Abaddon Born(e)

Development 2.1

As the sun started to crest the horizon, and the orange light of dawn started to shine on the drawn curtains of the bedroom I had claimed, I knew it was safe to get up. The previous evening, after stalking off, I’d eaten my food and listened with half an ear to Herb complaining about me for the better part of an hour before he’d gone quiet, likely asleep. I had laid down to go to sleep myself when I had a horrible thought: I was a Noctis Cape, I didn’t need to sleep, and if I did I’d instead review my memories in perfect detail. That, combined with today still being the Worst Day Ever meant I’d probably see some seriously messed up things, maybe revisit all of my traumatic memories, or see enough of a half-forgotten memory that I'd re-interpret what had actually happened based on my new skewed ‘recollection’. Either way, going to sleep was a bad idea right now, so instead I laid there on the bed and planned, occasionally getting up to pace as I came up with and discarded new plans until I realized that since this was still the Worst Day Ever, any plan I came up with was probably going to be seriously flawed. With that I laid down and waited. Doing nothing. For hours.

With the dawn of a new day, and one guaranteed to be better I finally left the room, grabbing a few pieces of leftover sushi from the kitchen when I heard Herb yelp in fright. Stepping lightly, so as not to make a sound in-case there was trouble, I walked into the living room, seeing two Herbs in identical clothing on the couch, and I froze.

One of them glanced at me while the other took a lazy look before rolling his eyes and slumping into the couch, closing his eyes. “Herb?” I asked, as the one who glanced at me looked back in my direction, keeping the other him in his line of sight.

“Yeah?” he asked, tense.

Knowing I likely wasn’t get a straight answer, I still had to ask, “What happened?”

“I showed up,” the relaxed ‘Herb’ informed me, not bothering to open his eyes. “Been waitin’ for a while.” Switching to Power Sight I saw a Purple and Gold Flame coming off of the twitchier Herb, the smaller Flame coming from the relaxed Herb feeding back to the one who responded. the sleepy one possessing all of the alert Herb’s powers, except for Replication.

“Oh,” I said, addressing the other Herb as it all clicked. “You must be the clone. Replicant. Whatever.”

He opened one eye to glare at me. “Excuse me?” he asked, sleepily offended. “I’m Boojack.”

“That’s a yes,” I told him, walking over to extend a hand. “Welcome to the team.”

“That’s a no,” he insisted, the sleepiness vanishing. “I’m Boojack.”

“Are you Herb?” I asked.

“No. I’m Boojack!” he insisted, talking as if I were a particularly retarded child.

I rolled my eyes, “That’s what I was asking.”

“Um. No. You called me a clone,” he corrected.

I pointed at Herb, who looked like he wanted nothing to do with this conversation. “He literally has a power that replicates himself. You’re the first replication. You’re ‘Boojack’, because of course they’d all have their own names.”

Boojack looked over at Herb. “You know, your friend’s an asshole.”

Herb looked disgusted. “No he’s not! Shut up you fucking replicant.”

I winced, turning to my friend. Or at least the original instance of him. “Don’t make it a slur, man, that isn’t cool. This isn’t Blade Runner.”

“You’re the one who called him that first,” he defended.

“Yeah,” I tried to explain. “But not like that. I called him a replicant because he’s a replication of you.”

“Nah,” Boojack defended. “He used a great term. Blade Runner’s the shit!”

“Blade runner isn’t the shit!” Herb responded.

“It’s pretty good,” I chimed in. “Especially for its time, especially when you consider the amount of practical effects they used.”

“It’s boring as shit!” Original Herb insisted.

“It’s an old movie!” I retorted, mimicking his tone. “They move slower. The pacing can drag a bit but it’s more atmospheric than a standard action movie.”

“Nah, I’m sayin’ it was boring back then. When I watched it. When it first came out,” Herb pronounced.

I can’t believe he’s pulling the age card I thought, hating that thought-terminating-cliché.

“No it wasn’t,” Boojack protested. “It was a deep introspection on humanity and the idea of being human.”

“See!” I proclaimed. “Boojack’s got it right! . . . How does that work?” I finished, murmuring to myself. “So they’re not exactly you?” I asked Herb. “They have your memories but different. . . perspectives?” I hazarded.

“Yeah,” Boojack told me. “Yesterday sucked balls.”

“And all that fighting?” I asked. Hopefully I had a less blood-thirsty Herb to help balance out the original. “That sucked too, right?”

“What? No. The fighting was the best part, we got to show off how strong we were,” the replicant smiled. “It’s all that running that sucked.” Or maybe not.

“So, you are your memories, so if you have them all you should be the same, unless there’s some other force at work? Whatever, welcome to the team!” I finished, once more extending my hand.

He looked at it for a second before ignoring it with a shrug of, “I was always here,” before settling back and closing his eyes again. “It’s just this dumbass was keeping me in.”

I frowned, that statement sounded off. “I think his power has a timer.”

“Yeah!” added Herb, “It’s not like I couldn’t have used help yesterday.”

“Then you should’ve taken a few minutes and figured out how to use your Stand after you landed,” he reasoned.

My friend looked thoughtful for a second, then angry. “Oooh,” he said in a childish voice. “Intelligent!”

I looked at the uncharacteristic act from my friend in concern. “Is it bad that I’m siding with your replicant on this one?”

Herb looked at me in betrayal. “Dick.”

Sometimes I really didn’t understand my friend.

<AB>​

​

Herb and I ate the leftovers, discovering that while the place didn’t have power, it had water, and we re-used the soda bottles to have something to drink. Boojack had gone back to sleep as we talked. “I can’t believe I punched a teenage girl,” he opined.

“Yeah,” I responded, not really seeing the problem. “Ya punched a fucking bitch, who deserved way more than that, what’s the problem?”

He sighed, “Still a teenage girl. I, I can’t believe I did that.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I can. We’ve both read the book. You know what she’s done!”

“I know, I know, I know,” he waved off, trying to ignore my point.

“And what she continues to do!” I pressed, not letting him be guilty when there was nothing to feel guilty about.

“I get it,” he said, in more of a ‘shut up’ way then an ‘I agree’ manner.

“And then there’s Sophia, who never gets better,” I continued. “Even through the end of the book she’s a broken, hateful, monster who rejects anyone trying to help because she clings so hard to her ‘predator/prey’ bullshit. She never admits what she did was wrong, even when presented with overwhelming proof that even makes sense in the ideology she claims to believe!”

“It’s not that though,” Herb told me.

Finally, the real reason I thought. “What is it then?”

“It’s the fact that I punched, not just a girl, but a teenage girl!” he reasoned. “You know just, how, wrong that is?”

“When the fuck have you given a shit about either of those things?” I demanded.

“When it’s punching a fucking teenage girl!” he responded.

“It’s not like punching a baby, man!” I shot back, rejecting his premise. “Some teenagers are at least assholes, if not fucking monsters. Some grow past it, some don’t!”

“Let me just feel bad about this?” he pleaded.

“No!” was my immediate response, “Because you punched someone once that deserves to be fuckin’ beaten bloody for the shit they’ve done! I’m really not getting the problem here.”

“Ya know what, let me feel bad about this while you go take a shower,” he proposed instead.

“Fine,” I conceded. “But stop feeling bad about this when I get back!”

The shower was ice cold, but with my immunity to temperature it was more bracing than uncomfortable. I took off my clothes, admiring my new physique and pausing as I wondered exactly how my costume worked. I took it off, but when I activated my Sight I still saw a thread of energy connecting it to my chest. Shrugging and taking a shower, though the soap was all floral scents, I got out and, purely by accident, summoned my costume to me, having it disappear from the rack and reappear on my body, drying everything it touched. “That’s neat,” I told myself as I walked out.

Herb still looked guilty, so I opened with, “You still feel bad about punching that bitch?”

He perked up immediately. “Of course not!” he responded, all traces of guilt gone. That was, weird I thought as I sat back down.

“I don’t either, fuckin’ teenagers!” Boojack called from the couch.

I quirked an eyebrow at Herb, who just shook his head.

“So, you met fucking Oni Lee, I bet that was cool!” he remarked, changing the subject.

“Not really,” I responded, shaking my head. “Dude’s got, like, no emotion. It’s probably from his fucking power. Do you know what his power is?”

He nodded, looking at me in confusion. “Duh, it’s teleportation, but cooler.”

“Nope” I told him, shaking my head. “He’s got exactly one power, replication. Thing is, every time he uses it the original dies. I didn’t meet Oni Lee, I met the something thousandth clone of Oni Lee. Even if I get that power, I’m never using it, and I need you to promise me that you’ll never use it if you get in range to copy it. Okay?”

“But it’s such a cool power,” he whined.

“Herb!” my voice was a whip-crack of command. “Do Not Use That Power! I don’t want you to fucking die, and you have no fucking clue how it’ll interact with everything else? What if the only things keeping his clones together is his power, that means you get one teleport, get ot of range and so lose the power, then you die.”

“Fine,” he conceded. “Yes massa’”

“Honestly, I don’t give a shit as long as you don’t self-terminate through sheer stupidity. Don’t copy powers that could kill you, and will slowly erode away your personality until you’ve got nothing left. I want a partner, not a fucking slave.” I waved toward the steel case that Herb had brought back from his meeting with Cauldron. “So, how did the meeting with the cape-illuminati go?”

“It went. . . fine,” he told me, giving a furtive look to where he’d stepped out into the room from Doormaker’s portal.

“Doesn’t sound fine,” I prodded.

“Let me show you what they gave me,” he deflected, nearly jumping over to grab the case, before placing it on our table, pressing his thumb to the lock and stating, “Contessa’s got no sense of humor” before it clicked open. “It’s the password I set,” he explained. “I think whatever set up our getting’ here wanted to fuck with them.”

That meant Abbaddon, the third entity. I didn’t want to think about the implications as he moved to open it. “Remember the vials?” he asked.

“Yeah, the ones we picked out,” I responded, starting to get a bit excited.

“Remember how you didn’t get any of your vials?” he asked, grinning.

“Yes. Open the fucking case!” I demanded, just as excited as he was.

“Oh come on!” He teased, starting to open it slowly. “Bum bum-“ he started to sing as Boojack yelled “Just open the fucking Case!”

Herb looked let down. “You guys have no appreciation of dramatics,” he whined. “Just enjoy the: Bum bum- now it’s just ruined.” He pouted, plopping down on a seat.

I rolled my eyes, he was such a child sometimes. I turned the case and started to open it slowly going “Buuuuum Buuuuum Buuuuuuuuuuum Bum Buuuuuuum!”

“Uh huh,” he responded indifferently. “Twenty first century fox? Really?”

“What? No. That’s the theme from 2001: A space Odyssey!” I replied, offended. Did I suck that much at singing?

He considered for a second, nodding. “That works, I was going for Paramount.”

“I could see that working,” I conceded as Boojack yelled, “JUST OPEN THE FUCKING CASE!”

“So what’s in the case?” I asked, opening it up and moving next to my friend.

“Our vials!” he announced, motioning inside.

The case, which was foam lined, contained six metal vials, a computer, a keycard, a smartphone, and a small booklet. Looking at the Vials the tops were labelled ‘Overwatch’, ‘Union’, ‘Storm’, ‘Lee’, ‘Cable’, and ‘Healer’. Each was metal with a glass strip showing the liquid inside, each a different color. “Holy Shit, that was my dad!” I exclaimed.

Herb looked at me, confused. “The vials were your dad?”

“What? No! That one,” I pointed to the ‘healer’ vial, “is what my dad picked from the CYOA. If it’s here then he must be too! I mean, I’d hoped he was, but I wasn’t sure, not until now!” I blinked as pieces started to fall into place. “He was that other guy.” Seeing Herb’s blank look I explained. “In that prismatic hell where we were falling. The black and grey thing was him.”

“The laughing thing?” Herb asked dubiously.

“When he’s in a lot of pain he laughs,” I said. “I do the same thing, but I’ve never been that badly hurt when you’re around. Shit, shit, shit, who is he?” I questioned myself, wracking my mind.

“Wait, What?” Herb asked. “You just said that he was your dad.”

“Yeah, but he chose to be inserted as an adult CEO instead of dropped in, and was going to be a Rogue. That means while he’ll still be him, he won’t look like him, and will already have an identity and everything.”

“Well,” he said, thinking about the problem. “You still look like you, right?”

“Yeah?”

“So even if you can’t recognize him, he should still recognize you,” my friend pointed out. “You can still poke around a little, but let him find you. Way easier.”

I sighed in agreement, turning my attention back to the case. We left the vials in their foam cradles as Herb took out the computer and tried to boot it up, but it was out of power. The phone wasn’t, and unlocked at Herb’s thumbprint, the opening screen showing us a map application, leading from our location to somewhere in the trainyard. Flipping through the booklet, the first page had “Entry Code: 68623762678537”, the following pages being contact numbers for services with prices, for everything from body cleanup & new identities to a dog sitter and food delivery.

“This is gonna be useful,” I commented, flipping through, taking pictures of the pages with my phone to add later. Looking over and seeing Herb trying to get away from the map app on his phone without success I posited, “I think that’s your secret base, the one you picked from the CYOA, and the phone won’t let you do anything else until you get there.”

“That sucks!” he cimplained, finally slipping it in a pocket inside his suit jacket.

“What happened when you met them?” I asked, trying to figure out what’d happened. While the booklet was interesting, the electronics seemed a bit. . . lacking.

“Oh, you know. Stuff.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing I shouldn’t have expected him to tell me how he’d screwed up right away, walking over to the living room. “Boojack, wake up, where going to someplace that hopefully has power.”

He was up in an instant. “’bout time!” he declared as he passed me out the door. “This place sucks.”

I followed him, helping Herb repack his case before walking out.

We strode down the sidewalk at a moderate clip, starting to leave the subdivision when my Sight activated. A girl with Grey and Yellow Flames was jogging down the other side of the street. I almost tripped, but kept on my feet as I tried to appear nonchalant, the girl giving the three of us a glance as she kept on moving, her power reaching out in every direction, but the connections were passive, not active, and my copying slid off of the tendrils of her power.

Herb waited until we were a few blocks away before asking, “. . . Was that?”

“Taylor?” I responded. “Yeah, she’s got Telepathy Based Anthropod Control. That’s it. It’s limited to keep her from noticing things below a certain size, and would also probably work on worms, but there’s nothing else. No secondary power for multitasking, or anything like that, it’s just she can connect her mind to bugs, and the completeness of the connection is reliant on her.” I reached down and picked up the ant that her power had connected to on my pant leg, tossing it onto someone’s lawn. “She wasn’t doing anything other than connecting to them, so I didn’t pick it up though.”

“But, she controls them independently!” Herb tried to point out. “No way that’s not a power.”

“Skill, probably born of need.” I argued. “In the book she spent a week in the psych ward because her connections were wide open. She probably forced her brain to adapt, along with her power helping, before she drew it down. I could probably do it too if I did that once I got her power, but it explains why Grue couldn’t do more than general commands when he borrowed it.”

“Damn,” Boojack chimed in behind us. “That’s impressive.”

“Yeah!” Herb agreed with himself. “She’s so on my team!”

I cocked an eybrow. “You mean our team.”

He looked a bit guilty. “Yeah, sure, that.”

“Herb. No poaching capes,” I reprimanded. “I know we’re going at this different ways, but we’re on the same team.”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine, sure, whatever.”

“Do I need to call dibs? Because I will if that’s how we’re playing it.”

“Children,” Boojack rumbled.

“Hey!” we responded in unison, before looking at each other and laughing.

“Okay,” I said after we got our giggles under control, Boojack giving the occasional long-suffering sigh. “So, we’re going to the railyard, which I think is right on the border of Merchant and ABB territory.”

“Two groups who want to kick our asses. Thanks, Numberman,” Herb commented.

“What did you do Herb?” I outright asked him, prompting Boojack to start laughing.

“Nothing happened,” he told me, before turning to Boojack. “And don’t tell him!”

The replicant waved him off. “It’ll be funnier if he hears it from you, ‘cause you’ll fuck up telling him about it.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Not today!” Herb insisted. I shrugged, hoping that since today was better, it wasn’t going to blow up in our faces. “So, between two groups that want to kill us.”

“The ABB will only be after me. They won’t know you were there,” I corrected.

“I sucker punched Lung!” he argued.

“Lung’s not gonna recognize you because it was my ass he was concentrating on fighting,” I shot back. “He knows I had a friend, but won’t connect it to villain you, just a black guy I was with.”

“Just your ass?” Herb teased.

Of course that’s what he would focus on. “It was a really shitty fight”

“All he saw were your eyes,” Boojack pointed out.

“They’re distinctive eyes!” I retorted, to which BJ nodded.

“Besides,” I reasoned. “With all the shit we stirred up yesterday, the PRT’s gonna be out in force, which means they’ll lay low for a couple of days. Well, until Lung gets captured, then all hell’s gonna break loose.” We walked for a few minutes considering what was going to happen, or at least I did.

“So,” I started, addressing another issue to break up the monotony. “The Vials. We’ve got your three, my two, and the one dad picked out. They’re all stupid strong as vials go.”

Boojack hmm’d in agreement. “DM said they were from their special reserve, and we only got ‘em ‘cause Contessa picked them. You know what that means? ‘Cause we don’t.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “They have a collection of vials they made at first before they learned how attenuate the negative effects to cut down on mutation. Between that and the freshness of the materials when they were first made means they’ll probably kill you, but if they don’t? Holy shit. That’s the run that created Hero and the Triumvirate. They don’t use them because of the dangers, both if they don’t use them, and if they do and can’t control the result.”

Herb looked at his case impressed. “And we know these work so. . . Holy shit. What happened when they used them at the end of the book, when Scion wrecks everyone’s shit?”

I snorted in disgust. “They don’t. It’s why I didn’t bother going down that path, even though it would have made a more powerful character. Cauldron play things too close, relying on having so many contingencies they don’t figure out what to do when shit gets really bad, wiping out their base assumptions they made all their contingencies on in the first place. It’s the reason that Taylor has to step in, even though what she has to become. . .” I shivered. Herb shot me a questioning look. “Don’t ask. Bad things happen when you start modifying the brain to increase power potency, and while I’ll keep the Khepri option available, it’s some last resort shit.”

He took a moment to process that. “Fine, so, you know who you’re gonna give your vials to?”

I perked up. I’d planned for this last night, and this was a great chance to see if my plans from then had been flawed. “I’ve got one: a minion master type with super high survivability that’ll be great for Danny, but the other, I’ve got no idea.”

Herb winced. “Yeeeah, Danny’s not the best choice.”

“But,” I reasoned. “If he has powers than that means Taylor won’t have to cut him out and have more of a support structure.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. . . The guy. . . He’s a nice guy,” I nodded. That was one of the reasons I was willing to give him powers in the first place. “But,” Herb paused again. “He doesn’t have the, wherewithal, to. . .”

“Do what needs to be done,” I supplied with a sigh, kinda seeing where he was going, even if I didn’t agree.

“He’s too idealistic,” Herb agreed.

“You’d think working for the dockworker’s union would have gotten rid of that,” I tried to argue, even as my traitorous mind connected dots I hadn’t realized existed, that Herb had read with a glance. “But-“

“But it didn’t.” he finished. “He doesn’t want power, even when it would help him. He thinks he’s being moral by doing things the hard way, takin’ that shit on himself. It doesn’t help anybody, but he feels better not takin’ shortcuts, but with what we need to do, we need all the shortcuts we can get. And if he finds out Taylor has powers. . .” he trailed off, searching for the right phrasing. “When he finds out that Taylor’s done some bad shit to get a lot of good shit done, he has a hard time accepting it. Even when he knows that’s when she needed him most.”

I sighed, nodding. “When he found out she was sneaking out, he locked her in, the kitchen I think? How does that work? Anyways, he locked his daughter, who not even six months previously had been locked in a space, albeit smaller, and had a psychotic episode, in without thinking about the fuck he was doing, because he was the parent, and had the authority, which he was losing, so he felt like he had to do something. Right. Damn. No vial for him. Now I need to find two people.”

“Sorry,” he offered.

I waved away the apology. “Nah, you’re right. Damn, who do we give these two to? These things are crazy, even more so than the standard vials. We’re all like, hey there normal person! Have some superpowers! Have more powers than me.”

Herb laughed, “We did make them damn powerful.”

I nodded. “Nothing I couldn’t defeat, though maybe more than you could. It’s kinda interesting that as the story went on, the number of normal people being heroic dropped to practically nothing? Isn’t that, like, para-privilege or something?”

Herb waved away my concerns, “It’s just they can’t effect the plot, and are too used to getting their asses saved.”

I nodded. “The Superman problem, verging to Jedi problem territories?”

Boojack piped up. “Superman I get, save people enough they get stupid ‘cause they expect to get saved, then mad when they don’t ‘cause it makes ‘em look stupid for bein’ so weak, but Jedi?”

“Right, So,” I started as we entered the central railyard, Herb pointing the way as he followed his phone. “You have the Jedi right, and anyone can potentially be one. They’re superpowered, with the same base powers and different specializations, and their philosophy is kinda fucked after the Ruusan Reformations-” I saw that I was losing him. “Basically, they want to go around and help people, so the government lets them, but any resource the government doesn’t have to use, it cannibalizes for some other department that’s clamoring for the funding, even if they don’t need it. There’s also the brainwashing, and philosophical problems, but that’s why it’s not a full on Jedi problem.”

“This government,” I waved around indicating the city around us, “On a city, state, national, and even global scale has gotten so used to heroes fighting villains, and normal crime, that police forces and militaries have atrophied except for the occasionally paranoid group. They’ve adapted to Endbringer attacks, but only so much as to evacuate or shelter, not fight, so even that is pushing the world towards collapse, which is why Cauldron wanted the Golden Morning, Scion’s rampage, to happen sooner rather than later. But that also means that when shit goes down, and something that is to Endbringers what Endbringers are to capes starts wrecking shit, everything collapses, because everyone pushed it off on the capes, who aren’t ready for shit that bad. When everything goes down everyone retreats to their enclaves and starts raiding each other in the chaos, all telling themselves they could handle the problem if it came for them, and not willing to weaken themselves in the slightest by helping someone else. It’s a ‘First they came for the protectorate, and I didn’t help, because I was not protectorate’ problem that ends with everyone dead if they aren’t forced to fight.”

“So, Taylor-” Herb started.

“No!” I objected, cutting him off. “We’re not trying that unless everything completely goes to shit, and it won’t because we’re not fucking morons. Cauldron threaded that needle, and only managed to not make a problem almost as bad as the previous one because of the very specific circumstances of her experiences. They had to thread the needle, because they let the highway get blown up, the tunnels flooded, their planes wrecked, and their hallways demolished, leaving only the smallest of openings to pass through. While maybe replicable, I’ll be doing my damndest to make sure it never comes to pass.” I commanded.

“Sheesh man, I was just asking,” Herb placated. “Besides we’re here.”

All three of us looked at the abandoned warehouse in front of us, dilapidated to the point I felt like I was going to get tetanus just looking at it.

Boojack voiced what I was feeling, “Dude, Our base looks like shit.”

 

Development 2.2

I had to give Cauldron credit, no one would ever think this was a Supervillain base. Herb checked his phone, which gave a beep and a picture popped up on its screen. Looking over his shoulder I saw a picture of the wall, with circled portions of rust labelled with numbers. While I puzzled over it, Herb gave an “oh” of understanding and walked forward, tapping at the circled points in order. Having done so, a mangled piece of wall, with sharp rusted steel edges waiting to scratch someone, seamlessly parted revealing a keypad. I read off the numbers from the manual, saved as a picture I’d taken with my phone, Herb typing them as Boojack watched. Code delivered, another section shifted revealing a rusted door, which popped open without any input on our part, the lights inside flickering on.

Herb looked hesitant so I went first, Shadow Stalker’s power ready to get me the hell out of there if I had to with a statement of, “I’ll be right back.” Inside was a classily upholstered interior, both functional and aestheticly pleasing, with an entryway leading to a receiving area, leather upholstered chairs around a table set up for meetings. Poking in doorways I say an entertainment room with a big-screen tv, bedrooms for a dozen people, a kitchen, a work area in the back with ample floorspace along with shelves of tools and materials, and more.

“I was wrong, this place is the shit!” Boojack said from right behind me, laughing as I jumped and turned shadowy. “Keep your panties on, I’m gonna go watch some tv,” Hh chuckled as he went to the entertainment room.

“Herb?” I called, getting a response from the computer center, where Herb had docked the laptop and was working on it, other monitors in the place turning on as he did so. “This is awesome!” he practically squeed in excitement, connecting to surveillance cameras across the city. “We’ve got a tap into the PRT, and there’s so many things I could do from here!”

“Sounds awesome,” I told him. “But first, we need identities. How much’ll those run us?”

Herb spent a few minutes navigating menus before he found what I was looking for. “Found it, it’s. . . Damn really? It’s twenty-five k. Each. We don’t have that kind of money.”

I gave him a look. “You work for a shadow organization; you don’t have a line of credit?”

“Lemme check. . . found it, I do, and. . . What the fuck! I’m already two hundred grand in debt? Asshole!” he swore.

Dear god, what happened when he was gone? I thought, trying to salvage the situation. “What’s the limit?”

“five hundred thousand, and the account is registered to a. . . John Blackman. Really?” he told me.

“Good,” I nodded, not sure how we’d repay that, but, with the ptorper powers, it should be simple. “We’ll need three.”

“For you, me, and Boo?” he asked.

“Close, for you, me, and your Stand.” I corrected. “I’ll need them for tomorrow when I register the team. First, I’m gonna want to get the full power-set before I present myself as Vejovis.”

He blinked. “Who’s that?”

“An obscure Roman god of healing, slaves, and fighters refusing to lose. Also, a god of Deceivers,” I smirked. “It fits.” Ignoring Herb’s rolling of his eyes I continued, “For that I’m gonna want to get three different power sets: the first is the flying brick package. I can get that from Glory Girl, she’s easy-

“Blondes,” he nodded sagely.

“Dude, I meant she flies around all the time, so I’ll be able to copy her powers easily,” I argued.

“Yeah,” Herb agreed with a grin. “Blondes are easy to spot, so it’ll be easy, but not as easy as redheads. What’d you mean?”

I stared at him, wondering if he was bullshitting now that I was calling him out, or had he set up that verbal trap on purpose? Screw it, doesn’t matter. “I also want healing from Panacea, and have a plan for that, and Bug Control from Taylor, to make me more relatable and to help her out when possible. A flier can summon a swarm faster than she can.”

Herb looked askance. “So, there’s going to be two bug controllers?” he shuddered. “No bugs in the base!”

I glanced at the fly trying to escape the windows of our base tinted with age and grime, or maybe just mocked up to look that way. “There’s already bugs in the base.”

“No, you know what I mean, no bringin’ in swarms,” he insisted.

“Your stand can turn into any insect ever, how is this different?”

He held his arms wide. “Do you see him doing that? No. And do you know why? Because I don’t like BUGS especially where I SLEEP!”

“Fine man, calm the hell down. No bugs in the base, I’ll keep them under it,” I smirked, laughing at his outraged expression.

He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Thank you. You said you had a plan for getting Panacea’s Power?”

<AB>​

“So. Buddy. Pal. Wonderfulness,” Herb greeted, Boojack watching the tv passively. “We need a really big favor from you.”

“What d’ya need?” he asked, not looking up.

“Blood, Pain, some injuries,” Herb responded. How is that supposed to convince anyone? I thought.

“Wait, what?” BJ asked, dragging his attention away from transsexual teenage midgets. “Why? Wha-What are you doing?” he asked, looking back and forth between us.

“It’s for the betterment of, well, everyone,” Herb reassured him, to the exact opposite effect.

“Yeah, um, no. I don’t care about everyone,” he replied recalcitrantly.

I sighed, leave it to Herb to not be able to reason with his own clone. “Do you want to look like him for the rest of your life?” I asked, jerking a thumb at my unhelpful friend.

BJ snorted, “Fuck no. I’m not him; I’m my own me.” He considered this for a second. “You got a way to change my face? Fine, what do I need to do to get rid of this ugly mug.” He glanced down at his light brown arms. “And make me darker. I’m too fuckin’ white.”

“The plan is that you get hurt and have to go to the hospital, your injuries requiring Panacea to heal, and while she does so I copy her powers as she uses them on you. I’m in the room because I’m pretending to be your partner.”

Boojack looked at Herb speculatively. “Do I get to fuck him up after?” the clone asked. “It’d only be fair.”

“Not until after I get the power to heal him, and even then, you can’t do anything permanent,” I responded without missing a beat.

“Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, why?” Herb asked in a rush.

“I’ll be able to heal you, it’ll be cool. Besides, you wouldn’t ask him to do something you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself,” I reasoned.

“ . . . WHAT!?” my friend yelled, suddenly panicked.

“We’re doing this so I can get a healing power,” I explained. Honestly, he knows this already I thought. “So, if his price is smacking you around a bit, after I have the power to heal you, then it’s no big deal and problem solved, right?”

Herb looked at me pleadingly and got no help whatsoever. If Herb hadn’t had clones, I would’ve volunteered to be the one injured for this plan so I couldn’t understand the issue. Seeing no salvation with me, he turned to Boojack. “Boo, Boo, Boo baby,” he implored. “Um, look. You, pain. Okay. You weren’t there when we were there. There was pain, we got beat up, life sucked that first day. You’re taking a couple hours of slashing. Cutting. Stabbing. Think of it that way. We had a whole day of it, you’ll have a couple hours, tops.”

Sometimes, when one sees an opportunity, one has to take it. “But wait,” I chimed in. “Doesn’t he have all your memories? That means he went through it too.”

Herb glared at me. “Shut up!” he commanded.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, obviously not feeling sorry in the slightest. “I’m just trying to follow the logic here.”

“I had the logic!” he nearly shouted as Boojack countered with “I remember that day. That sucked. What’s your point?”

“Look,” Herb practically begged. “You don’t have to. This isn’t a thing you need to do!”

Boojack shook his head. “Oh no,” he disagreed. “My Stand, Jackhammer, I need to learn how to use him.”

“You have my memories!” He pleaded. “You know how to use it!”

“Yeah, but we’re different in some ways,” Boojack stated with the smug demeanor of someone arguing from a position of justified power. “I need to check.”

“Come on, we can compromise!” Herb beseeched his other self. “How about one punch?”

Boojack snorted in disgust. “Fine, Seven.”

Herb, now hopeful, tried to bargain. “Two.”

His other self-looked at him disdainfully. “Are you really doing this? Eight.”

Herb looked shocked. “That’s not how this works! We’re bartering! We’re supposed to come to a compromise!”

BJ stared back impassively. “Nine.”

My friend tried a different track. “Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?”

His replicant looked back in disgust. “Yeah, now I do.”

“Fine, but if you’re gonna fuck me up, then I’m really gonna cut you!”

I sighed, trying to intercede. “Look, if Herb dies, you do too. Also, while you do have his memories, this will help everyone differentiate between the two of you.”

Boojack looked at me consideringly before finally nodding. “I want a pound of weed. . . and three punches.”

I quickly agreed, “Done!”

“You’re an ass!” Herb declared, looking at his alternate self.

“He’s YOU!” I told my friend.

“You’re pathetic,” BJ chimed in. “So, we good? We both make sacrifices,” he gave Herb a significant look, “so he can ‘help us all’?”

Herb sighed, “So he can help us all.”

“Yeah, I want to help. You’re my friend. . . sss.” I amended.

Boojack smirked at Herb, “See, I’m his friend too.”

“Yeah,” I explained, “You’re technically the same person.”

“Traitor,” Herb shot back.

“Uggh!” I groaned. “You’re the same person!”

Herb pointed at Boojack. “Does that look the same as. . . um, well.”

“YES!” I told him. “You look exactly alike, that’s one of the reasons we’re getting this power!”

“Well,” Herb rallied. “Does that sound like me?”

“If you were stoned? Yes.”

“You’re a dick,” Herb conceited, knowing I was right, trying his luck with his clone. “Are you gonna at least recognize me as the guy giving the orders.”

“As long as they’re fun,” he responded, adding, “And not too much work.”

“Endbringers?” Herb questioned.

“Well that’s just a given. I mean, saving people, I’m getting favors from that shit. Bitches, ya know,” he shrugged.

I gave Boojack a hearty thumbs up when he commented on fighting Endbringers, which got a bit less confident when he explained his rationale. “Yeah, bitches.” I half-heartedly agreed. At least he’d be helping people, and that was the important thing.

“So when we doin’ this?” the clone asked. “’cause if it isn’t right now, there’s some shit I want to watch if we’re not doin’ this right now.”

I checked my phone, seeing that it was only a bit after eight. “Not yet, probably this afternoon. We want to get Panacea in the middle of her shift so she doesn’t remember us.”

Boojack turned towards the tv. “Good,” he grunted, changing the channel. “Heh, fuck yeah, I love Maury. YOU ARE NOT THE FATHER!” he yelled before breaking up in laughter.

Herb and I left him to it, retreating to back to the computer room. “Maury?” I asked him. “Really?”

He looked disgusted. “No, I hate that stuff.”

“But isn’t he, you?” I asked.

Herb glanced out the open door where Boojack could be heard occasionally yelling at the tv. “Ya gotta understand, I don’t watch Maury, or not as a thing that I do on purpose.”

“I don’t think anyone really does,” I quipped.

Herb shook his head sadly, “You’d be amazed.”

There was an awkward pause. “I’m gonna go out, get some food, see if I can spot Glory Girl or Purity flyin’ about.” I said, starting to walk out.

Herb started to say something when we both heard Boojack yell “Oh you lying ya dirty skank. No way he’s the only dick you’ve been raw-doggin’!”

Wincing Herb said “I’ll think I’ll go with you. And maybe shop for soundproofing.”

<AB>​

Getting a bus to downtown was fairly easy, even if Herb laughed the fourth time I double checked to make sure we were on the right side of the street, which shouldn’t be a thing, but fairly quickly we were in the heart of the city, relaxing in a café near a closed ferry station. This one was a Starbucks, and according to the barista was the only one in the city, go figure, but it had outdoor seating where we could sip coffee, eat those little overpriced sandwiches, shoot the shit, and I could keep an eye out for active capes. The place even had a view of Protectorate headquarters if you looked down the street.

As we talked, I played with Cricket’s Acoustokinesis, keeping our conversation from escaping our table while letting each of us hear each other easily over the sound of the city. While the day was young, the heroes seemed to be sleeping in, leading to our current topic of discussion.

“I know it’ll be more complicated than ‘Hey Undersiders, come work for us, your boss is super evil!’ but we could. . .” I trailed off. “You have that, you’re being a dumbass look. What is it this time?”

“Well, one, we don’t have the money to keep ‘em,” Herb listed off.

I winced. “Yeah, they do get several grand each, each month, and way more for jobs, and we’re in debt. Stupid freakin’ Numberman. Can you even hint at what you did?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he waved away, “and two, you’re, well, you.”

“And?” I asked, trying not to get offended.

“Ya gotta remember,” he tried to soothe, “They’re all in it for fun, or to get some things, but aren’t that serious, they’re just enjoying the villain life.”

“Tattletale-“ I started

“Is the exception” he finished. “And that girl, hoo boy, is not someone I want to meet if I’m not prepared.”

I winced. If she read half of what was in my head, even if she didn’t get the entire ‘you’re fictional’, we were screwed. “Right, no way I want to face her until I’m ready or everything’ll go to hell. And yeah, it’s not until the bank hei- no, Bakuda’s rampage that they get pulled into the big leagues. Armsdick tells Taylor that he knows almost nothing about them when they meet in two days. And even then, they’re okay until after Levi visits- no,” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember. “It’s the gala that gets them on center stage, and only because Tom’s giving them so much money to do it, that everything goes wrong for them.”

“Oh, damn, I’m gonna need to hold you back!” he realized, and stopped, not explaining.

“Whhhhyyy?” I asked. With our plans, by that point we’d either be invited to the Gala, or the Undersiders would’ve already been co-opted by us.

“When Taylor fights Lung, you’re gonna want to save her!” he insisted loudly, and I was glad I’d soundproofed our table.

I scoffed, “She’s got that.” Thinking a bit more I added, “And if she doesn’t I’ll build something I can layer with my zones on, to shoot Lung with gravel going several times the speed of sound.”

“No, I meant Armsmaster’s pitch,” Herb disagreed, “we don’t need to help her.”

I scoffed harder, as I realized his worry. “This is Armsdick we’re talking about, I’ve got no worries ‘bout her being flipped. I’ll talk to her later, and use his assholery to cement myself as the actual hero I am. And as for Lung, we humiliated him and ran, he might go harder than he did in canon, hence the preparation.”

Nodding, Herb relaxed, “Yeah. In that case we need to figure out our intros.”

“Intros? To Taylor?” I clarified. “I was planning on doing it the next day, or that afternoon if it’s past midnight.”

Herb disagreed, “Nah, we gotta do it right then. She just saw two sides of the coin, we need to show her it isn’t one.”

My brain stalled for a second as I tried to decode his statement. “Oh, yeah, show her that her mode of thinking is that of a false binary, that’s it’s not Heroes vs Villains. I’ll have to do the same thing with Panacea later, since her not-mom Brandish has been such a bitch about it. That soon?” I asked, skeptical, but his suggestion had merit. “Yeah, better to disrupt the pattern as it’s forming then have to break it after its been formed. Do you have a plan?”

He shrugged, an action that did not fill me with confidence. “Most of one.”

I waited, but there was no more forthcoming. “Would you like to share with the class?”

“Not really.”

I groaned. He was going to be a dick about this. That meant I’d make some plans and then wing it. I was good- okay I was ok at winging it. It was more just rapid creation of new plans then whatever the hell Herb did, but I got by. “So GG is just gonna fly around, like she does. We’ve got a plan for healing, and getting Bug Control is going to be super easy. She’s not as subtle as she thinks and I know where she lives.”

Herb gave me a deadpan look. “That sounded really creepy dude.”

“I know,” I responded, aware of my unfortunate phrasing.

“And the fact that everyone you’re goin’ for are teenage girls makes it worse,” he added.

“I know, but hey, if Purity flies by I need her power for my second identity,” I offered, which would be nice and make sure it wasn’t all teenagers I was going after.

“Second?” he asked. “You haven’t even gotten a first one.”

“I mean cape identity,” I clarified. “Get this, I combine Skidmark’s power, Shadow Stalker’s, and Purity’s. I’ll wear a full body suit, and tell everyone that no, I’m not the lovechild of Purity and Skidmark, and Shadow Stalker isn’t my half-sister so stop asking.”

Herb guffawed in laughter, “Oh that’s fucked up. I love it!”

I smiled back. “Thing is, I need a name. Mine tend to be fancy, allusions, tell too much, or sound kinda corporate. You’re better at street sounding names, and this persona is gonna be a lot more villain than hero, for when I need to do things that are kinda questionable.” I looked at his amused expression. “I know, I’m a horrible racist. What’ve you got?”

Herb thought for all of three seconds before declaring, “Boardwalk.”

I blinked dumbly. “You’re gonna have to explain that one.”

“Well, Boardwalks are active when it’s dark, and have lights, and people move on them,” he elucidated.

It clicked far too well. “And this is why I asked, it’s too perfect. Boardwalk it is!” I said, giving him a half bow from my seat.

I grabbed us another pair of coffees and we relaxed and just watched the world go by.

<AB>​

“I wonder how they get to it? Is it flying cars?” Herb interrupted my people watching.

“Huh, what?” was my witty retort.

“The Protectorate,” he indicated, waving an image at a PRT van with its purple and black coloring floating over the waves towards the government-sponsored cape’s base.

“Forcefield,” I told him, pointing out the slight discoloration against the tame waves. “They extend it to let people on or off if they’re not flying.”

“That’s cool.”

“Eh,” I responded making a kinda gesture. “Defense-wise, yeah, but it puts them at a distance and dehumanizes them, making people have to go to the downtown parahuman response team office instead of the main one if you want to get anything done quickly. It’s a kind of pseudo-nobility thing where to even get into the real office you have to get permission from the lower office. It’s the kinda thing a good PR department would nix in an instant, but they probably got overruled.”

We tracked the van until it was a dot against the water.

“Honestly, can we make that our base?” Herb asked.

“Dude, we just got a cool base,” I chastised. “And didn’t you listen to what I just said? Right,” I corrected myself, connecting the dots of his unspoken assumptions and implications. “What would hamstring a Hero might be an asset to a Villain. Still wouldn’t work. Besides Leviathan wrecks it, takes it and slams it into the rest of the city. We’re inland so we should be fine, but it gets wrecked.”

“Yeah, I know,” he responded defensively. “But then we take it for our own!”

“Did you miss the part of the book where they cannibalize it and integrate it into PRT headquarters?”

“Yeah, but what I’m sayin’ is, we get to it first and use it for our own stuff!”

I looked at him skeptically. “Okaaay, how do you propose that without breaking the Enbringer Truce? Because they jump on it right away.”

“Eeeeeeh, we still have to work under that bullshit?” he groaned, taking an exaggerated sip of his coffee.

I hated it when he whined like a petulant child. “Until we have a way to reliably kill the fuckers that ruin everything,” I reasoned. “And that’s some end-game shit. But until then yeah, we have to at least pretend to play nice. Your bosses can do the ‘end justifies the means’ BS because they’re shadowy as shit. Stealing the rig? Not shadowy, like, the opposite of shadowy. That fucker glows.” I sighed, “We don’t pull that until we’re ready to face the world. Technically the good guys aren’t supposed to do that kind of thing either but, yeah, fuck Armsdick.”

Herb crossed his arms, honest-to-god pouting. “I never get what I want.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need!” At his look of extreme disappointment, I felt bad. “Sorry.”

He shook his head, bad mood gone as fast as it appeared. I’d have worried it was his Shard messing with his head, but he was always like this. “Channel it,” he told me before looking thoughtful, “Do they even exist here?”

I shrugged, “No clue, they might get it from Earth Aleph.”

“It’s probably better there,” he observed.

“You mean without the kaiju? Yeah, probably.” A thought struck me. “Did you ever notice the complete lack of any named media in the book. Like, at all?”

“I think it’s a publishing thing,” he gestured towards the Starbucks. “’cause it exists, but product placement is a thing you have to be careful if you want to get your book sold.”

After a bit more I saw a flicker of white and gold against the overcast grey of the sky and my Sight activated, turning the distant shape into a brilliant comet of White and Gold, leaving a trail across the sky. I saw two powers, the first a Force Field, it was weakened by one good hit, but not actually dispersed, and was the source of her flight and strength instead of any muscular enhancement. The other was an Emotional Control Aura. Togglable and adjustable, it acted to bring out emotions that would help the wielder, though the power couldn’t precisely choose which one.

My own power struck, like a flaming snake a mile long, and snatched off a bit of her Flame, pulling off a section and slamming it into my chest in an instant. This one felt like a stiff breeze blew through me, a new fire appearing in the metaphorical inferno that blazed in the back of my mind, a mental construct that I only now realized existed.

“That was fuckin’ cool!” commented Herb, staring at me, and the area around me.

“What?” I panicked, looking around to see if I was manifesting anything new.

He gestured towards the flying heroine. “The thing with Glory Girl, I can’t copy that audio-thing you’re doin’ but I’ve got your Power Sight and that was cool. What’s the range on that thing?” he asked.

“Um, visual?” I guessed. “I lost my handle on Ziz’s power when I lost sight of her, same for Lung. Not sure if it works with cameras.”

“Pfft,” he waved, “that’s easy to check.” He messed around with his new phone before bringing up an image of Alexandria fighting the Simurgh. “Try this!”

I watched the video as not-superman tried her best to take down the multi-winged angel to no avail for a minute before handing it back. “Sorry man, it’s just a phone to my power. Would’ve been cool though.”

He shrugged, putting his phone away, “We tried.” Turning back to me he commented, “It’s always weird to see your fire when you do that.”

I looked at myself, but my power didn’t work on myself, so I couldn’t see my own Flame. “What is it?”

“It like, wraps around it and engulfs it, and you’d think it would overwhelm it a bit, and it looks like it does,” he explained, using expansive arm movements. “But it doesn’t. It just kinda disappears into you, but when you use the power it flickers back and gets bigger. Like the sound thing is white and green right?” I nodded. “Yeah, it’s been there the entire time, try droppin’ it.” I did, both of wincing as the world around us got a lot louder. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the honking of mid-day traffic right in front of us.

Bringing back the bubble I asked him “What did you say, I couldn’t hear you?”

He nodded. “Didn’t know you were doin’ that much. I said when you dropped the sound, the fire disappeared, most goin’ out but some goin’ back into you.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed, standing up and gathering up our trash. “First tier of my power gives you as many uses as you see the power used. Second trigger is infinite use, so it saves it for later. I’ve got what I wanted, and if GG’s patrolling her sister’s probably on-shift. Let’s get those ‘buffalo wangs’ Boojack wanted and head back.”

“Why ya gotta say it like that?” Herb complained. “That sounds so ghetto.”

“I’m just quoting him verbatim, he’s your replicant,” I shot back, heading inside.

 

Development 2.3

We were walking back through the trainyard, bag of ‘wangs’ in hand and Herb was still complaining, even if he had shifted topics. “Why couldn’t we’ve seen Purity?” he opined.

I stopped, looking around. “It’s overcast dude, she gets her power from bright light. Means she has to marshal her power on days like this. You’re not gonna have the chance to see her every day.”

He gave a forlorn sigh. “You know what would help save my world? Seeing her.”

I just looked back, unamused. “What is it with you and fucking white supremacists man?”

“You know that, deep down, all those chicks love me,” he stated with deep conviction.

I started walking again, the sooner we got home, the sooner we could moving forward with the plan. “She and Cricket were pretty clear. They hate you. Well, Purity hasn’t met you, but still considers you to be of an inferior race.”

“Again,” he reasoned, “her thinking I’m inferior will make it all the better when I get with her.”

“Um, no,” I corrected, “her thinking you’re inferior will mean you’re not going to get there. Full stop.”

He looked at me with the same sense of disappointment that I felt for this whole conversation. “Ya know, this defeatist attitude is not good for you. How are you gonna be a hero if you keep sayin’ things are impossible.”

I sighed deeply, this back and forth we were having made no sense whatsoever, and I was ninety percent sure he was enjoying the hell out of it. “Well, for starters, I’m not going to date a white supremacist, though if we’re keeping things even, I wouldn’t date a black supremacist either.”

He shook his head, taking a tone that suggested I was the one being thick in this situation. “No, what I’m sayin’ is it seems like a challenge.”

“’Cause it is”

“Exactly,” he stated with surety.

I amended, telling him, “An impossible one.”

“It’s not an impossible one,” he argued. “Improbable, not impossible.”

“Ok, yes,” I gave, trying to end this conversation. “It’s improbably, highly improbable, and you’re efforts are almost surely wasted-“

“-Until they’re not!” he finished.

“What about her kids?” I asked, annoyed that I was even entertaining the concept.

He grinned broadly, “Then I’ll be the dad they really need!”

I tried to place this on the timeline. “Before or after Kaiser gets offed, because there’s no way he’d be fine with that.”

“Oh. After. Obviously. No way he’d want a half-black man raising his kids, especially since I’d be better at it then he is.” Ignoring my comment of “like that’s a high bar,” he continued, “Hell I might have to off him just because.”

I winced at my friend’s plans of murder over poontang, but nevertheless offered, “If you need help, I’ll back you. Just, make sure she likes you first. And wait until the city has gone downhill, right now it’d draw way too much heat.”

“Maybe we could stop that from happening?” he theorized. Really? I thought. This is what makes him want to save the city? “But I don’t have a lot to offer her right now,” Herb mused. “And I need to do it before she goes back to him.”

I couldn’t help pointing out some missing details. “And do you know when that happens?” At his look of realization, I trawled my memory, finally remembering the pertinent details. “She shows up with metalhead at the villain meeting to talk about Bakuda’s rampage, so you’ve got like, two weeks, tops. I don’t remember the exact day.”

“Shit, I gotta work fast,” he told himself as we reached the base.

I walked inside, calling to Boojack that we were back and we had his ‘wangs’.

“Mauri’s such a bitch here!” was his response. “He’s got a stupid ass ‘emotion detector’ that shows how bad they feel, and keeps the fuckin’ golddiggin’ skanks from comin’ on the fuckin’ show! And they keep on talkin’ ‘bout superheroes & shit!”

“My heart bleeds,” I deadpanned. “You have Herb’s memories right? Why does he want to have sex with Kaiser’s ex-wife?”

“You want to bang Purity? You want to bang Purity. Why? Just, why?” he asked disgustedly. “That’d be like puttin’ you’re dick in a blender.”

“Made of light. And racism,” I added.

“No,” Herb explained, with the visage of someone describing nirvana. “The idea, that every time you sleep with her, knowing she might kill you the next day, just, damn.”

“You need help,” I told him, Boojack nodding in agreement. “Either way Boojack, eat your wings, then we can get this show on the road.”

He looked down at the open container of wings then back at me. Not breaking eye contact. He brought one up and very, very slowly took a bite, slowly chewing it in exaggerated slowness. I gave him an unamused look. He took another one, and was starting to take a third when Herb walked over and stabbed him in the chest.

I shot to my feet in shock. “What the hell you ass!? We needed to get him there and then hurt him!”

“He’s the ass!” he explained, pointing at BJ laying on the floor, hand holding the wound. “Did you see how slow he was eating?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose as I helped the bleeding Boojack to his feet. “Manifest your Stand” I told him, a ram-horned figure appearing behind him, glaring at Herb, flat teeth grinding behind a shaggy beard. “Okay,” I told BJ, handing him a knife. “Now stab Herb in the arm.”

“What?” my forethought-less friend asked as his clone stabbed him, BJ’s own wound healing as he did so. “Ow, what the hell!”

“No.” I told Boojack as he moved to stab Herb again, before turning to the bleeding original and telling him “Now punch me.” Taking the, what I’m sure he thought as righteous, blow on my arm, the bruising blow stopping the bleeding from his own stab wound, but not visibly healing it. “Stop!” I commanded as he reared back to hit me again. “Now BJ is uninjured so Panacea won’t see any oddly healed wounds and you’re not gonna bleed all over the place as you follow us. That was stupid, don’t stab people outside of the plan. Shut up and let’s go.”

“But my wings!” Boojack bellowed, drowning out Herb’s response.

“You were being an ass, you can eat them when we get back,” I informed him, pushing him out the door.

“It was in the plan!” Herb insisted as he followed. “Just a bit early!”

“We need to get picked up in the industrial sector, on the other side of the city from the fucking trainyard, and not leaving a blood trail to your secret fucking base,” I shot back. “Now shut up and grab the car.”

Herb facepalmed. “I did not think of that. Wait, what car?”

“You’re base has a car,” I told him, tossing him the keys. “The garage is on the other side of the workshop.

Boojack glared over at his shoulder at Herb. “I’m gonna enjoy punching you.”

“Both of you shut up!” I commanded. “Dear god, you’re worse than fucking teenagers!”

<AB>​

Herb brought the car around, a rust red Prius. After much complaining, and a bit of shoving as all three of us, none of us small men, wedged ourselves in, we were off, and a half an hour later were pulling into an area in the new industrial part of town without any peopl. Piling out, I looked around and didn’t see anyone as we ducked into an alley.

“Okay,” I told the two of them, Boojack standing a few feet away from Herb, “Let’s do this.”

“Do I have to?” Boojack asked.

“Yes!” Herb told him, lunging at him and stabbing him. Boojack shuddered as he took it, and more as Herb carefully stabbed him in places that would bleed, but wouldn’t be life threatening, adding heavy punches and breaking a few ribs, careful not to puncture anything. It was, quite frankly, hard to watch even if I knew that Boojack was just a power-created clone of my best friend. By the end Boojack was a beaten, bleeding mess on the ground, staring hatefully up at his progenitor who was covered with his blood and bleeding heavily.

I used one of the burner phones I’d taken from the base to call 911, sounding terrified as I talked about how a bunch of skinheads held me down while they beat my boyfriend before they left, and please send someone I think he’s going to die! I motioned for Herb to leave, who nodded and got in the car, peeling out. Well, as much as one can in a Prius.

The operator told me to stay on the line and I gave a panicked but inarticulate reply as I muted the phone. “You okay?” I called to Boojack walking over. At his look I amended, “Okay, stupid question. Ambulance should be here in a few minutes, you good for that?

“Can they come faster?” he winced. “Because, he stabbed me a few more times while you were talking, and I think one of them was a kidney shot.”

“Got damnit, Herb,” I growled before unmuting my phone. “Oh god, there’s so much blood!” I called out with a slight quiver to my voice. “Is there anything I can do?” I pleaded.

“Apply pressure to the wound,” the man on the other side.

“Which one?” I cried, “There’s so many!”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Whichever one is bleeding the most. Help should be there soon.”

I gave another effeminate cry of terror as I calmly kneeled down and applied pressure to his side, holding the phone with my shoulder and cheek. After a minute or two I heard the distant sirens, and an ambulance pulled up, the paramedics jumping out and running towards us. One of them looked at the bloody scene and swore heavily, running back to get the stretcher. The other bent down, putting his hands on another injury, asking me if I was injured.

“Nothing more than maybe bruises,” I told him earnestly. “They held me down while they, while they, oh god!” I fake broke down.

The other EMT came back, and the two loaded him up, taking the stretcher back to the Ambulance. “Can I come with him?” I asked looking around. “My hunny-bear doesn’t look that good!”

The two glanced at each other before one told me to get in. Climbing in I took his hand, telling him. “It’s okay honey, the EMT’s are gonna make everything all right.”

One had gone to say something to the driver while the other was l reaching back to get something, so neither saw Boojack open his eyes to look supremely uncomfortable. “Ya know what dear?” I told him, patting his hand before putting it down. “Rest, conserve your strength. I’ll be here for you.” Boojack nodded before closing his eyes as the paramedic turned around with a tube of something.

“I’m gonna need you to sit there,” the other man told me. “I know you want to help, but we need to work fast ok?”

I nodded as the other EMT came running around, jumping inside and closing the door as the ambulance jerked into motion. As they worked frantically I felt a little bad, since they were working this hard to try to save someone who ultimately didn’t need their help. I comforted myself as I told myself that their efforts would lead me to gaining healing powers, which would in turn let me heal a lot more people than they could.

They worked hard, Boojack’s enhanced body keeping him alive as we got there. He was rushed into the room, where he was hooked up to IV’s, the staff only noting my presence to tell me where to sit and to ask his blood type and allergies. After a few minutes Panacea walked in quickly, looking first at the unconscious Boojack then at me, asking, “Can I heal him?”

I nodded Seeing her, Panacea’s power a Bone White and Blood Red Flame of not healing, but twinned Biological Understanding & Biokinesis. Her Flame wasn’t the blazing inferno of her sister, but a constrained campfire that barely extended past her form, though the intensity of it made my eyes water. The flesh sculptor put her hand on his arm looking shocked at the extent of his damages as she started to heal them.

My power snaked out, meeting hers as it closed his wounds, taking some it for my own, her power a warm glow in my chest. Concentrating on it, trying to See the bit of her power inside me started to give me a headache, but I realized in a crushing bolt of despair that, like her sister, I only got half of the package. I could heal, and I could sculpt flesh, but I had no intrinsic understanding, nor could I diagnose problems I didn’t know about. I might be able to knock people out with a touch, but unless I figured out exactly what I was doing I was just as likely to shut off their heart. Damn I thought as she finished up, trying to tearfully thank her as the doctor that came in with her hurried her off somewhere else, there goes almost a full third of my plans.

After she left Boojack looked over at me. “You get what you need?” he asked.

“I got enough,” I responded, frustrated. “Let’s get home.”

We checked out, paying six grand, the fact that I did so in cash raised an eyebrow but provoked no other comment. We took the bus back to base, Boojack not saying much for most of the trip. “All that gay stuff. . .” he started, trailing off.

“Was to sell the character and make sure I was there when she healed you. I’m into chicks, and even if you were one, you’re old enough to be my father, which is a bit much, even for me.” I told him, looking out the window as the bus drove on. “Herb and I joke about it, but it’s one of those funny ‘cause it’s never gonna happen things. It’s why I stopped when I saw you getting uncomfortable.”

“’kay. Thanks,” the man said. “So, when am I gonna get the weed?”

“I’ll steal some from the Merchants tonight,” I promised. “I need some practice with my flying brick setup.”

He nodded. “Good. Thanks.”

“No prob,” I told him. “If Herb couldn’t replicate himself I was planning on having him injure me instead, having you around lessened the risk, as he could remake you if we screwed up.”

There was silence for a minute before he asked, “Fuck, really?”

I glanced over to see him staring at me. “Yeah, I told Herb I wouldn’t ask someone to do something I wouldn’t do myself. I don’t lie to my friends, you included.”

“I’m not him,” he huffed, looking away.

I snorted, “Try that to someone who can’t see your soul.”

His head snapped around so fast it almost looked painful. “What!?” he hissed.

I tapped my temple. “I can See powers and Know them, and while I can’t read it enough to figure out someone just from that, I know people. Social niceties I have problems with. Didn’t at first, but hey, both of our childhoods sucked, just in different ways. But who people are deep down? I figure that shit out fast, and hoo boy has that lost me a lot of friends. You know that.”

I sighed,”Either way, I see your power feeding into his and vice versa, and I’ve seen you act. You’re still my friend, just a different aspect of him. You want to call yourself something different? That makes total sense with what I know of Herb. You’re him, and you’re not,” I laughed. “Which is just the kind of koan level of shit he says all the time, but it’s how you guys process things.” I sighed, looking back out the window. “Herb is Herb, always has been, so an Herb that isn’t Herb can’t be Herb so he musn’t be Herb, he must be something else, even if he isn’t. No matter how you look at it though, Herb is my friend, no matter his name, or his perspective.”

We rode in silence, him not saying anything else, the walk from the bus-stop to our base quiet. As I was about to put in the code for the door he put a hand up to stop me. “What you said. . . Thanks. You’re my friend too.”

“No prob Boojack,” I told him, keying the code in. “Let’s see what Herb made for dinner, then I’ll see about getting your own face.”

<AB>​

Herb hadn’t made dinner, as he had gotten wrapped up in checking out the Parahuman Online Forums, trolling for information. He started putting something together as Boojack flopped down on one of the dining room chairs, eating his reheated wings, and I recounted the events of the day while grabbing one of the base]s portable consoles and looking up information on melanin production and plastic surgery.

“So you’ve got Panacea’s power!” he crowed as I got to Boojack getting healed. “That’s so ridiculous!”

“Nah dude, I’ve got half of it. I can do the Fleshsculpting, but I’m doing so blind. For instance, Boojack, give me your arm,” I instructed. He reluctantly handed it over and I grabbed a kitchen knife, slashing lightly at him with it. Holding onto his wrist as he tried to jerk it back. Reaching into my power I pulled on the Fleshsculpting and willed it to heal, for all of the newly severed tissues to rejoin. The flesh knit itself back up, leaving his arm bloody and unmarked.

“What the hell!” he yelled, taking his arm back and rubbing the healed section.

“I need practice,” I told him, “And a demonstration. I’d use it on myself, but that’s the one thing the power can’t do. Besides, you’re borrowing my disease immunity so you don’t need to even worry about that.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment then offered his arm again, Herb stopping as he was cutting up some carrots to look between us and shoot me a questioning glance. I gave a minute shake of the head and Herb shrugged before going back to meal prep. He has a really low opinion of himself sometimes I thought.

“So,” I said, turning my attention to Boojack’s arm, concentrating on what I had read about melanin formation and distribution, trying to reach into the skin on his arm to darken him like he asked. “I’m doing this blind, but I’m 90% sure can heal by forcing something to go back to the way it was,” I told him. I tried feeling something for feedback purposes, but I got nothing. Going over what I’d read I tried to imagine an increase in melanocytes, the various melanosomes to individual keratinocytes, and all of the other things that determined skin pigmentation.

A whispered “Holy Shit” caught my attention and I stopped, looking at the skin of the arm I was working on as it had turned to pure obsidian. Herb had stopped and Boojack was looking down at his own arm which he pulled free with a mixed expression of fear and awe. “I think ya overdid it,” Herb commented, staring at his replicants pure black arm, with even the palms and the skin under the nails the color of pitch.

“Oh, shit!” I commented, looking at it. “I might have accidentally given you Melanism.” Both of them looked at me in confusion. “It’s like the opposite of albinism, I can probably tone it down if you want.”

BJ shook his head, “Fuck no, this shit’s fuckin’ awesome. Can you do the rest?”

I shrugged, grabbing his arm and trying again, this time conceptualizing all of his skin as a single continuum, applying what I’d done to his arm to the rest of him, trying to apply a general healing effect to it as I worked, hopefully catching any mistakes I’d made. Letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding, I opened my eyes to see Herb & BJ, one with light brown skin, the other obsidian, but otherwise still identical.

With his skin done, I focused on his face. “Okay,” I told him. “This is at the same time way more complicated, and way less. I can micromanage the shit out of this, but that’s something I want to experiment with on someone who isn’t my friend. And I wouldn’t feel bad about messing up. Like a rapist pedophile or something. The way easier way would be to just describe what you want, and I try to make it work. Worst case scenario,” I pointed to Herb. “I just use him as a template and reset you.” I think I can do that, but there’s no need to mention that I might not have that capacity.

Boojack looked at his new skin and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll just tell ya what I want.”

After another hour of tweaking, taking a break for dinner as Boojack got used to chewing with a different jaw, I’d finished. Boojack had had me tweaking his facial structure, hair line, and a handful of other things as I reached a happy medium between a young Nelson Mandela and some rapper named Shabba Ranks.

When I’d finished he’d looked at himself in a mirror I’d grabbed from the bathroom, checking out his new face. “You are one ugly asshole,” commented Herb, looking at his replicant.

BJ shot a considering look back at his creator. “Really?” he asked. Herb nodded emphatically, and Boojack smiled broadly, turning to look at me. “It’s perfect!”

 

Development 2.4​

​

I stretched, releasing the tension that had built up using a new power when I couldn’t afford to screw it up. Even if I really had screwed the pooch, BJ would be back in a week, but we’d still be down an effective fighter if he was on Herb’s level. “Okay, that’s done. I need to go out for a bit.”

“What for?” Herb asked.

“Well, for starters, I’ve gotten two out of the three powers I need for Vejovis, and, if I can get the third, I can sign up first thing in the morning. That means taking a trip over to Taylor’s place, as knowing her, she’s doing some last-minute suit tweaking, which’ll hopefully let me snag her power.”

Herb looked concerned. “Okay, but we need to talk about your habit of stalking teenage girls.”

“What?” I responded, thoroughly confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, you spent the morning trying to see Victoria, then you hurt someone just to see Amy, and now you’re trying to look in Taylor’s windows. You’ve got a problem, and the first step is admitting it.”

I sighed. “One, I was only doing that to get their powers. Two, we were also looking for Purity, who’s older than I am, and three, I don’t have a problem!”

He nodded sagely, “So you can’t even take that first step. That’s sad.”

I threw my hands up in frustration, “Whatever man, I’m heading out.” I paused. “Oh, and Boojack, I’m gonna go pick up your weed. Just make sure not to do anything life threatening to Herb in case it’s a couple of hours ‘fore I get back.”

BJ chuckled as Herb shot me an accusatory look. “Asshole!” the non-replicant declared.

“I learned it from watching you!” I responded as I walked out the door.

<AB>​

Using a combination of Shadow Stalker’s Shadowform and Glory Girls flight I became a dark spot against the black of the night, shooting across the sky like an umbral comet. Circling around Merchant territory, it was only a matter of time before I found some dealers sitting on a street corner. After watching them for a few minutes peddling some drugs to some kids who were probably in their mid-teens, I waited until one went to relieve themselves down an alley. Sinking behind him, shifting my outfit to a dark cloak, leather armor, and a black mask while waiting for him to finish, I phased in, applying a chokehold that had him out in seconds as he struggled uselessly, scrabbling for a knife which pinged off my forcefield and armored costume uselessly, dropping to the ground as he lost consciousness.

Lifting him to a nearby rooftop I patted him down, relieving him of his wallet, a bag of pills, some white powder, and several small bags of weed. Looking at it, trying to get a feel for how heavy it was, weed was lighter than I thought it would be for its volume. I sighed as I pocketed it and his cash, dropping the powder and pills, realizing that, if I was gonna do this, it would be way easier to follow them back to their base, but I was working on a time-limit.

Looking over the passed-out Merchant, I shrugged and reached down, pulling the costume off of my hand to get skin contact, calling on my Fleshsculpting to try to heal him up a bit, not doing anything specific but trying for a general healing effect.

It took a minute, but the track-marks in his hands healed up and the bags under his eyes tightened. A couple lesions healed as well, and the gauntness in his cheeks filled in a bit. He still looked like shit, but not quite so bad, and I considered my good deed of the day done as I took off in Shadowform once more.

Passing over the city, looking down on it with my power as I gazed upon the rows upon rows of houses, I looked for Taylor’s. Flying lower, but still above the homes, I drifted around, looking in through open windows for a light to focus on. After several false starts, and surprised by the sheer number of people who didn’t shut their curtains when engaged in all sorts of activities, from the lewd to the illegal, I finally hit jackpot. Floating along and seeing another basement light on, I hesitantly drifted closer, ready for another suburban sex dungeon, when instead I saw a room covered in cobwebs, the window cracked open and a slow but steady trickle of bugs making their way inside.

Sitting on a stool was a lanky girl, her back to the window, working at a table while a mass of spiders and other bugs covered her table. The conglomeration of insects worked on something that was a shifting pattern of greys and blacks even to my enhanced sight, with a bit of yellow at one end. I tried to use my Power Sight, but it wouldn’t activate. It took me a few moments to realize that while I could see things in Shadowform, I couldn’t See powers.

Shifting out of it, my eyes seemed to warm as I Saw the Grey and Hornet Yellow Flames pouring off her form, tendrils of fire spreading out in an intricate web connecting every single bug, directing them and controlling them in concert. My own power reached out, skimming some off of the insects in front of me, and bringing it back.

I had to cut off a cry of pain as it connected to me, and then spread, a Blood Red and Royal Purple web of lines bursting out of me, crisscrossing with the Grey and Yellow one in front of me. The insects around me flickering into my consciousness as a sea of embers in every direction, and Taylor a muted inferno before me.

I Knew that I could sense her, or the shadow of her with this power, but I could not puppet her, just as she couldn’t puppet me in return, though there might be some other interactions possible. She gave a cry of surprise and fell off her stool, the bugs all around me starting to swarm and converge on me as she struggled to get up and see me through their eyes.

Panicking, I took to the air, shifting to shadows once more, the connection with the bugs muted, but still present as I felt Taylor’s shock and fear through them, several flies lifting off to follow me. Concentrating, I let go of her power, trying to force it to the back of my main power as Herb described seeing it. The power seemed to resist my attempts, but finally submitted, my connection to the insects below me and Taylor fading like smoke on the wind as I changed direction and headed back for Merchant territory.

Several dozen blocks later I took Taylor’s power back out, feeling the insects below me in a living map, one that started giving me sense data instantly, a whole mess of it. Okay, got what I wanted, just not in the way I meant to, I thought to myself as I drifted, the information I got muted somewhat by my Shadowform. No way I can I can pretend I haven’t met her. From that brief contact I knew that when I approached Taylor again, my power would recognize her, and vice versa, just like it let me recognize different types of insects and I did not expect her to have that many black widows. If her dad ever walked into the basement, he was a dead man, and she needed to move them asap.

I drifted as I felt out the insects below me, getting a slight headache as I did so, pushing myself to concentrate on as many as I could and holding it there, looking through their eyes and feeling what they felt, though the senses didn’t really match up to mine. I started at five and slowly pushed myself more and more until I could handle five times that, before tacking a deep breath and checking my phone, letting the connection drop back to its passive level. I’d been out here for a bit over two hours, and I should probably be getting back to the base soon in case BJ did actually hurt Herb.

Drifting back in that general direction, I saw another pack of Merchants. Forcing a bug to land on one of them and hide in the folds of his too-large clothing was fairly easy, and I tracked them in the air as they walked. I tried to listen in as they talked about someone, through the insect I had on them, and it took a few tries to put it together with the fly’s odd way of hearing, but I eventually got something about a ‘bad boy slayer 8’ posting a video? I gave up on it, as I wasn’t going to risk flying into something listening to them talk about videogames, and just focused on trying to put together visual data from nearby insects while still paying attention to where I was going as I followed them.

It took another twenty minutes, and I only had to swerve to avoid a taller building twice, but I finally followed them back to a house at the edge of the railyards. They walked up, greeted someone at the door, and proceeded inside, the door being shut behind them. Four of them plopped down on a couch while the fifth went upstairs, giving the guy inside some money before getting passed some more drugs and heading down to sit with his friends. Drifting down I saw the window to the drug room was blocked by heavy curtains, but the flies inside had a clear view. It took a few minutes to figure out what I was looking at, a good deal of which was spent figuring out they were looking at everything upside down, as they had landed on the ceiling.

Inside were three guys, one sitting behind a desk watching internet videos, another dividing drugs into small bags from a massive pile of weed, while a third relaxed by the door, gun in one hand, phone in the other as he texted someone, waving away my fly when I tried to see what he was saying. The desk-guy finished his video, grabbed the money, and moved to a dark shape in corner, fiddling with it until it opened. A safe I realized, getting ready to enter. Thinking for a moment I applied Speed Zones to my gloved knuckles, adding power to my punches, before I phased into reality and hit the window fist first.

I paused for a second as the push from my hands was countered by the structure of the window, but I flew harder and the glass broke, then accelerated, cutting through the shades and slicing into the gunman as he looked up from his phone. I followed in and punched him in the face, Glory Girl’s shield popping to enhance the blow, his head snapping back and hitting the wall behind him, knocking him out.

Landing, I spun and kicked the guy by the safe in the head before he could close it, hearing the third guy getting up, the fly on him tracking his movement as he closed. Turning I caught his wrist with a knife-hand, forcing him to drop his blade as my other hand came up, punching him in the gut and sending him flying upwards right as the shield returned. I spent it again, the man hit so hard he impacted the ceiling before dropping to the floor, moaning on the ground. Checking the gunman, I saw that he was bleeding pretty heavily, so I mentally manipulated my costume to reveal a fingertip and pressed it to his skin, stopping the bleeding, but nothing more than that, pulling my costume back over my hand as I heard shouts from below.

I punched the three incandescents lighting the room, plunging it into darkness except for the faint moonlight filtering in through the slashed curtain, and the dark blue flickering glow on my knuckles. Holding my hands behind me, I crouched down in a corner opposite the downed guard as my shield returned, enhanced eyes unblocked by the darkness. Glory Girl’s forcefield could tank anything once before needing to recharge, and my own costume was bulletproof, so unless one of the guys downstairs was an unknown cape, I was going to be fine.

There was a hesitant knock on the door, and a voice calling for “Big Pat?” Looking around, I thought maybe they meant the guy who’d had the gun? They were all kinda normal sized.

After a moment another voice called, “Big P? We heard somethin’ you okay?”

After more silence a third said “We comin’ in, okay?”

A full minute passed before the door opened and a raggy looking white kid, maybe college aged stepped in, hand blindly reaching for the light switch, flicking it on and off to no effect. “What the fuck?” one of them asked as a few more edged their way in, all of them carrying some sort of weapon, the two I hadn’t tagged before quickly getting a gnat to track them with.

With all of them crowding around the doorway, they blocked out the light from the hall, but as they entered they saw the dropped form of the gunman. “Eddie!” one of them called, rushing over. Guess that wasn’t Pat I thought, tightening up.

As they turned to look at ‘Eddie’ I pushed my knuckles to the wall, launching me forward, using my flight to keep my going as I careened into one of the three holding pistols. I broke the momentum of my flight on his back, taking him down as I lashed out with both fists, negating my recoil with flight as the other two were sent flying in different directions by the Zones on my fist.

One of the gang swung out with an oversized knife, which I dodged, spinning around it to punch him in the face, sending him flying off into a wall as I lost my shield. A few moments of frenzied fighting later and the last one was down. I’d taken two shots during the fighting, the shield taking the first one to my side right after it regenerated, the other glancing off my armored arm while it was gone, and everyone was down, either unconscious or moaning on the floor, curled up around their injuries.

Dusting my hands off theatrically, I walked over to the safe, pausing as I saw the bricks of cash stacked inside. Looking around, I grabbed two duffel bags, stepping over moaning Merchants. One tried to stab me in the leg as I walk around, but a quick shuffle step dodged it, boot landing on his hand and probably breaking at least one finger.

“That wasn’t nice,” I chided, as I stepped past the thug, who wrenched his hand back, holding it to his chest. Grabbing the stacks of cash and stuffing it into the bag, I’d only filled half of one, so I stepped over to the trash bags of weed, dumping out enough that I could fit them into the remaining space in the duffel bags, grabbing a third bag just for good measure. Looking around at everyone passed out, I shrugged before walking over to one of the thugs and taking his phone, starting to dial 911 before pausing. If I do this they’ll get caught, but I haven’t registered yet, and if an unknown cape takes down a drughouse, only for a new one to register in the morning, it’s gonna look suspicious. Clearing the number, I dropped the phone back on the thug. As I was walking to jump out the window one of the thugs, moaning in pain, asked, “Who are you?”

I stopped, thinking. Should I go with Vejovis? No, they might have seen the Shadowform. Might as well start dropping hints of the second identity. “Boardwalk,” I told him, relaxing my throat to deepen my voice, before turning to Shadow and jumping out the window, the reduced gravity of that form letting me land lightly below as I took off down the street.

After a few blocks I took to the air, flying back to base and landing lightly, my control much improved from when I left. I walked inside, dropping the bags and my mask on the kitchen counter as I poked around, trying to find Herb & BJ. I heard laughter from the workshop, Herb’s full belly laugh and BJ’s low chuckles. Ambling over I saw the two of them leaning on each other, both bruised and bloody, their stands both a dozen feet away and engaged in an arm wrestling contest. I ambled over, both of them turning to look at me, both grinning. “What happened?” I asked, healing up Herb who was worse, though not by much, before turning and doing the same to BJ, unblackening eyes, removing bruising, and giving them the general repair treatment.

Herb grinned. “We were bonding!” he declared.

Boojack gave a snort of laughter. “He was whining, so we fought. He’s not as weak as he looks.” I quirked an eyebrow at the Stands, who both dispersed. “The whiny bitch here said if we had them out, we could keep fighting ‘cause of that heal if you hurt someone thing they have. Probably thought he could heal up by takin’ me down.” Boojack grinned. “Didn’t, but he aint as bad off as he was.”

I looked around them, and the broken and knocked over shelves that had held all sorts of material for building pretty much anything, the ground littered with bolts, screws, pieces of bent metal and broken wood. “Ugh,” I moaned into my palm. “Okay, priority, setting up a sparring area so you two don’t break something.” My aggravation led me to, rather than tell them, show them my newly acquired power.

Herb screamed like a small girl as Boojack let out a low “Woooooaaahh” as hundreds of bugs streamed in from every direction to stop around me, coming up through the grates on the floor, crawling through the cracked windows, and scurrying in from every corner, carpeting the floor around me in an ever-growing mat of insects. Herb’s squeals of terror rose in pitch as they slowly arrayed themselves closer to him. Boojack looked at his progenitor in morbid curiosity. “What the hell is that sound?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I quipped, amused at seeing the dynamic turned on Herb. “Though there are some dogs that might be able to identify it.”

“You didn’t have to take that power! You didn’t have to take that power. You. Didn’t. Have. To. Take. That. Power,” Herb chanted as he retreated until his back hit the wall of the storage area.

I shrugged, trying to repress my smirk. “I needed something I could work on with Taylor, and besides: Bug control is cool. Creepy, but less so when I tell them what they do.”

“Can you get rid of the bugs?” he pleaded, but I was too busy thinking about the possibilities.

“Oooh, and the power synergy,” I continued, ignoring him. “My range might be bigger but I don’t have nearly the fine point control that she does, yet, maybe never will, but I can fly, so I can go around, grabbing swarms, then bring them back to her to use, then she takes over and BAM, she destroys the bad guys because we’re both gonna be heroes!”

Boojack amusedly looked at Herb panicking, having noticed that the bugs made a small circle around him as their ranks crept closer to my friend.

“That’s cool,” Herb commented, going up on tiptoes. “Could ya’ get rid of them now?” he asked, as thousands upon thousands of eyes stared at him.

Thinking about it I ordered the lot of them to face me, and shit, that was creepy. “Any you want me to keep?” I asked. “I heard spiders were good for silk and stuff.”

“You know what’s really good?” Herb asked.

“What?”

“When they’re not in the house. With. Me!”

I snorted. “They’re already in the house, you just didn’t see them.”

“Yeah,” Boojack weighed in. “But, like, out of sight, out of mind and shit.”

I sighed. “Fine, gimme a sec.” I ordered them all out, and they streamed in a dark tide to every exit, the swarm obscuring all sight for a moment

“Is that all of them?” Herb asked after the last few exited out the window.

“Well, there’s-“ I stopped myself as I saw his warning look. “Yes,” I told him flatly. “Yes, there are no more bugs in the house.”

“Good,” Boojack said, ambling out. “I’m going to sleep.”

“Wait,” I called, stopping him at the doorway. “The bags on the counter have your weed. The money is ours, but I still need to count it.” Boojack nodded and walked off.

“Money?” Herb asked.

“I hit a Merchant drug-supply house,” I explained, looking around the room and trying to figure out how to put it back together. “Hit them, took their money, and grabbed a couple bags of weed.”

Herb nodded as we both heard Boojack yell out “Holy Shit!” in happiness.

Wandering over we saw Boojack almost cuddling one of the duffel bags. “I thought you said a few bags?” Herb asked as we watched him stroke the vinyl.

“Yeah,” I told him, not getting his surprise. “A few duffel bags. The money only took up half of one, so I filled the rest of it up, and two more just to make sure. That’s stuff’s lighter than I thought it would be.”

Herb looked at me, dumbfounded as Boojack stated, “If you guys need me for something else, I’m so fuckin there. I’m gonna get high as shit!”

“What?” I shrugged at my friend’s accusatory stare. “I didn’t have a scale and didn’t want to short him.”

<AB>​

Boojack made good on his promise, and Herb went to bed, stating that he’d done enough today and wanted sleep, unlike some other dumbass. I pretended not to notice, starting to count the money and, after I was sure Herb was asleep, I called in some beetles to start organizing the mess he’d made of the workroom, splitting my focus between counting and getting them to sort through, and gather up, like items. I added more beetles as I could handle them, having kept a group on standby, helped give my power a workout and iron out the, well, bugs.

Giving general commands was easy, but individualized ones were much more difficult, and if I hadn’t had my power keeping my body in peak condition, I probably would have had a killer migraine. I still started to get one as I reached my limit, but holding it there, not pushing any harder, caused it to eventually fade, and a bit after that I increased it again until I had to stop once more as the feeling of painful strain returned. It had been a couple hours and I was up to 82 beetles when BooJack stumbled in. He stopped as an already counted bundle of cash, held together with a rubber band, was carried past him by several beetles working in concert to move it to my office.

“Didn’t you say you were getting rid of the bugs?” he asked as he sat down at the kitchen table.

I quirked an eyebrow. “I did, but then he went to sleep and I need the practice. They’ll be gone in the morning, and no way he’s getting up before daybreak if he doesn’t have to.” I continued counting as I talked, though splitting the focus dragged it away from the workroom bugs who started to fly around until I gave them a general ‘land and stay still’ command. The group carrying the money had dropped it, so I stopped counting while I got them to pick it up and drop it off before joining their fellows.

“You don’t care about a few beetles, do you?” I asked, bringing one and having it settle on my hand.

He looked at it suspiciously, “They’re not gonna eat my weed, are they?”

I didn’t think they would naturally, but by the red glassines of BJ’s eyes he was extraordinarily high, so I had some fun with him. “You wouldn’t do that, would you Barry?” I asked the beetle in my hand, making it shake its body back and forth in negation.

BJ looked at the beetle before nodding to it back. “Okay Barry, you tell your friends the weed is mine, and if they eat it I’ll squash them like a. .”

“Bug?” I offered.

“Yeah a bug,” he finished. I had Barry run behind my hand, poking his head out in fear.

“Do you have to be so mean?” I asked him, pretending to pet the beetle comfortingly. “He wouldn’t eat your weed.”

“I’m sorry Barry,” he told the puppeted insect. “But I gotta set boundaries. You know how it is.” He looked at me. “Beetles get territorial and stuff, right? He’d understand.”

I nodded, having ‘Barry’ go join the rest. “He’s gonna go tell the others. Why’d you come in? You hungry?”

He thought for a moment before nodding. I sighed, got up, and made us both some sandwiches, directing him to bed after he finished eating, before I sat back down to keep counting while the beetles continued to clean the workshop.

Taking a break around three, I tried to see if I could use Fleshsculpting on the beetles, like Panacea did for Taylor later. The good news is that I could, the bad news was that I had no idea what I was doing, so it died pretty quick when I tried to make it stronger. The second one exploded when I tried to make it bigger, and the third one I gave a spike on its head, which was kinda cool, but then it couldn’t fly, and died shortly after for reasons I couldn’t discern.

Giving it up as a bad job I finished counting the proceeds, just over forty thousand, before I had to go try and fix the shelving. The beetles had separated out the mess, and the shelves were modular enough that I could rebuild them fairly easily, shifting them to make a sparring area near the door, but they weren’t strong enough to do it themselves. That said, the process went extraordinarily fast with one hundred and twenty-six little helpers. I stretched out and dismissed them back to the nest I was building in an abandoned box-car outside of the base as dawn bloomed, and got ready for my next day of saving the world.

 

Development 2.5

Making a quick breakfast, I started to get ready, picking up my mask before pausing. I looked at the mask I held, the mask which had been formed from my costume, but was now completely separate from the rest of my suit. Turning on Power Sight, I could see the threads of energy that ran through my costume, and one seemed to drift off in the direction of the mask before fading into nothing. At the mask what could only be the other end of the thread faded into sight, running through the length of the piece of ‘cloth’. Moving it moved the faded ends, the two hanging, phantom threads always pointing at each other.

Now that I looked at the mask, it, too, was odd. Where I had assumed there were eyeholes, was nothing but blank, black material the same color as the mask. Moving it towards my face, it was black until I put it on, where it lightened until I could see again. Walking to the bathroom, I didn’t see my own prismatic eyes through what appeared to be clear holes in the fabric, but instead just the black of the mask staring back. Concentrating on wanting to see my eyes, the blackness faded until my eyes could be seen, however taking off the mask again showed no eyeholes, only clear sections for my eyes, like the cleanest glass.

Thinking about it I reformed it into one of my first mask ideas, a white domino mask with red the color of arterial blood forming a border around it. Instead of eye-holes I had the white continue, covering the eyes completely. Putting it on, more pressing it to my face really, it stuck and I could see perfectly fine out of it. Looking in the mirror I saw just white where my eyes were, none of the telltale prismatic light shining through. Touching it lightly, I found that while the material had been soft when I handled it, the mask was now hard, resisting the pressure of my fingers easily, even, I hesitantly found out, on my eyes.

Reaching up to feel the edges, I found it flush with my skin, and couldn’t find any point I could leverage to take it off. As I started to panic about being able to take it off, thinking was it changeable until I settled on a superhero costume? it immediately peeled off in in my hands, feeling like a somewhat rubbery fabric. Taking a deep breath, I held it and put it on, sticking to my face, before willing it off again, catching it as it fell.

Finished with that, I turned my attention to my costume. As I did so, the darm material turned to a pristine white bodysuit with a matching red set of gloves, boots, belt with pouches, and a strip at my neck where the costume ended. I considered adding a cape, but all I could think of was Edna Mode’s emphatic “No Capes!” Instead, I emblazoned a red caduceus, tweaking the snakes a little to give them the subtle horns of the Entities’ Shards.

Smirking at the joke, I checked the network to see when the PRT opened for visitors, noting that my new identity had already been made, a Lee Elric, from Iowa. Specifically, I was from a town that had been wrecked when a cape named Voidshadow, who the ability to effect gravity, had been killed, either before or after setting off a micro-black hole, destroying half the town and killing most of the people who lived there.

Really, I thought, Voidshadow? What was he, 14? I checked just in case, but she was twenty-seven, so I was secure in my snark instead thinking badly of a kid with problems. My official documentation would be arriving today, at a secure box in a nearby post-office, but I had a social security number, bank account with the minimum required to keep it open, A credit card with a couple thousand in debt, jerk, and everything else your average person would need. I had a college degree for liberal arts, and had been doing odd-jobs to make ends meet on my work history, along with a single paid-off ticket for speeding several years ago. Number man cost top-dollar, but the identity was surprisingly complete.

The PRT opened at seven, which meant if I left now, I’d probably get there right as it opened. Checking that both my friends were sound asleep I cleared out the last of the bugs, including a couple that had snuck in without my help, and left the base.

Flying just over the buildings until I left the trainyard, I took off and did a quick patrol over the docks and boardwalk, seeing the people just starting work, opening up shops, and milling about early on Sunday morning. As I flew, I could feel the bugs below me, but my power worked in a sphere several hundred meters around me, allowing me to detect the ones directly under me, but not those more than a block at a time at my height far above the city. I tried to control some that were flying below me, but I didn’t breach the triple digits like I had in the base while I tried to also fly, while paying attention to my surroundings.

Floating onward I headed downtown, lazily drifting past the skyscrapers, waving casually at the cleaning staff on one floor as I flew by them. Looking around, I finally spotted the PRT building, as opposed to the Protectorate’ ‘Rig’, a decently tall building of stone instead of glass with barred windows, a Helipad on top, and two guards on the rooftop looking up at me as I descended. I made sure to keep at least a hundred feet away, and they held their guns at the ready, but didn’t point their rifles at me. I waved at them as I dropped to street level, pushing open the clear glass doors of the lobby, stepping in lightly past the armored guards who watched me warily, what must be foam sprayers ready, but not pointed at me either.

Behind the front desk was a middle-aged man, who was trying to look calm as I walked up to him, and mostly succeeding. Should I hold up my hands to show I mean no harm? I thought. No, that will make them think I could do harm, and maybe treat me like an armed gunman instead of someone potentially dangerous. I tapped into bugs around the base, and saw that in adjacent corridors soldiers were moving into position, as several analysts freaked out, A spider in the break room, along with the fly caught in its web showing me someone dropping their coffee as a sound went off and they started running.

This is a bit much, I thought. They really should have had a ‘New Hero? Click here!’ option on their website if they didn’t want them just to walk in. I pondered that obvious oversight for a second. Then again, with powers pushing for conflict, they might not have that many takers instead of people jumping into fights and meeting the Protectorate on site.

“Hello,” I told the man cheerfully, like this was perfectly normal and I was coming in to register a new car or something. “I’m a new Hero and I’d like to register, as well as register an independent team. What forms do I need to do that?”

The man looked at me as if I had asked for a baby chihuahua and a quarter pounder with cheese. “What?” he asked dumbly.

“I’m a new Hero, and I figured that before I went hero-ing I should register with the Parahuman Response Teams, see if there’s a do’s and don’ts booklet or something like that, and register me and my partners as an independent team. They think this is kinda stupid,” I only half-lied, “But hey, good communication is necessary to working together, and prior planning prevents piss poor performance and all of that!”

He looked down at his computer as a phone rang. He looked at me hesitantly, and I shrugged. “Take your time,” I told him. “I’m not in a hurry.”

He took the phone, giving out several “Yes sirs”, a couple “No sirs”, and one where he glanced at me before going “This wasn’t in the training, sir”. He finally looked up at me asking, “If it isn’t too much, what is your power. . .”

I smiled. “I was thinking of going with Vejovis for a name, unless that’s taken, and I have the Alexandria package, bug control, and a limited healing ability.”

He stared. “How do those go together?”

“How do powers work in general?” I asked, shrugging.

“Bug control?” he questioned instead.

I pointed at the spider making a web in the far corner of the room. “Is it okay if I use my power in here?” No need to be rude I thought.

He looked taken aback before nodding hesitantly. Taking direct control of the spider, I had it abandon the web it was making and descend, scuttling across the floor before climbing onto the desk, stopping halfway between the two of us, the fingertip sized arachnid raising its forelegs in greeting. My power told me it was a funnel weaver, and that even if it did bite, it would be practically painless.

As he watched I made it cartwheel across the table, falling on its back. I extended a finger and flipped it back over, making it bow in thanks before turning towards the man and standing at attention, one leg raised in a salute. “I’m still getting a handle on it,” I told him. “General orders like ‘come here’ or ‘go there’ get a lot more, but I’m limited with fine control.”

He looked at me, then the spider, then back to me. “Is it poisonous?”

“Even if it did bite you, you’d barely feel a thing, and it’s not a threat to people,” I told him, answering the question he meant to ask.

He nodded before going back to the phone, relaying what just happened while I had the spider do yoga, or as close to it as an arachnid could, pretending that I wasn’t listening in on what he was saying. After a bit a woman in her early thirties walked in with some paperwork, wearing what looked like office wear, but she was a bit too muscular and moved a bit too smoothly to be the corporate drone she dressed as.

Taking the paperwork, and producing my own pen, turning down her offer of one, I stood there and filled out the forms, occasionally making the spider look as if it was checking my spelling. I left the forms for personal identity, trigger circumstances, past actions, and other potentially incriminating fields blank, as I started to get the suspicion that I was being played.

“You need to fill those in,” she informed me, as if I’d done something wrong.

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so, what was the worst day of your life ma’am, please don’t shy away from graphic detail.”

“What?” she asked starting to get offended.

“It’s what you’re asking for, so it’s only polite to share.” I told her, motioning towards the blank fields. “If this is what’s actually required to register, I can now see why no-one ever does, and why my compatriots thought this was a fool’s errand. For instance,” I indicated the page I was currently working on, getting the spider to point to the relevant section. “You’re asking for a blood sample. Not only is that incredible invasive, but with the amount of rogue Tinkers out there, I’d rather not have to fight some cloned mutated version of myself in the future, let alone the possibility of powers that let you affect someone through their blood. I’ll fill in the information I’m willing to give, and if that’s not enough I’ll leave.”

“That’s if you are allowed to,” she replied hostily, but, even with the few powers I’d picked up, there was nothing they could to do hold me with who they had on staff, and at short notice. Hmm, I thought. This woman’s not an administrative assistant. I’d say either security or management, maybe both. Mark this down as reason 8 why I’m never joining the Protectorate.

“You’re holding me? On what charges?” I asked mildly, watching the two guards shift behind me uncertainly. Good, she was undoubtedly taking a chance trying to goad the unknown parahuman who had demonstrated a low-level Master power, and was likely high on her own authority instead of following orders. I hoped her stupidity wasn’t mandated, just probably encouraged. “I did make sure to hire a lawyer before I came here, and if you were to take the blood sample you wanted, I’m pretty sure that counts as illegal search and seizure.” Note to self, go hire a lawyer.

She just glared at me, so I stopped filling in sections, flipping through the “registration” form, finding nothing else they really needed to know about me. Turning to the sweating desk-clerk I asked. “This should be enough. I expected to have to be careful of being tricked by villains, not the good guys. Is there a ‘form’ for independent teams or should I just give you the basics?”

The ‘aide’ bit out, angry at my obvious dismissal of her presence, “If you and your friends come for a full testing, they will receive a stipend in order to follow PRT Guidelines.”

I didn’t even look at her. God, I hated these people. “We have no need of that, I was coming here as a courtesy. Now, would you like information on my team or should I leave?” I asked the man. The woman started to say something when the phone rang again. The mand working the desk picked it up, before handing it to the woman who listened, before angrily shoving it back to him snatching the papers I’d filled out and stomped out a side door.

I watched her go before turning back to the guy, and I couldn’t help but comment “Some security people really need PR training. Has anyone checked to make sure she’s not secretly a para-human? I’ve heard that sometimes the powers make you a bit antagonistic towards other capes.” Both were completely true statements, but what they implied was completely unfounded as I would have Seen her power if she’d had any, and she was completely mundane.

The man behind the desk looked pained, as if he wanted to say something but doing so would get him in trouble. Turning the conversation back to why I was here, I said, “So, right, Independent Hero Team. I’ll be setting up a PO box later today, so I’ll just mail you guys a postcard or something. As for the name, we’re called the Penumbral Protectors, and our members-“ I was cut off as the phone rang again. “Do you want to just put them on speaker or something?”

The poor receptionist took the call, and told me, “I’m being told you can’t call yourselves Protectors because it’s too close to the Protectorate, and I can’t put him on speaker.” The man looked scared. At least he understood the dangers of people with unknown powers.

I sighed, resting my face in my palm. “No, that makes sense. If I had some kind of ‘hear my voice and be hypnotized’ power keeping me here and contained would be ruined if I could talk to someone in charge.” I looked up to see his panicked expression. “I don’t have one of those, but you guys couldn’t have known that. So, no protectors, it’s not like they own the copywrite to the word, but okay,” I mused as the man calmed down somewhat. “Um. . . hmmmm. How about Penumbral Defenders?”

He listened in before nodding. “That’s okay. Who else is on your team?”

“Right now it’s myself and two brothers. One calls himself Break, the other is Enter. Both have strength and toughness that increases as they fight, kinda like Lung without the whole turning into a dragon thing, they heal as they fight, and Break turns into dinosaurs.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “Dinos?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “all kinds, he turned into a T-Rex once, and can do little ones as well. No idea how that fits, but it does. And either Enter turns invisible, or something else entirely, he didn’t want to explain.” The guy I was talking to looked around nervously as the guards by the door shifted again, sprayers pointed towards the empty air where I wasn’t standing.

“I don’t think he’s here,” I told him as I watched the rest of the base started to freak out through my bugs, going into full Master/Stranger protocols. I wasn’t gonna mention that part, but the security chick had pissed me off. “I don’t think he’s here, probably,” I corrected. “He’s like seven feet tall. Either way it’s just the three of us.”

The PRT clerk looked up at me. “A team with three members. That’s small.”

“Yeah,” I responded a bit defensively. “We’re starting small, then growing later. You know, ‘started from the bottom now we’re here’!”

He gave me a look of sheer disbelief before taking down the information. “You’re actively recruiting?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but we’re mostly settling in, getting a feel for the city, fighting crime, all that good stuff. Is that it?”

He listened to his boss before asking, “How long have you been a team?”

“Today. Right now, we just registered,” I replied, frowning, waving a hand to indicate the forms I just filled out.

Again, listening. “How long have you known them is what he meant,” the man clarified.

“Oh! Break I’ve known for years, way before he got his powers. We used to play D&D together and chat online. His brother I’ve only known for a few days. He’s kinda an ass, but follows Break’s lead. If there’s anything else, I was planning on heading over to the hospital and see if I could help. Oh, and before I leave, do you want me to take the bugs out of your base? I can kinda feel them out there and around, so I could tell them to come here and just take them out like the cleanest exterminator ever, but it’d probably freak people out.” I advised.

A few more moments of listening and he turned down my offer, wishing me a good day. I casually walked out, pausing by one of the guards who stiffened, but relaxed when I asked which way it was to the nearest hospital. He gave me the directions and I thanked him, leaving and taking flight from the sidewalk, heading to my next stop that day.

<AB>​

Landing outside the Brockton Central Hospital, I walked into the ER, and, seeing no one in line, I approached the desk. I informing the woman there that I was a healer who’d registered with the PRT (neglecting to mention I did so less than hour ago), and that I was here to help. A doctor was called in, looking annoyed at having to show up, and he questioned me on my capabilities. Telling him I could heal, but only if I knew what was wrong, seemed to actually make him happy for some strange reason, as well as the fact that my ability to generally heal things didn’t work on anything more than a low-level problem. I was sent to a patient, an older man on a hospital bed, and told to wait there. The likely patient was unconscious, and had a number of tubes connected to him, but otherwise the room was empty, quiet except for the occasional beeping.

After a few minutes the door opened, and a girl walked in. Average height, with messy brown hair and freckles, it was the bags under her eyes I noticed first as she slowly walked in, like someone half asleep. If it wasn’t for my Sight and her costume, I wouldn’t have recognized her, having not looked at her too closely yesterday, as I’d tried to show I was more interested in Boojack’s wellbeing than her.

The hood of Panacea’s white and robe put her face in shadow, hiding it, and the red scarf also served to distract, both emblazoned with pseudo-Caducei, the snakes having stars instead of heads, turning them into intertwined shooting stars below a first aid symbol instead of the winged staff on my chest. She started to walk over, her power a guttering candle to the campfire it had been yesterday. She stopped and looked at me for a second, light returning to her eyes as the Flame stabilized. “Who are you?” she asked in the confused tone of someone not sure if they’re dreaming.

“Vejovis, hero, independent team, new Trigger and newly registered,” I told her, holding out my gloved hand for her to shake numbly. “I asked the PRT for the nearest hospital to help at and they sent me here. I assume they want me to work with you because of your diagnostic power.”

That got her attention. “What?” she asked, coming more awake. “How do you know about. . .”

I shrugged “I’m a healer, but I need to know what’s wrong before I can heal them, or I might miss something. From what I’ve heard you don’t, so you obviously have some kind of Thinker power that lets you diagnose things for you to heal, which is kinda awesome, so what’s wrong with this guy?” I asked, jerking my thumb at the guy in the bed.

She glanced at me, muttering to herself nonsensically, “Hero healer. That’s what heroes do.” Honestly I wouldn’t have heard her if I wasn’t cheating, and I got the feeling that if she were more awake, she’d never have said it. She started to ask, “Do I have. . .” before noticing he was out cold. She looked back at the doorway at a doctor who was waiting, looking both bored and annoyed, and the other man nodded.

She touched the patient nodding to herself before shaking her head, looking at me. “He’s got a broken pelvis, a weak heart, and a UTI from the catheter,” she instructed. I walked over, miming manipulating something as I pulled off the index finger of my glove, putting it in my belt pouch as I touched the man’s chest. I tried to focus on my copy of her power as I said, “Okay, Pelvis is just reconnecting the bone, but I’m not sure about the heart or UTI, that’s,” I motioned towards his lap, “right?”

She nodded, walking me through the steps of healing, feeling my progress as I worked. Happy with the progress, she turned to leave and I followed. The doctor, however, looked unsure. “Where are you going?” he asked me.

I motioned towards Panacea who didn’t look nearly as tired, though she was still swaying slightly, watching us. “I follow her and she can walk me through healing someone while she heals someone else. It won’t double the rate of healing, I’m not on her level, but it’ll go a lot faster.” She looked at me, brow furrowed in confusion to some part of my statement, though I wasn’t sure which part, as it was all pretty self-evident.

When I looked back at her, she turned to look somewhere else, the doctor thinking for a moment before saying, “Yes, of course, I was just wondering why you were walking that way.” I didn’t point out that I had just followed Panacea, letting him officiously lead us to out next set of patients. From there we worked through room after room of sick and injured, Panacea diagnosing and walking me through the process while she healed someone else at the same time, my speed of Fleshsculpting drastically increasing in rate and precision under her expert instruction. I avoided my general ‘get better’ technique, since I wanted to run that by her somewhere that, if I was doing something wrong, wouldn’t get me in trouble. There were some problems though.

“What? Why are you healing me? Why can’t Panacea do it?” An older man with a clogged heart asked me indignantly.

“You have a clogged circumflex artery, and the others need to be cleaned, which is easy, and I’ve done two of already today. She’s curing cancer, which I’m still learning. Do you want the healing or not?” I asked, baffled that anyone would complain about painless, near instant life-saving healing with no long-term effects.

“I came here to be healed by Panacea, and I paid top dollar to do so!” he retorted angrily, puffing up his already ample chest.

By this time, we were attracting stares, and I was losing my patience, as every minute spent dealing this blowhard was another I could have spent healing some kid in bad shape. Is this how she feels all the time? I thought, glancing over her as she sleepily moved onto another patient. No wonder she pushes herself.

Taking another track, I looked at him in questioning distaste. “Sir, there is literally no difference between Panacea or I healing you, except she can do it faster or. . .” I trailed off. “Is it the fact that she’s a teenage girl, and you want her to touch you? Because, that’s not appropriate, in the slightest.”

He sputtered as the stares all around us turned from curious to disgusted. “Just heal me,” he commanded imperiously as I rolled my eyes, touched the top of his hand, and cleared the arteries in seconds.

We kept working, moving from room to room as the time slowly moved on. After a bit I recognized that we were, with two exceptions for critically wounded patients, moving in a giant circle as the staff shifted new patients into our path. Several times I had a doctor or nurse try to direct me away from Panacea, telling me that I knew enough and that their diagnosis would be good enough. I pointed out that it was my first day, and that for every new thing I dealt with I still needed her explanations, which made them upset for some stupid reason, but they had no convincing argument against it so each one gave up after a few tries, and one literally stomping away in anger.

After the first attempt, I started reading the patient’s charts as Panacea diagnosed them, finding a handful where they had been mis-diagnosed, and if I had gone from the chart I would have, at best, done nothing to help them, and, at worst, possibly killed them as instead of joining together a break, I would have fused two separate bones together and cut the tissues between them, or something far worse.

By the time noon rolled around, my stomach was rumbling and I needed a break to relax. Heading over as she gave sight back to a heavily scarred young woman, I tapped Panacea on the shoulder as I had taken to doing when I needed an explanation on how to heal something. “Oh, something new?” she asked hopefully, eyes drooping as she half smiled. “What is it this time?”

“Lunch,” I told her, motioning towards the clock on the wall.

“What?” she asked, processing the words slowly. “Oh, um, you go, I need to keep going.”

I snorted. “I’ve been with you all morning and neither of us have eaten, or even taken a break. Come on, it’ll be twenty minutes, then we can go back to healing the masses.”

She shook her head, “No, I’m okay, I’ll just keep going,” she insisted, the woman looking around in amazement as Panacea healed her burn scars. As I gave her a disbelieving glance her stomach gave a growl like a corned lioness.

She blushed as I asked, “When’s the last time you had something to eat? I had some breakfast six hours ago, when did you?”

“Um,” she said, not meeting my eyes. “I had something yesterday,” she admitted, letting go of her now healed patient.

Rolling my eyes, I stepped beside her and put a hand on her back, pushing her towards the door calling to the rest of the room, “We’re gonna grab a quick lunch, then we should be back!”

A couple of the people inside cried out in anger, but I ignored them as we left and I started to head towards the cafeteria we’d passed a few rooms ago. The doctor that had been ‘helping us’ looked up from his phone as we passed, fiddling with it before running after us. “Where are you going?” he demanded, “You still have patients to see!”

“It’s noon,” I explained slowly, not stopping. “We haven’t had a break all morning, we’re going to get some food.”

He ran in front of us, barring the way. “You can eat when you’re done,” he commanded, as if he were in a position to dictate terms to us. “Heroes wouldn’t stop while people still need them,” he added, almost vindictively, eliciting a wince from my companion, who made an attempt to turn back around, but gave up when I provided a bit of token resistance with my hand on her back.

I stopped, looking at him. “Yeah, no. I’m taking a break and,” I looked over at Panacea, who was leaning into my hand, struggling to stay awake. “Panacea, how long have you been working and how many breaks have you taken.”

She looked sleepily back. “I started last night, and I haven’t. People need me.” My look of shocked disbelief prompted her to add. “They do, and I couldn’t sleep anyways.”

I looked back at the doctor. “She’s been working all night? Why haven’t you made her take a break, I’m pretty sure that, by law, you have to.”

His look of indifference spoke volumes. “I started this morning, it’s not my fault she didn’t take any breaks.” The man scoffed, “Can’t she just make herself not tired, or is that beyond her capabilities?”

“Panacea, can you heal your own tiredness, or make yourself not hungry?” I asked calmly, looking at this dumbass and wondering how he finished medical school.

“Huh? No, can’t heal myself. Don’t do brains, it’s wrong,” she murmured, leaning more on me for support.

I looked at him with finality. “There you go. We’re taking a break.”

“You can if you want to, she still has work to do,” he answered dismissively, reaching out to grab her shoulder, looking offended when I blocked his hand.

“Okay asshat, here’s what’s going to happen,” I spoke calmly, reaching out for every insect in range. “You’re gonna step out of the way, or I’m gonna do the hospital a favor and make all the insects in it leave.” He looked unsure. “And I’m gonna do so, by making them all follow you for the rest of the day,” I threatened as I started to pull them out of nearby rooms, the amount small at first, but starting to group together around him.

He shrieked and ran off, with the bugs starting to follow him, but going back to where they came after he turned the corner. Pushing Panacea forward as she muttered about not being nice, we entered the cafeteria as I responded that no, he wasn’t. I moved her along as we got food, putting it all on a tray that I carried as people stared. Getting to the end the cashier blinked at us, before giving us the price.

“We’re healers,” I told her. “Take it out of what the hospital is paying us.”

“Um,” she glanced between the two of us nervously, checking her screen. “I don’t have an account for Panacea or you Mr. . ?”

“Vejovis,” I told her. “Today’s my first day here. I’ve probably done over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of healing for the hospital this morning. I’m not sure how much they’re paying me, but I’m sure it’ll cover my lunch, and Panacea’s even better at it than I am.” The girl looked between the two of us, unsure. “And of course Panacea has an account, she’s been doing this for a while, right?” I added.

The cashier nodded slowly. “She’s been here for months, she must,” she responded thoughtfully, “You might not be in the system yet. I’ll go get my boss, go ahead and eat.”

I brought our food over, directing her to a chair, commenting as I ate my burger. “That was weird, did you have that problem last time you ate here? How much are they paying you?”

She munched on her fries, eyes almost closed. “Never ate here, too busy, need to heal, be a hero, heroes don’t ask for money.” She looked almost zombie-like. No wonder, if she had been here since yesterday. I remembered how in the book, Amy had been running herself ragged healing trying to prove herself as a hero to her adopted mother, Brandish, who was always looking for evidence that she was a villain because Amy’s dad was the villain Marquis.

That was a messed-up family dynamic that I’d need to take steps to fix, let alone the entire ‘sins of the father’ thing that was pretty un-Christian. Normally, especially for teenagers, especially for teenage girls, someone would have stepped in to help, but if the doctor’s attitude, and the fact that she didn’t even have an account in the cafeteria were any indication, something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

Or the halls of its hospital.

The metaphor still worked.

A call of “You!” broke me out of my thoughts. I saw an older man in a suit coming over, Dr. Texts-a-lot behind him along with two orderlies that wouldn’t look out of place as gang muscle. I glanced over at Panacea who had fallen asleep as I pondered the situation, and stood up to meet them.

“Can I help you?” I asked politely, aware of the other people in the cafeteria, two of which had already pointed their phones at me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded.

“Well,” I responded in a carrying voice. “Panacea and I had been healing patients all morning, and we took a quick break to eat some lunch before going back to work. Is there a problem?”

“You bet your ass there’s a problem! You still have people to see and you attacked my doctor!” he yelled.

I looked at him, adopting a confused body posture. Is this guy an idiot? I thought Or just so sure of his own power he thinks I should just bow. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard you.” I asked him in a confused tone. “I’ve been working for four hours, and Panacea twelve without a break. Also, I never touched the man.”

“You sicced your bugs on him!” he accused, ignoring my point. Like Lung, is that a thing here? Is this why Herb hates New Hampshire?

“One,” I started slowly, “So you agree that we had been working hours without a break and two, no I didn’t. I suggested, that since he was so busy that he was trying to physically drag the teenage girl who was on the verge of passing out back to work,” I stated, waving towards the currently sleeping girl, “I could get the insects that have nested in the hospital to follow him out, so he could help while we got food. He turned down my offer. Neither I nor any insect I controlled touched him.”

“And the food!” The man continued. “I’ve been informed that you didn’t pay for it. As the Administrator of this hospital I could call the cops and have you arrested for stealing!” Dear god, is it like a disability or something? And he’s the Administrator? Oh, no, I realized. I know what this is. He’s either making things up or taking them out of context to make his point, and instead of admitting he’s wrong he’s just jumping to the next thing. I’ve met people like him before. This is not a person I can have an honest dialog with, time to change tactics.

I straightened up and looked him in the eye. “Are you telling me,” I asked calmly, but letting the offense into my voice, giving it the qualities that would carry straight to several phones I saw recording. “That we’ve been working at your hospital, performing services for which I’m sure that you’ve charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for, today alone, and not only are you not paying us a thing, you aren’t even supplying us food and demand that your volunteers are not allowed to leave, acting the same as kidnappers? I’ve been here less than a day I’m sure that the local news would love to hear how this hospital, despite having a nigh-magical healer was paying her nothing, denying her breaks, and was giving her no support whatsoever. On top of that, when said hospital gained the service of a second super-powered healer they managed to alienate him in. A. Single. Morning!”

The director looked like he wanted to punch me, but doubled down on his high horse, settling for. “You are no longer welcome in this hospital, leave and never return, but first pay for the food you stole!”

I looked at him for a second, before I had to laugh. “Fine, whatever, you’ll never see me in Brockton Bay Memorial Hospital again.” I reached into my belt, the orderlies tensing as I took out my wallet, grabbing a fifty and leaving it on the table. Stowing it I turned back to Panacea. “Wake up Panacea, we’re apparently not wanted.”

“Not her!” he said. “Just you. We’ll take care of her. Leave or you will be forced to leave!”

Again, I looked at him for a moment. What is wrong with this guy? I thought, before it clicked. Powers, most people have one, maybe two. He hasn’t been informed I have an Alexandria Package. He’s underestimating bugs and thinks that I can only heal, like Panacea claims. If I obviously use my biologically themed powers to attack people who are physically attacking me, he can try and play victim and fearmonger, but if I drop them with fisticuffs, he can’t use that angle. “Yeah. No.” I said. “This girl’s been run ragged, call her emergency contact and I’ll leave when I know she’s not with people that work her to exhaustion.”

“I will do no such thing!” he yelled, motioning for the orderlies to do something. I looked at them with an eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, you are not police officers, and if you put your hands on me, I will defend myself from your assault.” They glanced back at the Administrator, who motioned them forward. I waited until one of them grabbed me before taking his arm, pulling it off my shoulder and shoving him backwards into the space between tables. He skidded several feet, looking surprised. “Right, I also have an Alexandria Package. I’m not moving until I’m sure she’s safe, as apparently this hospital likes to assault people, or someone with actual authority shows up. Call. Her. Contact.”

“I don’t negotiate with criminals!” The blowhard stated, arms crossed, having now spotted the cameras.

“Then you shouldn’t talk to yourself, since you’ve technically committed conspiracy to commit battery, and have all but admitted to false imprisonment. If you won’t call her contact, I’ll borrow her phone to do so.” I told them, walking over to her robe and reaching a hand in her pocket to get her phone.”

“He’s molesting her, get him!” the idiot yelled, trying to play to the crowd. Leaning over to get the phone, one hand in her pocket I was in an awkward position, but still had no problem swinging out with my other hand slamming it into the chest of the other orderly who tried to tackle me, sending him into a table as a few people screamed.

Standing back up I looked at her phone, accessing her emergency contact, which was her adopted sister, Victoria, A.K.A. Glory Girl. “Are you high on painkillers or something?” I asked as I waited for her to pick up. “I told you exactly what I was doing. Throw incitement of violence on that list of reasons why you’re a criminal.”

“Hey Ames, What’s up?” A teenage voice answered from the phone.

“Hello, this is Vejovis, new hero, healer, I’m at cafeteria at Brockton Bay Memorial Hospital. I was working with your sister when she collapsed from exhaustion, and the hospital staff refused to call you, attacking me when I tried. I’m guarding her until you can get here.”

“What the fuck!?” she cried, and I could hear a quick “Sitch at the hospital Ames is in trouble, got to go, Dean” Before the sound of wind picked up. “Stay right there!” and the phone disconnected.

Looking up I saw the Orderlies trying to take phones from the people that had been recording. “Put it in an e-mail and send it to yourself,” I told them. “Then the file isn’t just on your phone.”

“You!” The administrator raged futilely. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ll never work in another hospital again!”

“Oh no, I’ll never work for free without breaks in a place where I get yelled at if I try to leave and attacked if I try to help my coworkers? Whatever will I do with myself? Oh wait, I’ll stay here until Glory Girl shows up.” I drolled, glancing at the Orderly moaning on the remains of a table. “I want to say I’m sorry, but you did try to attack me when I was distracted, so I wasn’t able to be as nice.”

I stood there, waiting as several more Orderlies showed up and tried to force people to leave. Several near me who hadn’t stopped recording moved around me to keep doing so, and when the orderlies tried to shove past me I shook my head at them, indicating the injured one who they carried away before backing off.

I heard someone shout “wait!” and felt a feeling of artificial awe a half second before Glory Girl flew through the door, the sounds of footsteps coming behind her as an unpleasant looking man ran in behind her. She took one look at the cafeteria, myself standing between her sister and a squad of orderlies, and the people filming it all behind me before demanding, “They say you kidnapped her! What the hell is going on?”

 

Development 2.6

“I’m not,” I told her, “but first, what does your Master power do exactly?”

She looked confused as she floated closer, probably believing that she was the greater threat in close quarters combat. “What? Why?”

I stepped away from her sister. “Humor me, please.”

“Well,” she said getting between Panacea and I, “Um, it makes people think I’m awesome, and criminals scared why?”

I gestured towards the Administrator, the person who followed her, the doctor, and the orderlies, who were all backing away, several of them trying to hide behind each other, and then the people behind me, who were filming, and looked like this had made their day.

“Okay, seriously, like what the fuck is going on?” Glory Girl demanded.

I shrugged. “It’s like I said on the phone. I’m Vejovis, a new healer, who came here to heal people and learn how to do so from Panacea. She looked tired, but I didn’t think much about it until lunch time rolled around and the doctor over there,” I indicated Dr. Texts-a-lot, “Told us we couldn’t stop for lunch or a break, he tried to physically drag her back so I pressed the issue and he ran to his boss while we got lunch. Turns out that they don’t pay her anything, and won’t even handle her meals, and told me to pay for the food I ‘stole’,” I explained, using air-quotes. “And to leave, while they’d ‘take care of her’. I asked they call her contact because she obviously needed to go home and get some rest, since she fell asleep while eating, they refused to, and attacked me when I told them I was getting her phone to call you. I’m assuming they lied to you when you got here, to try to get you mad and attack me for them.”

The Superheroine blinked dumbly. “Okay, what the hell?” she glanced at her sister, the administrator, and the doctor before looking back at me. “She’s worked herself hard before, but they’re never that bad when I’m here.”

“You mean when you have a mind control aura that makes them not want to make you mad? Gee, I wonder why.” I answered sarcastically. Did she forget about her own power?

She blushed in embarrassment, getting defensive. “It’s not a Master ability, it’s a Shaker.”

“That just means it’s area of effect instead of making minions,” I shot back before dragging myself back to the topic at hand. “But without you here, they apparently are totally okay playing off her desire to be a hero to manipulate her into working her like a slave.” I saw her start to get more upset, and cut off her response before we could get more sidetracked than we already were. “Get your sister, the two of us have been told we’re not wanted here again ever.”

“Not her, just you!” the administrator tremulously called.

I rolled my eyes. “My bad, I’ve been told that I’m not wanted here because I can’t be manipulated into working more than a slave. People still feed their slaves.” Why am I getting so testy? I thought as Glory Girl nodded before turning around and picking up her sister and floating towards the door, the feeling of awe diminishing slightly as she moved away. Ah, that. I thought as I followed and the feeling increased. I hate being manipulated, and feeling emotions that had no apparent cause irked me.

I followed her out, shaking my head at the administrator as I walked, the few people still recording following after, one orderly making a grab for a phone that missed as the woman recording ducked and followed after me faster. “So,” I said, coming up even with the floating Glory Girl, walking quickly to keep up. “Panacea said she had been working since yesterday. Does your mother know?”

She shook her head, “Probably not. Ames does this sometimes, even with me telling her it isn’t good.”

I feigned shocked concern, despite expecting the answer. “Does this happen often?

She winced, “Not really, but sometimes on weekends I check on her if she’s working.” I snorted, and she got defensive. “What?”

“Work suggests she’s getting paid,” I told her. “Apparently she wasn’t, which might have been how they told themselves it was ok to take advantage of her. There’s laws regarding employees, but volunteers aren’t protected. Lawmakers probably assume that if things get bad, volunteers’ll just leave.”

We walked out the front doors, well, one of us did, Glory Girl coming to face me. “I better bring her home, thanks for calling me. You’re okay.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “Do you want me to head back and talk to Brandish about what happened? I figure, since she’s Panacea’s mom, she ought to know.”

Glory Girl wouldn’t meet my eye. “I’ll tell her, it’ll be fine. Besides, I can’t carry both of you.”

I levitated using my copy of her power. “You don’t need to, I can fly.” She looked shocked. “Sorry, didn’t get to do the full intro in there. My name is Vejovis, I’m a new Trigger and a newly registered independent hero, head of the Penumbral Defenders, a new independent team. My powers are bug control, healing, but not diagnosing like your sister, and an Alexandria package. I’d offer to shake your hand, but they’re full.” I joked.

“Okay,” she said, starting to lift up in the air watching as I kept pace. “That’s weird. Bug Control?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, no idea where that comes from. Makes about as much sense and strength, flight, durability, and an emotional inspiration field. Powers, right?”

She nodded. “Okay. Icky, but okay.”

I laughed as we flew over the city. “They’re less gross when I control what they do, but it’s limited to bugs, so rats still gross me out.”

We flew for a bit before she asked, “You said you didn’t diagnose? What d’ya mean?”

“You know how Panacea can touch you and knows what’s wrong with you?” Glory Girl nodded. “I can’t do that. Surface level stuff that I can see are easy, but anything underneath the skin I need a picture of, and steps on how to fix it. She was helping me understand how to heal different things as I worked. Panacea’s pretty amazing with that stuff.”

She nodded, before tilting her head in question, “Why do you keep calling Ames, Panacea?”

“Professional Courtesy, Glory Girl” I responded immediately. “Her identity might be known, but until she gives me permission to call her by real name I won’t use it. Like how you call someone Mr. or Mrs. and use their last name until they say ‘call me, whatever’.”

She looked thoughtful about this as we flew in what I realized was almost a parabolic arc towards her parent’s house, finally stating, “You were surprised when I said mom didn’t know Ames was wor- at the hospital.”

I mentally praised my acting as I took on a serious expression. “I’ve finished college, but if I were working in high school, she’s in high-school, right?” I asked, continuing at her nod. “If I were in high school my mom would want me to call her if I was working late, and if I didn’t come home she’d call me to make sure I was alright. I was just surprised that she didn’t. I meant it as a rhetorical question, that’s why I was surprised when the answer was no. I’ll have to ask her why she didn’t know where her teenage daughter was when I talk to her.”

“Yeah, you might not wanna do that,” she advised as we descended in front of a nice-looking house. She tried to move to get to her belt, but was having trouble with her hands full of healer. I motioned towards the doorbell and pressed it when she nodded.

A minute later a severe looking blonde answered the door, glancing at Glory Girl before glaring at me. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Mom, he’s a hero,” Glory Girl told her moving forward and angling past the woman to take Panacea inside.

“My name is Vejovis, Ma’am. I’m a newly registered hero on a new team. I presume you are Brandish?” I asked, holding out my hand, which she ignored.

“What were you doing with my daughter?” she asked instead. Okay, someone’s having an off day I thought.

“One of my powers is healing, though I’m not nearly as good as Panacea. I was working at Brockton Bay Memorial Hospital with her as she taught me to use my power more effectively.” I waited a beat to emphasize my extended hand before slowly retracting it.

Her glare didn’t lessen. “What did you do?”

I looked at her for a moment, controlling my emotions completely and stomping down my first response, which would be to meet her aggression with my own. For some reason she reminded me of one of my exes, who would want to get upset with a person, even if they didn’t really deserve it, but would wait for something to react to as an excuse, even if her response was in no way proportional.

I would thus deny her the chance by acting perfectly professional. “When your daughter collapsed from overexertion, given that she has been working at the hospital since yesterday without a break, Ma’am, I wished to call her emergency contact. The hospital did not wish that to happen, likely due to the fact that she had not been allowed to have a break by the hospital staff, as they kept telling her that if she was a hero, she wouldn’t stop, and they didn’t want this fact to come to light, Ma’am.”

The corner of her eye twitched a bit at the second ‘Ma’am’, which was on purpose. “It was a both simplistic and dirty manipulation that worked very well on your daughter, Ma’am, and was likely why she pushed herself past her limits in the first place. The Administrator told me to leave when I took a break, and had his orderlies attempt to restrain me when I informed them I wouldn’t leave until someone came for your daughter, Ma’am, as she had fallen asleep a minute after sitting down. I used your daughter’s phone to call your other daughter, who arrived and carried her back here, Ma’am. One of my other powers is flight, which I used to follow her so I could tell you what happened in person. Ma’am.”

As I talked Brandish seemed to get more upset, probably because I wasn’t giving her anything to lash out at me for. She hadn’t made much of an appearance in the book, but what I had seen in Worm wasn’t good. “And why did you stay if they ordered you out?” she asked, disapprovingly.

“Why did I stay and not leave her with the people who had worked a teenage girl until she passed out, and then refused to call her parents when she was unconscious? Really, Ma’am?” I asked in return, voice almost devoid of emotion.

She narrowed her eye, her hand starting to glow. “Don’t take that tone of voice with me young man!” she practically hissed. Ah, I thought, repressing my feelings harder and keeping my face emotionless. The last bastion of the harridan, lie about the other person’s ‘tone’ while simultaneously pretending you have done nothing wrong, standing on your age and gender to presume you have the moral high ground. Brandish, you are bitch, and the faster I get your daughters to notice, the better off they’ll be.

I started to open my mouth to respond but was cut off by Glory Girl saying, “You’re still out there? Geez mom, he’s cool, let him come inside!”

Brandish glared at me even harder, “He was just leaving.”

“What, really?” she asked, coming back and squeezing past her mom. “Thanks for calling me! You helped Ames out, and I’m glad you did!”

I returned her smile with one of my own, physically turning to look at her and ignoring Brandish completely. “It’s the least I could do for another hero, let alone one that was teaching me how to use my power.” I reached into a belt pouched and pulled out one of the cards I’d printed that morning. “Here’s my contact details, please give it to Panacea when she wakes up. I enjoyed working with her and would like to do so again.”

As I handed over the card Brandish reached out and snatched it out of my hand. Glory Girl looked at her mom in surprise. “I’ll take that,” the sad excuse for a mother said.

I looked back at Glory Girl and rolled my eyes. “My number is 1 777 835 6487. It’s 1 777 Vejovis essentially. Thanks for your help too, have a nice day Glory Girl.”

And with that I turned my back on Brandish and took off, using my sound control to listen as Brandish told her daughter “He’s dangerous, stay away from him,” only for her daughter to respond “What the hell mom? He was being nice!”

<AB>​

I entered the trainyard and flew low to avoid detection, landing at the base a little before one. “Lucy, I’m home!” I called, feeling a little let down when I got no response. Poking around I found BJ in the kitchen, making a gigantic plate of sandwiches, giggling as he did so.

“Boojack?” I asked him. He waved me off, so I left, looking around for Herb. I saw the light was on in Herb’s room. Poking my head in I saw him in his bathroom, studying his reflection in the mirror, lips pulled back. “What are you doing?” I asked causing him to jump.

“Dude!” he told me excitedly. “I’ve got Vampire teeth!”

“It’s been two days, you just realized this?” I asked incredulously.

“I forgot,” he defended, fingering them. “I knew I was gonna get them, but these are hardcore. I was expecting, like, Buffy teeth.”

“You’re a Case 53,” I told him, walking in. “They need to be obviously inhuman features. ‘Buffy teeth’ could just be unusually large.”

“Yeah, but these are like Bella Lugosi long. I like it!” he commented, going back to looking at them in the mirror. “Yeah, Buffy teeth are so short!”

“I think they had that game-face demonic visage thing they had was supposed to balance that out.”

He nodded. “Yeah, at least I don’t sparkle.”

“Dude, I don’t think you’d be able to make it as a supervillain if you sparkled,” I laughed. “Not without murdering enough people to get a kill-order on your head.”

Herb thought about it. “It would be a challenge, but maybe too much of one.”

“No, it would just suck,” I disagreed.

“Yeah!” Boojack yelled from another room. “It’d suck, you gay-ass bitch!”

I sighed, “Thank you Boojack for your helpful contribution.”

“You’re welcome!” he called back without a hint of remorse.

“God he’s a dick,” I commented to Herb. “Is that what you could really be like if you took a different path?”

“Yes,” he answered honestly.

“Thank you for not being like that.”

“Oh, I thank myself all the time,” he replied without missing a beat.

“Nevermind,” I sighed, to his amusement. “I met Brandish,” I told him, testing to see if it was all the older white woman he was interested in, or just the white supremacist ones.

He looked up at me in confusion. “Why? She’s a cunt!”

Apparently not. “I registered at the PRT, our team name is the Penumbral Defenders.”

“Penumbral. . .” he trailed off, thinking. “I like it, we’re the police department, since the Protectorate ain’t doin’ shit!”

“What?” I asked. “No, I figure since we’re going to be a team of heroes, villains, and rogues, when I track down my father, that some sort of shadow theme name would work. My first Idea was Crusaders, but Crusader is already an E88 cape so that was out.”

“Yeah,” Herb agreed. “Plus the whole Christian thing, and it’s gay as shit, we’d get called Twinkles or something like that.”

“What’s wrong with Christian thing, the word isn’t inherently religious.” He gave me a look. “Fine, but why the police? We’re. . . Oh, I get it. Our initials would be PD, like Police Department. Okay, yeah, I can see it now. Wasn’t intentional.”

“Still awesome,” he added. “And we’ll be the cops people can like, instead of just shooting black kids!”

“Statistically speaking white people are. . . you know what, it doesn’t matter. Either way,” I said, dragging the conversation back on topic. “It’s our official name. So after registering I went to go help out healing with Panacea-“

“Dude, you’ve got a problem,” he interrupted.

“I will hurt you, and I won’t even feel that bad, because I can heal you now.” I promised. “So, I worked with her, getting practice healing and she taught me a lot about mending wounds I can’t see. Thing is, she’d been working since yesterday, double shift at least, maybe a triple shift with no breaks at all and was dead on her feet. When we stopped for lunch, which I had to fucking threaten the doctor who was ‘helping’ us with bugs just to get, the hospital admin comes and tries to chew me out. Oh, and get this, not only were they paying us nothing while charging the patients, they wouldn’t even cover lunch, and accused me of ‘stealing’ when the cashier chick said we should be good and went to go check.”

“Damn,” he said. “That’s fucked up, what’d ya do?”

“I was ready to split, but Panacea had fallen asleep, and they wouldn’t even call her contact to come pick her up. Dude had his goons try to jump me and throw me out, didn’t know I had strength, dumbass, and they attacked me after I said I was going to use her phone to call her emergency contact. So I put them on their ass, called her, and Glory Girl showed up. You know that mind control power she has?”

“The fear/awe aura thing?” he inquired

“Yeah, turns out that even with them lying to her that I’d been ‘holding her sister hostage’ ,when she showed up and they nearly shit themselves? Well, it was pretty damning fucking evidence they did something wrong. So, she picked up Panacea, and we flew back to her house, where I got the 4^th degree from Brandish despite doing nothing wrong!” I exclaimed. “She was looking for anything to get mad at, so I was polite and professional, which just pissed her off more since she couldn’t find anything to get mad at!”

Herb winced. “Um, dude, that was the wrong thing to do?” he more asked than stated.

“What?” I asked right back. “I was being professional, what the hell’s wrong with that?”

“Okay,” he prefaced. “So, Brandish’s a total bitch, but remember she has a massive hate-on for Marquis, who was always professional, who reminded her of her kidnapper, who was too. The one that made her Trigger. By bein’ all ‘professional’,” he said with air quotes, “All you did was remind her of both of the dudes she fuckin’ hates.”

“Oh. Shit, you’re right.” I replied, sighing. “Fuck it, I never was gonna get her on my side to begin with, and she’s too stuck in her paradigm and her power is too limited for her to be worth helping. I’d rather have Panacea on my team anyways. My being perfectly professional to her bitchiness will just distance them from her faster, since god knows she’ll never deign to explain herself to her kids, and it’ll make he look like the irrational harpy she is.” I stretched. “You ready for tonight?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he grinned, before looking at me seriously. “But you can’t help, she’s gotta fight this on her own.”

I nodded. “Yeah, if it goes like cannon. We did piss off Lung in a way that didn’t happen in cannon though, so if it starts to get really bad, and Taylor’s in real danger, I’m stepping in.”

He nodded, “So when do we head out?”

“Nightfall.” I responded. “But before that, I’m building a Railgun!”

“Wait, What!?”

 

Development 2.7

I finished my project with an hour and change to spare. It would have gone faster, but I’d promised Herb I wasn’t going to bring in bugs, and I wasn’t going to, now that I wasn’t cleaning up his mess. Having built and tested my device, I folded it up and left it by the door, going to make everyone dinner.

After a descent chicken-alfredo baked penne, Herb and I got into costume, ready to take the next step on our own Path to Victory, and I secured my weapon to the back of my costume, willing it to stick in place to hold it there, threads reaching out and securing it.

The sun had set an hour ago, and twilight was shifting into darkness as we got ready to leave. Standing outside, Herb looked at me expectantly. “How we gonna do this?” he asked. “You can fly, but I can’t copy your copied powers, so should I have Enter turn into a giant bird or something?”

I shook my head, “I can just carry you, besides, I registered you guys as turning into Dinos, so stick to them unless shit gets really bad. A princess carry’ll have to do,” I told him, holding out my arms.

“Ahh, are you my prince?” he faux-cooed as he jumped into my arms.

“Dude, you guys are so fucking gay.” Boojack commented from inside the doorway.

Herb hopped out of my arms and took off his mask as he ran over to BJ, grabbing his replicant by the head, declaring “Boojack! I love you soooo much!” before kissing him straight on the mouth.

Running back, he jumped into my arms as I declared “Ambiguously Gay Duo, away!” and took off into the night sky, the both of us laughing.

We flew around for a while, I shifted us into Shadowform once we reached a hundred feet, flying around the docks looking for Taylor. I hesitantly felt with my bug sense, ready to disconnect it if I go too close. With my extended range I’d detect her before she detected me, but if I tipped her off that I was in the area, the fight might go much differently. After a bit we landed to give my arms a break, Herb copying my Power Sight to improve his own vision as he looked around. He couldn’t work at a remove, unable to copy the powers saved to my own power copying power, but the others I had were fair game. “Anything?” I asked, stretching out.

“Nah, just some thugs,” he told me, pointing them out.

I got ready to pick him up again when I stopped and thought. Glory Girls’ Alexandria package was really just one power, not three. Her forcefield blocked damage, enhanced her own strikes, and it moved her, but the first two needed recharging. Actually, it was the moving that I thought about, since she could still feel things, breathe, all that fun stuff, which meant that the field was malleable. “Give me your hand,” I told Herb. Grabbing the offered limb, I concentrated on her power, specifically on extending it past me to cover him as well, levitating myself and trying to levitate him as well.

He watched, interested, as I tried to make it for a few times with no result until I mentally thought of cupping him with my forcefield, like a metaphorical bowl that lifted him rather than a full forcefield that locked him in. He squeaked as he was lifted up with me, and moved as I moved my arm, maneuvering him around as if he were weightless.

“Holy shit, you really are Superman!” he cheered before thinking. “Does this make me Lois Lane?”

“You get into enough trouble,” I idly commented as he had the gall to look offended. “But no, there’s not a good Superman analogy in this setting. Dude had too many powers. Try letting go,” I advised, moving him a few feet over the ground. He did so, and fell to the ground with a yelp, taking the fall into a roll before looking down at himself in surprise. I hmmm’d before nodding. “Okay, I can extend it to move people, but I need skin contact. Wait, I’m wearing cloves, so just general touch. Actually, wait a sec.” I told him floating down into an alley and grabbing an empty bottle. I came back up holding it by the neck and floating, extending my field over it. “Try grabbing it now.”

He did, but didn’t float. When I pictured the forcefield extending past the bottle to lift him, there was a crack as the glass deformed and crushed into itself, leaving only dust. “Holy shit,” Herb commented as I grabbed another bottle.

“Okay, I can extend it, but not through two things. Different experiment.” This time I covered it with my forcefield, trying to cover it, not cup it like I had Herb. Leaning down I swung it against the ground in a motion that should have broken it. Instead I felt the strength of my forcefield diminish as it gave a loud thunk, cracking the cement we stood on, glass intact.

“Okay, that might be useful,” I murmured, reaching for Herb’s hand again with my free one. This time I focused on covering both weapon and cupping Herb, lifting slowly, bringing both up with me without a problem, and moving us over a few buildings in case anyone investigated the disturbance I made.

Nodding to myself I stuck the bottle to my back just in case, grabbed my friend by the forearm and waited until he grabbed me back, then extended the forcefield and took off, phasing out as we started to cover the docks in a less intimate position.

<AB>​

After another few hours of searching, with both of us silent as we looked for a disturbance, I felt a pull on the bugs at the edge of my range. I oriented us that way, tracking the direction of the pull as it slowly moved before turning off that power and taking us in that direction. I murmured to Herb, “Found her,” as I wrapped us in a bubble of silence, making sure that any noise we made wouldn’t be heard.

“You’re not using the bug power?” he asked as we flew. I glanced at him. “The web faded, which looked fucking cool but holy shit there are a lot of bugs out there.”

I nodded, “I don’t want her to feel me through the power and get distracted.”

He nodded back, pointing out the darkly mottled shape of Taylor creeping along, the Grey and Yellow Flame that shone once I focused on her highlighting her in her own web of power as she pulled and controlled thousands of insects at once.

He was right, it was impressive.

I flew several hundred feet above her and kept pace as she flitted from shadow to shadow in the docks, moving bugs to scout ahead as she moved. After following her for close to an hour, I saw a group of people gathered together, one familiar figure standing head and shoulders above the rest, the Grey and Orange Flames of his power reaching up into a dragon that almost seemed to pace as it flickered. Looking at her path, I saw her stiffen, before heading for a nearby fire-escape and I knew it was time to get set up.

Herb pointed at nearby building, but I shook my head, heading to one farther away and higher. We set down, and only our enhanced sight let us see Taylor as she finished the climb, creeping to get into position, her insects starting to swarm.

“Dude, we’re too far away to help if she needs it,” he said, worried. “Not that she does, but you said-“

“We’re well within range, but also just out of hers,” I interrupted, taking out the device behind my back and setting it up, Extending the tripod and folding out the trough.

“Oh shit, is this the railgun?” he asked looking over the device. “It looks kinda. . . basic.”

The railgun, as it was right now, was the bottom half of a length of pipe mounted on a tripod, with sights, and small set of rails perpendicular to the pipe which ended at the back of the pipe and a single handle attached to the bottom of the pipe. “It’s ‘cause it is,” I responded. “I only had a few hours to build it.”

“But aren’t. . . don’t those things have magnets and shit to shoot things?” he questioned, squatting down to look at the bottom, searching for something. “Where’s the battery?”

I laughed. “You’re looking at him,” I grinned. “Instead of a magnetic field, I’m using something better.” With the base secure, and the feet extended, I started laying Speed Zones down the length of the pipe, each layer turning it darker and darker, until it was hard to see against the dark of the night, the sparks it gave off an eggplant purple, a slight breeze picking up from it as air molecules hit the Zone and accelerated.

I grabbed a metal bolt I’d snagged from the workshop, and slid it along the track, moving it into a divot I’d cut to hold it in place before it would drop into the trough and be fired, probably at five times the speed of sound if I’d done my calculations correctly. Instantly lethal to an unarmored opponent, enough to knock Lung flat on his ass and take him out of the fight. Probably. Hopefully. It would make a hell of a noise, so no test firing at this level, but the arc would only have an inch of drop at this range and speed at most, assuming it wasn’t just a straight line, and I adjusted my sights accordingly.

Looking down them I could see Taylor crouched on the rooftop, directing her bugs below, the sounds of gunfire and the bursts of flame from Lung showing her attack had begun. We stood there, tense, as the battle played out like canon, with the thugs running and the light from Lung’s fire becoming more intense as he transformed. Then. . . there! Taylor started to leave, not knowing that as Lung’s transformation progressed, he gained what he believed were a ‘dragon’s senses’.

By the movement of the light and shadows, Lung was climbing the building as Taylor rummaged around her backpack, taking out two things, both hard to see at this distance. “What’s she got?” Herb asked, either of me or himself as she advanced on the dragon as it started to crest the top of the building. Instead of scoring a shoulder shot the first time, she hit him square in the eyes, Lung covering his face as he bellowed in pain with his free hand, still clinging to the ledge with his other.

Taylor darted forward, what looked like a baton in her other hand, striking at his free hand. Lung started to let go, but grabbed the ledge again, shooting a stream of flame at Taylor, probably guessing her position from the impact of her weapon. She twisted away, falling prone as the fires barely missing her, and scrabbled backwards, frantically crab-walking away from the scaled menace, summoning her bugs to help.

“This is different,” I commented coldly, sighting on Lung and preparing to fire. “She gets burned I’m taking this fucker down, or if he gets a good hit in. I can stabilize her, and Panacea can heal her, but I’m not taking more of a chance than that.”

“Agreed,” he responded, all joviality gone as we watched the confrontation.

The insects swarmed him, going for his eyes again, blinding him once more as he let out gouts of flame, Taylor taking shelter behind a vent as Lung struck out randomly. Hitting nothing, and doing very little other than scorching the rooftop, the leader of the ABB continued to rage.

Taylor had her baton, but with the villain’s wild swings, she was playing it safe, trying to distract him with what few stings she could get in before her swarms perished. Smart girl, but I already knew that. Lung continued to shift, the fire around him intensifying as he started to move towards Taylor. “Bitch’s coming.” Herb commented as I was about to take the asshole down, finger on the bolt.

Sure enough, a large shape launched itself from a nearby rooftop, the monster body slamming into the dragon, claws scrabbling uselessly on the iron scales, but its imparted momentum taking both of them off the side, a whining howl mixed with a surprised roar that cut off after a moment, the firelight dying down quickly.

“Good,” I commented, moving the bolt off of the firing line and pocketing it. “I’m gonna drop the field, be right back,” I told him, carefully taking the tripod and flying to the alley behind us. Looking away and closing my eyes as I tried to strip off the fields one at a time, but the collapse of one triggered the rest, flashing my vision red through my closed lids. Quickly collapsing the structure and sticking it to my back, I flew up to see Herb looking in my direction.

“That was really fuckin’ bright!” he told me as I grabbed his hand, shifting us to shadow and taking off, seeing Taylor and the Undersiders all looking in our direction, but without enhanced vision of their own they shouldn’t be able to see anything that mattered.

“Stronger it is, the brighter it is,” I apologized. “Maybe if I could strip off the layers one at a time it would be better, but I’ve been kinda pressed for time.” He nodded as we rose high above, watching Taylor talk to the villains, before they climbed on what must be Bitch’s dogs and riding off. Grue was right there, constantly leaking darkness, but to see his power I’d have to shift back into full visibility, and I wasn’t doing that anywhere near Tattletale if I didn’t have to.

Armsmaster arrived a moment later, shooting Lung with his specialty tranquilizer before Batman-ing up to the rooftop Taylor stood on with a grappling hook. I didn’t need to hear them to tell that he talked her into letting him take credit, the douche, and sent her on her way before anyone else could show up and realize that Armsdick hadn’t performed a solo takedown. We watched her descend the fire escape, and start to head back home. Looking at her path, I saw she planned to take cut through an alley a couple of blocks away that would be perfect. Stopping on the rooftop to phase in, I kept a hold on Herb as we dropped over the ledge and dropped down, slowing our fall right before we touched down.

Looking at her, I saw that she’d already taken off her mask and was staring at us, eyes wide behind her glasses. The insects around us started to swarm as she visible panicked, probably thinking she’d just outed herself. Bringing my own, more powerful bug control online I took hold of the swarms around us and grounded the lot of them. She gave a shriek of terror as she fumbled for her baton, dropping it before catching it and holding it out in front of her unsteadily.

Herb took the lead.

“Woah, woah, slow down, slow down,” he said motioning with his hands as we calmly walked towards the panicking girl. “It’s not what you think, but it’s not what you don’t.”

She glanced at him, still keeping most of her attention on me, confusion vying for fear across her face. I looked at him stating, “Wow, that was such a clear statement,” before turning my attention back on her as she tried to grab control of the insects around us.

“The world is never that clear,” he reasoned, projecting an aura of calm relaxation.

I glanced back, “No, sometimes it really is.”

“Taylor, darling-” he started.

“Don’t say darling dude, that’s creepy,” I interjected. Why did I let him take the lead on this?

“Taylor, darling” he reiterated. “I know you’re gonna try this whole superhero thing. “

I felt compelled to add, “That’s not a bad thing,”

“It’s not,” he amended, “But it’s also not the right thing.”

“Yes it is,” I retorted, folding my arms, flexing my power to keep her bugs calm, despite her continuous attempts to take control. “’Not the right thing,’ says the villain. Hero here, doing the right thing is the right thing. That’s why it’s called the right thing!” I sighed, “We’re getting sidetracked again aren’t we.”

“Yeah,” he ruefully agreed, as if hadn’t started it with his inscrutable bullshit.

Taylor, thoroughly off balance by this point, tried going on the offensive “Who are you? How do you know my name? What are you? You’re a hero, but he’s a villain? What’s going on!?” she demanded.

“Listen,” Herb started carefully. “That, I could tell you but. . . Well, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“Sorry,” I added “You really wouldn’t.”

Herb redirected the conversation. “Can we just stick to the fact that you really don’t want to be a hero.”

Taylor and I responded at the same time with “Yes I do/ Yes she does.” I continued as she stared at me, curiosity overcoming her fear. I Explained to both of them, for different reasons, “Armsmaster isn’t a hero, he’s a power-hungry corporate climber with tunnel-vision so bad he doesn’t understand anything not directly related to his goal, and willing to sacrifice almost anything to get it.”

Rolling his eyes, he clarified, “You don’t want to be one of those heroes-”

“Exactly!” I interrupted, clamping back down on the bugs that were swarming behind us. “Independent teams are the way to go!” I selected a few beetles and used them to float my card over to her, which she took, before I released control over those six, letting her puppet them around for a second as a show of good faith. She turned her attention back on us as they landed in her hair, disappearing.

Herb waited for that little show to finish before adding, “You don’t want to be New Wave either.”

“Yeah, that’s not what I meant by independent teams.” I sighed, “They’ve got some serious problems, but those are more psychological and sociological than anything inherent to being an independent team.”

“Thing is,” Herb told her, “the Undersiders are going to be something amazing for you, and you’re gonna mess with it, by trying to be a hero. You’re not gonna mean to do it, but you are.”

I weighed in. “They’re generally good people, for definitions of good, but their boss is, ugh.” I gave a theatrical shutter.

He tried to drag the conversation back on topic, “Look darling, I have future sight, trust me.”

“Annoying is what it is,” I chimed in. “We know a possible path. It also doesn’t function how you think, and it makes planning things a pain.”

She seized on that lead and ran with it. “Is that how you know who I am? I tell you in the future, so you know now? Is that how you knew where I was?”

“In a way,” I agreed. “As far as I can tell, our view of the future doesn’t set off Time Paradoxes, so we’re free to act on it. We didn’t mean to catch you with your mask off,” I told her truthfully. “But we knew who you were anyways.”

“So, here’s the thing, darling,” he tried again, and I think I could hear the frustration in his tone as we got on a tangent he didn’t control. “I want to offer you- we want to offer you,” he corrected at my look, ignoring my thumbs up when he corrected himself, “a better option.”

“Saving people without dealing with large amounts of bureaucratic BS!” I explained with a smile. “And not being commanded by the government to do blatantly illegal things because ‘shut up I’m in charge, do what I say or I’ll break the law even further to punish you, because that’s how the law is supposed to work’ or things like that.” She looked at me in mild confusion. “Which is the Protectorate and the PRT, and what they’ll become later in Brockton Bay. Don’t believe me? Wait a few days and call Armsd-master,” I advised, almost slipping. “Talk to him about possibly infiltrating the Undersiders, but know that he’s gonna rip you a new one because of a fuck up that he made that he’s gonna blame you for.”

“What?” she asked. “What did he do, does Lung escape?”

I shook my head. “He does later, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Armsmaster took sole credit for taking down Lung, dick move by the way, the rep for taking down the Dragon of Kyushu would make the local villains respect you and be wary of you, not make you a target.”

Herb added, “You took down a serious threat, one that normally takes a team of capes to beat. People would be going ‘Oh my god, you did this really awesome thing, please join our Wards team, and then you could negotiate for almost anything you wanted. School transfer? Done. Investigation into your bullying? Done. New ballin’ bugs that aren’t native to here? Done and Doner.”

I nodded, “But that’s not going to happen now because Armsmaster already called in his solo takedown of Lung, isn’t he amazing? But what did he actually do in the fight?” At her look of dawning horror I repressed a smile, this was too easy. “Yeah, thing is, Tranquilizers? Anesthesia in general? It’s a lot finicky-er than movies, tv, and books make them out to be.” Herb nodded in agreement sagely. “He said his tranqs were configured to take down brutes like Lung? That means they’d be meant to work to fight his healing factor, a healing factor which is already busy fighting off the venom you pumped him full of. Nice job on that!” I told her approvingly, slowly releasing my hold on the bugs around her.

She jumped in surprise at once more able to use her power freely, before looking back at me warily, moving them into position to swarm us, but holding back, as if they were waiting for an excuse. “It’s honestly the best thing you could have done, and if you’d bought yourself a bit more time you wouldn’t have needed the Undersider’s help at all. However, that means that his healing factor has to decide between stopping the necrosis at the bite sites, or fighting off the tranquilizers which will shut down his brain. The things your bugs bit? They’re gonna rot.”

Looking at the now sickened girl turning green, her minions buzzing in agitation, I waved at her to calm down. “Don’t worry, Lung’s power means it’ll grow back. Hell, you could dig out his eyes and he’d only be blind for a fortnight.” Ignoring Herb’s cough at the canon reference, I plowed forward. “Thing is,? You told him this. Not about the drug interaction, but that you’d filled him full of venom. Anyone who uses drugs to fight is responsible for what those drugs do, that’s why you brought EpiPens after all, and you told him everything he needed to know. However, he wasn’t focused on apprehending the dangerous mass murdering gang leader supervillain, he was focused on the glory it would get him, and how to get as much as possible, even if it meant screwing over a new independent hero.”

Taylor started to fumble for her phone, but I shook my head, “It’s too late to warn him, the damage has already been done, but now instead of a flawless solo capture he’s gonna look like a slightly out-of-control tinker who performed a vicious PR-unfriendly takedown. A true hero wouldn’t have tried to take credit by lying about the effects of what you’d done in the first place, an honest man would come clean about his deception and try to make it right.”

I shook my head. “The leader of the local Protectorate? He’s gonna blame you, and if, no, when he has the opportunity? He’s going to screw you over, hard, possibly fatally if he can get away with it, for the crime of daring to make him look bad, when he was the one breaking his own rules and you were just trying to save what you thought were some kids from a horrific death. That’s why if you want to be a hero, and you know in your heart you do, or let’s be honest, Emma, Sophia, and Madison’s houses would have a serious bug problem. If you want to be a hero, don’t join the Protectorate, team with us instead.”

Herb nodded. “That way, you’ll be doing the right things for the right reasons, not what you think are the right reasons.”

She blinked at him in confusion, still a bit overwhelmed from my appeal, as I quirked an eyebrow. “Okay dude, you’re gonna need to explain that one.”

He sighed. “Here’s the thing. You’re young, so young. You think you’re gonna do the right things for the right reasons, and this is the only way you’ve got to do things, but honestly? It’s because assholes keep pushing you in that wrong direction.”

I pondered that for a second before nodding with a “Yeah, pretty much.” Seeing her blank expression, I elucidated. “Taylor, and I’m calling you by your real name because you don’t have a cape name yet, and the ones you do end up with aren’t yours by choice, but things people give you, and they’re all villainous, even when you’re a hero working with the Protectorate.” She gave a start at that, looking to Herb who nodded.

“What my villainously inclined friend means is that you’re fairly reactive as a person, that you only tend to do things in response to other people’s actions, which narrows your own options as you’re always fighting them on a battlefield of their choosing.” She opened her mouth to retort but I held up a hand, at this point, and especially unmasked, her reaction to social confrontations was to listen, and stew if attacked until she exploded. Her earlier outburst was because Herb had baited me into a Tattletale like ‘I know something you don’t know’ kind of behavior. Her current reaction set would let me hit her with hard truths, but then explain them so that she was forced to listen in a way that her father never would.

“The things you do, are going to do, are damn impressive,” I told her, “but they’re always a direct escalation of the situation. Someone threatens you, you find a way to take them down and remove the threat. You think someone’s hiding something, you pour your efforts into finding it out yourself so they can’t hide it. You think you need something, you find a way to get it no matter what. It’s an admirable trait, and one I have a bit of myself, but it leads to limiting yourself in a number of ways. Thing is, even with the Undersiders, your strength of character and drive, and yes, you have both in spades, leads to you co-opting the team as the new leader in all but name, but that also means that you never truly talk to anyone about your plans or views on what’s going on, so you don’t get different perspectives. We’ll offer those perspectives, and help you when you need it, not only if maybe you ask in exactly the right way to not offend us or trigger our personal hang-ups, like most capes.”

Herb nodded. “We’ll support you. We’ll not always be there one hundred percent because we both got shit that we need to do, but we’d expect the same from you, and we’ll back you if you need it.”

“Yeah, like the whole going undercover, gathering information, then turning them over to Armsmaster thing?” I asked, and she stiffened, before I could almost see her remind herself that we said we knew the future. “Do you think he’d really honor any promises you, or even he made, to them or you? Or do you think he’d lie about it, like he lied, lies, and will lie about Lung, possibly claiming you were just a villain who helped him for leniency. That he’d lie that you’ve already given him your statement, so there’s no need to talk to you, then get you thrown in jail for being one of them, and take the glory of their capture for himself? All the while he’d tell himself he was doing the right thing by getting a troubled girl out of harm’s way. By imprisoning her. You really want to know what he’s like when he doesn’t think he can get something from you? When he can’t use you? Call him.”

“Or offer to meet him somewhere he doesn’t control,” Herb suggested. “We’ll be there, not doing anything, unless you need us to.”

I let out a laugh, “That would actually work better, then you could get a read on him in person and he couldn’t claim some BS like ‘that wasn’t me, I never said that, it must have been your friends who were manipulating you because they’re all super evil and I am the sole paragon of law and goodness as long as you don’t actually pay attention to anything I do!’” I finished in a fake voice.

She looked between the two of us. “Did you plan this?”

I shook my head. “Nah, our future knowledge gave us broad strokes with a focus on critical people and critical events. One of them is you. Another is the Undersiders. Another is their sociopathic boss, and there are more.”

Herb nodded. “So, if you set up a meeting, tell us when and where, we’re good but not that good, yet.” He took out a card of his own, walking over and handing it to her “My card, for if you don’t want to be hampered by all those pesky ‘rules’.”

“Says the villain,” I retorted.

He rolled his eyes again. “I’ll support you for the tough things.”

“You’re saying that like I won’t,” I commented.

“I’m saying it so I get first shot,” he responded.

Rolling my eyes this time, I clarified. “If you want to be a hero, give me a call, a villain, him, but if you want to do the right things and help people, call either of us. We’re both on the same team for a reason.”

 

Development 2.x (Interlude: Chuck)

Trigger Warning: Extreme Racism. No one is the good guy here.

Charlie, Chuck to, well, everyone, wasn’t sure if this was a dream, or if he was just really high. Wandering through the streets of the city that he wasn’t sure was real, he hadn’t thought that he’d taken anything, but he couldn’t think of any other reason why he’d be here. His phone had no service, and it was early morning, so he figured he’d walk around and get his bearings. This city, apparently named ‘Brockton Bay’, had seen better days, and the name seemed familiar, but only enough that he felt like he was on the edge of a full on holy shit, brain expanding, déjà vu moment instead it actually giving him anything to work with.

He wandered toward the smell of the sea, since if there was anything interesting to see, it would probably be the place to be. The city woke up around him as he walked, the hustle and bustle of the people giving his surroundings a feeling of business they hadn’t had when he’d arrived, stepping out of an alley with no memory of how he’d gotten there. He’d checked the alley twice, and all he’d found was a bad smell and more questions.

Reaching the shore, he sighed and looked along the boardwalk. Whelp, it was a boardwalk. Grabbing a newspaper someone had left on a table and moving to a café down the street he got some food, dipping into his reserve funds since he was pretty sure they wouldn’t take his college cafeteria card. Reading it, he was still not sure if he was high or dreaming, but he realized why this place sounded familiar. As he perused stories about superheroes, and the three gangs that were active in this city, he remembered his older brother talking about a story he’d wanted him to read. Something called Wyrm, though there was only, like, one dragon, and he wasn’t the main character either.

Thinking about it, he was leaning towards dream. He’d fallen asleep reading stuff and dreamed up plotlines before, like that time he’d been reading Animal Farm and the pigs had been overthrown by the two dogs they’d ‘educated’ and turned the farm into an actual socialist utopia. Man, he’d failed that book report hard.

A few hours later, some delicious waffles down, and with the waitress giving him hints that he should leave, he was definitely leaning towards dream, as he didn’t think drug trips were supposed to last this long. Well, he thought they didn’t, he hadn’t actually ever done drugs, other than alcohol, which didn’t really count. The paper had been cool though, and if the story was even half as cool as he’d dreamed it, he should probably read it. As he walked down the street, he figured that he could bargain with his brother that he’d read this story after he woke up, if his brother played the newest season of the Walking Dead, since none of his friends played it and he wanted someone to talk about it with.

Wandering around, he heard screams and looked down the Boardwalk to see that one of the shops was apparently on fire. Yeah, not my problem, he decided, turning on his heel and walking away. He’d made it out of sight when he heard distant screaming, but a different kind of screaming, with what sounded like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park.

Looking behind him, he saw two guys, both jacked, running full tilt down the Boardwalk, one was black with a bright yellow jacket wrapped around his head, the other. . . he couldn’t really tell. He was covered head to toe, a hood and mask obscuring everything but glowing rainbow eyes. God those look gay, he thought. Behind them an honest to god Dragon, slate grey and on fire, which ran on all fours to catch them, wingless, but with a long tail swinging back and forth that looked freaking lethal.

The runners passed him on both sides, the covered one’s eyes meeting his and opening in shock for a moment. The dragon charged straight for him, or at him, and he leaped to the side, somehow pulling himself into some kind of roll that cleared him of the monster as it pursued its prey, the heat from the flames like he’d stuck his head in an oven for a moment. Watching it chase those two, he shook his head. Better them than me.

<AB>​

Having wandered away from the dragon, he’d taken a few turns towards what looked like downtown. Really, heading away from the dragon and the cops that would eventually show up is all he’d wanted, and was now just meandering. He’d started down an alley, of the non-stinky variety, and there were three Asian guys hanging out in it. He’d given them a nod and passed by, stopping when he heard a ringing click down the corridor. Slowly turning around, he saw that one of them had an honest to god submachine gun that he’d pulled from. . . somewhere. “You, Gaijin, give me you money fool!” the guy with the gun demanded.

“Um, why?” he asked, not really sure how he should respond in this situation.

“Are you high, round eye?” the mugger asked, walking up to him and pointing the gun at his head. “Because I’ll fill you pasty head full o’ lead if you don’t.”

He stared at the guy in disbelief, finally noticing that all three of them were wearing the same color scheme. The Asian themed gang? He thought. But it’s broad fucking daylight! Who mugs people in the middle of the day when there’s cops and shit everywhere? Yeah, this is a dream, which means worst case, I’ll just wake up.

He’d had lucid dreams before, though they were rare. They were always really fun though, since he could do whatever he wanted and it didn’t matter, since none of it was real. It was like video games on crack, and he remembered them fondly. Well, kinda, in that half-memory thing that dreams did. If he was just in an unfamiliar city, sure, it might be real, but one with glowy-eyed people and dragons? Definitely a dream. He started giggling, which descended into full guffaws.

This was gonna be awesome.

One of the other gang members shifted uncomfortably, looking at the guy they were mugging laughing uproariously with a gun pointed at his head. “Is he high or something?”

The other thug glared at the laughing teen. “Maybe he’s a Merchant, they’re always fucking high. Hey Bai Tou, give us your money and your drugs, then get your ass back to Archer’s Bridge!”

He stopped laughing, petering out quickly, looking down in thought. I don’t even know what that meant but it sounded racist. How does that work? And Merchants? Wait, if there’s drugs in this dream, I should take them! “Hey big nose!” the SMG wielding thug yelled, poking him in the face with the barrel of his weapon. “Pay attention to me when I’ve got a weapon in your face, or I’ll blow it off!”

Again with the racism? He mused. Actually, fuck it, if racism is the way you want to go, let’s play! Calming himself down, but unable to repress a smirk, he made a show of looking at the gun. “Hmm, that’s a big gun,” he noted, pausing for a second for the thug to start to say something gloating before adding, “compensating for something, eh?”

The thug looked flabbergasted before his face turned into a snarl as he started to shout “For that y-“ obviously about to pull the trigger.

The gunman never got the chance as Chuck brought his hand up, knocking the SMG to the side right before it was shot, the quick burst of bullets going wild, hitting the wall to the left, one piercing a trash can as he took a step inside the thug’s firing arc, yelling, “Golden Rule Yellow Man! I’m mugging you now!” as he punched the gangbanger straight in the face, nose crunching viscerally under the impact.

One down in a spurt of blood, the other two froze before one whipped out a knife and slashed at Chuck. He took a step back, slapping the knife out of the thug’s hand, stepping forward and rising in an uppercut, using his full six-foot five inch frame to lift the smaller man off his feet, letting his height compensate for honestly sub-par strength, pairing it with a taunt of, “Where’s your Sun Tzu now, Bitch!”

“Fuck? You a cape?” the last one demanded, scared, fumbling for a pistol.

Chuck spun with a hammer fist to the last one’s temple, downing him as well. “No,” he said to the now unconscious gangbangers, having no idea what a ‘cape’ was. “I just know kung fu!” Looking around he realized that no one in the alley could hear his awesome one-liner. “Dammnit!”

He relieved the thugs of their weapons and money. After all, on top of being a great taunt, he was just following the golden rule, and these thugs obviously wanted to be robbed because of their skin color. Looking at them though, it didn’t seem like enough. He walked out of the alley, the street had only a few people on it, all glancing at him before hurrying on their way. Striding confidently over to a corner store, he bought a permanent marker and returned to the racist thugs, the cashier oddly jumpy. He stripped them, tying their clothing together into a rope which he used to bind them all to each other, and then to a dumpster.

With the sharpie, he considered what would be appropriately racist before shrugging and just writing on them every horrible thing he could think of like ‘I don’t know Kung-fu’, ‘Slanting eyes slant my aim’, and ‘Both my weapons are 9mm’ which he was pretty sure wasn’t physically possible. Looking at what he’d done, he had to laugh. This was such a hate crime it shouldn’t even be funny, but fuck it, they were racist assholes and this was a dream, so none of it mattered anyways!

Using one of their phones he took a few pictures, creating an email account to send the pictures to, taking the username ‘BadBoySlayer888’. He’d thought of 666, but that was way too edgy teen, 777 was kinda angelic, and what he was doing wasn’t, so 888 it was. Dropping their phones and wallets next to them, without their cash, he wasn’t going to be a complete jerk and make them get new licenses and stuff, he took off, asking a food-cart vendor where ‘Archer’s Bridge’ was as he ordered lunch.

He had drugs to do.

<AB>​

Several hours later he headed back downtown, having jumped two groups of ‘Merchants’, and almost jumped some drug addicts who weren’t bothering anyone, who’d forgiven him when he’d given them some free drugs he’d taken from the first group, which was only fair. He was looking for a nice hotel to crash at and check out his new purchases. It had surprised him how easy the gang members were to beat up. He’d sparred with his brother, who was way better than he was, but now all the moves and advice just. . . clicked, and the idiots he’d taken down were moving so slow.

He figured it was just the dream helping, since he wanted to be a better fighter, so he was. Wanting to fly and shoot lasers from his eyes had, sadly, not helped at all. So, wearing a backpack containing his new pre-paid phone, laptop, and mp3 player, several ‘confiscated’ weapons, and a whole lotta of drugs, he looked for a swanky place to crash. Two places had turned him away at the door, though given the fact that his clothing was bit bloodstained, even if none of it was his own, he couldn’t really blame them.

The third place, however, the doorman actually looked approving and let him in. The guy at the desk didn’t even bat an eye, only asking how long he wanted to stay. A thousand dollars for a night seemed like a lot, but hey, it was fancy, and the way the guy was specific about no violence on the hotel’s grounds was a bit odd, but he didn’t really care. Apparently, there were services that were available for free, or a bit more money with a list in each room, which might explain the cost.

Once he’d settled in, having an artisanal pizza sent up for him to eat while he unpacked, he got the laptop online and set it up. If he was in a dream world, then that should mean if he signed into Steam, he should be able to play dream games as well, which would be awesome. The pizza arrived and he finished the setup, immediately searching for Valve’s gaming service. To his shock and horror, it didn’t seem to exist, neither did GOG or even Humble. The only one he could find, was Origin.

“I thought this was a dream!” he yelled dramatically to the sky, knowing he was being ridiculous, “But it’s a nightmare!”

He tried finding some to download directly, only to come to the conclusion that most of his favorite games didn’t exist. CK2? Nope. Hotline Miami? It was a band, and not a good one. Shrouded Isle? The search engine directed him to the game Myst. He flopped down on his bed in childish despair, before looking over at the pile of weapons and drugs he’d unpacked. Hmm he thought. If I couldn’t play the game, why not live it? This dream was a bit more resistant to manipulation than the other lucid dreams he’d had before, since he still didn’t have superpowers, but maybe it was because he was in an established setting already?

Either way, he was gonna have some fun.

Mind made up, he uploaded the photos he’d taken on a photo sharing website with an account of the same name, giving the photos names like ‘Worst part of beating up ABB, you’re bloodthirsty again in an hour’ and ‘Made in China, Beat in America’.

It was so over the top and offensively racist, he had to laugh.

The best part about dreams is that you got to be someone completely different from who you were, like acting in a play or playing a roleplaying game. That done, he loaded the appropriate music on his MP3 player, grabbed his wallet, phone, and a revolver, took two handfuls of shrooms and pills, consuming one of them right there, and headed out into the night. He shopped for the appropriate gear, appreciating how the colors of everything slipped and blurred into each other, the night bright and exciting in a way it’d never be in real life, and while he couldn’t find the exact one he wanted, he acquired a white and red letterman jacket, along with a rooster mask from one of those year-round Halloween stores. From there it was a matter of time to wander around the slums and near the Boardwalk until he found some ABB thugs.

Jumping them was easy, and a bit of enhanced interrogation got the location of their nearest operation, a combo drug den/brothel, along with the password. It only took threatening to blow off the thug’s fingers to get the actual password as well, “may-oo”, whatever that meant, though wasn’t that a white thing?

Good password though, he’d never have guessed it.

So, after knocking them out and taking their money, he left them with only minor flesh wounds, everything fairly intact, though that one guy he’d stuffed in a trash can would be feeling it when he came to.

Popping back to the costume supply store he picked up a panda mask and a compliment on the ‘realistic’ bloodstains on his clothes, along with a couple of duffel bags. Walking calmly to the location of the brothel, he adjusted his cell phone in his breast pocket, setting the camera so it would record what he did, and took a deep breathe before he knocked and gave the password.

The guy who opened the door was armed, and had a look of shocked surprise seeing a man in a bloodstained letterman jacket and panda mask, but quickly raised his gun to fire. The door guard was knocked inside as Chuck kicked him in the chest, following him and taking him out with a double tap to the head and heart as he yelled, “Who’s endangered now, Bitch!”

Inside another thug sat, watching dumbly before bringing up a shotgun. He got a two-shot combo as well as his killer informed him, “Ling-Ling says hello!” Taking a moment to check if more were coming, he reloaded his revolver, pocketing the brass, and taking the pistol and shotgun from the two dead thugs.

Damn my imagination is vivid he told himself as he stripped the two dead bodies of their valuables, a bit shocked at how life-like the bodies looked, getting a little queasy as he looked at the shredded remains of what once was a face, though that might have been the drugs. Screw it, this is a dream, he told himself, looking away, psyching himself up, it doesn’t really matter, ‘cause it’s not real!

With that, he grabbed some more drugs, chowed down, and set the mp3 player to blast the most racist song he could find, “Love me long time” by some rapper named Dizaster on repeat. He stood there, listening and couldn’t help but laugh as it played, the world pulsing a bit in time. It was so over the top racist that he felt bad just listening to it, but it fit what he was doing so well. With that in mind, he opened the next door, giggling to himself, and proceeded inside to kill every motherfucker in there.

<AB>​

Walking back, masks stuffed in his now full duffle bags, he grinned, flush with victory, adrenalin, and soooooo many drugs. That had gone better than he’d thought. There’d been quite a few gangbangers inside, but he’d caught them with their pants down. He giggled. Literally in some cases. Sweeping through like an endangered specter of death he’d scythed through them with almost no problem. That one guy had known kung-fu, and had started kicking his ass, but the revolver in his pocket had stunned the fighter long enough for him to use one of his pilfered pistols to take him down.

If you weren’t supposed to bring a knife to a gun fight, this moron hadn’t even done that! What was black and white and red all over? Him! Laughing, he shook his head. He wished he’d thought of that one while he was doing the run. The laughter trailed off. He was sad he had to kill that one whore though.

Most of them were happy to escape, some running immediately once they realized the guards were dead, a few stripping the bodies of their rapists before leaving, which he couldn’t blame. One bitch though had started yelling at him in Chinese, or Japanese, or maybe Korean. He didn’t speak. . . what was the super racist way of talking about Asian languages? He couldn’t remember. Either way, she was yelling at him in a language he didn’t know and had rushed him with a knife so he’d shot her.

He hadn’t meant to kill her, just wing her, but she tried to dodge his shoulder shot, and took it in the chest instead. Heart, if he had to guess, from when he’d tried to give her first aid, but she was already dead. He’d wiped his hands off on the sheet, but he could still see the bits of red, which seemed to keep catching the light. Either way, there was no need for her to be nasty about it.

His job done, he’d found one of their computers, which hadn’t even been locked, and uploaded his video before sending all the documents he could find on the desktop to the cops. The combo to the safe had been on the computer, so he’d opened that sucker up, filled it with cash, and left.

A few ABB idiots had tried to jump him on his way out, so those fuckers were dead, though he was so surprised he hadn’t thought of any dope one-liners, so it wasn’t an A+ victory, maybe like A-. Or B+. Definitely better than a C.

He wandered back to the hotel, the front desk guy, not batting an eye at his appearance. The. . . Concierge! That was it. That guy pointed out Chuck was bleeding, which he hadn’t even noticed, and said he’d send up the hotel Doctor. Sure enough, a few minutes after he’d reached his room, there was a knock and an elderly black man with a doctor’s bag came in.

The doctor tsk’d as he viewed the damage. “Busy Night?”

Chuck shrugged, feeling no pain. “Kinda, sometimes you have to make your own fun, ya’know?”

The man directed him to sit on the bed, before kneeling down and examining the knife and gunshot wounds. “None of these look life threatening, luckily. Have you taken anything today and when?”

He gestured towards the literal pile of drugs on the table. “A handful of drugs and pills, maybe three hours ago? Then another, maybe an hour ago?”

The Doctor looked over, poking the hodge-podge pile. “Depending on the mix it’s either no wonder you’re still on your feet, or a wonder you made it out the door. I’ll give an addiction suppressor and some antibiotics after I’m done,” The doctor responded, getting to work suturing wounds, extracting bullets, and doing everything doctors did.

It was interesting to watch when you didn’t really feel anything. Pulling out a couple of syringes the Doctor gave him a stern glare. “This will make you feel worse in the morning, but stop any new addictions from forming. Do you want it?” Chuck shrugged. It wouldn’t really matter, since he was going to wake up back home after he ‘Went to sleep’, so he didn’t see why not.

When the Doctor finished, advising that he see someone in a few days to repack the wounds, Chuck tipped him an extra thousand, which was greatly appreciated. Lying down he couldn’t help but think, Good dream Chuck, back to classes when I wake up but it was nice to blow off steam where I didn’t have to ask everyone their freakin’ pronouns, as he fell asleep.

<AB>​

Chuck awoke in agony, fire lacing through his guts. He rolled over to get out of his dorm bed, only for his legs to hit more bed, quaking in spasms of pain. Opening his eyes against the too-bright sun he saw he was in a very nice room, drugs and guns piled up, along with three duffle bags of cash in the corner. What the hell? he thought as he looked around, seeing the painkillers the doctor had left and using the glass of water next to them to take them. Why haven’t I woken up yet? And why does it hurt? Dreams don’t hurt!

He staggered over to the desk, legs barely able to support him as he turned on the computer, the browser automatically opening to a news site, detailing an attack by Lung on the E88 and a retaliatory strike on an ABB safehouse that looked very familiar.

Wait, He thought, dread surging in his gut, twisting his wounds in shapes of suffering, the pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before. What if this isn’t a dream. What if I’m, I don’t know, in an alternate dimension or something? That would mean I. Mean I!

He ran for the bathroom, stumbling, falling, and made it in time to be violently sick in the toilet, whether it be from the pain, the drugs, what he had said, what he had done, that he’d fucking KILLED PEOPLE, or some combination of all that, vomiting until there was nothing left, then he vomited some more.

After an hour he struggled to his feet, feeling only marginally better, though whether that was from drugs or from vomiting he wasn’t sure. Shakily, he returned to his bed and laid down, trying not to aggravate his injuries as he considered his situation.

So, the Merchants might want to kill me for mugging them. The ABB definitely wants to kill me for sooo many reasons. That means I need to stay out of their territory. Looking online he saw that Downtown, while not really any gang’s territory, had all of them pass through from time to time. Okay, that means I need to go somewhere they won’t go that means. . . shit I’m going to have to head towards the fucking Neo-Nazis. I hate those assholes.

He didn’t want to, but it was his only choice. He’d get a place there and lie low until he could find out what the hell was going on. Those assholes were just like Pikmin: dumb, easily lead, and cared way too much about skin color, but they’d serve to keep his ass from becoming dragon-chow.

Destination in mind he gathered up his spoils, grabbed some new clothing from the closet, putting the letterman jacket in his backpack along with the masks, since they definitely would be evidence, and got the hell out of there. Checking out, he headed for what the map had called ‘South Imperial’, deep in the Neo Nazi Territory.

 

Blueprint 3.1

We left Taylor in the dark alley, swarm curling around her protectively, both of us flying off as I kept a hand on Herb’s collar. “Well, that went well,” I commented as we soared through the night.

“Yeah,” he nodded, thoughtful, bombastic persona turned down now that it was just us. “Any other plans?”

I shook my head. “Not really. I want to work a bit on my air control, I think it might help with flight control, or maybe help divert bullets like Stormtiger can, but I need fine enough control that I can make it subtle enough to not register as a power if people see me do it, and I need to look over what our base has. Have you read the manual?”

“There’s a manual?” he asked, shocked.

“Yeah?” I responded, confused. Was there a quick guide he’d been using instead? “it’s the word document on the desktop of the base computer that says ‘Read This First’!”

“Oh, that, yeah, it’s like over a thousand pages long! You can’t expect me to read that!” he complained.

I considered dropping him, just for a moment. “You can’t be bothered to read the manual for your secret villain base? Are you serious?”

“You’ll read it, that’s good enough,” he waved, dismissing my question.

“Ha. Ha. No,” I flatly responded. “I’m not telling you what’s inside, you can read it for yourself. We don’t have anything to do until she calls us, or the bank heist in three days.” I landed, dropping him, and strode forward. He fumbled for his phone, trying to look up the code, while I commanded, “Vejovis, Unlock.” The voice lock and facial scan recognized me and opened, letting us in.

“Wait, you can do that?” he asked, impressed.

“Yeah, it’s in the manual,” I retorted.

He tried to give me puppy dog eyes, but they didn’t really work coming from a jacked six-foot-tall black man. “Oh come on, can-“

He was cut off as a pure black fist punched him straight in the face. “That’s for making me gay asshole! I don’t kiss guys! I’m gonna go punch some people!” Boojack announced, stomping out.

“Merchants are near the docks, they probably have weed!” I called out after him, laughing as I reached down and picked Herb up, healing his broken nose.

“He hit me!” Herb informed me, shocked.

“You did kiss him,” I reminded, still laughing. “That was a bit much. And he doesn’t think the pretending to be gay thing is nearly as funny as you do.”

He sputtered. “But, but, he’s me, kinda.”

Rolling my eyes, I headed to my room to drop off my railgun prototype. “Oh, now he’s you. Read the manual, I’m gonna go practice.”

<AB>​

Starting with thrown stones and working my way up, I spent the night alternating between practicing my Aerokinesis and working on the base manual, having downloaded a copy to the smartphone I got from the base. The air claws that I’d seen Stormtiger use were fixed in my memory, a mental prompt that said, ‘press this to claw!’ but they gave only straight recreations, not the skill behind it, nor did it allow me to modify them, making them larger, weaker, on anything else.

I knew the underlying concepts, it was just condensed air until it was solid, but it was like having a grounding in physics and being asked to build a car. Any other use of the power I had to build from scratch, including the claws if I wanted to do more than ape the shirtless Nazi.

Moving breezes was easy enough, but it took a bit more to move objects. Doing so without blasting wind everywhere was even harder, but after a few hours I got the hang of it. From there, tossing rocks and altering their flight path was the next step in difficulty. I was making progress, but it was slow, and not nearly as straightforward as reading the manual.

On the other front, from my reading as I tried to make and move constructs without having to focus, I figured out how to turn on the security cameras and a few other features around the base, running them through my new phone which, like my old one, was still at 100% charge when I took it out of my pocket, recharging whenever I put it back in its pouch. Trying to find a connection for my old phone was proving difficult, as the exact micro-usb connection it used didn’t match anything I could find online.

Boojack stomped back in a few hours later, bloody with a few scratches. He borrowed my Disease Immunity, and I closed up his cuts before making him something to eat, sending him off to bed, animosity forgotten.

I was left with another few hours before the sun rose, and with that I could start working on my other plans. First thing I needed was a lawyer, and fast if I was going to keep ahead of those that would use the law against me.

Growing up I considered being a Lawyer, thinking that they were bastions of Law and Fairness, given that they had law right in the name. I found out, instead ,they were that jerks who only bothered to remember the rules when it helped them, and would let blatant violations of the law go without a word if it would advance their desires. That, combined with the fact that most judges were previously lawyers themselves, turned me off of the profession entirely. However, just like you needed a security guard to fend off vandals who might be similarly armed, I needed one to assist me. With the emails sent off to various firms, and a hot breakfast waiting for Herb when he came out of the shower, I turned towards tracking down my errant father.

I knew he was a Rogue in the city, which made finding him trivially easy. In canon there was exactly one Rogue, a cape who didn’t join in the massive game of cops and robbers that most played at while they destroyed people’s lives. That was Parian, who had cloth control, or something else that seemed like it, since the author had been oddly cagey about her real power. That meant, when I checked online and there were two rogues in Brockton Bay, it was stunningly obvious who my father was. He had apparently become “The Neutral Party”, a Thinker who specialized in negotiations and had been checked several times for mind control powers, all tests turning up negative.

I frowned as I looked at the screen. I didn’t remember exactly what dad’s powers were, but I was pretty sure that ‘Super Negotiation’ wasn’t one of them. I typed up an e-mail, as Vejovis, taking an hour to phrase it so the first letter on each line spelled out my real name as a clue, and sent it to his official e-mail. He had no listed phone number or address, or really anything to tell you where he was. While that was frustrating on my end, I could kinda see why, as having a master negotiator working for you would be the type of thing the E88 would love, let alone some of the major players from other cities, like Accord in Boston, the Thinker specializing in planning.

I considered setting up a meeting with Parian to get Taylor a better-looking costume, but decided to hold off on doing it until she officially joined the team, and went back to playing with projectiles while reading the manual. After an hour of diminishing returns, I tried to take a different track to see how my technique was progressing so started filming the rocks with my phone and reviewing after every third attempt. To see if there was something that, while concentrating, I was missing.

After a bit I nearly smacked myself in the head in frustrated realization. We were going to go meet Armsdick later today, and part of his intimidation shtick was the whole “I’m recording this” thing, with which, to be honest, probably highly selective editing in his reports to cut out all the bits that made him look bad.

What we needed to do was have equipment to film things, so that when, not if, things went bad, we had video proof that it was the ‘heroes’ being the aggressors! Mind made up, I headed out to add even more debt to our account as I left in my civvies to go pick up some easy to place cameras.

Stepping out the door, the phone I’d set up with my Vejovis phone rang. Picking it up, I didn’t recognize the number so started with, “Vejovis of the Penumbral Defenders speaking, how may I save your day today?” Okay, saying it out loud, it wasn’t nearly as cool as it had been in my head.

“This is Amy?” came the reply, more question than statement. “Vicky gave me your number.”

“Amy?” I echoed, confused. Who the hell was Amy? Oh! “Hello Panacea, you sound better. Did your mother tell you what happened?” I inquired, voice warming.

“No, but Vicky did,” she responded quickly. “And I saw the video.”

Once again, I had a moment of confusion. “What video?” I asked after a moment, walking back inside and pulling open a computer.

“The video of what happened in the cafeteria,” she replied. “You didn’t post it?”

Opening up a browser on one of the base’s laptops and hitting the bookmark labelled ‘News’ I was brought to page detailing several stories, one with a picture of me in profile in the hospital cafeteria. “Oh, right, the people who were taping the thing at the hospital. I kinda forgot about them to be honest, I was more concerned with getting you home.”

There was silence on the other end of the line before she came back with, “But you said you were going to go to the news!”

“Just to get him to back off. I had plans that evening and it slipped my mind,” I explained. “Probably should have done it though,” I mused. “A quote from me would have made the entire thing much more damning.”

“That’s not very heroic,” she responded, sounding hurt.

“What?” I retorted, confused. “You mean your family never gives public statements? ‘cause I’m pretty sure they do.”

“But not to hurt anyone! You would have been doing it out of spite, that’s different!” she tried to argue.

I laughed, “Ha, yeah, no. Doing something out of spite assumes I care, and I really don’t about that hospital. What they were doing was blatantly illegal, and I’d just be giving a report on what happened when I interceded in what was obviously a crime.” I heard her take a breath to retort and realized what I was doing. Shards push people to conflict Lee, you can’t respond in kind when capes get combative or it’ll turn into a feedback loop.

“Panacea, what they were doing was not okay,” I told her softly, cutting her off before she could defend the people that wronged her because of her warped ideas of heroism. “Think about it this way, you know how the hospital uses machines like X-rays and MRI’s?” I waited for her response, a terse mm-hmm. “Do they use them constantly, over and over again with no time for cooling down or maintenance? Or do they use them in a way that will let the machine continue running for as long as it can? They weren’t allowing you to even take breaks, using you over and over again with no care for how you were holding up. There were other issues there, but let’s just focus on that one, because it’s enough. They weren’t treating you with as much care as they treat inanimate objects, and if other people exposed what they did, then good on them.”

I sighed, might as well attack this from a different angle. “Think about it this way Panacea, what if Glory Girl was out doing patrols with the Wards and the Protectorate, but after each patrol they’d switch out the rest of the team and tell her that if she was a real hero, she wouldn’t stop while there might be people out there that could use her help, that might get hurt if she selfishly takes a break. And so she goes on another patrol, then another, then another.”

“The sun sets, she’s still going, still trying to save everyone,” I stated, painting a picture for her, “and as the Protectorate teams switch out, each new one pushes her to keep going, to the point where she’s finding it hard to fly straight but they keep telling her there are people who need her so she does it anyways. And then she’s paired up with a new team after the sun rises and say, Battery notices how she’s flagging, only to realize that she’s been doing this for over twelve hours straight, and when Glory Girl falls asleep in the meeting room and Battery rightly goes ‘What the hell? someone call her contact, she needs to go home!’ Director Piggot says, ‘No, leave her here, and if you say anything we’re kicking you out!’”

“Battery then goes ‘Screw this, I’m doing it anyways!’ Would you say that’s unheroic behavior on Battery’s part?” I asked, though mostly rhetorically. “Or would you look at all those who either forced her to keep going on patrol, or saw it happen and did nothing, and look at them and go ‘What you are doing is not ok!’”

Again, silence. “But Vicky would just tell them she doesn’t answer to them, and the Protectorate wouldn’t do that anyways!” was her eventual repost.

I sighed again, repressing a growl of frustration. This wasn’t ignorance, this was willful blindness of the truth, to the point of pointless martyrdom. “I know that, but we’re talking hypotheticals. You say that my amusement at the hospital’s horrible treatment of you coming to light is unheroic, I’d say their treatment of you is downright villainous. And not the semi-harmless Uber and L33t kind, the ongoing, systematic, screw you up horribly E88 or ABB kind. The fact that they were helping people while hurting you by treating you badly doesn’t excuse their behavior, anymore than Kaiser helping out his community at the cost of persecuting minorities excuses his.”

Shifting gears, I told her, “Part of being a Hero is helping other people, and if you have to inconvenience yourself to do so, well that makes the sacrifice worth it, but after a certain point you get diminishing returns. Do other doctors regularly pull over twelve hour shifts without breaks, only to be expected to pull another one immediately afterwards? The Doctor assigned to help us spent most of his time texting his girlfriend when he could have been working to save lives, and he was getting paid to do it! Your power makes it easier to help a lot more people, but he had the power and training to help people as well, even if not as effectively, was getting paid to do it, and wasn’t. What does that make him?”

I waited for a response, but only received silence. I had the distinct feeling this conversation would have gone more smoothly if I could’ve seen her face to read her reactions. “I’m not saying don’t help people Panacea,” I stressed, “I’m a Hero, I’m all about that. I’m saying don’t assume those around you are always as good as you are. A lot aren’t, and treating them as if they are will get you in trouble. I learned a lot about how to use my power to heal more than just cuts and bruises from you, even if you were dead tired, and the next time you go to help heal people I’d like to be able to help you and learn from you. Just, don’t go somewhere where they’ll treat you badly. Seeing a fellow hero be abused by those with evil in their hearts, even if they’re not capes, is one of my pet peeves. I’m still new in town, and new to this hero-ing thing in general, so would it be okay if I called you later if I need help?” I finished.

“Um,” was her erudite reply. “I’m. Yes, if you need help, you can call. I might be busy, I’m still in school.” She finished, almost apologetically. Ugh I thought. Get off the cross, honey, someone needs the wood.

“Are you calling me from your cell phone?” I asked gently, trying not to set off another bit of self-recrimination.

“Yes,” she rallied. “Yes, this is my cell phone, and Vicky’s number-”

“I don’t need her number” I told her, cutting her off. “If I need help, you’re the one I want to call.”

“Oh, um. Okay? Are you sure? It’s just that-” she tried, obviously off-balance.

“I’m sure. Have a good day Panacea.” I told her, hanging up after her response of “You too.”

I walked out, a spring in my step and my plans in motion. Now I needed to get my hands on some cameras.

<AB>​

​

It was almost 2:30 in the afternoon when I finally got a call from Taylor. “This Is Vejovis of the Penumbral Defenders, what needs saving?” Nope, that didn’t work either.

“Um, this is, um Taylor?” she half asked. “You and the other guy asked me to tell you about the meeting.”

“Right Taylor, still working on the phone thing. When, where, how do you want us to play this, and how visible do you want us to be?” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Taylor?”

“Um, right, sorry, didn’t expect you to ask me that,” she responded. “You seemed you like you had a plan yesterday. Well, some of one.”

“This is your op, we’re just there to make sure you’re okay,” I informed her confidently. “If you want to go with the ‘I’ve got a team backing me up now’ thing we can be right there with you. If you want him to think you’re being scouted we can be barely visible, and if you want him to treat you as the lone hero you were when you first met, we can be out of sight, but ready to respond if things go bad.”

“Wow, okay,” was her response, a moment later going with “the last one. If he’s as bad as you say, and he sounded angry on the phone, he might be different if you’re there.” Might? I thought, but held my tongue.

She gave me an address near where the southern docks turned into downtown, and promised me she’d be there at least 20 minutes early, accepting my suggestion to meet somewhere other than where she was meeting Armsmaster in case he was setting up a trap, though she was pretty sure he wouldn’t do that.

Rousing Herb form his surfing, or whatever he was doing on the computer, and suiting up, the two of us flew, or to be more specific I carried us, to the secondary meeting sight, cameras taking up half of my belt pouches. I had purchased ones with low EM emissions, so his gear hopefully wouldn’t spot them against the low-level interference of the city. Meeting Taylor, she was pacing up and down an alley, obviously nervous as the sound of bugs were a constant low-level buzz in the background.

“My dear, so good to see you!” Herb called magnanimously, causing her to jump. As she turned around I realized my bug powers weren’t online, so she hadn’t been able to sense me. Bringing it up and feeling the bugs she’d accrued in the alley I raised an eyebrow, about to comment when she beat me to it.

“How do you do that?” she asked, just short of demanding. “It’s like you didn’t exist until you did!”

I gave her a Gaelic shrug. “I have ways of relaxing my control on my powers that you apparently don’t.”

“Could I learn?” she asked hopefully. Her desire to learn new ways of using her power was so blatant and earnest it was almost painful, and I was glad she’d met us, instead of someone who’d take advantage of that. “It’s just, sometimes I see things I don’t really want to.”

Herb shook his head. “I understand why you would wish that my dear, but the more you use your power the more it will grow. You don’t have my friend’s other gifts, so you need to develop yours to the fullest.”

I nodded, “Pretty sure it wouldn’t work for you, since you only have the one power.”

“How do you know I don’t- right. Future knowledge,” she sighed, shoulders dropping.

I didn’t bother correcting her. “So, you’re going to go and talk to Mini-Man and sell the entire infiltrating the Undersiders thing, while we hang back and play support.” I reached into my belt pouch, taking the comm units I’d found in the base, tossing one to Herb while passing another to Taylor before putting the third in my ear. “This’ll keep us in touch.”

“Mini-Man?” Herb asked, taking off his pseudo-helmet to put in the earbud, missing Taylor’s surprised glance at his casual unmasking.

“He’s a tinker specializing in miniaturization of tech, it fits.” I defended, my domino mask letting me put mine in without a problem.

He laughed. “So the halberd, you think he’s compensating for something?”

Taylor made a disgusted face as she put her mask back on. “That’s gross,” she commented, her voice coming in through the comms.

I rolled my eyes as I shrugged, “I don’t know, nor do I want to. Now where’s your meeting place?”

She led us down a few alleys to a deserted lot far away from the mid-afternoon traffic. “Here, it’s out of the way enough we shouldn’t be seen.”

Herb visibly winced as I started setting up cameras. “What?” she asked. “And what are those?”

“Not being seen, means more likely not to get caught doing something bad, darling,” Herb informed her. “Armsmaster’s more likely to start shit where people can’t see him and ruin his image.”

“And I’m making sure we have video proof,” I added, putting a camera in a pile of non-bio trash and moving it to hide it while keeping the view. “So that it’s not established hero’s word vs. unknown creepy bug girl’s. It’s established hero’s word vs video evidence.”

“Wait, you think. . .?” she asked, trailing off.

“That he’d lie?” Herb asked. “Undoubtable.”

“No, well yes, but that I’m creepy?” she asked, looking down at her costume, self-consciousness screaming from her posture. Well, as much as her body language ever showed anything when she was masked. I really needed to help her work with that. Once we got her to be consciously expressive, it wouldn’t be that hard to teach her how to physically express things you didn’t feel to throw people off.

“Us? No,” I reassured her, Herb nodding in agreement. “But someone seeking to discredit you, who didn’t know you? Yeah, your current costume is a bit off-putting. It’s secretive and stealthy, great for pulling off most hero ops, but intimidating, which might have been the point, but there’s things that can be done to offset that.”

Herb nodded sagely, “Definitely girl, we got plans.”

Her body language, muted as it was, spoke of confusion, so I told her. “Cameras are set, well be the next street over. You’ve got this, but if you need help, just call. If your comm goes dark we’ll assume he’s done something and jump in.” She nodded back to us as Herb gave her a thumbs up and we retreated to a nearby alley to listen in, moving the trash cans to better hid us from the street as we laid in wait.