(Wednesday, February 9 2011)
Had one of her clients found their way into Verthandi's self-styled 'Thinker workshop,' they would probably stop and gape long enough for Lisa herself to taser them. Or maybe she could deploy some of her shiny new containment foam grenades that a shipping company had inexplicably misplaced.
Lack of expertise would likely result in you being trapped as well.
Lisa shook her head, forcing the useless thought out of her brain. Her glorified office-slash-library took up what would have been the master bedroom in her relatively nice downtown Boston apartment, occupying the largest contiguous space that she could separate via a closed door.
The most noticeable attraction was the wall-to-wall corkboard covering the outside windows, holding up numerous photos, newspaper clippings, and printouts all connected by various colored strings. Cliché, perhaps, but in Lisa's experience there were often connections between her investigations and knowing those connections had kept her ahead of the game in Boston for the better part of two years.
A two-by-four bank of monitors perched like some eldritch monster on her expansive desk, as though it was ready to devour Lisa if she leaned forwards too far from her ergonomic chair. Her flailing in such a situation would disturb the several piles of books, newspapers, photos, and other miscellany that covered the desk unclaimed by the computer. Much of that could be returned to its proper places on the bookshelves standing along the remaining free wall space, but not today.
In fact, Lisa was avoiding her office in its entirety today, choosing to relax by eating ice cream and half-watching some Aleph import romcom while lounging on her couch. She had a moderate headache, which was not unusual except that she had gotten very little of her contracted work done last night. Instead, she had been completely focused on her new personal pet project, and boy was it a doozy.
Attempted murder, negligent school officials, failures of parenting… and an extremely dangerous Trump.
Oh, it was certainly true that Phase's power was worrisome, and Lisa was quite sure that WEDGDG and the other Protectorate Thinkers had lost their minds when their power didn't work on their Ward-in-name-only. Lisa had even half-expected them to hire her to surreptitiously observe Phase to see if her own power worked, but they hadn't and that was their loss.
Lisa had still become involved, of course. She was not one to leave a mystery unresolved, and seeing a girl out clothes shopping who provoked only blanks from Lisa's power was far too curious to pass up. Obviously the girl had been a parahuman; with her age and general location, the best bet had been an unannounced Ward.
When said Ward remained unannounced, Lisa had started digging. Phase's power was actually quite limited in its scope, as Lisa was perfectly able to search through the girl's past via mundane means and put together a reasonably complete picture about the situation. Taylor Hebert had been dealt a pretty terrible hand, and now she was refusing to play at all.
Going on a tour of the Wards area had been rather illuminating. While Lisa's power just drew a blank when she used it directly on Phase, it had been more than happy to reveal all sorts of details based on the way her nominal teammates interacted with her. They were not pleased with her refusal to play the game, generally, but they were not really angry at Phase personally. They knew something was up, but few details; it was immediately clear that Phase had told the other Wards practically nothing, and that she was distancing herself as much as possible from the program.
All of this was music to Lisa's ears, because the girl sure as hell wasn't fooling anyone with her little 'Ghost' routine. And Lisa hardly needed her power to notice that Phase had been lonely and depressed, nevermind her best attempts to fade into the couch she had been sitting on.
Model of Phase suggests that —
Lisa clamped back down on her power and stuck a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. Phase, in true independent fashion, was bumbling around with no real plan or scheme. Ordinarily Lisa would just wait for such a cape to either get recruited or dealt with, but even had she wanted to get rid of Phase, the girl's power would make it difficult. Even Accord might struggle to concoct such a plan, which made Lisa feel all tingly inside.
Instead, Lisa was going to do what evidence suggested relatively few people did for Phase — ask the girl what she wanted. Since the answer was, apparently, 'be a hero,' Lisa was more than capable of making the girl's dreams come true. Phase had power in spades but had no backup; Lisa knew everything but often found herself limited in action. Together they could actually make substantial changes in Boston, and enough of those were 'heroic' enough that Phase wouldn't complain.
There were undoubtedly plenty of changes that needed to be made.
First and foremost was the mess of the Teeth's relatively recent return to South Boston. People often fixated on the Butcher as the primary threat, but the other capes and unpowered members created enough problems without their insane leader's help. Prior to the return of the Teeth, that area had been a patchwork of small-time villain teams, none of which had warranted the effort by the PRT to remove them. The Teeth, on the other hand, regularly raided, pillaged, and burned the neighborhood, and Lisa was not alone in searching for ways to curtail their violence.
On the other side of the river, Cambridge had recently gone from being the Travelers' stomping ground to otherwise neutral. In reality, the mercenary team had been dancing to Accord's tune, giving the OCD maniac a buffer between himself and Blasto (a discovery that Lisa credited to her conspiracy corkboard). The nomadic group had recently moved north to Brockton Bay, possibly hired by that friend of Accord's, and the power vacuum was a prime opportunity for the villains displaced by the Teeth — those that had survived, that is.
Lisa was sure that she would get a strongly worded letter from Accord about his plans soon enough, but even the small-time independents were already getting involved in the power grab. Case in point, Phase herself seemed to at least be doing her research, given her involvement several nights ago. The 'Ward' would almost certainly not object to being fed information about locations and habits of the local villains.
And if it meant that Accord's plans encountered some difficulties, then all the better.
Lisa's mind flicked back to the Escher-like mess Phase had made of the Wards regulation and she couldn't help but smile. She had high hopes for this partnership.
"This is so fucking stupid," Missy swore as the Wards filed out of the conference room.
It was a sign of the increasingly tense times that Dean wasn't flexing his newly minted leadership role and chastising Missy for her language. The Youth Guard had gone completely off the deep end, sticking their annoying soccer mom faces into every corner and crevice of the Brockton Bay Protectorate looking for 'concerns,' and being benched was starting to drive the Wards a little bit insane.
Or, as Missy considered the other two girls on the team, more insane.
"We wouldn't be out there fighting, anyways," Carlos said, as though by rote, and Sophia snorted in derision.
"Right, because we need the professionals to go after the fucking Undersiders," she spat.
"And you're going to stop them from teleporting away… how?" Emma retorted.
"I have an idea for an EMP gun," Chris said. "Could try to knock out their Tinkertech."
"If you can finish building it," Sophia said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Besides, Emma can just zap Chariot's shit."
Emma shook her head. "Not through Grue's darkness." The reminder of the power interaction made Sophia practically snarl, to which Emma responded with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
Missy cut off the brewing argument. "It's not like it matters. They're not worth the trouble of tracking them down before they vanish back into thin air. And they've mostly been hitting the Empire, anyway."
"That's precisely the problem," Emma pointed out. And it was — the Undersiders were a case study in how a Tinker could be a force multiplier, making them the most effective hit-and-run group in the city. Their precision strikes in Empire and ABB territory were sometimes not discovered until far later, and usually not by the PRT. And now, emboldened by their successes, they were turning into a real problem for the Empire.
Kaiser couldn't let that stand, of course, but sending his capes to chase ghosts left his borders relatively unprotected. And Lung was never one to let opportunity escape his grasp, meaning that the places where Empire and ABB territory abutted had become just short of war zones.
"Well, Piggot and Miss Militia aren't any happier with our situation than us, but they think that we might be allowed back on patrol soon," Dean said diplomatically. It amused Missy that Dean tried so hard to maintain his 'leader' image even when talking about the rules preventing him from being a leader in the first place.
Missy tuned out the other Wards' annoyed grousing (or in Sophia's case, bitchy sniping) while they took the elevator back towards the common room. The Youth Guard was here, they were sticking their noses into everything, and as far as Missy could see, the only way out was to simply give them what they wanted and wait.
Well, mostly. There was no way in hell she was telling them about her scars.
The only one who shared in Missy's silence, of course, was Emma. Missy had never been truly friendly with the redhead — she saw how Dean's eyes followed the older Ward — but it was hard to imagine her doing all of the things she had admitted to doing while tormenting Phase. Sophia doing those things was more believable, given her violent history as a vigilante and general attitude, but even there Missy couldn't really understand.
Admittedly, she hadn't tried very hard. No sooner had the truth come out about Phase than the Youth Guard kicked down the doors and demanded answers, so it wasn't difficult to connect the Wards' sudden bureaucratic shitstorm with the girl who had run away when she recognized Emma. Their list of complaints was too perfect, their questions too by-the-book to be anything other than the retribution of someone with an axe to grind.
Missy thought Phase's overreaction was a load of shit, and as much as the others tried to hide it behind sympathetic words, they agreed. With the Undersiders stepping up their game and the deteriorating situation in the city, it burned to be stuck on base and telling some stupid glorified babysitter about 'scheduling irregularities' or 'lack of positive role models.' Brockton Bay simply didn't have time for Assault and Battery to be doing PR patrols or for Armsmaster to ride his bike slowly through mostly safe areas.
Sophia started swearing loudly when they got back to the common room, cutting off whatever Chris was complaining about and making Emma fidget. The investigation into their harrasment campaign had wrapped up, and to nobody's surprise, not all that much had happened. Piggot had, apparently, done some creative reading of the rules and assigned both troublemakers to a long list of so-called 'kitchen patrols,' which didn't violate the temporary Youth Guard restrictions.
It amused Missy to no end to watch Sophia and Emma cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, guarding supply closets, gophering for PRT staff, or doing other pointless activities that Piggot could technically assign, but had never used up until this point. Sophia hated those activities with the force of a thousand suns, while Emma just accepted the punishment with a far away look on her face.
'Kitchen patrol' had also started giving Missy other ideas. She had shared some of them with Dean, and he agreed that the Wards could not, in good conscience, sit around while the Bay went to hell outside headquarters.
As usual, the first thing Chris and Dennis did upon returning was fire up the game consoles while Emma flopped down onto the couch and brooded on her smartphone. Missy was about to head into her own room when Emma let out a surprised squawk. "Hey, um, guys," she said, waving her phone in the air.
It was… a PHO thread? And a video (magnified by Missy's power) of an obviously newbie hero duking it out with two villains. The video ended with a sizable explosion and the arrival of the PRT, prompting some confusion from the assembled teenagers.
"I don't get it," Dennis said. "So there's a new independent hero in Boston?"
A worrying smile rolled onto Emma's face. "That's Phase."
Dennis gave her a flat look. "I still don't get it."
Missy, however, had fewer cobwebs in her brain. "Wait, she's technically a Ward, right?" Emma nodded vigorously. "I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to do solo stuff like that. In fact, I'm completely sure. She's going to get in so much trouble."
"I don't think so," Emma said, oddly confident. "Her dad came over to talk to my parents last week, and I heard him discussing how Phase won't go in for power testing. Well, after they were done shouting at each other, that is. The Boston director asked her dad to go down to help, only for Phase to call the guards on him."
Missy was equal parts horrified and interested, because while she couldn't imagine why Phase's dad would do such a thing, she was also very curious about whatever Phase had done to scare away her parents.
"Anywho, I did some digging and found out, yeah, unless you go in for power testing, you're basically useless as a Ward," Emma continued. "But look here." Emma took the phone back and flicked through a few threads, eventually settling on one for the Boston Wards. Missy barely had time to read 'New Unannounced Ward?' before Emma pulled up a wall of text. "According to this post, tour groups met the newest Boston Ward, Phase, as recently as yesterday."
"This is very, ah, enlightening," Dean said diplomatically. "But why do we care?"
"Because, if Phase found a loophole that lets her get out from under the Youth Guard's thumb, we can too!"
Emma suddenly had the other Wards' complete attention. Even the sounds of scrubbing from the kitchen stopped, which served as a reminder that even Piggot was looking for ways around the Youth Guard. The Wards traded disbelieving glances before Dennis leaned in and said, "Go on."
Derek Atkinson, better known to the world as Nebula, was not a man who cursed in costume. It had been a habit he formed during his two years as a Ward, and he certainly wasn't going to change now that he was a full member of the Protectorate. That way lay sloppy mistakes and bad PR, two things Department 24 could ill-afford right now.
Thus, he pulled off his domino mask and dropped it on the desk in front of him before hissing, "Fuck."
Across the desk sat the office's owner in her bizarre ergonomic chair. Laura Smith — Gauss — was tall enough that she had needed to special order the thing to avoid back trouble. Her own visor sat on the far end of the table, and she rubbed her face in response. "Look, Derek, I know it seems strange, but Kamil is right. The hobby time rules were never meant to be used like this, but between that, the fact that the 'no unauthorized patrols' is apparently enforced through Image rules, and Massachusetts' own lax vigilante laws, Phase is in the clear."
"We have a Ward going out at night and getting electronic stores blown up!" Derek curled a hand into a fist but resisted the urge to pound on Laura's desk. "It's our job to help her grow into a proud heroine that people can look up to, and I don't see how we're doing that by letting her run around with no supervision! Can't we do something to convince her?"
Derek didn't even want to mention the absolute mockery of the Wards tour that Phase had ruined yesterday. The PR department had been scrambling like a kicked anthill to clean up that mess, and Derek found it ridiculous that neither Laura nor Kamil felt punishment was 'necessary yet.' Just because the girl had stuck to factual statements should not mean that it was acceptable for her to reveal them to the public!
Laura leaned forwards, resting her elbows on the desk, and to Derek she suddenly seemed to age a decade. All of the enthusiasm, drive, and infectious cheer drained out of her face, leaving behind a bone-deep weary exhaustion. "Kamil and I see two options. In the first, we find some way to twist her arm — arrest her on a technicality, threaten to transfer her, whatever. She runs away and becomes a villain."
"Fine, then we can get her back under a probationary membership and —"
"Don't be ridiculous," Laura snapped, the uncharacteristic vitriol shutting Derek up immediately. "At that point she loses nothing by going to juvie and then just escaping with her power. And I will raze this city to the ground before I let someone send an innocent fifteen year old girl to High Sec or worse over something as inconsequential as insubordination."
Derek sat back and crossed his arms. "What's your second option, then?"
"We do nothing. If she's going to be a vigilante, then it's better to have her living here where we can keep our eyes on her instead of consigning her to a life of crime. Phase is, by necessity, playing by the vigilante rules. Boston isn't particularly dangerous to small-timers and Accord isn't stupid enough to kill someone who is obviously a Ward." Laura sighed, reclining in her chair while it twisted 'comfortably' beneath her. "I believe that asking for tips from the other Wards will bring her closer to actually joining up. Who else is she going to talk to about cape business?"
"This makes us look like idiots," he hissed, ignoring that she made a good point.
"No shit," Laura said darkly. "And after doing a bit of digging on Phase's history, I'm not inclined to disagree with the label."
"That's Brockton, not us," Derek tried.
"Irrelevant, at least to Phase."
A fist slammed onto Laura's desk, and Derek was surprised to see that it was his. "This is insane! The Protectorate should not bend over backwards for a disrespectful, insubordinate teenager! We —"
Laura fixed him with a glare that cut off his tirade instantly. "We caused her trigger event, Derek! It's a miracle that she still wants to be a hero! Kamil and I are doing our best to find ways to ensure that Phase eventually joins the Wards properly, and we're under enough pressure from the PRT and New York that I don't need your complaints, too!"
The two heroes stared at each other for a long moment after Laura's forceful rebuke, only for Derek to break his gaze away and focus his attention back onto his hands. The silence persisted for another minute before Laura spoke. "Look, we're going to let Phase have her fun. She can only cause so much damage as an independent vigilante while following the laws, and Kamil believes that Phase will eventually want a team of her own. When she does, we'll be waiting."
Derek scowled, forcing himself to unclench his hands. "And we can arrest her if she does something actually illegal. It's not like Phase can claim not to have known the rules ahead of time. Then we can force her onto the correct path with a plea deal and put this whole mess behind us."
Laura scowled right back at him, but didn't contradict his statement.
