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Chapter Text

My eyes opened and I screamed. Exotic energy danced over my skin, shattering my breaker state and knocking me off balance. From the way that Leet was staring at me with a frozen expression on his face, I was pretty sure that hadn't been his intention. Whatever had been the normal effect of that beam, it had instead interacted strangely with my breaker state. Not for the first time, and not for the last either, I lamented having such an easily exploitable weakness. When I was in my shadow state, I was completely invulnerable to nearly all forms of damage, but even the smallest current from a double-A battery could leave me with lichtenberg burns. From the sharp pain dancing over my arms, I was pretty sure that I'd have some nasty burns to take care of today as well.

My leg seized up slightly and I stumbled, almost falling onto the hard asphalt below. I threw my hands out and activated my power at the same time, driven by instinct. My body went cold as it dissipated into smoke and shadow, like I'd just had a bucket of ice-water poured over my head, and my momentum came to a quick halt. The whole world grew blurred and hazy to my vision, like it was made of mist, and sounds became muffled like I was underwater. I could still see my own body just fine, long gloves with armored plates on the top entered my vision, holding onto a tinkertech crossbow with tranquilizer bolts. I had a set of broadhead-tipped bolts in my pouch, although I rarely had need of them: my power could be more than lethal enough without them, after all.

Fucking Leet, I thought to myself. Fucking Tinkers.

I stumbled back to my feet and dropped the breaker state, the world flickering back into focus. Leet was staring at me, dressed in suit with a green tie and a white rabbit mask, the tinkertech device he'd shot me with still in his hands. I still wasn't sure what it was supposed to do–he'd said something about bioshock and dimensional tears, but I didn't really pay much attention because the reference had escaped me then (although I was pretty sure I knew exactly what he was referencing now–I knew he was dressed as Robert Lutece, that he was creating dimensional 'tears', and I even knew that the mechanical construct behind him was a Songbird). I had a sneaking suspicion that something had really gotten fucked up, though. The device seemed to normally open up small portals to other dimensions, which Uber and Leet had used to bypass the security on the jewelry shop they were robbing.

Either way, I knew that I had to stop him from opening any more portals before he used them to escape. I brought my crossbow up and briefly phased into my breaker state, bringing the weapon with me. The bolt was clear in my sight even as everything else went back to that hazy shadow. I had to be precise with my timing, because a mistake could easily lead to accidentally phasing my bolt into the villain's spine, but I had a lot of practice with my power–even as a part of me marveled at having superpowers to begin with. I pushed that thought away, because I was pretty sure if I gave it any attention right now I'd have a complete mental breakdown. With precise timing, I unphased myself and the bolt at the same time, snapping back to the real world. I was greeted by the sound of delicate tinkertech being torn to shreds as a bolt of metal rematerialized inside its components and the indignant squawks of a pissed D-tier supervillain. Music to my ears, honestly. A moment later the 'tears' that Leet had created flickered and then dissipated.

My second bolt took him in the arm as he was looking down at the device. The tranquilizer took effect quickly, and he barely had time to look up at me in shock before he slumped to the ground, unconscious. I loved having a tinkertech crossbow–beside being far more accurate and launching bolts with significantly more power, they also eliminated the need to laboriously reload which was by far the most irritating part about using a crossbow.

"Leet's down for the count with a dose of the tranqs," I said. "Requesting transport to our location ASAP."

"Roger that, Stalker," came from the comm in my ear. Kid Win was on console duty today, which was usually alright unless he got into a tinker fugue and forgot to respond. Fortunately today he was working on getting his math homework done, which realistically meant he was taking any excuse to be on duty. There was a pause as he relayed the request. "Alright, looks like we can have a van to your location in 8 minutes."

I turned my attention to the rest of the fight. The giant mechanical monstrosity–the Songbird, right–had been frozen mid-cry by Clockblocker. It was beautiful, in a horrifying metal monstrosity kind of way. It was vaguely humanoid, with bronze wings and a massive bird-like head with large eyes that glowed a faint red. Fortunately, it seemed like Leet had compromised somewhat with the source material, as with the current overlay on the HUD wired into my helmet, I could clearly see the mechanical components that made up its body, rather than the biotinker horror that it was in the game. And I still didn't know how I knew that, all of a sudden, but I shook that thought off. At least it was frozen. As much as Dennis pissed me off sometimes, I had to admit that he could be pretty useful in a fight like this, although the random length of time that things were frozen was still a real pain in the ass. He was still standing near the Songbird, ready to refreeze it as soon as it unfroze, and watching as Aegis sparred with Uber.

It was a pretty even fight, surprisingly enough. Aegis had the advantage of flight, super-strength, and leverage, but Uber was a combat thinker with a body that he'd shaped into the peak physique. Uber was dressed in a vest and pinstripe pants, also wearing a rabbit mask, and I recognized the outfit as belonging to Booker DeWitt. Again, I did not consider how I knew that.

A few moments ago, I'd have taken the shot and dropped Uber without any concern for Carlos' pride or safety. It would end the fight quickly, and Aegis was an adaptive brute with regenerative ability. For whatever reason, though, I didn't quite feel like doing that yet. I'd intervene if it looked like Uber was getting the upper hand, or if Carlos wanted help, but with Leet down and the Songbird frozen there wasn't any real rush. I walked over slowly, my crossbow pointed toward the ground, as Uber used a series of martial arts moves to ward off several of Aegis' kicks. Then Uber caught one leg in a hold and whipped around, throwing Aegis over his shoulder and toward the ground. Before he could convert it into a pin, though, there was a soft 'pop' as Aegis dislocated his leg from his hip and slipped out of the hold, twisting around and then flying up to get out of reach. I'd flinch if I hadn't seen him use that move countless times before, and knew that his powers kept him from feeling anything more than mild discomfort. Uber clearly didn't know that, though, as he took a few steps back and looked up with a kind of horrified disbelief.

I got within a dozen feet and lifted the crossbow again, training it on Uber's form. "Need any help, boy wonder?" I called out.

"Stalker, take the shot!" He yelled back.

The bolt flew true, but Uber managed to avoid it with a frankly ridiculous twisting of his body. Fortunately, Aegis had been expecting it, because he used the opportunity to catch Uber's hands and twist them behind his back. Before Uber could wriggle out of the hold, I crossed the distance and jabbed one of my bolts into his exposed arm. He went down a few seconds later.

"Thanks, Stalker," Aegis said, as he released his hold, letting the man slump to the asphalt. His hands were busy with a couple of zip-ties, leaving Uber's hands restrained behind his back.

"For the record, that counts as my capture," I said. "The score is Stalker: 2, everybody else: 0."

Carlos let out a huffing laugh. "Hey, I think I get at least half a point."

"Stalker: two, Aegis: one third," I said, rolling my eyes behind my mask. "Hey Clock, how're you doing with Big Bird over there?"

"Fine so far, but I'll need somebody to put it down when it unfreezes in a bit," he said. "And if this is Big Bird, I really don't want to run into Oscar the Grouch."

The comment caught me off guard and I let out an involuntary chuckle. "Isn't that just Skidmark?" I replied.

Both Dennis and Carlos stared at me incredulously through their masks, but Dennis was the one to actually speak. "You good, Stalker? 'Cause you just laughed at my joke, and I'm pretty sure that's grounds for Master/Stranger confinement coming from you."

I scowled under my mask, even as a suspicious part of my mind thought he was probably more on the mark than he thought. "Oh go fuck yourself, I'm allowed to be in a good mood after we take down a couple half-rate dipshit villains."

"Ah, there's the Stalker we know and love–or, well, know at least," Dennis said, and barely reacted when I flipped him a middle finger.

I turned back to the Songbird, even as my hands were busy fiddling with my crossbow. I ejected the half-depleted cartridge of tranq bolts, swapping it out for a cartridge containing some custom bolts that unleashed a burst of containment foam on impact. Useful for restraining movers, and downright invaluable for destroying machinery. "Clock, back away from it. I'll nab it as soon as it unfreezes."

"Armsmaster might prefer if you bring it in less damaged," the voice in my ear cautioned. I resisted rolling my eyes, because I knew that Kid Win had a bad case of hero worship going on with the Protectorate leader, made even worse by Armsmaster's inconsistent attention and accidental neglect.

"Negative on that, console," I replied. "If he wants Leet's tech undamaged, he can come down and fight them himself. Right now we've got a rogue mech with some degree of AI and nobody controlling it, and I sure as hell don't trust that Leet put in any kind of reasonable precautions against harming bystanders. I'm putting it down with extreme prejudice."

There was another long moment as Kid Win seemed to struggle with the decision, but eventually I heard, "Roger that, Stalker. Permission granted to eliminate the hostile tinkertech."

Then it was just a waiting game. In the distance, I could hear the distinct sound of the PRT sirens, lower and a different pattern from the ones used by emergency services. I kept my crossbow trained on the Songbird. After another half a minute or so, it suddenly began to move again, shaking its wings and letting out an intimidating SKREEE! Its head swiveled around and then locked on to me as the closest target. Then it began to charge.

I phased to shadow, launched the bolt, and phased back. I was a little early on the first one, and it impacted the frame outside of its body, releasing a payload of foam that barely slowed it down. Then I did two more quick shifts, pushing my power to its limit as I unleashed another bolt. These two I managed to time correctly, phasing them back right inside of the oversized skull and the central body. Confoam exploded out, filling every empty space and destroying the delicate tinkertech components inside. A few moments later, the giant bird mech collapsed to the ground with a low 'thump.'

Finally, I let my crossbow lower, then holstered it back at my side. "Tinkertech eliminated," I reported.

"Roger that, Stalker," Kid Win said, sounding a little glum. Still, it wasn't like it would have been that helpful to either of the team's tinkers to bring it in whole. Everyone knew that most tinkers couldn't make heads or tails of another's work, and while Armsmaster was better at it than most, Leet's tech was notoriously difficult to work with. God knows I'd heard Kid complain about it enough times.

Absently, I wondered if Kid Win had figured out his specialty yet–it was supposed to be modular components, wasn't it? Then I froze, because that was not something I could just push past. Chris had been struggling to find his specialty since he'd triggered, and there was no way in hell that I should know it. And I didn't–except, I did as well. My hand went to my head, and I took a hard seat on the curb.

I could feel a headache growing, and it only got worse now that I had a moment to reflect. I was acutely aware that something was wrong–I didn't even know exactly who 'I' was anymore. It wasn't amnesia, or anything like that. It was the opposite, if anything: I remembered everything about my life clearly, I just had two sets of memories to contend with.

I knew that my name was Sophia Hess. Equally, I was sure that my name was Talia Woodsworth. I was a sixteen year old girl who had a part-time job as a superhero. I was a twenty-three year-old woman with a degree in computer science. My closest friend was Emma Barnes, who went to Winslow High School with her. My closest friend was Miguel Martinez, who I'd met in Intro to Algorithms at BSU and quickly formed a connection with over being the only queer and non-white people in the class.

My head was pounding, trying to reconcile two disparate sets of contradictory truths, despite knowing that both were correct.

Some things were the same: I was born in 1995, I had a short temper and a sharp tongue, I was a Black woman living on the East Coast, and I both liked running and was pretty damn good at it. Sophia was on the track team, and Talia had gotten a decent scholarship to DSU for both track and cross country. I'd never been good enough to get past State, but I had placed decently enough. I had to focus on those details, otherwise I knew I'd go mad. There would be time later to figure out just what the hell happened to me.

"Stalker. Stalker!" A voice was saying, and a rust red mask filled my view. Aegis' eyes peered through the small slit in his mask, wide and expressive.

"What's up?" I said, wincing through the pain.

"You just sat down and stopped responding," he said, concern clear in his voice and visage. "Did something happen during the fight?"

I grimaced. "That dumbass Leet tagged me with one of the blasts from his portal gun thing," I said.

"Are you alright? Do you need transport to the medical bay?" He asked, and I could tell he was genuinely concerned. A part of me, the Sophia part, wanted to tell him to piss off and play 'wards captain' with somebody else. The Talia part of me was touched that he cared so much, and respected that he was trying to shoulder a burden bigger than he ought to.

"I'm fine, Aegis," I replied. "Just got a bit of a shock, that's all."

He looked over me, and I could tell he saw the ginger way I was holding myself–the gate had struck my left shoulder, and I knew from experience it was now covered in mild Lichtenstein burns. He seemed to make a decision. "The three of us will ride back with Uber and Leet, alongside the troopers, to make sure they don't have some contingency to escape. That'll give us some time to fill out our after-action reports." And, I knew, it would give him an excuse to make sure I saw medical before I left.

I scowled a little, but honestly I was more touched than anything. "Yeah, fine," I huffed out. That was not a Sophia reaction, I knew, because Sophia could only understand kindness in terms of deception and weakness, which was an emotional rabbit hole of introspection that I was not willing to go down right now.

Maybe it was telling that neither parts of me even considered telling the truth, but Sophia didn't feel like getting put in a Master/Stranger tank for a few days, and Talia didn't feel like being told she was some kind of master effect and potentially being destroyed. Besides, both of us had always been fairly independent with minimal trust for authorities, and knowing what I did about the Worm setting did nothing to change that. Well, if Talia's knowledge about Worm could be trusted at all.

That was a whole other can of, well, worms. Did Talia even exist? Did Sophia? Was I trapped in a coma somewhere, dreaming of a webnovel I'd read once? Or was I just Sophia Hess, and I'd gotten some kind of weird mastering from an untested piece of experimental tinkertech that convinced me I was also somebody else? In the end, though, I realized that it didn't really matter. As best I could tell, this was my reality, and until I had evidence to the contrary I would just have to assume both people were real.

Still, that didn't mean I could just assume this was the world of Worm, with all that implied. Sure, I was on Earth Bet, and I was on the Wards as Shadow Stalker in Brockton Bay, but that didn't mean I could suddenly start acting on the information that Talia had read. I couldn't just assume that Taylor Hebert (and she did exist, I remembered that, and fuck I'd have to deal with that later) had already triggered with the power to control insects, or that Leviathan was going to attack Brockton Bay, or any of the civilian cape identities that I now knew were accurate.

I couldn't assume there was some kind of predictable plot–I couldn't assume anything, right now. But there were ways to find some things out, ways to test if Talia's knowledge had any truth to it, and I made a note to figure some of those out soon. Still, one thing definitely stood out to me: in the webnovel, Sophia Hess has her whole life pretty much destroyed by Regent, and by extension Taylor Hebert. That, at least, I might be able to do something about, even if none of the knowledge was real; with Talia's perspective, I could see how badly Sophia had fucked up with Hebert, and I could see just how strong the girl was. Enduring is a different kind of strength than the kind that Sophia understood or respected, but one that as Talia I was all too familiar with.

I was broken out of my thoughts by the arrival of the transport van, along with a couple escort vehicles from which spilled out a small squad of masked PRT troopers. I watched from the side as they moved the unconscious villains into the back of the van, foaming their wrists and legs shut for good measure.

Carlos, Dennis, and I rode back to the headquarters in one of the escort vehicles, leaving behind a good half of the squad to figure out how they were going to haul the destroyed tinkertech golem back as well. I let my eyes rest as we traveled, and it was only the ache in my shoulder that kept me from slipping into sleep.

~*~​

The Wards common room was empty when we returned. I could hear Chris tinkering from his lab, a sound of softly scraping parts and unintelligible muttering, but Vista and Gallant were off duty today. I took a moment to consider my feelings toward the two of them, to find that my reaction to Vista had changed quite a bit. Before, I'd only thought of her as a bit of a twerp, prey trying to act tough to make people think it was a predator. Now, I could appreciate some more nuance of her situation: yes, she was a kid trying too hard to be an adult, but she'd also had to grow up way too fast.

Gallant could still go suck a dick, though, the sanctimonious asshole. So could after-action reports, for that matter.

I finally finished typing up how I'd dismantled the Songbird, and then I saved the file with a vicious keystroke. "Fucking finally," I said, stretching my arms and only mildly wincing as it pulled on the gauze wrapped around my shoulder.

"Language," Carlos replied almost absently from the dining table, where he preferred to work on his reports because he was a heathen who didn't understand the comfort of a couch.

"Bite me, shield boy," I snapped out. "I'm fine to be all formal and shit in the field, but I'm not policing my fucking language in here."

"Even around Vista?" He said, raising an eyebrow.

"Are you kidding me? That girl has a mouth like a sailor," I said, shaking my head.

"She's still 12 years old," he said, giving me a level stare.

"Sure, treat her like a kid. I'm sure it's a great idea to piss off the most powerful Shaker in a hundred miles."

Now Dennis was staring at me again, for a very different reason. "Um, not trying to piss you off, Sophia, but isn't that like… what you do all the time?"

I huffed, because he wasn't wrong, even as a part of me scrambled to find a response. Too much change, too fast, and they'd dunk me in the M/S tanks at best, and do something to excise Talia at worst. That was not something I wanted to have happen. "Yeah, well, do as I say and all that. And…"

Dennis jumped on that, like I knew he would. He was thin and wiry, with curly red hair and a trickster's grin. "And?" He said, with a leading tone.

I let out a long sigh. "Just… fuck it. Tell anybody about this and you're dead meat, but I had a session with Yamada recently and some of the shit she said was, I dunno, helpful I guess." The best part was, that was actually true–well, I'd had a session with Jessica Yamada, at least. She was something of a legend among the Wards, and her schedule was always booked full between Boston, Brockton, New York, and the Asylum, but she had a reputation for making more progress in one session than other parahuman psychologists could make in three months. We'd talked a little about the other Wards, and Sophia's mentality, and although at the time Sophia had blown it all off as 'prey bullshit,' Talia could appreciate some of the finer points. The escuse should hold up to some scrutiny, at least.

"Hey, no shame in therapy. I can tell you I'd be a mess if it wasn't for some of the counselors I've seen," Dennis said.

"What, and you aren't a mess now?" I snapped back, because it fucking sucked to be vulnerable, and my immediate response was always defensive–that went for both of us, actually.

"Ouch," Dennis replied, placing his hand on his heart dramatically. "I've been wounded. Carlos, I think I've been fatally injured. Tell my family that I was too handsome for this world."

I rolled my eyes, but I appreciated him dropping it. "Shut the fuck up and finish your damn report," I said, but I couldn't keep a hint of fondness out of my voice. Dennis was a pain in the ass, and he could have a pretty bad case of 'foot-in-mouth' syndrome, but he was also the most empathetic person on the team (and yes, that included the literal empath, because Gallant was hopeless with people despite his thinker powers). "Anyway, I'm tryinig to be nicer to Missy, and like, the team in general."

"You literally just told me to shut up," Dennis snarked.

"You don't count, you're more like a mascot than anything," I replied. "Anyway, I'm done with this shit so I'mma bounce before Piggot yells at me for using excessive force on the Songbird or whatever."

Aegis had been watching our repartee with a bemused expression, and I knew that he'd have finished his AAR way before me. He was good at all the bureaucratic shit, certainly better than Triumph had been when he was Wards leader. I could tell that right now he wanted to reprimand me for shit-talking the Director, but he let it slide–partially because I knew he had the same gripes the rest of us did. "Alright, Sophia. You did a good job today, and for what it's worth I think you made the right call in the field. If the Director gets upset about your decision with the tinkertech, I'll take the blame." he said. "And I'm glad to hear that therapy has been helpful for you. I'm sure that Missy will appreciate your attempts as well."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, waving my hand dismissively, even as I headed toward the back doors that led out of the base. "Don't mention it. Like, seriously, don't, or I'll help you stress test your redundant biology."

"And this is being nicer?" came Dennis' indignant squawk from behind me, but I didn't respond. I knew that I was a bitch and that wasn't about to change any time soon. The thing that Talia had figured out, and what Sophia never had, was that it was perfectly possible to be a good and caring person without having to be sappy or stop insulting people who deserved it.

I slipped out of the base, taking an underground tunnel and coming out in the back of a McDonalds. It was a common enough spot for teens to stop by and hang out that nobody tracked who came and went, which made it the perfect front for one of the three hidden entrances set up for the Wards to get in and out of work inconspicuously. This particular one also happened to be right on a bus line toward our apartment building, and it was easy enough for me to hop on and head back home.

Chapter Text

I'm not going to sugarcoat it: home kinda sucked. For one thing, we didn't exactly live in the nicest part of the city–although, honestly, most of the 'nicer' parts of the city were Empire run, a result of rapid and deliberate gentrification and a city police force where at least 50% of the officers were squarely in Kaiser's pocket. So we lived in an apartment building near the trainyard, and I knew for a fact that a good portion of our neighbors either ran for the Merchants or bought from them.

The lock in the front door of the building was more a formality than anything, since it could be opened by some aggressive shaking, but that was why we all made sure the locks on the apartments themselves were solid. I stopped in the cramped mailroom to pick up whatever had come in, since Mom always forgot to do it herself.

I'll admit, I was more than a little surprised to see the other girl in the mailroom. On one hand, Sophia had known that Aisha Laborn lived in the building in a distant kind of way; we ran into each other now and then, and our mothers sometimes chatted with each other. On the other hand, Talia knew that Aisha Laborn was potentially an incredibly powerful Stranger, and a future member of the undersiders–in one timeline, at least. It also meant that her brother, Brian, who I remembered as tall, built, but kind of quiet, was most likely Grue–again, if the memories could be trusted, which was a big 'if'.

"Heya," she said as I entered. Her hair was dyed with a streak of almost offensively bright green, and she had on a pair of ripped jean shorts and a denim jacket over top of a tie-dye tank top.

"Hey," I said, slipping the keyring from my pocket. I opened our mailbox and grabbed the small stack of paper. Mostly ads and junk mail, from what I could tell, although there looked to be a few bills as well. "How's things?"

"Fine," she said, with an off the shoulder shrug. She wasn't even picking up mail, just hanging out in the only semi-public space the building had.

"Yeah?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah," she replied, her lips drawing flat.

"Brian doing okay?" I asked, shuffling through the mail in my hands. A pamphlet filled with coupons that Mom would definitely want, a request for donations from some eco-charity that the last tenant had signed up for ten years ago and who just kept sending us more mail, and what was probably this month's credit card bill.

"Brian's doing just great," she said, with a scowl.

I winced. "He moved out like two years back, right?"

"Sure did. First chance he could get. I mean, I don't blame him, but…"

"Yeah," I said. "Listen, Mom told me to tell you that you're always welcome at our place. Not that you need it or anything, just. Y'know. We could use somebody to watch the little gremlin."

I watched her from the corner of my eye, as her face warred between wounded pride and hope. It felt strange to see that kind of expression directed toward me of all people, but honestly? Knowing what I did about her life, knowing that she had her own Stevens to deal with? I couldn't find it in myself to do any less.

"Uh, yeah," Aisha said after a while. "I might take you up on that sometime."

I shrugged. "We can pay you for babysitting, if that helps. It wouldn't be much, but y'know, it's something." Well, Mom couldn't really afford that, but I made enough as a Ward between my base salary and my cut of merchandise sales that it wasn't a huge issue. It was still way less than I'd have made if I wasn't probationary, and most of my sales went into a trust fund until I graduated from the Wards and came off probationary status, but it was still a decent nest egg. Back when I'd been negotiating my contract, Alan Barnes had used some rather inflammatory rhetoric about wage theft and forced child labor that had left the PRT caving pretty quick on that clause.

She gave me a long look. "You're being way less bitchy than usual," she said after a moment, and I regretted ever trying to help this feral child.

"Eat shit and die, shrimp," I snapped back.

She just nodded, like she'd been expecting that, and I had a brief moment to consider just how fucking awful Sophia had been. Only a brief moment, though, because that was not something I needed to be dealing with right now.

~*~​

The key twisted in the lock, a heavy thing that took some real weight to turn it, and then I was in our apartment. Home, I supposed. It was a nice enough apartment, for the location. Mom did what she could to spruce things up: paintings got for cheap from the Lord Street market hung over popcorn-pebbled wallpaper, a vase with half-dead daisies set on a small table in the entryway. I took my shoes off and slouched into the living room, bag slung loosely over my shoulder.

We'd moved here four years ago, when Lucy was born, and Mom could afford more than the cramped one-bedroom apartment we'd been living in before. This place had three bedrooms, technically, although the third–the one that I'd been given–was barely more than a spacious closet. I didn't mind much, though, since it was better than having to share with Terry. We'd never gotten along well–growing up he'd been more interested in his friends and hobbies than his younger sister, and we were both stubborn enough that we spent a lot of time butting heads.

The TV in the living room was on, showing some godawful animated brain rot that was clearly keeping Lucy entertained. After a moment, I recognized it as the reboot of the Mouse Protector show. Mom was in the kitchen, working on dinner. I took a peek and saw a stack of microwave warmed flour tortillas and a pot of black beans on the stove. Taco night, then, which meant that Mom had a long day and couldn't be bothered to make anything more complicated.

Terry was sitting at the table, a worksheet in front of him and a pencil in his hands. He was frowning down at it as I came in. I didn't even bother to look at what he was working on–he was getting an associates in business from Brockton Community College, and I had negative desire to learn anything related to that.

"Hey, Mom," I said, letting my backpack fall down as I slumped into the seat opposite

"Sophia," she said, distractedly. "Can you help me with dinner?"

I wanted to say no, because I was tired from work and the post-fight adrenaline drop, but I also knew that Mom probably felt the same way. It wasn't something that would normally occur to Sophia, who had skipped most of the critical phases of learning empathy, but Talia's memories made the difference. It helped that

"Yeah, fine," I said instead. Then I forced myself to my feet and stumbled over to the kitchen, washing my hands in the sink (the side that Mom wasn't using to wash the chicken). I fell back on familiar habits of helping out in the kitchen, although I couldn't quite remeber if those were from Talia or from a younger Sophia. Either way, it was soothing in a way. Mom gave me a few looks, but I could tell she wasn't going to argue with me helping for once. It wasn't something that Sophia did often, not since I triggered two and a half years ago.

Dinner was a pretty standard affair. We said grace, although none of us were really practicing–we hadn't actually been to church in years, with the exception of Christmas and Easter. Mom looked like she'd been wrung out, but she still did her best to make conversation–she liked to go around and have each of us say something about our day. Lucy prattled about what they'd done at the daycare that day, which ended up being a convoluted story about fingerpainting with her friend Jake, or something; I'm not gonna pretend that I didn't zone out for most of it. Terry mentioned that he'd applied for an internship at Medhall, and was hoping to hear back soon. I winced when I heard that, as I recalled from Talia's memories that Medhall was owned by Kaiser himself; although again, I didn't know how accurate that was. Mom told us about the group of old ladies who came into the yarn supply store again, and how they'd spent a whole hour looking for a specific shade of yarn and complaining the whole time before they left without buying anything. Riveting, I know.

Then it got me, and I had to go through the usual process of sanitizing my job for my family. Mom had a very strict policy when it came to my cape life, which basically boiled down to 'keep the rest of the family away from it.' As far as Terry and Lucy knew, I'd gotten into some trouble with the law and now had a court-mandated volunteer position at a food shelter. It was a pretty common excuse used in the Wards, and as part of my probation I had to work there for a while every couple weeks, just to keep up the ruse.

I settled with saying, "Work was fine. There were a few people who got a bit unruly, but we got them to settle down." An extreme understatement of capturing Uber and Leet? Maybe, but at least it wasn't technically a lie, and my family didn't press further.

Dinner ended with a whimper. I took the dishes to the sink almost automatically, and started rinsing them before putting them in the dishwasher. It was meditative, in a way, and something I needed after the day I'd had.

"Alright, what's going on," Mom said, after a moment. She took the pot that I'd just washed and began to dry it with a towel.

I paused. "What?"

"I wasn't born yesterday, Sophia. You hate helping out. What do you want?"

I scrubbed the pan, putting in some elbow grease to get the blackened char off of the places where the nonstick coating had been scratched through. I meant to come up with some kind of excuse, but what came out instead was, "Mom, am I a bad person?"

She almost dropped the pot. "What?"

"I had a talk with my therapist recently. You know, the court-mandated one? And, uh, she made me realize some stuff about how I was treating other people. I mean, specifically the others on the, uh, team, but kind of just people in general."

She was silent for a long time, which I supposed was answer enough. I don't know why it hit me so hard just then–maybe I was finally processing that part of me, Talia, had been ripped away from her home and likely wouldn't go back. Maybe I was just feeling guilt and regret, which Sophia had managed to push down and avoid for years but was finally coming through. Maybe I was just overwhelmed. Either way, I couldn't help the small choked noise that escaped me then, or the tears gathering in the corner of my eyes.

I wiped them away furiously, because I fucking hated feeling vulnerable like this–that was how you got hurt. I'd learned that the hard way with Steven.

"Oh, Sophie," Mom said, and I felt her arms wrap around me. "You aren't a bad person. You're intense, and you have a lot of anger, but that doesn't make you bad. You're just struggling."

"I think I fucked up, Mom," I muttered into her shoulder. "Like, real bad. And I need to fix it but I don't know that I can."

"Can you tell me about it?" She asked, and I knew what she was really saying–was this related to my life as Shadow Stalker?

I shook my head 'no', because… well, it wasn't really related to that, but I was pretty sure that if Hebert had actually triggered, it would be fairly soon. That, and there was a selfish part of me that just didn't want to tell my mom what I'd done. "It's not like I broke my probation or anything, it's just that I've been… awful, and to people who don't deserve it. I'm so angry all the time, and I feel like I lost track of who actually deserves it." The tears were coming faster now, and I furiously wiped them away with my shirt sleeves.

"Well, I'd say the first step is an apology. And after that, all you can do is your best," she said. Her hands ran through my hair, soothingly, and I leaned into the touch even as a part of me knew that I didn't deserve it.

We stayed like that for a while before, shakily, I found my composure again. I pulled away, and let the pan fall into the sink. "I'm gonna head to bed, I think," I said, my voice still a little shaky. "I had a long day."

"Alright, Sophia," Mom said. A part of me hated that she was a better mom than I'd had as Talia, even though Sophia's mom had to work more to make ends meet. Another part of me still hated her for being with Steven to begin with, although I had some more perspective to see that he had fooled her just as much as he'd fooled me. The idea of even having a good relationship with my mother was a novel one, but it felt like it might actually be in my grasp–at least, as long as .

My room was small, barely big enough for a twin bed, a desk, and a small bookshelf/nightstand. I'd showered back at the PRT, because they had tinkertech dryers that could actually dry braids in a couple minutes, rather than half an hour. I practically collapsed into my bed, barely taking the time to shuck off my clothes. I thought that I'd be up for a long time, grappling with the philosophical questions of who I was, sleep kept at bay for the whole night. Instead, I was out like a light almost as soon as my head hit the pillows.

Chapter Text

I put off the Emma problem for the whole weekend. I knew I’d have to deal with it eventually, but god I was not looking forward to doing that. She texted me a few times, but I just told her that I was busy with my job and I wouldn’t be able to talk much. It had the benefit of almost being true, too. I did send a quick text about laying off Hebert for the moment, since I had something planned that I needed to do alone, and she reluctantly agreed.

It was currently March 27th, which–if Talia remembered correctly, which was not guaranteed, and if her memories could be trusted, which was also not guaranteed–should mean that Taylor has triggered (and the locker was certainly a thing that we did, Jesus Christ what the fuck past me). There were a few things that I could match up with Talia’s memories; I had heard about the Undersiders’ attacking the Ruby Dreams casino, as part of concerns about a potential escalating gang war. I had also heard some PRT reports about the Cornell bomber, and just the thought that she was going to be coming to my city and there was nothing I could do to stop it gave me the absolute chills. But all of those were things that Sophia had heard about beforehand, really–they didn’t confirm or disprove anything, yet.

Browbeat wasn’t a part of the wards team, though. I was pretty sure that he was there by the time that canon started, in Talia’s memories, so that would hopefully be some evidence one way or another. I seemed to remember that he died during the Leviathan fight, which–again, not going to be thinking about that right now. Anyway, I was reasonably sure that Taylor hadn’t started patrolling or whatever yet, at least as long as we were in the ‘canon’ timeline and not some alt-power thing or canon divergence (other than me) or literally any other multiversal possibility. Fuck, I hated dealing with so much uncertainty. Honestly, all I really wanted to do was get out and ghost around town in costume, maybe pin some Nazi shitheads to the wall with my crossbow bolts. I probably couldn’t do the latter, on account of I really wasn’t supposed to use my broadheads for anything short of lethal encounters, but I did have patrol today with Vista so at least I’d be able to burn some energy off. 

I knew I’d have to deal with Emma and Taylor at some point, but it absolutely did not have to be quite yet. I did take a moment to call Assault, though, after checking to make sure he wasn’t on patrol. He picked up on the third ring.

“Shadow Stalker?” He said, and I could hear the confusion in his voice–I wasn’t one for talking much in general, and certainly not with him.

“Assault,” I replied. “I had a hypothetical question to ask you.”

Amusement filled his voice, even over the shitty connection. “Oh, you did, did you? Well, let’s hear it.”

“Hypothetically, I had an idea for something that would be good for the Wards, but it hypothetically wasn’t technically allowed. And, hypothetically, I had an idea for how to skirt around the regulations, but I wanted to ask the expert at creative rule manipulation before I went ahead with it. Hypothetically speaking.”

He actually laughed out loud. “Well, hypothetically, I might be able to give some advice.”

~*~

I was scheduled for a patrol with Missy Sunday afternoon, and I showed up to the PRT building a good hour early. It was a sure bet that she would be there–we all knew how much she despised going home.

“Hey squirt,” I said, proving that despite my best efforts I was incapable of not being an asshole.

“Sophia,” she said, giving me a mild glare. It was made less intimidating by her cherubic cheeks and short height. It was made more intimidating by the way that she could make space her bitch. It came out in the wash, I thought. 

I set my bag down on the couch and fell backwards myself. “Look, you’re always bitching about how Image won’t let you have a weapon, right?”

She bristled. “I’m not bitching about it, I just think it’s ridiculous that they want me to go out on the same streets as fucking Hookwolf without so much as a taser.”

 “Hey, woah, I agree with you,” I said, holding out my hands. “It’s stupid and it’s going to get you hurt, again . Look, I just had an idea about how we could get around that.”

“Why?” She said, staring at me with mistrust in her eyes. It was earned, I knew, but it still hurt to see.

I shrugged. “Somebody made a pretty good point to me recently about the whole strength in numbers thing. If you’ve got a way to protect yourself, I won’t have to worry about you as much on our patrols.”

She bristled. “I can take care of myself just fine!”

“I mean, sure, but you’re still a twelve year old. Ah bah bah bah!” I cut off her retort, holding up a finger. “You’re just a twelve year old, and I’m just a sixteen year old. A weapon is a force multiplier, and that’s even more true when it comes to our powers. You’re practically a god when it comes to controlling a battlefield, but there’s pretty much nothing you can do to actually take somebody down, right?”

She threw up her arms. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years!”

“Right! And I’m agreeing with you!” I shouted back. “Look, I get it, alright? My power is primarily defensive, and I don’t have much of a way to do a nonlethal take-down, short of phasing a brick into my opponents kneecap. And I’ve been informed that is ‘not a recommended action’ and ‘causes way too much work for Panacea.’ That’s the whole reason I started using a crossbow, and with the tranq darts I can actually convert my defensive power into a decent offense.”

She gave me a long look. “Fine, I’ll bite. What’s your plan to do what I’ve been trying to accomplish for the past two years?”

“Well, it’s not so much a whole plan as it is a stop-gap measure. The thing is, though, my costume has two crossbows. I was just thinking that, while we’re on patrol, it might be nice for you to hold onto one of them for me for a bit. They’re pretty heavy, after all.”

She crossed her arms. “I doubt that Piggy would appreciate the nuance.”

“I don’t think the Director really gives a shit, short of how it might impact PR or the Youth Guard. But the thing is, they can’t really get that pissed about this, at least not at you. The Wards aren’t supposed to get into any real danger, right? And we both know that’s horseshit, especially in Brockton Bay, but that’s the excuse they keep using to deny you weaponry.”

“And? You think giving me a crossbow is going to help with that?”

I shook my head. “Not on its own, no. But if you’re in a situation where you need to defend yourself, and you use one of my crossbows to do it, they won’t have a leg to stand on–after all, their whole argument hinges on you never being in that kind of danger. Of course, the flip side is that you can’t use it at all unless we can clearly prove you were in active danger, but c’mon. This is Brockton Bay.”

“That’s… not a bad idea, actually,” she admitted after a moment.

“And after that, we can probably spin it into getting you some kind of permanent weapon. After all, if you were in enough danger to need to borrow one, it’s reasonable that you might need it again. I’m pretty sure we can get Image on board, too–maybe some kind of costume redesign while we’re at it, too. It’d be an excuse to generate some hype, get a whole new round of toys going. It’ll probably need to be some kind of cutesy and nonlethal thing, but appearance should always be secondary to keeping you alive.”

That had come out as a bit of a ramble, but I’d been thinking about this for a while now. It was just stupid for us to deliberately handicap Missy, not when she was one of the most powerful Shakers in the whole damn protectorate and she had more experience than any of the other Wards. Maybe in another department, in another city that didn’t have a teleporting suicide bomber, a rage dragon, a massive neonazi presence pulling strings behind the scene, and some of the highest cape violence per capita in the nation–well, maybe there it would make sense to try and let Missy stay a child for as long as she could. But this was Brockton Bay, and the PRT was sending Vista out to fight on the front lines. And beside, Missy had clearly stopped being a child a long time ago, not really.

She stared at me, but I could see the gears churning behind her eyes. “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said. “Do you really think that would work?”

I waved my hand. “Eh, it’s fifty-fifty odds according to Assault. Worst case, I get chewed out for letting you handle my crossbows. You should come off squeaky clean either way.”

“You asked Assault?”

“He got away with calling himself Assault to match with Battery,” I pointed out. “And I know for a fact that he helped Dennis with getting himself called Clockblocker rather than Timestop or whatever bullshit Image dreamed up. I’m, like, 90% sure he has the entire regulations book memorized just so he can find amusing loopholes.”

Missy crossed her arms, sinking deeper into the couch. I let her deliberate, taking the opportunity to check over my crossbows and make sure they didn’t need any real maintenance. The sight had been knocked out of alignment slightly, and I spent a few moments fiddling with the bolts to re-align it. Then I got out a small tube of bow string wax and gently applied it to the string, checking the condition as I went. There were a few parts that showed the slightest signs of fraying, but it wasn’t bad enough to replace the string yet. I figured I could safely get another fifty to a hundred shots out of it before it got to that point. I’d probably want to replace it in the next few days, but it wasn’t urgent yet, especially since I’d restringed my backup only a few days back.

“Alright, fine,” Missy said at long last. “I’m not convinced it’ll work, but it’s better than just hitting my head against a brick wall.”

“Great, let’s get started then,” I said, and put my crossbow down. Then I reached into my bag and pulled out a nerf blaster, which I tossed to her with a quick, “Catch!”

She caught it out of the air, and the space around her hands only warped slightly as her power ensured a clean catch. Then she scowled at me. “Oh fuck you, Stalker. This another way of calling me a kid?”

I snorted. “I don’t need a roundabout way of doing that, squirt. No, this is what you’re gonna train with until I’m convinced you aren’t gonna hurt yourself or anybody you don’t mean to with a crossbow. Do you think I just started out shooting four-hundred-dollar instruments of war? No, I worked my way up to that.”

“Are you telling me that Shadow Stalker started her career shooting criminals with Nerf guns? ”

“Spread that around and you’re dead meat,” I said with a glare. “Anyway, even a nerf dart is gonna do some damage when it rematerializes inside of your kneecap.”

“Holy crap, you’re serious,” she said, staring at me with wide eyes.

I smirked. “Yeah, there might be a Nazi or two in the bay who still have a few nerf darts stuck inside their torso. That’s not important right now, though. C’mon, I’ve got the ranged target room booked for the next hour.”

The ranged target room was one of several mixed-use training facilities at the headquarters, used by both the PRT members and the Wards. It consisted of a long room with reinforced walls, and a plethora of different available targets ranging from standard packed-cloth archery targets, to ballistic gel dummies with accurate skeletons that could mimic a human body, to a basic skeet-shooting system built into one of the walls. I’d only been in the Wards for six months and I’d already logged over two hundred hours training here. 

I had a lot more fun than I’d thought I would, working with Missy. We’d trained together some before, but only in bigger groups with the whole of the Wards. It turned out that she was pretty intense when she got into it, and she had a ton of creative ideas for how she could use her power. She also immediately defaulted to proper trigger discipline and appropriate gun handling, even with the nerf blaster, which I hadn’t been expecting. Apparently she’d heard Militia talk about it enough that it was pretty much second nature, now, which was a damn good sign. I gave her a short talk about range etiquette and safety, about making sure that the range is clear before shooting anything, which she treated with the respect that it (if not I) deserved.

For the first fifteen minutes, I just had her practice ordinary target practice. A nerf blaster is substantially less accurate than a crossbow or a gun, of course–they shoot slower, with no rifling or fletching to keep them on target. That made it a pretty good tool to start with, in my mind, since it would help her get her head around the basics. 

After that, I had her start to incorporate her powers into things. It turned out that, unsurprisingly, Vista would be a downright menace with a projectile weapon. She could narrow space in a cone around her target to catch inaccurate shots and funnel them in. She could easily shoot around corners, or even curve space to shoot a target from the front and tag them from the back. 

After that, I brought out the big guns–well, metaphorically. From my bag, I pulled out the other weapon I’d brought, a paintball rifle. “So, I’ve been thinking, and I think this would work the best for you, longterm,” I said, placing it in her hands. She immediately dropped the barrel, placing her fingers around the grip but keeping her finger straight.

“A paintball gun?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Yup,” I replied, shrugging one shoulder. “It’s guaranteed nonlethal, which is helpful–it’s hard to sell the whole ‘child soldier’ angle if you’re literally using a weapon that normal people only use to play around. And we could put all kinds of payloads in the paint. Tranqs would be easy, but you could also do confoam or smoke cover, or whatever. The main issues of paintball guns, their short range and their inaccuracy, are all easily covered by your power.”

She gave it another considering stare. “Huh.” Then she turned and unleashed a burst of eight shots. She fired straight, not moving the barrel at all, but the space in front of her warped and twisted. Eight targets were splattered with paint–not dead center, but none of them missed either. It was something we could work on, for sure.

Eventually, we had to leave for patrol. It was a quiet one, which for once I actually appreciated. Missy and I spent most of the time roof-hopping and keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity. The route had us staying away from any of the more gang-ridden parts of the city, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that we didn’t find much. A few people took our photos, and we stopped at one point to sign autographs for a group of tourists, but otherwise it was fairly quiet. I tried to enjoy it while I could, knowing what I did about what might well be coming.

Vista was a professional in the field, eschewing any small talk. That was fine by me. I knew that Missy thought that Vista was the best part of her, and I was sure that Shadow Stalker was the best part of me as well. It was often easier to be a hero than to be a teenage girl.

After two hours were up, we made our way back to the PRT HQ–entering through the front, this time, since we were both in costume. We didn’t talk much again until we got back into the base and were heading down the elevator into the base. This time, it was Missy who broke the surprisingly companionable quiet.

“So, uh, what’s the plan for when I’m not patrolling with you?”

“I dunno, I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet,” I replied. “None of the others really use weapons, other than Kid Win, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to muck with untested tinkertech if you aren’t the tinker. Why?”

“It’s just, um, next week I’m patrolling with Gallant, and I wasn’t sure if you’d talked to him about your plan.” She blushed, looking down bashfully.

“Oh god, I forgot about your thing with Dean,” I said without thinking. I immediately regretted it, because making fun of a preteen for her crush was way too bitchy even for me.

She scowled, but I could see the hurt flashing in her eyes. “What do you mean, my thing with Dean? You have a problem or something?”

I held up my hand, guilt flooding me. “No, shit, I’m sorry. That came out wrong. The only problem I have with your little crush on Dean is that you’re way too good for him.” That… wasn’t much better. God damn, why was I so good at sticking my foot in my mouth?

“I’m–sorry, what?” She blinked a few times, stunned.

“Look, do you really want me to get into the problems I have with your crush? And I’m self-aware enough to know that, like, half of them are personal issues.”

“Try me,” she said, because she was a stubborn bitch.

“Fuck, fine,” I said, shaking my head. “Okay, so first, he’s a Stansfield. They’re rich as sin, and I know for a fact that you don’t get to be that rich in this city without at least tolerating some of the racist white supremacists with Empire ties that run this shithole. I’m not saying that the Stansfields are Empire, but I know that his parents must have business connections that they know are Empire and just ignore it because it’s inconvenient. And I know that Dean doesn’t believe in any of that crap, but I also know that he’s at least learned to turn a blind eye to it.”

“You got any proof of that?” She said, glaring at me.

I sighed. “I mean, no, obviously not. But ask him about it sometime, I doubt he’ll outright deny it. And I know that there’s not much he can personally do, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, okay?”

“So that’s one reason. You think that his parents might have some connections who might be Nazis. What else?”

“He’s a wet paper towel of a person. He might be able to literally see emotions, but he’s less than useless when it comes to actually doing something about it. He knows you have a crush on him, he knows all the shit going on with your parents, he knows that Amy is burning out at the hospital, that Chris is depressed and Dennis is hiding his pain with humor, and he must have seen how much rage I had going on, but he’s content to just let that shit be without actually doing a damn thing.”

“And what does that make you, then, if you also know that stuff and don’t do anything?” She glared at me, which, fair.

“A raging hypocrite, I guess,” I said with a shrug. “But I wasn’t really in a ‘helping’ stage of my life until recently, and I didn’t pretend to be either. Everyone knows I’m a bitch. Meanwhile, Gallant wants to act like the knight in shining armor but he never fucking saves anyone.”

Missy tries to glower but it just comes off as a pout, and I feel myself relent. “Look, Missy, don’t take it too seriously. It’s probably mainly just because he reminds me of the richer Empire kids at Winslow, and so I’m projecting my anger at them onto him.

She bit her lip. “Have you ever actually talked to him? I mean, an actual conversation, not just wards-talk and patrol and stuff.”

That made me hesitate. “Well, I–huh. You know, I’m not actually sure if I have.”

“I think you should do that before you judge him for all that. He’s got a lot going on, and he’s trying. I think he’s more frustrated with not being able to really help people than anybody else. And I know he doesn’t talk about his parents much, but he’s got issues with them too.”

My gut reaction was to defend myself, because seriously, I’m supposed to have sympathy for the rich white boy? But I’m trying to be less of a bitch, and I can admit that a lot of my judgment of Dean was kind of based on assumptions. “Fuck,” I muttered. “Okay, fine, I’ll give him a chance. Still think you deserve better, but whatever.”

She nodded, and in that moment she looks so much more mature than her twelve years. I’d always known that powers age us in ways that most people can’t see, but it’s rarely as clear as with Missy. She had to grow up fast, to survive her home and the streets of the Bay. Privately, I made a note to see what I can do about getting Missy away from her parents, because nobody should have to live with their freaking trigger event like that.

We changed in silence, slipping out of our cape outfits and back into civvie clothes. I always felt diminished when I slipped back from Shadow Stalker into Sophia Hess, like I’d lost the best part of me. I was pretty sure that Missy knew what that was like better than any of the rest of the Wards. 

“Hey, Sophia,” she said, as I turned to head out. “Thanks, for today. I, uh, heard you’d had something of a change of heart from Carlos, but I didn’t really believe it until now.”

I gave her a smirk. “Yeah, well, don’t expect me to suddenly join hands and sing Kumbaya, squirt. I just realized that I’m not getting out of here any time soon, and I’d rather have people I trust at my back when we go out to punch some Nazi assholes.”

“Call me squirt one more time and I’ll twist you into a fucking pretzel,” came Missy’s deadpan reply. It startled a laugh from me, and broke up the heaviness of the conversation before.

“Sure thing, pipsqueak,” I replied, walking away. Then the world swam around me and I walked directly into a wall that Missy twisted into my path. Prepubescent giggles follow me as the world returned to normal and I stalked off, flipping her the bird over my shoulder as I left. Apparently, being nicer meant I was gonna be surrounded by little shits.

Still, I couldn’t help the warm feeling in my chest as I went home.

Chapter Text

Winslow was a shitheap, although it wasn’t quite the hive of scum and villainy that it’s reputation made it out to be. Classes were a mixed bag, and I was bored in science and math, already having been through most of the material as Talia–which, actually, was an argument in favor of Talia’s existence. I was bored in English and History, but for a very different reason. Neither sides of me gave much of a shit about those classes.

There were people wearing gang colors, but it tended to be on the subtler side. There was an official dress code that banned the obvious shit–no swastikas or red-and-green armbands–but the Korean kid wearing a shirt with a christmas tree pattern? The skinny white girl wearing a sports jersey with the name Lane and the number 14 emblazoned on it? That shit was harder to control. It didn’t help that the Nazis had a rotating list of dogwhistles that they liked to rotate through. 

There was tension between the junior ‘Bad Boyz’ and the Hitler youth, but it rarely spilled out into outright violence, at least no more than a few shoves or a couple weak punches here or there. 

The biggest problem I was facing was the drudgery of it all. Boring lectures by uninspired teachers, on subjects I either knew or couldn’t bring myself to give a shit about, while out in the real world Brockton Bay became shittier every day. I already missed the freedom of college, and only one of my memories had even experienced it. By the time lunch rolled around, it felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. At least for three days a week, I only had to go for half-days.

I knew where Hebert was going to be, because it was where she usually went during lunch. She liked to hide in the bathrooms to eat her lunch, and there was one in particular on the third floor that people rarely went to because it was out of the way and cramped. Ignoring the twinge of guilt that thought caused, and telling Emma not to wait for me, I made a beeline toward the restroom. I hung the ‘out-of-order’ sign on the door to make sure nobody would disturb us, then I went in.

Sure enough, as soon as I pushed the door open, I could see Hebert’s worn sneakers underneath one of the stalls. “I know you’re in there,” I said, crossing my arms. “We need to have a chat, you and I.”

Was it probably a bad idea to corner Taylor in the toilets, alone? Yep. Did I have a better idea for how to do this? No, no I did not. Regardless, it seemed to work–she pushed the door open with a wary hesitance, looking around. Her whole body language was hunched, and she had a brown paper bag in one hand, her lunch I assumed.

“Hebert,” I leaned against the wall, between her and the door out. “I had somebody tell me something recently that gave me a bit of perspective.”

She stared down at the ground, hands clenched into fists, but she didn’t say anything. 

“See, for the longest time, I was sure that there were only two kinds of people left in the world: those who fight against the inevitable end, and those who turn around and die. I looked at this city, at the fucking neonazis who practically run the place,  at the slaving and kidnapping gangs of violent criminals, and the authorities who just roll over and let them do what they want with barely a slap on the wrist. And, well, I thought to myself, you’re either a predator or you’re passive prey, waiting until the lion catches you and snaps your neck. We all die, whether in a villain attack or to an endbringer or, if you’re very lucky, of natural causes. It’s just a matter of how much you struggle on the way there.”

“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.” The words slipped from Taylor’s mouth, surprising both of us. She flinched back, but I could see the steel in her spine underneath her cowering posture. How blind had I been, to look at her and think her weak before?

“Yeah, exactly. But recently, somebody pointed out that there’s more than one way to survive. They showed me that there’s a kind of strength in endurance, when you could easily fold. And well, I couldn’t really stop thinking about it, you know? Most people in your position would have folded by now–they would have pulled out of school, or tried to move, or gone to the Empire for protection. They would have given it, I’m sure.”

Now she glared at me, meeting my eyes for the first time. “I’m not about to join the fucking Nazis just because some bitches are making my life a living hell.”

I laughed, just a little. “Yeah, there it is. Emma had one awful day and she fucking broke, y’know? But not you. You just endure. Even after all that shit back in January, you were back in school by the end of the month. And you just took it, and endured, and never broke because that would mean that Emma and I had won, right? There’s some real fuckin’ strength in that shit.”

“Go fuck yourself, Hess,” she said, straightening. Her face had stretched into a rictus of fury.

“What are you gonna do, huh Hebert? You gonna punch me? I’ll give you one for free.”

As soon as I said that, she was stepping forward into a right hook. I saw it coming, knew that I could dodge out of the way if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t move. I did roll with the punch somewhat, just to keep from breaking my jaw or her fingers, but otherwise I took the full force across my cheek.

There was some decent force to it. The blow whipped my head around, with enough force left over to send me stumbling to the side and slumping against one of the bathroom stall doors. I’d tried to brace myself, but I’d still bit my cheek a bit, and the iron taste of blood started to spill into my mouth. I took a moment to collect myself and then pushed myself back to my feet, working my jaw and touching it tenderly with a hand. I could tell it was going to swell like a motherfucker.

Taylor, meanwhile, was shaking her hand out. I knew that must have hurt like a bitch for her as well, especially if she didn’t have much experience with actually punching people. She seemed almost like she was in shock, like she couldn’t believe she’d actually done that. I could see her start to shut down, like she knew that this was a trap and I’d just gotten what I wanted. And, to be fair, a week ago it would have been just that.

“Damn, that was a nice hook,” I said, and then I walked over and spat some blood out into the sink. I ran the water for a bit, watched it turn pink and swirl down the drain, even as I kept an eye on Taylor in the mirror. “Who taught you how to throw a punch? It’s clear you’ve got at least a little experience.”

She watched me with cautious eyes. “My dad was a dockworker,” she said, like it answered everything. I supposed it did.

“Your form’s not terrible, but it could be improved a lot. For a right hook you’re gonna want to bring your arm higher up, like you’re hugging a big tree.” I said. “And you’d get more power out of it if you really stepped into it and twisted your body. The power of a punch comes from the whole body, not just the arm–your heels and waist should be rotating into it as well.”

I turned off the water and turned my body to the side, so she could see my profile. Then I threw a punch, slowly, making sure to demonstrate my technique, which I’d trained to be nearly flawless. Sure, I mainly fought with my crossbows, but that didn’t mean I could neglect my CQC skills–there were times when a crossbow just wasn’t practical, and Image had taken a very dim view to my request to use a knife.

“Now you,” I said, after I’d demonstrated it a few times.

I really should have expected her to try and punch me again, but it actually took me a bit off guard. Not so much off guard I couldn’t dodge out of the way, though. I twisted around her punch and grabbed her hand at the full extension.

“Better,” I said, then I reached out and pushed her elbow higher up. “Keep the elbow up, though–you want it level or even a bit higher than the hand itself. Otherwise you’re losing out on force.”

She recoiled, pulling herself away from me with a glare. “Again,” I said, and once more she tried to hit me with the right cross.

This time I caught the hand with my own, wrapping my hand around her wrist. “Better posture, but now you’re not twisting your waist. I shouldn’t be able to catch it this easily.”

Somehow, we slipped into an impromptu lesson for the next ten minutes. Hebert never stopped glaring at me, but there was confusion there as well. She didn’t speak much, but she was an apt pupil–far more so than I would have expected. And she never tried to pull her punches, even when she came close to actually hitting me. Every punch was thrown with the intention to land a devastating blow. It was a brutality that the Wards trainers would have found alarming, but I could only approve. Earth Bet wasn’t a world for people who showed mercy to their enemies.

The bell rang, surprising both of us. I let go of my grip on Taylor’s wrist, stepping back. “I can get Emma to lay off, for now. But I’ll be here the same time tomorrow.”

Taylor was panting with exertion, glaring at me. “Fuck you,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on in your sick head, but this doesn’t make us even, alright?”

“I never said it did,” I replied with a shrug.

“And your cheek?” She said, as if daring me.

I raised my eyebrow. “Got hit with a softball, didn’t I?”

“Fine,” she said, and then she pulled her hood up and stomped out of the bathroom. I watched her go, then pulled out my phone and opened up the group chat with Emma and Madison.

S: T is off limits for now

E: wth sophia???

S: ill tell u l8r

S: short version, got her 2 push back

S: finally

E: u gonna get her in trouble?

E: i can call daddy if u want

I grimaced at that.

S: no

S: im done hiding behind adults

S: and we’re done with the taunts

S: this is between us now and i dont need anybody else interfering

S: alright?

M: Alright, Sophia. I’ll let the others know to back off as well.

There was Madison, folding like a wet paper towel as always. Emma took a little longer to reply, which was to be expected. I was well aware just how much of Emma’s fragile view of the world had been built on top of her supposed superiority over Taylor, and it wasn’t going to be easy to dismantle that without sending the girl spiraling. A part of me wanted to do just that, to punish her for the cruelty she’d inflicted, but–well, it was largely my fault to begin with. Taylor and Emma were strong and weak in different ways, and if I hadn’t come by with my stupid fucking ‘lone wolf’ predator rhetoric, they could have supported each other and covered their weaknesses. There was a reason wolves hunted in packs, after all. This whole clusterfuck was my fault, and I would have to fix it.

I was almost to my next class by the time Emma’s text came back.

E: were gonna have words Sophia

E: but

E: fine

I slipped into the computer lab a few seconds before the bell rang. Mrs. Knott looked up as I entered, and then her eyes went wide. “Sophia, what happened? Are you alright?”

I shrugged. “Got hit with a softball over lunch,” I said.

“Do you need to see the nurse?” She asked.

“Nah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” I dropped my backpack to the ground and slipped into the seat beside Emma. Mrs. Knott looked as if she wanted to push the issue more, but it was Winslow. People showing up with injuries that they don’t want to explain is kind of par for the course here. With nothing else to do, she started in on the lesson, an explanation of a simple insertion sort. 

Emma, on the other hand, who had seen me right before lunch, was a lot more concerned. “What the hell happened, Sophia? Is that from Taylor? ” she asked in a low hiss.

I gave her a side shrug as I booted up the computer. “Might be. Like I said, I finally got her to push back. I think she’s got some potential, actually.”

The look Emma gave me was a mix of shock, disbelief, and horror. “W-what?”

I sighed, then grabbed her hand. “Look, the whole point of this was to find her breaking point, show her that she’s just prey. Right? But Ems, I’m pretty sure that Hebert just doesn’t have one, not like we do.”

“Doesn’t have what?”

“A breaking point. She just… endures. It’s not that she’s not fighting back because she’s resigned or she’s given up or whatever. She just knows that she can outlast us. It’s a different kind of strength.”

Emma’s hand was shaking in my own. “But… you said she was useless. She’s always been a weak crybaby, always. ”

I sighed, checking on Mrs. Knott at the front of the class, who was prattling on about the runtime of the insertion sort. “Hey, Ems. You’re fine. You’re strong. You’re a survivor. That’s all true, regardless of what’s up with Hebert. It’s like… different kinds of predators, you know? The difference between a wolf and a vulture.” That seemed to help with some of Emma’s freak-out, but it also unfortunately drew Mrs. Knott’s attention.

“Miss Hess, do you know the answer?” 

I looked up. “Sorry, could you repeat the question?”

She shook her head. “I was asking if you knew the runtime of the algorithm.”

I thought for a moment. “Um, worst case should be n squared minus n all over two, which would happen in either an already sorted or reverse sorted list. So, uh, big-O of n squared, I guess? I’d need some more time to work out the actual average runtime for a randomly sorted list.”

“I, well, yes,” the teacher said, looking a little flustered. Oh shit, I’d fallen back on Talia’s automatic knowledge. To her, that kind of question was so elementary that I hadn’t even considered how strange it would be for Sophia to answer like that. “As Sophia said, we should expect that the runtime will increase at roughly the square of the size of the list.”

Fortunately Emma was too rattled to give me a weird look, and the rest of the class either didn’t care or had already learned their lessons about fucking with me. I tuned Mrs. Knott out and started to work on today’s assignment, which was actually implementing the insertion sort algorithm.

#main function

def main() {

listSize := 30;

unsortedList := [randInt(0,255)]*listSize;

sortedList := insertionSort(unsortedList);

print.cmd(sortedList);

#performs insertion sort on unsorted list, returns new sorted list

def insertionSort(unsortedList) {

sortedList := []*listSize; 

#get next element in list#

for element in unsortedList:{ 

for index in sortedList.nonemptyLength():{

#only add element if smaller than next element

if element < sortedList[index]:{

sortedList.insert.shift(element, index); 

return(sortedList);

if __name__ == “__main__”:{

main()

My fingers flew over the keys, and I felt myself relax into the simple pleasure of coding. We were writing in a language called Wyrm, which according to Sophia’s bored recollection of this class had actually been written and released by Dragon. It was pretty easy to get my head around after looking up a few example programs online–the syntax was clearly derived from C, but it had the legibility and dynamic typing of Python, and some pretty nice features–the ‘insert.shift’ function built in for lists was a particularly nice discovery that saved me a few lines of code. The IDE was also Dragon-tech and it was like something out of a dream, quickly catching syntax errors, inconsistencies in variable names, and even offering automatically generated comments that were far more useful than they had any right to be.

All told, it only took me about five minutes to write the program, and another three minutes to test it and confirm it was working alright. I had some time to kill, so I wrote a few other sorting algorithms as well–a selection sort, which was kind of just the inverse of the insertion sort, and then a bubble sort as well. Then I got to work on some of the relatively trickier algorithms, starting with a merge sort and a quick sort. For fun, I also wrote a one-line Bogo sort, and then a modified Bogo sort that at least couldn’t make backwards progress.

I had about twenty minutes to kill after that, and I realized that Mrs. Knott had stopped her lecture and the rest of the class was finally getting to work on their own programs. I knew better than to try and help Emma yet, although if she looked like she might pull her hair out that could change. She was surprisingly proud about getting help, even for classes that she hated. I shoved down the bit of guilt that said it might be partly my fault.

Since I had some extra time, I looked into some of the libraries that were already installed on the computer and found an interesting one called SerPlot that seemed to do what I wanted. It took a little bit of digging around in the documentation, but I was able to get a kind of janky animation going without too much effort. I knew I could get it better if I put some more effort into it, but it did what I wanted it to, which was to visualize the different sorting arrays. 

I’d gotten into the flow of things, so I didn’t notice Mrs. Knott approaching us until she was practically behind me. “Emma, Sophia, how are things going over here?”

“Fine,” Emma said. I looked over at her screen–her code was mostly alright, although I could tell she was going to have some index issues that would cause it to break. And, indeed, she had an out-of-bounds exception when she tried to run her program.

“The index starts at zero, Ems,” I said, absently.

She scowled at me, but then she looked back at her code. “I don’t get why they don’t just start counting at one,” she muttered, adding a ‘-1’ that would fix the issue. Not the most elegant of solutions, but hey, it’d work.

“Good catch, Sophia! And how’s your program going?”

I looked at my screen, which was a mess of different functions and rushed spaghetti code. “Oh, uh, it’s fine?”

I made a few quick changes, did a quick compile, and then ran the code. A small black window popped up, with thirty white bars of different heights. They began to move around, with smaller ones jumping toward the front and pushing the rest forward. It took about twenty seconds for the animation to complete, and then it printed the sorted list in the command line.

Mrs. Knott stared, her mouth hanging open in shock. After a moment, she recollected herself. “That’s…that’s very impressive, Sophia. Did you just write that now?”

I shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed at the attention. “Um, yeah? Well, some of the code for the animation came from the examples in the serPlot documentation, but I modified it to work here.”

“Huh,” she said, staring at me. “Well, I think that’s worth some extra credit, certainly. Good work, both of you.”

I nodded as she walked away toward other students, saving the program and dropping the files into the homework submission folder, then I powered off the computer and began to pack up.

Emma jabbed me in the side as we left. “What’s going on with you? First the stuff with Hebert, then you’re sucking up to Mrs. Knott? Since when did you give a shit about programming?”

I shrugged. “I dunno, Ems. I didn’t do it for her, though, I was just bored. Some of the people at work were talking about it and it got me interested. It’s like a puzzle, kind of. It’s better than history or world studies, at least. If I’m stuck in school anyway, I’d rather work on something interesting than be bored shitless.”

She accepted that, although I knew that she thought it was weird. That was fine, though–it was safer for Emma to pick up on my changes than anybody else, because she at least couldn’t get me thrown into an M/S tank. It wasn’t like I’d changed so drastically as to be unrecognizable–I was still Sophia, I still looked like her and talked like her, because I was her. I was just…more, now, with some better perspective about how the world worked. I knew that I’d probably have to give Emma a better answer at some point, which would mean talking about my whole ‘revelation over therapy’ thing, but that could wait. 

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I saw Hebert in my English class, and she gave me a glare that turned into a faint smirk of satisfaction when she saw the way my jaw had bruised and swelled up into a purple blotch, but she didn’t say anything and neither did I. A few of Emma’s little hanger-ons tried to talk some shit near Hebert’s desk, but I shot them a glare and they scattered like flighty little birds. Parasites, the lot of them. Little yappy birds that would crumble like so much tissue paper under even a fraction of the pressure we’d put Hebert through.

For her part, Hebert didn’t acknowledge my help, but I hadn’t exactly expected her to. At least she’d see that I kept my word–that was the important thing for now. And, hopefully, this could be the start of a chain of events that wouldn’t end with me enslaved by one of Heartbreaker’s less murderous children. Hopefully.

Chapter Text

Despite everything, I managed to slip into a routine. I’d wake up at six, get to school by six thirty, and have an hour of track practice before school. Then I’d shower off with the rest of the girls, and I’d have about fifteen minutes to finish whatever homework I’d forgotten to do the night before. Classes continued to be boring, and I’ll admit that I blew off most of them, only putting in enough effort to keep a low B average. Honestly, between my power, the track team, and my CS knowledge, I had several careers lined up for me, and none of them would care much if I got a C+ in World History. If I wanted to go to college, it’d be easy enough to get a decent track scholarship even with my grades–and that wasn’t even factoring in that the Protectorate tended to give their members full rides.

At least four days a week, I was at the PRT HQ for either patrol, training, or console duty. Sometimes I’d go even if I wasn’t on duty, usually to meet up with Missy and help her get comfortable with using ranged weapons. I also pushed myself harder than usual, practicing shifting between my breaker state and my normal one faster, practicing shooting through a wall or a potential hostage and reforming the bolt on the other side, practicing my mobility with the lessened gravity and greater drag that came with my shadows.  I had some measure of control over how much physical forces actually affected me in that state, which was why I could drift slowly one moment, and then shoot a bolt that was barely influenced by gravity or air resistance the next. 

I also continued to have… lessons, for lack of a better word, with Hebert during lunch. Mostly it consisted of me showing her a new way to try and hurt me, and then practicing that until she wasn’t shit at it. I focused on body blows, mainly, because now and then Hebert got lucky and slipped past my guard, and I didn’t want to deal with the bullshit that would come from a bunch of clearly visible bruises. For the most part, Emma respected my request to lay off of her, and I could tell that Hebert was relieved to not be dealing with all the rumors and whispers, although I was pretty sure she was also kinda just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It was equally clear that Hebert didn’t trust me, and that she wasn’t pulling any of her punches–or kicks, or grapples, when we practiced those. She clearly still hated me, which was fair. The shit we’d pulled on her was, well, horrendous. I was more than a little pissed at past Sophia, considering we lived in the neonazi capital of the US and I apparently decided to pick on a white girl with strong enough morals to not hide behind Kaiser’s skirts. Was it a little telling that I knew I wouldn’t have regretted my actions if I had gone after one of the Empire wannabes? Maybe, but honestly anybody willing to call themselves a nazi in 2011 deserved the locker incident or worse.

In any event, Hebert clearly hated my guts, but she was willing to learn from me. I don’t know if she realized it was my best attempt at repentance, or what, but we had a weird kind of unspoken truce between us these days. She was acerbic and defensive, naturally, and she still spent most of her time slumped in her baggy hoodie, but increasingly I could see the times when her steel spine shone through. It made me feel optimistic, because if Talia’s memories were to be trusted, she would certainly need that soon.

Also, because I was looking for it, I noticed that whenever we fought, I’d get gnats clinging to my joints. They were hard to see, and I’m sure I’d miss them ordinarily, but once I knew what to look for they weren’t too hard to spot. It wasn’t quite proof, but it was strong evidence that Hebert had in fact triggered–and that Talia’s memories were at least somewhat accurate. It was currently late March, and if my memories were to be trusted Skitter first went out sometime in early April, but I couldn’t remember exactly when that was; not to mention that I’d almost certainly already introduced enough changes to throw off events, even if Talia’s memories were perfectly accurate.

I tried not to think much about what I, what Talia, had left behind in her other life. I also tried not to think about how the end of the world might well happen in the next two years, and there was very little I could do to prevent it–in fact, there was every chance that my arrival and actions had doomed Earth Bet, and perhaps every other adjacent reality. Whether that included Talia’s world, well, that was far above my paygrade. I had mixed success with putting those thoughts out of mind–certainly there were several more emotional breakdowns over the first two weeks since the merging of memories, although I managed to make sure I had them in privacy. I wasn’t particularly proud of that, but Sophia’s emotional control had been predicated on bullying and a destructive predator-prey mentality, and both of those had been stripped away from me.

All I could really do was take each day as it came, and try my best to be a better person than the original Sophia Hess had been. My very arrival had no doubt sent the future into flux, and if Taylor really was to be humanity’s best hope, it was probably a better idea to be on her good side, as much as I could. I also had some hope that there were precogs powerful enough to correct whatever ripples my presence might have; I had a hard time believing that whatever I did would really have an impact when put up against the absolute bullshit that was Path to Victory. Again, if Talia’s memories could be trusted, but if they couldn’t then there was no reason to worry about an apocalypse anyways, so it evened out.

Like I said, I tried not to think about it.

There was one rather unexpected moment in those couple weeks–unexpected because for all that we were on the same Wards team together, I had never really talked much with Chris. Sophia had always wrote him off as a weakling and a nerd, and a defective one at that. I knew that he spent most of his time tinkering, but between his dyscalculia and his lack of a tinker specialization, he was frustrated with his progress more often than not. Sophia had never given him much more thought than that, and until we were both on base together one day, neither had I.

Chris and I were sitting around the Wards lounge. I had console duty in half an hour or so, and he liked to come in for Tinkering time whenever he had the chance. I was using the opportunity to get ahead on some of the reading for English class, although I was really struggling because William Faulkner was a dickhead who was so far up his own ass he was smelling his stomach. Chris was typing away on a heavily modified computer, and as I got increasingly bored with trying to navigate the bullshit of Absalom, Absalom I started to watch him more and more. He looked–frustrated, honestly, like whatever he was doing should be working but just wasn’t. It was a feeling I was very familiar with. 

Eventually, I gave up on the book. “What are you working on?” I asked him, standing up and circling around the couch to see the screen.

“What? Oh, um, it’s a targeting program for the alternator cannon I’m working on, so that it can recognize certain capes and only target them.”

“Really?” I said, feeling my interest getting piqued. “What kind of algorithm are you using for the targeting? Is it some kind of facial detection, or object tracking, or what?”

He gave me a very strange look, and if I wasn’t so incredibly bored with Faulkner, and also so desperate to talk about CS stuff with anybody who knew more than the absolute basics, I probably would have stopped talking there to keep my cover. But, well. I was.

“It’s, um, supposed to use an application of a multi-level neural network and a deep learning algorithm trained against an adversarial network, in conjunction with a facial recognition program based on geometric analysis and transformation of facial shapes, so that it can simulate a three-dimensional virtual mimicry of the environment and automatically calibrate the shot, and so that it can lock on to a given target and crossreference them against a potential database of known villains. Or, um, something like that. I’m still working on it.

I knew, for most people, that would just sound like tinkertech babble. But, well, I had spent years studying this shit, and I had specialized in artificial intelligence. “That makes a lot of sense,” I said, nodding. “Although using a GAN can run into non-convergence or mode collapse, and they’re often pretty sensitive to whatever hyperparamaters you initialize.”

“What the hell?” He said, blinking up at me with those wide cow eyes.

“Here, let me see what you’re working on.” I sat down next to him, hip-checking him slightly so I could get a better look at the screen. Whatever comments I was going to make about the actual program died as soon as I actually started to read the screen.

“What the hell is this shit?” I said, looking at the block of some of the absolute worst spaghetti code I’d seen in my whole life. “It looks like it’s already been passed through a level of obfuscation. Jesus, Chris, who taught you how to code?”

He flushed. “I taught myself, okay? And my power helps out.”

I grimaced, because I could tell when I was being a bitch sometimes. “Yeah, well, your power might be functional, but it sure as hell isn’t helping with readability or documentation.”

He gave me a confused look. “Does that… really matter? I mean, if the program works, it works, right?”

I gave him an incredulous look. “Does it matter? Look, even if you’re not working with other people, how often have you wanted to go back and modify some of your old code, only to find it completely incomprehensible? How often do you have to redo something you’ve already done, because you didn’t use a proper object-oriented framework?”

“Object-oriented?” He said, blinking a few times.

“Oh my god,” I said, staring at him in horror.

He blushed even harder, and a hurt look flashed over his face. “Look, if you’re just here to yell at me and call me dumb, then you can—”

“No, wait, shit. Um, sorry, I’m not good at this, it’s just– wow, Armsmaster fucked up. This isn’t on you, Chris, this is just, like, basic CS stuff that your tinker mentor should have taught you. I mean, fuck, you should be good at object oriented stuff, it’s all modular anyways–” I cut myself off, because fuck I was not supposed to know that. There wasn’t anything to do about it now, though, I’d just have to trundle on through.

“Modular?” He said, staring at me with confusion.

“Yeah, plug and play, you know?” I made a gesture with my hands to indicate plugging something in. “You create an object, with certain general properties, and then you create separate instances of it in the program. It’s one of the founding principals of modern computer science, y’know?”

He blinked a few times. I’d probably just told him his tinker specialization, or at least put him on the path to discover it. Was that a bad thing, though? 

It was surprisingly fun to talk with Chris about this kind of stuff, though. He was untrained, but he had killer instincts and was able to make correct leaps of logic that were astonishing. I didn’t know how much of that was Chris himself, and how much was his power, but honestly the distinction was academic. Before I knew it, the next thirty or so minutes had passed with me giving Chris a compressed crash course to Intro Computer Science.

“Okay, like look at this part here,” I said, pointing to a group of lines in the facial detection algorithm for the alternator cannon he was working on. “You’re manually creating a hundred triangles with a for loop and storing them as a two-dimensional array, which is fine, but you could make this way easier on yourself if you made each triangle an object and then stored them all together as one ‘face’ object, which could also handle a lot of the attached metadata. And right here, you’ve hardcoded your sorting algorithm–which has a quadratic run time, by the way, but we’ll get back to that–right into your main() function. If you want to sort something else later, you just have to copy the whole thing again, right? But if you make it a separate function, you can reuse it wherever, and copy it to other projects easier too.”

I looked over, to see Chris staring at me with an expression of baffled confusion, and I winced. “Oh, um, was I going too fast?”

He shook his head. “No, I mean, that all makes sense–like, it makes so much sense, I wish I’d heard about this before. I was just wondering, um, where did you learn all of that?”

I froze, looking down. Oh shit, oh fuck, Sophia was not supposed to know all of that. And, as usual, I went on the defensive. “What, just because I’m…a jock or whatever, I can’t like computer science?” I said. It was an old hurt–as Talia, I’d had so many people give me shit for studying CS, mainly (but certainly not only) the white guys in my classes. Because I ran track, because I was Black, because I was a woman, because I was a ‘frigid bitch,’ or all of the above. I had to remind myself that Chris had never shown himself to be like that, I’d never seen him treat anybody differently for their gender or their race.

He shrugged, clearly a little uncomfortable. “Um, sorry. You’re right, I shouldn’t have assumed, it’s just. I don’t know, you don’t really give off that vibe.”

I sighed, because, well, fair enough. “Yeah, I know. And I know I’ve been kind of hard to work with, but… I had a realization about the value of having a team, recently. Like, I think I was still kind of stuck in the solo vigilante mindset, and so I was looking at you all as just weights dragging me down. It was only when somebody knocked some sense into me that I realized helping you would help all of us. And, uh, I didn’t really think you needed my help with this stuff, because I just assumed that Armsmaster wouldn’t fuck up this bad with his mentoring.”

My phone began to beep, then. I took it out and cursed. “Fuck, I have to get on console. Listen, if you want more help with this stuff, just let me know. I don’t have too many people who give a shit about this in the rest of my life, and it was… nice, I guess.”

“Yeah, um, thanks, Sophia,” Chris said. 

I gave into my older sibling urges and gave him a noogie. “No problem, kid,” I said, then left to man the console, ignoring his protest of “we’re the same age!” coming from behind me. As I slipped the headset over my ears, I felt something that had been wound tight inside of my chest begin to relax slightly. Now I just had to hope that wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

Chapter Text

Missy didn’t quite know what to make of the changes in Sophia. 

Since the other girl joined the wards nine months back–since she was forced onto the team–Sophia has been nothing less than an absolute bitch. She complained about everything from her new costume to the drills they ran and the constraints of procedure. That wasn’t even getting into how much the girl had clashed with the whole team dynamic. Sophia clearly had a problem with authority, and she bristled under leadership of first Triumph and now Aegis. She thought Dennis was an immature clown, which–well, kind of–and she treated Chris and Dean like they were weak and worthless. And then there was how she acted toward Missy.

When she’d first found out that they were getting a girl for the team, Missy had been ecstatic. It had been two years since Shimmer had graduated to the Protectorate and promptly gotten the hell out of Brockton Bay, and Missy was more than a little sick of the sausage fest. It didn’t help that she had difficulty making any friends her own age–how was she supposed to relate to the girls who just want to talk about gel nail polish and which fictional vampire is the hottest, while Missy is walking around with a bandage around her stomach from Hookwolf? Not that there’s anything wrong with that kind of talk, exactly, but Missy knows that she had to grow up fast and it shows.

So yeah, she’d been excited to have a girl on the team. Then she’d met Shadow Stalker and her hopes took a rapid nose-dive into a flaming dumpster. Sophia was harsh and cruel, and she seemed to take particular delight in putting Missy down for being young. Dean had mentioned once that Sophia seemed to always glow at least faintly with anger, and Missy didn’t need emotion sight to know he was telling the truth. The Black girl walked around with a chip on her shoulder the size of the damn Rig, and although Missy had some sympathy given the state of Brockton Bay, it didn’t justify taking it out on the rest of the team.

So for the most part, Missy just tried to keep her head down around Sophia, falling back on a professionalism she’d learned as the only way to fight back against a PR team that seemed determined to declaw Vista and dress her up in ribbons and bows. It worked, too–Sophia was still dismissive and casually cruel, but she was skilled in the field and they were able to work together without too much of an issue.

And then Sophia threw a nerf gun at her and roped her into a frankly ridiculous plan to get her a weapon, something that Missy had been complaining about for literal years. It had been surprisingly fun to mess around in the ranged testing room with Sophia. The girl was still acerbic, still bitter and full of rage, and she still made fun of Missy’s height and age, but it felt like the bite had been taken out of her words. There were even moments where the girl had almost been empathetic, if in a bitchy and constipated way.

 A part of her, the part which has spent two and a half years being drilled on Protectorate procedure, wondered if she should talk to somebody about a possible mastering. People didn’t usually change that quickly, and she knew what the protocols said about acting on any suspicion at all. But master/stranger protocol absolutely sucked to go through, and it would be awful if Sophia was making a genuine effort to change (which honestly seemed way more likely) and she was immediately met with suspicion and hostility.

So Missy stayed quiet, and she enjoyed the time Sophia spent working with her on her aim and using her power to guide projectiles. The other girl had even taken a couple hours to teach Missy how to use her actual crossbows, and they’d messed around a few times with sillier options like a blowgun and a shuriken. It was just plain fun, the kind of connection she hadn’t been able to make with girls her own age since her trigger, and shockingly quickly Missy realized that Sophia had gone from hostile coworker to something almost like a friend.

Jenna watched her eldest daughter and wondered what had happened to the sweet girl that had wanted so badly to be a doctor or a firefighter. Well, she knew some of the answer to that–Steven had happened. Not that she knew the whole story there, because Sophia refused to talk about it and Steven turned out to be a manipulative sociopath with ties to the Empire. She knew that he’d done something, though, that had left Sophia destroyed. He hadn’t assaulted her, she knew that much, but whatever he’d said had left Sophia broken in some deep way she didn’t know how to fix.

And then Sophia had started to sneak out, and at first Jenna had worried that she might be meeting some guy, or maybe she’d been swept up into one of the endless small gangs that popped up around the trainyard. Trying to confront her daughter about it only lead to her pulling further away. Then she’d caught her daughter stepping through the wall, materializing out of shadow in an outfit of all black, with a white hockey mask over her face and a crossbow in her hands, and she’d known.

The good news had been that she hadn’t joined a gang. The bad news was that Sophia had clearly fallen into vigilante justice, and now Jenna understood why Steven had apparently been checked in to the hospital for crossbow wounds in his thigh and stomach (she’d still been on the books as his emergency contact, at that time, which was something she’d changed very quickly). And, well, she’d done her best to convince Sophia to join the Wards, but by that point her daughter barely listened to her, barely talked to the rest of the family at all. She spent most of her time with her new friend, a white girl from a nicer part of the city whose father Jenna recognized from skeezy ads for a divorce firm. At least she’d managed to wrangle an agreement from Sophia to keep her cape life away from the rest of the family, which–well, it might have pushed her daughter further away, but Jenna knew the danger of cape life and she knew that she needed to protect Terry and Lucy from that life.

And she knew that had probably pushed Sophia away. She knew that it had to feel like she was choosing somebody else over Sophia again–but what was the alternative? The last thing she wanted was to put her children in danger, and if Sophia insisted on doing it then all she could do was try and protect her other two children instead.

It made her feel like a failure of a mother, but the simple fact was that Jenna had to work three jobs just to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. She’d never planned on raising three kids alone, but then her husband had been killed in a cape fight between the Empire and the short lived Red Rattlers gang. She’d considered getting the hell out of Brockton Bay after that–it wasn’t like she wanted to live in the neonazi capital of America, after all–but moving was expensive and her parents still lived in Brockton, her church group was in Brockton, and honestly pretty much everyone she knew lived in Brockton as well. And there was a small part of her that knew her family had been living here since the mid-1800s, and she would be damned if she let some jumped up white supremacist assholes drive her away. That was her pride speaking, though. At the end of the day, she had to put her family first. Unfortunately, for now, that meant staying in the bay.

It had been a bit of a shock, when Sophia willingly helped her with the dishes. She thought that she might be buttering her up, at first, but she hadn’t asked for anything–well, other than letting Aisha Laborn stay over some times, which Jenna would have done anyways. That poor girl, honestly…

And Jenna was worried about whatever Sophia’s mistake was, at work, but she didn’t let herself ask. Sophia would have told her, if she really wanted to, and otherwise it was best to stay ignorant of her cape life. It wasn’t fair, but… Jenna had seen again and again what happened to regular people when they got caught up in cape drama, and it never ended well.

She knew she was failing her daughter. She had been for a long time, since before she triggered, but it had gotten worse afterwards. But Sophia had so much anger, and it scared her. And Sophia could turn to shadow and phase objects into someone’s knees, and it scared her. And Sophia walked like she was always ready to strike out, and it scared her.

All Jenna could do was the best for her children, and it wasn’t enough, and that scared her.

Taylor swayed to the side of Hess’ punch, the gnats she had placed on all the girl’s joints helping her to predict exactly what the bitch was going to do. She grabbed Hess’ arm, locking it in place, and then delivered her own punch right into Hess stomach. Of course, the other girl didn’t just stand there and take it–she moved with the blow, just as she’d been teaching Taylor to do, and her abs were clenched hard. Some of the breath was driven from the other girl’s lungs, but when she met Taylor’s gaze her lips were spread in a wide rictus grin. And, despite herself, Taylor felt an unfamiliar smirk on her own face.

Taylor never held back, not when she was fighting with Hess. Well, sparring. Training? Honestly, she didn’t know what to call this strange ritual they’d both fallen into. Some kind of fucked up apology, maybe, or perhaps Hess actually didn’t see anything weird about shoving Taylor one day and then teaching her to fight the next. There was that story about predators and prey, which made an uncomfortable amount of sense when it came to explaining Hess’ worldview. While Clements and Barnes seemed to tear people down for no reason than the thrill of it, using whatever cracks they could find in their victim’s psychology, Hess only went after people she called ‘weak.’ The way she said the word, it had always felt like the worst insult she could imagine.

So yeah, Taylor had no idea what to do with a Hess that seemed to have changed her mind and suddenly classified Taylor as ‘strong’ instead. At first, Taylor had been sure that it had all been a trap–that she’d get called to the office for fighting and would end up suspended or maybe expelled. But the call never came. Weeks went by, and she kept meeting Hess in the bathroom each lunch period, where she did her level best to beat the shit out of the other girl, yet she never got in trouble. Hess was still a bitch, but the bite had been taken out of her words. And, to make matters even stranger, the other two members of the Trio really did back off. Sure, Barnes and Clements still threw the occasional verbal jab, but it was nothing like the coordinated campaign they’d been running before. She was still wary–they’d pulled the same shit before the locker–but she had her bugs to protect her now. Shitty power or not, she would never be helpless like that again.

She wasn’t going to stop, though. Taylor might have gotten the shit end of the stick when it came to powers, but she was still going to be a hero. And learning to fight, the kind of real-world dirty fighting that Hess was teaching her, well it would be invaluable when she finally went out, as soon as her black widows finished weaving the silk for her costume. Soon, soon, she knew–Brockton Bay was a fucking mess, and it needed every last hero it could get. And maybe she’d join the wards in a bit, once she’d gotten some cred to her name, but she refused to deal with a new set of teenage drama without at least some reputation to protect her.

And, well. She had to admit to herself that, as weird and fucked up as it might be, Taylor couldn’t help but feel a thrill of pride when she finally pulled off a tricky new move and Hess gave her that approving nod and a bloodthirsty grin. It wasn’t kind, not exactly, but it was still some of the first positive human interaction that Taylor’d had in years with someone who wasn’t directly related to her . And the fact that Hess was partly to blame for that didn’t stop her from feeling a warmth inside her at that hungry look. Not to mention that Taylor quickly realized she liked fighting Hess. It soothed some of the fury that she’d buried deep in her heart, and it was just plain fun. It was crazy, and ridiculous, and absurd, but very quickly the lessons with Hess became the the highlight of her day. 

They weren’t friends–that ship had obviously sailed a long, long time ago. But with this new Sophia, the one who no longer shoved her in the halls, they weren’t quite enemies either. For all her reading, for all her knowledge of English, Taylor couldn’t find the word to describe what they were to each other.

But each day, like clockwork, Taylor found herself back in that dingy out-of-order bathroom, with something strange and new growing between the girls.

Aisha knocked on the apartment door, two floors up from her own home. There was no answer for a moment, so she knocked again–and then she gave in to her impulses and started drumming out a beat on the doorframe. A few moments later, the door swung open abruptly.

“Jesus fuck, what do you want?” came the harsh and unmistakable voice of Sophia Hess. The girl glared at her, using all of her three inch height difference to her advantage. Aisha was pretty sure that most people would be intimidated, but she’d never done well with the whole ‘fear’ or ‘respect’ thing.

“Hey,” Aisha said, with a shrug.

“Hey yourself, brat,” Sophia muttered. “The hell do you want?”

“You said I could come here some times, help watch Lucy, y’know?” 

“Ever heard of a damn cell phone?” Sophia muttered, but she opened the door anyways. Aisha could see the other girl’s eyes flicking over her form, could see the moment of stillness when they caught the hand-shaped bruises on her upper arm.

“Mine broke yesterday,” Aisha said instead, which wasn’t exactly true–she was pretty sure that mom’s knew boytoy Rico had stolen it and pawned it for drug money–but the effect was the same.

“Yeah, yeah,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “You should get a burner then, for emergencies. It’s not smart to be going around town without something, at least.”

“What, so I can call the police when an Empire asshole jumps me?” Aisha said, with an exaggerated eye roll.

“It makes them back off more often then you’d think, even if half the police here are sympathizers. And it’s not just about you–what if you find somebody who’s been shanked in an alley or overdosing or whatever, and you need to call the hospital?” Sophia gestured for Aisha to take a seat, then began to busy herself with something in the kitchen. The apartment was certainly far cleaner than the one that Aisha shared with her mom, in part because there weren’t any needles, bowls, or lighters littering the tables and furniture.

“And if you’re worried about the actual police,” Sophia continued, as she began to arrange something on a plate, “you can always just call me instead and pretend you’re talking to them. Or your brother, I guess.”

Aisha gave her a dubious glance. Sure, the girl was built, all lean muscle and danger, but thad didn’t mean much against a bunch of skinheads. “And what would you do about it?” 

“Oh ye of little faith,” Sophia said, putting the plate in front of Aisha. There was a selection of cut carrots, bell peppers, and uncooked broccoli, with a plastic tub of ranch in the middle. “I can’t tell you how, but I’ve got some connections. Don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency, but I can probably get you out of a tight scrape.

“Sure you do,” Aisha said automatically, but she was staring down at the plate of veggies. “What the hell is this?” 

“It’s a snack, dumbass,” Sophia shot back, leaning over suddenly and flicking Aisha on the forehead. “It’s good for you. Ever hear of garbage in, garbage out? That’s as true when it comes to food as it is to data.”

“Trackhead,” Aisha snarked, although there was no heat to it. She grimaced, but she was pretty hungry, and Sophia was liable to force feed it to her if she didn’t eat it now. She took one of each veggie, swirled them around in the ranch until they were drenched, and then stuffed it all in her mouth at once. It was… not great, because it was still a bunch of raw vegetables, but better than she’d expected.

“Real talk for a moment–do I need to hurt somebody?” Sophia said, gesturing at the bruises. 

Aisha shook her head, futilely trying to pull her ripped sleeves down over her arm. “Don’t worry about it. Rico’s an ass, but it’s not that bad. He doesn’t get off on hurting people or whatever. If he goes then Mom’s probably gonna bounce back to one of the other dealers, and most of them are worse.”

Sophia gave her a long look. “That doesn’t make that shit okay, but whatever. I’ll let it go for now, if you promise you’ll let me know as soon as it gets bad. Deal?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Aisha said, rolling her eyes, but there was a funny tingling feeling in her chest area that she couldn’t deny. 

Chapter Text

Brockton Bay always looked so different from the rooftops. I was doing a late-night patrol in the Docks, and from the top of the warehouses and apartment buildings the district looked quiet and peaceful. I knew it was just an illusion, of course–when you got down on the street level, you could see the grime and decay, the way that the infrastructure had fallen apart and the sense of despair that loomed over the people in the streets. At this time of night, it was mainly stumbling drunks, desperate prostitutes, and ABB members or hopefuls.

I wasn’t technically supposed to be out, right now, but as long as I wasn’t running around pinning gangers to the wall with my crossbow, I doubted that anyone would notice or care. I’d been doing these unofficial patrols for months now, even after I’d started with the Wards, and nobody had ever given me any flack for it. Of course, Piggot would probably have been less okay with it if she heard about the broadhead bolt that I’d used on Grue (and that was another clusterfuck I’d need to deal with at some point), but it wasn’t like the Undersiders were going to advertise that information–and I would make sure there wouldn’t be any repeat performances, either.

The thing was, the PRT was only officially liable for my actions and safety when I was on the clock. They’d still come down on me hard if I stepped out of line, of course, but it was kind of impossible to tell a bunch of teenagers that they couldn’t use their superpowers outside of work–especially for people like Aegis or Kid Win, who couldn’t exactly turn off their powers. It was a well known fact that powers needed to be used, and if I wanted to do that by going for harmless rooftop runs, then nobody really gave a shit. Being a probationary ward might have changed that, but  Alan Barnes was a really good lawyer. He’d gotten me permission to do these solo runs after three months of probation, so long as I scheduled them ahead of time, took a GPS tracker with me, called in anything unusual, and focused on escaping rather than fighting at the first sign of danger.

Of course, past Sophia was an idiot who had proceeded to ignore all those restrictions, chafing at even the smallest bit of control, which was what led to the whole broadhead-in-Grue incident to begin with. But with a bit more perspective, I could see that (even if the restrictions still chafed), it was way better to follow them and hold onto what little freedom was still left to me, rather than risk getting caught and sent straight to juvie.

The first sign that something was strange was the faint buzzing sound, which got a little louder as I moved toward it. Then I could see a faint haze in the air, a few blocks away, like a thin cloud of smog that was hovering only just above the rooftops. From the ground it would probably be pretty much invisible, but from the rooftops.

I reached up to the side of my head, where the earbud comms were in place. They weren’t quite tinkertech, but they had some neat features–they didn’t block out any of the sound unless it hit above a certain threshold, and then they would cancel the noise so I didn’t go deaf, which honestly that was kind of a necessity when you worked on a team with Triumph. One button press and I would be connected to the main console, which at this time of night was manned by an actual PRT officer rather than another Ward. I hesitated for a moment, then let my hand fall. I might get in trouble for it later, but I knew that console would never clear me engaging with an unknown parahuman without backup—and I needed to have Shadow Stalker make a better impression on Skitter than Sophia did for Taylor. 

A casual jog over the roof and a few leaping jumps in my breaker state brought me near enough to the haze to figure out what it was. As I’d half-suspected and half-dreaded, the haze was actually a small swarm of various insects, all buzzing around in a controlled pattern. Looking down off the roof, I saw her: a tall woman, with the gawky proportions of a teenager, and a gray bodysuit with an intimidating mask that left her long black hair exposed–and yeah, knowing what I did, that hair was unmistakable. Her head was turned to face me, as well, and I knew that she’d made me as soon as I entered her range.

I kept my hands away from my weapons and then hopped off the roof, bleeding out momentum with my shadow state. I shifted back as I landed, keeping my hands in front of me to show I wasn’t reaching for my weapons.

“Hey there,” I said, thankful that my mask muffled my voice enough for it to not be immediately recognizable. “Don’t think I’ve seen you before.

“Hello,” she replied. “You wouldn’t have. It’s my first night out.” There was a buzzing of insects that accompanied her voice, and I could see that she had several hundred of the creepy crawlies on her body as well. It was, frankly, fucking terrifying. It’s one thing to read about somebody who can control insects, and another to see a woman standing unnervingly still while a fleet of spiders crawl in perfect synchrony through her hair. Honestly, I felt incredibly lucky that Taylor was as good of a person as she was, because otherwise I’d probably have drowned in spiders a long time ago.

“So, uh. Just to be clear, you’re not a villain, right?” I knew she probably wasn’t, or at least not yet, but it was important to ask.

“No, I’m a good guy! Why would you think I’m a villain?” she said, and she sounded genuinely confused.

I held up my hands. “Woah, I’m not saying that I do! Just wanted to make sure we weren’t about to fight, is all. And, uh, you’re not exactly sending ‘innocent hero’ vibes with your costume.”

Her shoulders slumped a little at that. “That’s not intentional,” she replied. “I made my costume out of what I had, and by the time I realized how edgy it was it was too late to change it, not unless I wanted to start from the beginning.”

“It looks professional for a homemade costume. You should have seen my first outfit, it was pretty much just a hoodie and a hockey mask. What’s it made out of?” I asked.

“Spider silk,” she replied. “Strong, lightweight, and it can stop a knife or a weaker bullet. The downside is that it doesn’t take die super well.”

“Goddamn, that’s insane. Your costume’s badass, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also creepy as fuck. That’s not a bad thing, though. If anybody gets the value of a hero with a creepy costume it’s gonna be me,” I told her, gesturing to the stern woman mask and the all-black outfit I was wearing.

“That makes sense,” she said, chuckling. “You’re Shadow Stalker, right?”

“That’s me,” I confirmed. “Got a name yet?”

She shrugged, and I’d spent enough time with Taylor to read her body language as embarrassment. “Not yet, no. Most of the good bug names are taken or sound too villainous, and the rest are pretty lame.”

“Well, I’ll have to give you a temporary name when I radio this in,” I told her. “Standard Wards policy, I’m afraid. How do you feel about Arachne?” I’d considered Skitter or Weaver, but… well those names are just so loaded with history, even if it’s not yet the history of this world.

“Because I made the suit of spider silk?” She said, and her head tilted in a way that was actually a little insectile. It was strangely intimidating. “That’s fine, although… I mean, Arachne wasn’t exactly the hero of that story.”

“I mean I always read it as Athena being a stuck-up bitch who couldn’t take a joke. Not to mention, it wouldn’t hurt to have a name with a little intimidation. I don’t think your power would really lend itself to a traditionally heroic look.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, I know my power’s shit, you don’t need to rub it in.” Her shoulders arched defensively.

I couldn’t help it–I actually laughed a little at that. Seeing her recoil, though, I realized my mistake. “No, shit, sorry. Not laughing at you or your power. It’s just–you have control of insects, right? Or something like that? I can tell they’re behaving strangely around here.”

She nodded slightly. “Yeah, um. I have control over insects within about a two block radius,” she said.

“How many can you control at once?” I asked, because it’s the obvious question that I would ask if I hadn’t known.

“Oh, uh, all of them.” And all around us, the swarm changed its motion, all of them beginning to orbit around us in twisting, braided patterns.

“Fuck me,” I said in a low whisper, and it was only partially faked. Because it’s one thing to read about that, and another entirely to see in person just how bullshit that level of control was. It reminded me a little of laser shows I’d seen in the past, in the degree of precision and control, but a hundred times bigger and with each dot capable of biting my ass. “If I ever hear you call your power weak or shit again, I’ll kick your ass. Or, well, I’ll try, until you cover me with a thousand bugs.”

She scuffed her foot against the road. “I mean, I know it’s creepy and kinda weird,” she said.

“Sure, but that just means you can creep the fuck out of gangers and villains. If you want to be a hero–and I’m damn glad you do, because I like my orifices insect free–well, I bet you could be an incredibly effective one.”

At that, her shoulder straightened once more, and I could practically see the small ember of confidence flickering to life. Was it wrong of me to try and push her into being a hero, rather than a villain? I didn’t know. I knew that they were her first friends in years, but I also knew that Skitter had suffered a lot due to that decision. I wanted to believe she would be happier as a hero–it had been her goal to begin with, after all, and it was only because nobody had believed in her or given her a chance that she’d become a villain. Well, I was willing to give her that chance, and if she still joined the Undersiders despite it all, then I’d known I’d done my best.

“I imagine there’s a reason you don’t want to join the wards, yeah?” I asked, because it needed to be said.

Her whole body grew tense. “I’m not interested right now,” she said, and her voice was cold.

“Don’t blame you,” I told her. And maybe this was a little selfish, because who knew how much it would set my progress back if she found out now that Sophia and Shadow Stalker were the same person, but I had other legitimate reasons as well. “PR would shit themselves over your powers, and they’d be desperate to hobble them so you don’t look ‘villainous’ or some shit. I can’t even tell you that you’d be safer there, because they’re putting Vista in danger every time they refuse to give her armor or weapons just for image reasons. You could make way more of a difference as an independent, at least for now.”

“Huh,” Arachne said, staring at me–and it wasn’t just with her eyes, I could feel the attention from all her bugs as well. Gave me the heebies like nothing else, to be honest. “I’d have thought you would be pushing the wards all the way.”

“Nah, it’s not right for everyone,” I said with a shrug. “There’s a reason I didn’t join until I fucked up and was forced in. Actually, that’s a good thing to mention: you have to be real careful about excessive force, even against the Nazis. Which is bullshit, I know, but I got press-ganged into the Wards after they caught me leaving some skinhead rapists pinned to a wall by my bolts.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, but her voice had gone flat. Was she scared off by the violence? Or was she worried about how much damage she could do with her bugs?

“You have a burner?” I asked her, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Even outside of Talia’s knowledge, I knew that Taylor had a hang-up about cell-phones, because she was pretty much the only person at Winslow who didn’t have one. It had made Emma and my life way easier, since we didn’t have to worry about her calling for help. That thought caused me to flinch, now–even after two weeks in this world, I still had some difficulty reconciling Sophia and Talia’s morals.

“Uh, no, I don’t,” she said, and even with her impassive mask I could tell she was a little sheepish.

I sighed, then reached into the utility belt hidden in my costume. I grabbed one of my spare burners–I always carry two, just in case–and tossed it to Arachne. She caught it with a little fumbling, but that was fine. “Alright, rookie, rule one for solo patrols: always keep a burner on your person. If not for yourself, then for anyone who might need medical help.” It felt strange, giving the same talk again that I’d just given to Aisha.

“Don’t call me that,” Arachne said, and I could hear the scowl in her voice. 

I gave her a look. “I’ll stop calling you ‘rookie’ when you stop making rookie mistakes. Listen, I spent two years as a vigilante before I joined the Wards, and you better believe I made a ton of fuck-ups in that time. I can help you avoid most of those, if you want. But if you’d rather figure it out on your own, just tell me to fuck off and I will.”

There was a long pause between us. Arachne was unnaturally silent and still, and I was pretty sure she was displacing her emotions into her swarm–another thing that was far creepier to see in person. Honestly, Arachne’s outfit had a primal horror to it, and I could easily see how Skitter had become the feared warlord that she’d been.

“Yeah, alright,” she said at length. “Um, thank you. For helping me.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, this whole damn city is pretty much run by the Empire. Another hero on the street is one more thing standing in their way of running unchecked, so I don’t mind keeping you from being murderized.”

I could tell she wanted to ask about that–it was more honest than I’d meant to be, and I knew that most people took my opinion on the Empire’s control as more of a conspiracy theory than anything–but then her body went still, her head snapping to look down the length of the street. I could see a faint orange glow, but nothing else–clearly she’d gotten advance warning with her bug senses. “Shit, we need to hide,” she said, in a low whisper.

I was already moving, pulling us into an alleyway. “Let’s get some height,” I told her, gesturing to a nearby fire-escape. Arachne quirked her head, then nodded, and began to climb up the ladder with nearly soundless steps. I waited until she’d gotten about half-way up before I went to shadow, leaping up and bouncing between the two walls in a series of wall-kicks. I had years of practice with it, and I managed to get to the top of the two-story building at about the same time that Arachne did. Then I phased back to the real world, balancing on the outside lip of the roof. 

We moved closer to the light, crouched in low profiles. We were both wearing dark colors against the night sky, so it was unlikely we’d be seen, but there was no sense in being reckless. It was nice to see that, other than her lack of a phone, Arachne did seem to have decent instincts.

As we got closer, I got a better look at where the orange light had been coming from. In a voice barely above an exhalation, I whispered, “ oh shit.”

“That’s Lung, isn’t it,” Arachne whispered back.

That was definitely Lung, surrounded by a dozen ABB members, lit in the soft orange glow of lighters, burning cigarettes, and the small dancing fireball around Lung’s hand. As we watched, another dozen members came out of a nearby building, and I could tell by the way their gait and the way their clothing moved that most of them were packing at least some kind of heat.

It was hard to hear, but I had some tools to get around that. I pulled out my left comm and offered the earbud to Arachne–my mask and hood was designed to have just enough give for me to access my ears without taking it off. Then I pulled out a gizmo that Chris had made for me a few days back at my request. It was barely tinkertech, more of a directed parabolic microphone that managed to get the same clarity of a five meter focusing array into only a few inches of actual material.

I hadn’t made it with this exact situation in mind, but it was always helpful to be able to gather information from a safe distance–especially with some of the plans I’d been making for the Empire lately. Old-Sophia had hated them, of course, but that was more on a personal level. Talia hated neonazis in the abstract, because their viewpoints were repugnant. Me, as I was now? I wanted to bring the Empire to its fucking knees , and then make Kaiser beg for mercy before I put a bolt through his nazi brain. And no, I didn’t give a fuck if he actually believed in what he preached. You know what you call somebody who’s willing to co-opt Nazi ideology just to hold power? A nazi, that’s what.

That was beside the point right now, though. I flicked on the parabolic microphone, and it automatically connected to my comm earbuds. There was a brief moment where it let out a high-pitched whine as it calibrated, and then we could hear Lung’s little speech in perfect clarity. He had a strong Japanese accent, but he was fairly articulate despite that.

“...been disrespected for the last time. They think that they are above reproach, above the might of the dragon? We will show these children that they are not, that they cannot challenge the might of the ABB without consequence. If you see the children, just shoot. Doesn’t matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?”

There was a collective sound of agreement, and a few harsh words in another language–I was pretty sure it was either Korean or Vietnamese, but I wasn’t the best with languages. Talia knew a smattering of Japanese from one college class, and Sophia had picked up some Spanish, but it wasn’t much.

“Fuck,” I said quietly, and Arachne looked back at me with horror in her posture.

Chapter Text

“Console, come in. Come in!” I hissed into the now active comm in my ear. “This is Shadow Stalker, do you read me?”

“I read you, Shadow Stalker,” came the voice of a PRT officer, one I didn’t immediately recognize.

“I’m in the Docks, on the corner of 7th and Hawthorn. Lung is currently gathering a group of unpowered hostiles for an attack on unknown victims that he only referred to as ‘children.’ I’m currently with a new independent hero, insect Master, provisional name Arachne.” I said all of it quickly and quietly. Lung shouldn’t be able to hear or sense us from here, not without powering up some first, but it wasn’t like we had a perfect idea of his power.

“Repeat that, Stalker–you said you’re near Lung?”

“ Yes I’m near Lung, and before you ask I didn’t go looking for him or some shit. He just showed up while I was establishing contact with Arachne.”

“How close is he? Has he noticed you?”

“He’s about a block away, and I don’t think so. We’re currently on the rooftop of a two-story warehouse. I could probably take a shot from here and put him down before he gets going.”

“Negative on that, Stalker,” came the immediate reply. “Do not engage Lung unless you’re attacked first.”

“He’s trying to kill kids, ” Arachne whispered, in a horrified voice.

“Who’s that?” Console demanded, and I realized that I’d forgotten that Arachne had one of my comms.

“That’s Arachne, independent hero, we’re sharing comms in case things go south,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell them about the parabolic microphone, not when it was technically unapproved tinkertech.

“You gave out PRT property to a rogue parahuman?” 

I grit my teeth, because of course that was what he’d focus on. “I’m invoking clause 12.4(b) of the Wards hostile contact guide, which allows for temporary violation of standard opsec for the purpose of communication with an allied parahuman.”

Console sighed. “I’ll log it, but you’ll have to justify that to the director later.”

“Yes, fine, ” I hissed out. “Do we have an ETA on backup?”

There was a click, and then a new voice joined the call. “Shadow Stalker, this is Armsmaster. I’m en route, ETA 7 minutes from now.”

I felt my shoulders slump in relief. I’d known that he was patrolling tonight, but I hadn’t known if he was close or not. With any luck, he’d be here soon enough to deal with Lung before he really ramped up, and we’d be able to get away with not fighting at all. I felt a little weird about that–it would be something of an anticlimax, after all, 

Naturally, it was around then when everything rapidly went to shit.

There was the loud ‘crack’ of a gunshot, and to my shock I saw that one of the ABB members had just shot Lung in the stomach. The gang leader roared in response, the flickering flame in his hands bursting into a full-on fireball. It . I expected him to splatter the traitor across the ground, but Lung just rolled his shoulders and let out a hiss of pain. Three more cracks rang out, and with each one Lung got a little bigger and a little scalier. Then he made a gesture with his hand, which I noticed was already covered in scales and talons, and the gang member quickly holstered his weapon. A few moments later, his regeneration had kicked in enough to push out the bullets, blood-soaked metal scraps falling to the pavement.

“Oh fuck me,” I whispered, as I realized what had just happened. I’d known, academically, that Lung’s biggest weakness was that he took time to ramp up. I knew that his power just needed an adversary to fight against. I just hadn’t pieced together that he could easily manufacture those conditions and quickly boost himself into Brute 4 territory, easily.

By this point, Lung was easily seven feet tall, with talons on his hands and his shirtless chest covered with protective scales. He raised his head into the air, as though he was breathing deeply, and I realized that he was doing just that. It was well-documented in Protectorate records that his senses got better as his transformation progressed. He must have been trying to use either scent or sound to track the Undersiders, or maybe he really did have some kind of heat sense when he ramped up. At this point it didn’t really matter.

Then he turned his head and looked directly at me, and I nearly pissed my suit. I had largely survived as a vigilante by targeting those weaker than me, and the cape battles I’d been in had usually been skirmishes with lesser villains. It was a very different thing to be facing down a man who was capable of fighting a god-damned Endbringer to a standstill.

Arachne acted first, grabbing me and pulling me back away from the roof before I even realized that Lung had thrown the ball of fire in his hands right toward us. I landed in a backwards roll, shifting to shadow halfway through so that I could throw myself back to my feet, although I stayed low down. From my perspective, the whole world went dark and fuzzy, turning to the drifting monotone of my shadow state. A second later, the edge of the building burst into a flash of light and heat as the fireball impacted, and even through my breaker state and my suit I could feel the intense heat. I let the shadow state drop a moment later so I could communicate.

“Take down the unpowered gangers, now!” I cried out to Arachne, pulling out my crossbow at the same time. I darted to the side, risking a glance over the edge of the roof. Several of the unpowered gangers had guns out, and as soon as they saw me they opened fire. I shifted shadow immediately, feeling the unmistakable sensation of bullets passing through my breaker form. It stung, and I knew from experience that I’d have some mild bruising there when I turned back, but I’d been shot through countless times before and it was easy to put out of my mind. In response, I let out a shot with my crossbow at the nearest gang member.

By the time I phased back, I’d broken line of sight, but I knew from experience that I’d gotten them with my bolt. That was one down, and easily two dozen more gang members left, not to mention the fucking Changer 10 that was rushing toward us.

“Stalker, what’s going on?” Armsmaster’s voice came from my comms.

“Lung used one of his men to ramp up!” I hissed back. “He found us somehow and now he’s attacking!”

Then the screams started, and I snapped my head over to Arachne. She was ducked low to the ground, staring at the gravel, but then again she didn’t really need her eyes as long as she had her swarm. The yelling continued, along with several whimpers and cries for mercy in English and at least six other languages. I went back to my breaker state and risked another look over the edge, and I was glad that I had.

Arachne’s swarm was at once fucking terrifying and a thing of beauty. It had swept over the dozens of gang members like a biblical plague, and from here the streams of bugs looked halfway between billowing smoke and the tentacles of an eldritch god. Gang members were covered in thousands of bugs, and from the way I saw them recoiling, tripping, and dropping their weapons I was pretty sure she was biting their joints with extremely painful insects. As I watched, one of them tried to raise their gun at my silhouette, but his hand was swiftly covered in a layer of insects. He let out a horrific scream, dropping his weapon, and collapsed to the ground clutching his hand. Lung looked mostly unharmed, although he’d been swarmed as well, and I was pretty sure she’d gotten a number of bites in before he’d let out a wave of flame that killed off most of the bugs around him.

“I’ve disabled most of the unpowered gang members,” Arachne said after a moment, her voice calm and emotionless.

“Jesus fuck,” I said, looking at her with a sense of awe. Was it weird that I was a little turned on? I mean, I knew it was Hebert, but I’d always had something of a thing for dangerous women. There was a reason why Sophia had had an Alexandria poster in her bedroom, and why Talia had been a little obsessed with Marvel’s Black Widow. Not that I actually wanted to date Hebert, that would be an utter disaster even if you ignored our history, but damn if Arachne wasn’t kind of hot.

Then Lung let out a billowing roar of fury and I snapped back to the fight at hand. He was moving toward us with great strides, and as I watched I saw part of his skin that had been bitten fall off as more scales pushed their way from beneath. “Oh fuck, we have to go,” I said, grabbing Arachne’s hand and dragging her back toward the fire escape. She stumbled a little but was quick enough to follow.

“We need to split up,” I whispered, trusting that the tinkertech in the comms would pick it up. Hopefully Lung wouldn’t be able to hear, even with his senses. “I’ll try and pull his attention while you get to safety.”

“Stalker, belay that!” came the voice of console in my ear, but I ignored it.

Arachne for her part recoiled at that. “What? I’m not leaving you!”

I rolled my eyes. “My power’s built for escape, yours isn’t. Trust me, I’ve got a way better chance of getting away if I don’t have to worry about protecting you as well.”

There was a sound of concrete crumbling from behind us, and I chanced a glance back to see a flaming and silvery-scaled hand on the rooftop. It was quickly joined by another, and then a half-monstrous Lung pulled himself upwards. By now he was easily nine feet tall, with scales coating nearly every exposed inch of his body and a long tail stretching out from behind him. Tongues of fire were licking over every part of his body, protecting him from Arachne’s attacks. He took a deep breath, and then a gout of white-hot flame burst out from his mouth in a streaming line.

Once more, Arachne reacted first, pulling me to the side and out of the way. This time the fire passed close enough to hurt, and I knew the skin on my left side would be raw when I took off the suit. We’d gotten to the edge of the roof, though, and Arachne was quick enough to jump down onto the fire escape, practically falling down the stairs to get off the roof. I stayed behind, even as Lung raced toward me.

At the last minute, I went to shadow and lunged forward, passing through him. It stung as I phased through his body, since I wasn’t exactly immune to heat in this form, but I was through him quick enough for it to not be too bad, and the movement against the shadowy smoke of my body helped it to cool off fast enough to not transfer over to my normal form. Then I jumped, taking advantage of the physics-defying nature of my breaker state to throw myself into a half turn and launch a crossbow bolt. I turned back in time for it to penetrate halfway through his back, although I was unfortunately a few inches away from actually getting his spine. Not that it would have put him down for long, but every bit helped.

A wall of flying bugs threw itself up between Lung and me, creating a makeshift smokescreen. I used the opportunity to throw myself to the side in a shadow-assisted roll, a surprisingly valid tactic because I actually could do a doge-roll with real I-frames, and avoided another stream of fire that turned the gravel where I’d been standing into a small pool of glowing magma.

Lung leaped forward on its heels, slashing toward me with long and wicked claws. I went to shadow, but the sheer force behind his blow still knocked me to the side. My breaker state let me carry momentum and I landed nearly twenty feet away, next to a crumbling and rusted metal air vent on top of the roof. After a moment, I dropped my breaker state and lashed out with a sharp kick, my reinforced boot colliding with it and shearing off a plate of metal. I grabbed it in my left hand (my right still holding my crossbow), and then went back to my breaker state. It took more effort to bring the metal plate than it did my suit or my crossbow, but it was manageable enough.

This time, when Lung leapt toward me, I was ready. I danced away from his thunderous leap, ducked under the shadowy image of his wide swipe, and then slammed my left hand forward. The sheet of metal cut into my gloves and an absent part of my mind wondered if I would need to get a tetanus shot, but the rest of my attention that wasn’t taken up with terror was focused on placing the sheet just right. From my perspective, it cut smoothly into the massive shadowy shape of Lung’s body, bisecting him neatly. This was the kind of maneuver I rarely did, because it was ridiculously lethal on pretty much everybody, but Lung was ramped up enough that I had little doubt he’d survive it. It should, however, take him out of commission for long enough to buy us a little time.

Then I dropped my shadow state, and the metal plate fused with Lung’s torso and spine. It wasn’t quite large enough to completely split him in two, but I could tell that I’d succeeded in my goal when his legs went limp and his whole lower half collapsed. He let out an inhuman screech of pain, but before I could celebrate too much one of those massive claws wrapped around my extended left arm and threw me with all the strength of a 9-foot, several ton rage dragon.

I let out a hoarse scream as sharp pain lanced up my arm and I immediately knew it was broken. I went to shadow on reflex, spreading out my shadow state as large as I could to decrease my weight and increase air resistance. That saved me from splattering against the roof, and I only ended up bouncing several times against the shadowy surface—I’d considered dropping through but that was almost certainly a bad idea—before I came to a stuttering stop. I let the shadows drop and then let out a groan as the pain of my arm caused a swell of nausea that nearly led to me spilling my guts on the gravel. There was enough adrenaline in my system to push past that, though, and I stumbled to my feet.

That throw had launched me all the way onto a neighboring warehouse, and I pushed through another wave of dizziness to try and get a bead on Lung’s position. There were several voices talking over each other in my comms, but I couldn’t focus on them right now. On the original roof, Lung had collapsed on the ground, his clawed hands scrabbling at his stomach. It took him several long moments before he was able to find purchase on the sheet of metal, and then he ripped it out with a horrible screech. It was accompanied by a splatter of gore and viscera, but I knew that it wouldn’t be too long before he healed from it.

Then the biblical swarm descended.

There was no other word for it—one moment, I could see Lung, struggling to get inoperative legs to work, and then there was a horrible buzzing noise and a hundred thousand insects descended on his body. Arachne must have judged that he wouldn’t be able to focus on blasting them away with fire and healing himself at the same time. Given that it took nearly fifteen seconds before a wave of fire erupted out and killed off the closest insects, it seemed that gamble had paid off. The area around his stomach was raw and bleeding, and I could see that Arachne had clearly directed several of her meat-eating insects to devour his flesh. His face was also a destroyed mess of gore that had more resemblance to ground beef than a person, although as I watched scales began to form over the flesh and two orbs grew into eyeballs. A reasonable person would probably have been disgusted, but I had seen enough after-action reports on Lung’s victims that I could only feel satisfaction—and more than a little fear, because he was regenerating way quicker than I’d like.

“Armsmaster, ETA?” I called out, a note of desperation entering my voice despite myself.

“Three minutes,” came the terse reply, and I bit back a curse. Could I survive three more minutes against Lung, when he was getting stronger and I was only going to get more tired and injured? There was a chance that he’d gotten enough venom and tranquilizer to eventually knock him out, but the more he scaled up the less of a chance I had of that.

Then Arachne’s panicked voice came through the comms. “Shadow Stalker, three big creatures approaching from behind!”

It took a moment to figure out what she was talking about, and before I could fully realize it the world went completely dark. I tried to go into my breaker state on instinct, but as soon as I transformed it was like I was stuck in a thick layer of clay. I could only hold my shadow state for a moment before I was knocked out of it, just in time to take a glancing blow from what felt like a truck.

Immediately, all the air was driven from my lungs and I was tossed backwards across the roof. I hit the ground hard, bouncing a few times as the muffled sound of massive footsteps came from around me. Even through my suit, the gravel gave me roadburn as I crashed into it, and I was pretty sure one of my ribs was broken, although I didn’t know if that was new or something Lung had given me. I forced myself back to my feet anyways.

Then I could see again, as Grue–because that power interaction was unmistakable–dropped his darkness. Lung had just enough time to try and brace himself before several tons of parahuman-enhanced demon dog flesh slammed into his body, and the two of them went flying off the roof–fortunately, away from the alleyway that Arachne had been in.

The Undersiders slid off the other two dogs, staying on the rooftops—except for Bitch, who stayed planted on her monster dog. A few moments later, I watched as Arachne scrambled back up to the roof from where she’d been hiding on the fire escape. It made sense that she’d return to high ground–I wouldn’t want to be on street level with Lung right now either. 

I shifted back to my breaker state, since I would exacerbate my injuries that way, and then I jogged over the roof and leapt back over to them. As much as I knew they were by far the lesser evil compared to monsters like Lung or the Empire, I didn’t exactly want to leave Arachne alone with them. If she ended up being a villain anyways, I wouldn’t stand in her way, but I wanted to give her more of a chance to be the hero she clearly wanted to be than she’d had in Talia’s memories.

The Undersiders reacted to my presence almost immediately, Tattletale’s hand dropping to her gun while Regent leveled his scepter toward me. I phased out of my breaker state and held my good hand up, showing that both my crossbows were holstered at my side, then I winced as the motion exacerbated my injuries. It seemed to work, though, since Tattletale didn’t go for her gun. There was still some smoke billowing out from Grue–not enough to fully obscure vision, but enough that my comm was dead in my ear.

“Shadow Stalker,” Grue said, venom in his voice.

“Grue,” I replied, trying to keep my own anger away. “Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I think we can both agree we have a mutual enemy right now.”

“You shot me with a broadhead bolt the last time we met,” he said, with a growl.

“Because your fucking shadows nearly killed me when I was three stories up, you absolute–” I caught myself, forcing calm breaths. “Not important right now. I’m… sorry for what I did. It was out of line, since I know you didn’t actually try to kill me first.”

“You’re actually telling the truth about that,” Tattletale said, cocking her head. And damn, she was actually pretty attractive, although personally my tastes ran a little more toward the Bitch side of things.

“No shit,” I said, but I bit back any further retort. “Bad power interaction, your darkness forces me out of my breaker state and it happened at a bad time. Look, I know I handled that poorly. And before you want to run your mouth, Tattletale, I’d suggest you think again.”

She opened her mouth to do just that, but I had leverage that I was more than willing to pay. I’d thought a lot about how I wanted to handle Tattletale before now, because of everybody in the Bay she was the only one who would really be able to suss out what happened to me.  From Talia’s memories, I was well aware of how dangerous Tattletale could be, even if right now the PRT considered her a bit player. Fortunately, I had cards I could play to keep her from sharing that, and hopefully keep the Undersiders—and her specifically—from becoming a serious enemy.

I looked directly at her and mouthed the words, I know Coil’s identity. It was hidden by my mask, of course, but I had no doubt that her power was bullshit enough to get past that.

She froze. “What? How could you possibly… Oh, I see. Really? You trust that? You do, and for good reason. And nobody else knows?”

I scowled—of course she couldn’t resist the urge to run her mouth. “You really want to try me, Tattletale?” I flicked my gaze toward Regent and made an aborted movement toward my heart, then towards Grue (who was looking generally uncomfortable) and mouthed ‘Brian’–the motions subtle enough that only Tattletale should have picked up on it.

Her eyes went wide.  Quietly, she said, “You’re not sure.”

“No, but clearly I was right about that, and I’d guess most things as well. Besides, you’d be able to confirm it pretty quickly, right?” My head was swimming from the word games, and the pain, but I pushed through.

“Yeah, fair enough,” she said.

That was when Regent lost his patience. “Okay, enough of this Thinker bullshit. Do either of you want to share with the class?”

Tattletale shook her head. “I’ll tell you back at base,” she said, then turned to look at Arachne. “Thanks for the save, newbie cape. I owe you one.”

Arachne let out a huff of air. “Oh my god, you were the kids he was talking about,” she said. She sounded a little disappointed, and I couldn’t really blame her. “We almost died because of you!”

“Yes, and I’m very grateful for that. Does it help that you took down one of the biggest threats in the Bay?” Tattletale offered up, with a smirk. “Oh, and that goes for you too, Stalker. As far as I’m concerned we’re even now.”

“Hey!” Grue said, rubbing at his shoulder—the shoulder I knew I’d hit with one of my bolts. “You’re seriously just gonna gloss over her last murder attempt?”

“And how we had to get a new couch after Grue bled all over it?” Alec chimed in, but at least we were all on the same page about ignoring him.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh grow up Grue. My power can be ridiculously lethal. If I meant to kill you, you’d be dead.”

Unsurprisingly, this did not seem to endear me to him. I couldn’t resist needling him, though—even now, he was kinda pissing me off, with his whole ‘fake tough’ attitude. I had a theory about that, but it wasn’t something I liked thinking about and I didn’t have enough evidence yet so I pushed it away.

Tattletale paused, looking in the distance, then grimaced. “As much as I’d love to continue this conversation, Armsmaster’s on his way so we need to get going. You gonna cause trouble?” The last part was obviously directed at me.

I held up my hands, wincing as the action pulled at my ribs. “Even if I wanted to, there’s not much I could do. And we still need to have that conversation—civvies okay with you?”

“Fine with me,” Tattletale replied, while Regent let out a low whistle. Then Tattletale was scrambling back up onto one of Bitch’s dogs, while the rest of the Undersiders followed them. “Need a ride, Arachne?”

I wanted to interrupt, but I promised myself I’d at least let Taylor make that decision for herself. She seemed to consider it for a moment, then shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m good,” she said.

Tattletale just shrugged, and then they were bounding away over the rooftops. A sharp whistle from Bitch split the night, and a moment later a third monster dog joined them, evidently having left the battered body of Lung behind.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said, as soon as they were gone. I’d pushed past the pain for that conversation, but now that it was over I couldn’t help but feel the pain again.

“Are you alright?” 

“I’m fine. Well, I’m in a lot of pain, but I’ll be fine. And, uh, if you didn’t mention that conversation to Armsmaster, I’d appreciate it.”

She seemed a bit taken aback, but she said, “Oh, um. Sure.”

“You’re a peach,” I said dryly. A moment later the last of Grue’s smoke fully disappeared, and instantly my ears were filled with the frantic voice of Console. “—don’t know why she went silent, but it was still near the fight,” he was saying.

“Stalker here,” I said, and there was an audible sigh of relief, followed by what would probably be a boring scolding. “We just had a run-in with Grue and the Undersiders, pretty sure his power interferes with radio signals. Good news is that Lung is down, with help from Hellhound’s dogs.” 

“You’re safe?” came the reply, after a moment.

“Think I’ve got a broken left ulna, a few lacerations and deep bruises, and a couple ribs might be cracked,” I replied. “Nothing life threatening, though.”

Now I could hear Armsmaster’s motorcycle as it raced onto the scene. I stepped to the edge of the roof and looked down. Lung had shrunk back to his normal size and was lying fully unconscious (as well as fully naked) on the street below. Armsmaster, in his suit of blue power armor, hopped off his bike in one clean motion. His visor swung up to meet my gaze, and I gave him a tired wave—one that he did not reciprocate, because he was a stick in the mud.

“Hey Arachne, want to go down and meet a hero?” I said, turning back to the other cape.

She froze for a moment, then nodded.

“Cool, I’ll meet you down there,” I said, and then I stepped off the roof. It’d been terrifying the first fifty or so times I’d done this, but now it was just instinct to shift into my breaker state to slow my fall, and pop out right at the ground.

“Hey,” I said, walking toward Armsmaster. He didn’t acknowledge me at first, just leveled his halberd and shot a tranq round into Lung’s ass. I didn’t laugh, but it was a near thing. Only then did he turn back to face me, and his expression was not pleased.

“Shadow Stalker,” he said. “Do you want to try and explain to me why you engaged Lung in a fight, while on a solo and unsanctioned patrol?”

I bristled. “It’s not unsanctioned! I’m allowed to do solo patrols so long as I make every effort to escape and don’t deliberately incite violence!”

Armsmaster looked at me, then looked at Lung. I couldn’t see it through his helmet but I knew he was raising an eyebrow.

“I didn’t attack him, I just defend myself from his unprovoked assault. And I did make every effort to escape that wouldn’t compromise the life of a fellow hero,” I told him. I wanted to cross my arms in defiance, but that was definitely not in the cards.

His mouth pulled into a tight frown. “That will be for the director to decide after she reads the after action reports,” he said, then he turned away. I followed his gaze, only to see Arachne approaching from the alleyway. Armsmaster went rigid, his grip on the Halberd flowing into a more combative stance.

“Woah, hey, she’s a hero,” I said.

“I’m a good guy,” she said, because she was a dork.

“You don’t look like one,” Armsmaster replied, and I could see Arachne flinch.

“Don’t be a dick,” I snapped back, before I thought better of it. By his shocked and displeased expression, I knew I’d get an earful for that later, but I couldn’t really bring myself to regret it. “It’s her first night out, and she made her costume herself. Besides, it looks badass.”

“I didn’t realize how edgy it was until I was most of the way done, and the fabric doesn’t really dye well,” Arachne said.

Armsmaster just sighed, like dealing with teenagers was worse than fighting even the toughest villains. 

The pain was really starting to get to me then, and without the adrenaline in my body the nausea surged. I barely managed to keep my dinner inside, but it was enough to make me take me woozy, and I leaned back against the warehouse’s wall and sat down. Armsmaster gave me a concerned glance, but I waved him off—I’d been hurt bad before, and I knew that right now there wasn’t much I could do until one of the PRT vans arrived to drive me back to the base for medical.

I listened with as much attention as I could spare to the conversation between Armsmaster and Arachne. He offered the wards, as I expected, although he didn’t push all that hard, and then he fished for information on the Undersiders. And, of course, then the fucking glory hound pushed her to give him credit for the capture. I saw that she looked unsure, and she gave me a glance as if asking my opinion.

Pushing past the pain and nausea, I said, “You should let him take it.”

That seemed to surprise her, and she looked at me with an expression of betrayal. And yeah, normally I wouldn’t be able to pick up on something like that, but I knew Taylor’s body language—I’d seen her look like that toward Emma many times before.

I held up a hand. “Hey, you were a life saver tonight, make no mistake, and I promise I’ll let the other Wards know what you did if that’s what you want. But trust me when I tell you that you want no part of the ABB or Oni Lee, and especially Bakuda. She’s fucking crazy, and anything that puts you on her radar will rapidly decrease your life expectancy. I’m not sure how much good it’ll do, since it’s not like the other gangers didn’t experience your bugs, but anything to keep you out of that psychopath’s focus is a good thing.” I had to stop talking then, otherwise I probably would have thrown up.

Arachne didn’t say anything for a long moment, but her body language relaxed. “Then… yeah, keep my involvement a secret for now. But only from the press,” she said, and there was that spine. “I want the Protectorate to know the truth.”

Armsmaster gritted his teeth, glory hound bastard that he was, but there wasn’t anything he could do but nod.

The conversation didn’t last much longer after that, and Armsmaster went to prepare Lung for transport. Before Arachne left, though, I called out to her. “Hey, Arachne.”

She paused, looking at me through those amber lenses. God, it really was a badass costume. “What?” she asked, and her voice was as exhausted as I felt.

“It was nice, working with you. My number’s preprogrammed into that burner—shoot me a text if you want to meet up, or if you have any questions about the whole hero thing, yeah?”

She was still for a very long moment, long enough for me to wonder if I’d fucked up. Then, quietly, she said, “Yeah, sounds good. Thank you, Shadow Stalker.”

Then she walked off, and I slumped back against the concrete wall. Fucking Lung. I’d known that Taylor had fought him in Talia’s memories, and I had been doing some solo patrols in this area in the hopes of catching her before it all went down. Somehow I’d just never expected to get caught up in that fight myself. My arm was on fire, my ribs were screaming, and there were aches and sharp pins of pain all across my chest and legs. And I still had to deal with an after action report and, likely, an interrogation of every one of my actions and decisions, which would almost certainly result in some kind of punishment. But I was still alive, and that wasn’t nothing.

Chapter Text

I ended up hitching a ride with one of the PRT vans back to the HQ—not the same van that Lung was transported in, obviously. Most of the troopers were trained in some level of first aid, which I knew because they made the Wards go through the training with them, but it was pretty common for each squad had somebody with dedicated EMT training. I’d heard they got paid around twenty percent more than their coutnerparts, and it was worth every penny. 

I recognized the trooper who helped me into the van and directed me to lie down on the fold-out gurney: Lieutenant Dakota, a hispanic woman with a faint lisp who was barely over five feet and terrified the living shit out of everyone else in her squad. She was a take-no-nonsense kind of woman, and normally I respected that except when she was telling me exactly how stupid I’d been to try and keep fighting with a broken rib, using words like ‘perforated lung’ and ‘boneheaded children.’ She did splint my arm and give me a couple of over-the-counter painkillers—not opioids or any shit like that, I’d seen what that did to people and outright refused to try it, so it was just some ibuprofen—and it was nice to hear her cursing Armsmaster’s name for not immediately giving me medical attention.

They put me in the on-base medical wing, being attended to by one of the few doctors cleared to know Wards identities, although I still kept a basic domino mask on just in case. After all, it wasn’t like we could just go to the regular hospital for in-uniform injuries. By that point the painkillers had kicked in and the pain was at a manageable level, and a quick round through a Dragontech medical scanner confirmed that my ribs were only fractured, not broken all the way through, and so I wasn’t at risk of puncturing a lung. Still hurt to breathe, a little, but the arm was way worse. The doc made some noise about bringing Panacea in to heal me up, but I did my best to wave him off—it had officially reached late-as-fuck o’clock, and there was no need to wake her up just for me to get immediate parahuman healing. I figured I’d be fine to tough it out until the next time she was volunteering at Brockton General, where the PRT had an arrangement to covertly slip in injured heroes and troopers.

I hadn’t really expected Piggot to come until tomorrow, but apparently bagging Lung had been a big enough deal for her to be called in. It was the first time I’d seen her in person since Sophia and Talia had merged, and she looked different than I’d remembered. Sophia thought of her with scorn, and I could remember her using unflattering phrases like ‘sausage fingers’ and ‘lard-ass.’ Seeing her now, though, I couldn’t help but notice the faded scars on her neck, the faint tremble in her left hand, the sharp intelligence in her eyes. Her arrival, inevitably, led to her sitting beside the bed as I gave her an abridged after action report. It was a little painful, due to the breathing thing, but I soldiered through and tried to be as objective as possible. It wasn’t like they didn’t have most of the story already, between the comms recording and Armsmaster’s own report.

She only stopped me once, when I mentioned seeing Arachne and engaging with her. “So you encountered an unfamiliar parahuman, and you decided you would just strike up a conversation with them without calling it in first?”

I licked my lips, finding them suddenly dry. “With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t believe I was in much danger. I have one of the best powers for escaping most dangers on the team. And…”

“And?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Something about her reminded me of myself, I guess,” I said after a moment. “I mean, she wasn’t really making much of an effort to hide and her costume read way more ‘anti-hero’ than villain. I thought I’d talk to her, make sure she knew where she could find support.”

Piggot narrowed her eyes. “That seems like a lot of conclusions drawn from minimal evidence,” she said after a moment.

I just shrugged my good shoulder. “I was fighting on the streets for two years before I joined up, ma’am. I got pretty good at figuring out who was a villain and who was trying to help,” I said, with a little shrug. Which was true, although part of the old Sophia’s criteria had also been ‘who was a victim’ and ‘who would fight back.’

Her lips pursed in a moue of displeasure. “Either way, I think we both know you broke regulation. Finish your report and then we can address punishment.”

I nodded. I’d known this was coming even back when I made the decision to approach Taylor, because I’d judged it to be worth the punishment. Now I’d just have to take my lumps. As best I could, I told her the rest of what had happened, with the exception of some of the conversation with Tattletale, for obvious reasons.

“Why didn’t you run?” she asked, when I finished. “I know that you know the regulations when it comes to villains like Lung. You’re not meant to fight anyone without backup, least of all somebody who previously fought the entire protectorate to a standstill.

I winced, but I knew she was right. Still, I’d had a reason, and I didn’t think it was wrong—not morally, in any case. “Ma’am, at the time of Lung’s unprovoked assault, I was on the roof with Arachne, who did not seem to have any Brute powers or any defensive abilities. I knew that I would be far more equipped to escape from Lung, even once he’d ramped up, and I judged that if I fled immediately it would be the same as letting her die. I acted just as I would with any of the other Wards, doing my best to buy time for her to escape and potentially attack Lung from a distance with her swarm, which is precisely what happened. There’s a good chance that if I had followed regulations, I might be uninjured but an aspiring hero would be dead.” I paused, panting, and then winced as each breath pulled against my rib.

She gave me a long, searching look. “Well, officially I need to tell you that you broke regulations by putting yourself in danger. As a Ward, your first priority needs to be your own safety, because you’re still legally a child. Which means that you’re going to be on punishment duty for the next two weeks. I’ll let you choose: either console duty or the elementary and middle school circuit.”

I almost said console duty, because Sophia despised dealing with young children, before a thought crossed my mind. “I’ll take the school circuit,” I said instead, because Dinah was a middle schooler and this might be my best chance to run into her before Coil made his move. “Talking to middle schoolers can’t be worse than talking to Dennis.”

“I’ll let image know—I’m sure they’ll be ecstatic.” Her lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. “I probably should revoke your solo patrols, but I’ve seen the analytics when it comes to your presence and crime. I am going to insist that you only go out when there’s a Protectorate hero within ten minutes of your location, that you don’t go after any more capes without backup, and that you inform Console before you engage with any other non-protectorate Capes. I don’t care if you stumble on Mouse Protector and Parian doing a show in the streets, you call it in. Understood?”

I nodded, feeling intimidated and a little impressed. “Understood, ma’am.”

“Good,” she said, pushing herself out of the seat.

A thought struck me, then. “You said officially I broke regulations. What about unofficially?”

She gave me a long look. “Unofficially, I can respect a person who’s able to escape but stays behind to protect the weak. It’s a rare thing, Hess, and not something I’d have guessed you to have.”

She walked out on that note. Abruptly I remembered what Talia knew of her background—how she’d been at Ellisburg, how the cape support had panicked and abandoned the PRT troopers in favor of saving their own hides. There was a faint warm feeling in my chest, and I didn’t think it was the fractured rib this time.

Then I remembered that I’d signed myself up for dealing with a bunch of snot-nosed brats for the next two weeks and I groaned.

It was hard to get to sleep, and not just because of the pain, which was only partially diminished by the meds. I’m not going to lie, fighting Lung was terrifying. I’d mostly stayed away from cape fights, before joining the Wards, preferring to focus on shutting down unpowered drug dealers, muggers, and rapists. My power was practically built for ambush tactics, and I preferred to set up a situation of overwhelming superiority before I engaged in a fight. I’d gotten in a few skirmishes since joining the Wards, but they did their best to keep us away from the real heavy hitters, so that had mostly been a couple run-ins with the Undersiders, an encounter with Circus, and that time with Uber and Leet–who had, of course, already escaped their confinement, since apparently the holding cells are built out of swiss cheese and prayers. I understood the logic of it, to some extent–the way that it was better for everybody if somebody like L33t didn’t feel like going all out, because for all that  he was an ass and his tech was buggy, I had little doubt his ‘murdering’ tech trees were still largely untapped. Still, it was hard not to be a little pissed off to see them back out on the streets so fast. 

Still, letting low-tier gimmick villains like Uber and L33t escape was one thing: letting Lung go was another. If I’d had my way, I wouldn’t have gotten involved with him at all, especially knowing what Bakuda was capable of. Honestly, she scared me almost as much as the Nine or the Endbringers—maybe not in the long term, but right now she was a literal loose cannon that was liable to begin a vicious bombing campaign against the city. A part of me had been hopeful that my presence here would change things enough for Lung to go uncaptured, even though another part of me was glad he was gone: besides his own cruelty, I was sick of the way that Kaiser and his jackboot boy scouts used the other gangs as both a shield and a propaganda machine.

Eventually I did drift off to sleep, only to be woken up at four in the morning by someone entering the room (and none too quietly, either). I sat up, blearily blinking sleep from my eyes, then winced when that pulled on my injuries. 

“Ah shit, I wish they hadn’t called you,” I said as soon as I saw who it was. I regretted the words as soon as I said them, but it wasn’t like I could take them back.

Amy Dallon, better known by her cape name Panacea, gave me a fierce scowl. “What, are you too tough to need healing?” she said, her voice acerbic. She looked about as rough as I felt, and I could tell that she’d been woken up in the middle of the night and shuttled down here for an ‘emergency.’ 

“Wait, fuck, that’s not what I meant,” I said. “Just—it pisses me off how everyone takes you for granted. You’re a teenager and a human being, not a damn healing robot.”

She just shrugged impassively. “Yeah, well, it is what it is. Besides, they didn’t call me for you—they needed me to stabilize Lung.”

I scoffed, and my nose wrinkled in involuntary disgust. “That’s even worse, then. They’re waking up a teenager in the middle of the night just to save a slaver from the consequences of his own actions, just so it doesn’t reflect bad on the Protectorate.”

“So what, you think they should have just let him die?” she shot back, venom lacing her words.

“Honestly? Yeah. The shithead tried to murder a Ward and a newbie hero completely unprovoked, and that’s not even getting into how many people he’s personally killed or how many women he’s kidnapped, blackmailed, or coerced into sexual slavery.

A conflicted expression crossed her face. “That’s for the justice system to decide, not individuals,” she said, although the words had a flat affect that made them sound like she was quoting somebody else.

“That only works when our justice system isn’t a fucking revolving door,” I snapped, then forced myself to calm down—it wasn’t like I was mad at her, not really. “To be clear, I don’t blame you for healing him. I get it, you’re an affiliated parahuman, and part of that is helping out the PRT when they ask. I just think if he couldn’t survive without parahuman healing, if he would be dead in any other city without Panacea on hand, then it’s stupid for them to go out of their way to heal him.”

There was a silence after my words, and then she scowled. “Can we debate this moral philosophy shit sometime that isn’t four in the goddamn morning? I just need to know if I have permission to heal you.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” I replied, and held out an arm. It was… a little nerve-wracking, knowing from Talia’s memories what Amy was actually capable of, but at the same time I knew it took intense pressures and the god-damn Slaughterhouse Nine to actually push her there, and I would do my best to keep that from happening. Another item added to my mental to-do list, another plate to start spinning, but given how much good Amy could do if she didn’t go to the Birdcage, it would have to be done.

She laid her hand over my own, and then I felt the viscerally unpleasant sensation of my bones knitting themselves back together in my arm and ribcage. It didn’t hurt, thankfully—she must have disabled my pain receptors before she began—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t itchy and strangely ticklish. It only took her a few moments to heal what otherwise would have taken weeks or months, and then she finished it off by healing up the bruises and scrapes I’d gotten in the fight. By the time she lifted her hand away, I felt like I’d never been injured at all. It was honestly incredible.

“Hey, uh,” I said, as she turned to leave. “I know I was kind of a bitch, but I do appreciate you healing me. I just think it’s bullshit that they called you in instead of waiting until it worked for your schedule. Just… it feels like that’s saying your time doesn’t matter, and it does. ”

She gave me an incredulous glance. “You’re saying you’d rather suffer for a few days with a broken arm than mildly inconvenience me?”

“It’s not a mild inconvenience to drag you out of bed in the middle of the night,” I shot back. “But honestly? Yeah. I can deal with a bit of pain that I brought on myself for a couple days to keep the best hero in this damn city from feeling unappreciated.”

She scowled. “Don’t make fun of me with that shit, you asshole,” she snapped. “I can’t stop a normal thug, much less any kind of other cape, and much less somebody like Lung—and don’t try to deny it, Stalker, your crossbows leave very distinctive wounds. All I can do is pick up after the cape battles.”

I scowled right back. “I’m not making fun of you, dipshit! Anyone can run around stopping muggings and shit, but nobody’s striking at the root of any of the problems. Meanwhile you’re actually out here saving hundreds of lives every week, and not by feeding into a broken justice system. You’re the best of us all, Panacea, and I’ll make you see that even if I have to beat it into your stubborn head myself.”

We glared at each other for a few moments, and then she let out a small snort. “You’re ridiculous. Get some sleep, Stalker, and don’t make me heal you any time soon or I’ll make you regret it.”

“No promises,” I said as she turned and stomped out of the room, although not before taking a moment to flip me off as she left.

I thought I’d be too wired to get any rest after that, but unsurprisingly the biokinetic had a better grasp on my body than I did. I felt great, no pain anywhere at all, and soon I was sinking back into the hospital bed. Amy had shit bedside manners, but she was surprisingly fun to talk to, and she could give as good as she got when it came to snark. Maybe finding a way to help her out wouldn’t be as much of a chore as I thought.