2.4
Friday, 18th February
You awoke, energised for the day ahead. While you weren't entirely sure what you were going to be doing, aside from training with New Wave, you were fairly sure that you were going to find it productive.
Quickly taking a tally of your recent responsibilities and actions in your head, you realised that you contacted Rhizome, New Wave's costume supplier, in an adrenaline fuelled haze the night prior. Nothing specific, but you had reached out; luckily, by the time you had returned to the house from your morning jog she had yet to respond.
You often wondered what life might be like for the professional cape; there was a good chance, you thought, that many of them would be nocturnal to a large extent. After all, crime often took place at night and patrols followed suit. Therefore if you were a Tinker like Rhizome, perhaps you spent most of your days asleep, waiting to be contacted by other capes awake during the early hours.
Whatever the case, the lack of response allowed you the opportunity to do a little more digging on Rhizome in general. Finding a list of clients wasn't difficult; while she left a disclaimer stating that many customers weren't interested in sharing testimonials for whatever reason, a significant number of customers were happy to lend their names to her advertising.
Probably something to do with their own PR, you thought to yourself. Hire me, I have the good equipment and I know people – that sort of thing.
Alongside glowing reports of success from New Wave, you found comments by a handful of members of the Protectorate from around the country, including a surprising dual testimonial from Prism and Cache of the New York cape scene. Not quite Legend himself, of course, but even the association was enough to bolster Rhizome's appeal in your eyes.
Despite this association, her biggest contact and public service appeared to be with The Guild. It made sense, given the location, but still somehow took you off guard. Whenever people talked about The Guild, they usually considered Dragon as the main headline and occasionally followed it up with Narwhal if they wanted to show that they knew what they were talking about. The best Tinker in the world and the head of the Toronto Protectorate were sufficiently attention grabbing to provide The Guild with whatever notoriety it needed, without getting into their other members. Rhizome being part of the group was surprising, but you weren't surprised that she had been overshadowed.
Her site, linked through from her PHO account, contained a run-down of her methods. Apparently she had developed a machine which would scan the measurements of an individual perfectly by extrapolating data from a single, full body photograph, and was able to use those to construct a costume out of combinations of custom fabrics that mimicked the properties of numerous other materials without many of their major weaknesses. Any colours seemed viable, she was able to do armoured materials too within reason – no suits of plate armour, but additions to the standard body suits or helmets seemed to be plausible, as apparently Rhizome took credit for a number of well known pieces of headgear, and there was even an indication that her work was pliable enough to outfit fairly significant changes in shape and size.
Indeed, the only problem appeared to be the cash: Rhizome was charging almost $5000 purely for the photographic evaluation, apparently the most expensive part of the process, and another $5000 for each suit, assuming a basic format. Armoured pieces added on to the price, and so did accessories like boots and belts.
A quick scan through your own gear and a look at her price list told you that you were probably going to be paying out at least $12k for your gear. Admittedly, you were probably never going to have to buy another costume again unless you wanted to, but accounting for cleanliness and laundry you were going to have to buy two at least. Twenty four thousand dollars was a lot of money. You had it, after the Winslow settlement, but Dad was probably going to complain about the sudden expense.
The assurance that you weren't going to have your morph-mask ripped open in public and expose your identity would assuage his concerns, but the conversation still didn't promise to be a particularly bright one.
As you were finishing up your rough calculations, you received a notification from Rhizome on PHO; she hadn't been friendly enough to send anything more than what appeared to be a standard catalogue of options and details: an order form, essentially.
You'd have to talk to Dad about it first, then consider what you actually wanted, before you could send off the information. Perhaps a way to handle the money without it being connected to your civilian identity too: you had no doubt that Rhizome was on the level, the Protectorate association had assured you of that much, but you still weren't willing to give away your civilian identity to a stranger online.
Chances Rhizome would ever actually tell anyone my identity?
18%
Too high to gamble with, even if it was low in the ultimate sense. Who knows what kind of things can happen in the world of parahumans; she lived in Canada after all. Heartbreaker couldn't be that far away, and who knows what could happen then?
Panic unjustified, perhaps, but why take the risk when it wasn't necessary? You'd see about setting up a cape bank account soon enough and then revisit the idea. For now, a different blue shirt would do the job, even if it wasn't quite as dark as the one that had been sliced open the afternoon before.
Briefly, the thought of what would have happened if you had been cut comes to mind. Of course, you were pretty confident that no random mugger was going to be able to slice you open, but what if it hadn't have been you? What if he'd taken a hostage, rather than attempted to run, or even assaulted another cape who had less security from their power? You could have been left severely injured, at least; from the location of the slice, even worse wasn't off the table.
Looking into some first aid seemed to make sense, even if only as a last ditch backup. Saving people was part of being a hero, after all, and there was only so much value in arresting a criminal if they managed to kill someone first.
Unfortunately, the internet was a little less helpful with first aid than it had been in researching Rhizome or the more criminal elements of Brockton Bay; there were a million sites filled with information on how to treat various specific situations and even more information on general guidelines, but very few that seemed able to agree with one another. Checking the PRT seemed even less helpful: though they boasted from offering elite training to their capes, including field health management, it also seemed clear that this training was only typically offered for capes under their employ.
Part of your mind went back to Laserdream's suggestion that they wanted people under their thumb more than they really wanted them independent, and you were forced to agree. Holding stuff like this over people's heads was a large carrot, and wherever there was a large carrot, the implied size of the stick was gargantuan.
Settling for ordering a few books online as well as some general self defense items, you logged off the computer and got to your feet.
A morning in front of the desk was hardly a good way to prepare for training with New Wave, after all.
Travelling to the boat graveyard was a longer process this time than the last. Something of a lingering paranoia had settled into you after Faultline's appearance, and while you weren't entire sure how to interpret the signals from your questioning regarding Coil and the Empire, you weren't arrogant enough to assume you could simply get yourself out of any trouble that came up. Much better to simply avoid the trouble in the first place; flying high, taking your time to scan with your parahuman detection field by occasionally dipping low, and making sure to keep a smothering blanket of blindness draped around your airborne form was the least you could do to try and maintain some semblance of secrecy.
By the time you reached the waterfront, you were sure that nobody had followed you; at least, as sure as you could be.
You were also a little later than anticipated, the caution slowing you down. Manpower and Glory Girl were already waiting – Shielder's absence was no surprise, given how easily you had been able to conquer his best protections the week prior. What was more surprising, on the other hand, was the presence of another figure.
Carol Dallon, Victoria's mother, better known to Brockton Bay at large as Brandish, was a very professional looking woman. Employed as a lawyer in her civilian life and not quite as active a cape as she had been a decade earlier, her blonde hair was cut short, severe, and it clashed slightly with the fluorescent orange that arced across her white bodysuit in dramatic and aggressive fashion. She was taller than her daughter, though not by much, but her presence was larger than even Manpower's, and it was clear that she was the leader of the group arranged before you.
'Hello, Glory Girl, Manpower. I wasn't expecting you, Brandish, but it's nice to meet you as well.'
'I'm pleased to finally meet the cape my daughter has been spending so much time with. I heard about your altercation yesterday. Good work.'
You nodded in response. Her tone was as brusque as Faultline's had been, perhaps more so, and you could sense there was more than a little judgment behind her tone. As though she had heard about your process and approved of the outcome but perhaps not the process; whether that disapproval came from her experiences as a cape or her training in the fine legalities of arrests and cape protocol, you weren't entirely sure; nor were you particularly interested.
Something you had realised in the depths of much of your research was that most of the rules and regulations surrounding parahuman activities were either restrictive to the point of rendering you useless, or so vague as to be interpretable in any way required by the legal system at the time. You weren't going to judge such a thing too harshly – after all, the legal situation surrounding capes was new, constantly challenged by new powers, and you understood the desire for the government to maintain as much control as they thought possible without public uproar. Nevertheless, you didn't feel particularly inclined to pay it more than lip service as long as you were doing the right things when it came to improving Brockton Bay and protecting people.
Brandish led the training session for the day, much to your surprise. You still worked with Glory Girl and with Manpower for most of your physical training as it was clear that Brandish didn't possess the skill set necessary to handle your most forceful blows. Evasion, however, was important to her, and she was more than willing to test your ability to think on your feet and respond to danger without simply punching it.
'There will be times in your life that someone is trying to hurt you and you can't simply hit them back. At least, not hard enough to stop them. Either because you can't hit them hard enough or because doing so would cause bigger problems. You have to think about things like collateral damage,' her voice was clear that she expected you not to have considered it before, though she also gave a gimlet eye to Glory Girl, whose sheepish expression made you feel less isolated. 'And the safety of civilians in the area. What good is it throwing a car at a villain if it rolls over two civilians afterwards? No good at all.'
Despite her clear rust in some of her more intense moments, the polish she had given to her skills was clear; she navigated the battlefield, steadily more densely populated with detritus from the nearby piles of garbage, with a degree of enviable grace and while her energy weapons were not able to pierce your skin on the few occasions they made contact, you weren't entirely certain that she had even been trying. The blazing heat implied by the orange glow that surrounded them was surprisingly mild upon touch.
Your costume fared worse, however; a collage of slices built up and you sighed as you felt the need to throw out yet another shirt. Thank God Rhizome was on the horizon.
Attempting to grapple with Manpower, who seemed somewhat more prepared for your strength this time around while also trying to evade Brandish's assaults with Glory Girl playing the completely unfitting role of civilian-to-be-protected was immensely difficult, and had they been real criminals attempting to harm a civilian you would have failed multiple times over; Glory Girl had been hit at least twice.
Of course, if this were a real life or death situation you wouldn't have been so gentle and both Manpower and Brandish would have found themselves launched into the ocean, but the reality of location loomed too large to allow that to settle as an excuse; if you were in the middle of a crowded civilian area, simply being irresponsible with your strength could lead to more destruction than it was worth. You would do it if it meant saving a life, of that you had no question, but if you could save that same life without collapsing a building or trashing a car, you would prefer to take that option.
A few years ago video of Alexandria subduing Alienator, a villain with a powerful master ability but zero enhanced durability, without even damaging the phone booth he attempted to hide inside had gone viral across the cape-watching parts of the internet, and you were desperate to reach that level of proficiency. Were you to find yourself in that same situation now, you'd either get mastered or you'd have to rip the top off the booth to stand a chance at extracting him.
Training finished up after only a few hours, largely because the adults involved had other responsibilities, and you thanked them for their time just as you had the previous week. Making their way out together, you grabbed Glory Girl for a quick talk.
'I'm feeling like I'm making a lot of progress as a cape lately, and I really wanted to go out on patrol later. I told Dad about it, he said it was okay as long as I stuck to the Boardwalk – did you want to come with me?'
A guilty look came across her face but was banished quickly.
'I can't, I've got to meet with Gallant later. We had a blow up the other day that we have to talk over, you know how it is.'
You didn't know, but you nodded as if you did; no need for Glory Girl to know that you were possibly the least romantically experienced person she had ever met.
'Still, if you were okay with going on your own the Boardwalk should be pretty chill. We can come up with some ideas of how to be seen while you're out if you want, we can fly together.'
Taking her up on the offer seemed like the obvious thing to do, and as you took to the skies you matched paces. Despite her obligations to Gallant, you were fairly sure that she was happy to let him wait and stew in his uncertainty and so the leisurely flight you made together over the city served her purposes just as much as yours.
Together you planned a basic outline of your afternoon; starting at the North end of the Boardwalk, you would work your way down at a medium height, occasionally rising up to maybe a hundred feet or so in order to get some distance on your scouting before sinking back down to ensure the civilians could see you. It was getting later in the day but the stores on the Boardwalk were still likely to be open for another few hours, and so getting eyes on you was vital. Meanwhile, you were to practice using your deafening field just subtly enough to obscure the sound of your buzzing wings from ground level. If anything major came up, you were to contact the PRT for assistance – standard independent protocol.
Nothing about the plan seemed elaborate or confusing, and so you left Glory Girl to her romantic dramas feeling a sense of optimism about your upcoming patrol. A quick call to Dad, who gave his assent as long as you stuck over the Boardwalk, and you found yourself riding the currents of the air to the wooden planks of the tourist zone.
Cool air was sweeping over the ground, salty but subdued from the February frost. It was starting to brighten up, and the evenings were drawing back, but the definite ghost of Winter still draped itself across all available surfaces and the popularity the Boardwalk would reach in the summer was only a suggestion in the minds of the meagre crowds that made their way back and forth as you watched. Drifting along on silent wings, their glow soft, you saw some of them look up and take pictures on their phone but an even larger number ignored you completely. Given the usage of the Boardwalk by the Protectorate and the Wards over the years, seeing a cape here and there in the nearby parts of Brockton Bay was hardly newsworthy.
You spent the first hour of your time above the Boardwalk drifting lazily, attempting to use various more passive powers to investigate the area around you and ensure that no parahumans were getting close to major store fronts without your awareness. Senses were imperfect, you'd experienced the reality of that now, but nevertheless it was the best set of options you had.
The quiet ambience of flight also gave you a few opportunities to run a handful of questions through your thinker power – questions that you had been unable to ask the night before as a result of the incipient headache.
Chances that Coil's gang are the ones most likely to make an attempt on me?
80%
A lucky guess, but not exactly an uninformed one; Coil's gang was the group about which the least was known. He was a cape himself, at least as far as the rumours went, but the details of his power were known to essentially nobody. Either he told nobody at all, or the only people who told were the best henchmen and associates one could imagine; there wasn't even speculation online. He had showed up relatively recently in Brockton Bay, being a newer addition than either Kaiser or Lung's groups, and set up shop as a gang leader with a crew of almost entirely hired guns. Mercenaries, guards, ex-military types that he outfitted with tinkertech equipment of unknown origin. So far he'd done very little that you could find other than the usual process of gangs expanding through a territory.
That he was the one targetting you was somewhat unsettling. The Empire, you could see; while your costume didn't give much away with regards to your race, you were demographically more likely to be white than anything else in Brockton Bay, and they had a penchant for scooping up as many parahumans as they could; at their peak, they boasted a larger quantity of capes than even the Protectorate and Wards combined. Even an attempt on Iron Rain's life some years ago hadn't left them too damaged, and she had recovered in time to continue wreaking havoc across the city whenever Kaiser called for it.
By comparison, Coil was a nearly unknown factor. Whatever his agenda was, he hadn't made it public and speculation was entirely that; speculation. Very little could be gleaned about him and his desires other than the generic gang-land fantasies of power and money.
Luckily, you had a little more in the back pocket than most researchers.
Chances that Coil wants me as a partner, versus a tool?
0%
As expected. Both options were bad, of course, but in one circumstance there was the opportunity for negotiation; a sting set up, perhaps. As a tool there was no such chance – it was a case of staying away from him until you could work out a way to put him down. The only real question was how he knew more about your powers than he should have done: before the Thinker headache had set in, you'd learned that much. The only people who knew anything were Glory Girl, your Dad, and the PRT.
So that left one option.
Chances that Coil has a mole somewhere in the PRT?
100%
Nailed it.
It wasn't even a matter of distrust in the PRT itself. No, Dad had simply made it clear to you as you had grown up – government agencies were imperfect and prone to corruption. He was quick to remind you that private agencies were no better, and in fact, they often had corruption baked in as a base premise rather than just gaining corruption by happenstance, but the reality is that as soon as you handed over your data to the agency, it was on file, and once it was on file, it was no longer secret.
That had been at least part of the point in being vague about your powers in the first place. Dad's encouragement had come from a place of concern, not just paranoia. The only thing to wonder was exactly who the mole could be – who was it that would have access to general information about capes and would also be willing to leak it. Of course the obvious answers such as the Director or the head of the Protectorate were out of the question: they would know, but you'd eat your own cloak before you thought Armsmaster would start selling other parahumans out to villain groups, and the Director must have been vetted before attaining her position. Even if you didn't know her, and the few appearances you'd seen on television left a sour taste, you thought that this particular brand of bureaucratic failure was probably not her modus operandi.
Before speculation could take hold, and plans for that information could be made real, you noticed something. You smelled it before you could see it, but once you rose high enough into the sky it was hard to miss; plumes of smoke, turning in thick black wreaths into the sky, somewhere not too far from the Boardwalk – perhaps a minute away if you flew directly towards it.
Now was the time to be a hero.
Plunging into motion, you quickly dug out your phone and called the fire service. In all likelihood, they had already been alerted, but you weren't about to let assumptions lead to disaster.
The phone rang twice before it was answered, and you came to a stop hovering above the site of the incident; flames licked around the building, snaking their way up around it and through its various staircases and rooms, billowing clouds of smog puffing out into the early evening sky like hookah smoke beneath the premature stars.
You were quickly informed by the dispatcher that they were aware, something hat was no surprise, and hung up. With no fire trucks in sight, or even the sound of sirens nearby, you knew that you weren't going to be able to rely on their appearance to solve the problem; that left very few options.
Scanning the area, you couldn't see a fire hydrant close by – and even if you could, you weren't sure if busting it open and redirecting it like in the Earth Aleph movies would even work in real life. Similarly, you couldn't just try and blow the fire out; you weren't an aerokinetic.
The only solution you could see clearly was both the most intimidating and the simplest: you were going to have to go in.
If not you, who? If not now, when? Those questions had come to you in the past and the answers were as true then as they were now as you gazed into the flickering heat of the building. Without any further hesitation, you plunged into the smoke.
Seeing was impossible. You coughed as you took a few bitter breaths, and resolved to hold your air as much as you could; with your strengthened diaphragm and your enhanced resilience, you felt as though you could hold up without fresh air a little longer than most. Instead, you dedicated yourself to action: you had entered towards the top of the building, assuming that those on the ground floor would be better positioned to engineer their own escape.
No parahumans around meant that it was difficult for you to use your sensory powers to locate them, and instead you settled from going from room to room; doors didn't stand in your way, and the few pieces of smouldering architecture that attempted to block your path were moved like tissue paper. As soon as you were able to take people up, three at a time before your arms were full, you made your way out of already opened windows to deposit them on the street below.
Crowded apartment buildings had many more than three occupants, however, so you dove back in as soon as you could rattle another breath into your lungs; the mask obstructed your breathing somewhat, and you made a mental note somewhere in the back part of your brain to see what Rhizome could do about air filtration. Ash clung to the weave of the morph-mask and you felt it fluttering against your open mouth.
Colliding with surfaces as often as you were evading them, visibility was growing low; your concern was amplified by the unconscious bodies of the next two residents you found. Relocating them to the street was easy, but you weren't entirely sure if they were okay beyond having a pulse present.
By the time you emerged carrying another set of civilians, the fire service had arrived and you could see the men in their handsome uniforms tumbling out of the vehicles, rigging up hoses and ensuring their own breathing apparatuses were secure before moving in to the base of the building.
Evacuation in the midst of an inferno, it seemed, was surprisingly boring. The tasks become repetitive, the drama you had expected from the scene drained by the inability of the heat to truly harm you and the lack of sound coming from most of the inhabitants you rescued; there was a drama to their silence all of its own, but it was a more haunting kind than the tumultuous, and you found yourself falling into a lull. As you continued to work, the hoses on the exterior of the building were switched on and gallons of water began spraying up towards the top of the building, where a prominent head of the flames threatened to leap over to the buildings adjacent.
Boredom, however, couldn't last.
As the torrent of water met the flames atop the building the hiss of steam almost concealed the cracking of the building itself. You got the feeling, from your treks throughout the building, that it had never been the most structurally sound place to begin with and now, with much of the construction damaged by fire and then soaked with thousands of gallons of water in quick succession, the walls and ceilings were giving up their ghost; the cracking sound grew ever louder even across only seconds and you wondered how to best prevent the collapse from hurting anyone below.
Instinctively, you knew the answer.
Phasing directly into the wall adjacent to you, you emerged on the exterior of the wall several dozens of feet above ground level and allowed your bottom half to remain fused with the surface.
Allowing yourself to feel the faults in the wall, you slowly navigated your way around the exterior, using your brute strength to simply fold the upper levels of the walls, sagging under the water and the weight of their own materials, in on themselves; from the outside you imagined it looked strange, as though someone were experimenting with life-sized origami, but between the sense of structure your bond with the walls conferred and the trivial quantities of weight as far as your newfound strength was concerned, there was no difficulty at all.
It took only a few minutes to collapse all of the external walls of the building inwards, laying them above their own footprint, and most of that time had been limited more by the speed of your wall merge than by anything else.
Allowing yourself to drop from the outside of the wall, you plummeted head first towards the ground. The onlookers inhaled sharply, and you smiled a little inside your mask before allowing your wings to snap to life and right you within only a dozen feet of the floor.
Looking out at the gathered crowd, you felt good. Not in a qualified, tentative way – simply good. As far as you could tell, your rescue mission had been a success and it hadn't been any harder than stopping the mugger the day before. Yes, your cloak was scorched and would need replacing but you were already doing that.
As you blew a tuft of loose hair out of your peripheral vision, you noted that there was a small hole in the morph-mask too, at the level of your hairline. Nothing serious, but you supposed those in the crowd knew what colour your hair was now: again, no big deal. It was already getting replaced.
You looked at them in silence and they looked back in kind. Slowly, a small cheer began to build – it wasn't the uproarious cheer you see in movies when a hero saves the day, as there were only maybe thirty or forty people present and a few were more concerned with their family or talking to the fire fighters themselves, but it warmed your heart nevertheless.
Waving slightly to a few of those closest to you, you allowed your wings to carry you off the ground, their buzzing sound unrestrained by your sensory field for now, and their glow ramping up to a maximum.
Taking to the skies never felt so heroic.
As you made your way over the city, moving perhaps a block or two away from the aftermath of the flames, you saw something catch your eye; something you should have expected to see all along.
There, perhaps five hundred feet from the scene of the fire, was a small group of men dressed in all black, gas masks on, bulletproof body armour strapped to everywhere it could fit, with lengthy rifles draped across their backs.
Chances Coil had something to do with that fire?
100%
Chances he knew I'd be on the Boardwalk?
You felt a sting run through your head as you left the area, the limit of your questioning crashing into your desire to know the truth.
50%
You never got as many fifty fifty answers as when dealing with Coil. Something about it struck you suspicious, though you weren't exactly sure what, and the void in the back of your mind seemed to agree; it had been quiet for a little while but seemed eager to confirm your suspicions about Coil. If it thought there was something strange about that man too, you weren't going to doubt it.
You needed to let some people know about some moles in the PRT.
And get a new costume.