Maybe that was what made me so eager to touch her?

"I was tense," she grumbled. "The tests they're making me go through are wearing me out."

"Just think, once you're done, you'll be able to go out and heal all the people you want," I offered, renewing my attack on the upper parts of her shoulder blades.

"For free," she grumbled. "Well, mostly for free. I can't believe you convinced mom to negotiate a consulting contract with the PRT and the city government."

I laughed. "It was easy. She already negotiated the same thing for Taylor's copy of your power, and it only makes sense to charge the only ones you're really allowed to charge under the laws."

"I'll still be doing the healing for the local Protectorate for free, but everyone else can pay reasonable rates," she agreed then yawned cavernously.

"Getting tired?" I asked. She really wasn't tense anymore.

"Not too much, I think I'm just so relaxed I'm forgetting to breathe," she mumbled and fumbled for her phone. "We have an hour… and I'm starting to think maybe I could do with a nap."

"That does sound good," I admitted.

That was why I woke up an hour later to the sounds of Victoria giggling and taking pictures of her sister and I snuggled up together under a blanket. Taylor, the traitor, was laughing, too.

oOoOoOoOo

"You're doing great," Triumph encouraged.

I flopped down on the mat. "I feel like I'm made of jelly," I definitely did not whine.

"But it's jelly that's doing great," he returned with a chuckle. "You'll be happy you put in the work if you need to run away from someone later."

I just groaned and looked up from my spot to watch Taylor running another lap. Her legs were super long which made it totally unfair for me to try to keep up with her.

"It's only day three," I grumbled, but accepted the water bottle that Triumph tossed me and drained half of it in one long chug.

"You came back for day three, so that's kind of an accomplishment on its own."

"I thought this was mandatory?" I questioned.

"Technically, you're just required to pass the fitness benchmarks. After you do that, then it's all optional. However, you can't pass those yet, so… yes, mandatory," he answered and I realized that was why I didn't see the rest of the team living in the gym like we were at the moment.

Taylor collapsed beside me as she finished her last lap of the small gym and gladly took the half-drunk bottle of water out of my hand to drain the rest.

"You two can take ten minutes if you want. Taylor, Aegis is going to be in to work on hand to hand with you in a bit. Madison and I can head over to the range."

"Anything is better than running," I agreed. Meanwhile, Taylor was blushing because I was pretty sure she had a bit of a crush on Carlos. It seemed like a terrible idea to date a teammate, but when she had been talking about her 'type', it had fit him pretty well.

Then again, I wasn't one to talk, what with dating a cluster-mate. I was a little concerned that whatever force had been messing with us before might see Taylor's attention straying and do something about it. We hadn't seen any overt mind whammies from it outside of the first one, but that didn't stop me from worrying about it.

 

[Swordchucks]

The week before Christmas turned into our first real week of training as Wards, which had been a mixed experience. Triumph stepped up the physical fitness portion which I kind of hated. I was a fairly sedentary person in both lives and while I was thin, that didn't mean I was fit.

Power training was more interesting, of course, though the initial rounds where I had gone through doing everything that I could do to an inert rod covered in Armsmaster's sensors had been pretty tedious. Once he determined that nothing I was doing was making the rod dangerously radioactive or threatening to cause something he called 'false vacuum decay', I'd been cleared to work on things without him present, and Triumph had grabbed ahold of me almost immediately.

I was more than a little jealous of the way Taylor's power worked. When she copied a power, she got an immediate, instinctual idea of how to use it. Practicing with it or watching the original user use it improved her proficiency, though there seemed to be diminishing returns on doing so with each individual power. Ultimately, that meant that she probably wouldn't reach the same level of skill as the original user, but it wasn't a big enough margin to be noticeable unless she was right beside the person she was copying. Even then, it seemed to be more of a function of her skill with using the power than the power's raw strength.

In addition to the powers she'd borrowed from New Wave, she copied Triumph's and Aegis's powers. Eventually, she would get through the whole Wards team, but she wasn't going to be allowed to touch the powers of most Protectorate members for a while. I wasn't entirely sure who had given that order, but it must have been from someone high up because Armsmaster had seemed disappointed by it. I strongly suspected that he wanted to find out if she could copy Tinker powers, which I was admittedly also curious about. Unfortunately, the Wards didn't currently have one and I couldn't remember when Kid Win had joined the team in the other timeline.

For the moment, Taylor was focusing on practicing and understanding the powers she had instead of adding more to her arsenal. Since she could only use one at a time, it seemed reasonable for her to pause and gain proficiency instead of piling on more options. Her worst enemy would probably be stretching herself too thin.

My powers had some of the same pitfalls while also being the opposite of hers in other ways.

I only had a single power - or maybe two powers that worked closely together and looked like one from the outside - but that single power was versatile to the point that it almost seemed like magic. I had nearly complete dominion over everything non-living within my range as long as I could envision it as an energy effect of some sort. Thermal energy and kinetic energy were the most obvious, but there were so many options that it was difficult to count - particularly because I wasn't limited to a single effect at a time.

That boring testing with Armsmaster had produced some useful results, in addition to having my powers declared mostly safe to experiment with. We had discovered that my ability to turn 'down' an energy was faster than my ability to turn it 'up'. That meant that defensive applications of my power were more efficient than offensive, and that gave Triumph a place to start on exercises.

"Where did you even find two pitching machines?" I asked as he finished setting up the practice area in the small Wards gym.

"It's amazing what you can rent in this city," he answered with a grin. "Alright, so here's what we're going to do… That dummy right there is your teammate." He pointed to a rubber head and torso on a stand wearing a domino mask. I was pretty sure that it was meant to be used as a martial arts dummy, but I just found it a little creepy. "I'm going to shoot baseballs at it, and your job is going to be to stop them."

That sounded easy enough and setting the kinetic energy of the air in front of the dummy to a static level would 'drink' in everything that the balls could provide, each of them dropping to the ground afterwards. Where things got more complicated was when we were working on my speed. I could raise a barrier quickly, but not instantly, so when the balls were being fired about a second apart, I only ended up blocking about half of them.

"Alright, that's still good," Triumph declared as he started gathering up balls into a bucket to reload the machine. He got about half of them before I just made the rest float into the bucket. "You could have started with that…" he grumbled, but that didn't slow him down. "Anyway, you can block stuff but you have to get your barrier up ahead of time. Understanding your limits is an important first step because that means we can figure out how to work around them. We're a team, so knowing how to work with each other's powers is even more important than having individually strong powers."

Triumph was a pretty decent planner and big on teamwork. Over the course of that week, he worked with me on defensive drills and my speed did seem to get a bit better at raising and lowering barriers. We also worked on coordination drills so that my defense didn't interfere with the attacks of my allies because of the second weakness of my powers. While I could set a field to move at a set distance from myself and to automatically adjust to my own motions, I didn't have the ability to do so for allies.

If I had a friend inside a defensive bubble, I had to manually adjust the barrier around them or the bubble stayed in place. Worse, while I had discovered that I could do some limited manipulation of forces by 'feel' without looking at them directly, detailed results - like keeping a barrier moving around a teammate - required me to be able to see what I was doing. Raising a defensive dome was almost trivial, but if I wanted to have the parts of the dome behind me do anything complicated, that was nearly impossible.

In the end, that meant that my shields were great for areas and allies that fought from range, but much less useful for those that attacked physically. Aegis was a great example of someone that I couldn't shield very well while Triumph was much easier to protect while still allowing him to use his roars.

Clockblocker was generally in that group, though he needed to succeed at fewer strikes to incapacitate a target, making it a little more manageable in theory. The more interesting thing we discovered when working together was that I could turn off the effect his power had on something by adjusting the energy that was holding it locked. It was the first kind of line that I had discovered that was only there when a power put it there and also the first kind of line that I could only adjust in one direction. I couldn't copy Clockblocker's power, but I could cause the lines representing it to stop moving, which effectively broke the effect.

At least in theory, it was a good synergy between us since his temporal lock was normally unpredictable. As long as I did it before his minimum time lapsed, that meant we could coordinate when the lock ended, which opened a lot of tactical doors to the whole team. It also helped alleviate one of the biggest dangers he faced - getting stuck in something he froze accidentally.

Even with all of those advantages, however, he didn't really like the fact that I could basically no-sell his power with a thought. He didn't get outright hostile about it, but he was a little snippy with me after we made the discovery. Discussing all of the ways it benefited him as part of the team mollified him a little, but not completely.

Vista's power was similar in that I could sense what she did to space and turn it off, but I couldn't replicate the effect myself. Fortunately, she wasn't as annoyed by that as Clockblocker had been.

On the other hand, Gallant was a different story. I could block his emotion beams by locking certain aspects of the air in a shield, but I couldn't undo whatever effect they had on people. It might have been an aspect of the Manton limit of my powers, though that limitation was somewhat confusing since I could unfreeze people that Clockblocker froze. There must have been some sort of distinction in how the effects were achieved that my powers picked up on - I just wished they bothered to explain it to me.

Working with Taylor would be an entirely different level of complexity, but it mostly followed the same lines. If her power relied on 'simple' attacks like one of Glory Girl's punches, I could deal with it like any other punch. If it was more exotic - like a laser beam - I could turn it off or block it but not necessarily replicate it. Given that a lot of exotic effects were just odd ways to deliver kinetic or thermal energy, it didn't matter that much since I could replicate the effects, but it was confusing on what was and what was not within my power.

The approach of Christmas also meant that I was very close to being done with Winslow, and that was one of the best gifts I could get. At least, that's what I'd hoped.

oOoOoOoOo

Sophia was back as Emma's shadow during the half-week leading up to Christmas. I wasn't entirely sure where she had disappeared to in that week or so that I hadn't seen her lurking, but it probably had to do with her attempting to set Taylor up for drugs. It was either that or Emma only wanted her around when she was talking to me if she was sure that she could 'win' one of our little spars.

In any case, it was the last day before break, which was my blessed last day at Winslow, so of course Emma had to have one last confrontation with me. Not only did she have Sophia with her but three of the other girls that were teetering on the edge of becoming her minions, so she must have been feeling extra confident as she cornered me in the hallway after lunch.

"It's so sad about your little girlfriend," she simpered in her best fake sympathy which had just the right hint of mocking underneath it. I had to admit that she was refining her techniques very quickly. "You're going to be at Arcadia and she's going to be left behind all on her own. Don't worry, I'll make sure to keep a close eye on her."

I was genuinely confused for a moment. Amy was already at Arcadia and it was probably a little bold to call her my girlfriend just now. I mean, we had been flirting a lot and sort of dating, but we hadn't actually said 'girlfriend' or anything. "No, she-" I caught myself as I realized that Emma wouldn't have been referring to Amy, at all. "Oh, Taylor. You… think Taylor won't be going to Arcadia?"

I didn't quite understand where she had gotten that idea from until I realized that she wasn't privy to most of the stuff I had learned about the investigation. From the outside, it might have looked like Taylor was at home because she was being punished when the reality was that the PRT had decided that leaving her home would help prevent any further incidents while she waited to transfer out.

Something about my tone must have thrown her, because Emma sounded less sure of herself for a moment before she could completely recover. "Yes, Taylor. It's so tragic that she was almost able to get out of our poor, underfunded inner city school, but her demons must have been too much for her. Not only is she going to end up trapped here, but with a criminal record to go along with it-"

The smart thing to do would have been to not react to Emma's little rant. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter what she believed, and leaving her with an unsolved mystery would have been the best course of action. However, the act she was putting on just seemed so juvenile - so petty - and so obviously wrong that I couldn't help myself. I laughed. Not a little giggle, either, but a big, full laugh right in her face.

"Do you know that Arcadia students only go to classes for half a day? The other half, they spend in an affiliate program. There are a bunch of options, but the important thing is that Taylor's internship drug tested her as soon as she applied, which was before the whole locker raid. She was clean and someone there must really like her because they pushed back on the school and the police as soon as they heard about it." I should have stopped there, but I was really enjoying the look of growing confusion on Emma's face. "I heard that someone in the BBPD actually cared and now they're looking into it deeper. The rumor I heard was that the drugs they found in her locker had a lot in common with drugs found in several other people's lockers these last few months. Suspiciously easy to find, no fingerprints, you know… planted. By an amateur."

The only thing I can say in my defense was that I was a good enough actress to not look in Sophia's direction at all. Instead, I focused on Emma like I believed she was the culprit. I couldn't help but keep pushing, despite the fact that it was a terrible idea to do so. "Who did you blow for a locker master key, Emma? Was it one of the guys that works in the school store? The guy that wears the bowtie, maybe? I bet he would go for that. We all know how much practice you get-"

I honestly didn't expect Emma to hit me. Sophia? Yes. She's a violent maniac. Emma? She's a catty bitch that I've never seen make a fist. The good thing about not expecting it was that I didn't have to deal with a moral dilemma about publicly defending myself with my powers. There was no time to raise a shield and-or set her on fire. On the other hand, she had six inches and at least twenty pounds on me. Her fist plowed into my face, my face went flying backwards along with the rest of my head, quickly followed by the rest of my body as I momentarily went boneless in shock and pain. I landed flat on my back.

I think that Emma was just as surprised as I was because for several long seconds, no one made a sound. Then I said, in a very flat voice, "Ouch."

 

[Swordchucks]

"And that's my Christmas gift to you," I declared as I finished recounting the story of how Emma punched me in the face and got herself suspended on the last day before Christmas break.

Taylor's eyes had grown steadily wider as I told the story, but they narrowed at the end. "I thought you said that the smart thing to do would be to keep our mouths shut and let the PRT do their thing." It wasn't a question, it was an accusation.

I laughed nervously because I had said that. Several times. "Uh, yeah, that would have been the smart thing to do…"

"But you decided to antagonize Emma, just when we're about to be free of her and tip her off that her scheme wasn't going to work." The more Taylor talked, the more attacked I began to feel.

"Well, from a certain perspective, I guess…" That was the correct perspective, of course, but it sounded so harsh when she put it that way.

"And what did Agent-what's-her-name have to say about it?" she asked again, somehow picking exactly the right things to dig at.

"Agent Lawson said that I should have found a way to avoid a fight," I didn't mumble. "And she's making me review some manuals next week." That had been an awkward conversation. She hadn't been mad, but she had sounded disappointed, which was worse. The fact that next week - the week between Christmas and New Years - was an unofficial 'no work' week for the Wards which meant that my assignment was a punishment, if a light one.

Taylor let out a huge sigh and then leaned forward, grabbing me in a hug. "It's alright," she mumbled, though I think it was as much said to herself as it was to me. I hugged her back because, frankly, I needed it.

"How did you get out of there without them noticing you didn't have any marks on you? Wait, you didn't get yourself kicked out of Arcadia, did you?" Taylor asked after she sat back a few minutes later.

"I kept an ice pack on it the whole time. I pretended it hurt really badly and refused to let anyone look at it," I said. I had experienced a brief moment of panic in the nurse's office when I realized that the pain was gone and all the physical signs of the injury were gone. I could have tried to pretend that Emma was such a weakling that she'd been unable to hurt me, but everyone had seen the big red mark right after the attack. "And no… mom came to get me and she and Principal Blackwell had a chat. There was… a little yelling."

"Your mom isn't mad at you, is she?" Taylor asked quietly. Somehow we'd ended up in the reverse of our typical positions and she was trying to brush my hair. It wasn't going well as my hair liked to make tangles out of itself.

"Kinda, but not because I was fighting. She got Blackwell to agree that if she just didn't write me up then mom wouldn't make a stink about how they were letting me get bullied. Zero tolerance policy or not, I don't think Blackwell wants to deal with that when she can just not do anything and never have to see me again." Mom had been more annoyed with me than Blackwell, but mostly because I hadn't planted Emma on the ground for daring to mess with me. She knew as well as I did that this way worked out better, but she was always weird that way about fights.

"Are we still going to be able to get together after Christmas?" she asked as she worked on some of the small knots she'd made by trying to brush the rat's nest I called hair. I grunted because it hurt, but I kind of liked having it messed with so I didn't stop her.

"I haven't been told I can't go. Amy would be pissed if we didn't make it." We had kind of vague plans to meet up after family stuff was over since we all had the next week off.

"Do you think Victoria will be there?" she asked as nonchalantly as possible. She really wasn't a very good actress, though.

I chuckled. "If she is, she will probably have Dean with her and they'll be glued to each other."

Taylor made a gagging noise. "I am not a fan of Dean," she grumbled.

"You like Dean, you just don't like the fact that he's dating the girl you have a crush on." I tried to make it teasing because Dean really was likable. It was almost infuriating how hard it was to dislike him, even if I wanted to root for Taylor in the non-existent love triangle.

"I'm going to pretend I can't hear you," she said primly.

oOoOoOoOo

Christmas was nice. My family went to see my grandparents across town and we had dinner together on Christmas Eve before exchanging gifts. I got mostly clothes, though I did receive the customary hundred-dollar bill I'd gotten from them every year since I could remember. There were no cars with bows on them or any of that silly stuff, but I also got a nice new winter coat out of the deal.

There was a bit of extra celebration because my parents had shared with them that I had won an essay contest and with it a coveted spot at Arcadia. They weren't in the know about powers, and I was fine with that. It wasn't that I didn't trust them, but the more people that knew, the more risk there was for everyone involved.

Christmas Day, we spent 'as a family', which was kind of boring but nice in its own way. Mom and dad were both off for the whole day - a rare occurrence - and we made a big breakfast that turned into a kind of combination breakfast and lunch. I would have called it brunch, but I was pretty sure that brunch had its own kind of menu while this was literally just breakfast served as an early lunch.

In any case, I spent my afternoon in the old shed in the backyard putting the finishing touches on the gifts I intended for my friends. Taylor, Amy, and I had agreed on a spending limit for our gift exchange of a few bucks, but I intended to cheat a little bit. One of the non-team things I had been working on with my powers was precise control, both of effect and of the size of the object I could manipulate. When I had started, my limit was around the size of my smallest finger and I'd managed to improve on that a little bit.

I melted down pennies and old nails - separately - to get a couple of metals that I could draw into thick wire using my power and then weave together into bracelets. I couldn't have managed the wire in short sections, but somehow taking a long enough piece of it seemed to satisfy my power's limitations. Somehow. Polished, the bracelets looked nice enough, though I had no idea what metals were really in them. I still made a matched set of three as 'friendship bracelets' for gifts. They had cost me, literally, pennies and were kind of cool in a shiny, chunky way.

I stuffed them into small boxes, wrapped them up, and had them ready to go a few days later when we finally all had freedom to meet up.

"How was Christmas?" I asked Taylor when we met up at the bus stop. We'd both gotten off transfers so we could take the bus to Amy's and were sheltering in the little covered area while we waited. I'd actually opted to miss the first bus so that we could ride together.

"Boring," she said, though she didn't look unhappy. "Dad actually had off the whole last half of the week and all weekend. So that's been nice, I guess."

"That's good. Mine are kind of rotating, but we did get all of Christmas Day together, which was good." I spotted the bus down the street a bit at that point and we lapsed into companionable silence for a bit. Being out in public together had gotten a little awkward because we couldn't really talk about most of the stuff that we really wanted to talk about.

The front door of the Dallon household opened to reveal a grinning Victoria. "Mistletoe!" she declared and held a plastic sprig of the stuff above my head. Quick as could be, she gave me a kiss on both cheeks and then did the same thing to Taylor while giggling the whole time.

If I was looking dazed, that was nothing compared to Taylor's expression.

Victoria vanished in a fit of giggles, leaving us to find our way to Amy's room on our own. We managed, somehow.

"Is she okay?" Amy asked when we walked in. I turned to look behind me and Taylor was still blushing with her eyes wide.

"Yes, your sister just… Well, it's…" I didn't really want to out Taylor, especially considering it was just a bit of a crush.

"She did the mistletoe thing, didn't she? She's been doing that to everyone for a couple of days, just to get a rise out of people." Amy sighed, though she was smiling when she did it.

"Yeah, it's a bit…" I looked for words and I couldn't find them.

"Victoria is a bit much, sometimes," she grinned and poked Taylor in the side.

That broke the tension and we had a pleasant afternoon chatting and hanging out. My bracelets were well received and I liked the little bowling pin keyring that Amy got for me to commemorate our first date. Taylor, the nerd, gave books. Mine was titled Do It Yourself Coffins for Pets and People.

I gave her a strange look and she just grinned, shrugged, and declared, "I thought of you when I saw it." That both explained everything and nothing.

"Are you two excited to start Arcadia?" Amy asked a little later as she flopped half onto me on her window bench while Taylor claimed a part of the floor.

"A bit," I admitted and Taylor made a similar noise.

Amy's fingers traced across my arm. "I'm going to like seeing you more," she said, a little bashfully. Then she looked up to Taylor. "Oh, and we need to find you a girlfriend, too. That isn't my painfully taken sister. What's your type?"

There was a moment of awkward silence after that. Finally, Taylor blurted out, "I don't actually like girls. It's just… Victoria…"

Amy's eyes went wide in horror, but not for the reason I expected. "Oh. Oh, no. I'm so sorry." Then she scrunched her eyes shut and started taking deep breaths in an effort to calm herself down, I assumed.

I took her hand. "Amy, what's wrong?"

It took her another moment or so, but she finally regained her composure. "I'm so sorry, Taylor. I think it's my fault."

"How is it your fault?" Taylor asked in confusion. I was right there with her.

"You know how when this all started, I talked about how multiple-triggers can get… weird? Like, they can trade around personality traits and stuff?"

"Or how ours can mind control us to get what it wants?" I supplied. That really was the big thing we tried not to think about too much.

"Yes, or that. But the switching around… well… I haven't been thinking about it. I never even really noticed it was gone, but… well, I used to have a huge crush on my sister." Before either of us could really react to that, she rushed on. "I'm adopted. I was five or six when I came to live here and, well, you've met Carol. She isn't… she's not a very good mother. She has other good qualities, but not… those. Anyway, Mark's really depressed, too, so he's not very present and Victoria is the only person in the house who…"

I pulled her closer to me in a one-armed hug. Taylor stayed where she was, listening to what Amy was saying with dawning horror.

"It was just a crush, but then, after we all got powers, it was just kind of gone and everything was better between us and… now you're dealing with it, and I'm sorry," Amy finished lamely.

Taylor looked conflicted for a few moments before she got up and came over to give Amy a hug from the other side. "It's okay. It's… not the best thing in the world, but I'd rather be the one dealing with it than you. I don't have to live with her and… well, it's better than the mind control thing. Now that I know it's a stupid powers thing, I can deal with it better. It's not even that bad, it's just a bit embarrassing."

Amy was crying. I was crying. Taylor was crying. We were all crying. Then there was hugging and then a little laughing and eventually the tension broke.

 

[Swordchucks]

It didn't take long for me to understand why Wards were paid a salary rather than an hourly rate. Between Christmas and New Years, I found myself hanging out at the Wards base almost as much as I was at home and defining what amount of that was 'on the clock' and what was not would have been nearly impossible. There was a minimum time commitment, but it was so low that I had a feeling it would never really come up for me. What was probably more likely to come up were the overtime and add-on rates we could charge for working outside of our normal hours or performing certain services we had specifically negotiated fees for.

During that same time period, I did get together with Amy a couple of times to hang out, but we mostly just listened to music or scrolled through our phones while being near each other. It was very nice, but not at all like I had always assumed teenage romances would be.

Part of that, I realized, was me. I was dating a fifteen year old while being fourteen, twenty, or possibly twenty-one, depending on how you counted time. I didn't feel like I was twenty most of the time - I still felt fourteen - but I had been a shitty twenty-year-old recluse so maybe that was a lot of it.

In my first time through, my life had basically stopped at fifteen. That's when Leviathan had attacked and the full horror of what I had helped create became clear. Everything after that was kind of a blur of self-loathing and obsession that culminated in my trigger and subsequent trip back in time. I had done things and experienced things during that period, but none of them had been important. Not like things seemed to be important now, anyway.

So, I was physically a teenager and dating a teenager and my head was screwed up. I didn't want to be predatory, so I kind of defaulted to being passive in our relationship and that left Amy to lead and she'd clearly not dated before. Not that I had, either, but that line of thought was getting circular. It left us in a kind of perpetual 'taking things slow' state which didn't bother me at all. Like I said, it was very nice.

Taylor was also at the Wards HQ quite a bit, too, as it was structured kind of like a hangout club with the intention of enticing teen heroes to hang out. If you had a bunch of teenagers with powers, what better way to keep them out of trouble than to give them somewhere to be where they were unlikely to get into trouble? If it also made them look at the government in a more favorable light and kept them nearby for emergencies, so much the better.

There were officially no Wards activities for the week - other than my punishment detail of reviewing training materials on de-escalation techniques - but Triumph was happy to run us ragged in the hopes that we would eventually pass the mandatory physical fitness exams. Aegis was also happy to put Taylor through her paces in hand-to-hand training, and I was starting to think that there might be something between the two of them. He was nice enough and after learning the truth of Taylor's crush on Victoria, I hoped that he would at least give her a shot. She deserved a chance at something remotely normal.

Things went well right up until we started school the first week of twenty-ten at Arcadia… then they continued to go well, which was a trend that started to make me nervous. Ever since I had come back in time, nothing had gone well for too long at a stretch without exploding somehow.

Arcadia was a nice school and the contrast with Winslow was striking. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but there was fresh paint on the walls and everything that was supposed to work - like light fixtures and doors - did.

I found myself milling around in an auditorium with around twenty other girls and a few boys that were transferring in from all over the greater Bay area. The group seemed to be overwhelmingly made up of a couple of body types - scrawny and tall or scrawny and short - and most people had long dark hair, as well. It was easy to see the effect the PRT was going for. Just because a deception was blatant didn't mean it wasn't also effective.

"Welcome, everyone, to a new semester at Arcadia," a smooth baritone voice called as an older black gentleman walked down the aisle and climbed onto the stage. He didn't bother grabbing a microphone. "If you can't hear me, come on down a bit closer," he said, though his voice did seem to carry well.

"I'm vice-principal Adams, and I'm the one that looks after your grade. I'll follow your year level all the way through graduation, so feel free to come to me with any issues. I look forward to getting to know all of you over the next three and a half years. Give or take," he chuckled like it was a joke, though I didn't quite get it. "There's a brief orientation video that we show everyone when they arrive, so sit back and pay attention. There might be a quiz after."

He laughed again, though I wasn't sure there had actually been a joke in that, either. True to his word, a video started to play on the projector screen at the back of the stage. It was accompanied by a heavily produced audio track that tried just a little too hard to be cool.

What followed was about half an hour of painful sketches and presentations about the way the school worked and the rules we needed to be aware of. The most important takeaway from the whole thing was that no one was supposed to try to figure out the identities of Wards, and gossiping about it could get you in trouble or even expelled.

Arcadia ran on a half-day schedule that was kind of crazy, too. In the mornings, there were typical academic classes. In the afternoons, the school hosted study halls but also encouraged students to take part in 'a wide variety of exciting, real world opportunities'. There were programs for Brockton Bay University, Brockton Bay Technical Institute, and a number of work-study programs. It all amounted to an excellent opportunity to let Wards come and go as they pleased. I found out as much when I met with a counselor after the presentation and was informed that my 'application' to study office management with 'Abrams Consulting' had been approved.

The only downer was that I only had one class with Taylor and one class with Amy. My other two classes - because they somehow managed to fit four classes into a half day - included no one that I knew.

Other than that, Arcadia was… well, fine. It was nicer than Winslow and the teachers certainly seemed to care more, but high school was high school. I had eventually graduated in my other life - not that education was terribly important in the aftermath of Gold Morning - so I was hopeful that most of it would be a review and I could focus on cape stuff instead.

Between the orientation assembly, waiting to talk to the counselor, and filling out about a million forms, the only time we had with the other students at Arcadia on our first day was at lunch. Lunch was also the last part of the 'regular' day before everyone was officially dismissed to their afternoon assignments. Given that many students were leaving afterwards, anyway, a lot of them were allowed to skip out on it entirely which explained why they could get away with only one lunch period for the entire school.

"Taylor, Madison, over here," I heard as we walked into the lunch room. I turned to find that Victoria, against my expectations, wasn't one of the people that cut out early. Instead, she was at a table with quite a few other students.

She then proceeded to introduce us around to several other people, the only two of which I recognized were Dean and Rory. There were a lot of names thrown at me in a short period of time, but I had always been good with names and I memorized their faces to go with them. I did my best to pretend that I didn't know the two Wards, and eventually Amy grabbed my hand to haul me away from the group to actually get my lunch. Taylor drifted along in our wake.

"Sorry, she's a bit much," Amy apologized as she pulled me along with her, her hand not leaving mine. I wasn't going to complain.

"Enthusiastic," I agreed. I remembered all of the rumors about Glory Girl in the other timeline being an idiot. I'd interacted with her enough to know that she wasn't dumb actually dumb. In fact, she was rather intelligent, but she could also be impulsive and over-eager. That led to incidents where she could have been labeled a moron.

I gave Amy's hand a squeeze. "Are we…"

She looked down to our joined hands and then back to my face with a faint blush on her cheeks. "Yeah, that's fine. I don't care if people know. Do you…"

"It's cool," I declared, well aware that I was also blushing. Really, the whole fourteen or twenty thing would have been better if it was consistent or even if they averaged out somehow. At that moment, I was entirely fourteen.

"You two are adorable, but I'm hungry," Taylor cut in as she breezed past us with a small grin on her face. It just made me blush harder.

After lunch, I reported to 'Abrams Consulting' which was, shockingly, a front for an access tunnel into the PRT building and spent the rest of the day either hanging out in the Wards area doing the small bit of homework that I had or training in the gym. As newbies, Taylor and I hadn't been formally introduced to the public, so we wouldn't be on patrol or doing events anytime soon, but we did have a lot of mandatory training sessions to get through. That was definitely more interesting than my regular classes, if only barely.

School had started back on a Tuesday and the biggest thing happening that week was my meeting with the PRT Department of Public Image on Thursday afternoon. Taylor's would be Friday, and I was pretty nervous to be going first. My fellow Wards had a wealth of advice, though I hesitated to call it good advice.

"You have to look the weasel in the eye and establish dominance. It's the only way," Dennis declared with a thick accent that I assumed was supposed to be Australian. I was pretty sure he would get bashed over the head with a didgeridoo if he actually let someone from Australia hear it, though.

Rory cleared his throat loudly. "Don't take advice from Dennis," our fearless leader declared solemnly.

"In general?" I asked, trying to stop myself from snickering at the byplay.

"Well, I would take all of it with a grain of salt, but specifically with regards to PR and public image. How many hours of training did they hit you with for changing your name at the announcement, again?" Rory gave Dennis a meaningful look.

Dennis, for his part, just rolled his eyes. "They wanted to call me Clockstopper. Like Crimestopper, but with clocks. Or… a lot of other stuff. You have to admit that Clockblocker just rolls off the tongue. People remember it."

"Dennis is sort of right, though," Missy chimed in. "I mean, not about the name he picked, but you have to push back on them or they will stick you with something horrible. They wanted to give me a candy fairy theme."

"It couldn't have been that bad," Rory tried, but I could tell that he wasn't entirely convinced of that.

"No, it was worse. It had rainbow colored wings and big fake candy pieces on a poofy dress. It was hideous and made me look like I was five." The loathing in Missy's voice made me feel a little bad for thinking that the outfit didn't sound terrible. I could probably do an adorable and childish persona better than I could do something more adult. Then again, Missy had been - and still was - the youngest member of the Wards and the only girl for a long time, so she was certainly fighting for respect, even if it was just in her own perception.

"Oh, I know, your name should be Funstopper," Dennis declared. "Because you can turn off power effects and stuff. Or Fun Ruiner." When we had discovered that I could end the effect his power had on things, he'd been a little weird about it, and this seemed like an extension of that.

"Be nice, Dennis," Rory warned.

"I am being nice," Dennis defended. "I don't want her getting stuck with a boring name. Oh, how about Clamjammer? Then we can match-"

Dennis was cut off by Missy giving him a rough shoulder to the side of his arm. "Even if she did go with that, why would you suggest it in front of the rest of us? They'd consider us all accomplices! We'd all be stuck in PR training until this time next year."

"Fine, fine. I'm just trying to help," Dennis grumbled, though from the little smile on his face, I could tell that he'd accomplished what he was trying to do.

Once he wandered off, Rory bumped his knuckles against my arm. "Hey, don't stress about it too much. They'll work with you and they're usually open to suggestions. Just… feel free to say no if they suggest something you don't like. You're probably going to be stuck with it until you hit Protectorate age."

I took a deep breath. "Yeah, no pressure or anything."

 

[Swordchucks]

No matter how long I stared at it, it just didn't get better. I tried tilting my head a bit and… no. That didn't help.

"So, what do you think?"

I raised my eyes from the page to look at Landon, the sharply dressed man that had greeted me on my arrival at the Department of Public Image offices within the bowels of the PRT. The hallway outside had been plastered with posters of the current Protectorate and Wards roster so they clearly had some successes under their belt. Looking at the sketch I had been presented with first, I kind of wondered how.

"It's… colorful?" I offered diplomatically.

"Yes, that's part of what we're going for here. Bright colors play well with children, and our messaging to kids is one of our most important missions. It helps them see the Wards program as a helping place if they should need it later," he said smoothly.

"For… children," I echoed as those facts tried to reconcile themselves with others. "Why does the rest of the outfit look like a stripper from Candyland, though?" For an outfit meant to appeal to children, there certainly was a lot of skin showing.

"That also tested well, though with a slightly different demographic."

"I'll bet… and the list here, those are names?" I skimmed over the words at the corner of the sketch. They were all in something suspiciously like Comic Sans, the font of the criminally insane. Rainbow was at the top and they just got worse from there. Sugar Plum? Really?

"Some proposals, yes. What parts of it do you like most?" he asked and leaned in.

I huffed. "Do you have other candidates? I'm not sure I like this one, at all."

Unfazed, he turned a page on the large sketchbook to another. This one was more reserved, with a light gray bodysuit under a gold chestplate that managed to obscure any obvious gender. The arms and legs were protected by golden gauntlets and boots with a helmet covering the figure's head, stopping at their nose in the front but completely hiding the hair in the back. 'Argonaut' had been written below it in stylized script along with a doodle that might have been intended as a logo.

"That's… better, I guess, but it feels painfully generic. I don't think it's very… me?" I said as I looked it over. I could probably live with it, but it really did feel like a concept they had been trying to foist off on someone for a while. Nothing about my powers or even the costume they were proposing seemed to fit the name, either. "It doesn't really fit my powers, but I like the coverage and the armor."

"You might think otherwise in the middle of the summer," Landon noted and then he pointed out some of the areas where it could be customized a bit to be more my style.

"So, is this one better? At least a 'maybe'?" he asked, smiling slightly. He really was handsome, though I wasn't particularly interested. Even if he hadn't been old enough to… well, no, given how young my father had been when I was born, that meant that Landon certainly wasn't old enough to be my father. He was still too old for me to be interested, even with my age-confused status.

I blew out another sigh. "A weak maybe. I don't like it, but it's better than the first one. Do you have anything else?"

"It's a tried and true design for a costume. We actually have quite a few heroes using color-swapped versions of this outfit and it lowers the overhead on merchandise. It also means it's easier to replace armor pieces if you break them or they simply wear out. We did have some more specific ideas for you, though. I suppose…" he flipped the page again.

This page held a figure with a shock of blond hair escaping from the back of a leather skullcap held in place by a pair of oversized goggles. It managed to conceal more of the face than I would have expected and the obvious wig would have made identifying me more difficult. The rest of the costume was reminiscent of a kind of lab coat with a heavy leather apron on top - which were off-white and black, respectively. The name Alchemist had been written on the bottom with a lightning bolt on the side.

"Who came up with this one? Aren't alchemists like a chemical thing? Wouldn't people be expecting some sort of Tinker?" I huffed, offended on behalf of my powers. The first one had been offensive, the second one had been painfully generic, and while this one had character, it was character in all the wrong ways. "I don't like this one at all."

"So you want-"

"No, I just really don't like this one. Do you have any more ideas?" I asked before he could try selling me on Argonaut again.

"Maybe a few. I honestly thought you'd go for Alchemist… but how about this?" he flipped past two sketches to another one. "Not originally designed for you, but it might work."

This one was a more feminine figure in a black bodysuit with dark blue armor panels that were more decorative than actual protective. There were heavy boots that came up to mid-thigh and the top went from bare shoulders to a flared skirt-like region at the waist. There were also long gloves that came up to just above the elbows which gave it a look of armor while also leaving it strangely exposed. Bare shoulders and thighs along with a cutout in the skirt made me wonder once more who was putting things together. The part that gave me pause was something else, though. The figure was posed up against a massive shield with cross-like protrusions it was holding in one hand.

The name 'Shielder' had been written in the corner along with a cross-shaped icon.

"Not the name, but I like parts of the outfit and… I think I might be able to make my power work with a shield…" The object was giving me ideas. So many ideas, in fact, that I almost forgot that they were stealing a member of New Wave's name which… actually, I'd met Eric when I was over at Amy's house one time and he didn't have powers, so the name wasn't his yet. I still didn't want to take it, but it was technically free for the taking. "I like the colors, but I'd like more coverage.." I shared some thoughts aloud as I started trying to puzzle out how I would modify the costume so that it worked better for me. "Can I think about it some more?"

Landon nodded, still smiling. "I'll set up an appointment for next Tuesday. If you have any ideas before then, send me an email."

oOoOoOoOo

"Where did you get that, anyway?" Rory asked. Helper that he was, he'd agreed to help me without even asking what I needed help with.

"I requisitioned it from the armory," I said as I hefted the riot shield. We were back in the Wards training area on Friday afternoon and I had some ideas. "It is something that came up during my consultation with Image and it got me thinking. They won't let us have a weapon without it being tied to our powers, but one of their concepts used a shield as a prop. I think I can do a lot with one but I won't know for sure until I try it out."

"A shield?" he asked. "I can see it fitting in with your powers. You are good at making shields, so playing off that…"

I nodded. "That's the thought. Plus, when I really started thinking about it, a lot of what I can do works better if I have an object to focus on. I can get by using thin air, but it's harder, conceptually."

One of the weaknesses of my power was that I either had to be looking directly at something or have a very good idea of where it was located to manipulate it. Acting on the air was always a little dicey since my power acted weird if there was a living being too close to what I was trying to do. A shield I was holding onto the handle of? That wouldn't be hard at all.

"Are you sure you want to carry it, though? Those things are heavy."

"That's the first test… I think I can…" with a flex of power, the shield started floating on its own. Turning down the effect of gravity on it was easy enough. Nudging it around with kinetic energy was also easy. "There we go."

"Well, at least your action figure will have a cool accessory," he joked and went to grab a bucket of tennis balls from the storage lockers. "Want to see if you can use it for blocking stuff?"

"Yeah, let's see if this is worth doing."

oOoOoOoOo

"I'm ready," I declared as I tromped into the entryway of our house where mom and Amy were waiting. I had on a nice, dark blue dress with some thick tights underneath and some shoes with a little heel to them. I couldn't exactly tell what Amy was wearing because of her heavy coat - it was freezing outside - but I could tell that she'd put on a little more makeup than normal and done something with her hair.

"I'll have her back before too late, Mrs. Clements," Amy told my mother with a smile that made my stomach do a little fluttery thing. She was acting very confident, and I liked that.

My mother just laughed. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do… and if you do half the things I would do, make sure they can't identify you while you're doing them."

Amy's smile might have been a little more brittle at that declaration - my mother had that effect on people - but she nodded anyway. "Shall we?" she asked and I grabbed my own coat and bundled up.

A few moments later, we were standing on our front stoop adjusting to the cold. Amy leaned in and gave me a hug. "Sorry, I just… you look very nice and I wanted to let you know."

I blushed from something other than the cold, but it came with a huge smile. "If you're really sorry, you could tell me where we're going and what we're celebrating," I teased. Amy's invitation to go out had been lacking in details, to say the least.

"I want it to be a surprise."

With a dramatic sigh, I took her hand. "Alright, surprise me."

She smiled at me and I was again reminded that I had no idea what I was doing. In general, but specifically in this relationship. We held hands to the bus stop and then huddled together on the ride to wherever I was being taken.

When people mention the 'Boardwalk' in the Bay, they're mostly talking about a half-mile long strip of land adjacent to the docks which had been turned into a tourist area when things were better. Even as things declined, the Boardwalk stayed 'better' than the surrounding area by virtue of the fact that they had the revenue streams to pay for better security. The Enforcers were little more than a gang, but they did keep the other gangs out of the area.

That wasn't the full extent of the waterfront in the Bay, however. Not even close.

Towards downtown, where the Bay - the actual body of water - was more shallow, there was a long stretch of beach that was popular in the summer with the occasional pier and over the years those areas had been used for a lot of things. During the winter, most of the beach stuff closed up, but some parts operated year-round.

"This is it?" I asked as I looked at the weathered facade of the seafood restaurant Amy had hauled me to. It looked like a nice place, but not so nice that there weren't families eating there.

"Yeah, it's… well, my family comes here on birthdays and to celebrate special stuff, sometimes. I thought it would be nice to bring you here to celebrate something," she said, looking suddenly very bashful.

I gave her a reassuring smile. "Yeah, that sounds nice. What's good here?"

Amy smiled back and we proceeded to have a nice dinner. I was a little worried about paying for it - the prices weren't crazy, but they were at least double what I would have spent normally - but Amy said she had it covered.

"So, what is the big surprise?" I asked after we finally finished eating. My crab cake had been delicious and the Boston cream pie after had been completely unnecessary - but also delicious. Afterwards, we walked out to the short pier that ran out from the restaurant and looked out over the water in the moonlight.

"Alright, so," she pulled out her phone and flipped to a picture of a document. "I'm not carrying it around, but I wanted to show you this."

"Limited license for parahuman healing?" I read aloud. Once the words registered, I looked up and gave her a big smile. "That's great. Congratulations!"

Then she leaned in and kissed me. It was clumsy and I could taste the lingering taste of chocolate on her lips. Noses were in the way and it wasn't entirely centered, but it was nice.

She pulled back suddenly, blushing. We hadn't really kissed before, and as far as first kisses went, it was pretty nice. It was my first kiss in this life, and I hadn't exactly had any from my other life that were worth remembering. "Sorry, I just… I wanted to…"

I took her hand in mine. "No, it's fine. It's good." I leaned in more cautiously and gave her a peck on the lips.

"Will you be my girlfriend?" she asked in a rush and I had to force myself not to laugh at how obviously nervous she was. We pretty much already were, but this would make it official.

"Yes, of course." If I was going to let Amy drive, then I'd let her drive. My mixed up feelings could just go along for the ride.

 

[Swordchucks]

It only took a couple of days of working with it to decide that a shield was 'worth doing', as it were. Once I had the shield in the grip of my power, further manipulation on it was easy enough. Having shield effects appear to 'spread' out from it was simple and it would give me the same kind of misdirection that Gallant enjoyed by making it seem like I needed the shield as a focus.

It also gave me something handy to club people over the head with when I needed it. Or to throw at them, which I got very good at very quickly so long as the shield stayed within my range.

My second visit with Landon in Public Image went more smoothly with no more hideous rainbow outfits and more practical discussions. I had a feeling that I'd been subjected to some manipulative tactics during our first meeting. The bad outfits they had initially introduced had most likely been there to 'anchor' my expectations so that I had something to push back against. If I didn't know better than almost anyone how much teenagers could suck, I would have been insulted. As it was, a bit of manipulation to get me to do the right thing wasn't always necessarily a bad idea.

The main result from our second meeting was that I'd be getting a shield. The final design wasn't settled, but several preliminary versions had been mocked up for me to play with. Big, flashy accessories were very useful for a hero's image since they were distinctive and easy for the public to recognize. Even if the specifics of the design changed over time, being 'the one with the shield' was an easy way to stick out in people's minds.

The fact that shields, in spite of their offensive uses, were seen as entirely protective and defensive by the public definitely helped. It also helped that they were relatively inexpensive to make, even more so because anything used to make mine stand out from the relatively few heroes that used shields was purely cosmetic.

The costume itself had taken considerable more discussion to decide on the final version of. The original sketches showed something that looked almost like a one-piece swimsuit with some armored pieces tacked on in addition to gauntlets and boots that covered most of the arms and legs. It was kind of cute, but I didn't have the figure to pull it off, even with a copious amount of padding. Landon suggested that the exposed parts could actually be a flesh-colored undersuit, but I decided I would just feel too exposed.

Instead, with a flashy shield, I could afford to have a drab costume. What I ended up with was a bodysuit underneath a dark purple tunic with some lightly armored panels attached and some brighter purple highlights. The boots and gauntlets stayed, though they would only provide about the same level of protection as sports pads in order to keep the weight of the outfit manageable. On top of all of that was a visored helmet that left my mouth and chin exposed along with a short fringe of pink 'hair' that came from underneath the helmet to further add to the disguise.

There was a distinctly feminine cut to the suit which I liked, though its style was so far from my taste out of costume that there was little chance anyone would connect it back to me on that basis.

The original name they wanted was Shielder, which I was avoiding for other-future reasons. Eventually, we landed on Bulwark, which I liked well enough. I could get behind the concept of being a defensive fortification for the team, even if it sounded a bit presumptuous. Then again, it had taken Clockblocker a full minute to find a way to make a joke out of it, and even then he'd only been able to come up with 'butt walk' which was pretty lame. I considered that a plus.

Taylor's own visits went well enough and she ended up being called Anima. Her costume was kind of a 'fantasy rogue' aesthetic with a lot of dark reds and leather and a hood/mask combination that concealed most of her face and hair. It was an outfit that didn't hint at her powers, which was probably a good thing.

By the middle of January, we were almost done with our basic 'media training' and ready to be presented to the public as new Wards. Given that our body doubles at Arcadia had been put into place at the same time, taking further steps to separate us as new capes was deemed unnecessary and a date was set. As far as an outsider would know, we could have joined at any time in the previous semester and had just been waiting for the semester to change before being announced.

"Poor baby," Amy cooed with only a hint of sarcasm as she rubbed my feet. "All of that prancing around on stage has to be rough."

I groaned in pleasure as she rubbed at where I was hurting. My new boots had a bit of a heel to them to further disguise my height and learning to move fluidly them was taking longer than I'd hoped. Plus, I just liked being touched - even if she could probably fix all of my aches and pains in a second with her power. "It's totally unfair that your team just lets you not do stuff like that."

"There had better be some sort of benefit from having to grow up in a family of open capes," she grumbled. It wasn't a topic she talked about very often.

"Was it that bad?" I asked gently.

There was a bit of a pause, though she kept rubbing. "Mostly no," she answered after a while. "I mean, aside from Carol's Carol-ness, anyway. There were some bad bits like after Aunt Jess died, though."

"Ah," I answered noncommittally. "That was the Empire thing, right?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "Guy was charged as a minor and he's already out. The Empire said some stuff when he got arrested, but from what I heard, he's a member now. They obviously weren't too upset about it, so don't believe any of that shit they spout about unwritten rules. They only care about them when they're the ones benefiting."

For the life of me, I thought that guy got killed by Kaiser, but Amy would obviously know better than me. "Wow, that sucks," I said softly and pulled her into a hug. Giving up my foot rub to cuddle my girlfriend was a small price to pay.

"Yeah, it's one reason why Vicky takes secret identities so seriously. Me, too. I kind of wish I had one, but that was never really an option." I hugged her harder at the admission because it felt like something she had been holding in for a while.

"There have to be some upsides," I tried. "Like, it has to be easier for you to do the healing thing if you are using a legal identity."

After a moment, Amy nodded hesitantly. "Yeah, I guess. It's… Well, I kind of wish I was a Ward, sometimes."

I made a face. "There's some good stuff about it, but the paperwork… so much paperwork… and it's kind of boring. It's like an after school club in all of the bad ways."

Amy snorted. "I guess. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side."

"That is what they say," I agreed. Then I decided to change the subject. "Want to make out a little?"

"Definitely."

oOoOoOoOo

The final design for the shield was eventually settled. The Image team's main concerns were that it was distinctive and that it didn't end up looking too much like a riot shield, since that would give the wrong message. What I wanted was something big enough that I could use it as a surface to stand - and fly - on. Flying on a platform of air was not easy and a solid platform was much better.

Unlike with my bodysuit, the weight of the shield was a non-issue. Adjusting it to have no weight was an easy use of my powers and with practice I could do it without even looking at it first. The final design was a big oval with panels of what I thought were clear plexiglass with a grid pattern and some LEDs that made it look purple in most lighting. It was something I could change later if I got sick of it but I liked purple.

Our actual introduction press conference was… fine? Afterward, I only really remembered a few things about it. First, I remembered hiding backstage with Taylor as we waited for our cue. She made a really bad joke - the contents of which I couldn't remember - and I laughed just before we were called out on stage. Then there were a bunch of flashes from the photographers and I remember stumbling through a prepared speech and answering some softball questions. Then it was over, just like that.

The nerves leading up to it followed by hours and hours of preparation meant that it went off without a hitch, which was definitely a good thing. Arcadia was a pretty intense school and I was finding myself with a lot more homework than I expected. Having to deal with another punishment detail on top of my regular Wards training and the homework would have been overwhelming. I needed that time for better things, like spending it with my girlfriend.

Properly introduced to the public, it was inevitable that we would end up having our first official outing as members of the wards before long. It happened shortly before the end of January and it was about what I expected, but not in a good way.

"Are patrols always this…" I struggled to find a word to sum up what I was feeling as we finished our walk through the tourist section of the Boardwalk. It was almost four and the sun was still up, though it was getting really cold.

"Cold? Boring? Deserted?" Triumph asked with some amusement. "This time of year, yes. If it were the middle of the summer, we would be getting stopped every few steps for a photograph or an autograph. Once they have your promotional shots ready, they'll give you a stack to carry for trips like this, though they usually encourage you to do the autographs on the spot instead of beforehand."

"It seems kind of… I don't know, shallow?" I said as I finally put my finger on what was bugging me. Admittedly, the bad weather was probably a lot of the problem, though it was easy enough for me to keep the air around me at a comfortable temperature.

"Ah, yeah. Being a Ward isn't very exciting most of the time," Triumph agreed. "But that's part of the reason we exist as an organization. There are plenty of capes that have excitement all the time - they're in the gangs or they're out beating people in up dark alleyways. We're supposed to be the alternative to that."

"I guess, but it just seems so boring." I didn't whine. I really didn't.

Triumph laughed at that and we finished the rest of our patrol not long afterwards. There were no convenient muggings inexplicably close to where the Wards - and not to mention the Enforcers - patrolled, nor did a random villain decide to stage a daring daylight robbery of one of the small shops along the shopping district. I would even have settled for a fire - preferably a small one that didn't destroy anyone's stuff - to spice things up, but no luck.

Instead, what I got was a boring, uneventful patrol just like Dennis and Missy had lamented about many times.

It was kind of a letdown, though I supposed that it was better than doing something stupid like fighting Lung on my first time out.

oOoOoOoOo

Waking up around a week later at one am to my PRT phone buzzing was less of a letdown. I groggily got it to my ear. "'Lo?" I managed.

"Bulwark, you're being called in. I have a van enroute to your location with a backup costume. Be outside in eight minutes. The trooper on board will have more details for you."

The adrenaline that came after that woke me up in a hurry. I managed to acknowledge what I'd been told and end the call before fumbling for some clothes to throw over on top of my pajamas. I didn't have time for anything else and my costume would go on top in any case. By the time I'd stumbled down the stairs and sent off a quick confirmation text to Agent Lawson - who may or may not have been the person that called me, it was hard to tell in my half-asleep state - there was a white van idling out front.

The door slid open and I confirmed that there were actual troopers inside before hopping in, myself. A small part of me paranoidly suggested I was being kidnapped, but someone that knew enough to stage everything up to this point would have been able to snatch me even if I resisted. That was the point of contacting my handler directly, though.

In any case, there was a suitcase with my costume inside on one of the seats, and the trooper in the back helpfully turned around so that I could change. It was more difficult than I expected in a moving van, but I got everything on in short order. My shield was included with the rest, which was nice.

"Some time after eleven o'clock last night, the vigilante Shadow Stalker assaulted a man in an alleyway between sixth and elm," the trooper recited to me while I got dressed. "The first we heard about it was near midnight when the paramedics arrived at the hospital with him. The victim regained consciousness enough to identify his attacker but is currently in critical condition with life threatening injuries. Since then, Armsmaster has made the call that we are bringing Shadow Stalker in, and he's asked for you to support that effort."

My mouth went dry. Sophia had finally fucked up enough that they were going to arrest her and for some reason they were asking me along. "Armsmaster will have further orders once we get to the staging area."

The rest of the ride, I had to fight down a rising sense of nausea. I was about to get into my first real cape fight and while I was - at least in theory - only supporting a joint Protectorate and PRT effort, it could still be dangerous. I kind of regretted wishing for more excitement back on boring Boardwalk patrol.

We were almost there before I remembered that I hadn't told my parents I was leaving and sent off a couple of apologetic texts.

 

[Swordchucks]

My previous interactions with Armsmaster had been brief, which hadn't really bothered me much. I got the impression that as the leader of the Protectorate ENE and a Tinker, he was incredibly busy. When I had talked to him, he was friendly and polite, but he had the air of someone that considered their time to be valuable and tried to make things as efficient for everyone as possible.

Tonight was no different as I found myself standing beside an equally groggy Taylor - Anima in costume- while he went over the situation. "The advance team will be approaching the suspect's apartment here. It is on the third floor." He tapped one blue gauntleted finger against the blueprint someone had taped to the side of one of the PRT vans.

"Anima, do you still have access to your healing power for today?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Taylor answered quickly.

"Good. That's why I wanted you along for this. Some of the injuries left by Shadow Stalker's crossbow bolts have been strange. I suspect she is able to make her weapons at least partially insubstantial until they are inside a target, which will bypass body armor. Given the types of bolts she has been using, taking one to the wrong spot could easily be fatal and your healing might be someone's only hope of survival." He tapped a couple of marked spots on the map. "I'm putting the two of you with the group that's stationed by the back door of the building, here. Bulwark, you're here to watch Anima's back and nothing more."

"Yes, sir," I echoed. It sounded like a lot of effort just to be a bodyguard, but I didn't like the idea of Taylor going this alone so I wasn't going to complain.

"Anima, please do not activate your healing power until ordered to do so. You might need a mobility power to reach your patient in a hurry. I'll have an officer provide you with radios as I understand that you don't have your final helmets yet. You'll be under the temporary command of Trooper Hoskins for the duration of this operation, but any member of the Protectorate team may give you orders as the situation requires. Any questions?"

We didn't have any - well, not any that we wanted to ask, at least - and were soon assigned to a five man squad of troopers. A pair of them wore the bulky containment foam sprayer backpacks that were pretty common within the PRT, but they also had handguns. The other three were holding submachine guns.

"Anima, Bulwark," the one that appeared to be in charge greeted us as we joined them. "Nice night for a stroll, isn't it?"

Taylor snickered politely - or perhaps she was sleepy enough to think it actually was funny - but I was more concerned about how cold it was. I had experimented with climate control bubbles during previous patrols, but I wasn't confident enough to extend them to other people yet. If Taylor was going to be cold, it seemed unfair for me not to suffer with her. I was far more confident in a smaller effect - kind of like a power-produced space heater - which I created instead. It helped a lot and it only took Taylor a second to realize what I had done as she invaded my personal space to share in the heat.

"We move in five," the man I presumed to be Trooper Hoskins declared. PRT trooper armor only had numbers on it, not names. Presumably, it was to protect them from retaliation from villains. Given how paranoid I had become about my own identity, I understood, but that didn't make it any less confusing. "Alright, let's go."

As we walked, I listened to the radio chatter through an earbud. Presumably, when I got my 'real' helmet, it would have the radio functions built in, but making do with a wearable unit was alright. I had been through a class on how to use them at one point, so it wasn't that alien to me.

"Nervous?" Taylor asked quietly, startling me slightly.

"A little," I admitted. How could I not be? Sophia had thought nothing of framing Taylor for a crime - and probably would have tried the same on me if given half a chance - and that was before she was cornered like a rat. I had a bad feeling that Armsmaster's plan was good, but maybe not good enough to account for the level of crazy that we were dealing with.

The alleyway we ended up in did not smell nice. It was sandwiched between two five story apartment buildings of weathered brick. Quite a few fire escapes littered the sides and there were clothes lines that criss crossed between them at various points. No laundry was hanging there now, due to the weather, but during the summer it probably would have been pretty colorful. It would probably also have smelled even worse.

In the dark, it seemed riddled with places that a villain could be hiding, waiting to murder us with a crossbow.

One of the troopers tried the back door and found it opened to his touch. I couldn't see his mouth through the mirrored PRT faceplate, but I heard his voice on the comms. "Back door secure. It was not locked."

Other voices confirmed and over the next few minutes the advance team climbed to the second story while two more squads like ours took up positions on the streets to the front and side of the building where Shadow Stalker's apartment was. In the back, we should have been far removed from her likely escape routes, but I couldn't help but be on edge. Things had just been going too well lately for fate to not throw us a twist.

"Breaching in ten," I heard and took a deep breath as I waited. A long, slow ten count later and there was a distant banging noise. Seconds later, there was the sound of something exploding - barely more than a firecracker from this distance - followed by muffled yelling.

For a heartbeat, the radio was silent then two voices talked over each other. I heard something about the roof. Looking up, I could just make out a figure jumping over the gap between the two buildings. I wasn't alone, either, because I heard Trooper Hoskins voice declare, "She's jumped to the other building. Suspect is headed south."

I turned to the side just in time to see Taylor - Anima - lift off the ground. "Anima in pursuit," she declared over the radio and was off the ground before anyone could stop her.

I cursed - real cursing, not fake cursing - and took off after my friend that was rising straight up at a high rate of speed. Given my surprise, I had to resort to the equivalent of launching myself skyward like a slingshot in order to keep up.

As I rose, I heard several voices telling us to stand down, but Anima was chasing after Shadow Stalker like a hound after a rabbit. If she was going to get in trouble, I might as well be there with her.

I cleared the top of the building and got my flight under control to see that both the shadowy figure - presumably Shadow Stalker - and Anima had already covered half of the building in front of me. I poured on the speed to get closer, but two things happened in rapid succession.

First, the shadow twisted in midair. Second, something dark shot out from the shadow, headed right for Anima. It was just barely inside my range when it struck Taylor high on her leg. I didn't have a shield that could have stopped it in time, though with the crazy waves of energy surrounding it, there wasn't much chance one of my normal barriers would have worked, anyway.

Fortunately, the crossbow arrow… projectile? Bolt? Whatever the thing was called, it just bounced off Anima and I had a momentary burst of relief that she'd picked Glory Girl's power with its forcefield and not one of the other fliers she had on her list.

"Freeze, PRT!" I declared as I powered forward to get at least Anima into my range so I could protect her better. That part was relatively easy because after taking a hit, Anima was keeping back and being more cautious. Shadow Stalker lept away, turning to shadow which let her almost fly on her own. Anima went to pursue her, but she didn't manage to move before I grabbed her shoulder and threw up a sound barrier around the two of us.

"We aren't supposed to be trying to take her in," I half yelled at her. My mind was racing with how to best mitigate the damage and I came up with a plan. "I'm going to make us invisible and silent. You fly faster than me, so I'm going to ride on your back and you're going to follow her. We can call in her location while she tries to run away."

Anima looked like she wanted to protest, but my tone really must have put her off that because she nodded.

I threw myself onto her back and started fiddling with the barrier I had raised around us. Going invisible was something I had worked on a few times and while it was normally pretty complicated, it was much easier to do if we were going to be flying since any distortions were much, much harder to notice against an empty sky. The initial complication of it - not being able to see any of the light I was bending away from us - was solved by warping infrared light into the visible spectrum once it reached the inside of our bubble. It wasn't the greatest for detail or cold objects, but picking out large objects and people was easy enough.

Anima took off now that things were adjusted and we hovered about six stories up as we followed Shadow Stalker's mad flight. For someone that technically couldn't fly, our quarry had figured out how to move very quickly with long, impossible jumps while in her shadow state. There was some limit on that, however, because she kept becoming solid in between jumps - it might have been a limit of her power or being insubstantial meant she couldn't breathe or something. However it worked, she couldn't remain a shadow for more than a certain amount of time at one go which was useful information to know.

It didn't help her escape attempt that the infrared being put off by her body actually got a little brighter when she went into her shadow state, making her stand out to my adjusted vision.

I hit the button on the radio which was still full of chatter, some of which demanded that we respond. "Anima and Bulwark are following the suspect from above. We will not engage. Suspect is turning east toward Lord street along Wagner, still on rooftops."

After a few seconds, there was a clear response from Armsmaster. "Bulwark, continue surveillance. Do not, I repeat, do not engage."

Between the tone he used and the facts of our situation, I had a feeling that we were going to be in for some serious additional training after this. If Taylor had picked a different power and now had a crossbow bolt stuck through her leg, I could only imagine that it would have been much, much worse.

"Acknowledged." On the other hand, something good had come from that brief encounter. I decided it was better to tell the boss. "Armsmaster, I believe I can stop her from phasing through objects if they are within my range."

"Acknowledged," was the only response.

We continued to follow Sophia across the rooftops for a while. She tried doubling back a couple of times or ducking literally through buildings, but the combination of our invisibility, height, and the fact that the cold streets were deserted made it nearly impossible for her to hide from us.

"I'm sorry," Taylor said after a while. Riding on her back as I was, I couldn't see her face, but she seemed tense. "She was running and I just reacted."

"I'm sorry, too. It's… well, it's not fair for them to bring us along on this and not expect us to get in the middle of this. Sophia tried to get you in serious trouble and you have a lot of reasons to be mad at her." I tried being comforting, but our positions didn't allow for much of that. "I'm sure there will be yelling later, but the job isn't screwed up yet. If we salvage a win, that has to count for something, right?"

"Yeah, it does," Taylor agreed and we spent the rest of our pursuit in silence except for the frequent updates I radioed in.

We crossed Lord street and headed into the really bad sections of the docks. Eventually, we were in the older section of the docks where the actual docks were. After the collapse of shipping - and the formation of the Boat Graveyard - the fishing industry had also collapsed along with the shippers, leaving dozens of warehouses and canneries vacant and empty. Finding a place for a hideout in this part of town would have been trivial, if you weren't picky about the amenities.

The first warehouse we watched her duck into was actually an attempt to throw off any last pursuers. I called it in and after about five minutes, we caught sight of her sneaking out the side to a second warehouse nearby. If it weren't for the infrared frequencies I was using to watch her, we never would have seen her move.

"Armsmaster, I believe she's settled in the old Paxton Fish cannery. Permission to approach for further reconnaissance." I knew Anima wanted to go, but we were already in a huge pile of trouble. Jumping in without permission was just going to make it worse, though I really wanted to. I was tired of clinging to Taylor - Anima's back and watching Sophia make an idiot out of herself.

"Permission denied. Suspect is armed and dangerous and we're adding more attempted murder charges to her list. Anima, you're going to be needed to patch up a couple of the people in the advance team after this is done."

I could feel Anima stiffen under me and I was pretty sure she'd realized that her actual job tonight had been to do just that and she wasn't because she'd run off against orders.

It was Anima's turn to fumble with her radio. "Is anyone hurt bad?" she asked.

"No, fortunately. There are two troopers that would be out of action for months without your help, but no one is in danger of dying."

She relaxed a little and I gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. More minutes passed and I levitated the shield off my back and sat down on it in mid-air. I needed to stay close to Anima so that the barrier held, but there was no reason for her to carry me anymore.

"We are at the initial staging location. We are approaching the rest of the way on foot. ETA five minutes. Bulwark and Anima, can you help pick out locations for the snipers?"

I took a deep breath. It didn't sound like they were going to let Sophia get away a second time.

 

[Swordchucks]

I licked my lips nervously. The cold was drying me out unpleasantly and the adrenaline had worn off. That left me cold and exhausted, but there was still stuff to be done.

"Anima and Bulwark ready," I said softly into the radio. My sound barrier had been effective so far, but there was no sense testing that. The two of us were behind the cannery, out where the big rollup doors would once have given access to ships carrying incoming shipments that tied up along the concrete pier that thrust out into the water. It was cold and silent now, the debris on the small dock that hadn't fallen into the water or been carried off by looters forming dark, dull shapes against the ground.

I could get all of the back wall into my range, but we needed to be fairly close to it for that to work. I'd tweaked the frequencies around the matter of the wall - and ground and air and everything else I could touch - to stop the weird effect I had seen from Sophia's power. If she tried to phase through it, she would probably be in for a nasty surprise. Once I got the signal, I would be doing the same thing for everything inside my range, which would include most of the warehouse, as well.

Most likely, what I was doing would just stop her power from working at all, but I expected that would be a big enough shock on its own. If it hurt her beyond that? I was having a hard time caring.

When the other PRT teams had moved up, Armsmaster had given the both of us a quiet dressing down, though it hadn't been especially harsh. Mostly, he had emphasized that we would be discussing the matter further once it was all over and how that went would hinge on our adherence to orders for the rest of the mission. He'd seemed annoyed, though it didn't really seem to be entirely directed at us.

This time, our orders were clear and explicit. We were present in order to keep Sophia from out the back of the cannery by making that wall impossible for her to phase through. There were snipers covering the other parts of the building, so the rear was the only really open path and getting a boat into place to cover it wouldn't be anywhere near as effective as just having me do it.

"What if she ends up coming out that way, anyway?" Taylor asked nervously. I think that after the last incident, she was being justifiably wary about the possibility of conflict.

He paused for a brief moment, his visor somehow giving the impression of a calculating stare, before replying. "It is possible that she will somehow end up running in your direction. In that case, I would urge you to avoid her. Shadow Stalker is a seasoned criminal that has been active for well over a year. Some of her targets have been experienced fighters so we have to assume that she knows how to handle herself. I want you to understand that the most important thing for the two of you is to not get hurt. If she gets away tonight, that isn't great but we will get her eventually. She doesn't have the kind of support network that she would need to evade capture for long, so if it's a choice between her escape and either of you getting injured, let her go. You are much, much more important than she is."

Anima frowned and I had a feeling my own expression wasn't positive, either. Sophia had directly struck against the both of us in our civilian identities and I didn't like the idea of letting her go. At all.

"Yes, sir," I agreed. Despite my personal feelings, what Armsmaster was saying made a lot of sense. I still didn't like it, but the bright side was that any hope Sophia had of getting a sweetheart deal that let her keep doing her own thing as a probationary Ward was pretty much gone. She might, somehow, claw her way into a team somewhere, but assaulting members of the local PRT attempting to apprehend her wouldn't make her any friends.

Eventually, I was pulled from my thoughts by a chirp over the radio followed a few seconds later by spotlights flaring to life in front of the building followed by a voice on a bullhorn. "Shadow Stalker, this is the PRT. We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up. If you give yourself up without further violence, this will go better for you."

A long minute passed, then another. I triple-checked my modifications to the back wall, just in case.

What happened next surprised me but it really shouldn't have.

Shadow Stalker eased open one of the smaller rollup doors and slid out underneath it as quietly as she could. I boggled at the notion - I had been a little obsessed with the idea that she would barrel through the wall in spite of my meddling, and the idea that she would just wedge open one of the ancient metal doors and crawl through seemed alien to me.

Regardless, it was easy enough to lock down the air and ground around her, forcing it to be effectively solid to force and resistant to her power. She bumped into the shell a few seconds later and then tried to spring to her feet, only to find that she was now trapped like a bug in a jar. Even if we were cloaked in my invisibility bubble again, I then made the whole thing opaque from the inside so that she wouldn't be able to see at all - a not unreasonable amount of paranoia on my part - which just made her panic more. I couldn't bring myself to sympathize too much.

"Bulwark reporting Shadow Stalker captured at the rear of the building," I reported over the radio. It was anticlimactic and if she had been a brute or a kind of mover that I couldn't lock down, it would never have worked.

The rest of the night was an exhausting blur. I disintegrated a little of the concrete outside of my Sophia-bubble and made the rest float into the back of a PRT van. I had to ride in the back with her to the Protectorate HQ where the higher grade cells were and then stay on hand while a negotiator got her to agree to surrender in order to be released from the 'tinkertech field' which was confining her.

By the time I finally got home, I was ready to fall over, which I promptly did. I then slept straight through my alarm the next morning and woke up to a bunch of texts from Amy around noon.

They were kind of sweet, going from mild worry to full-on panic to a ramp-down as she apparently got told by someone that I was out 'sick'. I texted her back letting her know that I was 'feeling better' and that we would talk about it soon. I also had messages from Taylor who had been on her own additional adventure to heal some people while I was sitting on Sophia.

I also had a text from Agent Lawson requesting that I let her know when I'd be able to come to HQ because I was about to get a crash course in writing an after action report. Joy.

oOoOoOoOo

I rubbed my temples as I stared at the computer in the Wards area and revised my last line yet again. Agent Lawson had been a big help, but she'd kicked my proposed report back to me three times with suggestions and corrections. She claimed that it wasn't that I was doing a bad job, but that the format was fairly specific. You had to describe things in certain ways and use certain phrases for things, and it was a lot to keep straight.

Taylor wasn't there because when we had eventually admitted that she had gotten shot by Shadow Stalker, she'd been hauled off to the infirmary for a checkup.

"Geeze, they chained you to a desk already?" I glanced up from where I was sitting to find that Dennis was grinning at me. It had been almost a month since we'd discovered that my powers could negate his, and he'd mostly calmed down about it. He was at least trying to get over it, anyway.

"No good deed goes unpunished," I grumbled. "Is it always like this?"

He nodded. "Pretty much. Things are either boring, or they're really exciting followed by a huge pile of boring paperwork." He glanced at the screen. "Just remember, it's PRT policy to never imply ownership of a dildo. You have to use the indifferent article, so it's always 'a dildo' and not 'your dildo'."

I blinked. That sounded familiar. "Uh, I don't think it's called an indifferent article. What movie is that from?"

"One that you're too young to watch," he teased. "Did you talk to Amy yet?"

That threw me for a loop and I forgot about movie references. "Sort of? Why?"

He shrugged. "We have a class together and she was freaking out because you weren't at school. I had to clue in Dean so that he could give Vicky a heads up and she could stop her from ditching school to go find you. You really shouldn't leave your girl in the lurch."

I groaned. "I was half asleep when I got in and then it was after dawn by the time I got home. I kind of forgot to message her." I blew out a long breath. I was definitely not used to being in a relationship and that had definitely been a miss on my part. Then I gave Dennis an even look. "Thank you for doing that. She was probably really worried."

Genuine thanks appeared to be one of Dennis's weaknesses and he fidgeted as he looked away. "Uh, yeah, it's fine. No problem."

oOoOoOoOo

Amy looked confused. "They're very pretty," she said after a moment. The small bouquet of flowers I had shoved into her hands dipped as she looked at them with uncertainty.

"I just wanted to make it clear how sorry I am," I mumbled and gently took her other hand. She didn't resist. "So I ordered something pretty executed for you."

That got me a snort and Amy seemed to be on more familiar ground. "It's… well, I was upset, but it's okay. I know you probably didn't have a choice."

I gave her hand a squeeze. "I was half-asleep or in a panic for a lot of the night, but I should have thought about how you'd react if I didn't make it to school this morning. I remembered to text my dad and I didn't remember to text you. I'm sorry." It would have been easy to use the excuse she offered me, but I didn't want to lie to her.

Amy rolled her eyes and looked around for a place to put the flowers down. She ended up tossing them onto the table so that she could get her other hand free and pull me in for a hug. "It's still fine," she mumbled into my ear. "I grew up around capes and I know what it's like. Just… try not to do that again. I'll try to warn you if I'm going to be out, too."

"Okay," I mumbled back into her collarbone. I was the perpetual little spoon - even standing up - not that I minded.

oOoOoOoOo

"Shadow Stalker shouldn't be a problem for us going forward," Armsmaster declared across the conference table. Two days had passed since we brought her in and I actually felt fully awake again. Getting a call to meet with the boss had filled me with nerves, but he didn't seem upset.

"Once she was convinced of the seriousness of her situation, she was very receptive to discussing a deal, but there is no way that I want her in this city after her assault on the troopers attempting to apprehend her. If circumstances were different - if she were voluntarily coming to us instead of being dragged in after several cases of attempted murder - we might find some common ground, but that is not the case."

"So she'll get to be a Ward, just somewhere else?" I asked carefully, wondering if history really was rhyming with itself, even if it didn't really repeat.

"Possibly. She'll be going to Los Angeles for a program that Alexandria runs to 'scare straight' young parahumans that may be salvageable. If she comes through with flying colors, she might get shuffled off to one of the Wards divisions in a city with a low crime rate and a high degree of oversight. Most likely, though, she will serve at least part of her time in what amounts to a 'work release' program defending a containment zone. Believe me when I say that it isn't necessarily better than being in prison, but we are unfortunately in a world where we can't afford to discard a cape that could be salvageable."

I shuddered. After it had been mentioned some weeks ago, I had looked into what the containment zone assignments were like, and some of them were Hell on Earth.

"What about us?" Taylor asked, finally voicing what we really cared about. Sophia's fate was somewhat interesting, but it didn't really affect us directly. Not anymore.

"I'm going to be assigning both of you to train with PRT squads more extensively. Both of you have powers which could be huge assets for large operations. I think the Shadow Stalker operation would have gone more smoothly if you were both more experienced with following orders and comfortable with the command structure. That's nothing we can't fix with some practice and time, though," he said and then he stopped talking.

"That's it?" I blurted out. "We're not… in trouble?"

Armsmaster sighed heavily. "Do you want to be in trouble? No, I know that you don't. There were certainly a number of mistakes made - many of them on my part - but there's a truth in life and especially in the Protectorate. There's a quote - Bernard Shaw, I think - that success covers for a multitude of blunders. At the end of the day, we caught the criminal and no one was seriously injured -not beyond fixing, at least. If someone had died, this might be a very different conversation, but the truth is that if you're going to mess something up, make sure you still get the job done. No one is keen to assign blame during a victory celebration."

I let that sink in. Basically, we weren't in trouble because everything had worked out. More or less.

"The both of you showed that you need more training, but you both also showed that you have the instinct to try to help. We can teach you to follow orders, but we can't teach you that instinct, so I think we're in a workable position. Let's just try to make sure the next operation you two are involved with is a little less exciting."

Spoiler: Notes

I mentioned way back at the start that this was my NaNoWriMo project for 2022 (and one I actually did by all of the rules) and I managed to cross the 50k threshold in the previous chapter. As presented originally, this chapter was just a sketch of a couple of scenes to finish out my thoughts because I ran out of inspiration. When I did the rewrite/edit, this one got fleshed out considerably to what it is now, but that is pretty much it for this story. For now, at least. I have zero inspiration for more, but it's also a story that I'm happy with up to this point and could see adding to in the future.

I think I learned a few things from writing this one, and I like to think that I offered a unique take on the Wards program that made sense within the world that Wildbow presented.

Thank you for reading along with me.