Pondering the entire thing was blissful release. That morning before leaving the house, you had finally worked out what to say to Anchor and you knew even as you had typed it that it was a bad idea to be honest; telling someone that you basically knew nothing about music and barely listened to it was not the kind of confession that a teenager made if they were trying to fit in and be popular, but you had figured it was better to be clear than to embarrass yourself telling some convoluted lie. At least the confession had been slipped in among the much larger revelation that Rachel and Regent were coming with you to Atlanta; hopefully she'd be distracted by that enough to forget that you were as culturally aware as the average octogenarian.
Wanting to come off cool, or at least not painfully uncool, to a younger person was in itself a very uncool thing, but you couldn't help it. Anchor was, if you remembered rightly, a few years younger than you, and trying to relate to someone who was still a little kid in some ways was difficult conceptually.
Vista was an exception, in that she acted more mature than Clockblocker did, but applying that expectation to everyone younger than you felt like a mistake in the making.
Passing on a charge to Dauntless and exchanging a few brief words, you turned your attention to Assault, who, in his red costume, stood out like a stop sign in the otherwise sterile white of the medical room.
You wondered a little why all of the enhancements took place in such a venue. While you couldn't make assumptions, thus far you had empowered a range of people and none of them had seen a power change that caused a mess – even Vista, again the exception, who saw her power temporarily go out of control and resonate throughout the room itself, had left it intact in the end and with nobody displaced or injured.
Precautions were sensible and you appreciated that the PRT took them, but part of you felt as though the location was more for the convenience of the doctors than for yourself or the other parahumans involved.
Unlike several of your other recent empowerments, Assault was able to slip a glove off to receive the power and you were glad that you weren't going to have to ruffle his hair or touch his jaw or something equally bizarre. Just because you were an inch or two taller than him didn't mean that rubbing his head would feel any less bizarre.
'So, you just zap me and I talk about what happens?' he asked, as though the process were less about directly interfering with his powers and more about paying his taxes.
'That's usually how it goes. If something's going to explode, let me know so I can get out of the way.'
He smiled, an expression you had yet to see on his face, and you noted that he had something of a roguish quality to his face. Even with his visor covering his eyes and the implication of a helmet tracing along his jawline and across the back of his skull, the older man was able to exude a charisma that was markedly different from the way he had come across during the missions you had been on with him in the past. His popularity with the message boards made a little more sense, though you weren't entirely convinced about some of their pet theories. There were those who speculated that he was some kind of model in his private life, and that didn't quite feel right.
Assault felt less like a model, posing for the camera, than he did a class clown testing how far he could push the boundaries; a harmless sort of miscreant, to be sure, but the kind who would scribble on your face if you fell asleep first at a party.
That so much could be communicated from a grin spoke to the devilish set of his jaw.
Still, the empowerment itself went ahead unremarkably; you laid your own hand across his – reminding yourself again to get a set of gloves with exposed fingertips at some point – and jetted across a pulse of power.
Nothing happened.
Assault seemed to be filed in alongside Aegis, the tinkers, and Velocity as one of those parahumans whose boosts seemed to have very little visual indicator, if one existed at all. Further, he didn't even appear to react bodily – no shiver, shake, or stretch that implied any change in his capacities.
'Anything?'
You found yourself asking in curiosity; generally you would stay quiet while a power was examined and you allowed the doctor to guide things, but in this case you couldn't help but be intrigued. The atypical reaction had set your mind to work and you imagined any number of possibilities; Assault bouncing off the ceiling, continually channelling energy to permit a sort of gliding flight, shooting blasts of kinetic force – the possibilities seemed to be endless.
'Yeah, there's something,' he said, shifting his weight from one foot to another and taking on a pensive look.
'Care to share the details?' the doctor asked, his tone measured so as not to appear to aggressive in his demand.
'Sure, just give me a minute. A lot to think about.'
And so a minute he was given. You weren't sure what it was, but Assault didn't move about the room. He didn't touch anything or anyone, nor did you see any visual cues accumulating over time. For all the world it simply appeared as though the hero was stood there waiting for the world to run out of seconds, or for a timer to tick down.
Then he spoke, and you jerked back to attention.
'Turns out,' he said, 'there's a lot more energy out there than I thought. And it's all for me.'
'What do you mean?'
'My whole thing is kinetics. Everyone knows that, movement goes in, force comes out. There's other types of energy too, but that's always been on the other side of the barrier. Not anymore. Whole planet's got a magnetic field, there's energy in that. The tension in a body, there's energy in that. Heat,' he reached out, placing a hand on your shoulder and you felt a frigid chill run through your skin, even through the insulation of Rhizome's costume. 'That, too. Lot of energy out there to take.'
You were amazed. But that didn't last.
'Assault, you're aware, and forgive me for saying this,' the doctor – Doctor Klein, his name tag read – spoke with a measured uncertainty in his voice, 'what that sounds like?'
'Dynakinesis? Yeah. I get it.'
You didn't.
'Would anyone like to explain, for my sake?'
Assault spun around as though he had forgotten that you were there, though Klein seemed far less surprised by your decision to speak up; the resigned look on his face even implied that he had expected as much.
'Dynakinesis, the ability to control and manipulate energy just, generally. Not a common ability,' Assault began. 'Some people would say my normal powers are already getting there. It's got a bad reputation when it gets too versatile or too tricky, though, because the one big dynakinetic everyone knows is Behemoth. You've probably heard of him, kind of a rough character.'
Memories of that half-watched news report, with lightning flashing as bodies fell against a blackened night, slipped through your mind like an assassin, stabbing at your mood.
'I'm not that bad,' he said. 'Still can't let the power out in new ways, it's all just kinetic stuff. But I think the upper limit is a little different, and if you can take it from more places, the ease of use is pretty high up there. Right now I usually get Battery to kick-start me if it's going to be a big conflict. With this, I don't think I'd need it. I'd just steal some energy from the air or something. Magnetic field.'
'Sounds impressive.'
You weren't being comedic or facetious. It did sound impressive, even if Assault himself was acting like it wasn't a huge deal; maybe for someone who could comprehend the exact contours of its limitations from inside the power, it was easier to categorise. Part of you even toyed with the idea that he had always been capable of more than you had seen, and this merely facilitated his upper limits rather than truly expanding them – if that was the case, the casual nature with which he took the upgrade seemed a lot less absurd. It was hard to imagine that, though; Assault had never been one of the Protectorate's biggest names, and it was nearly impossible to explain that if his true powers were as powerful as he seemed to be implying.
'Hey,' he said, the wolfish grin spreading over his face once more. 'You ever figure out how to bottle this kind of boost, let me know. We could make a bomb off it.'
And with that, the tension in the room dropped. Behemoth faded into memory again, an omnipresent boogeyman, and you listened to Assault as he explained where the limits of his new powers could be if his intuition was right, and you watched with barely suppressed amusement as he stole the electrical power fuelling the doctor's watch when the scientist had checked it during one of Assault's longer explanations. An effective way to make a point, you thought, if the kind of thing that would be annoying to actually deal with. Where did people even buy watch batteries?
You settled up, making sure that Assault was alright – which he was – and then left off to allow them to finish with whatever they needed to do. You rarely stayed around longer than was necessary to find out what the boost actually did; that much was important for you, in case you ever found yourself out in the field with one of the people you had boosted and experience could provide fuel for fine decisions. The rest, academic and scholarly though it may be, and valuable too, was out of your hands; you had no idea what some of the numbers the doctors were interested in collecting even referred to, let alone what use they could have.
And so you decided to head home. Knowing that you were going to be in for another, more targeted empowerment the next day gave you a new perspective on the idea of spare time and you were going to take the afternoon to yourself.
Flying home didn't take long, and slipping into your home by phasing through the bedroom wall, sensory muting field cast about you, brought back a sense of nostalgia that didn't even feel like it should have existed in such a short period of time. Reflecting on it, you'd come a long way since using your breaker power to sneak out and get dirt on Shadow Stalker.
You weren't sure how you felt about her. Obviously you didn't like her, and you didn't think you ever would; Sophia had been a menace and the bane of your life, and if someone else had been put through what you were you wouldn't have blamed them if they had done far worse than expose her as a probation-breach. Even just thinking about her still lit a flame of anger in your gut.
But on the other hand, you didn't know where she was. A juvenile detention situation, from what you remembered, though the details had never been made one hundred per cent clear. You weren't going to allow Assault's anti-Birdcage stance to extend far enough into your conscience to think she she didn't deserve being thrown in juvie; she definitely did, and juvenile detention didn't last forever by its very definition. But you did wonder what the conditions were like; they had to be harsh to hold someone with abilities like hers, and there was a twinge of sympathy.
Sophia had the kind of psychological problems that were hard to deal with. Nobody was the same kind of bitch she was without something weird going on, and the fact that she had triggered told you about as much.
The stench of the locker crawled through your nose, and you felt bile rise.
No, nobody got powers for free. You remembered that well enough.
What had Sophia been through to give her hers? It would have been easy for you to turn around after that day and declare a vendetta on her and on the heroes for giving her succour; villainy might not have laid far from that road. You could have ended up with Rachel and Regent, but on the other side; how easily the coin flips and alters things. Maybe, just as you could easily have turned to the wrong side of the law, she could have been a half-decent person if things had turned out differently.
You unfastened your helmet and dropped it onto your bed, shaking your hair out and relishing direct access to the air. Filtration systems be damned, there was nothing like uninterrupted airflow.
In any case, you pushed thoughts of Sophia to the side. Whether you had some level of sympathy for her trigger, that did nothing to justify how she behaved since, and if anyone could do with some tough justice it was her. She'd be out in a couple of years – as far as you knew, her birthday had already been, the trio celebrating it by playing pin the tail on the Taylor – so it wasn't like you had condemned her in the same way you had condemned Hookwolf. Who also deserved it, but that wasn't the point.
Perhaps you'd been hanging around Assault too much lately.
With Dad still at work, setting up for his final transfer out of Brockton Bay, you decided to spend the afternoon eating snacks and using the computer. You had a lot to look into, between your newfound tinker specialty, Anchor's messages, and your pledge to find some hobbies, and so you felt like it was probably a good idea to get a start on that rather than just letting things pile up.
First, you pulled up your favourited sites. Armsmaster had been clear with you that it was no longer an option but a requirement that you pursue some scientific education. If you hadn't wanted to, maybe the command would have chafed, but given that it was your idea in the first place it was easy to view his offer to grease the wheels of enrolment as a sort of acceptable nepotism. After all, while the full extent of your tinker powers weren't yet clear, it may well have been the case that it was more for other people's safety than your own in the long run.
Ignoring the gold and white colour scheme, you send through a few of the courses you had read through and found interesting to Armsmaster's number, with as much detail as you could include. There were a lot of options and while the best school seemed clear, in terms of close location and scientific focus, you weren't one hundred per cent sure about what the best options were to study. You were willing to leave that much in Armsmaster's hands.
Penumbra: That's a list of the courses that seem relevant. If you have any advice, please let me know. Thank you again for the offer to put in a good word.
While browsing, you picked up a subscription to a few of the various schools of engineering and science's newsletters; you didn't expect to understand half of what they said, but there was a good chance that they could provide sparks of inspiration for tinkering, or at the very least, interesting terms could provide an avenue for guiding your own educational studies.
Perhaps it was ambitious to be subscribing to professional level educational journals and communiqués, but you were nothing if not precocious.
Except perhaps stubborn.
Reading through the Campus Life section of the university's website was a mixture of inspiring and intimidating. Despite being in the middle of a city, the grounds appeared strangely rural and it reminded you positively of the nicer parts of Brockton Bay, though without the coastal regions. Suddenly it struck you how strange it would be to be away from the sea, something that had been omnipresent your entire life.
Even with the threats that the ocean posed, building up in the public consciousness over time, it was still something you appreciated more than disliked; the salty scent of the air and the freshness of the cool breeze that came in from atop the waves was one of the highlights of living in Brockton Bay, and you missed it already.
Beyond that, there was more that seemed to jump out. No wonder Anchor had been so curious about your taste in music; after Endbringer attacks and social collapse had cratered professional sports, Atlanta had lost a huge part of its core culture and that culture had been filled by music. There seemed to be at least something happening almost every night, and most of the names were utterly foreign to you. Not only were you out of touch, you were out of touch and headed to a place where that out of touch status was more likely to be exposed than maybe anywhere else.
You made a note to try listening to some of the names you saw. You'd promised you'd get into a hobby, and music seemed like a plausible enough place to start – scribbling down a handful of bands, of a variety of genres and types from young men with golden teeth to pale figures with spiked wristbands and face-paint, you set that aside to deal with later. Beneath it, you scribbled a few more ideas while the potential idea of a hobby loomed large; swimming, sports, reading, making things out of wood, cooking – anything that came to mind and wasn't immediately repellent.
Concepts such as dancing or singing were entirely out of the question. Singing was for the shower, and nowhere else, and you would rather go jogging than dance and make a fool of yourself.
With that handled, you returned to the screen and continued reading about the place that you were going to call home.
Civilian crime existed, and the crime rate was high; though no higher than it was in civilian terms in cities such as New York. The major difference was parahuman, with crime and villains spilling out at every turn, but you had already known that; the presence of groups like Octave seemed to be designed to attract someone such as yourself. Someone who knew the need to get rid of the threats that were haunting the city.
Mythology had swollen in the parahuman age; while Atlanta was a major city, it was easy to forget that it was in the South, and while you were conscious that it might well have just been your own built-in New England sense of mistrust for the states closer to the Gulf, you knew there was a different type of thinking sometimes that came with the hotter weather. Evangelical Christianity had given rise to the Fallen, after all, and Georgia was no stranger to that kind of religion; something you rarely saw in Brockton Bay.
More than that, though, all manner of superstition appeared to have flooded the state.
From old folklore to new, hitting the search engines with the idea of urban legends in Atlanta gave rise to lists as long as your school homework syllabi, though with far fewer mentions of exam dates and far more names that seemed exceedingly difficult to pronounce.
Some of them seemed to be myths and legends that predated even the establishment of the state proper; rooted in the traditions of the indigenous inhabitants of the area. Some, though, were distinctly new; it was hard to find a mention of the Atlanta Worm Man prior to the new millennium, and there were dozens of stories since that described close calls with what seemed almost certain to be a cryptid of some sort.
Letting your research wind down to a crawl, you clicked a number of your tabs closed, watching mention of the Altama-ha sea monster and Bigfoot vanish into the digital graveyard.
Instead, you headed back to PHO to see whether or not Anchor had seen your embarrassing confession, and if so, what kind of insult she had prepared to levy your way.
She had answered.
AlaskanBullWorm: you listen to nothing??? cmon thats crazy, you should try some of the new spitwizard stuff, it will melt your head
when you get here ill definitely take you dw, we'll get you right fr fr prepare for the noise maybe bring earplugs it gets loud
AlaskanBullWorm: its fun though not bad loud
AlaskanBullWorm: are you having a party before you leave the bay?? what will you do for music if you don't listen to any?? are the other wards you mentioned picking the tunes??
Click to expand...
The glowing green circle next to her name told you that she was still, at least nominally, online.
Thus far, you had learned at least two things from Anchor. The first was that she was a very talkative young lady. The second was that you were almost certainly going to embarrass yourself at some point talking to her – she knew too much and cared too much about things that were happening. You weren't sure that you had any real grasp on popular culture since mid-2009, and even then you were hardly an expert; Mom and Dad enjoyed music from their own childhood too much, and the only exposure you had to pop music was from Emma, whose on taste verged on the saccharine to a point that your teeth hurt solely via memory.
Given that it hadn't resulted in complete failure thus far, you decided to err on the side of honesty with Anchor again. If it produced a negative result, at least the two of you would know where you stood with one another upon arrival, rather than having to puzzle it out over however long that might take.
Penumbra: It wasn't a choice, I just didn't really have a chance to listen to much since I was a kid. If you make some suggestions, I'll add them to my list, I'm trying to get into some new things – advice from a friend.
We're not having a party when we leave though. The other two Wards, Skýla and Regent, are probationary so they don't really have much of a relationship with anyone to justify a party anyway, and I don't think either of them really listen to much music either.
Click to shrink...
It didn't take long for Anchor to fire back – almost fast than you had thought possible.
AlaskanBullWorm: thats crazy, you definitely need to have a party tho or at least a get 2gether, you cant just leave
AlaskanBullWorm: maybe let someone else pick the music for now tho
AlaskanBullWorm: give a farewell speech tho, you gotta make them remember you
Penumbra: If I promise to give a speech, do I get to skip the party?
AlaskanBullWorm: mmmmmmmm ok, but you gotta give th speech for sure
Penumbra: It's a deal. Speech, no party.
AlaskanBullWorm: not very cute but ok ok, you do you : )
Click to shrink...Falling back into your chair, you briefly considered what a speech would even look like. You remembered spending some time looking through Mom's old books on public speaking and rhetoric, so you knew the formula and the expected norms, but what did you have to talk about? You were the senior to nobody, had mentored nobody, and had no real control or understanding of the long term goals of the PRT in the Bay. You didn't want to presume anything, and giving a speech that just thanked a lot of people and wished them the best seemed a little empty.
Dragging out a scrap of paper, you began to sketch out the shape of what you could talk about, and patch them together into the beginnings of an introduction, but none of it looked even close to decent. At one point you read a sentence aloud and, in shame, had to resist the urge to eat the paper to remove all proof of the attempt.
Whatever else happened, you knew that writing was not going to become your hobby of choice.
Words didn't seem to cooperate with you.
And yet, you had pledged to give the speech and so you would. Anchor didn't necessarily have the means to force a party on you if you chickened out, but you would rather not go back on your word anyway; you had said you would do it, so you would do it. That was just part of who Taylor Hebert was. Even if it meant writing a stupid speech.
Stupid integrity.
Wednesday, 13th April
Empowering two days in a row was a strange experience, especially after the oddly melancholy experience that had been Assault's empowerment; you still wondered whether it was a good thing that he had immediately defaulted to describing the nature of his power in terms of Endbringers, even if it was just to give a common point of reference.
There was a fear that name invoked that meant most people didn't throw them around in good company. Assault was, you had noticed already from his views on the Birdcage, something of a maverick but even then you would have expected propriety to win out when it came to monsters that he had, as a senior Protectorate member, almost certainly faced in one form or another.
With a task that revolved around two much more predictable heroes – tinkers, as far as you could tell, tended to be a little more reliable if only due to their familiarity with timing and schedules and planning – Wednesday morning promised to be perhaps anticlimactic.
After all, empowering the two tinkers individually had led to almost nothing until you could chase them down later to discuss the results; fuguing was, as far as you could gather, not a particularly dramatic thing to look at even if the concepts at work were impressive and sometimes extremely powerful.
Dragon remained the gold standard, and her ability to work with other tinkers had been a significant factor in her rise to the top; her work on containment foam had originally come from collaboration with another tinker whose name was far less known, and you wagered that at least some of the technology that currently sat in your helmet came from her work with Rhizome as members of the Guild.
Kid Win and Armsmaster were both waiting for you, this time breaking the trend of doctoring. Instead, the two of them were in a vacant room adjacent to the medical room in which your usual work took place, with a paper sign sellotaped to the door indicating the change of venue.
Inside, along with the two tinkers, was a large table surrounded by seats and covered with equipment. The two tinkers had hauled in significant portions of their ongoing projects, and a plethora of tools so diverse that you could only name a handful of them.
Immediately, your own tinker ability kicked into overdrive and you began wondering whether any of them could be put to use solving your own problems; Armsmaster in particular seemed to have a number of tools with working edges and surfaces so small that you had to squint to make out their shapes from a distance, and the idea of using them to bridge the connecting plates of your psycholophone and reduce the surface area even further sprung to mind.
Beating the thought back, at least until you could work with Armsmaster yourself, you waited for the senior tinker to speak – and speak he did.
'Tinkering Session Q2M129KW; recording. Armsmaster, Kid Win, Penumbra present,' he spoke, placing a small device which you could only assume was his recorder on the desk. 'Tinker collaborative empowerment outline. Penumbra is to utilise her Trump ability to empower myself and Kid Win and then observe for a brief period of time ensuring no immediate danger. At this point she is welcome to exit the room. The two of us are to remain in this room until four hours have passed at the minimum, or until at least a singular combined idea has been formulated; if the latter occurs prior to the former, we will proceed to the testing rooms to begin expediting experimentation. Does this sound reasonable to all involved?'
You nodded, before realising that speech was required for the recorder, and affirming aloud. Kid Win repeated your own words, confirming his comfort with the situation.
The process was easy, and you simply followed the protocol from last time without the gap in between to allow Armsmaster to leave. He unsealed a plate in his armour, allowing for you to touch his skin, and Kid Win's far less complete protection simply allowed you to press a hand to his forearm. Having never empowered two people simultaneously, you took it in turns; first pulsing power into Kid Win, and then almost instantly afterwards channelling the same strength into Armsmaster.
And the results were as instantaneous as the first time.
Armsmaster stiffened, then closed the compartment of his armour with a rigidity that spoke of precision and an almost robotic instinct. Kid Win, by comparison, gained a frenetic energy that seemed to radiate out from him. You recognised the look on them both from having seen it before but also, now, from having experienced it; you knew that their minds were flooding with ideas – perhaps blueprints for existing concepts, but also potentially items that were brand new and might result in the cannibalisation of one or more of the devices they had brought along with them.
Hope alone was not enough to ensure that they had brought only that which they could afford to lose, and you had to trust that the two of them were wise enough to anticipate that consequence and to remember their own states from last time.
'Empowerment complete. Tinker vigour clearly activated; the two subjects seem ready to work. Are you both feeling okay?'
Emulating Armsmaster's professional and scientific tone after spending two months trying hard to come across as professional and then allowing your own formality to drop felt a lot like slipping back into an old pair of shoes, and you wondered how you had done it all day long when you were first starting out.
Then it registered that, in some sense, you were still just starting out. And wasn't that strange to consider?
'Yes, I'm well. I need to work.'
Armsmaster's gruff voice took an edge to it, and you were half sure that you had heard the electronic tones of his artificial-actor routines beneath his natural timbre.
'Yeah, I think I'm okay.'
Kid Win was clearly possessed of less angst than Armsmaster, and you wondered whether that was simply due to his higher baseline energy level making it less of a shift, or whether Armsmaster was simply powerful enough as a tinker that his ideas came faster and stronger. Briefly, you wondered what it would be like to empower Dragon, or even Hero, had he still been around. Part of you imagined that the two of them would have immediately deconstructed the room around them and built a teleporting clone machine or something equally absurd.
You stuck around for nearly half an hour, watching the two of them steadily deconstruct everything in front of them into a mess of circuits and plates, metal bolts and screws careening off the table and pinging off the walls with none of the tidiness that you had come to expect from Armsmaster and all of the mess you had experienced in Kid Win's workshop while you had been borrowing it.
Indeed, the same strange fishing-rod-reel-gun-claw item that Kid Win had been working on while you had last been present had been set spinning at frankly dangerous speeds, with another small tool that Armsmaster had set up quickly interfacing with it before disengaging at a rapid but metronomic pace.
Between the movements, the two of them spoke in clunky half sentences, words that barely meant anything and other words that clearly meant something to them but not to you were traded across the table, tools were passed, and you got the idea that whatever was going on between them needed fairly little communication; they had hit upon at least one idea, possibly independent ideas, which were being networked between them through purely the momentum of thought and shared tinkering experience.
You reported as much into the recording device, unsure of what else to tell it; there was no insight you could give into what they were building or how effective it was being.
Joined by a doctor shortly after things began, you noted that it appeared safe enough. The official had given you leave to exit and you hadn't followed through immediately; rather, you had stayed a little longer to watch their actions.
Anticipating it seemed to work. There was a rhythm to their motions. But the purpose eluded you with an almost purposeful smoothness, slipping away from perception whenever you felt that you were coming close to figuring out exactly what was happening.
Tinkers, you decided, were very strange.
Leaving them to it after an hour, the two showed no signs of stopping – though Kid Win had burned himself another two times. How his hands weren't entirely scar tissue, you weren't sure that you knew.
With an afternoon free, you headed towards the gym; there was always time to practice your combat skills, and you would find out what they had built when it was done.
That, or you'd pick the two of them out of whatever crater their symbiotic tinkering had created.