Agitation 3.8

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“Any trouble?” Grue asked Tattletale.

“We’re okay for now.”

We’d gone over the plan until I’d been worried I would start murmuring about it in my sleep. I joined Tattletale, Grue, Bitch and the largest of the three dogs as we headed to the sealed vault door.  Regent watched at the front doors with the two other dogs.  His power had a good enough range that he could delay any approaching opposition long enough for us to get into position.

Tattletale took hold of the stainless steel wheel that jutted out from the front of the vault and spun it, then stopped it. She repeated the process, going right, then left, then right again, for an indeterminably long time.  Just when I had the hopeful thought that maybe she wasn’t able to get in, there was a sound of something heavy shifting inside the door.

The four of us hauled the door open, and Tattletale sauntered off to where the bank manager worked. She sat herself down at the computer, putting her feet up on the corner of the desk, and began typing away.  From there, she could keep an eye on the media, watch the surveillance cameras and remotely control the door locks and alarm systems.  All with the right passwords, of course, but that wasn’t a problem for her.

Grue, Bitch and I started strapping a canvas harness onto the one dog that wasn’t standing at the front doors. I was gradually working out which was which.  I think Bitch called this one Brutus.  He was the biggest, with the meatiest body, and he had a shorter snout.  He’d been the Rottweiler, before.

He turned his massive head towards me, until the deep set eyeball was just to the left of my head.  The pupil narrowed into a dot.  There was just the bloodshot white of the eye and the yellow-gray of an iris as broad as my handspan.

I knew the worst thing to do would be to show fear or nervousness, so I was careful to breathe slowly and focus on buckling the straps and making triply sure they were fastened tight.  I was maybe being a little too firm, just to ensure the Brutus didn’t think I was weak or shy.  Not that it mattered.  I seriously doubted I could make him flinch, even with one of my weapons in hand.

With the harness securely fastened, we headed into the vault, Brutus standing at the door.  The vault was stainless steel from top to bottom with neatly banded bundles of bills organized into stacks.  The stacks, in turn, were organized by the size of the bill, all neatly set up against the wall. On the wall opposite the stacks were drawers like an elaborate filing cabinet.  They were pretty much just that.  The bank kept copies of all important documents for the local branches here, in a fireproof vault, in case of disaster.  The far end of the vault had another door, opening into an elevator that went down to the garage basement, where the armored trucks could be loaded.  It was a shame it wasn’t an option for an escape route. The door, the elevator and the garage itself were all firmly locked outside of specific times and days.

Bitch dumped an armload of bags onto the ground, and she and I got on our knees on either side of the pile and began stuffing one of the bags with cash.  She took off her mask to see what she was doing better.  Grue, for his part, withdrew a short crowbar from within the darkness that smoldered around his body.  He set to cracking open the filing drawers with the squealing noise of metal creaking and bending.

As Bitch and I filled the first bag, we buckled it closed, cinched the accompanying strap tight around it, and with mutual effort, slid it across the slick metal floor towards Brutus. Grue turned away from the drawers to grab the bag, haul it up and attach it to the dog’s harness.

It was a staggering amount of money. As Bitch and I worked, I started trying to count the money I was putting into the bag. Five hundred, one thousand, one thousand five hundred. Bitch was working just as fast as I was, so I could double that. Just taking a second to wrap my head around what the total amount would be per bag made me lose track.

We filled a second bag and slid it towards the door. Grue grunted as he heaved it up to the opposite side of the first bag and clipped it in place. While we filled the third bag, he clipped on one more – a bag filled with the contents of the first drawer he had opened.  According to Lisa’s briefing, the drawers would hold deeds, liens, insurance forms, mortgages and loan information.  Apparently our employer was willing to buy these from us.  I’d speculated about why – the most obvious possibility was that he could ransom them back to the bank.  More intriguing was the thought that he wanted the information itself for his own purposes.  Or, on a similar note, maybe there was something specific that would be found in the midst of the paperwork, and he was willing to buy it all if it meant keeping his true intentions unclear.

“I’m going to be sore tomorrow,” Grue groaned, as he recovered from strapping the bag of papers into place, “And we haven’t even been in a fight yet.”

“Sore and rich,” Bitch spoke.  I glanced at her and saw her grinning.  It was disquieting.  I’d only ever seen her sullen and hostile, so any smile would be kind of creepy.  It was worse than that.  Hers was the kind of smile you’d see from someone who had never seen one before and was trying to replicate one from what they’d read in books.  Too many teeth showing, I suppressed a shiver and focused on the work.

We slid the third bag across the floor.  Grue hooked it into the harness.

“We can’t put any more on here without it being a problem,” he decided.

“The weight is even?” Bitch asked.

“Close enough.”

Bitch stood and crossed the length of the vault to where her creature waited. She rubbed her hand on Brutus’ snout like you might see a horse owner do, except Brutus most definitely wasn’t a horse. She was rubbing her hand on exposed muscle, calcified tatters of flesh and bone hooks that jutted out of gaps and knots in the muscle. She managed to look almost affectionate as she did it.

“Go, baby. Go,” she commanded, pointing to the front door. Brutus obediently loped off to the front of the bank and sat, his prehensile tail absently coiling around the door handle.

“Hey!” Bitch called out, then whistled twice, alternating between short and long. The smallest of the dogs, who was only recognizable now by her missing eye, bounded towards us in her excitement. Some of the hostages screamed in alarm at the sudden movement.

I winced.  I didn’t want to think about the hostages. They were already heavy on my conscience, and they were constantly on the periphery of my attention, as long as I continued using the bugs I’d planted on them to keep alert for any movement or talking.

“That’s the one you call Angelica?” I asked, to distract myself. “The name doesn’t seem to fit with what you call the others.”

“I didn’t name her,” Bitch said. As the creature approached her, Bitch slapped her a few times on the shoulder, hard. It didn’t hurt the animal though – Angelica just lashed her tail in what I realized was a warped way of wagging her tail. Bitch snapped her fingers twice and pointed at the ground, and Angelica sat.

I had already partially filled a bag when Bitch rejoined me.

“She had previous owners then.”

“Fuckers,” Bitch swore.

“They were the ones who made her lose her ear and her eye?” I asked.

“What? You think I fucking did it?”  She dropped the money she had in her and and stood up, clenching her fists.

“Woah, no,” I protested, shifting my weight so I could move out of the way if she got aggressive, “Just trying to make small talk.”

She took a step toward me.  “Coward.  You know you can’t take me in a-”

“Enough!” Grue shouted.  Bitch turned on him, her eyes narrowing.

“If you can’t work over there, then take over here.”  His voice was steady, firm.  Bitch spat on the floor and did as he asked, taking the offered crowbar from his hand as they passed each other.  Grue took over the bag filling where Bitch had left off.  We quickly got a rhythm down, and four more bags were filled in a matter of minutes.

“We want to stay to load up the third dog or run for it?” I asked Grue, then added, “No use getting greedy.” I would be happy to leave as soon as possible. I wasn’t interested in the money, and I definitely wasn’t interested in going to jail for it.

“How much do we have?” he glanced over in Angelica’s direction

Tattletale answered for me, from where she stood at the door to the vault, “Forty one thousand, eight hundred. It looks like that’s as much as we’re going to get. The white hats are here, and it’s not looking good.”

We were out of the vault in a flash, and we joined Regent at the front doors, peering through the gaps in the wall of darkness.

Tattletale hadn’t exaggerated. Our opposition was lined up on the sidewalk across the street, the colors of their costumes bright in the midst of the gloom of the rain and the gray of the city.  Aegis, tan skinned, was wearing a rust red costume with a matching helmet, both with silver-white trim and a shield emblem. The cockroach, I’d come to think of him.  The boy with no weak points.

A dozen or so feet to his right was Vista, wearing a costume with a skirt, all covered in wavy, swooping lines that alternated between white and forest green. She had some body armor worked into her costume design.  Her breastplate was molded to give the illusion of a chest, but that didn’t do anything to conceal the fact that she was still young enough that I could have kicked her ass in a straight up fistfight.  If she was older than twelve, she was a late bloomer.

Clockblocker stood to Aegis’ left. He wore a white costume, skintight, with interlocking panels of glossy white body armor placed wherever they could give him protection without inhibiting his movements. I couldn’t see it through the rain, but I knew from TV that the armor had images of clocks on it in dark gray.  Some of the images on the armor were animated so they drifted across the surface, while others were fixed in place with hands ticking. His helmet was faceless, just a smooth expanse of white.

“Tattletale,” Grue growled in his echoing, reveberating voice, “You know how I say you’re a fucking dumbass sometimes?”

The three weren’t alone. Kid Win was floating in the air to one side of Clockblocker. His brown hair was damp in the rain, he had a red visor and body armor in red and gold. His feet were firmly planted on his flying skateboard, which had a ruby glow radiating from the bottom.  His hands were gripping matching guns.  Laser pistols, or something in that vein.  Kid Win was saying something to Gallant, who was standing a ways to his left.  Gallant was an older teenager in a gunmetal and silver costume that blended the appearance of a pulp science fiction hero with a medieval knight.

On the opposite end of the line was someone I didn’t know. He was big in a different way than Grue was big. The kind of bulk that made you think powers were at work. His muscle laden arms were bigger around than my thighs, and I thought he could probably crush cans between his pecs. His costume was little more than dark blue or black spandex with a diamond print. His mask was full-face, except for the eyes, and had a crystal attached to the forehead.  He was the only person standing there who didn’t have body armor.  He didn’t look like he really needed it.

“Who is he?” I asked, pointing.

“Browbeat,” Tattletale sighed, “He’s a point blank telekinetic, which means that he can move things with his mind, but only if they’re within an inch or so of his skin. He can use it to throw punches that hit like freight trains, or shield himself from incoming attacks. He’s also packing personal biokinesis, which means he’s got a kind of ability to manipulate his own body. He can heal just by concentrating on an injury, and he’s used it to bulk up. He might be capable of doing more on the fly, depending on how much he’s trained since we saw him last. He’s been a solo hero in Brockton Bay for a little while.”

“What the fuck is he doing here?” I asked.

“We crossed paths with him once, Regent and Bitch beat him. Either he’s here for revenge or he’s joined the Wards very, very recently. My power’s suggesting it’s the latter.”

“That’s is the kind of thing you’re supposed to inform us on well in advance,” Grue hissed at her, “And there’s not supposed to be six of them.”

“There’s seven,” Tattletale said, wincing as Grue slammed his fist against the wood of the door. “There’s someone on the roof.  I’m not sure who, but I don’t think it’s Shadow Stalker. Might be a member of the Protectorate.”

“There’s not supposed to be six or seven!” Grue roared in his unearthly voice “There’s supposed to be three, four at most!”

“I made an educated guess,” Tattletale spoke in a low voice, “I was wrong.  Sue me.”

“If we get out of this in one piece,” Grue spoke, his tone low and menacing, “We’re going to have a long conversation.”

I rested my forehead against the window.  An armored section of my mask clinked against the glass, “Educated guess.  It would have been nice if you had said it was an educated guess, way back when we were planning this.”

Of our group, Bitch seemed the least daunted.  “I can take them.  Just let me go all out.”

“We’re not going to fucking risk killing anyone,” Grue told her. “We’re not maiming anyone, either. The plan stands.  We have the money, we run for it.”

Tattletale shook her head, “That’s what they want. Why do you think they’re lined up like that? We bolt with the money from any of the exits, the person on the roof tackles us, incapacitates us or keeps us busy while the rest close in.  Look at how they’re sort of spaced out.  Just far enough apart that if we try to go between them, one of them can probably close in fast enough to nab us before we get away.”

“With my power-” Grue started.

“They still outnumber us. There’s at least five ways they could take one of us down while we’re running, even if they were going in blind… and Vista’s in the equation. Figure any distance we need to cover is going to be much farther than it looks, and things get ugly. It wouldn’t be a problem if there weren’t so many of them.”

“Fuck,” Regent groaned.

“We can’t just stay here,” Grue said, “Sure, they’re getting cold and wet, but our odds aren’t much better if we force them to come in here after us, and if we wait too long, the Protectorate might show, too.”

“We have hostages,” Bitch said, “If they come in here, we take out one of the hostages.”  Somewhere behind us, someone moaned, long and loud. I think they’d heard her.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was a bad situation, and worse, I was afraid it was my fault. I’d warned Armsmaster something was going to happen. I could believe that he’d told the teams to be ready to go out in force. Even worse, he could be the unknown person on the roof. If that was the case, and Tattletale caught on, I was supremely fucked.

Fuck.

“We need to catch them off guard,” I didn’t realize I was speaking aloud until the words left my mouth.

“Sure, but how are we going to do that?” Grue replied.

“You guys are masters at the getaway, right?  So we change gears.  We fight them face to face.”

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Agitation 3.7

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Grue was already out of his vehicle and halfway to us by the time Tattletale and I had shut the doors of the van.  He was using his power at a low degree over the entirety of his body.  The darkness soaked into and through the porous leather of his costume, making him look like a living shadow.  Brian had showed me how the visor had vents at the edges, to direct the effect of his power around the sides and top of his head, so it wouldn’t obscure the face.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t see through the effects of his own power – he could.  He’d explained that the vents were there to create an effect where you could see glimpses of a black-painted skull floating in the vaguely human shaped form of even darker black.  When he had the money to spend, he had told me, he was going to get a more complete costume custom made for him in the same way, to expand on the effect.

“Let’s move fast.”  His voice echoed, reverberated, with a hollowness to the sound, like something alien and far away.  He was using his power to play with the sound, “Tattletale, see to the door.  Bug, with me.”

Together with Grue, I returned to the van Lisa had been driving.  Grue grabbed the handle of the sliding door and hauled it open, then scrambled out of the way as the contents came pouring out.

I chuckled at the image of this spooky supervillain being caught off guard.  I’d packed the entirety of the van, minus the driver and passenger seats, with bugs.  As the door opened, they spilled out to pool on the wet pavement beneath the door.

“Got enough?” his voice echoed.  I thought maybe I caught a touch of humor in his tone, behind the influence of his power.

I smiled behind my mask, “Let’s hope.”

A drive earlier in the morning had given me the opportunity to gather this swarm.   It was surprising how many bugs there were in the city, hidden from sight.  At any given point in the city, I could generally draw out tens of thousands of bugs from inside walls, sewers, attics, lawns, trees and even places you would think were too clean or occupied to have any creepy crawlies lurking about, and I could do it over a matter of minutes.

These weren’t just the bugs I could draw in at a moment’s notice, though.  Traveling the city had given me the chance to be picky.  These were the good ones, each of them fast enough to keep up with me, or capable of being carried by those that were.  More than that, though, the majority of them were either durable sorts like the larger centipedes, cockroaches and beetles, or capable of stinging and biting, with bees, wasps, ants and blackflies making up their bulk.  To round out their number, I’d gathered moths, houseflies, and mosquitoes, who weren’t the best attack bugs out there, but were easy enough to get, and served to distract the enemy or bulk out the swarm.

There were three hundred and fifty cubic feet inside the rear of the van. Tattletale had told me that.  When they were packed in just tight enough that they wouldn’t damage each other or spill past the barrier and into the front seats, it added up to a pretty amazing amount of insects.  I called them out of the van and watched as their mass seemed to expand as they spread out.

We joined Tattletale at the side door of the bank. I had to admit, I admired the sheer change she was capable of pulling off when donning her costume.  Rather, I should say, I admired the effort she’d gone into as Lisa, that made her so different from her Tattletale persona.  Her mask was narrow, only really surrounding her eye sockets, covering her eyebrows, some of her nose and some of her cheekbones, but it hid the freckles on the bridge of her nose and changed the apparent lines of her face.  Her hair was down and loose, damp from the rain, in contrast to how it was always in a ponytail or braided when she was ‘Lisa’.  Her costume was skintight, beaded with droplets of water, lavender with bands of black across the chest and down the sides of her arms, legs and body.  An image of a stylized eye, only visible in the right light, given it was dark gray on black, was worked into the costume’s design.  A compact ‘utility belt’ sat diagonally across her hips, sporting a variety of compact pockets and pouches.

Regent was keeping watch, a few feet away.  From what I’d seen while we prepared, I now knew his costume was deceptive.  He still wore the hard white mask with the silver coronet, but he had shown me how the interior of the mask had foam shaped to the contours of his face, with only his mouth left free, so he could talk without being muffled.  In a similar vein, the loose white shirt he wore covered up a mesh vest that was molded to the shape of his body.  He was idly twirling a scepter in his fingers.  The scepter wasn’t purely thematic – apparently the crowned orb that topped the scepter had two electrodes built into the tines, for the taser that was built into it.  It was all about misdirection, misleading and giving the impression of vulnerability.

“The fire exit at the back is protected by a digital passkey,” Tattletale explained while she crouched at the keypad, staring at it, “Every employee has the number to get in if they need to, but that rarely happens because opening the door sets off a bunch of alarms.  That password is easy.  The interesting thing that the employees don’t even know is that the capes and SWAT teams have a special code they can put in if they need to make a quiet entrance with no alarms going off.  To do that, you punch in the regular code, 3-7-1, but you hold the one down, then press the number sign and the asterisk keys down at the same time… Voila.  Try it.”

Grue pulled on the door.  We waited in tense silence for a moment for the angry blare of the alarm, but none came.  Tattletale grinned at us. “What’d I tell you?”

Grue signaled, and we were joined by Regent and Bitch with her three dogs.  The animals were the size of small ponies, their flesh having swelled and expanded enough that their fur had split at the seams.  Muscle and bone showed beneath, and the arrangement of said anatomy wasn’t exactly typical.  The change was slow enough that you couldn’t see it if you were looking for it, but if you looked away and looked back a moment later, you could tell they were bigger, that bone at the shoulder was longer, the eyes were deeper set, and so on.  Spikes, spurs and an exoskeleton of bone growths had appeared to fill or cover gaps and grow in at places where the bone was already close to the skin.  The tail of the smallest dog – Angelica, I think Rachel called it – was twice as long as normal and prehensile, now, and the other two were well on their way.  It looked like someone had torn out a pair of human spines, the meat still hanging off them, and attached them one to the other before tacking the end to the dog’s hindquarters.

Bitch, for her part, was just wearing a jacket with a fur ruff collar and a cheap, hard plastic mask of a bulldog.  The dogs had been given the rear of the second van, allowing Bitch to work her power on them as Brian drove.  Being able to do the change more slowly meant she wouldn’t prematurely exhaust herself or the animals by rushing the job on site.

We made our way into the back hallways of the bank’s ground floor, Bitch’s dogs leading the way, my swarm pulling up the rear.  The clock had started running down from the moment we’d parked in the alleyway; that was the point where people might have thought something was up.  Now that we were inside, though, someone knew, or would know any second.

At this very moment, chances were, some guard in the room with the security cameras would be making a call to 911 and reporting a crime in progress by costumed criminals.  If Tattletale was right, the Protectorate was too far away to be called in, so they would contact the Wards.  We had five or ten minutes before trouble showed.

Each time we passed a room, Grue, Regent and I would double check it.  The first few were empty, but as we reached one room, a dog took notice, and Grue raised a hand to plunge the room into darkness.  A second later, he stepped back into the hallway, twisting the arm of a cringing thirty-something man in a gray suit behind his back.  I hadn’t even realized Grue had entered the room in the first place.

In the next room, Regent grabbed another hostage.  I caught a glance of the man, graying hair and thick around the middle with a pink dress shirt and no jacket, staring at us with eyes wide.  He opened his mouth, I think his intent was to cry for help, but broke down into coughs and sputters instead.  A second later, he keeled over and collapsed onto the floor.  He tried to climb to his feet, but his elbow buckled and he hit the ground a second time.  While he continued to struggle, Regent strode into the room with an almost lazy air, grabbed him by the collar and shoved him towards the hallway where we stood.  Defeated, Pink-shirt didn’t resist, half-walking, half-crawling forward as he joined us.  He met eyes with the other employee, but didn’t say anything.

We only passed a dozen offices, but it felt like three times that number.  Grue was on point, glancing into each room and watching for danger from up ahead, with Regent keeping an eye on rooms to our right.  That meant I was paying attention to the rooms on the left, as well as keeping an eye out by way of the swarm to our rear.  Each time I looked into an office, lunchroom or conference room, I prayed it would be empty.  I didn’t want to be any more responsible for all this than I had to.

When I saw the last office on the left was vacant, I was relieved enough that I nearly forgot my role in the next stage of the plan.

We reached the front lobby of the bank, and Bitch’s dogs charged into the room.  They were nightmarish, barking, growling and shaking themselves in a spray of bits of fur and blood as they abruptly grew another foot taller at the shoulder.  I had a moment’s glimpse of twenty or thirty bystanders and another six or so employees of the bank before the lights went out.  Grue used his power, and the room was plunged into darkness, the volume of the screams and wails dropping to utter silence in a matter of seconds.  We stood in the entryway to the lobby, and there was only nothingness where the bank lobby had been.

“Your move, Bug girl,” Tattletale said, reaching forward to put a hand on my shoulder.

I closed my eyes.  With a mental command, my bugs flooded into the room from the hallway behind us, flying and crawling over, under and around us to spread through the room.  I noted each person in the lobby as my bugs made contact with them, and left several bugs crawling on each individual.  I took five seconds to double check I’d gotten everyone, and belatedly remembered the two employees we had brought forward from the back offices.  A group of bugs returned from the darkness, brushing my skin on their way to make contact with the pair.

“Done,” I said.

Grue swept his arms forward, and the darkness parted.  We moved into the room as a group.  Pink-shirt and the younger guy collapsed to the ground as we walked.  I supposed it was Regent’s work there.  Some of Grue’s darkness clung to the surfaces of the doors and the windows, but the room was otherwise clear in a matter of moments, lit only by the florescent lights.  Everyone except for us was lying on the floor, crouched behind a desk, or huddled in the corners.  Two of Bitch’s dogs were standing in front of the main entrance, while the smallest was standing near the vault.  All three of the monsters were the size of cars, now.

“Fifteen minutes,” I called out to the room, my heart in my throat, “We won’t be here any longer than that.  Stay put, stay quiet, we’ll be gone before fifteen minutes are up.  You’ll be free to give your statement to the police and then go about your day as usual.  This isn’t a TV show, this isn’t a movie.  If you’re thinking about being a hero, don’t.  You’ll only get yourself or someone else hurt.”

I held up my hand, finger outstretched, a familiar spider perched on the tip, “If you are thinking about running, making a phone call or getting in our way, this is a good reason to reconsider.  This little creature and her one hundred sisters that I just brought into this room are under my complete control.”  I had the spider drop from my fingertip, dangling by a thread, by way of demonstration.

“She’s a black widow spider.  A single bite has been known to kill a full grown human, or put them into a coma.  You move, talk, try to find or kill the spiders I just put on your bodies, in your clothes, in your hair?  I’ll know in split second, and I’ll tell them to bite you several times.”

I stopped to let that sink in.  I looked over the room.  Forty or so people.  I saw a full grown man with a tear rolling down his cheek.  A teenager with freckles and brown curls was glaring at me with raw loathing in her eyes.  At one of the counters, a matronly bank employee was shaking like a leaf.

My taking hostages like this?  It had been my idea, so help me.  As horrible as it was, it had been necessary.  The worst case scenario was some regular schmuck in the bank pulling some stunt and getting themselves or others hurt or killed.  I couldn’t let that happen, if I was in a position to help it.  If it meant keeping them quiet and out of the way, I was willing to terrorize them.

As I saw the effect I’d had on these people, that justification felt really thin.

I was going to hell for this.

 

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Agitation 3.6

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“Think of it as a game,” Lisa said, “A high stakes variant of cops and robbers.”

A steady downpour of rain thrummed against the outside of the van Lisa was driving.  The rain drowned out all other noise of the traffic around us and muted our view of the surroundings, making the interior of the car an island in the midst of downtown.  Traffic was at a deadlock, so bad that Lisa had put the van into park and turned off the engine.  To break the silence, I had asked Lisa why some villains didn’t get their secret identities revealed when they got caught, and I’d apparently stumbled into one of her favorite topics.  I supposed it was good that she was in a mood to talk, because I wasn’t.

“I think,” I ventured, “That it’s a little closer to real cops and robbers than the schoolyard game.”

“No, no.  Hear me out.  Grown adults running around in costume?  Making up code names for themselves?  It’s ridiculous, and we know it’s ridiculous, even if we don’t admit it out loud.  So there’s capes like you and me, where we go out in costume and it’s fun.  Maybe we have some agenda or goals, but at the end of the day, we’re getting our thrills, blowing off steam and living a second life.  Then there’s the crazies.  The people who are fucked up in the head, maybe dangerous if there’s not something or someone to help keep them in line.  The people who take it all too seriously, or those guys you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of, even if they didn’t have powers.  Lung, Oni Lee, Heartbreaker,” she paused.  “Bitch.”

I nodded.

“And there’s the monsters.  The really dangerous motherfuckers, who are barely human any more, if at all.  The Slaughterhouse Nine, Nilbog-”

“The Endbringers,” I interjected.

Lisa paused, “Right.  But you have to understand, ninety percent of what goes on when you’re in costume?  It’s the first group.  Adults in costumes playing full contact cops and robbers with fun-as-fuck superpowers and toys.  This mindset applies to the people without powers too.  Way I see it, having a local team of superheroes is like having a sports team.  Everyone’s rooting for them, they make for great media that isn’t about wars or the water crisis or whatever, there’s merchandising and tourists… all good shit that the local government loves.  But what good is having a team if there’s no competition?”

“Which is where we come in,” I figured out where she was going.

“Exactly.  At the end of the day?  We’re not doing much harm.  Property damage, theft.  A few civilians get hurt if they don’t move out of the way fast enough.  But insurance payouts cover that stuff, and people aren’t that much worse off.  The property damage is covered and the injured bystander has a great story to tell at the water cooler.  The city gets revenue in an indirect way, from merchandise, tourism and the rising property that come with being an exciting city.

“Compared to the psychos and the monsters out there, it’s almost in the city’s interests to keep us in circulation.  Far as I see it, we’re not that much better or worse than the so called good guys.  We face more risk at the end of the day, with the possibility of jail time and physical danger, but we get a better payoff.  We just took the path that was higher risk, higher reward.”

“I’m not sure,” I said, carefully, “That I buy all that.”

“No? Then why don’t they send people like Über straight to the Birdcage after his trial, like they are with Lung?  The amusing but relatively harmless villains get a regular jail cell, they inevitably break out before the trial concludes, and the cat and mouse game starts again.  Sure, there’s the three strike rule, and he’ll get sent to the Birdcage eventually, but the people in charge have to maintain some plausible deniability.”

I didn’t think there was a way I could argue against Lisa’s theory without giving too much of my own perspective away.  I just kept my mouth shut and turned my new knife over in my hands.  Direct from our anonymous ‘boss’, it sported a blade a little over six inches long and a textured handle with three symmetrical indents on each side, for grip.  According to Lisa, it was strong enough to use as a miniature crowbar, if I had a mind to.  My extendable combat baton was tucked away in the panel of my armor where I kept my pepper spray.

“But the real evidence to my ‘cops and robbers’ theory,” Lisa continued, “Is the reaction you see when someone crosses the line.  You’ve heard about it happening.  Someone finds out another cape’s secret identity, goes after the cape’s family.  Or a cape wins a fight and decides his downed opponent isn’t in a state to say no if he’s feeling lusty?  Word gets around, and the cape community goes after the fucker.  Protecting the status quo, keeping the game afloat.  Bitter enemies call a truce, everyone bands together, favors get called in and everyone does their damndest to put the asshole down.”

“Like we do with the Endbringers,” I said.  I sheathed my knife.

“Holy fuck,” Lisa said, slapping the sides of the steering wheel with her hands.  I think if the van had been moving, she would have hit the brakes for emphasis.  Traffic was starting to move, though, so she started up the car and put it into gear, “Twice, you bring up the Endbringers in as many minutes.  You’re being morbid.  What’s going on?”

I stared out the window at downtown Brockton Bay, hundreds of people with umbrellas and raincoats, a few intrepid individuals bolting down the street with a briefcase or newspaper over their head, to ward off the downpour as they made their way to or from their work on their lunch hours.

It was hard to talk to Lisa, as much as I liked her as a person.  I felt like I was walking on eggshells.  If I said something, would that give her the puzzle piece she needed to figure me out?  I had been lucky so far, but relying on luck sucked.  I was counting on this ruse continuing, whether it was because I enjoyed the temporary companionship of Brian, Lisa and Alec, or because I wanted to get Grue, Tattletale, Regent and Bitch carted off to jail and prove Armsmaster wrong.  I was aware how paradoxical those two interests were.

But right now, maybe for the first time since Bitch had set her dogs on me, I felt painfully out of place in the group dynamic.  We were robbing a bank, and I was the only one who was guilty about it, apparently the only one who was worried about the safety of the bystanders and hostages.

Then there was the fact that Armsmaster had said that two members of the Undersiders were murderers, and doubt was tainting every interaction I had with these guys.  When I was smiling about a joke Alec made, was I enjoying the joke of a killer?  I liked Brian, but now I was looking back on how he had pointed out how to brutally disable someone in a fight, and I was wondering if he’d ever gone that one step further and snapped someone’s neck.  It wasn’t a hundred percent impossible to imagine that one of the secrets Lisa was so fond of keeping included murder, either.  I felt like every interaction with these guys was spoiled, now, and there was nobody I could ask to clarify the lingering questions.

Still, staying quiet now would only make her more suspicious, and if she turned the full extent of her power on me, I doubted my undercover ruse would withstand her attention.  I confessed with a half truth, “I got in an argument with someone last night.  I think it was mutual disappointment, got pretty heated, hurtful.  I guess I’m a bit angry, and my confidence is a little shaken.”

“Well, fuck them,” Lisa stated.  I raised an eyebrow in response.

She went on, “See, I know you.  Believe it or not, I like you.  Did from the time I saw you on that roof, opposite Lung.  You know how we fear the unknown?  Well, I know stuff, that’s my whole thing, and that motherfucker is one of the very few people who can spook me.  You, Taylor, stood up to him.”

In a manner of speaking, anyways.  The way I remembered it, I’d been curled up in a fetal position when the Undersiders came to my rescue.  I didn’t correct her.

“So this guy or this girl that’s got you down in the dumps?  I say fuck them.  They don’t know you.  They don’t know what you’re capable of.”

I would have stopped myself if I could have, but the irony of her statement was too rich.  I grinned, looking out the window to hide the expression from Lisa.

“I saw that.  Don’t think I didn’t.  So I’ve shaken the doldrums from you.  Good.  Now look to our left.”

“Who uses words like doldrums, anymore?” I voiced my thoughts as I obeyed her instruction.  She only chuckled in response.

As I realized what I was looking at, through the rain and the past the traffic, I swallowed hard.  It was a stone fixture six stories tall, with crenelations on the roof and balconies, stone gargoyles at the corners and iron grilles on the windows. The entryway had wide stone stairs like a courthouse, with statues of rearing horses with wild manes on either side.  The name of the institution was etched into the stone above the doors.  The Brockton Bay Central Bank.  A virtual castle.

“In twenty minutes or so, we’re going to be leaving there, tens of thousands of dollars richer, the adrenaline rush of victory pumping through our veins,” Lisa’s voice was barely above a whisper, “Now tell me.  Can you visualize that?”

Not really.

“Yes,” I tried.

“Liar,” she said.  Then she winked at me, “It’s okay.  An hour from now, you’ll be rolling in money and laughing about how pessimistic you were.  Promise.”

Lisa pulled the van around to circle the block, then pulled into an employee parking lot behind a restaurant.  As she pulled into the parking lot, bringing us right to the back corner of the bank,  I pulled on my mask.  Lisa did the same, then took a few seconds to smear her eyelids with black facepaint so they blended in with her mask.  I wasn’t so lucky as to have any final touches to apply, so I watched the rearview mirror nervously.  It felt like an eternity, but was probably closer to a minute, before Brian pulled a second van into the alley that led into the lot.  He parked his van halfway down the alley, blocking anyone else from coming through.

As I opened the car door and hopped out into the pouring rain, I managed to say the words without choking on them, “Let’s go rob a bank.”

Lisa grinned.

 

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Agitation 3.5

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“A favor,” he answered me, as if he needed to say it out loud to himself to believe it.  The tone gave me pause.  Had I misread him, that first night, when I gave him credit for Lung and assumed he was grateful?

“Yeah,” I tried to sound confident, “But I should explain things first.  First off, the Undersiders offered me a spot on their team.  I took it.”

His reaction was subtle.  His chin rose a fraction, he shifted his weight fractionally, and  the grip of his armored gauntlets tightened enough on his Halberd to make a faint metal-on-metal screech.

“I think you’d better start making sense, fast,” he spoke in a calm voice, even as his body language was making me want to back away.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my nerves, “I’ve been thinking a fair bit about the conversation we had last Sunday.  It seemed odd how you accepted I was a good guy as fast as you did.  Would I be right in guessing you either have a lie detector built into your helmet or some power that works more or less the same way?”

He didn’t hurry to give me a reply, taking a few moments before telling me, “Lie detectors can be fooled, even mine.”

“Well, tell me if anything sets an alarm ringing, or if your instincts tell you I’m lying.  I was a good guy then, I’m a good guy now.  I joined the Undersiders because you said you were having trouble getting info on the guys.  Now I know their faces, I know the names they’re using, I have a pretty good idea about what their powers do, and I know where they’re living.”

His posture relaxed.  He slapped the pole of his Halberd against his back and it snapped into place.  “If that’s the case, then you’ve done us a great service.  Would you be willing to come to the Protectorate Headquarters and present that information to the team?”

My heart leapt.  Meeting the local Protectorate, with Miss Militia, Triumph, Velocity, Dauntless, Battery and Assault?  I could imagine seeing their reactions to everything I’d found, telling them about my fight with Bitch, maybe about my part in the fight with Lung, if Armsmaster was cool with that.  Hearing their stories in turn.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” his response was so quick it was very nearly an interruption.  His tone and posture were both hostile again in a flash.  I was glad he wasn’t still holding his Halberd, because I think he might have pointed it at me.

“There’s one more thing I need to find out for you,” I said, raising my hands in a sort of surrender.  I needed to find out who their boss was.  I couldn’t tell him that, though.  The less he knew, the less likely Tattletale would know I told him anything.  At least, I was hoping that was the case.

“So tell me what you know and then go find that last detail.”

“I can’t,” I answered for the second time in ten seconds, hating myself for doing it.

“You’d better have a good reason, or I’m dragging you to the PHQ and we’ll see how well you tease when you’re in front of the entire team.”

Which would be a disaster.  I swallowed hard, “What if I told you there was a spy in the PHQ?”

“You’d be setting off the lie detector.  Try again.”

I bit my lip.  I’d been hoping that phrasing it as a question would throw it off.

“There’s something at play that’s for all intents and purposes, a spy in your ranks.”

“Mostly true.  What is it?”

“I can’t be any clearer without them figuring out I told.  Just my being here is really risky.”  If word got out as to how Lisa’s power worked, I was almost positive she’d know how.

He stared at me for several long moments, “The Tattletale girl.”

Armsmaster had come to the conclusion more or less on his own.  I hoped that was enough to keep Tattletale from drawing a connection to me.  Still… fuck.

He stared off towards the PHQ for a few long moments.  Without looking at me, he asked, “So you’re not willing to provide any concrete information.  Why did you call me?”

“They’re planning something.  They want me to help them.  I do this, maybe one or two other jobs, I’m sure I can get that last essential detail, and you’ll have what you need to capture these guys.”

He didn’t reply.

So I asked my favor, “I need to know that if things go sour or if I need to sabotage their plan, I’ll have you to pull my ass out of the fire and keep me out of jail.”

“What are they planning?”

“I can’t say,” I admitted.  If I told him, Lisa might know I’d ratted the team out from any changes in the response time, extra guards or whatever else.  However justified my silence was, I could see Armsmaster getting increasingly irritated.

“Is it murder?  Is someone going to get hurt?”

“No,” I said, “I’m pretty sure no civilians are going to get hurt, unless things go really wrong, which is something I’m hoping to prevent.”

He frowned, then stopped gazing out the window to look straight at me. “I’m not giving you any protection.”

I clenched my fists at my sides, “This is the only thing I need, and you’ve got them!”

“You’re a stupid girl,” Armsmaster said.  He gave me a moment to let the words sink in.

“I-”

He didn’t give me a chance to speak.  He bowled over me, his voice rising as he spoke, “You’re asking for my permission to carry out a major crime.  At least, I assume it’s a major crime, because you wouldn’t be asking otherwise!  You want me to stand by so you can play your little spy game with a team that has two murderers on it!”

Two?  I could believe that Rachel had maybe killed someone at some point, manslaughter if nothing else, but who else would?  Eyes wide, I asked him, “Who-”

I didn’t get to finish my question.  Armsmaster talked over me until I shut my mouth and listened.  “Do you think you’re clever?  In the real world, undercover cops have handlers.  They have someone to report to, someone that can call in backup at any time.  You?  You’re a middle schooler with delusions of grandeur.”

“I’m not in middle school.”

“Oh, well,” he crossed his arms, “I stand corrected on all counts.” The sarcasm in his voice was palpable.

I protested, “And if I did have back-up or a handler or anything like that, they’d know.  The way I’m doing this is the only way this could work.  Use your lie detector, you’ll know I’m telling the truth about this.”

“I know you believe you’re right.  That doesn’t make it god’s honest truth.”

There was something about hearing all this from Armsmaster that made it twice as hard to take.  I opened my mouth, but my brain just couldn’t piece together a coherent response.  I shut my mouth again.

“Abandon this charade, little bug girl, before you bite off more than you can chew.  Tell me what you know, right now, then go home.  I don’t care if you put your costume away for good or if you sign up for the Wards, but don’t go on with the solo act.  That’s my recommendation.”

That stung.  I tried again, “I gave you Lung, full credit.  You can’t give me the benefit of a doubt?”

“You gave me a dying man!” Armsmaster bellowed, startling me, “That was on my shoulders!  I had to put up with two days of losing command of my team, two days where they confiscated my Halberd and power armor!  I was interrogated, all my equipment taken apart and checked!  All because you couldn’t resist using your bugs to give that man a fucking near-lethal dose of poisons!”

His attitude from the beginning of this meeting had been hostile.  Now I understood why.  I held my ground.

“That’s not my fault,” I told Armsmaster, my voice strained with anger.  I gave voice to a suspicion that had been nagging at the edge of my consciousness since I’d heard about Lung being hospitalized, “I didn’t dose him with enough venom to kill him.  What I think is that the tranquilizers that you pumped into his system knocked out his ability to heal, which is what let the poisons do as much damage as they did.”

We glared at each other, as much as people can exchange glares when they can’t see one another’s eyes.  Still, it wasn’t hard to imagine the expression on his face.

“If you contact me again, you’d better be prepared to answer every question I have.  Beyond that, I’m not condoning anything about what you’re trying to pull.  You’re on your own.”

I would have been happy to storm off, or offer my own angry parting words.  Except there was something else I needed from him.  On the assumption that he’d take me up on my offer, I thought I’d ask as a last, minor favor.  Now I was put in a situation where I might have to beg a man I really wanted to punch in the face.

“I-” I paused, trying to find the words, “I’m asking you to please not tell anyone we met tonight.  No records, on paper or computer.  Don’t do anything different because of what you learned tonight.  I know I can’t make you.  I don’t have anything to offer you, besides the information I’m going to get.  But if these guys get wind that I met you, it’s going to go really badly for me.”

“You made your bed.  You have to lie in it.”

“No,” I shook my head, furious he was being so mule headed.  My fists clenched, “Don’t toy with me here.  Maybe you don’t agree with what I’m doing, but I started this because I wanted to do you a favor.  The least you could do is not screw with me on this, and get me hurt or killed because your fucking rep got a smudge on it.”

I regretted my words as soon as they left my mouth, but I could hardly take them back.

“Fine,” he decided, then dismissed me, “You can go, now.”

It was a dick move, that last bit, because I was following his order if I listened and it made me look bad if I didn’t.  Still, if there was any upside to the bullying I’d endured out of costume, it was that I could handle the little maneuvers of bullies and assholes when I was in costume, too.  I left and didn’t think twice about it.

I was pissed, and it was a lot easier to be pissed at Armsmaster than it was to be angry with myself.  This hadn’t gone the way I’d planned.  I didn’t even know if that ‘fine’ of his was an agreement to do as I’d asked, or if I was royally screwed the next time I went to meet with the Undersiders.  There were two ways I could respond to this.  I could either drop the plan and put away my costume like Armsmaster wanted, or I could pull off the undercover gig and prove him wrong.

Fuck it.  I was going to rob the hell out of that bank.  I’d win the trust of the Undersiders, I was going to figure out who was running the show, and then I was going to hand over all of the info.

To Miss Militia, I was thinking.  Not Armsmaster.

 

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Agitation 3.4

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“I’ll be there.  Yes-” I saw a light in the living room window and put my hand over the lower half of my cell phone while I briefly investigated.  Damn, my dad was home.  I put the phone to my ear, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to run.  No.  No.  Look-”

As I heard the front door open, I snapped the phone shut and jammed it into my pocket.  I’d apologize for hanging up later.  I definitely didn’t want my dad to see the phone.  I didn’t think he would stop me from owning one, but ever since my mom’s death, cell phones had carried strong negative connotations.  That, and I’d have to explain where I got it and how I’d paid for it.

Brian had given me three identical cell phones – all disposables – first thing in the morning, and I’d decided to go with him to the loft rather than head to school.  The way I figured it, I didn’t have much of a chance of focusing on classes with Thursday’s bank robbery occupying my attention on top of the stress of just being there and waiting for the other shoe to drop as far as my skipped classes.  Besides, I rationalized, it didn’t make a lot of sense to go if I knew I would be skipping again to go rob the bank.  I’d promised myself I would go the day after tomorrow.  Face the music.

I’d spent the day with the group.  Rachel had been out of the apartment, the others weren’t specific on why and I wasn’t interested enough to risk looking too curious by asking.  So it had just been me, Brian, Alec and Lisa.  We’d hammered out the fine details of the robbery and I had decided what weapons I wanted Lisa to ask the boss for.  I had elected for both a combat knife and a telescoping police baton.  The knife would serve for emergencies and those people who were just too tough to hurt with the baton.  The baton, twenty one inches long when fully extended, was for more general use, offering more clout than I’d otherwise get with my fists.  Lisa had promised I would have them for tomorrow.

After that, we kind of avoided the subject of the robbery, by some unspoken agreement.  It wouldn’t do to overthink it or risk getting too nervous.  Either way, I had felt a need to burn some nervous energy, so I had helped clear out the storage closet around lunchtime, with Lisa and Brian’s help.  We’d sorted out the stuff, found a place for it all, and set up the room with odds and ends they had lying around.  The stuff included an extendable clothes rack, a dresser, an inflatable mattress and a bedside table with a lamp attached.  It was enough space for me to keep some toiletries, a spare change of clothes or two, my costume and my equipment.  Lisa spent a lot of time talking about what I could do to make the space my own, what I could buy, how I could decorate, but I was happy enough with what we had there.  I kind of liked that it was a bit spartan, because it sort of fit with how I didn’t plan to be around that long while still feeling weirdly appreciative at being accepted as a part of the group.

Having tired ourselves out, we’d all collapsed on the couches and watched some of Alec’s movies from Earth-Aleph, the alternate Earth that our Earth had been communicating with since Professor Haywire tore a hole between realities.  Media was one of the few things that could be traded back and forth through the hole.  Long story short, you could get books, movies and DVDs of TV shows from the other world, if you were willing to accept the price tag. The benefit? I got to spend the afternoon seeing how the other universe had handled episodes one and two of the Star Wars films.

Fact: they were still pretty disappointing.

By the time my dad got in, I had pork chops defrosted, dusted with lemon and pepper and sitting in a frying pan, with vegetables in the microwave.  Cooking was sort of something you started doing when you had only one parent, unless you really, really liked takeout.

“Heya,” my dad greeted me, “Smells good.”

“I started dinner a bit early because I have somewhere I want to be, tonight, If that’s cool?”

He tried to hide it, but I could see a bit of disappointment.  “Of course,” he said, “Your new friends?”

I nodded.

“Let me get changed and then I’ll ask you all about them,” he promised as he headed upstairs.

Great.  I hadn’t had to answer these questions last night because my dad had been working late.  My mind started racing to anticipate questions and come up with plausible details.  Should I use their real names?  Or at least, the names they had given me?  I wasn’t sure if that would be a breach of trust.  I decided to use their real names for much the same reason I’d decided to use my own with them.  It just prevented disasters if my dad ever happened to meet them, which was a terrifying thought, or if they called for me.

I didn’t need to worry about my dad hearing about four kids being arrested, all of whom had the same name as my ‘friends’, since most or all of them were minors and their names would be kept from the media under the law.  I was also under the impression that the courts didn’t always unmask capes when they arrested them.  I wasn’t entirely sure what was up with that.  It seemed like something to ask Lisa about.

By the time my dad had come back downstairs, I’d resolved to try and keep my lies as close to the truth as possible.  It would be easiest to keep everything straight that way.  That, and I hated lying to my dad.

My dad had changed out of his dress shirt and khakis, into a t-shirt and jeans.  He mussed up my hair and then took over the last bit of the cooking.  I sat down at the table so I could talk to him.

“So what’s going on?” he asked.

I shrugged.  I hated feeling this tense around my dad.  He’d never bugged me about the bullying, so I’d always been able to come home and sort of let my guard drop.  I couldn’t do that now, because I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop as far as my skipped classes, and my new ‘friends’ brought a whole mess of secrets and lies into the mix as well.  I felt like I was on the verge of a terminal breach of trust.  One mistake or a single concerned phone call from the school, and my dad would probably flip, and things wouldn’t be the same between us for a long time.

“Are you going to tell me their names?” he asked.  He set the food on plates and brought it to the table.

“Brian, Lisa, Alec, Rachel,” I confessed, “They’re alright.  Get along with most of them.”

“Where did you meet them?  School?”

I shook my head, “I wanted to get away from school for a bit, so I caught a bus downtown to catch a bit of a break.  I ran into them at the library.”  Partial truths.  You couldn’t really catch a bus downtown and back during the lunch break – I’d tried, when I was avoiding the trio – but I doubted my dad would research that.  I did sort of cross paths with the Undersiders at the library, though.

“They go to the library at lunch?  What are they like?”

“Brian’s pretty cool.  He’s the one I’ve talked to the most.”

“A boy, eh?” My dad wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“Dad, stop!  It’s not like that,” I protested.  I doubted Brian had the slightest interest in me, not least because I was two or three years younger than him.  Besides, well, I was me.  I opted not to mention the age difference to my dad.

Changing the subject, I said, “Lisa’s alright too.  Really smart, though I haven’t talked to her all that much.  It’s nice being able to hang out with another girl again, even if she’s pretty different from me.”

“If she’s smart, she can’t be that much different from you.”

I could’ve kicked myself.  I couldn’t explain she was a bad guy, while I was an aspiring superhero, or exactly how she was ‘smart’.  I’d talked myself into a minor corner where I didn’t have an answer ready, and I needed to avoid doing that.  Fumbling for an answer, I said, “She’s only a year older than me, and she’s graduated high school already.”  That was the truth. She cheated, but she did technically graduate.

My dad smiled, “Impressive.  Tell me they’re all excellent students that can serve as good role models for you.”

I could have choked.  Good role models?  Them?  I kept my composure and limited myself to a little smile and a shake of the head, “Sorry.”

“Alas.  What about the others?”

“Alec is the youngest, I think.  Kinda hard to connect with.  He’s an amazing artist, from what I’ve seen, but I don’t really see him draw.  It seems kind of hard to get him interested or involved in anything.  He always looks bored.”  As I said the words aloud, I realized they weren’t exactly true.  The two times I’d seen Alec react to anything had been when he’d played his little prank on Brian, tripping him, and after Bitch and I had been fighting.  A streak of schadenfreude to his personality, maybe.

“And the last one?  Rita?  Rachel?”

“Yeah, Rachel.  I don’t get along with her.  I don’t like her.”

My dad nodded, but didn’t say anything.  I was halfway expecting the typical parental line of ‘maybe if you try to show interest in things she likes’ or some other inane advice.  My dad didn’t pull that on me, he just took another bite of pork chop.

I elaborated a bit, to fill the silence, “She wants things her way, and when she doesn’t get that, she gets mean.  I dunno.  I get enough of that at school, you know?”

“I know,” my dad said.  It was a good lead-in for him to question me about what was going on at school, but he didn’t take it.  He stayed quiet.

I felt immensely grateful, right then.  My dad was respecting the boundaries I’d set, not pushing, not digging for more.  It made this conversation so much easier that it might otherwise have been, and I knew it couldn’t be that easy for him.

I felt like I owed him something for that.  Sighing, I admitted, “Like, at school.  The, uh, the people who’re giving me a hard time?  They sort of ganged up on me on Monday.  Just, you know, taking turns insulting me.  It’s why I needed to get away and went downtown.”  I felt embarrassed, saying it, because it was humiliating enough to live through without having to recap it, and because it felt so disconnected from the rest of the conversation.  But if I didn’t say it right then, I don’t think I would’ve been able to.

My dad sort of went still.  I could see him compose himself and choose his words before he asked, “Not to diminish how much it sucks to get put down like that, but they didn’t do anything else?”

I raised my eyebrows in question as I chewed.  They had, kind of, but I couldn’t really say ‘They used Mom’s death to fuck with my head’ without having to explain the Emma thing.

“Anything like what happened in January?” he asked.

I lowered my eyes to my plate, then shook my head.  After a few moments I said, “No.  January was a one time thing.  They’ve pulled smaller ‘pranks’ since then, hassled me, but no repeat performances on that front.”  I made air quotes with my fingers as I said ‘pranks’.

“Okay,” my dad said, quietly, “That’s a relief to know.”

I didn’t feel like sharing any more.  You’d think I would feel better, after opening up, but I didn’t.  I felt frustrated, angry, awkward.  It was a reminder that I couldn’t have a real conversation with my dad like I used to be able to.  More than anything, I felt guilty.  Part of the guilt was because I’d apparently let my dad think that every time I was bullied, it was like it had been that day, nearly four months ago, when things had been at their worst.  I stabbed at a bit of fat with my fork.

“When were you going out?” My dad asked.  I glanced at the digital clock on the stove and noted the time.

I was glad for the excuse to escape, “Now?  Is that okay?  I won’t be long.”

“Meeting your friends?” he asked.

“Just going to meet Lisa for coffee and conversation, away from the rest of the group,” I told him as I stood up and moved my plate to the sink.  The lie was heavier on my conscience after the open disclosure I’d just had with him.

“Here, wait,” he said.  He stood up and fished in his pocket for his wallet.  He handed me a ten, “For the coffee.  Sorry I don’t have more.  Have fun?”

I hugged him, feeling painfully guilty, then headed to the back door to pull my shoes on.  I was just opening the door when I barely heard him say, “Thank you.”

“Love you, Dad.”

“I love you too.  Be safe.”

I shut the door, grabbed the gym bag I’d stashed under the back steps and headed around the house at a light jog.  I held the gym bag low so my dad wouldn’t see me carrying it.

I took the same general route I took on my morning runs, heading east, towards the Bay.  This time, though, instead of turning up towards the Boardwalk, I headed south.

Back in its heyday, every inch of the city had been a bustling metropolis.  Ships were coming and going at all hours, trains were coming through to deliver goods to be shipped overseas and the city teemed with people.  The northern end of the bay – especially the area close to the water – was all about the industry.  Ships, warehouses, factories, railroad and the homes for everyone who worked those jobs.  You also had the ferry running across the bay itself.

The ferry was my dad’s pet project.  Apparently, it had been one of the first things to go when the import/export dried up.  With the ferry gone, the Docks had sort of been cut off from the rest of the city, unless you were willing to drive for an extra half hour to an hour.  My dad held the opinion that the lack of that transportation to the rest of the city was why the Docks had become what they were today.  He believed that if the ferry were to start running  again, jobs would be created, the people in the low income neighborhoods would have more access to the rest of the city, and the low-class, high-class, no-middle-class dynamic of Brockton Bay would smooth out.

So when I’d been trying to think of a place that was fairly private but easy to find, I thought of the ferry.  I could probably thank my dad for the idea.

I approached the station and found a disused restroom to change into my costume.

The building and the ferry itself were well kept, at least on the outside, which was one of the reasons my dad felt it would take so little effort to get things going again.  Still, that wasn’t the city’s issue.  They didn’t want to provide the addicts and the gangbangers easy access to to the rest of the city, all the while paying to provide the service, for mere hopes of maybe getting improvements for the future.  So the city kept the station and the ferry looking pretty for any tourists that wandered far enough south from the Boardwalk and maintained eternal ‘temporarily out of service’ and ‘coming soon’ signs up around the building and in the brochures.  Aside from the regular replacements to keep them looking new, the signs hadn’t been taken down in nearly a decade.

I ignored the doors to the station’s interior, and instead headed up the stairs to the outdoor patio that overlooked the bay.  There were some large panes of glass to break the wind, and stone tables and benches for those wanting to sit to eat.  It was one of the best vantage points for seeing the PHQ in all its splendor.  The headquarters was a series of arches and spires mounted on a retrofitted oil rig.  Even the platform it was built on was beautiful, though, with hard edges and sweeping lines.  The entire thing was lit up by tinted spotlights and set against a faint corona of shifting colors, like the aurora borealis trapped in the shape of a soap bubble.  A forcefield, forever on, shielding the people who watched over Brockton Bay.

“Wasn’t sure if you would show up,” a male voice broke the silence.

I turned to face Armsmaster, “I’m sorry.  I had to hang up on your receptionist.  Real life called.”

He looked somehow different than the first time I’d met him.  His lips were set in a hard line, his feet set further apart.  His arms were folded across his chest with his Halberd in one hand, the pole resting against his shoulder.  It conveyed such a different attitude that I momentarily wondered if he was the same person under the suit.

“I need to call in a favor.”

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Agitation 3.3

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“No,” Brian intoned, “Such a bad idea.”

Lisa still had the phone in her hand.  Bitch had arrived just behind her, and stood in stark contrast to Lisa’s jeans, sweater and tight ponytail, with an army jacket, and virtually no attention paid to her hair.  The littlest of the dogs, the one-eyed, one eared terrier, trailed after her.

“Come on,” Lisa wheedled, “It’s a rite of passage for dastardly criminals like us.”

“Robbing a bank is moronic.  We’ve been over this,”  Brian closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, “You know what the average haul is for hitting a bank?”

Lisa paused, “Twenty thou?”

“Exactly.  It’s not millions like you see people getting away with in the movies.  Banks don’t keep a lot of loose cash on hand, so we’d be pulling in less than we would for most other jobs.  Account for cost and the fact that this is Brockton fucking Bay, where banks have a little more reason to keep the amount of cash in their vaults to a minimum, and we’d be bringing in twelve to sixteen thou.  Divide five ways and it’s what, two or three thousand bucks each?”

“I could do with an extra three thousand dollars to spend,” Alec said, putting down his game controller and shifting his position on the couch to follow the conversation better.

“On what?” Brian asked.  When Alec shrugged, Brian sighed and explained, “It’s a horrible payoff for the amount of risk involved.  There’s three big superhero teams in this city.  Figure there’s another dozen heroes that fly solo, and we’re almost guaranteed to get into a fight.”

“So?” Bitch spoke for the first time, “We win fights.  We won before we had her.”  She raised her chin in my direction as she said that last word.

“We won because we picked our battles.  We wouldn’t have that option if we were cooped up in the bank and waiting for them to come to us, letting them decide how and where the fight happened.”

Lisa nodded and smiled as he spoke.  I thought for a second that she was going to say something, but she didn’t.

Brian continued, getting pretty passionate as he ranted, “We won’t be able to slip away like we have when things got a little out of control in the past.  Can’t avoid the fight if we want to get away with anything worth taking.  The bank is going to have layers of protection.  Iron bars, vault doors, whatever.  Even with your power, Lise, there’s a limit to how fast we can get through those.  Add the time we have to spend managing hostages and making a safe exit, and I pretty much guarantee that there will be time for a cape to get wind of the robbery and slow us down even more.”

Alec said, “I kind of want to do it anyways.  Hitting a bank gets you on the front page.  It’s huge for our rep.”

“The runt is right,” Bitch said.

Brian grumbled, “Not fucking up is better for our reputation in the long run.”  His deeper voice was really good for grumbling.

Alec looked at me, “What do you think?”

I’d almost forgotten I was a part of the discussion.  The last thing I wanted was to rob a bank.  Hostages could get hurt.  The fact that it would potentially put me on the front page of the paper wasn’t a high point, either, if I ever wanted to drop the supervillain ruse and become a hero in good standing.  I ventured, “I think Brian makes a good case.  It seems reckless.”

Bitch snorted.  I think I saw Alec roll his eyes.

Lisa leaned forward, “He does make good points, but I have better ones.  Hear me out?”  The rest of us turned our attention to her, though Brian had a frown that made it seem like it would take a lot to convince him.

“Ok, so Brian said similar stuff before, before we hit that casino a few weeks ago.  So I was kind of expecting this.  But it’s not as bad as it sounds.  The boss wants us to do a job at a very specific time.  I got the sense he was willing to offer a fair bit if we went the extra mile, and I negotiated a pretty good deal.

“The bank robbery was my idea, and he liked it.  According to him, the Protectorate is busy with an event on Thursday, just outside of town.  That’s part of the reason the timing is so important.  If we act then, there’s almost no chance we’ll have to deal with them.  If we hit the Bay Central, downtown-”

“That’s the biggest bank in Brockton Bay,” I interrupted her, half-disbelieving.

“So everything I said about them having security and being careful is doubly true,” Brian added.

“If we hit the Bay Central, downtown,” Lisa repeated herself, ignoring us, “Then we’re hitting a location just a mile away from Arcadia High, where most of the Wards go to school.  Given jurisdictions, New Wave won’t be able to jump on us without stepping on the Wards’ toes, which pretty much guarantees we go up against the team of junior superheroes.  With me so far?”

We all nodded or murmured agreement.

“Figure that’s happening in the middle of the school day, and they won’t all be able to slip away to stop a robbery without drawing attention.  People know the Wards are attending Arcadia, they just don’t know who they are.  So everyone’s constantly watching for that.  Since they can’t have all six or seven of the same kids disappear from class every time the Wards go off to foil a crime without giving away the show, chances are good that we’d go up against a couple of their strongest members, or one of the strongest with a group of the ones with less amazing powers.  We can beat them.”

“Okay,” Brian begrudged, “I’ll accept that we’d probably do alright in those circumstances, but-”

Lisa interrupted him, “I also got the boss to agree to match us two for one on the haul.  We bring in fifteen grand, he pays us thirty.  Or he gives us enough money to bring our total up to twenty five, whichever is more in the end.  So we could walk away with two thousand dollars and he’d pay us twenty three thou.  So as long as we don’t wind up in jail, we’re guaranteed five thousand dollars apiece, bare minimum.”

Brian’s eyes widened, “That’s insane.  Why would he do that?”

“And,” Lisa grinned, “He’ll cover all our costs, just this once.  Equipment, information, bribes if we want ’em.”

“Why?” I echoed Brian’s earlier question, disbelieving.  Lisa was throwing around sums of money that I couldn’t even wrap my head around.  I had never even had more than five hundred dollars in my bank account.

“Because he’s sponsoring us and it stands to reason he doesn’t want to fund a team of nobodies.  We manage this, we won’t be nobodies.  That, and he really wants us to do a job at that particular time.”

There was a few moments of silence as everyone considered the deal.  I was frantically trying to think of a way to try to convince these guys it was a bad idea.  A bank robbery could get me arrested.  Worse, it could lead to me or a bystander getting hurt or killed.

Brian beat me to it, “The risk to reward still isn’t great.  Five grand each for hitting what may well be the most fortified location in Brockton Bay and an almost guaranteed confrontation with the Wards?”

“Second most fortified location,” Lisa countered, “The Protectorate Headquarters is the first.”

“Fair point,” Brian said, “But my argument stands.”

“It’ll be more than five grand for each of us, I guarantee you,” Lisa told him, “It’s the biggest bank in Brockton Bay.  It’s also the hub of cash distribution for the entire county.  Said cash gets transferred in and out by armored cars on a regular schedule-”

“So why don’t we hit one of the cars?” Alec asked.

“They have ride-alongs or aerial cover from various members of the Wards and the Protectorate, so we’d be caught in a fight with another cape from minute one.  Same problems that Brian’s talking about, as far as getting caught up in a fight, difficulty accessing the money before shit goes down, yadda yadda.  Anyways, the Brockton Bay Central has cars coming in twice a week, and leaving four times a week.  We hit on a Thursday just after noon, and it should be the best day and time for the sheer size of the take.  Only way we’re getting away with less than thirty thousand is if we fuck up.  With what the boss is offering, that’s ninety thou.”

She folded her arms.

Brian sighed, long and loud, “Well, you got me, I guess.  It sounds good.”

Lisa turned to Alec.  There wasn’t any resistance to be found there.  He just said, “Fuck yeah, I’m in.”

Bitch didn’t need convincing any more than Alec had. She nodded once and then turned her attention to the scarred little dog.

Then everyone looked at me.

“What would I be doing?” I asked, nervously, hoping to stall or find holes in the plan that I could use to argue against it.

So Lisa outlined a general plan.  Brian made suggestions, good ones, and the plan was adjusted accordingly.  I realized with a growing disappointment and a knot of anxiety in my gut that it was almost inevitably going to happen.

Arguing against the bank robbery at this point would hurt my undercover operation more than it helped anyone.  With that in mind, I began offering suggestions that – I hoped – would minimize the possibility of disaster.  The way I saw it, if I helped things go smoothly, it would help my scheme to get info on the Undersiders and their boss.  It would minimize the chance that someone would panic or be reckless and get a civilian hurt.  I think I would feel worse if that happened than I would about going to jail.

The discussion went on for a while.  At one point, Lisa got her laptop, and we debated entrance and exit strategies while she sketched out a map of the bank layout.  It was uncanny, seeing her power at work.  She copied a satellite image of the bank from a web search into a paint program, then drew over it with thick bold lines to show how the rooms were laid out.  With another search and a single picture of the bank manager standing in front of his desk, she was able to mark out where the manager’s desk was.  That wouldn’t have been too amazing, but without pausing, she then went on to mark where the tellers were, as well as the vaults, the vault doors and the enclosed room that held the safe deposit boxes.  She noted where the fuse box and air conditioning vents were, but we decided we wouldn’t mess with either of those.  That stuff was cool in the movies, but it didn’t do much good in real life.  Besides, this was a robbery, not a heist.

While we worked, Alec got restless and went to make an early lunch. Of the four of us, I got the impression he had the least to contribute, at least strategically, and that he knew it.  I wasn’t sure if he just didn’t have a very tactical mindset or if he just didn’t care that much about the planning stage of things.  My assumptions led to the latter, as he seemed more willing to go with the flow than Brian or Lisa.

He brought us a plate of pizza pockets along with assorted sodas, and we ate as we wrapped up the plan.

“Alright,” Brian said, as Lisa shut her laptop, “I think we have a general idea of what we’re doing.  We know how we get in, we know who does what when we’re inside, and we know how we want to get out.  Keeping in mind that no plan survives contact with the enemy, I think the odds are still pretty good.”

“So, the enemy,” I said, resisting the urge to wince at the realization that I would be up against good guys, “My only experience fighting in costume… or even just fighting, is against Lung, and that didn’t go well.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Brian said, “You did better than most.”

“I’ll rephrase,” I said, “It could have gone better.  We’re going up against the Wards and they aren’t pushovers.”

Brian nodded, “True.  Let’s talk strategy and weaknesses.  You know who the Wards are?”

I shrugged, “I’ve researched them.  I’ve seen them on TV.  That doesn’t mean I know the important stuff.”

“Sure,” he said, “So let’s go down the list.  Team leader: Aegis.  You’d think he has the standard Alexandria package, flight, super strength, invincibility, but that isn’t exactly right.  He does fly, but the other two powers work differently than you’d expect.  See, he isn’t invincible… he just doesn’t have any weak points.  His entire biology is filled with so many redundancies and reinforcements that you just can’t put him down.  Throw sand in his eyes and he can still see by sensing the light on his skin.  Cut his throat and it doesn’t bleed any more than the back of his hand would.  The guy’s had an arm cut off and it was attached and working fine the next day.  Stab him through the heart and another organ takes over the necessary functions.”

“Not that we’re stabbing anyone through the heart?” I made it a hopeful half-question, half-statement.

“No.  Well, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stab Aegis through the heart just to slow him down.  If you did it with something big enough.  The guy’s like a zombie, he gets back up within seconds of you beating him down, keeps coming at you until you’re too tired to fight back or you make a mistake.”

“And he’s super strong?” I asked.

Brian shook his head, “Lisa, want to field this one?”

She did.  “Aegis isn’t strong, but he can abuse his body in ways that makes it seem like he is.  He can throw punches hard enough that they’d break his hand, mangle his joints and tear his muscles, and his body just takes it.  He has no reason to hold back, and he doesn’t need to waste any time protecting himself from you. He can also draw on adrenaline… you’ve heard stories like how little old grandmothers lifted cars off the ground to save their grandkids?”

I nodded.

“That’s adrenaline at work, and Aegis can do that for hours at a stretch.  His body doesn’t run out of steam, he doesn’t get tired, he doesn’t exhaust his reserves of adrenaline.  He just keeps going.”

“So how do you stop him?” I asked.

“You don’t, really,” Brian said, “Best bet is to keep him occupied, keep him sufficiently distracted or stick him somewhere he can’t escape.  Trap him in a dumpster and throw it in the river, you can get a few minutes of relief. Which is all harder than it sounds.  He’s the team captain, and he isn’t stupid.  Rachel?  Sic your dogs on him.  A two ton canine or two should keep him out of our hair until we’re ready to run.”

“I don’t need to hold back?” Bitch asked, her eyebrow quirked.

“For once, no.  Go nuts.  Just, you know, don’t kill him.  Alec?  You’re the backup there.  Keep an eye on Aegis, see if you can’t use your power to throw him off.  Buy enough time for a dog to get its jaws on him and he’s probably out of action.”

“Sure,” Alec said.

Brian extended two fingers and tapped the second, “Number two.  Clockblocker.  Let it be known, I fucking hate people who mess with time.”

“He stops time, if I remember right?” I inquired, as much to stay in the conversation as to get the clarification.

“More specific than that,” Brian said, “He can stop time for whatever he touches.  The person or object he touches is basically put on ‘pause’ for anywhere from thirty seconds to ten minutes.  Only good thing is that he doesn’t control or know how long it’s going to last.  But if he gets his hands on you, you’re out of action.  He’ll either stand next to you and wait until you start moving, then touch you again, or he’ll just tie you up in chains and handcuffs so that when his power wears off, you’re already in custody.”

“Long story short, he touches you, you’re boned,” Alec said.

“The upside is that whoever he touches is also untouchable.  Can’t be hurt, can’t be moved.  Period.  He uses that defensively, and he can do stuff like throw paper or cloth in the air and freeze it in time, making an unbreakable shield.  You don’t want to run into something that’s frozen.  A car that drove into the side of a piece of paper that Clockblocker had touched would be cut in two before it budged the paper.”

“Noted,” I said.

Brian continued, “The third heavy hitter on the Wards is Vista.  You know that myth about how the capes that get their powers young are exponentially more powerful?  Vista’s one of the kids who keeps the myth alive.  Clockblocker is sort of a one trick pony, his trick involves screwing with one of the key forces of our universe, but it’s just one thing.  Vista also messes with physics on a fundamental level, but she’s versatile.

“Twelve years old, and she has the power to reshape space.  She can stretch a building like taffy, so it’s twice as tall, or squeeze two sidewalks closer together so she can cross the street with a single step.”

“Her weakness,” Lisa added, “Is the Manton effect.”  She turned her full attention to me, “You know what that is?”

“I’ve heard it mentioned, but I don’t know the details.”

“Wherever our powers come from, they also came with some limitations.  For most of us, there’s a restriction about using our powers on living things.  The reach of powers generally stops at the outside of a person or animal’s body.  There’s exceptions for the people with powers that only work on living things, like you, Alec and Rachel.  But the long and short of it is that the Manton effect is why most telekinetics can’t just reach into your chest and crush your heart.  Most people who can create forcefields can’t create one through the middle of your body and cut you in two.”

“Narwhal can,” Alec cut in.

“I said most,” Lisa said, “Why these restrictions exist is a question nearly as big as where we got our powers in the first place.  The capes that can get around the Manton effect are among the strongest of us.”

I nodded, slowly.  I wondered if that had something to do with why Lung didn’t burn himself, but I didn’t want to get further off topic, “And Vista?”

“Vista can stretch and compress space.  She can also do funny things with gravity.  Thing is, the Manton effect keeps her from stretching or compressing you.  It also makes altering an area a lot harder for her if there’s more people in that space.  So if all of us are in one room, chances are she won’t be able to affect the whole room.”

“But,” Brian added, wiping a string of cheese from the corner of his lip, “Every time we’ve run into her, she’s been faster and overall more powerful with her power, and she’s had new tricks.  Every second she’s on the battlefield is a second things become harder for us.  We take her down sooner than later.  Aegis, Clockblocker, Vista.  Those are the ones we’re most likely to run into, and whoever else winds up coming, they’re the ones we have to deal with, or we’re fucked.

“Let’s quickly go through the rest.  Kid Win.”

“Tinker,” Lisa said, “Flying skateboard, laser pistols, high tech visor are staples for him.  Expect something new, depending on what he’s come up in his workshop.  He’s mobile but not that threatening.”

“Triumph?” Brian said.

“He turned eighteen and graduated to the Protectorate.  Don’t have to worry about him,” Lisa said.

“Gallant.”

“Glory Girl’s on and off boyfriend, he pretends to be a Tinker in the same vein as Kid Win, but I think he just runs around in secondhand armor with a fresh paint job.  His thing is these blasts of light.  Getting hit by one feels like a punch in the gut, but the blasts also mess with your feelings.  Make you sad, make you scared, ashamed, giddy, whatever.  Not that bad unless you get hit by a bunch in a row.  Don’t.”

“That just leaves Shadow Stalker.  Bloodthirsty bitch,” Brian scowled.

Alec explained to me, “She’s got it in her head that Brian is her nemesis.  You know, her number one enemy, her dark opposite.  She’s been going after him every chance she gets.”

“She was a solo hero,” Tattletale said, “Vigilante of the night, until she went too far and nearly killed someone, nailing him to a wall with one of her crossbows.  The local heroes were called in, she got arrested, and made some sort of deal.  Now she’s a probationary member of the Wards, with the condition that she uses tranquilizer bolts and nonlethal ammo for her crossbow.”

“Which she isn’t,” Brian growled, “At least, not when she comes after me.  That arrow she shot through my side had a fucking arrowhead on it.”

Tattletale shook her head, “Her powers and Brian’s sort of have a weird interaction with one another.  Shadow Stalker can sort of transform.  She becomes extremely lightweight, can pass through glass and thin walls and she’s nearly invisible.  Only thing is, while she and the stuff she carries are all wispy in her transformed state, the stuff she shoots with her crossbow only stays that way for a half second.  Then the effect wears off and it’s a regular arrow flying towards you. So she can leap between rooftops, almost impossible to see, hard to even touch, and all the while she’s shooting very real arrows at you.”

“So what do you do?” I asked.

“Her power doesn’t work well while she’s inside Brian’s darkness, for whatever reason.  She isn’t as fast or agile, he can see her better, and she can’t see him in the darkness,” Tattletale told me, “So it becomes something of a very intense game of tag, with one very fast person that’s essentially blind and deaf but carrying lethal weapons, while Brian, the other, is trying to take her out without getting shot.”

“Let’s avoid that,” Brian said, “It’s too time consuming and she may want to use that kind of scenario to delay us.  Just don’t get shot, and if you see her or see the opportunity, inform the team and do your best to take her down without losing sight of a priority target.

“So that’s the plan, then?” I said, “So many maybes.”

“That’s the way these things go, Taylor,” Brian said, his tone a bit terse, “I think we’ve done a pretty good job of covering all the bases.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to sound like I was criticizing your plan-” I said.

“Our plan,” Brian interrupted.

I didn’t want to think of it that way.  Instead, I said, “I’m a touch nervous, is all.”

“You don’t have to come,” Bitch said, her tone a touch too casual.

“In all seriousness,” Brian told me, “If you’re having second thoughts…”

“I am,” I admitted, “as well as third thoughts, fourth thoughts, and so on.  But I’m not going to let that stop me.  I’m coming with.”

“Good,” Brian replied, “Then we’ve got the rest of today and tomorrow to prepare.  Taylor?  You can meet me on your run first thing.  I’ll have a cell phone for you.  You can text Lisa with anything you think you’ll need, like those weapons you were talking about.  Look up models and brands ahead of time if you want something specific.”

“What’s her number?” I asked.

“I’ll put it in the phone before I give it to you.  Lisa?  You confirm the job with the boss, talk to him about the other stuff.”

“Got it.”

“So unless there’s anything else, I think we just planned a bank robbery before noon,” Lisa said with a grin.  I looked at the digital clock displayed under the TV.  Sure enough, it was half past eleven.

I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a good thing.

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Agitation 3.2

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I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bus line that ended at the old ferry put me only a fifteen or twenty minute walk away from the loft that Lisa, Alec and Bitch called home.  I could be spending a fair bit of time there before I gathered enough information or earned enough trust from them to turn them in to the authorities, so the convenience was nice.

It was a nice day, if a bit windy.  The air was crisp and cool, the sky was a brilliant and cloudless blue that was reflected in the ocean, and the sand of the beach sparkled in the light of the sun.  Tourists were already crowding the railings or migrating to the beach, pinning down the corners of their beach blankets under picnic baskets and shopping bags.  It was too cold to go in the water but the view was spectacular.  I enjoyed it for a few moments before venturing into the crowd.  I walked with my hands in my pockets, as much to protect the stuff in my pockets as keeping the worst of the chill out.

Living in Brockton Bay, you learned stuff like that.  How to protect yourself, what to watch for.  I knew that the Vietnamese teenagers who were leaning against the railing of the boardwalk were members of the ABB, even if they weren’t wearing their gang colors, because the only Asian kids in Brockton Bay that had that much swagger were already part of Lung’s gang.  I knew the tattoo on the arm of the guy lifting boxes into the florist’s van that read ‘Erase, Extinguish, Eradicate’ meant the guy was a white supremacist because it had the letter E repeated three times.

The man in the uniform who was talking to a shop owner wasn’t a cop or security guard, but one of the enforcers the merchants of the Boardwalk hired to keep the undesirables from making trouble.  They were why the Boardwalk didn’t have beggars, addicts, or people wearing gang colors hanging around.  If your presence offended or worried the tourists, they would step up to scare you off.  If someone shoplifted or panhandled in the Boardwalk, they ran the risk that one or two enforcers would drag them behind one of the shops and teach them a lesson.  Anything more serious than shoplifting or panhandling, well, there was always someone on duty in the floating base of the Protectorate Headquarters.  Any of the store owners or employees could call the likes of Miss Militia, Armsmaster or Triumph in, given a minute.  The tourism revenue the Boardwalk picked up earned a lot of goodwill from the government and government sponsored capes.

I headed off the boardwalk and into one of the alleys leading into the Docks.  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw one of the uniformed enforcers staring at me.  I wondered what he was thinking.  Good kids didn’t hang out in the Docks, and I doubted I looked the part of a guileless tourist.

The abandoned factories, warehouses and garages of the Docks all blended into one another very quickly.  The colors of the building exteriors weren’t different enough from one another to make buildings recognizable, and the people or piles of garbage that I had been unconsciously noting my previous visit had all shifted locations or been replaced.  I found myself glad for the artistic graffiti and the row of weed-entangled power lines that I could use as landmarks.  I did not want to get lost.  Not here.

As I arrived at the foot of the huge factory with the Redmond Welding sign, I found myself wondering whether I should knock or just go on up.  I didn’t have to decide – the door opened just a second after I’d come.  It was Brian, and he looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“Hey,” he said, “Lisa said you’d arrived.  I thought you had school.”

It took me a few seconds to get my mental footing.  Any demonstration or mention of Lisa’s power kind of had a way of doing that to me, and that was on top of having a conversation sprung on me without a chance to prepare.  “Changed my mind,” I said, lamely.

“Huh.  Well, come on up.”

We headed upstairs.  I saw Brian was wearing different clothes than what he had been wearing earlier in the morning.  What he was wearing now bore a closer resemblance to his clothes from the day before – a green sleeveless t-shirt and black slacks with a lightweight fabric, like yoga pants or something.

Alec was waiting, leaning against the back of a couch, as we entered the living room.  He was wearing a t-shirt with some cartoon or video game character on it and basketball shorts.  He stood straight as he noticed us.

“Alec and I were sparring,” Brian told me, “Lisa’s on the phone in the kitchen.  Rachel and her dogs are in her room.  You can watch us, if you want, but no pressure.  Feel free to use the TV, put on a DVD or play a video game.”

“Don’t save over any of my files, dork,” Alec said.  He’d started with the ‘dork’ thing last night.  It wasn’t exactly malicious, but it grated.

“My name is Taylor, not dork, and I wouldn’t do that,” I told him.  Turning to Brian, I said, “I’ll watch, if it’s cool.”

Brian smiled and nodded, while I moved to kneel on the couch and watch them over the back of it.

As it turned out, it was less of a ‘sparring’ session than an attempt on Brian’s part to give a less than fully committed Alec some basic lessons on hand to hand fighting.

It was one-sided, and not just because Alec wasn’t trying very hard.  Alec was a very average fifteen year old guy in that he had little muscle worth speaking about.  Brian, by contrast, was fit.  He wasn’t big in the sense of a bodybuilder or someone who exercised just to pack on muscle like you saw with some of the people just out of prison.  It was a little more streamlined than that.  You could see the raised line of a vein running down his bicep, and the definition of his chest showed through his shirt.

Besides the difference in raw physical power, there was also the age and height gap.  Alec was two or three years younger and nearly a foot shorter.  That meant Brian had more reach – and I’m not just referring to the length of his arms.  When he stepped forward or backward, he moved further.  He covered more ground, which put Alec on the defensive, and since Brian was stronger, that put Alec in a bad position.

Brian stood without much of a fighting stance, hands at his sides, bouncing just a little where he stood.  Twice in a row, I watched Alec swing a punch, only for Brian to lean out of the way.  The second time Alec’s arm flew by, Brian leaned in and jabbed Alec in the center of his chest.  It didn’t look like much of a punch, but Alec still sort of woofed out a breath and stepped back.

“I keep telling you,” Brian said, “You’re throwing punches like you’d throw a baseball.  Don’t bring your arm so far back before you punch.  You’re just broadcasting what you’re about to do and it doesn’t add enough power to the hit to be worth that.”

“What am I supposed to do, then?”

“Look at how I’m standing.  Arms up, bent, then I just extend my arm, wrist straight.  Fast enough that whoever I’m hitting generally can’t step out of the way, so they’ve got to either take it or block it.”

“But you weren’t standing like that ten seconds ago when I was punching you,” Alec complained.

“I left an opening to see if you would take advantage of it,” Brian replied.

“And I didn’t,” Alec noted with a sigh.

Brian shook his head.

“Well fuck this then,” Alec said, “If you’re going to go easy on me and still kick my ass, I don’t see the point.”

“You should learn how to fight,” Brian said.

“I’ll do like I have been and bring my taser,” was Alec’s response, “one poke and they’re out cold.  Better than any punch.”

“And if the taser breaks or you lose it?” Brian asked.  He needn’t have bothered.  Alec was already sitting himself down in front of the TV, remote in one hand and game controller in the other.  Brian’s disappointment was palpable.

“Mind giving me a few quick and dirty pointers?” I asked.

Alec sniggered, Beavis and Butthead style.

“Grow up, Alec,” Brian said, “If you want to quit, fine, but don’t be a dick.”  He turned to me and flashed that boyish smile.  Then we started.

I knew he was going easy on me, but he was still a damn tough teacher.

“Make two fists.  No, don’t wrap your fingers over your thumbs.  You’ll do more damage to your hands than you will to the person you’re hitting, if you do that.  That’s better.  Now jab at me, okay?”

I tried to emulate what he’d been describing to Alec.  Arms up, bent, and extending my fist with a snap.  He caught my right hand in his left.

“Okay, now you’re going to do two things different.  Step into the jab so you’ve got your body’s momentum behind the hit, on top of your arm’s power.  Second, I want your left arm up as you’re jabbing with your right, and vice versa.  If I see the chance, I’m going to pop you one on the shoulder or ribs, so be ready to fend me off.”

I winced at the idea, but I played along.  I jabbed, he stepped away, and he jabbed me in the shoulder.  He didn’t hit as hard as he could have – I think he only hit as hard as it took to make it hurt and drive the lesson home, but I suddenly felt a stab of sympathy for Alec.

Things continued in that vein.  Brian didn’t stay on one topic for long.  When I started struggling with something, he shifted gears to another area that complemented or built on what I was having problems with.  When I failed for the fifth time to fend off his retaliatory jabs at my shoulders and ribs, he started talking about posture.

“Rest your weight on the balls of your feet.”

I tried it, then told him, “I feel like I’m going to tip over backwards if you hit me.”

He bent down to check, and I lifted my toes two or three inches off the ground to demonstrate how I had my weight balanced on my heels.

“No, Taylor.  The balls of your feet.  He raised his bare foot and pointed at the padded part between his toes and the bridge of his foot.

“How is that a ball?” I asked, raising my own foot to point at the vaguely spherical part of the foot where the ankle met the ground, “this is the only part that looks ball-like.”

“You guys are so lame,” Alec chimed in, without turning around.  Brian swatted him in the back of the head.

We moved on from posture, Brian’s recommendations on balancing did help,  to self-defense again.  From there, we changed topics to the mental side of things, both for me and my opponent.

“So I throw a punch like I’m aiming to put my fist through them?” I confirmed.

“Right,” Brian said, “Instead of just trying to make contact with the point where your hand meets their body.”

“What about when they’re attacking me?”

“Best bet?  Don’t give them a chance.  Stay aggressive and keep them on their heels.  If neither of you have formal training, then that’s going to give you the best odds.  They won’t be able to turn the tables on you unless you make a mistake or they can guess what you’re going to do as you do it.  Which is why you mix it up.  Rights, lefts, punches, jabs, elbow, knee, kicks and if you’re bigger and stronger than them, you can try tackling them to the ground.  With all of that, you stay on them until they aren’t in a position to fight back.”

“Are you formally trained in anything?” I asked.  I suspected he was, since the only other way for him to know as much as he was demonstrating was to have actually been in a good number of fights, and I wasn’t thinking that he seemed the type to fight without reason.

“Ehhh,” he hedged, “Some.  My dad was a boxer when he was in the service, and he taught me some when I was little.  I moved on to other stuff on my own – Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Krav Maga – but nothing really held my interest.  I only took a few weeks or a month of classes for each.  I know enough and keep in shape, which is enough to hold my own against anyone who isn’t a black belt in whatever, which is the important thing, I think.  Keeping up with the more serious martial artists is a full time job, and you’re still going to run into people who are better than you, so I don’t see the point in stressing too much over it.”

I nodded.

We moved on to key areas to attack.

Brian pointed to the body parts in question as he explained, “Eyes, nose, temple, chin and throat are the areas above the shoulder.  Teeth or ears if you can hit hard enough.  I can, you can’t.”

“Sure,” I said.  I wasn’t offended by his bluntness.  He was stronger than me, so he had more options.  Tip toeing around it didn’t do either of us any favors.

“Below the shoulders, diaphragm, kidney, groin, knee, bridge of the foot, toes.  Elbow is a good one if you can do anything with it,” he took my wrist in his left hand and my shoulder in his right, extending my arm straight as he brought his knee up to gently tap the outside of my elbow.  I could see how he would have screwed up or broken my arm if he’d done it full strength.  He went on, “But in my experience, it doesn’t come up often enough to worry about.”

It was a little disquieting to hear Brian methodically describing how to break a human being.  I saw him as a nice guy, if I ignored his career choice.

Not entirely by accident, I changed the subject, “I was thinking about investing in a weapon for hand to hand.  When I was fighting Lung, fists were no good and I found myself really wanting a knife or a baton or something.  Don’t know if they would have been any good against his armor, but you know…” I trailed off.

Brian nodded, “Makes sense.  You don’t have a lot in the way of upper body strength, no offense.”

“None taken.  I tried to get something like a push-up routine going, but I got sick of it fast.  At least with running, there’s that sense of going places, you get the scenery.”

“Push-ups get repetitive, yeah.  Well, the boss is good about supplying us with gear.  Lisa’s the one who talks to him, she’s talking to him right now, in fact.  Put in a word with her if you want something like that.  It’s untraceable too, so the good guys aren’t going to be tracing any serial numbers or whatever from your weapon back to your purchase.”

The fact that Lisa was talking to their boss made me very curious, all of a sudden.  That said, I couldn’t really traipse in to eavesdrop without being suspicious.  Instead, since Lisa was out of earshot, I thought I’d seize the opportunity to ask, “So who is this boss of ours?”

Brian and Alec exchanged a look.  When they didn’t immediately say anything, I wondered if I’d pushed it too far.  Had I been too nosy?

“Figured you’d ask,” Brian said, “Thing is, we don’t know.”

“What?” I asked, “We have an anonymous sponsor?”

“It’s really fucking weird, yeah,” Alec said, then he hammered a button on the game controller, “Boom!  Triple headshot!”

“Alec, stay focused,” Brian sighed the words, with a tone suggesting he didn’t expect to be listened to.

Alec bobbed his head in a nod, his eyes not leaving the television, before adding, “It’s weird but it’s basically free money, a good team, contacts, access to everything we need for stuff, and pretty much no drawbacks.”

“Lisa knows, I think,” Brian grumbled, “But she says that when she joined the Undersiders, she made a deal that she was going to keep quiet on the subject.  I’m not sure if that means she knows who he is or if it’s just to keep her mouth shut if her power tells her.”

“So let me get this straight,” I said, “This guy gathers you all together, offers you a salary and what?  Doesn’t ask for anything in return?”

Brian shrugged, “He asks us to do jobs, but most of the time it’s stuff we’d do anyways, and if we say no, he doesn’t make an issue of it.”

“What kind of jobs does he ask us to do?” I asked.

Lisa’s voice just behind me startled me, “This.  Pull up your socks, boys and girl, because we’re robbing a bank.”

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Agitation 3.1

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Tuesday morning found me running again, first thing.  I woke up at my regular time, apologized to my dad for not having breakfast with him, and headed out the door, hood of my sweatshirt up to hide the mess of my uncombed hair.

There was something appealing about being out and about before the city had woken up.  I didn’t usually get out quite this early, so it was a refreshing change.  As I headed east at a brisk jog, there were no cars or people on the street.  It was six thirty in the morning, and the sun had just finished rising, so the shadows were long.  The air was cool enough for my breath to fog.  It was like Brockton Bay was a ghost town, in a good way.

My training regimen had me running every morning, and alternating between more running and doing other exercises in the afternoons, depending on which day of the week it was.  The primary goal was to build my stamina.  In February, Sophia had goaded some boys into trying to catch me, I think the goal had been to duct tape me to a telephone pole.  I had escaped, helped mostly by the fact that the boys hadn’t really cared enough to run after me, but I found myself winded after having run just a block.  It had been a wake-up call that came about just when I was starting to think about going out in costume.  Not long after, I had started training.  After a few starts and stops, I had settled into a routine.

I was more fit, now.  While I could hardly say I was heavy, before, I’d had the unfortunate combination of a slight bulge for a belly, small breasts and broomstick-thin arms and legs.  It had added up to me looking something like a frog forced to stand up on its hind legs.  Three and a half months had burned away the body fat, leaving me very lean, and had given me the stamina to run at a steady jog without leaving me panting for breath.

I didn’t aim to just jog, though.  I steadily increased my pace with every block I ran as I headed towards the water.  By the fifth block, I was running.

My general approach was not to get too worried about counting the miles or measuring the times.  That just felt like it was distracting me from my own awareness of my body and its limits.  If it felt too easy, I just pushed myself a step further than I had the previous day.

The route I took varied every day, at my father’s insistence, but it usually took me to the same place.  In Brockton Bay, going east took you to one of two places.  You either ended up at the Docks, or you ended up at the Boardwalk.  Because most areas of the Docks were not the sort of place that you just breezed through, given the vagrants, gang members and general crime, I stuck to main roads leading past the Docks and to the Boardwalk.  It was usually close to seven by the time I got to the bridge that went over Lord Street.  From there, it was a block to the Boardwalk.

I slowed down as the sidewalk ended and the wooden platform began.  Though my legs were aching and I was out of breath, I forced myself to keep a low and steady pace rather than just stop.

Along the boardwalk, people were starting their day.  Most places were still closed, with the top notch security systems, steel shutters and iron grates protecting all of the expensive stores, but there were cafes and restaurants opening up.  Other stores had vans parked in front, and were busy loading in their shipments.  There were only a few people out and about, which made it easy to find Brian.

Brian was leaning on the wooden railing, looking over the beach.  Balanced on the railing next to him was a paper bag and a cardboard tray with a coffee in each of the four pockets.  I stopped beside him, and he greeted me with a broad smile.

“Hey, you’re right on time,” Brian said.  He looked different than he had when I saw him on Monday.  He was wearing a sweater under a felt jacket, his jeans didn’t have any rips or tears in them, and his boots were shined.  On Monday, he had given me the impression of a regular person who lived at the Docks.  The fashionable, well fit clothes he wore today made him look like someone who belonged on the Boardwalk alongside the customers who shopped in stores where nothing cost less than a hundred dollars.  The contrast and the ease with which he seemed to make the transition was startling.  My estimation of Brian rose a notch.

“Hey,” I said, feeling just a touch embarrassed at having taken so long to respond, and feeling painfully under-dressed in his presence.  I hadn’t expected him to dress so well.  I hoped my being out of breath was enough of an excuse for the delay in response.  There was nothing I could do about feeling unfashionable.

He gestured towards the paper bag, “I got donuts and croissants from the cafe over there, and a coffee if you want it.”

“I want,” I said, then I felt dumb for the awkward lapse into caveman speak.  I blamed the early hour of the day.  To try and save face, I added, “Thanks.”

I fished out a sugar-dusted donut and bit into it.  I could tell right away that it wasn’t the kind of donut that was mass produced at some central factory and delivered overnight to the shops for baking in the morning.  It was freshly made, probably right at the store a block away, sold right out of the oven.

“So good,” I said, sucking the sugar from my fingertips before reaching for one of the coffees.  Seeing the logo, I looked over at the cafe and asked, “Don’t coffees there cost, like, fifteen dollars a cup?”

Brian chuckled a little, “We can afford it, Taylor.”

It took me a second to process the idea, and as I made the connection, I felt like an idiot.  These guys were raking in thousands of dollars on a given job, and they had given me two thousand dollars up front.  I wasn’t willing to spend the money, knowing where it came from, so it was just sitting in the cubbyhole I kept my costume in, nagging at me.  I couldn’t tell Brian that I wasn’t spending it, either, without risking having to explain why.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, eventually.  I leaned my elbows on the wooden railing beside Brian and stared out over the water.  There were a few diehard windsurfers just getting ready to start the day.  I guess it made sense, since there would be the occasional boat going out on the water, later.

“How’s your arm?” He asked.

I extended my arm, clenched my fist and relaxed it to demonstrate, “Only hurts when I flex it.”  I didn’t tell him that it had been hurting badly enough to cost me some sleep last night.

“We’ll leave the stitches in for about a week, I think, before we take them out,” Brian said, “You can go to your doctor and have him do it, or drop by and I’ll take care of it.”

I nodded.  A turn of the salt-water and seaweed scented wind blew my hood back, and I took a second to push my hair out of my face and pull my hood back up.

“I’m sorry for Rachel and that whole incident last night” Brian said, “I wanted to apologize sooner, but I figured it would be a bad idea to bring it up while she was in earshot.”

“It’s okay,” I said.  I wasn’t sure it was, but it wasn’t really his fault.  I tried to put my thoughts into words, “I think… well, I guess I expected to have people attack me from the moment I put on a costume, so I shouldn’t be surprised, right?”

Brian nodded, but didn’t say anything, so I added, “It caught me a little off guard that it came from someone that’s supposedly on my team, but I’m dealing.”

“Just so you know,” Brian told me, “Just from what I saw after you left last night and as people were waking up this morning, Rachel seems to have stopped protesting quite as loudly or often about the idea of having someone new join the team.  She’s still not happy about it, but I would be surprised if there was a repeat performance.”

I laughed, a little too abruptly and high pitched than I would have liked, “God, I hope not.”

“She’s kind of a special case,” Brian said, “I think that growing up the way she did kind of messed her up.  No family, too old and, uh, not really attractive enough to be a good candidate for adoption.  I feel bad saying that, but that’s the way those things work, you know?”  He glanced over his shoulder at me.

I nodded.

“So she spent a good decade in foster care, no fixed place to live, fighting tooth and nail with the other foster kids for even the most basic luxuries and possessions.  My guess?  She was screwed up before she got her powers, and with things happening the way they did, her powers pushed her into the deepest end of the antisocial pool.”

“Makes sense,” I said, then I added, “I read her page on the wiki.”

“So you’ve got the gist of it,” Brian said, “She’s a handful to deal with, even for me, and I think she actually considers me a friend… or as much a friend as someone like her can have, anyways.  But if you can at least tolerate her, you should see we’ve got a pretty good thing going with the team.”

“Sure,” I said, “We’ll give it a shot, anyways.”

He smiled at me, and I dropped my gaze, embarrassed.

I spotted a crab scuttling across the beach almost directly below us.  I reached out with my power and stopped it in its tracks.  Though I didn’t need to, I extended my finger and pointed at it, then waved my finger lazily as I made the crab follow where my my index finger was pointing.  Since Brian and I were both leaning over the railing, and there was practically nobody on the Boardwalk that wasn’t busy with work or getting their store opened for the day, I was pretty certain nobody else would figure out what I was doing.

Brian saw the crab dancing in circles and figure eights and smiled.  Conspiratorially, he leaned closer to me and whispered, “You can control crabs, too?”

I nodded, feeling just a bit of a thrill at how we were huddled like this, sharing secrets while the people around us were totally in the dark.  I told him, “I used to think I could control anything with an exoskeleton or shell.  But I can control earthworms too, among other things, and they don’t have shells.  I think all it takes is that they have to have very simple brains.”

I made it run in circles and figure eights for a short while longer, then released it to go about its business.

“I should bring the others their morning coffee before they come looking for me.  Want to come with?” Brian asked.

I shook my head, “I gotta get home and get ready for school.”

“Ah, right,” Brian said, “I forget about stuff like that.”

“You guys don’t go?”

“I take courses online,” Brian said, “My folks think it’s so I can hold a job to pay for my apartment… which is kind of true.  Alec dropped out, Rachel never went, and Lisa already applied for and tested for her G.E.D.  Cheated using her power, but she has it.”

“Ah,” I said, my focus more or less dwelling on the idea that Brian had an apartment.  Not the fact that Grue the successful supervillain had an apartment – Lisa had mentioned that to me – but that Brian the teenager with parents and schoolwork to focus on did.  He kept changing my frame of reference for trying to figure him out.

“Here, a gift,” he said, as he reached into his pocket and then extended his hand.

I felt a moment of trepidation at the notion of accepting another gift.  The two grand they had given me was a weight on my conscience already.  Still, it would look bad if I didn’t accept.  I made myself put my hand under his, and he dropped a key with a short beaded chain looped through it into my palm.

“That’s to our place,” he told me, “And I mean that.  Ours as in yours too.  You’re free to come by any time, even if nobody is there.  Kick back and watch TV, eat our food, track mud on our floor, yell at the others for tracking mud on the floor, whatever.”

“Thank you,” I said, surprising myself by actually meaning it.

“You going to come by after school, or should I meet you here again tomorrow morning?”

I thought on it for a second.  Last night, not long before I’d left, Brian and I had gotten to talking about our training.  When I had mentioned my morning runs, he had suggested meeting me regularly.  The idea was to keep me up to date, since I wasn’t living at the group’s hideout like Lisa, Alec and Rachel were.  It had made sense, and I’d agreed.  It didn’t hurt that I liked Brian the most of anyone in the group.  He was easier to relate to, somehow.  That wasn’t to say I didn’t like Lisa, but just being around her made me feel like I had the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.

“I’ll come by later,” I decided aloud, knowing I might chicken out if I didn’t commit somehow.  Before we could get caught in another thread of conversation, I gave him a quick wave and started my run back, the key to their place clenched in my hand.

Heading back home and preparing for school left me with a gradually increasing feeling of dread, like a weight sitting on my chest.  I’d been trying not to think of Emma’s taunting and my fleeing from the school with tears on my face.  I had spent an hour or two tossing and turning in bed, the event replaying over my head while the throbbing of my wrist jarred me awake every time I started to drift off.  Beyond that, I had been pretty successful in avoiding thinking about it.  Now that the prospect of going back was looming, though, it was impossible not to dwell on the subject as I headed home, got ready and caught the bus.

I couldn’t help but dwell on the coming day.  I still had to face the consequences of missing two afternoons.  That was a biggie, especially since I had missed the due date for handing in my art project.  I realized my art project had been in my bag, and the last time I had seen my bag had been when Sophia was standing on it, smirking at me.

There was also the issue of going to Mr. Gladly’s class.  That usually sucked enough, what with Madison being in that class and my having to do group work with the likes of Sparky and Greg.  Knowing that I had to sit there and listen to Mr. Gladly teach when I’d seen him blatantly turn his back to me when I was being bullied… that sucked more.

This wasn’t the first time I’d needed to psych myself up to going to school.  Deceive myself into going and staying.  The worst days had been back in my first year at high school, when the wounds of Emma’s betrayal were still fresh and I wasn’t yet experienced enough to anticipate the variety of things they could come up with.  Back then, it had been terrifying, because I hadn’t yet known what to expect, didn’t know where, when or if they would draw the line.  It had been hard, too, to go back in January.  I’d spent a week in the hospital under psychiatric observation, and I’d known that everyone else had heard the story.

I stared out the window of the bus, watching the people and the cars.  On days like this, after being publicly humiliated, getting myself to the point where I was willing to walk through the door was about making deals with myself and trying to look past the school day.  I told myself that I would go to Mrs. Knott’s computer class.  None of the Trio would be there, it was usually pretty easygoing, and I could take the time to browse the web.  From there, it was just a matter of convincing myself to walk down the hall to Mr. Gladly’s class.

If I just made myself do that, I promised myself, I would give myself a treat.  A lunch break spent reading one of the books I’d been saving, or a rare snack bought from the store after school.  For the afternoon classes, I’d inevitably come up with something else to look forward to, like watching a TV show I liked or working on my costume.  Or, I thought, maybe I could just look forward to hanging out with Lisa, Alec and Brian.  Outside of the part where I nearly got mauled by Bitch’s dogs, it had been a nice night.  Thai food, five of us lounging on two couches, watching an action movie on a huge entertainment system with surround sound.  I wasn’t forgetting what they were, but I rationalized that I had no reason to feel bad about spending time with them when we were – for all intents and purposes – just a group of teenagers hanging out.  Besides, it was for a good cause, if it meant they relaxed around me and maybe revealed secrets.  Right?

As I got off the bus, a pair of old notebooks in one hand, I just kept all that in mind.  I could relax in Mrs. Knott’s class, and then I just had to sit through three 90 minute classes.  Maybe, it occurred to me, I could try and find and talk to my art teacher over the lunch break.  It would mean staying out of the trio’s way, and I could maybe work something out as far as doing another project or at least not getting a zero.  My marks were okay enough that I could probably manage a passing grade with a zero on the midterm project, but still, it would help.  I wanted to do more than just pass, especially with all this crap I had to put up with.

Mrs. Knott arrived at the classroom around the same time I did, and unlocked the room to let us file in.  As one of the last of fortyish students to arrive, I’d wound up at the back of the crowd.  While I waited for enough space to open up at the door, I saw Sophia talking to three of the girls from the class.  It looked like she had just come from her track practice.  Sophia was dark skinned with black hair normally long enough to reach to the small of her back, though she currently had it in a ponytail.  I couldn’t help but resent the fact that even with her being sweaty, dusty, and a notorious bitch, pretty much every guy in the school would still pick her over me.

She said something, and all of the girls laughed.  Even though I knew, rationally, that I probably wasn’t on the list of their top five things to talk about and that they likely weren’t talking about me, I felt my heart sink.  I moved up towards the jam of students waiting to get into the door, to break the line of sight between myself and the girls.  It didn’t quite work.  As a group of students entered the room, I saw Sophia looking at me.  She made an exaggerated pouting expression, drawing one fingertip in a line from the corner of her eye down her cheek like a mock tear.  One of the other girls noticed and chuckled, leaned closer to Sophia as Sophia whispered something in her ear, then they both laughed.  My cheeks flushed with humiliation.  Sophia gave me a final smirk and turned to saunter away while the other girls filed into the classroom.

Kicking myself even as I did it, I turned away and walked back down the hall towards the front doors of the school.  I knew it would be that much harder to go back tomorrow.  For one and three-quarter school years, I had been putting up with this shit.  I’d been going against the current for a long time, and even though I was aware of the consequences I’d face if I kept missing school like this, it was so much easier to stop pushing so hard against the current and just step in the other direction.

My hands jammed into my pockets, already feeling an ambivalent sort of relief, I caught the bus back to the docks.

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Interlude 2

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There were very few things, in Victoria Dallon’s estimation, that were cooler than flying.  The invisible forcefield that extended a few millimeters over her skin and clothes just made it better.  The field kept the worst of the chill from touching her, but still let her feel the wind on her skin and in her hair.  Bugs didn’t splat against her face like they did against car windshields, even when she was pushing eighty miles an hour.

Spotting her target, she whooped and plunged for the ground, gaining speed where anyone else would be slowing down.  She hit the asphalt hard enough to crack it and send fragments of it into the air, touching ground with her knee and foot, one arm extended.  She stayed in that kneeling position for just heartbeats, letting her platinum curls and the cape that was draped over one of her shoulders flutter in the wake of air that had followed her descent.  She met the eyes of her quarry with a steely glare.

She’d practiced that landing for weeks to get it right.

The man was a twenty something Caucasian with a shaved head, a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans and work boots.  He took one look at her and bolted.

Victoria grinned as he disappeared down the far end of the alley.  She rose from her kneeling position, dusted herself off and ran her fingers through her hair to tidy it.  Then she raised herself a foot off the ground and flew after him at an easy forty five miles an hour.

It didn’t take a minute to catch him, even with the head start she had given him.  She flew just past him, grazing him.  An instant later, she came to a dead stop, facing him.  Again, the wind made for a dramatic flourish as it stirred her hair, her cape and the skirt of her costume.

“The woman you attacked was named Andrea Young,” she spoke.

The man looked over his shoulder, as if gauging his escape routes.

“Don’t even think about it, fugly,” she told him, “You know I’d catch you, and trust me, I’m already pissed off enough without you wasting my time.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the man snarled.

“Andrea Young!” Victoria raised her voice.  As she shouted, she exercised her power.  The man quailed as though she’d slapped him.  “A black college student was beaten so badly she needed medical attention!  Her teeth were knocked out!  You’re trying to tell me that you, a skinhead with swollen knuckles, someone who was in the crowd watching paramedics arrive with an expression bordering on glee, you didn’t do anything!?”

“I didn’t do nothing worth caring about,” he sneered.  His bravado was tempered by a second look over his shoulder, as though he’d very much like to be elsewhere right that moment.

She flew forward, her fists catching him by the collar.  For just a moment, she contemplated slamming him up against a wall.  It would have been fitting and satisfying to shove him hard enough against the brick to crack it, then drop him into the dumpster that sat at the wall’s base.

Instead, she pulled up a little, bringing the two of them to a stop.  They were now just high enough above the ground that he’d feel uncomfortable with the height.  The dumpster, mostly empty, was directly below him, but she doubted he was paying attention to anything but her.

“I think it’s a safe bet to say you’re a member of Empire Eighty-Eight,” she told him, meeting his eyes with a hard stare, “or at least, you’ve got some friends who are.  So here’s what’s going to happen.  You’re going to either tell me everything the triple-E’s have been up to, or I’m going to break your arms and legs and then you’re going to tell me everything.”

As she spoke, she ratcheted up her power.  She knew it was working when he started squirming just to avoid her gaze.

“Fuck you, you can’t touch me.  There’s laws against that shit,” he blustered, staring fixedly over one shoulder.

She turned up her power another notch.  Her body thrummed with current – waves of energy that anyone in her presence would experience as an emotional charge of awe and admiration.  For those with a reason to be afraid of her, it would be a feeling of raw intimidation instead.

“Last chance,” she warned him.

Unfortunately, fear affected everyone differently.  For this particular asshole, it just made him dig in his heels and become obstinate.  She could see it in his body language before he opened his mouth – this was the sort of guy who reacted to anything that spooked or unsettled him with an almost mindless refusal to bend.

“Lick my hairy, sweaty balls,” he snarled, before punctuating it with a spat, “Cunt.”

She threw him.  Since she could bench press a cement mixer, though it was hard to balance something so large and unwieldy, even a casual toss on her part could get some good distance.  He flew a good twenty five or thirty yards down the back road before hitting the asphalt, and rolled for another ten.

He was utterly for still for long enough that Victoria had begun to worry that he’d somehow snapped his neck or broken his spine as he’d rolled.  She was relieved when he groaned and began to pull himself to his feet.

“Ready to talk?” she asked him, her voice carrying down the alley.  She didn’t move  forward from where she hovered in the air, but she did let herself drop closer to the ground.

Pressing one hand against his leg to support himself as he straightened up, he raised his other hand and flipped her the bird, then turned and began to limp down the alley.

What was this asshole thinking?  That she would just let him go?  That, what, she would just bend to his witless lack of self preservation?  That she was helpless to do any real harm to him?  To top it off, he was going to insult her and try to walk away?

“Screw you too,” she hissed through her teeth.  Then she kicked the dumpster below her hard enough to send it flying down the little road.  It rotated lazily through the air as it arced towards the retreating figure, the trajectory and rotation barely changing as it knocked him flat.  It skidded to a halt three to five yards beyond him, the metal sides of the dumpster squealing and sparking as it scraped against the asphalt.

This time, he didn’t get up.

“Fuck,” she swore, “Fuckity fuck fuck.”  She flew to him and checked for a pulse.  She sighed, and then headed to the nearest street.  She found the street address, grabbed her cell from her belt and dialed.

“Hey sis?  Yeah, I found him.  That’s, uh, sort of the problem.  Yeah.  Look, I’m sorr- ok, can we talk about this later?  Yeah.  I’m at Spayder and Rock, there’s this little road that runs behind the buildings.  Downtownish, yeah.  Yeah?  Thanks.”

Victoria returned to the unconscious skinhead, checked his pulse, and listened intently for changes in his breathing.  It took a very long five minutes for her sister to arrive.

“Again, Victoria?” the voice disturbed her from her contemplations.

“Use my codename, please,” Victoria told the girl.  Her sister was as different from her as night was from day.  Where Victoria was beautiful, tall, gorgeous, blonde, Amy was mousy.  Victoria’s costume showed off her figure, with a white one-piece dress that came to mid-thigh (with shorts underneath) an over-the shoulder cape, high boots and a golden tiara with spikes radiating from it, vaguely reminiscent of the sun’s rays or the statue of liberty.  Amy’s costume, by contrast, was only a shade away from being a burka.  Amy wore a robe with a large hood and a scarf that covered the lower half of her face.  The robe was alabaster white and had a medic’s red cross on the chest and the back.

“Our identities are public,” Amy retorted, pushing the hood back and scarf down to reveal brown frizzy hair and a face with freckles spaced evenly across it.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Victoria replied.

“You want to talk about principles, Glory Girl?” Amy asked, in the most sarcastic tone she could manage, “This is the sixth – sixth! – time you’ve nearly killed someone.  That I know about!”

“I’m strong enough to lift a SUV over my head,” Victoria muttered, “It’s hard to hold back all the time.”

“I’m sure Carol would buy that line,” Amy said, making it clear in her tone she wasn’t, “But I know you better than anyone.  If you’re having trouble holding back, the problem isn’t here -” she poked Victoria in the bicep.  “It’s here-” she jabbed her sister in the forehead, hard.  Victoria didn’t even blink.

“Look, can you just fix him?” Victoria pleaded.

“I’m thinking I shouldn’t,” Amy said, quietly.

“What?”

“There’s consequences, Vicky.  If I help you now, what’s going to stop you from doing it again?  I can call the paramedics.  I know some good people from the hospital.  They could probably fix him up alright.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Victoria said, “That’s not funny.  He goes to the hospital, people ask questions.”

“Yeah, I’m well aware,” Amy said, her voice hushed.

“This isn’t, like, me getting grounded.  I’d get pulled into court on charges of aggravated assault and battery.  That doesn’t just fuck with me.  It fucks with our family, all of New Wave.  Everything we’ve struggled to build.”

Amy frowned and looked at the fallen man..

“I know you’re not keen on the superhero thing, but you’d really go that far?  You’d do that to us?  To me?”

Amy pointed a finger at her sister, “That’s not me.  It’s not my fault we’re at this point.  It’s you.  You’re crossing the line, going too far.  Which is exactly what people who criticize New Wave are scared of.  We’re not government sponsored.  We’re not protected or organized or regulated in the same way.  Everyone knows who we are under our masks.  That means we have to be accountable.  The responsible thing for me to do, as a member of this team, is to let the paramedics take him, and let the law do as it sees fit.”

Victoria abruptly pulled Amy into a hug.  Amy resisted for a moment, then let her arms go limp at her sides.

“This isn’t just a team, Ames,” Victoria told her, “We’re a family.  We’re your family.”

The man lying just a matter of feet away stirred, then groaned, long and loud.

“My adoptive family,” Amy mumbled into Victoria’s shoulder, “And stop trying to use your frigging power to make me all squee over how amazing you are.  Doesn’t work.  I’ve been exposed so long I’m immune.”

“It hurts,” the man moaned.

“I’m not using my power, dumbass,” Victoria told Amy, letting her go, “I’m hugging my sister.  My awesome, caring and merciful sister.”

The man whined, louder, “I can’t move.  I feel cold.”

Amy frowned at Victoria, “I’ll heal him.  But this is the last time.”

Victoria beamed, “Thank you.”

Amy leaned over the man and touched her hand to his cheek, “Slingshot break to his ribs, fractured clavicle, broken mandible, broken scapula, fractured sternum, bruised lung, broken ulna, broken radius -“

“I get the point,” Victoria said.

“Do you?” Amy asked.  Then she sighed, “I wasn’t even halfway down the list.  This is going to take a little while.  Sit?”

Victoria crossed her legs and assumed a sitting position, floating a half foot above the ground.  Amy just knelt where she was and rested her hand on the man’s cheek.  The tension went out of his body and he relaxed.

“How’s the woman?  Andrea?”

“Better than ever, physically,” Amy replied, “I grew her new teeth, fixed everything from the bruising to the scrapes, and even gave her a head to toe tune-up.  Physically, she’ll feel on top of the world, like she had been to a spa and had the best nutritionist, best fitness expert and the best doctor all looking after her for a straight month.”

“Good,” Victoria said.

“Mentally?  Emotionally?  It’s up to her to deal with the aftermath of a beating.  I can’t affect the brain.”

“Well-” Victoria started to speak.

“Yeah, yeah.  Not can’t.  Won’t.  It’s complicated and I don’t trust myself not to screw something up when I’m tampering with someone’s head.  That’s it, that’s all.”

Victoria started to say something, then shut her mouth.  Even if they weren’t related by blood, they were sisters.  Only sisters could have these sorts of recurring arguments.  They had gone through a dozen different variations on this argument before.  As far as she was concerned, Amy was doing herself a disservice by not practicing using her powers on the brain.  It was only a matter of time before her sister found herself in a situation where she needed to do some emergency brain surgery and found herself incapable.  Amy, for her part, refused to even discuss it.

She didn’t want to raise a sensitive issue when Amy was in the process of doing her a major favor.  To change the subject, Victoria asked, “Is it cool if I question him?”

“Might as well,” Amy sighed.

Victoria tapped the man a few times on the forehead to get his attention.  He could barely move his head, but his eyes lolled in her direction.

“Ready to answer my questions, or do me and my sister just walk away and leave you like this?”

“I… sue you, he gasped out, then managed an added, “Whore.”

“Try it.  I’d just love to see a skinhead with a few broken bones go up against a superheroine whose mom just happens to be one of the best lawyers in Brockton Bay.  You know her, right?”

“Brandish,” he said.

“That’s her name in costume.  Normally she’s Carol Dallon.  She’d kick your ass in court, believe me,” Victoria said.  She believed it.  What the thug didn’t understand was that even if he lost the case, the media circus that would be stirred up would do more damage than anything else.  But she didn’t need to inform him of that.  She asked him, “So do I get my sister to leave you as you are, or are you willing to trade some information for relief from months of incredible pain and a lifetime of arthritis and stiffness in your bones?”

“And erectile dysfunction,” Amy said, just loud enough for the thug to hear her, “You fractured your ninth vertebra.  That’s going to affect all nerve function in extremities below your waist.  If I leave you like you are, your toes will always feel a little numb, and you’ll have a hell of a time getting it up, if you know what I mean.”

The skinhead’s eyes widened a fraction, “You’re fucking with me.”

“I have an honorary medical license,” Amy told him, her expression solemn, “I’m not allowed to fuck with you about stuff like that.  Hippocratic oath.”

“Isn’t that ‘do no harm’?” the thug asked.  Then he groaned, long, loud and with the slightest rattle in his breath, as she removed her hand from his body.

“That’s just the first part of it, like how freedom of speech and the right to bear arms is just the first part of a very long constitution.  It doesn’t look like he’s cooperating, Glory Girl.  Should we go?”

“Fuck!” the man shouted, then winced, tenderly touching his side with one hand, “I’ll tell you.  Please, just… do what you were doing.  Touch me and make the pain go away, put me back together.  Fix me?”

Amy touched him.  He relaxed, and then he started talking.

“Empire Eighty-Eight is extending into the Docks on Kaiser’s orders.  Lung’s in custody, and whatever happens, the ABB is weaker than it was.  That means there’s territory for grabs, and the Empire sure ain’t making progress downtown.”

“Why not?” Victoria asked him.

“This guy, Coil.  Don’t know what his powers are, but he’s got a private army.  Ex-military, all of ’em.  At least fifty, Kaiser said, and every one of ’em has top notch gear.  Their armor’s better than kevlar.  You shoot ’em, they’re back up in a few seconds.  ‘Least when you shoot a pig, you can be pretty sure you broke a few ribs.  But that’s not the fucked up thing.  These guys?  They’ve got these lasers hooked up to the machine guns they carry around.  If they don’t think bullets are doing it, or if they’re after people who are behind cover, they fire off these purple laser beams that can cut through steel.  Tear through any cover you’re standing behind and burn through you too.”

“Yeah.  I know about him.  His methods get expensive,” Victoria said, “Top of the line soldiers, top of the line gear.”

The thug nodded weakly, “But even with money to burn, he’s fighting us over Downtown territories.  Constant tug of war, neither of us making much headway.  Been going on for months.  So Kaiser thinks we should take the Docks now that the ABB are on the outs, gain some ground somewhere easier.  Don’t know any more than that, as far as his plans.”

“Who else is up to something?  Faultline?”

“The bitch with the freaks in her crew?  She’s a mercenary, different goals.  But maybe.  If she wanted to branch out, now would be the time to do it.  With her rep, she’d even do alright.”

“Then who?  There’s a power vacuum in the docks.  Kaiser’s declared he wants to seize it, but I’m willing to bet he’s warned you about others making a play.”

The skinhead laughed, then winced, “Are you dense, girl?  Everyone’s going to make a play.  It’s not just the major gangs and teams that are looking for a slice of the pie, there.  It’s everyone.  The Docks are ripe for the taking.  The location’s worth as much money as you’d get downtown.  It’s the go to place if you want to buy black market.  Sex, drugs, violence.  And the locals are already used to paying protection money.  It’s just a matter of changing who they pay to.  The Docks are rich territory, and we’re talking the potential for a full scale fucking war over it.”

He looked up at the blond superheroine and laughed.  Her lips set into a firm line.

He continued, “You want to know my guess?  Empire Eighty Eight is going to take the biggest slice of the Docks, because we’re strong enough to.  Coil’s going to stick his thumb in just to spite us, ABB is going to hold on to some.  But you’re also going to have a bunch of the little guys trying to take something for themselves.  Über and Leet, Circus, the Undersiders, Squealer, Trainwreck, Stain, others you’ve never heard of?  They’re going to stake out their ground, and one of two things is going to happen.  Either there’s war, in which case civilians get hurt and things get bad for you, or there’s alliances between the various teams and solo villains and shit gets even worse for you.”

He broke into laughter yet again.

“Come on, Panacea,” Victoria said as she stood up, touched ground with her boots and brushed her skirt straight, “We’ve gotten enough.”

“You sure?  I’m not done yet,” Amy told her.

“You fixed the bruises and scrapes, broken bones?”  Everything that could get her in trouble, in other words.

“Yeah, but I didn’t fix everything,” Amy replied.

“Good enough,” Victoria decided.

“Hey!” the skinhead shouted, “The deal was you’d fix me if I talked!  Did you fix my cock?”  He tried to struggle to get to his feet, but his legs buckled under him,  “Hey!  I can’t fuckin’ walk!  I’ll fucking sue you!”

Victoria’s expression changed in an instant, and her power flooded out, blindsiding the thug.  For an instant, his eyes were like those of a panicked horse, all whites, rolling around, unfocused.  She grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted him up and growled into his ear, her voice just above a whisper, “Try it.  My sister just healed you… most of you, with a touch.  Did you ever wonder what else she could do?  Ever think, maybe, she could break you just as easily?  Or change the color of your skin, you racist fuck?  I’ll tell you this, I’m not half as scary as my little sister is.”

She let him go.  He collapsed in a heap on the ground.

As the two sisters walked away, Victoria pulled her cell phone out of a pouch on her belt with her free hand.  Turning to Amy, she said, “Thank you.”

“Play safe, Victoria.  I can’t bring people back from the dead, and once you’ve gone that far…”

“I’ll be good.  I’ll be better,” Victoria promised as she dialed with one hand.  She put the phone to her ear, “Hello?  Emergency services?  Requesting special line.  New Wave, Glory Girl.  Incapacitated criminal for you to pick up, no powers.  No, no rush, I can hold.”

Looking over her shoulder, Victoria noted the thug, still floundering and half-crawling, “He’s not going to get up?”

“He’ll be numb from the waist down for another three hours.  His left arm will be iffy for about that long, too, so he’s not going to move unless he can drag himself somewhere with just one limb.  He’ll also have numb toes for a good month or so, too,” Amy smiled.

“You didn’t actually…”

“No.  Nothing was broken, and I didn’t screw up anything, beyond a temporary numbness.  But he doesn’t know that.  Fear and doubt will complete the effect, and the suggestion becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.”

“Amy!” Victoria laughed, hugging her sister with one arm, “Weren’t you just saying you weren’t going to mess with people’s heads?”

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Insinuation 2.9

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As Brian and I returned to the loft, I felt more than a little apprehensive.  It wasn’t just that I was going to be around Bitch again, but I was also having to face Lisa and Alec.  After shouting and talking about quitting the team, I was turning around and going back.  A part of me wanted to apologize, but a larger part of me felt I shouldn’t.  I had been justified in everything I had said and done, right?  Maybe it was just because I wasn’t used to violence or raising my voice.

As I’d feared, there was a bit of an awkward silence as we reached the top of the stairs.  Bitch was sitting in a chair beside one of the tables, her dogs nowhere to be seen.  As she saw me, she scowled, but didn’t say anything.  Alec grinned as I came back, but I couldn’t decide if it was because he was glad or if it was at my expense.  I didn’t know him well enough to guess either way.

“Glad you came back,” Lisa told me, a bit of a smile on her face, “Alec, can you go get the first aid kit?  It might be in the storage closet.”

While Alec did that, Brian sat me down on the arm of the couch and I pulled off my sweatshirt to get a better look at the damage.  I pulled the bottom of my tank top up around my ribs to get a look at where one of the dogs had been gotten at my stomach and back.  My clothes had taken most of the damage, and I’d only suffered three or four shallow-ish scrapes.  There was bruising and some raw areas where I felt tender, but I figured I’d recover from that in a day or two. I had a cut on my ear, which would be harder to hide, but I was pretty sure I could keep the incident from my dad without him raising hell.

There was only one spot of real damage, a puncture where it looked like a fang had buried itself deep in the top of my forearm and then dragged an inch or so down towards my wrist as it made its exit.  The area around it was already turning colors with bruising.  I wasn’t sure how deep the puncture was, but I was pretty sure it should have been hurting more than it did.  The blood from the injury had trickled down my arm, and was still welling out.

“Christ,” I said, mostly to myself.

“That was awesome, you know,” Alec told me, as he returned with the first aid kit, “I didn’t think you had it in you to kick someone’s ass.”  I glared at him, but he just sat on the back of the sofa, his legs kicking like an excited kid.

“I think we’re going to clean that and stitch it.  Tattle’s power should give us a better sense of whether stitches are necessary,” Brian said, quietly.

“Alright,” I agreed.

I would hardly describe getting stitches as a bonding experience, but Bitch more or less stayed quiet throughout the process.  We were both sat down and told to sit still while Brian both cleaned and sewed up the hole in my arm and the tear my kick had made in Bitch’s ear.  Brian insisted I take two Tylenol, though the pain was still limited to a mild ache in my arm.  I grudgingly obliged.  I’d never liked taking pills, and never felt they made a real difference.

“You have first aid training?” I inquired, to make conversation and break the tense silence.

Alec complained, “We all do, Brian made us all take a comprehensive class less than a week after we were gathered as a team.  Such a pain in the ass, believe me.  He’ll make you do it too.”

“I already did,” I admitted, “One of the first things I did.”  I jumped a little at a snarling from my left, but it was just Rachel cussing as Lisa taped a cotton pad to her ear.

Brian just looked at me and flashed that boyish smile again.  I looked away, embarrassed that a guy like him would get pleased like that on my account.  He got up to head to the bathroom, garbage from the bandages, sutures, cotton swabs and ointments in his hands.

With Brian gone and Lisa absorbed in trying to patch up Bitch’s ear, I was left with Alec.  To make conversation, I said, “Alec.  You were going to tell me what you do.  You go by Regent, right?”

“The name is a long story, but what I do is this.”  He looked over his shoulder at Brian, who was returning from the washroom with a damp washcloth in hand.  Brian, mid-stride, stumbled and fell onto the floor.

“Way to look good in front of the new girl, gimpy!” Alec mocked his teammate, laughing. Grateful for the break in the tension, I couldn’t help but laugh too.  While Alec continued laughing, Brian got to his feet and ran up to the smaller boy, at which point he got Alec in a headlock and began punching him in the shoulder repeatedly.  This abuse only made Alec laugh harder in between his cries of pain.

Lisa turned to me, smiling at the prank and play fighting between the boys, “It’s a bit complicated to explain, but basically, Alec can get into people’s nervous systems.  This lets him fire off impulses that set off reflexes or make body parts jerk into motion.  It’s not a dramatic power, but with timing, he can make someone fall over midstep, drop something, lose their sense of balance or pull the trigger on a gun.”

I nodded, absorbing the information.  It sounded very underwhelming to me, but I was willing to admit I could be underestimating it.

“Well,” I said, after a long pause, “I think I pretty much get what everyone can do, then.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but Bitch can turn those dogs into those freakish monsters I saw the other night?”

Sitting a few feet away, Bitch muttered, “They aren’t freakish.”

Lisa answered my question, ignoring her. “Rachel can do it with any dog, actually,” she said, stressing the name, “And no codenames when we’re not in costume, ‘kay?  Get in the habit of using the right name at the right times, and it’s that much harder to slip.”

It was hard to think of Rachel by her real name.  Bitch seemed really fitting given the stunt she had pulled.  I apologized to Lisa, “Sorry.”

Lisa gave a small nod in response, then told me, “She can use her power on any dog, but only Brutus, Judas and Angelica are trained well enough that they’ll listen to her when they’re pumped up.”

Ah, so that was it.  “And Brian makes that oily darkness that screws up your hearing.  The Parahumans wiki said it was darkness generation.”

Brian smiled, “I put that into the wiki myself.  It’s not wrong, but it does catch people off guard when they think they know what you can do, and there’s something more to it.”

Lisa added, “It’s not just hearing.  It also cuts off radio signals and dampens the effects of radiation.”

“That’s what her power tells her, anyways.  I haven’t had much chance to test that part of things.  I get by as is,” Brian said.  He turned his hand palm up and created a handful of the darkness.  It was like smoke, but so absolutely black that there was no texture to it.  It was like someone had taken a scalpel to reality and the blackness was what was there when everything else was gone.  I couldn’t even gauge the dimensions of it, unless I looked at it from a different perspective.  Even then, with the way the darkness shifted and billowed like smoke, it was hard to judge the shape.

More of it just kept pouring from his hand, climbing upwards to cover the top of the room.  As the light from the windows near the upper edges of the room and the florescent bars on the ceiling was cut off, the room got a great deal darker.

He closed his hand into a fist, and the darkness thinned out and disintegrated into strands and tatters, and the room brightened again.  I looked at the light coming in from the windows and was surprised it wasn’t later.

“What time is it?”  I asked.

“Nineteen minutes before five,” Lisa said.  She didn’t look at a watch or a clock as she said it, which was unsettling.  It was a reminder that her power was constantly available to her.

Brian asked me, “Do you have somewhere you need to be?

“Home, I guess,” I admitted, “My dad will wonder where I am.”

“Call him,” Lisa suggested, “Now that the introductions are over with, you can just hang out for a bit, if you want.”

“We could order pizza,” Alec suggested.  Then when Lisa, Brian and Bitch all made faces, he added, “Or maybe everyone’s sick of pizza and we could order something else.”

“Stick around?” Brian made it a question.

I glanced at Bitch.  She was sitting on the table behind one of the couches and looking like a mess, with a bloody bandage over one ear, blood smeared below her nose and lip, and a bit of green around the gills that suggested she was feeling a little worse for wear.  With her in that state, I didn’t feel particularly threatened.  Staying meant I could work to get things more copacetic and maybe dig for a bit more information.  I’d also missed socializing with people – even if it was under false pretenses with a group that included an apparent sociopath.  It had been a sucky day.  Just chilling out sounded good.

“Okay,” I decided, “Yeah, I think I’d like to.”

“Phone’s in the kitchen if you want to call your dad,” Lisa said.

I looked over my shoulder as I headed across the loft.  The others got settled on the couches, with Alec turning on the TV while Lisa and Brian took a second to clean up.

I found the phone and dialed my dad.

“Hey dad,” I said, when I heard the phone being picked up.

“Taylor.  Are you alright?”  He sounded worried.  It was unusual, I supposed, my not being home when he got back from work.

“I’m fine, dad.  Is it cool if I hang out with some people tonight?”

There was a pause.

“Taylor, if there’s anyone that’s making you make this call… the bullies or someone else, tell me everything is fine.  If you’re not in trouble, tell me your mother’s full name.”

I felt momentarily embarrassed.  Was it so unusual for me to hang out with people?  I knew my dad was just trying to keep me safe, but it was bordering on the ridiculous.

“Annette Rose Hebert,” I told him, “Really dad, it’s cool.”

“You’re really okay?”

My gaze roved over the kitchen, taking in the details, as I gave him my assurances.

“Better than ever.  I kind of made some friends,” I said.

My eyes settled on their dining room table.  There was a stack of money, wrapped with a paper band just as the money in the lunchbox had been.  Beside the money, plain as day, was the dark gray metal of a handgun.

My attention caught by the gun, I only barely caught my dad’s question.  “What are they like?”

“They seem like good people,” I lied.

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