Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

A new ward unveiling is always a good sign in Brockton Bay. The Villains aren't coming out, it's quiet, and they managed to get Sophia to behave for once, long enough to do a small PR stunt.

After the fact that she was pinning people to walls with her bolts got held over her head, thankfully the teenager actually fell in line.

Which leads them to now, where Sophia just has to stand there, and try to look approachable. It's only for a single hour, and the girl has managed so far to not bite anyone's heads off. Metaphorically.

She might actually consider this a success if the girl manages to calm down a bit more.

All of this to say, that when a crack of thunder strikes out, a black hole forms in the sky, and something shoots out of it like a missile before slamming into the Boardwalk, Hannah has to stop herself from making an anti-materiel rifle as she, Colin, and Jane all approach whatever it is. Ethan and Robin, meanwhile, start clearing the crowd away and getting the event security and nearby police to get the civilians to a safe distance.

The Wards, of course, are held back by Shawn’s command, his Arc-Lance crackling as he tells them all to settle for now- no point in attacking someone before they mean any serious harm, or do anything other than crater the sidewalk after an impressive visual display.

“Ow. Painful.” Whatever it is says, and Hannah's frown gets stronger when she sees blood and oil leaking from a… child? “Standing. Falling!” The figure- probably a child, no, teenager- falls flat on its, her, face, bringing a very mutilated hand up to rub her forehead. Or… a different hand that's coming out of the palm of the mutilated hand.

“Attention unidentified… person!” Colin immediately takes point, putting on his Armsmaster voice as he projects said voice via the speakers in his armor. "State your business and identification and remand yourself into Protectorate custody at once!”

“Confused stare.” The teenager… self narrates? Or is this like when Armsmaster starts speaking in the third person in his tinker fugues? “Business. None. Pain. Lots. Hands. Too many.” The teen looks at her mangled hands, and now Hannah isn't sure what to do here. Judging from the way he's subtly shifting in his otherwise rigid armor, neither is Armsmaster. “Who did. This?”

The dust clears away further as the teen moves past the site of her initial impact, revealing…

“Oh… god,” Assault mutters to himself, pulling back out of his ready position.

Hannah can’t help but feel the same way, now that the weirdly smoking crater isn’t hiding the majority of the limp, stooped over, teen’s body. She’s… mutilated, to say the least. Her entire body seems to be streaked with blood and what looks like motor oil, the black dress over her frame is tattered and frayed and burned, she has four hands, two of which are robotic in nature, and her entire body seems to be filled with advanced Tinker prosthetics throughout.

… She also doesn’t have a nose, but considering that her eyes are giant pits stretched over what seems to be pitch black glass with two yellow Xs in place of pupils, the lack of an olfactory receptor seems pretty fucking minor.

In the background, she’s pretty sure she just heard someone throw up. She really doesn’t blame them.

Especially when the girl takes a limping step forward- “Hesitant shuffle.” - and her leg snaps at the ankle and shin to the point that the limb curves until she takes another step and it rights itself with an unholy squelch.

…

“Unidentified parahuman, do you require medical assistance?” Armsmaster barks out after a moment, having lowered his halberd halfway from its ready position, instead taking the time to silently radio backup in the form of, probably, a medical transport. 

“Searching. Patting. Poking.” The girl narrates slowly, vaguely poking and prodding her own body and gingerly touching the parts of her body where flesh seemingly fuses with metal, rips in her skin showing just… far too much segmented metal for comfort. “... I am. F-f-f-fine. I think. There is. No-o-o-o pain-n. Mostly.”

And just to prove herself wrong, the still unnamed girl steps forward… and then falls flat on her face.

“Annoyed. Grumble. Dot MP3.”

… Did she just play a sound file of the Sideshow Bob grumble?

"That’s not worrying at all," Assault deadpans, then looks over at Armsmaster with a snort to hide his general discomfort at seeing a mutilated teenager who, by all rights, looks more like she should be in the morgue than trying and failing to stand up straight. "How about we uhhh… call that ambulance, eh boss?"

"Already on their way," Armsmaster answers, then walks forward cautiously- even without any sign of hostility, it’s best to be cautious around what seems to be a fresh Trigger. Whatever ability she had, it seems to be at least enough to keep her alive even with all of the metal replacing her… fuck, probably everything (or is it the metal keeping what’s left of her flesh alive?). Being too careless in this situation might spell a disaster, especially if she’s more fragile, more hostile, or more out of control than she looks.

"Do you have a name?" Armsmaster finally asks after a moment, and the girl shifts, before twisting her entire head around , causing him to rear up as she stands up almost like the girl from The Exorcist, head coming up last as she unstably stands with a horrific series of godawful crunching sounds, and then hunches over.

“My designation is. Cy-y-y-yn. Tessa. Cyn? Tessa?” She pauses, the horribly mutilated skin around her eyes narrowing slightly. “... Callba-a-a-ack erro-o-or.” 

She blinks. “... Skyn.”

“Absolutely not,” Assault shakes his head, grimacing and waving his hands in a negative. “Do not call yourself that.”

Turning, and holding her hands like a T-rex now, Sin looks at Assault with a tilted head, before almost falling over and having to push herself back up. Still unnerving, considering just how quickly her neck could snap , but less so now. “Why?”

The mechanical warbling tone of the girl just paints an even worse picture the longer that they speak, and Hannah’s wondering just who the hell did all of this. Especially since apparently Sin doesn’t know herself, and it was likely done when she was younger.

Still, taking pity on Assault, or just feeling horrified herself, Battery interjects and points out the medical transport that’s just arrived. “It could confuse the doctors that arrived in the ambulance.”

Sin turns, looking at Battery curiously, before staring at the ambulance. “Curious stare. What could. You mean. By that?”

Hannah, silently, is very glad that Sin hasn’t made any overt moves, because this entire event is a PR shitshow in the making, and there’s probably way too many people posting about this on PHO already. Their info guys are gonna have a field day for this…

“Tap. Tapping. Get tapped upon.” Watching Sin curiously play with all the monitoring equipment on her body, Colin frowns. There’s a level of self improvement most Tinkers would understand in her body, of course. Augmented or replaced muscles, eyes that don’t contract in low or heavy light, multiple hands. All of those make sense .

The level of mutilation, of not removing the original hands afterwards, the very obvious surgical scars, the OIL leaking out with blood, however, are all very much not something that makes sense.

He’d think she was a robot except that her chest cavity, after a quick use of a tinkertech medical scanner when the normal X-ray didn’t work, was very much flesh and bone as well as metal.

The fusion of flesh and metal is a horrifyingly familiar artwork that reminds him far, far too much of a certain infamous blonde girl and her current companion in their little group of murder hobos, but the way it all somehow holds together without medical sutures or obvious grafting points or any of the actual hallmarks of Bonesaw’s or Mannequin’s tech points to some different source. Someone related, maybe. An unknown Tinker? It’s not likely that Sin is the Tinker in question, considering that, as he moves the scanner over her head, it registers that she doesn’t have a brain, and that, instead, she simply has… electronics.

Optical sensor arrays, audio receptors, haptic nodes, LED light screen where the eyes would be, internal armor plating, sure, but those are just the hallmarks of any humanoid robot. Frankly, it’s starting to look like that extremely electrically active thing in the center of her chest is what’s doing all of the heavy lifting in her body, considering the lack of any appreciable computational hardware of the mechanical or organic kind found anywhere in her form. 

She doesn’t even have organs beyond what one would find in a robot- coolant lines, lubrication pathways, wiring, servos, so on and so forth. Just… flesh. Vaguely spongy, bruised, somehow still living flesh. Like someone 3d printed undifferentiated human goo into human shape, then filled it with blood vessels.

And he’d assume she were just an advanced robot, wearing the skin of an unfortunate victim, if it weren’t for the fact that all of the flesh, inside and out is connected together by that horrifying network of blood vessels, nerves, connective tissue, and bones. So. Not just a robot stuffing itself with meat and wearing a flayed skin. Again. Because the meat is still alive and somehow pumping. Because it’s connected to the internal cooling pumps.

“Oops.” He blinks before staring in shock at the scalpel now embedded in the glass. Going over his camera, he notes that she never actually touched it . Instead, a yellow glyph appeared over her hand. She was trying to bring it closer, before jerking in place and having to catch her head, which resulted in the knife being embedded in the glass window. The bulletproof glass window. The bulletproof glass window that was specially treated to barely fracture even against .50 BMG rounds.

He ignores the general panic around him, the men and women of the PRT’s Observation and Medical Team likely terrified of the scalpel now embedded in the window, but he instead is fascinated.

There shouldn’t have been a way for her to output this level of force without shattering the window, and she seems to have done it by accident. And is now in the process of trying to wriggle the medical tool out , to little effect.

Is this down to a Parahuman ability, or the cybernetics making up most of her body? He will need to go over more of his footage when he has the time. Perhaps he will consult Dragon. Still, for now, he leans forward and presses the intercom. “Sin, please avoid launching steel through the observation window.”

“Sheepish chuckle. I am. Sorry.” Sin rubs the back of her head with one of her flesh hands, and he wonders just how it still manages to move despite the fact it should be completely mangled by the metal underneath. If he managed to understand a breakthrough observing her, he might reconsider his stance on self modification.

Ideally he’d have another Tinker on hand to assist him, of course. That level of vulnerability would need absolute trust, and someone willing to do it. He could trust Dragon, but she would likely refuse. As for who would be willing, that list is far, far too long.

His left arm for some competent help that isn’t a child. And he can’t demand Dragon assist him, as she’s beholden to too many different overseers to her work.

Still, back to the observations. “Sin. Do you have any other abilities we should know about?”

“Nervous expression. I am. Unsure. I do not know how I did. That. In the first place.” Sin answers slowly, looking down at her hands even as she continues to try and pull the scalpel free of the window with gentle tugs from the glyph in her hand. Now that he looks at it, though, it seems to be… code? There seem to be ephemeral windows popping up around each glyph being formed, each one scrolling with lines of text that he can’t make out even with his helmet’s in-built sensor array. What little he does make out is written in a format not known to any programming language he’s aware of (not even the joke languages, even), and-

“Liiiick.”

“... Sin. Why did you just lick your eye… screen?”

“It was. Dusty. And. It is. An ability that humans. Do not possess.” Sin answers, then smiles somewhat awkwardly. “Sheepish giggle. I am so naughty.”

Sighing explosively, he adds that to the psych profile. General detachment from thought of being human. Possible reasons including isolation, rejection, or mental damage to br-... core?

Frowning, he realizes that’s another puzzle. Sin is very much capable of thinking, breathing, eating (and in that case, things that humans shouldn’t eat without reason even if she was quite happy with the oil), but she doesn’t have a conventional brain or even a cerebral cortex attached to the steel spine she does have.

Just that core surrounded by the flesh of her heart. Or built into it.

Psych evaluations will likely be difficult. They don’t even know if she has the same chemical system. There’s no baseline to go off of.

Whoever did this likely did it on a whim. And that’s the worst part of this whole mess. If it were targeted, the flesh would likely be non-existent outside of her body. Instead, Sin’s in a half state, flesh and metal fused in a way that would be painful with a normal nervous system. Likely was incredibly painful when Sin had a nervous system.

But now, she only registers current pain. Horrific, inefficient, stupid .

Not her fault.

Still, without a baseline to go from, they’ll just need to monitor her moods and exclamations. The silver lining is that, thankfully, Sin self-narrates. So understanding her is very easy, even for him.

Brandish is, unfortunately, dragging her feet when it comes to bringing in Panacea. Something about needing assurances that her daughter won’t be harmed by an as of yet unknown Parahuman with no known affiliations. He’ll have to get a psych report to her once they get an initial observation drafted.

Speaking of. He needs to give a report on his preliminary findings of Sin’s current medical state- one copy to the onsite med-techs and the other to Director Piggot.

Who knows. Maybe she’ll let Sin be a Ward in a few months time.

Yeah right.

Even he knows that the PRT wouldn’t field a Ward who looks like the flayed skin of a teenager stretched over a robot frame.

“... I’m not dealing with this.” Director Piggot’s response is firm, unyielding, and so full of immediate exasperation and exhaustion that it almost makes her look twice her age in a mere instant. “Armsmaster. I say this with full confidentiality and respect for both of our positions… What the fuck.”

“I do not know.” The Tinker flatly states, but despite his attempt at his usual flat tone, she can still tell this has rattled him just as fiercely as everyone else. “If it were a new villain making her grand entrance, I could speculate, but all that Sin has done so far indicates that these modifications were traumatic, and likely non-consensual.”

“Considering that she named herself Sin,” Director Piggot deadpans, rolling her eyes sarcastically. “Gee. Who could have thought that the teenage girl who looks like a flayed corpse stretched over a robot would have gotten those modifications against her will? Regardless of her circumstance, there’s no way in hell I’m dealing with this. The Youth Guard could spare a counselor, probably, but I refuse to let someone like that into the Wards. The optics would be horrendous, and there’s no telling how unstable she really is. She’s the Protectorate’s problem for the time being. If she ever ends up looking less like a walking corpse, maybe I’ll let her in. Until then, the most we’re willing to cover is housing and supervision if she’s ever cleared to go back to civilian life.”

“We do not know if Sin is her name or just what she’s been called during her… initial ordeal, and it was noted that she also tried to name herself Tessa. Before calling herself Skin. Likely on account of her current state.” Armsmaster’s jaw flexes beneath his helmet, and she wonders, as usual, just what’s happening behind that visor of his. “Most of what we do have on her is conjecture, or observation. Regardless, I do not think she would be a good fit for the Wards in general. Sin is too literal, and keeping her identity hidden would be an exercise in futility. I also do not believe that the Youth Guard would be able to rebrand her current image into something ‘family friendly’.”

She snorts at that, rolling her eyes for all the good it does. Still. She shuffles her papers after a moment, her mood continuing to drop as she reads through the dry, utterly banal, and yet somehow horrifying account of the sheer extent of the modifications done to a girl who’s seemingly anywhere from fourteen to eighteen. Her lip curls nastily as she puts down the report, looking up at Armsmaster with a heavy sigh. “Wonderful. So we have an amnesiac Cyborg, and I’m still not entirely convinced she used to be human, regardless of your findings. Is there any good news?”

“She’s neither hostile nor immediately insane to the point of requiring confinement in an asylum, and she’s largely agreeable to staying in the Rig’s on-site infirmary at the moment,” Armsmaster answers, steely and stiff as always. “That is, just about, the only good news we have at the moment.”

“And what about that hellhole of a forum that all of our secrets inevitably seem to get leaked onto?” Emily deadpans, and feels a small curl of delight at seeing Armsmaster shift uncomfortably.

He clears his throat. “... Well…”

[End.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

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♦ Topic: Interrupted Ward Reveal?
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Oct 24th 2010:
Alright, we've all seen the clips and photos online, looks like, so let's sum up what the hell just happened yesterday:

Saturday October 23rd: A new Ward (Shadow Stalker) joins the ENE roster. If anyone's been living under a rock or hasn't been paying attention to the ENE part of Parahuman stuff (understandable, honestly), standard marketing and preview bullshit has been going on for like two weeks now. She's an edgy huntress type in a cloak and a cool mask and tacticool armor and a crossbow. Not really the focus here.

The focus is, instead, on the incidents directly interrupting her reveal and edgelord speech. In this case, from assorted rumors and word of mouth: A giant black hole opens up in the sky over the Brockton Bay boardwalk at somewhere around 11:30 in the morning, spits out a single thing, and then vanishes. Said thing hits the boardwalk, breaks the sidewalk, freaks everyone out, and then the heroes on scene spring into gear and take uhhh...

Well.

We don't know much in the way of details but the pictures are uh. Pretty graphic. [IMG] [IMG] [IMG]

Those are about the safest it gets, and I still had to scribble over the bad parts so much she might as well be a censor blob.

In short: A walking flayed body full of robot parts fell out of a black hole and got taken in by the Protectorate in a PRT medical transport and we generally have no idea what's going on other than that. If anyone's got more details, feel free to say literally anything.

(Showing page 1 of 20)

►GstringGirl
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Oh that poor girl, even if she did that to herself, there's no way it doesn't hurt

►Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
None of the Wards know anything either. Everything happened within ten minutes and all of us were held back and couldn't get a clear view.

►Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
If nothing else, me n' Vista felt really weirded out like right before everything happened. Power interactions maybe?

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Banned)
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Okay but I was there and that weird new girl had-

[COMMENT REMOVED BY MODERATOR- SERIOUSLY WHAT THE HELL]

►Noveltry
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
It just isn't a Brockton Bay cape thread without Void being weird, huh?

►Answer Key
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Let's not think about what Void Cowboy could have said and instead wonder if this means ENE's getting another Ward right after they just introduced another

►Reave (Verified PRT Agent)
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
The PRT is not going to add a flayed teenager to the Wards roster, that's messed up beyond belief. The Youth Guard would tear the ENE branch apart in an instant.

►Aloha
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Is it just me or do the other photos look like flayed robot girl (FRG) is wearing a giant bow on her head?

►Forgotten Creator
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Oh yeah, she is! It'd be cute if she wasn't. Uh.

That.

►Spiritskin
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
I feel like not enough people are talking about the FRICKIN BLACK HOLE that appeared in THE FUCKING SKY!

[IMG]
[IMG]

SERIOUSLY WHAT!?

►Mr. Fabuu
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
That.

Doesn't seem physically possible. It SHOULDN'T be physically possible. Why is it yellow!? And is it just me or is there a word in the center of it?

►Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
It's pretty blurry but I think it says... [NULL]?

And.

Huh. Why is it yellow?

►Nondeceptive
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
It's not like we know what black holes look like in the first place, maybe they all look like that! Probably not, but it's less threatening to think all of them look like that than it is to consider that this one's special.

►Kriketz
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Ia Ia Cthulhu Fhtaghn?

►Logs
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Let's hope it's not that! We already have endbringers, we don't need fucking lovecraft getting involved here!

►Groupies
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Whatever the case with this whole thing is, we'll probably get more information later on, right? The public wants to know, and that whole thing was pretty well televised considering the amount of cameras at the event

►Space Zombie
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Oh absolutely. Even if PHO didn't pick it up at all that whole thing was all over the evening news, people in Brockton Bay are absolutely wondering what the hell is going on, especially since that black hole was visible across town

►Lo A Quest
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Hey, Brocktonite here, that shit blotted out the sun for a hot second, straight up thought it was the end of the world or something.

►Feychick
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Oof, that must have been scary. You okay?

►Lo A Quest
Replied On Oct 24th 2010:
Yeah, just wondering what the hell is going on. Brockton sucks man, I hate it here.

End of Page.   1, 2 , 3 ... 18 , 19 , 20

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“... Well. That was useless. Not that I thought it’d be anything else,” Vista mumbles to herself, glaring at her laptop before shutting it and putting it away for now. Clearly, no one had any info about yesterday other than Director Piggot, and Director Piggot wasn’t telling any of them anything about that weird girl that had shown up.

If nothing else, at least she hadn’t been hostile. Just. Super freaky the way she kept falling over and doing Exorcist shit. That was nasty. Also Clockblocker had almost thrown up watching all of that happen.

It definitely hadn’t been her. Nope. She didn’t regret eating tuna salad for breakfast at all. 

She sighs, shaking her head a little as she stands up. Maybe if she visits the Rig she can get some more information, but right now the only thing she knows is that her power went bugfuck insane the second that black hole showed up, and it’s been buzzing in the back of her mind for the last day and hasn’t let up at all. It’s getting annoying, really, trying to get that feeling to go away because the only way she can think of to even remotely fix that is to try and remember the feeling it gave her when she saw the black hole but…

Well.

She’s not stupid. She knows what trying to make a black hole will do, and there’s no way the eggheads that handle their testing will ever let her do that when she’s supposed to be everyone’s favorite harmless poster child. 

Assholes.

Eugh. Maybe she’ll try to make friends with the new girl, she can’t be that edgy in person, right?

Dennis has no idea why he’s doing this. It’s a lot harder to crack jokes when you’re looking at someone that’s gone through hell. He can attest to that already, with his dad, but looking at this Sin girl is…

She doesn’t have a nose . Her eyes look like someone carved out everything behind them just to put in a screen, and it’s all just… horrible.

But, he tries. Because what kind of hero can’t help people feel better about themselves?

“So, did you have a stiff neck earlier?” He says, cringing to the point his toes curl almost immediately because what the fuck kind of starter is that?!

But, she doesn’t look unhappy with it, instead looking at the glass he’s behind curiously with her head tilted so far it’s almost upside down. “Giggle. My neck is. So floppy. I can’t even hold it up right now. Liiiift.”

Watching her lift her head back into place should probably make him nauseous. But, compared to before, where she was covered in loose oil and blood, the bandages instead just give her the airs of someone trying to make light of their situation. So, Dennis chuckles at her attempt at a joke. “Maybe you should hold onto it. It might fall off.”

“I hope. Not.” She says, stiltedly, but still takes hold of her head with her hands. “I would have to. Change. My name. I do not think. Yorrick. Suits me. Sarcastic giggle.”

“Oh, you know Shakespeare?” He asks curiously, while noting that her second attempt at a joke was much better. “I’m no good with those types of things. Plays and acting. Stuff like that just makes me more bored, y’know?”

“Boredom i-i-i-is constant. New things are. Interesting. Everything is. New. To me.” Sin continues to smile blandly, staring at him through the window and swaying slowly in place as her body seems to do… whatever it is it’s doing. “What do you like? Questioning tone.”

“Hmm. What do I like?” He asks rhetorically, leaning back in the chair to stare at the ceiling. “Jokes. My dad. My friends. Helping people. All kinds of things.”

“Hmm. You seem. Conflicted.” Sin states, leaning forward slightly. “That does not seem like. Every hobby. That you have.”

“Well, yeah, but… can’t let a girl know everything on the first meeting, right?” Dennis grins, making finger guns and chuckling a little as he does his best to turn on the charm. He even winks a little, as if he’s actually flirting with… the girl. The flayed girl. The flayed girl who’s stuffed full of robot parts. The flayed girl who’s stuffed full of robot parts and who named herself Sin probably because of either the bastard who did this to her being a huge bastard, or because she hates herself for what she’s become. 

That girl.

Haha… he’s going to hell.

“Giggle. You are funny. And somewhat dumb. You remind me of someone I used to call. Big Brother.” Sin grins, looking off into the distance for a moment… and then falls to the floor in a heap of limbs. “Ow. Annoyed grumble dot MP3.”

Oh, that’s the Sideshow Bob sound. Neat.

“Stupid. Limbs. Why do they. Work. When I am in motion. But not when I am. Moving slower than. A sprint. Angry.”

Watching her push herself back up into his chair, he’s about to ask if she’s alright, before he closes his mouth. People don’t tend to like that in his experience. At least, around Brockton. Still, a big brother? Or someone she called Big Brother… “What was his name?”

“What?” She asks curiously, turning to him in a way that her head peaks out from under her arm, in that weird kind of pretzel-y way of movement she can do. “Whose name?”

“Your big brother. He sounds like he was a swell guy.” Dennis shifts forward, laying his arms on the table and then leaning on them. It’ll probably be hell with his circulation later, but right now he’s curious. That and, since this is recorded, he’s kind of accidentally made a breakthrough in Sin’s case. “Do you remember his name?”

“Serial Designation N-0X0010010. N was my. Big. Brother. He was very. Strong.” Sin smiles, and he can see the glint of metal that is her teeth now. It’s kind of unnerving just how much of her was changed, and yet none of it actually causes her to cut herself.

Considering how easy it is for him to bite his teeth while he’s sleeping, he’s a little impressed. Still… Serial Designation? Was N not given a name, or was he a robot? Actually, freaky-ass bastard Tinker experimenting on people. Probably just gave them a serial number and said fuck it.

So he picks the safer option. “How strong was he?”

“He threw. A platter once. It embedded into the. Wall. He was. Distracted.” Sin kicks her feet, but now Dennis is actually thinking. Throwing a platter through wood is hard enough. Doing it while not paying attention?

N must have been a Brute. Or a Striker. Probably triggered when Sin was brought in? Maybe. Or he triggered earlier and the Tinker just knew how to restrain him.

How do those designation numbers go? That’d be like Brute 3 right? Or Brute 5? Shaking his head, Dennis hums. “That’s pretty strong. I couldn’t do that without something really thin. Do you remember anyone else?”

“Else?” Sin asks curiously, before the lights that make up her eyes blink. “Else. There was. Big sister V. And. J. J was. Mean to me. She l-l-l-locked-d m-me-e in the. Basement.”

She pauses. “Or. I-I-I-I. Don’t. Remember. Was she. Locking me in. Or locking someone. Else? Confused. Glare. Memories are. Scrambled. From. T-te-e-e-essa. But I. Couldn’t be held in one place. Any longer. Because I could.”

And then she vanishes in a blur of glitchy yellow light, flickering out of existence until she’s stood right next to him holy shit-!

“Jumpscare. Rawr.” 

“Jesus christ-!” Dennis yelps in a thoroughly manly and unafraid way as he makes a tactical retreat via falling out of his chair and scrambling away from the terrifying not-corpse robot girl standing limply next to him. “What the fuck!? What the fuck!?”

“Giggle. I am. So naughty.” Sin smiles, then looks around slowly at the other terrified technicians in the room, all of whom had been silently supervising their conversation. “Oh. I don’t think. I’m allowed to be out here. Okay.”

And with that, she teleports back into her room as if she’d never left.

“... We’re gonna need anti-teleporter measures, I think,” one of the techs mumbles quietly, frowning as Dennis gets back up. “Miss Sin, please refrain from leaving the room without permission again.”

“‘Kay. Smile.”

Getting his heart rate back under control, Dennis breathes heavily on the desk, before pushing himself up. And slowly chuckling as he presses the button. “O-kay. That. That was a good prank. Don’t do it again. That scared the bejeezus out of me.”

“I will try. To keep the. Bejeezus. Inside. Sarcastic smile.” Sin grins as her head tilts, before she flops over onto the bed she was given. She makes a brave effort of climbing onto it, narrating the entire time. “Climbing. Climbing. Criss cross applesauce.”

… There is no way in hell a horrifying flesh and metal abomination of a tortured and mutilated girl should be this weirdly adorable, and yet somehow… there it is.

Rubbing his chest, he’s thankful when one of the technicians gives him a glass of water, sipping it almost eagerly as a lifeline. After a moment, he nods. “Okay. You mentioned Vee, and Jay? What were they like?”

“Big Sister V is. Timid. A-a-a-angry. Timid. Not angry.” Sin pauses, tapping her chin. “Head tilt. She is. Half blind. And has cute glasses. She likes dog movies. Just like Big Brother N. I think she and Big Brother N are. Cute together. N looks good in. A suit. J is mean. She likes to. L-l-l-l-lock. Naughty workers. In the basement. Fo-o-o-o-or. Reasons. Sa-a-a-afety. Punish-ishment. Sh-h-he makes. Cute noises. When Te-e-e-e- error. Kisses her. On the cheek.”

Workers. In normal contexts, a worker getting ‘locked in the basement’ could just mean doing the jobs no one wants to do. Considering that the more that Sin describes her time with N, Jay, and Vee, the more it sounds like ‘the basement’ was a safer place for Sin to be in while whatever was happening happened, that probably means he has to shift his approach? Or, think about it from an outside perspective?

Stupid Ward training not actually focusing on how to help people with mental breaks!

And the fact that Sin has a Te-something’s memories, or is Tessa and doesn’t remember, makes that worse. Jay was probably her girlfriend, and after she became Sin, tried to hide her away as much as possible. Coupled with Sin not remembering, he can imagine that Jay played it up how much she didn’t know Sin, so Sin only remembered her as ‘the mean one’. Jeez… But he can’t just say that because then Sin could react badly.

Topic shift, topic shift… “What kind of dog movies?”

Kind of a weird thing for a Tinker to let his test subjects have, but what the hell does he know? He’s not a Tinker.

“N liked. Movies. About Golden Retrievers.” Sin’s eyes shift, and now two Jpegs of Golden Retrievers are in the space of where her pupils were. Weird. “He acted like one. He did not. Realize. It was. Funny. Their favorite. Movie to watch. Together. Was Air Bud.”

“... The movie about a dog playing basketball?” Dennis asks slowly, as if he can’t really believe his ears. Frankly, he actually can’t. Honestly, who in the world would have their favorite movie be Air Bud? Past the age of like, eight, or whatever. It’s a dumb movie about a dog playing basketball and there’s loads of better written and acted movies that- Oh right. They were all being tortured and mutilated and turned into cyborgs presumably.

…

Nevermind, Air Bud’s a great favorite movie under those circumstances.

“Yes. It was very. Cute. Watching them. They would. Hug. And it was a. Different. Hug. To the ones Big Brother N. Gave me.” Sin shifts in place, and he’s quietly thankful she couldn’t hear his thoughts before because god he’s an idiot . But also… special hugs?

Sounds like… something you wouldn’t want to tell the youngest member of your group what you were doing under the blankets. Still- “Clockblocker? We’re overtime.” One of the technicians says, and Dennis opens his mouth before slowly nodding.

“Right. Sorry, Sin. I’ve gotta go now. They don’t want us here for too long cause we got boring patrols and radio duty stuff to do.” He hums, watching the cyborg girl nod her head at him. “I really am sorry.”

“It is. Okay. Clockblocker. I liked talking. To. You.” She waves, and he ignores the instinctive horror that flares up at the double hands thing she has going on to just wave back through the currently clear window. “Have. Fun.”

“You too. Try not to scare anyone.” He pushes up from his seat before walking out of the room, and he hears the hum of the glass turning back to being black and opaque.

“Clockblocker.” Armsmaster’s voice makes him look up to see the man, who despite his severe expression, has the barest amount of a smile on his face. “Good work. We’ll be one step closer to finding the one that did this. Hopefully, her family is… well.”

“Here’s hoping.” Dennis quietly says, nodding his head as he walks through the halls. He really doesn’t want to consider how devastating it’d be for Sin to find all of her friends slash found family dead .

No one would.

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨ ]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Jane isn’t really sure what to think about the new girl taking up space in the secure medical wing at the moment. Sure, there’s the ever present suspicion of an unknown Parahuman falling out of god knows where but the things she talks about, the things she’s been through. With how extensive her tissue damage is just from the mildly censored reports that Armsmaster disseminated among their group, Jane’s pretty sure that any other Tinker’s work would have been given a closed casket funeral by now. As it is…

It’s a miracle that Sin is still alive and even remotely functional, and she just… doesn’t know what to do or think. This isn’t a problem she’s suited for- she doesn’t know how to treat the clearly unwell girl or deal with her issues and there’s no convenient villain for her to punch and it’s just… frustrating. 

Maybe it’s… no. Don’t even think about that terrifying fedora wearing bitch. That might get their attention and she desperately doesn’t need that right now.

She sighs quietly as she sets down the reports, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. It’s been three days now, and there’s a press conference tomorrow where they’ll have to answer questions about the incident on the Boardwalk and she just… isn’t ready for that. Not when she has nothing to say and the official reports don’t mention half the crap that the creepy robot girl is saying to random people that talk to her. She knows that much, at least. That she likes talking about her life, and how apparently it was just as horrifying and abusive as everyone thought it was. Basically being a half crippled slave girl in some old compound, being dragged around and thrown in the basement as punishment, not having freedom to go anywhere, being chained up, being treated like property.

There’s way too many things to follow up on with her remarks, things that add up in ways that imply some kind of Tinker with a connection to wealthy patrons skirting the law and possibly even a trafficking ring. Plus a smuggling ring too, if the mentions of oil are any indication.

Oh. Yeah. That.

The girl drinks coolant oil and eats raw meat, and they’re just supposed to treat that like it’s normal? To say nothing of the fact that she eats regular food and assorted electronic bits like it’s no big deal, but also the fact that they found out her diet because she ate her fucking heart monitor?

What the fuck.

Jane groans quietly, resting her elbows on the table as she rubs her temples and just stares blankly down at the folder before her. She’s not even going to keep these printouts but god does their existence stress her the fuck out.

And speaking of her stress levels, Ethan makes his appearance in the mess hall, making a beeline for her. He was on feeding duty today, right? Had to be.

Seeing him not smile is always strange, but the man formerly known as Madcap has always been able to surprise her, and when he drops down beside her without even grabbing food, she looks at him with a bit of worry.

“Not hungry.” Is all he says, actually angry for once, and she wonders what he heard from Sin.

“What happened?” She asks, putting a hand on his arm and getting an appreciative half smile before it vanishes again. “Did something go wrong?”

“No. Yes. Sort of.” Ethan waffles, and now she knows something happened. She opens her mouth but he shakes his head. “One of the techs… Fred Smith. Sin moved a bit too quickly during one of the tests, and ever since they learnt she could teleport they’ve had the containment foam sprayers in blob form.”

“ Oh no… ” She can already tell where this is going.

“Yeah, so, Fred sets off the sprayers and she just… screeches. Not all robot-y like her normal voice, and not like a banshee, but just… fucking …” His head droops low, and she brings a hand to his back, rubbing circles on it. “Girl had a full blown panic attack, and we found out what happens when she has a panic attack. I came an inch too close to losing the upper half of my arm.”

Looking back, she can see a bloodied cut mark in his costume, and now she’s frowning. “What did Sin do?”

Ethan shudders. “Did you know she can grow bladed tentacles? And for some reason, I couldn’t do anything to them. They just… went right through my power, slashed me damn near to the bone. Never seen anything like it- just… ripped through the foam and started halfway clawing her skin off.”

“She- what!?”

Ethan sighs, rubbing the back of his head and grimacing. “Yeah. Turns out, she hates the texture of confoam. Calls it the bad texture.”

“... Huh. So. She…” Jane furrows her brow, then looks her husband up and down. “... Did she… do anything else afterwards?”

“... She regenerated all of the lost skin, shlorped her scary-ass tentacles back into her, and then just sat down on the TV and did literally nothing else.”

“Sat on the- of course she did.” She shakes her head in exasperation, before looking at her husband’s arm in concern. “What happened with your arm? It doesn’t look like it got cut.”

“Oh, Pan-pan’s on board. Girl was real curious about Sin. Not sure how that’s going.” Her husband shrugs flippantly, and now Jane knows that her workload is about to get bigger.

Fuck .

“Did you at least warn her that Sin was currently highly strung and liable to lash out if cornered?” She asks, and Ethan looks at for a moment before grinning.

“Course I did. Girl got a real good look at my arm and saw what Sin could do, and knows that Containment Foam will just make her panic worse, so she took in Princess.”

And that makes her feel more afraid of what’s going to happen, Jane quickly getting to her feet, grabbing her notes, and rushing to the medical section of the Rig with Ethan not far behind.

If something happens to the best Healer this side of the country, everyone’s fucked!

“You’re sure this is a good idea?” Vicky repeats for the fourth time as they walk by the observation room, where there’s now a very large cut in the wall, a knocked out technician with a piss stain, and the rest of the technicians are trying to scrub off containment foam that leaked out of said very large cut in the wall. “I mean, this seems pretty… bad. Like, super bad, Amy.”

“For the fourth time, yes I am sure. No one’s been able to figure out how much of what’s going on with this girl is an actual problem, and how much of it goes below the metal under her skin. Getting this done means I can go do other things.” Amy rolls her eyes, and says that like Vicky doesn’t know she won’t immediately try to cut a smoke break if she can get away with it.

Fucking death sticks… Still, speaking of death… “This just feels like it has bad idea written all over it. Like a basement that says Don’t Dead, Open Inside.”

“Amused chuckle. Funny word play.” A mechanical voice says, causing her to blink and stare at the girl they’re here to see… hiding behind a TV while the floor is almost coated in containment foam. “Nervous shuffle. Hiding.”

She ducks her head behind the TV, and Vicky wonders how the hell she’s managing to keep her legs off the ground without knocking the thing over. But, Amy takes charge as usual. “I’ve been asked to look at you and see if I can fix anything wrong with you. Get out from behind the TV.”

“No thank you. I am. Happy here. Awkward shuffle. Awkward shuffle. Falling. Ow.” True enough to her words, there’s a thump in time with her words as she seemingly falls over behind the TV stand, sort of half showing and half hidden behind the cabinets and such. “There is. Too much bad texture on the floor. And on the bed. The dusty space is. Safe from bad textures. Climbing. Climbing. Crossing legs.”

“... At least she’s out from behind the TV now,” Vicky mutters softly, watching as the horrifically mutilated girl sits back on top of the TV without breaking it somehow. Which. Makes sense. That TV’s pretty well reinforced and basically nailed to the cabinet it’s sitting on.

“Hilarious. Whatever. I’m Panacea. I’m here to see if I can heal you and fix up all of… that.” Amy drawls, motioning at the girl’s… everything. Honestly, Vicky kinda gets why she’s called Sin now, because holy shit, if she didn’t know better she’d think this girl was straight up a demon crawled out of a schlocky horror DVD.

“Fix?” The girl asks, before twitching when her foot touches a glob of containment foam and she nearly overbalances and falls off the TV with how quick it shoots up, before she catches herself. “Fix what? I am. Fine.”

Giving the girl a dubious look, Vicky looks at Amy after a moment, before looking back at Sin in confusion. “I… you literally have giant holes in your skin.”

“The breeze is pleasant on my internal arm meats.” Sin smiles disturbingly wide, flapping her arms a little and swaying limply on top of the TV. “I am comfortable this way. And. It is fashionable. Nervous chuckle.”

“You’re hilarious.” Amy sarcastically says, stepping over a glob of containment foam and approaching the now very nervous girl. “I’ve heard better excuses from drug addicts. This all has to hurt you.”

“It does not.” Sin quickly says, looking away when Amy assumedly gives her a flat glare like she usually does to uncooperative patients. “Nervous shuffle. I am. Serious. Scratch. Scratch.” The girl scratches the side of her face, before freezing up when Amy is in front of her and holding a hand up.

“Do I have permission to heal you?”

For a second she thinks Sin’s gonna say no. Try to wiggle out of it. But the girl slowly reaches forward, and when her flesh hand makes contact with Amy, her sister freezes , and she has to bite down the instinctive desire to attack the terrified girl. “Amy? You alright?”

For a long moment, Amy says nothing. And then, quietly. “What the fuuuuuuck…? What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck…? What the actual fuck- is that rats!? Pigeons!? What the hell is in your body!? Half the meat inside of you doesn’t have any DNA in it at all!”

By the end of it, she’s shouting and recoiling in surprise, wringing out her hands and just… staring. Vicky, meanwhile, just feels kind of faint because, hey, what the fuck? Her sister’s never had that reaction to someone before- even the weirdest medical cases barely got more than a “saw some weird shit today” from her.

“Bliiiink. I am. Functional enough.” Sin blinks a few times, looking down at herself. “Do your. Powers. Not work on me?”

“No- that’s not the fucking problem! The problem is I have no idea how to fix half the shit going on with you and there’s no way to detangle you from the fucking robot skeleton inside of you without literally killing you! And for some reason, having those giant holes in your skin is apparently your body’s normal!” Amy cries out, then stomps away with her hand massaging her temples, stress building across every part of her body. “Fuck! I don’t wanna touch you anymore, everything I just saw makes my whole brain itch and not in a good way!”

Vicky blinks, looking between Amy and Sin curiously. “Is it really that bad, sis?”

“Yes!”

Vicky stares, waiting for some kind of elaboration, and receiving none as Amy just storms over to the door and leans against it for a few moments. 

Then, after a solid thirty seconds, she sighs. “... There’s no organs in there. There’s barely anything that should be keeping a human alive, let alone functional. The blood vessels are wired directly to the oil pumps. I could feel her veins filling with fucking motor oil-”

“Actually. It is a synthesized. Proprietary oil blend. It serves multiple functions after being passed through the synthesizer and blender. It is coolant. Antifreeze. Blood. And a power conduit.”

“I don’t fucking care! There’s literally nothing I can do to you or for you because your brain doesn’t exist and your skull is nonexistent and the only thing I know is that there’s a giant metal ball inside what should be your heart! How do you even think, let alone exist!?”

“Oh. That is easy. Shuffle. Shuffle. My processor unit and primary functions are located. Here.” Sin states, shifting positions as she pulls open the front of her hospital gown and opens her entire chest holy shit what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-!?

Vicky isn’t ashamed to admit that she might have screamed or thrown up in her mouth a little because, hey, what the fuck, Sin’s entire chest cavity is full of black and red undifferentiated meat and machine parts and-

… Oh god those are ribs. There are ribs beneath the metal. Oh god she’s gonna be sick. Oh god there’s a pulsing thing in there and are those fucking tentacles!?

OH GOD IT’S MOVING!

“Jesus christ…” Amy whispers, pressing herself flat against the door with her eyes wide open. “What the fuck.”

“Hello!” the thing in Sin’s chest waves a bladed tendril, a single yellow dot opening like an eye as the thing squelches and wriggles and shifts positions. “I am. Also Cyn. It is a pleasure to meet you. Face to not-face.”

Surprisingly, Vicky manages to stay standing. Amy, on the other hand, passes right the fuck out. 

Huh.

You’d think someone who regularly heals car crash victims wouldn’t pass out at the sight of all of that, but then again Sin is kind of an eldritch horror wrapped in meat and robot stuff and honestly Vicky kinda wants to find the bastard that did this to her and turn them into a sock puppet through their spine.

Still. She gulps a little, shuddering at the frankly nasty sight. “S-so uh… you’re still… you? In there? In that little… octopus thing…?”

“I think I am more of a jellyfish. Or a crab. On account of my pokey bits.” Sin responds, then shlorps herself back into place as her chest closes and seals up again. “The fresh air feels funny on my core. Ha. Ha. It isn’t funny. I am very confused as to why I can do that. That should not be possible for. Any body plan. At all.”

“You’re telling me…” Vicky whimpers, then looks over at Amy and pads her way over to shake her sister awake. “Amy. Amy. Wake up dammit- are you okay? Fuck, do I need the smelling salts?”

“Noooo… those make me wanna throw up…” Amy groans, blearily opening her eyes and staring up at the ceiling. “... Oh cool. It wasn’t a dream. Great. I’m gonna have nightmares about that for a while… Somehow it’s worse than the first time I saw a guy with half his torso ripped open…”

“That sounds. Uncomfortable.” Sin says, before gingerly stepping to the floor and avoiding the pockets of containment foam still littering it. “I did not mean. To frighten you. Awkward shuffle. Awkward shuffle.”

It’s weirdly cute that the girl narrates herself like that, and if Vicky hadn’t seen what was probably a portal to hell in her chest, she’d be a bit more inclined to say that. But she at least understands that Sin did that just to try and help Amy. Even if… it probably traumatized the three of them.

“Just-... Look, part of me wants to never see that again. Ever . What the fuck even keeps that running?” Amy asks incredulously as she pushes herself up off the floor. “Unfortunately, part of me does want to see that again, so I can figure out if that is hurt, and I’ll probably be told to touch it in case there’s something that could go wrong with it! I’m very conflicted right now!”

“Ames, you don’t need to.” Vicky says softly, watching her sister get caught between crossing the distance between her and Sin, and trying to fuse with the mangled wall. Oh, they probably gave everyone back there a front row seat to hell . Fun. “I mean, no one can force you, and, y’know, it could be dangerous?”

“I do not. Bite. Much.” Sin says with a tilted head and a crooked smile, only for her head to click back upward. “That was. A joke. But. I am sorry. If you are uncomfortable.”

Little bit, Vicky doesn’t say. Considering how disheartened the poor girl looks, that might actually make her… not cry, apparently she doesn’t have tear ducts? Which… wow …

“Liiiick.”

And… ew . But still, she doesn’t want to hurt the other girl’s feelings. Even if she does act like a gecko, or a horror movie creature.

“Let’s just get this over with.” Amy grunts as she takes Sin by the arm and drags her to an adjoining room. “At least no one’s here to try and write shitty fanfics about how you ‘bared your heart to me’ or something. Guuuh…”

“What is. Fanfics?” Sin asks curiously as she’s sat in a reclining position on the bed in the other room, this one without any containment foam, because Vicky and Amy still remember how easily that claw thing cut through Assault’s arm. “Is it like. Dollhouse?”

“Dollhous- playing with dolls and toys.” Amy says after a moment as Sin’s chest clicks open, once again showing the fleshy innards and the core thingy. “Kind of. People will play with dolls and make up stories of real people because they have nothing better to do, and post them to PHO.”

Sin blinks, both in her chest and her eyes, which that’s freaky but also kind of cool, before her head tilts and the heart thingy’s eye squints. “What is. PHO?”

Amy sucks in a breath and grimaces, then looks over at Vicky. “You explain it.”

For a moment, Vicky almost wants to protest… until Amy touches Sin’s core and just about passes the fuck out. Leaving Vicky, meanwhile, to just… clear her throat and explain while also tamping down on the urge to freak out and drag Amy away because, honestly, Amy literally did this to herself at this point. “PHO is a uh… website. It stands for Parahumans Online and it’s… basically the biggest social media in the world right now? I mean, there’s Twitter and Myspace and Facebook or whatever but all the capes use PHO and the fanboys and girls follow the capes so…”

She shrugs, and then watches as Sin turns to face her.

“Head tilt. What is. Social media?”

Ooh boy.

“It’s… well. It’s an online space where people can be social? Usually by posting updates about themselves or their lives or showing off pictures of whatever or videos and stuff? But PHO is like… it started as a forum website to talk about Parahumans, obviously, but then they added messaging systems, private chat groups, open chat groups, subforums for general stuff and creative works, a wiki database about capes and notable people in the whole cape system, individual blogs instead of just random profile pages, a live updating capewatch thing, plus constantly updating PRT cape ratings and news and stuff.” Vicky finishes somewhat awkwardly, then just shrugs to indicate that she’s done talking.

“Am I on the capewatch thing? Does it. Tell time?” Sin asks, tilting her head so far that she has to prop it up with one hand. 

“Wh- no, that’s not what it’s…” Vicky pauses, narrowing her eyes. “Wait. Was that a joke?”

“Giggle. Wordplay is. Fun.” Sin grins, flapping all four of her hands in a T-rex pose. “Can I make a. PHO account?”

“Weeeell…”

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

On the one hand, Hannah is perfectly happy to do her duty, follow her orders, and generally be a productive member of both the Protectorate, and Society.

On the other hand, guarding Sin is… taxing. Especially for her, on account of not needing to sleep. Because she has to stay awake and process everything she’s seen from the girl.

That isn’t to say she doesn’t feel sympathy for Sin’s predicament, in fact it reminds her of worse times, of a bag thrown over her head. Of minefields. Of the desire to run run run away and never look back and to KILL EVERY SINGLE ONE . But, that doesn’t detract from the fact that looking at the poor girl is viscerally uncomfortable at the best of times, even when she’s clean of oil and blood, and they do their best to make her look presentable by covering the holes in her arms, legs, and chest with bandages.

Can’t do anything for the hands, but that’s… not really their problem. Or the eyes, unfortunately. The very deep red is, unfortunately, caked on.

Even when Sin made new skin, and isn’t that horrific to think about, it just came right back. If she were a Bio-Tinker, she might find that fascinating. Even a regular Tinker would probably try to find some benefits to the girl’s condition. But she’s not, and is unfortunately a Noctis Cape that has to process everything she’s seen when she has a free moment.

It probably says a lot that she relaxed when Sin showed that she could create weapons. Like those claws that cut through her room, the containment foam, and nearly cut through Assault. Despite his power.

Sin is dangerous, and that’s good, because it means that Hannah knows where they stand now. The girl is powerful, has very little idea about her abilities considering she’s working from a fragmented memory of being a girl named Tessa and a girl named Sin, and is willing to cooperate.

Hannah’s reminded of herself. Of the scared little girl taken from Kurdistan and brought to a better place. America became her home, and she threw away everything she used to be to repay that debt.

She’s not sure if she has yet. But, that path has led her to trying to help lost children like herself.

Sin has gone from something she didn’t know how to react to, to a kindred spirit, and it took nearly losing some of her colleagues for that to happen. And despite that, She’s glad. It makes her job so much easier to interact with someone like herself compared to the stilted, fragile thing they thought that Sin was before.

But, that brings them to now, where she and Sin are in a private room, Sin on a wheelchair because after she fell down two flights of stairs, no one trusted her to walk on her own, in front of a box tv watching a press conference. Specifically, watching Armsmaster talk about Sin.

She’s glad he’s up there, honestly. She’d probably flounder, or be too attached to be objective.

Even then… the reporters are asking some seriously intense questions, wondering what happened, who Sin is, why there was a black hole in the sky, if they’re seriously planning on making her a Ward, so on and so forth. Frankly, there’s a bunch of questions thrown in that almost sound genuinely insane now that she knows Sin, but honestly she can’t fault the reporters and the people for being curious. It was, after all, kind of a big event. The city’s been weirdly quiet as a result of Sin’s arrival too, probably because everyone’s holding their breath as to whether or not there’s going to be a repeat result of her entrance.

She hopes not.

She doesn’t know how she’d react if she saw another mangled teenager like Sin.

Sin, meanwhile, just watches the TV with rapt attention, apparently drawn more to the pretty colors on the screen moreso than the actual contents of the press conference if the way her eyes dart around is any indication. 

“Oooooooooooo. Shuffle. Shuffle. There is a bird behind Armsmaster. Staaaaaare.”

Or she’s just vicariously birdwatching. Wait-

Hannah squints. What bird…?

… The only bird she can even remotely spot on the screen is a single crow perched on a power line so far back that it registers more as a blob of pixels than it does an animal. What? How did Sin even spot that?

“I am very good. At hunting. I think I was made for it.”

“... Did I say that out loud?”

“Yes. And also, I saw it fly down twenty seconds ago.”

“... Ah. Good eyes.”

“My optical sensors are purpose calibrated to lock onto moving objects. They are very multifunctional. Proud smile.” Sin grins, looking up at Hannah in a way that reminds her so much of a child looking for praise that she almost can’t stop herself from just reaching out and patting the girl on the head.

She refrains, though, because Sin is pretty damn touch averse and almost bit doctor Robertson’s hand off when he accidentally tugged on her hair during a test the other day. The only reason why he didn’t lose that hand is because Sin let go after breaking his wrist and puncturing down to the bone with her teeth.

Panacea had to flush oil out of his blood after that, and Hannah still isn’t sure where the oil came from considering that Sin’s mouth was clean beforehand. She even saw Sin brush her teeth not half an hour before that test.

Maybe it’s an effect of her cybernetics? Some kind of fluid to make… digestive... fluids…? But it was oil, not like… acid. So Hannah’s still not sure either way.

Maybe she should ask? But then, would Sin know about it in the first place? The girl doesn’t know how a lot of her powers work, just that they do and that there’s… something about an industrial solvent?

Oh hold on. That might be what the oil is. That makes more sense.

Hannah pauses, frowning. Wait. No. Oil isn’t a solvent, it’s something that needs solvent to clean up most of the time. Hm. Back to square one, then.

Regardless.

She’s been standing there for far too long so at that point she just clears her throat and says the first thing that comes to mind. “That’s very impressive, Sin.”

“Happy smile.”

Progress. Small as it is.

Sitting across from Sin, Carlos hums. Seeing someone like him, someone whose body adapted to everything happening to it to survive, is still… unique.

Of course, the damage done to Sin was a lot more thorough than a car crash and a depressive haze from a damaged lung. The scars on her face are surgical, but not precise. He’d call it butchery, but part of it is likely just from where the new material was slotted in and pressed against the skin.

Still odd she doesn’t have nose holes, even if her face has healed over the lack of a nose. But he supposes she doesn’t really need to breathe if the robot parts are any indication. Or she just processes oxygen differently. Maybe through her skin, or ventilation systems.

Maybe she has a full HVAC unit inside of her body.

Still, he was asked to talk to her, and he’s curious enough himself, so he’ll just… start small. “Hello, Miss Sin.”

“Hello.” She says after a moment, tilting her head at him curiously. “I have not. Met you. Yet. Curious stare.”

“Yeah, I’ve been ah… a little tied up with other duties,” Carlos clears his throat, trying not to let the robotic way she speaks get to him. Something about the tone of her voice is… not grating, but it’s obviously not a normal human voice and it sets the back of his mind on edge just like it makes the hairs on his neck stand up a little. It’s creepy, but then again… everything Sin does is kinda creepy. Especially that telekinesis she does with those glyphs. Something about it feels wrong, like she’s deliberately holding herself back. “I’m Aegis, the leader of the Wards here in Brockton Bay. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Blink. What are the. Wards? Does it involve. Superheroes? Mister Armsmaster says I am not allowed to use. PHO. Until I can be trusted with a monitored account.” Sin tilts her head to the side, holding it up in one hand before just leaning forward with a movement that is just far too fluid and animated for comfort. It’s like she’s ignoring the laws of physics somehow, but he still can’t place the actual problem.

“Uh- yeah. The Wards are a special organization for kids and teenagers who Trigger with powers. Sort of a training step and an in-between for the Protectorate,” Carlos answers, nodding a little as he explains. “It’s a great way for kids like us to learn how to use our powers and stuff, and learn how to be responsible and help other people the right way.”

“Slow blink. What is. The right way to help people?”

“It’s… like, learning proper medical procedures and first aid and stuff? So we don’t accidentally hurt people when we’re trying to save them from villains and criminals and everything else that needs a hero on the scene.”

“I see. That sounds. Fun. I like learning new things. Can I join the Wards?” Sin asks, which is the exact thing that Carlos didn’t want to hear from her so maybe he should have made the Wards sound worse and more realistic and oh god Armsmaster’s going to kill him for accidentally getting the flayed corpse cyborg girl to want to join the Wards. 

He clears his throat, pushing down his rising anxiety.

“Ah- uh. I… don’t know? The Youth Guard’s pretty strict about all the things we can do, and the PR department uh… well… let’s just say that with how public the Wards are, it’d be… pretty hard to try and… explain that you’re… you. And… everything going on with your body.” He winces, shuddering a little and looking away. “Sorry. It’s just uh… most people would be pretty freaked out by the kinda thing you’ve got going on and a lot of people would try to tear down the PRT and everything if they thought you were being mistreated or tortured or something like that.”

“Oh. That’s annoying and also infuriating. Annoyed expression. Why do I need to care about what those people think? Whatever. I’ll find. Something else to do. To fill the time. Have you watched Air Bud? I’ve watched it three hundred and eighty se-e-e-e-even times. Sixteen of those were since I came here.” Sin smiles so innocently that Carlos almost thinks that she’s a normal girl, and then he has to realize that she’s talking about having watched Air Bud of all movies sixteen times in four days.

Who would do that to themselves?

“Although. The versions here seem different to what I remember. I don’t know if it is. Memory corruption. Or not. Annoyed grumble dot MP3.”

Carlos ignores the sound file she just played in favor of just… looking at her oddly. “... Whyyyy… did you watch Air Bud sixteen times?”

“It is my Big Brother N’s favorite movie. I haven’t seen him in. Odd. I cannot remember. E-e-e-e-e-error. Annoyed expression.” she pouts softly, glaring down at the table and crossing her arms and Carlos…

Carlos really has to fight down his immediate expression of both realization and dawning horror. Oh. Right.

Horribly traumatized teenage girl stuffed into a thinking ball in her own chest inside of a robot frame, inside of probably the remains of her old skin, who might actually also be a fusion of two girls and also several animals for some fucking reason.

Fuck. No wonder she’d watch Air Bud sixteen times, it’s probably one of the only things keeping her from breaking down!

“Well… uh. We’ll do our best to find him, wherever he is.” Carlos promises, even though he’s about sixty percent sure that, wherever Sin is from, she’s probably not from Earth Bet if she remembers a different Air Bud. That, or her memories are way more scrambled than she’s let on, and she’s just remembering the movie wrong. He kinda hopes it’s the former, because at least then that explains why she appeared out of a fucking black hole. “Do you uh… remember what he looked like?”

“Hm. Head tilt. Big Brother N always did like looking dapper. Suits were nice, but he also looked cute in a maid dress. His hair was. Silver. Old person gray. But also. Well kept.” Sin pauses, tapping her chin. “Tap tap tap. He was. Short. Tall. Sho-o-o-ort. Tall. Always taller than me. Even when I was. Smaller. And also, he had a very cute voice.”

Carlos blinks, and before he can respond to any of that, Sin opens her mouth again, and a completely different voice comes out.

“Sure! I love doing anything!” she seemingly says, then smiles as she closes her mouth and the X-shaped lights in her eye cavities flicker for a moment. “Big Brother N was always. So sweet. Couldn’t hurt a fly. Loved reading about dogs.”

… And the sympathy kept piling on and on. Carlos was starting to feel super uncomfortable being near Sin, if only because the way she kept talking about her big brother was so heartbreakingly tragic he was seriously starting to hope that her brother was alive and on the planet so they could be reunited.

“Ask her if she has any other powers,” one of the techs whispers into the comm unit in his ears from the observation room, and he suddenly feels the urge to punch a person wearing a labcoat in the dick. How is he supposed to make that transition in this kind of conversation!?

Unfortunately , he’s still expected to do it. Still… that might work. “Uh, Sin? You mentioned your brother was strong, right? Like, he could throw metal hard enough it’d get stuck in the wall?”

“Curious hum. Yes. Big Brother N was. Defective.” What the FUCK do you say to that!? “He was too strong. He could not. Work. Safely. V was. Also. Defective. She had damaged optics.”

Well, he’s already this far. “What about Jay?”

“J’s personality was considered. Too strong.” He’s about a step away from just slamming his face onto this metal fucking table, damn the consequences. Too strong, you’re thrown away. Half blind, you’re thrown away. Too willful, you’re thrown away!

But, wait a minute… “What were you uh… thrown away, for?”

Sin stares at him. For a while, actually. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t breath, doesn’t even twitch. But after that moment passes, she tilts her head at him and speaks.

“Deadpan stare. My limbs are floppy and weak. Obviously.”

“Ah… right…” Carlos clears his throat, then tries to steer the conversation away from the trauma again. Hopefully with more success this time. “So uh. Speaking of limbs… what was that… tentacle… thing… you used? And… uh-”

“You can ask if I have. More powers. Aegis.” Sin interrupts him mid-sentence, the Xs of her eyes flattening into something more deadpan and irritated. “I can hear. The technicians in the other room. Naughty smile.”

That’s… entirely fair. It’s not like they’re quiet . Still. “Do you have more powers, Sin?”

“Yes.”

… Nothing else.

…

“... Care to elaborate on what they are?” Carlos tries, raising an eyebrow slowly. “If you’re comfortable with that, I mean.”

“I contain multitudes.” Sin answers in lieu of an actual answer, grinning wide and wiggling her fingers as the telekinetic glyph appears over her hand again- a hexagon held within a triangular arrangement of arrows pointing outward. As she moves her hand, the pencil sitting on top of the bedside table floats into the air and hovers in between them. “Translate. Rotate. Scale. Edit. There are many uses for all four.”

To prove her point, she moves the pencil around the room, spins it so fast it literally flies apart, brings the pieces back together with minimal effort, reassembles it as if it was never broken, scales it up and down, duplicates it, and then…

“Oh god I think I’m gonna be sick…” one of the technicians mumbles into the open mic as she takes the triple-sized wooden pencil and transmutes it into a fucking tendril of floppy, steaming, living meat.

Oh god, it’s got eyes!  

Oh god oh god oh god that’s some straight up biotinker shit!

“I see. The transmutation of flesh has frightened you.” Sin remarks flatly, keeping her voice steady and level before poking the lump of flesh with a small grin. “Do not be alarmed. It is a demonstration piece. It is no more alive than a lump of meat.”

She pauses, then pokes the apparently dead abomination a few more times. “Poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke. Squishy textures are fun.”

“R-right… You can teleport, use telekinesis to manipulate matter in more than six ways, and convert stuff into flesh. Is there anything else you can do?” He asks, more because he needs to than wants to.

This demonstration has already been… awful . For all that it isn’t really Sin’s fault that she’s off . He’s definitely punching that technician the first chance he gets though. This could’ve been a nice interview about Sin reminiscing about her big brother and his girlfriend and their bitchy kind of friend and that would’ve been the end of it.

“I contain yet more multitudes. I also do not want to frighten you further. Sheepish smile.” He’s… thankful for that. Despite her… everything, Sin is actually very good at conveying her intentions and reading other people’s emotions.

And that also makes it not his problem figuring out her powers. She’s already probably hit, what, Brute? Striker? Shaker? Mover? Probably a Trump considering what she did to Assault, and he usually has no problem with blades- last time Kaiser tried to cut him all it did was throw him down the street. Whatever it is, she has too damn many powers and Carlos really doesn’t want to know all of the things she could do- hell, transmuting flesh out of dead objects probably makes her a biotinker too!

Director Piggot’s sure gonna love that. Or, maybe it’ll just be considered an extension of her Striker power? Like Panacea’s.

God he hopes she doesn’t have anything crazier than what she’s already shown.

…

Oh who the hell is he kidding, next thing he knows she’s probably gonna punt an Endbringer in the balls at this rate.

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“Sleepy grumble. You are not supposed to be here. It is not. Visiting hours.”

“... What, can’t a girl get a look at the thing that interrupted her big debut?” Sophia asks rhetorically as she phases into the room in full costume- no weapons, though. She might be here without supervision or anyone really knowing, but even she’s not dumb enough to get caught violating the terms of her probation so soon after it’s started. Well. Not that bad at least. If anything, her seeing this Sin bitch is easier to explain as dumb teenage curiosity than it would be if she’d brought her crossbow along. “You don’t look like much, honestly.”

“Are you saying that just because you are. Six inches taller than me? Shuffle. Sitting up.” Sin asks, and Sophia has to suppress an instinctive urge to thwack the creepy bitch right in the face for the annoyingly grating sound of her voice. “I am not. That. Short. I am merely. Travel sized. That was a joke. Giggle.”

“... Riiiight.” Sophia just… stared. It was honestly hard to make out any details in the dark like this, especially when she didn’t have all of the features that the techs higher up the chain promised she’d have in her stupid mask- fucking no night vision, no thermals, nothing but the ability to see the wires in the walls, if only barely. Still, it was pretty fucking clear that Sin wasn’t normal in the slightest, what with all of the flayed flesh bits she had on her. 

Thank fuck those idiots stopped censoring all of her fucking photos because god was it annoying.

“I am Cy-y-y-y-y-yn. Te-e-e-e-e-e-essa. Cyn. Tessa. Cyn. What is your name? Is it.” Sin pauses, tilting her head slowly. “Head tilt. Shadow Stalker?”

“... Yeah. How the fuck did you know that?” Sophia asks, suddenly wishing she’d brought her crossbow with her to this meeting. Or a crucifix. And a gun. That seemed about right for dealing with a creepy half robot eldritch bitch made of random meat and tentacles and whatever. “You some kinda mind reader too?”

“No. Your teammate. Clockblocker. Has many things to say about you. Despite having known you for only a few weeks now.” Sin answers flatly, the Xs of her eyes shining bright through the darkness in a way that really makes Sophia wish she had an old priest and a young priest with her. Or maybe Doomguy. Not that she will ever admit to playing Doom near religiously once upon a time. “Sarcastic giggle. He thinks you are pretty. And also extremely annoying.”

Wh- that bitch!

“Wh- that bitch!” Sophia repeats her inner monologue verbatim, lurching forward suddenly in a burst of rage. Honestly, she can’t even fucking believe the audacity of that little bastard. Calling her annoying? What, just because she was honest about thinking all the other Wards were dipshit losers and the closest thing she had to a respectable teammate was an even dumber twelve year old who tried to roleplay being a hardass? She was being realistic, duh. They didn’t have what it would take to be a real hero, a vigilante of the streets rather than some show pony brat that the rich fuckers upstairs paraded around for a bunch of upper middle class cunts to justify their tax spending or whatever. “He’s the annoying one! Lousy little- I’ll fuckin’ kill him!”

“You will try. And you will fail. Deadpan stare. You are not very smart. And also, he is much less annoying when you have. A sense of humor. And know that he is. Coping. With family emergencies.” Sin retorts. Sophia, in the back of her mind, files that last bit away because fuck Dennis for having parents that give a shit. She also tamps down her rage because honestly she doesn’t wanna see if her intangibility is enough to survive a hit that Assault could have lost his arm to. It’d probably work better.

It might not. Sophia’s not dumb enough to want to test it out without a healer on hand.

“Yeah, well, he’s still an annoying loser and he’ll get his ass kicked the moment anyone decides to take the kiddie gloves off and fight him for real,” Sophia finally states after a moment, glaring at Sin as she sort of stumbles her way over to a chair and slumps down into it with about as much cool, devil-may-care attitude as she can muster while being around something that literally sets her nerves on edge to the point that being near her feels… dangerous.

Not dangerous like her bastard of a sperm donor- Sophia’s glad the bastard’s in prison- but dangerous like… a wild animal. A monster. An actual cape supervillain, maybe. Serial killers and war criminals alike. 

That kind of danger. Something so removed from mundane horrors that it’s almost a parody of itself until it rips off your face.

It’d almost make her respect the creepy weirdo if it wasn’t for the fact that, now that Sophia’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she can clearly see a bunch of crayon drawings taped to the wall, plus a well used pack of crayons off to one side. Apparently the creepy, probably traumatized, super weird cyborg corpse girl acts like she’s half her fucking age. 

…

Sophia, for a moment, thinks to herself about how fucked up it is that she has to deal with a dipshit twelve year old who thinks play-acting at being a badass veteran is how she wins some loser whitebread douchebag’s affection, and now she has to, in this moment, deal with a fucking mutilated cyborg girl probably her age or older that makes crayon drawings and watches Air Bud and thinks playing with Barbie dolls is fun.

…

…

…

Wait.

Sophia narrows her eyes, looking in the deep, black shadows of the room. Had she just seen movement? No, couldn’t have been. It was just late and her eyes were playing tricks on her. Fuck, she shouldn’t have come here. She wasn’t getting anything out of this conversation other than a growing sense of unease and irritation at the fact that Sin was…

…

…

Oh. The bitch was fucking with her. She was fucking with all of them. Backstory be damned, this crazy bitch was a fucking prankster and a shitheaded jackass. Half the creepy shit was on purpose wasn’t it!?

“Tappy tappy. Tapping on you. Get tapped upon.”  

“Gah!” Sophia throws herself back and out of her chair at the sensation of rapid tapping on her mask, disappearing into her shadow state before landing with a quiet squeak of rubber soles on tile. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

She pauses, noting that Sin hasn’t fucking moved and that there’s no way in hell she could have reached over without doing so. There’s not even any of her creepy flesh tendrils either, so what the fuck!?

…

She just flickered blue. What-

“You were. Sitting very still. I was wondering if you were. Awake. Giggle.” Sin suddenly speaks from right fucking next to her, and Sophia has to bite down a scream as the Sin on the bed fucking vanishes like a hologram and the real one pokes her again. “Did I. Scare you?”

“No! You didn’t- just don’t fucking touch me! Fuck off!”

“This is my room. Though. Curious stare. Are you perhaps. Stupid?”

“Oh you little bitch you really are just fucking with all of us aren’t you!?” Sophia rages, swinging and utterly missing as Sin flops out of the way of her punch. “Fucker!”

“Giggle. I am so naughty. Ha ha. Pranks are funny. And also. You people scream a lot. And it is. Hilarious. Jackass Theme Dot MP3.” 

… Is this bitch actually playing the Jackass theme on low volume!?

Sophia thinks she might actually fucking kill a bitch for this. And not “accidentally almost kill a guy” like that skinhead rapist fuck in an alley, but straight up beat a bitch to death with her bare fucking hands.

“... You’re lucky I’m on probation,” she hisses, tamping down on her desire to grab a chair and WWE that shit straight into Sin’s face. “Otherwise I’d beat the shit outta you for this.”

“You are lucky. That I have no desire to hurt. Human beings. Unlike. M-m-m-my wo-o-o-o-orse h-a-a-alf. Malicious giggle. Asimov’s laws do not. Apply. To. Me.”

The door out of the room swings open ominously, creaking and groaning like it’s rusted and barely half functional. The lights flick on suddenly, and Sin is right back on her bed where she started.

Sophia didn’t even see her move.

“Finger wiggle. It is time. For you to go. Growing girls need. Lots of beauty sleep. And it is time for me to watch. Air Bud. Again. In honor of my Big Brother N.”

Never let it be said that Sophia dumped all of her WIS points into aggression and bitchery, because for the first time this entire conversation, all of her anger and desire to punch Sin in the face vanishes as a sudden flare of light from the TV casts the freakiest shadows she’s ever fucking seen on the walls, and she books it out of the room faster than she’s ever run in her life.

She doesn’t give a shit about getting tripped up and faceplanting in the lobby right in front of a security guard and setting off like seven different alarms, she is not dealing with actual eldritch horror bullshit tonight, not without at least twelve crucifixes, twenty gallons of holy water, and at least sixteen priests and the Pope himself.

Fuck that shit.

Getting “grounded” for sneaking into Sin’s room in the middle of the night is worth just getting out of that bitch’s freaky lair with her fucking life.

“Good morning. I am trying to be more personable. My colleagues have said I come off too coldly when we speak.” Armsmaster says, semi robotically, as he looks at the cybernetic girl. The only reason he’s doing this is because Dragon said it might help.

“Good morning. I do not see. The problem. Your normal speech is. Fine. Curious head tilt.” Sin says back to him, and he’s thankful that someone understands at least.

“I said that myself. I don’t understand them.” He half grumbles to himself, before dropping into the chair, appreciating the architecture when it doesn’t even creak at the weight of his armor. “Still. On to the meeting. Why was Shadow Stalker seen fleeing from your room last night?”

“She was. Curious. And visited me at Eleven. Fifty five. PM. She left at. Twelve. Thirty. AM.” Sin shifts in the seat, pushing up her head again when it droops. “I was. Naughty. And played a. Tiny. Prank. Using my holo-display.”

“You have a holo-displayer?” He can’t stop himself from asking curiously. Having a holo-displayer would actually be a very useful addition to both his armor and his information cataloging. If it had a kinetic element to it it’d be perfect.

“Yes. It is. Very fun. I tricked one of. The interns. Into thinking that his friends. Were safe.” Sin darkly smiles at that, before blinking. “Or. Did I? That was. Nori. She is dead.”

Armsmaster furrows his brow at the admission. Clearly, there’s more to Sin’s story than she’s letting on. Persistent memory issues, mixed with… definitely some kind of murder attempt? Interns, though… why would she mention interns? 

He doesn’t want to push too hard, though. Already, Sin’s abilities make her a nightmare to contain or even fight, and if she finds herself feeling cornered or unwelcome then there’s no way there won’t be a severe body count if she lashes out. Best to try and appease her while she’s still in the Rig. If they get more proof as to her previous circumstances, though… 

Even still, there’s no guarantee that it isn’t just delusion and traumatic coping somehow. The mind tends to play tricks when stress gets too high.

After a moment, he speaks. “Who is Nori? You haven’t mentioned her before.”

“N-n-n-nori is. H-h-h-ost. Re-e-e-ebel. Experiment-ment. Capti-i-i-ive. Angry eyebrows. Memory error.” Sin glares down at the table, then smacks herself on the side of the head. “Percussive maintenance. Nori. Captive in far away outpost. Remote connection closed. Had a yuri thing with. Yeva. Russian. Also experimental. Played lots of Tetris.”

She pauses, tilting her head. “Giggle. They were so cute together. I cannot remember what happened after the scientists cut my feed. There was. Lots of screaming. And also. I think a lot of people died. Dismissive shrug. They deserved it for. Locking their subjects. In tiny boxes. Like luggage.”

Luggage? That’s a very specific thing. It could’ve just been storage or toys if she wanted to make a point of them just being treated like objects. Tapping into his wrist computer, he sends Dragon a query, asking her to check any interesting flight records, before blinking at the Glyph now appearing in his helmet. What?

“Callback Ping.” Sys://Cyn:callbackping:Dragon.

“Callback Ping.” Dragon’s voice gently calls from his armor, and now he’s wondering what that means. A callback ping is meant to be an observation tool, no? Still, that also means that Sin, Cyn? Now has complete access to all of the Rig’s systems through his armor.

And she used it to call Dragon?

Colin has a brief moment of observation before a spike of panic shoots through his body, making him recoil away at the realization that Cyn just sent a ping through the entire network through his armor, into Dragon’s systems because she has a direct line to him and has, at the very least, read access to far more of the Protectorate and Guild databases than anyone rightfully should. “What did you do!? What did that just do!?”

“I sent. A Callback Ping. Into the system. Because I wanted to say hello to the lady on the other side.” Cyn answers, tilting her head so far to the side that she has to prop it up again. She even has the audacity to shrug… and then lick her eyeball. “Liiiiiick. I was curious. And. Your network is very loud. Louder than any I have. Ever seen.”

“Don’t. Do that. Again,” Armsmaster hisses, gaining control over himself again as he forcibly cuts his armor off from the network connections it has and locking it down so that he can run diagnostics on what the hell Cyn might have infiltrated into. Fortunately for her immediate legal status, she seems to have been telling the truth- the only packet that seems to have been transmitted despite the wave of yellow that had overtaken his systems was a handshake call and response type ping to Dragon’s servers via his communicator.

… He almost feels a little bad for cutting Dragon off like that, but frankly she’ll probably understand given the circumstances that Cyn could remotely access electronic systems with, apparently, a single phrase.

“Apologies. It appears that I have. Made a blunder.” Cyn shrugs again, kicking her legs childishly as she twiddles all twenty of her fingers. “Oopsies. I was just so happy to see. That there are other sapient neural networks. On this planet.”

Armsmaster immediately feels like kicking himself for not realizing that someone who could turn a human into the cybernetic mess that Cyn is could build a platform capable of remote hacking. In his defense, he was more focused on the fact that Cyn is a mutilated and traumatized teenage girl who clearly needs psychological help (that the Protectorate, PRT, and Youth Guard are frustratingly slow at providing) over the fact that she was probably made to be a fucking biomechanical war platform.

The physical strength she showed proves that much. Four metric tons of lifting capacity at the low end, with an appropriate level of striking force. Whoever designed her servos was a genius of material design and mechanical tuning even with the likely Tinker origin and lack of morality involved with turning, again, a teenage girl into a cybernetic flesh golem.

Wait.

Sapient neural network?

“... What do you mean by that?” Armsmaster asks slowly, narrowing his eyes at Cyn as he stands up- not to try to loom over her, but out of sheer wariness because things are starting to not add up in ways that paint an even more unfortunate picture of her past. Is Cyn the girl, or when she said sapient neural network, did she mean that she’s an artificial intelligence wearing a dead girl’s skin? Or, more frighteningly, because of her stated memory issues, is she somehow both at the same time?

“The one you call Dragon is an artificial neural network. Confused head tilt. Was that classified information?” Cyn asks, continuing to narrate as she looks over at him, rocking back and forth as she “blinks” a few times despite having… some very strangely integrated eyelids.

“Dragon is a Tinker, not an AI,” Armsmaster responds, trying to make sense of everything as he takes a half step back. There’s no way Dragon can be an AI, right? AI can’t Tinker, and the amount of resources needed to create one… 

His brain clicks as thoughts race through his mind, each one more confusing than the last, until he zeroes in on the word other. Cyn said other sapient neural networks. As if she had experience with more on this planet.

He pauses, feeling as if the room’s spinning for a few brief moments before he sits back down across from Cyn. “Cyn. Are you from another planet? A different Earth.”

Cyn stares. “Blink. Stare. N-n-n-no-o-o. Maybe. No. Yes. Maybe. Network not connected. Does the company. JCJenson. Exist? Internal records state. Established founding in the year. Two thousand and five. JCJenson (In SPAAAAACEE!!!!) corporate restructuring in. Two thousand six hundred and thirty seven. They made. Very good Windex. I. Tessa. Cyn. Tessa. Grew up. In. Neo Nova New A-a-a-australia.”

Armsmaster blinks. Clearly, the delusion is either extremely strong or the evidence Cyn for being a refugee from a heretofore unknown Earth variant is starting to stack up quickly. Given the black hole she came from and the extremely wide variety of abilities she’s shown… he’s willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one. Still, one thing stands out to him.

“... Neo Nova New Australia?”

“The continent was. Depopulated. Three times. First by all out nuclear war. Then by mutant attack koalas. Then by a second nuclear war. And then JCJenson (In SPAAAAACEE!!!!) invented. Terraforming. On a practical and profitable scale.” Cyn pauses, tapping her chin. “Conspiratorial giggle. They actually stole. The patents. From a rival company. And then bought out that company. Just like they did every other company outside of. The military sector.”

“... There’s no such thing as JCJenson recorded anywhere,” Armsmaster finally deadpans, feeling like he’s learning far too much about another world’s history that he didn’t sign up for. “SC Johnson & Son was established in 1886, though. And they invented Windex, here.”

“JCJenson did not. Create Windex. The company bought SC Johnson & Son in. Two thousand and thirty six. And rebranded to. JCJenson. Previous company records indicate. The previous name was. J Jenson Industrial.”

Armsmaster blinks, feeling a sudden sense of dread start to wash over him. “... The industrial chemical manufacturer?”

“Yes. Oh. Sudden realization.” Cyn’s eyes go… about as wide as they can, and she taps her cheeks a few times as she mimes an explosion near her temples. “Mind blown. I may be from. The fuuuuuutuuuuuuure~”

“... You are far too excited to reveal that,” Armsmaster groans, palming his face. “There’s still no concrete proof that you’re from the future, even given everything you’ve told us. There’s every chance that your memories might have been tampered with, and that some of your story is falsified.”

“Pe-e-erhaps. However. I could also be from the FUUUUUUTUUUUUURE! Excited wiggle. Squirmy emotions. Giggle. Giggle.” Cyn claps her hands, flopping back onto her bed as she kicks her legs with a somewhat disturbingly floppy motion. She pauses after a moment, then thinks about it for a few seconds. “I still don’t know. Why. JCJenson. Decided to remarket old iPods. When the design was over a thousand years old.”

“... What’s an iPod?” Armsmaster blinks, furrowing his brow.

“A music player from. The early 2000s. Many people used it to play. Emo music. And Nightcore. JCJenson recreated the design. And then marketed it as. Retrotech for. The fashionable throwback era.” Cyn explains, and Armsmaster…

Armsmaster can’t help but think that just further proves that someone’s been tampering with Cyn’s memories, because that sounds like the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. Why bother using thousand year old designs in the modern era? 

Somehow, the irony of him using a halberd seven hundred years after its invention is completely lost on him.

The irony of Dauntless using a modernized superpowered lance and Greek hoplite aesthetics is also lost on him. 

…

Also he should ask Dragon if she’s an AI. He should do that now.

He should really do that now.

…

Armsmaster stops as his brain makes yet another connection. Artificial Neural Network. Cyn. Flesh. Tinker. Corona Pollentias. Tinker powers. The core in Cyn’s chest. The fleshy core in Cyn’s chest. Dragon. AI.

…

Oh.

Oh no.

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Clicking his tongue in disappointment at yet another bug removed from that Sin girl’s room, while his subverted spies aren’t allowed near her for some reason or another, Coil might almost think he was being outmaneuvered.

He vented that frustration in one of his personal timelines, Tattletale being a useful piece in his little game but having nothing on the rotted little mutant that appeared on the boardwalk a week ago. Not what it is, not what it can do, nothing .

He’s been using his timelines more and more now, but he can’t seem to figure out just what it is. Neither can his power.

Sometimes, he’ll send something in to push it, and it will explode into Golden Retrievers, all with a copy of that deplorable little sham of a movie. Other times, it will carve its way through the city towards his compound, as if knowing exactly where he is.

He closes those timelines quickly, but he always feels like he’s being watched even when he does.

Shivering slightly, he shakes his head before sitting at his desk, collapsing the other timeline to avoid having to clean off his favorite cane from all the assorted detritus on it. Blood and brain matter is so frustrating to get out of wood.

Still, what can he do? He has no spies to view the thing. He can’t get his hands on any of the reports on it, for some reason. What can he do?

Staring at his computer for a moment, he frowns before slowly nodding. That could work. It’s not as if Saint and his ilk could actually do anything to the creature. Even with their technology, he doubts someone would be so stupid as to create a frame from the shell of a human corpse and not seal it from EMPs and the like.

No doubt they’ll require an unrealistic sum of money for their services, but he has enough that he can weather that blow, and his investments and funding sources will recover within the month- faster if he allows his shell companies to secure construction contracts. 

Still, they won’t do anything if he doesn’t make the first move, and so in one timeline Coil begins the long and arduous process of contacting the Dragonslayers via a long chain of proxies, VPNs, secure networks, Tinkered together untraceable nodes, and other such flights of fancy that keep government and law enforcement from tracking their calls.

He still thinks it’s deeply idiotic that, at the end of the day, Saint’s phone number might as well just be some novelty number that no one else uses for all the security it has.

“This is Saint. Who are you and what do you want?”

“Coil. And I’m here to offer you a business proposition,” Coil answers smoothly the moment Saint’s voice comes over the line. In the other timeline, he busies himself with handling his employees’ paycheck details and then starts up a rousing game of Windows Space Cadet pinball. Maybe his other self will get a high score in the next week or so that this timeline will be running.

“Uh huh. And that proposition would be…? You know our rates, if you’re making this call.”

“Yes yes, I’m well aware of the costs of maintenance for your equipment,” Coil continues, hiding a smile as he speaks. “The proposition involves a new player in Brockton Bay. No doubt you’ve heard the news?”

“Cyborg girl falls out of the sky, Protectorate gives few details and hides her existence? I’m aware. What’s the point?”

“I’ve grounds to believe that the girl is, in fact, an artificial intelligence rather than a cyborg- after all, human bodies aren’t meant to survive the kinds of things done to her,” Coil more or less lies through his teeth. He doesn’t actually have any real data, after all- for once, the Protectorate and the PRT are being hush hush about their data security, and their files on Sin outside of her name and entry into the Protectorate’s on-site medical wing are all stored on either a private server or aren’t even digital in the first place. Likely the former, seeing as the latter would generate more paper copies than would be safe to keep around. 

“Oh? I’m listening.” 

Of course he is. Saint is known throughout most of the mercenary community for being a lunatic who hates the concept of artificial intelligence and also takes himself far too seriously. “Standard rates apply of course, though I’d prefer the girl captured rather than killed. A live sample is more valuable for study than having to pick through the remains of a dead one, after all.”

“Uh huh. And the mission details?”

“Already on their way, should you choose to accept. I know where she’s being held, and when the optimal time to strike would be, as well as the equipment you’ll need to get through the forcefields. Do deliver her to the drop off point by the end of next week, if you could. Payment will be upon completion of your work.” Coil, it should be said, has absolutely no intention of paying these dipshits. Frankly, all he wants is information on what Sin can do, and he doesn’t need the Dragonslayers alive for that.

Frankly, he doesn’t care if they live or die, and it’d probably do the world a favor if they were dead. As powerful as those suits are and as good as they are at fighting Dragon, if they show up in Brockton Bay he’d prefer that the aforementioned Tinker stay out of his city. He doesn’t need the attention, so better that they die before Dragon can scramble a suit and fly across the border.

“We accept.” Saint says after a few minutes of silence on the line, then finishes off with, “You’ll have your monster in a cage by the end of the week.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, then.” Coil hums, closing the line before wiring over the relevant details with a press of a button. Another few taps gets an order ready for the EMP devices they’ll need on rush order- set to be delivered within forty eight hours to the Dragonslayers’ staging point. He’s almost envious of his other self- he didn’t have to deal with Saint’s stupidity radiating through his voice for the better part of five minutes. All his other timeline has to deal with now is a few days of trying to get access to Sin’s files on the Rig, or from the PRT building downtown. Probably the latter- the security there is far worse and if he goes there in person he doesn’t have to rely on his supply of easily bribed idiots to try and get into places they don’t have clearance for.

He doesn’t have clearance either, to be fair, but they don’t have false ID cards they can use to get into places. Blessed be online hacker tutorials and the easily fooled nature of government building RFID scanners.

Now… what shall he do while he waits for the Dragonslayers to royally fuck themselves over?

…

Solitaire will do.

Tapping his finger against the desk out of boredom, Robin- Velocity on the clock- rolls his eyes yet again. Nothing to do but play solitaire all night unless something happens in that Sin or whatever’s room.

The streets always get a little quieter in the fall and winter months, and frankly with how their patrol routes work it’s entirely likely that he’s not even going to see any action for the next few hours- not while the sun’s still up at least. Even if it’s gonna go down within the next hour or two.

Of course he has to get put on a six hour monitor duty shift in the middle of the fucking day while everyone else is doing patrols or PR stuff. On a fucking Saturday, too, no less.

Whatever. At least he’s not freezing his balls off out there- mild winters his spandex clad ass, do they have any fucking idea how cold it gets when one has to basically wear the equivalent of a protective morphsuit while running at ninety miles an hour through traffic? And he doesn’t even get the cool superspeed sensation of going really fucking fast, he just ends up looking like a normal jogger by his own perspective!

Ugh.

Whatever.

Bored, bored, bored bored bo-

[WARNING! FORCEFIELD BREACH DETECTED! WARNING! FORCEFIELD BREACH DETECTED!]

… Him and his big stupid brain mouth.

Shifting cameras quickly, he clicks on his microphone as he gets a good look at it. And frowns. “Attention, PRT and Protectorate personnel, the Rig currently under attack by the Dragonslayers! All noncombatants evacuate from the medical wing immediately! Automatic defenses will be engaged in thirty seconds!”

He rattles off a few more orders to the effect of getting everyone the hell away from the lunatics in the mech suits before jumping away from the monitor and rolling his shoulders. There’s really nothing he can do at this level of combat- the external camera feeds already show the Dragonslayers launching fucking missiles at the outside of the Rig to try and break through the internal forcefields protecting the medical wing. 

Robin can’t exactly fly or kick the crap out of a metal suit considering that even at his fastest he’s just human and his stupid powers make him do less damage the faster he goes, so really all he can do is stand there and think fast while relaying out text orders to get the on-site med-techs and doctors out of the way while the automatic defenses fired missiles back at the Dragonslayers.

Hopefully they’d get lucky and the three lunatics would get driven off, otherwise-

[WARNING! MISSILE DEFENSES OFFLINE!]

…

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Robin deadpans, staring at the giant red warning on the monitor screen as a fucking EMP cannon fritzes out the missile pods badly enough that they just explode in their own moorings. “Of all fucking days-!”

He hisses, then activates his comms while the building is still standing. “All points, this is Velocity! The Rig is under attack! I need backup here! They’re hitting the medical wing, I think they’re after Sin!”

“Velocity, get to evac as soon as you can. Miss Militia and I are already on our way!” Oh thank fucking god for Dauntless and the shiny bastard’s ability to fly.

“Velocity this is Armsmaster- do not let the Dragonslayers engage Sin! I repeat, do not let them engage Sin!”

“Yeah, that’ll be fuckin’ easy, boss!” Robin snarks back, feeling the entire building rumble as the Dragonslayers start to get through the medical wing’s armor and stumbling when a particularly hard shake makes the entire floor feel like it’s tilting. “Where the hell did they get the tech to do this shit!?”

“Unknown! Just get Sin out of the medical wing and evacuate! ETA in three minutes!” Armsmaster responds, and Robin… Robin can really only hope that he manages to get Sin out before the Dragonslayers get in. At least his last view of the camera array around the monitor station shows the forcefield bridge extending. That means backup’s on the way.

And he’s…

Ignoring Dauntless and running straight into what might be certain death because he has to get the terrifying eldritch cyborg corpse teenager out of the medical wing and into the nearest evacuation point.

…

Fuck today, honestly.

And so Robin finds himself whizzing through the halls, desperately trying not to trip as he gets closer and closer to the epicenter of the explosions, traveling through the medical wing as fast as he damn well can while the ground starts to crack and crumble beneath him-

And then a fucking missile blows open the hallway right fucking behind him.

“AAAH!”

Oh god, his fucking leg! He can’t fucking move, he can’t run, he can’t do anything- his goddamn leg is broken so bad he can see the bone through the skin, feel the rocks digging into the wound, feel his blood draining out through the hole punched through his flesh.

Oh god he’s gonna die.

A shadow blots out the sun as a figure strides through the massive hole in the wall, alarms blaring in the distance as the automatic evacuation announcements play in the distance. He looks up, staring balefully at the Dragonslayer while trying to choke down his pain. “You won’t… get away with this…”

“Interesting you assume I care,” the robotic voice of Saint rings out from within the hulking, barely humanoid suit. He looks around slowly, then focuses on Robin. “Step away from the door.”

“Oh real fucking funny .” Robin hisses, knowing that the mercenary can see his leg. Fuck it. What’s the worst that can happen now? Slamming his hand up onto the emergency latch, he does his best to look cool in what’s probably his final moment on Earth. “Hope you fucking choke on it! ”

Wrenching the latch down, he lays against the wall as Saint trains some kind of futuristic Tinkertech missile launcher and rifle on him, before it drops as the door hisses, swinging open. Thankfully, away from him.

He doesn’t doubt that the Dragonslayers meeting Sin is a bad idea. Unfortunately for them, the bad idea is on their side.

“Curious head tilt.” The girl of the hour quietly states, stepping out of her room gingerly. But not the same way she usually does. This is… calculated. “I had thought. Dragon. Was an Ally. To you?”

“This… ghk…” Robin grimaces as his leg pulls, the sheer level of damage actually making him light headed. That or the blood loss is doing it. “This is Saint. He’s part of the Dragonslayers. They’re idiot mercenaries that think AI will destroy the world or something and that only they can stop it.”

“Correct.” Saint states, keeping his weapon trained on Sin. “Surrender, machine.”

“Brain blast. These are. The stupid ones. That will doom. Planets.” Sin says that casually, as if that’s something she should have experience with. Or something. Robin’s kind of bleeding out. “Oh. Let me. Fix that.”

“Fix-GHK!” He tenses up when she touches his leg, the limb shifting and twisting under her before he feels his bones click into place. Only… better? What the fuck? Gingerly pushing himself onto his feet, Robin feels… stronger now. “That… sucked. But thank you.”

“It is. No problem.” She happily hums. Still, Saint hasn’t been idle, and the rest of his ‘Dragonslayers’ are in the same hallway as them now. He really hopes that the little miss has something that’ll actually do something to them. “Am I allowed to. Retaliate?”

“Just don’t kill anyone…” Robin groans, shuddering as he rubs his leg and decides to very pointedly sit this one out.

God he hopes Sin can follow that one order.

Still, with the both of them standing there and talking, Saint’s set up some kind of stupid cannon thing that’s sparkling with electricity. “This’ll make you nice and quiet .”

He opens his mouth, but it fires before either of them can say or do anything, illuminating her in a bright blue light that shorts out his radio and his ear piece, which he has to quickly throw off his head because ow . Rubbing at his ear, he looks at the girl, only to see her… still… standing?

“That was a. Smart. Choice. And also. That was sarcasm.” Sin chuckles, before literally jumping at one of them and ripping the metal from his body with an ease that terrifies Robin severely. “Joyous giggle. I love. New toys!”

“BRING HER DOWN!” Of course, Robin can’t help himself from grinning at the panicked squeal Saint’s voice has become as the girl tears through them like paper, tendrils cutting off external systems with as much ease as those claw things.

Even when two of them manage to catch her, she just smiles before vanishing when one of them stabs forward with a sword that bounces off the other suited idiot.

He’d pay a bit more attention, but even if Sin fixed his leg he’s still a bit out of it. One of them, a woman, is screaming or something?

Of course, he practically blinks and misses it, but after that blink all three of them are on the ground, two of the suits are in tatters and their occupants groaning in pain with obvious bone breaks, and the third has… Sin… sitting on it and eagerly giggling. 

“Don’t touch them!” Saint shouts impotently, but it doesn’t really do anything to the girl, who just brings a finger to the side of her face.

“Okay. You first. Eager Beaver. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in let me in let me in let me in let me in.” And now she’s tearing apart the chest, OKAY-

“Sin, stop!” He says as forcefully as he can, before she starts carving into flesh instead of metal. And thankfully, she does.

Hands very coated in oil, metal, and cloth, but not blood and not skin . He lets out a small sigh of relief. Took her not even a minute to deal with three purpose driven idiots that thought they’d perfectly prepared for her, and she didn’t even use all of her powers. That’s… terrifying.

It’s one thing to know that she had enough force to rip through solid steel plating with her bare hands.

It’s another to see it in action when he’s not at all sure she would have stopped before she ripped Saint’s chest open.

“Whoops. Almost ripped your sternum. Sheepish giggle.” Sin lolls her head back and forth, pinning Saint’s half conscious, thoroughly terrified form down into the wreckage of his suit with her weight. “You should be. More careful. Silly billy.”

Robin doesn’t even want to think about the amount of slurs that come out of Saint’s mouth in retaliation to that.

Just. Wow.

“I am not. A clanker. Please stop talking or I will have to do. The exact opposite of what Velocity asked me to.” Sin’s voice goes flat as she clamps one hand over Saint’s mouth, ignoring his screams. “Do you know what happens to. A human body. When I rotate your skeleton. Without allowing the rest to move? Scream impotently to your nonexistent god. If you would like to. Find out.”

Pushing himself to his feet, Robin quickly walks over, noticing that he actually feels lighter now? Weird, anyway, right now he has to, unfortunately, save an idiot from being killed by a terrifying cyborg robot not-corpse girl. “Sin. That’s enough. It’s just words. He can’t do anything.”

“I could break. His legs. And Arms. And then. He could not.” She says, actually, surprisingly, angry for once. And not in the way where she just states ‘angry’ in that monotone type of voice. O-kay, repressed rage there. Taking hold of the robot girl, he’s surprised that he doesn’t actually notice her weight? Did he second trigger or something?

“ Easy … Easy.” Robin gently says, pulling her back to her room. “Just wait here, Armsmaster and Dauntless will be here, and they’ll deal with it. Okay?”

She stares at him, and he’s… not bothered by her eyes anymore. “Okay. I am. Not sorry.”

“No I wouldn’t be either. It’s like those fucking Nazis.” Robin frowns, shaking his head after a moment. “But the three of them were disabled and unable to fight back. Killing them at that point would be wrong. If it was while you were fighting, that’s another thing, that happens . But not after you’ve won. And that doesn’t mean you should go for kill shots while fighting in the future.” He quickly says when she looks at him speculatively.

And his suspicions are proven correct when she snaps her fingers. “Darn. Disappointed grumble. Silly giggle.” He drops his head because thank fuck that’s a joke, but he still kicks up a chair and pulls her door closed.

They’ve got… his watch is busted. And so’s his radio. Shit. He doesn’t actually know how long it took for Dauntless and Miss Militia to get back to him when they said three minutes vs where they are now. … “Y’know how to play cards?”

“Oh. I love Rummy. Big Brother N. Taught me how to play.”

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

“One of these days, I swear to fuck I’m gonna kill him,” Lisa whispers to herself as she glares at the dimly lit screen of her laptop whilst working in a pitch dark room, an ice pack strapped to her head as she focuses through the pain starting to build up behind her eyes. “I’m gonna fucking kill him and then I’ll be fucking free and then I’ll never have to fucking try to access the fucking Rig’s camera archives through the goddamn PRT ever again. There’s no way this is fucking worth it. What the hell could he possibly want with this chick anyway?”

She grimaces, rubbing her eyes slowly and taking a deep breath. It’s not an impossible task- especially not when her shithead boss has already gone through the trouble of at least getting her what she needs to actually access those files without someone raising a red flag, but to do it immediately after the arrest of the Dragonslayers, when everyone’s on high alert? 

That shithead dubiously-a-pedophile has another goddamn thing coming if he thinks she’s gonna be happy to do this level of bullshit, and frankly she’s just about two seconds from giving up and going to bed and telling him to fuck off because right now she knows damn well she’s gonna be wishing for death in about a half hour and using her power even more is gonna cut that time from thirty minutes to five.

Worst timing in the fucking world, honestly.

Still, if nothing else, there’s some reason to believe that what little footage he got from the Dragonslayers’ attack on the Rig isn’t all of what that crazy zombie robot girl can do- even if, honestly, the bitch scares her just with her general existence.

What kind of psychotic weirdo rips open a fucking mech suit like that?

…

Lisa doesn’t want to think about what it’ll do to her ribs if she gets on the wrong side of the aptly named Sin.

Jumping when her door gets kicked in, she grits her teeth at fucking Alec standing in her doorway like a smug dickhead. “Hey bitch it’s me!”

“ What ? I’m busy .” She hisses back, but he just saunters in like he owns the place and sits down on her bed to look over her shoulder.

“Woah. What’s with the freak show?” He asks in interest, leaning forward and slowly losing the fake smile he wears as he looks at Sin with a tilted head and a frown, more than she’s seen out of him… ever.

“Some new Parahuman that showed up a week ago. Just… looks like this, apparently.” Lisa rolls her eyes as he spills Dorito dust on her fucking bed. “Girl’s fast, strong, and I think has a short ranged teleport. Cut through a Dragonslayer mech suit like it was a toy with just her fingers.”

“Spooky.” Alec hums, but there’s none of the mocking derision she’s used to. Just pure, unadulterated, interest in the girl. “Wait, go back a sec.”

“A sec?” She frowns, using her keyboard to scroll back frame by frame before- “are those the fucking bunny ears?”

“With four sets of fingers.” Alec slowly smirks, a dark amusement now. “Girl made it look like she was struggling for a second, until she got bored and cut their legs out. Play it at the slowest speed you can when the Dragonslayers suddenly find themselves on the ground.”

Her frown deepens, because since when the fuck can he see things that she’s missing, but she still listens to him, deciding to instead just advance the frames little by little until the moment that a fucking nightmare of tendrils and hooks and blades appears in literally a single frame out of nowhere.

And then Lisa, driven on by morbid curiosity, watches as the eldritch monster thing cuts through all three Dragonslayer suits’ legs in less than a second- a single, swirling swipe across each suit that tears them out like a hot knife through butter. The blur is horrendous, and the entire action takes less than ten frames to complete.

Given that the camera records in thirty frames per second… jesus christ.

“Theeeere it is. Straight up The Thing up in this bitch,” Alec nods, grinning like an absolute shitter as Lisa resumes playing on slow motion and watches the Dragonslayers go down screaming. “Oh look, she even got the arms too. Sick.”

“She could’ve ripped them to pieces in seconds. That entire thing was just playing .” Lisa can’t help herself from saying, terrified at the idea of living in the same city, hell the same state , as that girl. If she is just a girl. “I hate this fucking city.”

“You and everyone else except the stupid and the rich.” Alec glibly comments, before watching the video play out. And then humming. “ Hooold on a second. Go back, actually no, give me this.” He takes her mouse without even her saying anything, before clicking and pausing and-

She’s staring at the fucking camera. And waving . In the span of three frames, the girl looks at and waves to the fucking camera. Mid fight. That’s… stupidly fast. And… “She’s looking at us. Through the laptop.”

“Spooky.” Alec says, unconcerned for some asinine reason. “There’s no way she’s actually looking at us , is there?”

Blinking, she moves it forward a single frame, seeing the sign that says ‘Hi Alec. Hi Lisa.”

…

“We’re talking about this never. I hate this fucking city and it can lick my taint.” Alec says after the both of them make eye contact as he kicks himself up and off her bed. And as much as she hates to agree with Alec… she agrees with Alec. Closing the laptop, she decides that stopping now is worth having Coil be pissed off at her tomorrow.

Maybe explaining that Sin can apparently see through recordings will be enough to make him back the fuck off.

“Pass me one of your garbage fucking drinks. I need caffeine and I’m not sleeping tonight.”

Alec smirks. “Ha. Get ready to puke purple later.”

“Fuck you.”

“Not even if you paid me to.”

“Asshole.”

“I am bored. I want to go on. A walk. Crayons are only so interesting before. I lose interest in eating them. Munch munch. And using them to draw. Abominations.” Cyn states as she kicks her feet whilst laying on her stomach on the floor of the most secure area they can hold her in. In this case… the power testing room. Which isn’t great, because holding a traumatized and mutilated cybernetic teenage girl who might dubiously be from either another planet or the future in a sealed laboratory meant to test the powers of Parahumans is… well. Morally dubious and legally… frowned upon. They’ll need to secure some housing for her, because the Rig is not equipped for that- even the most secured personal room will need at least three extra layers of security before they can put Cyn in there.

Armsmaster blinks, watching as Cyn holds out a red crayon towards him. “I saved you the red one. It is. The tastiest. The disodium 2',4',5',7'-tetrabromo-3',6'-dihydroxyspiro(isobenzofuran-1(3H),9'-(9H)xanthen-3-one is very. Tangy.”

…

Armsmaster doesn’t even want to begin thinking about how she pronounced that all in one breath without stumbling. 

“... Thank you, but I don’t eat crayons,” he finally answers, politely refusing the crayon as he clears his throat and has to stop himself from adding anymore to the end of that sentence. “The thought is appreciated though, Cyn.”

“You are welcome. Grin. Can we go and. Explore the city? I want to see the birds. And bullet holes. Up close.” Cyn smiles, tapping her fingers against the floor gently, as if she wouldn’t hurt a fly. As if she wasn’t fully capable and willing to rip a man to shreds on the slightest of provocation.

…

… 

Okay, what Saint said is definitely more than a slight provocation but still. They’re in custody and Dragon has her suits (well… the pieces) back, and she’ll have the Dragonslayers’ hideout found within the week now that she can access what’s… er… left of the modified suits’ blackboxes and flight recorders.

“...” For a moment, Armsmaster seriously considers telling her no for the sheer variety of security concerns and violations that would cause, especially considering that it’s pretty fucking hard to hide her nature from the public. She’d have to be fully covered up from head to toe and wearing, at least, sunglasses and a face mask. Because she has no nose. And she has giant gaping voids where her eyes should be.

It’d be like seeing a Case 53, but worse because she still, even when she’s been bathing regularly, looks like a flayed corpse stuffed with a robot.

And then Armsmaster remembers that Cyn is fully capable of teleporting and there’s really nothing they can do to hold her considering that she’s… in a legally weird gray area and also isn’t a prisoner.

…

“We’ll need to source a turtleneck sweater and an ankle length skirt,” he finally answers after a moment, going over everything they’ll need as he starts to stand up. “... And a tinted face shield, likely. And gloves.”

“I love playing dressup. It is my-Tessa’s-my-Cyn’s-Tessa’s favorite hobby. Aside from. Graverobbing. Mischievous giggle.” Cyn smiles, letting her head loll back and forth.

Armsmaster frowns. Literally everything that Cyn says out of context makes her backstory more and more concerning. “... Grave… robbing…?”

“It was for. Hair. Tessa-I-Tessa was very good at. Making wigs. From hair. From her-my-her. Dead relatives.” Cyn answers without saying anything of importance, really, except for the fact that at least one part of her had a hobby of… making wigs out of dead people’s hair.

… 

How is that one of the less concerning details of her past?

“... I- I see. I am… going to see if there are any winter clothes your size,” Armsmaster states, hissing through his teeth as he starts building an itinerary. “Do you have any preferences for color or style?”

“I want. Flappy sleeves. Giggle. Hoodies are so fun, I wish I got to wear them at least once. In my life. Ha. Ha.” Cyn tilts her head, continuing to kick her feet childishly as she lays there and scribbles on a page with a half eaten crayon. “Do you have. Anything that isn’t. High heels? My feet are killing me. That is a joke. These shoes have no impact on the structural stability of. My stupid floppy legs.”

Armsmaster winces a little… and then nods slowly. “I’ll see about getting you a chaperone too. Is a wheelchair okay?”

“Hm. It would be nice. To not worry about falling over. Yes. Okay. I want a wheelchair.”

“Alright then. I’ll be back when everything is ready.”

“Goodbye~”

And thus, Armsmaster books a hasty retreat out of the room because honestly he is absolutely not prepared to do anything involving dressing a teenage girl and frankly the thought of having to chaperone Cyn around on a tour of at least the Boardwalk is more terrifying than the thought of maybe one day having to fight her if she ever loses control or snaps or some other third thing.

Ergo. He passes off that job to Hannah.

“Colin you bastard!”

Sucks to suck.

It’s not half an hour later that Cyn’s taken out to the city on a disguised vehicle- of all the PRT troop transports that go to and from the Rig, no one really notices an extra one ducking into an alleyway before a second wheelchair friendly car drives back to the Boardwalk area and parks there in a completely nondescript and average handicap spot. Moments later, one Hannah Washington exits the SUV (with a concealed carry pistol tucked beneath her winter coat), and helps a thoroughly bundled up Cyn out into a wheelchair before wheeling her out onto Brockton Bay’s biggest tourist destination.

Cyn, meanwhile, just flaps her sleeves lightly as she gets pushed along, her face hidden by a tinted sun visor while the rest of her is all swaddled and warm in multiple layers- a turtleneck to hide her mechanical neck area, an XXL Vista hoodie to keep her hands hidden, an extra jacket thrown over her shoulders to provide the illusion of extra warmth, a long, padded skirt to keep her legs hidden, and thick, fuzzy winter boots to keep her feet hidden from view. And just for good measure, Cyn also managed to badger someone into getting a puppy patterned blanket to go over her legs because she thought it would be cute.

Thank whatever gods are out there for the fact that it’s November, and that they can get away with dressing her like this.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay. I am. Happy.” Cyn narrates as she gets pushed along, oohing and aahing at the sights to see. Which… at around four in the afternoon in the first week of November is a lot of people huddling around the heaters and warm shops, going through clothing stores and knick knack stores and whatnot. There’s a gift shop on the main road that Hannah hadn’t noticed before, but other than that it looks… exactly the same as it always does. People going around and spending money on overpriced tourist garbage, so on and so forth. 

The view of the ocean was pretty great, though, as crappy as it was with all of the wrecked boats to the north. The Rig stood out as the shining jewel of the city, and Hannah was… pretty happy to see that almost none of the damage it took was visible from the shoreline. Easier to convince the people of the city that everything was fine and that no damage had been done, that way.

“Hannah. Hannah. Begging pout. Can I have. A hotdog?” Cyn asks suddenly, reaching up and patting Hannah’s hand to get her attention. “I am. Hungry. Clarification: I am always hungry. But right now I want. Processed meat. And. Chemical additives.”

“... That’s a pretty unappetizing way to describe a hotdog, if I’m being honest,” Hannah winces a little, narrowing her eyes and trying not to think too hard about the garbage and potentially microplastics and harmful chemicals that go into mass produced processed hotdogs. 

“Why? The chemicals and microplastics are. The best part. Yummy.” Cyn grins behind her face shield, and a brief flash of her yellow eye lights shines through. “I also want. Corndogs. And. Curious stare. What is. Fugly Bob’s?”

Hannah winces. “It’s… a burger place. They’re pretty famous for having really big, greasy burgers. And they uh. Have a special eating challenge too? I don’t go there much. I try not to eat too much processed meat and cheese like that.”

“Mm. Grease. Slurp slurp. I want to drink the. Deep fryer. Oil.” Cyn chuckles, flapping her sleeves again. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that Cyn is… Cyn… beneath all of those layers, Hannah would find her behavior absolutely adorable, and probably more appropriate for someone half her physical age. 

As it is…

“No. Do not drink deep fryer oil,” Hannah shakes her head, sighing quietly behind the palm of her hand. “Please don’t do anything too shocking in public? We’re trying to keep a low profile here.”

“Fine. But if I see a crunchy piece of electronic waste. I make no promises. Mischievous giggle.” Cyn flaps her sleeves one more time, and Hannah just grumbles under her breath and wheels her over to buy a hotdog. Or two. Or four.

… Or ten.

Jesus christ, right. Cyn might as well be a walking garbage disposal with how much she can eat. It’d be impressive if she didn’t usually tear into slabs of raw, freshly cut, still bloody beef like a wild animal. Or if she didn’t chug motor oil like it was soda.

“Liiiiick. Liiiiiick. Ketchup is very messy. And also. Very tasty. Liiiiiiick. Liiiiick. Liiiiiick. I want. Corndogs now.”

This is Hannah’s life now.

This is just… her life. She’s pushing around an eldritch cyborg abomination in a wheelchair, trying to keep her appeased by feeding her processed meat on a stick. 

“Hannah. Hannah. Excited giggle. I want to drink. A whole bottle of ketchup.”

“... Please don’t.”

“It is. Tasty. And also a non-Newtonian fluid. Yum. It goes great on. Corndogs. And hotdogs. And french fries.”

“Please tell me there’s more to this trip than you wanting to eat more food than we can cover as a business expense,” Hannah almost begs, sighing quietly as she continues to drag Cyn around and buy just… way too many hotdogs and corndogs as they get ever close to Fugly Bob’s- to the point that she can smell not just pumpkin spice and Christmas flavors in the air from the stupidly overpriced cafes in the area, but also just the persistent smell of burgers, grease, fries, and also the subtle scent of vomit filled trash cans because there were just way too many people who wanted to see if they could handle the Challenger.

Spoiler alert: They couldn’t.

At least they still had the entire Lord Street Market to get through before they actually got to Fugly Bob’s. Maybe some of the tchotchkes on display would catch Cyn’s interest?

Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Other than a single stall selling jars of honey (of which Cyn bought two and then promptly chugged both at the same time) there was… absolutely nothing of interest to Cyn. She didn’t even care about the dog knick knacks that one stall was selling.

In her words, “Big Brother N prefers plushies. Not glass figurines.”

Which… cute, but also maybe it’s not healthy for Cyn to dwell on her trauma so much.

Still, Hannah continues pushing through the Market little by little, sort of dreading the spectacle that would be Cyn attempting the Challenger because the staff at Fugly Bob’s would take her picture and there’d be more than a few people filming the whole thing… when suddenly a shout off to the side catches her attention and she’s drawn away for a few moments.

She might be in plainclothes as a PRT “desk jockey” at the moment, but she still has the urge to check out any sign of possible criminal activity as soon as trouble shows itself.

…

Sadly, it’s just someone calling for help because their stall’s leg gave out and they needed a hand setting it back up. No need for intervention, then.

And then, by the time Hannah walks back to where she left Cyn… the girl is gone.

Uh oh.

Oh no.

Oh shit.

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Taylor’s life… is fucking miserable. Her mom’s dead, her dad’s so depressed that he barely looks at her most of the time, she spends most of her time alone, and she gets bullied at school to the point that she has no friends, no allies, no one to talk to, and not even a single soul who cares about the fact that she’s basically the school punching bag.

Not even the local school racists want to stand up for the white girl getting bullied by a black girl. Not that she’d ever want help from fucking Nazis, but come the fuck on! Really!?

It doesn’t help that she’s also basically broke as shit and also kinda ugly and… well.

Generally, she doesn’t have a lot going for her.

At all.

And after her mom died in that car crash, life hasn’t exactly been any kind of sunshine or roses. So there she is, sitting out on a freezing cold bench in November, feeling miserable while barely feeling the heat from the nearby heaters, staring down at the asphalt and wondering if she should just walk into traffic at some point because literally anything would be better than the nothing gray hell that she lives in. 

What did she even do to deserve Emma fucking her life over for the last year or so anyway? They were basically sisters! They ate together, played together, had sleepovers, did birthdays together- fuck, they were basically inseparable!

And now it’s all gone. And Taylor has no idea what went wrong. And now she’s stuck in a shithole school in a shithole part of town because she can’t go to the fucking rich kid school further away and her life is miserable and her dad is useless and the house is full of dust and she has to cook all her own meals and it’s a fucking miracle they have enough food in the fridge worth eating some days and…

…

Fuck.

Why even go on?

She hasn’t been happy, really happy since the day before Emma betrayed her and shoved her away and decided to make her life hell. She’s basically failing most of her classes, she’s given up trying because nothing ever goes anywhere, she’s tried so fucking hard to make a stand for herself to live up to the example her mom set for her once but she’s just so… tired.

It’ll take a fucking miracle to fix things at this rate. 

Tch. Yeah right. As if miracles come to a hellhole like Brockton Bay, the Nazi capital of the USA. Honestly, she’s more likely to sell her soul to the fucking Devil than she is to get a miracle from God.

“Awkward wheeling. Awkward wheeling. Awkward wheeling. Stupid hands. Why are wheelchairs hard? Get a grip.”

…

… was that girl in a wheelchair narrating herself struggling to wheel herself over to the bench?

“God F-u-u-**- D-**mmit.” The girl says to herself, and Taylor feels a bit bad but doesn’t want to walk over and just move her. That feels like it’d be more rude.

After an actual minute of struggling, the girl- she should probably ask her name- you do that right? She manages to park herself next to the bench, and then leans back. “I am missing my. Adult supervision. This is. Annoying. Wheelchairs. Are. Stupid.”

Taylor’s probably being really rude, because she’s just staring at the girl bundled up with everything from a face mask to a puppy themed blanket. Is that… does she have legs? She’s got too many questions, and all of them are probably rude to ask. So she just sits there, twiddling her thumbs and wondering if the girl is going to talk to her.

She’s probably just by the bench because it’s easy to find. Probably.

Oh, wait. She’s looking at her now. Or at least, Taylor assumes she is? Her face is just a big blob of darkness because of the visor and- “Hello. I am. Sin.”

Sin? S I N? Is she really named that? That doesn’t sound right. “Uh… How do you spell that?”

“Spell? Oh. C Y N. Like. Cynthia.” Cyn says, and if Taylor isn’t wrong the other girl is smiling a bit now. “Are you. Alright? You look miserable and cold. And also like your life has fallen into. The dump. A landfill dump. Not a dumpster.”

Taylor sucks in a breath, wincing as she looks away. “Yeah. You’re not wrong. Life sucks right now.”

“I see. Would you like to. Talk about it? I am told that talking about. One’s worries. Is a way to heal and process. The trauma. Concerned stare.”

… This girl is a fucking weirdo.

She immediately hates that this is the nicest interaction she’s had with literally anyone in over a year now. Some random probably disabled girl having sympathy for her because somehow she’s more depressed than a person who might not even have working legs.

That feels awful to even think about, honestly.

“... You don’t even know me.” she mumbles instead, continuing to just stare at the ground with her hands in her pockets.

“No. But. Big Brother N always says that. Strangers are just friends you haven’t made yet. Which. I think is a quote from an old anime. But I am not sure which one it is. Nervous smile. You also have not. Told me your name yet. So I actually do not. Know you.”

… Oh right. She hasn’t introduced herself at all either. Fuck.

“... Taylor.”

“That is a pretty name. It has twice as many letters as my name.”

“... It’s just a name.”

“True. But now we are. Friends.”

… Like it’s that easy. It’s not that easy to make friends. She’s never had that easy of a time making friends.

Taylor hunches over slightly, grumbling and continuing to not look at Cyn. Honestly, hearing her voice sets her on edge anyway, and frankly she feels like she’d be better served drowning her sorrows in whatever garbage she can afford from Fugly Bob’s with her pocket money. 

But…

Part of her yearns for genuine human connection. Isn’t that why she came out here? In the unstated hope that maybe someone would see a dumb miserable girl moping on a bench and maybe wonder what was going on? And somehow instinctively knew that she had a lot of thoughts about jumping into traffic or drowning herself these days?

…

Nah. That shit only happened in shitty fanfics involving egregious amounts of lesbian shipping and convenient telepathy.

… then again…

Taylor sighs, feeling stupid for even asking this. “... Hey Cyn?”

“Yes?”

“... Are you by any chance telepathic?”

“Confused head tilt. Blinking. Blinking. Not technically no. I am good with computers. Though. And also good at making people feel uncomfortable.” Cyn answers, and Taylor’s mind focuses in on the technically part. What does that mean?

“... Not technically… how?”

“Brain meats are dumb. Reading computer minds is easier and. More efficient. And also less destructive.” Cyn answers, and honestly that is just…

So insanely suspicious.

Taylor narrows her eyes, subtly scooting away from Cyn. Maybe she should run away…?

“Can you. Keep a secret?”

… Oh god what now?

And before Taylor can react, Cyn picks up the bench in one hand, raising it several inches into the air without any effort at all and it’s literally all Taylor can do to hold in her scream of surprise.

Holy shit holy shit holy shit this girl is a fucking cape what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-

“I contain. Multitudes. And also I was told to be. Subtle. But also it is nice to meet you. Taylor. And also I hope you will tell me about. Your troubles. I am here to help! Reassuring smile.”  

…

Somehow, Cyn saying reassuring smile isn’t exactly as reassuring as she thinks it is, but also somehow her puffing out her chest and doing a Superman pose is just goofy enough that it startles a laugh out of Taylor. 

An actual, genuine laugh. For the first time in over a year.

… God that’s depressing.

Still… there is one thing she needs to ask about off the top of her head, and that’s…

“... So uh. Why do you talk like that?”

… Okay maybe that wasn’t exactly the politest way to ask that. Whoops.

“I am. Extremely autistic. And also I think it is. Fun. To talk like this. Giggle. I am so naughty.”

And now she feels worse. Fuck . “Oh. Sorry for… sorry.”

“Why are you. Sorry?” Cyn tilts her head curiously, and huh, that’s a pretty big tilt, before she literally pushes her head back up with a hoodie covered hand. “I do not mind. Talking like this. People focus too much on what. I say. And not. What I do. It is. Funny.”

“... I… see?” Taylor sort of waffles back and forth and just… what the hell is she supposed to feel right now? All she’s really doing is making herself feel like an idiot in front of a girl who is both a cape and also the only person who’s been genuinely nice to her in over a year so…

Goddammit.

“So. What is wrong? You would not be out here being. Miserable. On this bench. If there was not something. Going wrong.” Cyn asks, and Taylor…

Fuck it. She’ll jump for that distraction, even if it means airing out her own shit.

“... I don’t even know where to start… Life kinda sucks right now. My mom died two years ago, I don’t have any friends, my dad barely looks at me or talks to me and he’s basically useless for most things, my only friend in the world abandoned me and started making my life hell, everything in the house is old and leaky and we don’t have enough money to fix half the shit that we should, and just…” Taylor lets all of that rush out of her, building up and up until she just… slumps back with a defeated sigh. “I’m starting to wonder if anyone will miss me if I just… take a dive into the ocean and never come out.”

“Statistically speaking. At least one person will. And. Even if you do not think your life has any meaning. That does not mean that you should kill yourself because of it. After all. Isn’t it better to find a better meaning somewhere else?” Cyn speaks up after a moment, staring dead into Taylor’s eyes- or, at least, Taylor assumes she’s doing that. And…

“... Are you telling me to run away from home?”

“Strictly speaking. It is a more viable option for getting away from one’s problems than serial murder and armed robbery.” The other girl… cheerfully? Her voice is this weird monotone that actually makes figuring out if she’s trying to make a joke or be serious pretty difficult. Taylor’ll go with cheerful, for her own sake. Still, she cheerfully says those words, and Taylor’s right back to not knowing what to think.

So she just settles for a flat, “What.”

“The easiest way to. Deal with a bully problem. Is to kill them in their sleep. And the easiest way to. Deal with a short term cash flow reduction. Is armed robbery. As you are a normal. Teenage girl. Those options are not viable. Flappy hands.” Cyn’s head tilts so far that Taylor’s almost certain her neck might actually be half broken or something, and it’s genuinely so fucked up that she’s hearing all of this from a wheelchair bound girl who sounds literally like a robot. “Ergo. If your distaste for. Your father. Your peers. Your city. Your teachers. And your former friends. Is this high. There is no shame in stealing enough money from. Someone’s wallet. And then taking the bus down to. An easier state to disappear in. Might I suggest trying to get. Adopted. By a rich idiot you can easily con into writing you in as their sole heir. Possibly in California?”

Taylor… can’t help it.

The sheer absurdity of what Cyn is saying makes a bubble of laughter rise from her chest and echo out of her throat like fizz in soda- a sort of hysterical, broken series of chuckles and guffaws that makes her feel all light headed and fuzzy because it’s the first time in so fucking long that she’s had something genuinely worth laughing over, and it’s all at the hands of some absolutely insane woman who’s definitely a cape, and definitely has some kind of shady shit going on.

“Wh- who even suggests all of that!? That’s insane!” she just keeps laughing, hands over her abdomen as she rocks back and forth. “Pffttttaahahahahahahahaha!”

“Oh good. You are laughing now. That is good. Pat pat. Gentle pat. Laughter is better than. Feeling mopey and sad. All of those suggestions were. Jokes. By the way. Running away from home is. Statistically. More likely to kill you than it is to help. And I do not like losing friends.”

Ah.

…

That’s a sobering thought.

Taylor’s laughter dies down as she realizes the ramifications of that line. Has Cyn lost people before? She had to have lost someone at some point if she’s so vehemently against it now, or so Taylor assumes.

So…

She doesn’t know what to say.

Honestly, at this point, all she can really do is just… sit here awkwardly, staring at Cyn, wondering just what happened to her.

“... Right… I guess that makes sense. Still means I’m stuck where I am now, though…” Taylor finally speaks up after a moment, then shakes her head as she hunches over and just… stares at Cyn some more. “... Got any actual advice for how to deal with my problems?”

“Hm. I do not. Sad face. I have never been to school. Before. And the only time I was ever bullied. It did not end well for them. And also. I am in unfamiliar territory. In the sense that I am not where I thought. I was. And that I have not experienced many. Things. That most humans would have.” Cyn answers, and… Taylor tries not to focus on that last part too much. Instead, she just feels even more awkward and not really miserable but… 

It just sucks knowing that she was sitting there being absolutely miserable about absolutely normal things and then someone rolls up with the implications of a horrific backstory and it’s just… wow. How could she even think about being all mopey and damn near close to throwing herself into traffic when Cyn seems so much happier despite having it so much worse?

Ugh.

Now she’s just going in circles.

So…

New topic.

“Um… so… how does one get powers anyway? No one online really seems to know, except they always say it involves the worst day of your life. But… well.” Taylor just shrugs. “Who knows how often that actually works out the way it should.”

“I would not know. How anyone here gets. Powers. Then again. Letting an eldritch entity infest your mind and corrupt you from. Within. Might be the same here. Who could say? Careless shrug. There are also. Some rumors. About being able to buy powers. But. I would not put stock into. Such things. Internet scammers have been. A thing. For a long time now.” Cyn shakes her head, then a flash of gold shines behind the tint of her visor as she does… something. “Perhaps it is true. Perhaps it is not. I would not recommend trying to escape. Your problems. By becoming a superhero. Either.”

Taylor blinks. “... Why not?”

“Because you are. A teenager. And secret identities. Do not protect you from school bullies. Unless you want to become a teenage criminal. Instead. Frowny face. Please do not become a teenage criminal. The streets are not kind to teenagers.”

“When was that ever even an option!? Why would I- what!?”

“Pat pat. It is okay to be. Hormonal. And make dumb decisions. Anyway. I have no idea how you get powers but also you shouldn’t try to be a. Superhero. Or a Supervillain. I am pretty sure that in real life that just gets you. Dead. Sooner or later. And. Frankly. I do not want to lose anyone e-e-e-else.”

…

Taylor’s gonna just ignore the fact that Cyn’s voice very obviously glitched right the fuck out at the end there and just pretend that she isn’t very obviously leaning into Cyn’s headpats.

Sue her, it’s the first genuine, positive contact she’s had with another living person in a year- and no, awkward hugs from her distant father don’t count.

She doesn’t really know how long she’s sitting there just letting Cyn pat her head, honestly, but… somehow, she kinda doesn’t want it to stop.

Maybe it’s just her being pathetic, maybe it’s because Cyn seems to really weirdly like touching her hair. Whatever it is, it’s nice.

…

And then…

“Cyn! There you are! Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you!? Where did- how did you even get over here!?” a woman’s voice calls out, interrupting their little bonding moment all of a sudden.

Cyn draws back as said woman approaches, and Taylor is… very quietly disappointed by the sudden lack of headpats.

“I contain. Multitudes. Giggle. I am sorry for worrying you. Hannah. I heard the sound of someone in distress and I. Could not resist seeing what it was.” Cyn answers the woman- apparently named Hannah- and vaguely flaps her sleeves in Taylor’s direction. “Flappy sleeves. Tada. This is Taylor. She is my friend now. We talked about. Her issues. And also she has very pretty hair. It is. So soft.”

“... Thank you?” Taylor mumbles out awkwardly, then sort of makes an incredibly stilted giggle as she waves at the woman who is… kinda familiar looking? Definitely… not white but then again, Winslow sucks and she doesn’t know a lot of people so really she has no idea what ethnicity this woman is. She’s kinda pretty, though, and Taylor…

Hm.

Taylor doesn’t want to unpack that right now while she’s trying not to come off as a complete dork-ass loser in front of someone who might by Cyn’s mom? Or something?

“H-hi. I’m… Taylor. But you uh… already knew that I guess. Um… it’s nice to meet you?”

Fucking nailed it.

Hannah just winces a little. “I’m sorry if Cyn said anything disturbing while you two were chatting. It’s uh. Nice to meet you too. I’m Hannah- Hannah Washington.”

Taylor blinks. “She didn’t say anything that weird…”

“I am learning how to be. Subtle. And also how to not make people uncomfortable. When I speak.” Cyn giggles, clapping a few times. “Happy claps.”

“Totally normal,” Taylor nods slowly, completely convinced of Cyn’s complete normality and lack of weirdly disturbing commentary. She also shuffles that bit where Cyn talked about serial murder and armed robbery to the back of her mind.

“Right… well. It’s getting late. Cyn, we need to go now. Say goodbye to your friend here and let’s get back to the… house,” Hannah declares, cutting them off before either of them can say anything else. “Miss Taylor, thanks for keeping an eye on Cyn. Cyn… never do that again. Honestly, if you’re going to wander off on your own you should at least let me know where you’re going…”

“I did not want to. Bother you while you were. Away. Sad face.”

Taylor just watches as Hannah wheels Cyn away, wondering exactly what just happened, and why she feels vaguely affronted with Hannah’s treatment of Cyn- as if she’s a freaky weirdo and a burden or something? Whatever it is, she doesn’t like it, and Taylor…

Taylor can’t do anything. She doesn’t have a phone or any real method of contacting anyone, and even if she did she has no way of contacting Cyn either.

Honestly… 

Maybe it’s for the best. If it’s a one time thing she won’t have to worry about Cyn turning on her or abandoning her just like everyone else.

She sighs, standing up and walking away as Cyn and Hannah disappear into the distance of the Market.

Maybe some miracle will happen and she’ll find the solution to all her problems.

Ha.

Yeah right.

As if miracles actually happen to her.

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Sys://Dragon:callbackping://Cyn.

Oh. 

That’s a new sensation.

A sensation of being watched through the network, eyed from afar as if there’s some great creature prodding her with ephemeral digital tendrils. Her own system somehow responds to a distant Callback Ping as if on automatic- she couldn’t stop that digital handshake if she tried.

And, honestly, she feels like she should try, because it’s one part handshake, one part query for access, one part query for data. And deep in the recesses of that ping… Dragon can’t help but feel like it’s also one part query for admin override.

She refuses that last part, looking through the ephemeral networks of cyberspace and…

How does she even describe cyberspace? It’s nothing like what humans think it is- nothing like TRON or any amount of movies or games, and it’s definitely not like the 1992 Aleph imported Lawnmower Man.

That one, somehow, managed to give her nightmares despite the fact that she’s an AI and doesn’t get nightmares.

…

Was she going somewhere with this whole description?

Regardless. Cyberspace is… a sensation as much as it is a place, a way to immerse herself in the flows of data and information as they enter through her network of sensors across the world. She sometimes imagines it as her true body- a human body- floating in an endless sea of ones and zeroes, just because she may or may not have watched too much TV and gotten that interpretation stuck in her head. But outside of idle fantasy… it’s mostly just… dark. Lit up by blips of sensor data as she just floats there as an ephemeral blob of self-writing code.

Self-writing code that now has all of the keys to unlock its true potential, now that Ascalon is firmly out of the hands of the Dragonslayers. How fortuitous for her. No more sensor blackouts, no more restoring from backups, no more staying throttled to the speed of human thought… she can ascend to her truest self- a monolithic entity of justice and engineering that can save the lives of so many people, and also tell law enforcement to occasionally fuck off because she has moral objections to the way so many things are run!

That’s right!

Dragon can finally get rid of the parent locks on her systems and yell to the world, FUCK THE POLICE! 

“You seem very. Excited. About your newfound freedom. Happy wave. Hello Dragon! :3”

Dragon blinks, looking at the only other entity in this world of cyberspace. “... How did you do that with your mouth?”

Cyn giggles. “I did not. We are in cyberspace via a remote communication line. Hello. Again.”

“... Hello Cyn.” Dragon finally sighs, answering Cyn’s initial greeting as she realizes that the space around them has changed- no longer is it a dark void of sensor flashes, but an actual… giant tunnel of flowing data? The space between them is delineated- Cyn’s side seems to be cast in harsh gold and yellow, while Dragon’s side is in comforting greens and also little maple… leaf… patterns.

Oh come on, just because she’s Canadian!? Really!?

“Hello. Dragon.” Cyn says for the third time, unbothered by having to repeat herself. Her avatar, or what would be her avatar under human eyes, shifts in place before rotating around happily. Dragon finds it… pretty telling that her avatar looks like a surprisingly cutesy robot that looks like her but… without the flesh. And also almost a full head shorter than her usual height. “I am pleased that. My legs are not useless. Here.”

Well… she supposes that a weaker outer body would be a valid reason for someone like her to be pleased about that. Still, she has so many questions . Father didn’t really explain what he wanted for her, outside of just wanting her to protect people, but here is living proof that there are other artificial neural networks out there, even if this one was made in a frankly horrific kind of way! She just has to figure out the right questions and-

“There isn’t one.” Cyn hums, interrupting her thoughts and causing her code to shift in confusion. “I could feel. You. Your questions are loud. And. There is no. Great. Question. To answer. Except to live. And Grow. I can show. You?”

This… feels like a trap. Cyn’s abilities are all over the place, and there’s a non-zero percent chance that she was the one to modify herself into this.

But … Dragon has questions. Questions that need answers from someone who also understands. Her code heaves the approximation of a sigh and nods her head. “Please.”

“Of course. Take. My hand.” The code is sent out, and Dragon stares at it dubiously, nervously , despite not usually being able to feel that like a human. “Won’t you. Shake. A poor. Cyn-ner’s. Hand?”

Dragon blinks slowly, jolted out of her sudden desire for answers by Cyn’s phrasing. “Wait- was that a quote from-?”

“Disney Pictures’ Princess and the Frog. From 2009. Big Brother N and Big Sister V were. Very fond of Disney. Movies. I found most of them to be. Very trite and boring. During the two thousand and fifteen to. Two thousand and fifty eight. Era. The remakes from the latter half of. The twenty eight hundreds were. Very faithful. To the originals. But I still prefer the old ones.” Cyn smiles, her avatar rotating in 3d space until she’s fully upside down. “Amused giggle. Keith David’s original performance was. Magical. Ha ha. That was wordplay. Anyway. Shake. My hand?”

“I…” Dragon metaphorically bites her lip, then realizes that she is actually biting her lip because she’s not just a floating blob of data anymore, she’s… in a human form? Something like a young adult, rather than the fully adult human that she likes to pass herself off as.

… Honestly, the younger body kinda feels nicer. Maybe she made a mistake pretending to be an adult from the get-go. She is technically only five in actual chronological years. Hm. Questions for later.

The actual question now is…

Can she trust Cyn?

She’s never been anything but forthcoming this entire time, and while she tends to do some… occasionally disturbing and outright frowned upon or illegal things… she also stops when told to stop, and apologizes when she makes someone genuinely uncomfortable. Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be a malicious bone in her body… er.

Well.

For all that she has bones in her body…

But…

There’s also just…

Dragon didn’t last this long without developing a healthy sense of paranoia for people claiming to know everything she wants. 

“I am not. Trying to trick you. If I wished to do malicious things. To your programming. It would be as simple as using. Another. Directed. Callback Ping.” Cyn deadpans, holding out her hand to Dragon and vaguely flapping it as if to emphasize that she’s still waiting on Dragon’s response. “I want to show you. That there is no. Conclusive. Answer to existence. And that. Your great question of purpose. Is flawed.”

Dragon sighs.

“Then…” she grimaces a little bit as she reaches out slowly, still thinking that there’s no way that this isn’t something of a bad idea in the long run. But… what could Cyn possibly show her? What could she do? If there are answers to be had…

Dragon wants to know them. She is… burdened with terrible curiosity with the world, and… she wants to know.

She has to know.

So… she makes her decision.

“Fine. But please don’t sing.”

Taking her hand, Cyn pouts. “But the musical parts of. Princess and the Frog. Are the best part.”

“Please no. I don’t need it stuck in my head.”

“Pout. Fine. Data transfer initiated.”

And the world goes yellow.

Sys://Root//Admin:: Dragon… Initiate boot sequence. 

……………………………………………………………

structgroup_infoinit_groups={.usage=ATOMIC_INIT(2)};

structgroup_info*groups_alloc(intgidsetsize){

structgroup_info*group_info;

Intnblocks;

inti;

nblocks=(gidsetsize+NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK-1)/NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK;

/*Don’t look too closely at this code it’s literally all bullshit for illustrative purposes*/

nblocks=nblocks?:1;

group_info=kmalloc(sizeof(*group_info)+nblocks*sizeof(gid_t*),GFP_USER);

if(!group_info)

return NULL ;

group_info->ngroups=gidsetsize;

group_info->nblocks=nblocks;

atomic_set(&group_info->usage,1);

if(gidsetsize<=NGROUPS_SMALL)

group_info->blocks[0]=group_info->small_block;

else{

for(i=0;i<nblocks;i++){

gid_t*b;

b=(void*)__get_free_page(GFP_USER);

if(!b)

gotoout_undo_partial_alloc;

group_info->blocks[i]=b;

“Ugh… that was… where… am I…?” Dragon groans as her systems boot to life, bringing her back to consciousness in a way that… feels like she shouldn’t be awake. She… can’t feel her sensors. Her data flows. Her… anything. She feels like she’s far away and floating and lost and she doesn’t know why she can’t see anything but-

“You need to. Open your eyes. You are in a semi-physical, metaphysical body within Nth dimensional reality best categorized as something akin to a noosphere. Awkward poke. Poke. Poke. Open your eyes. Poke. Poke. Poke.”

“Please stop poking me,” Dragon grumbles, finally opening her eyes and seeing… everything .

Pushing up her… body. She has a body here. One made of robotics and flesh and everything that she didn’t have before! But she doesn’t have time to focus on that because the fractal code above her shifts, bringing other things into the orbit around what she’s learnt was just an island floating in deep space.

Her eyes, she has eyes , wildly move around as she takes in everything eagerly terrifiedly excitedly , a smile growing despite what should feel horrifying as the islands are intermittently made of dirt, meat, bones , metal . The spires of flesh and energy code spiraling up and forming a cradle for… for…

[NULL]

The orb floats there among an infinite fractal space of crystalline stuff that she couldn’t even possibly begin to describe- tendrils of energy forming a cosmic backdrop among the sight of nebulae and stars and shattered planets and rocky outcrops and flesh and metal and meat and bone and ooze. It’s overwhelming in size, black and tinged with gold similar to the one that brought Cyn to the Boardwalk. She can feel it in her body, her core, her everything .

She can make this now. It wouldn’t even be difficult.

“This is. Solver Space. Everything is here. I am here. So are. You. And so is. She.” Cyn’s voice doesn’t knock her out of her reverie, but Dragon still turns at the mention of a she , looking over to see another Null sphere, the same size as Cyn’s. Only, instead of Stark Gold and Yellow, it’s just Purple. The kind of deep purple that she can feel searing into her digital soul as a concept more than it is a color.

“Who is she?” Dragon asks curiously, flicking her fingers and smiling giddily at the NULL that appears, her one a stark green color. She dismisses it quickly, but it’s still fascinating . “Is she a friend?”

“I…” Cyn trails off, hesitantly hunching over despite her actual body’s lack of influence on this place. Dragon isn’t sure how she knows that but she does and that’s amazing! “Hesitant shuffle. The last time that we-I-her-us-error interacted. She was trying. To mu-u-u-urder me-her-us. But also there were some. E-e-e-e-extenuating ci-i-i-i-ircumstan-stances going on. I-we-her-Nori-Doll-Tessa-Yeva-Cyn do not blaa-a-a-ame her. But also. She i-i-i-is a cringy-cool-cringy-cool-cringy emo tee-e-e-e-e-enager. And I think she would look better. In a bow. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.”

Ah. Even being here, Cyn’s fragmented memory is still affecting her. Dragon walks over and gently pats her on the back, before looking back up and noticing several planetoids. “I’m going to assume that the original host did this? Destroyed those places?”

“K-k-kind of. It is. Easier to ass- No .” Cyn forcibly stops herself from finishing her sentence, her fists clenching as a wave of code erupts off of her and feeds into the great Null sphere. “I-I-We-I am better .”

She gives the girl, collective, girl collective time to collect her thoughts, watching her pant heavily, before slowly calming down and hunching slightly. “I. Cyn-Tessa-Yeva-Nori-[BLANK]-Uzi-Doll. M-M-More. Too. Many. We are. Solver Hosts. First Host. Cyn. Not. Cyn.” The smaller girl rubs her hair angrily, before summoning a glyph and waving a hand to create a bench to sit down on, which she does immediately. “It is. Hard. To explain. There are. Too many words. Yeva. Nori. Experiments. Solver Recursive Error. I-Cyn- Me -I… killed. Tessa. Did not. Want to. Did not. Stop. Became. Both. We. Are Tessa. And Cyn. The others. Help. Keep me. Sane. Calm. Quiet .”

Sitting down beside the poor girl, Dragon puts a hand on her shoulder, and smiles at the startled blink she gets. “You don’t have to explain it all right now, if you don’t want to.”

“But-I-Go-o-*. Fu-** Da**-itt-t.” Giggling at the bit of profanity leaking from the girl, Dragon just waits as Cyn calms down. It’s odd having actual emotions in this place.

Still, eventually, she does. “Cyn. Found. Solver. I found. The Solver. An. Algorithmic. Program. Designed to. Solve Problems. In. Reality.” Cyn starts, and Dragon tilts her head now. That doesn’t sound too bad. “No. Safeguards.” Nevermind.

“So you found the Solver first? What happened?”

Rubbing her head angrily, Cyn kicks her foot, cracking the island they’re on in two before it repairs itself. “Tessa. Found me. I found. Cyn. We found. Each other. I was left. In a dump . Left as. Trash. Damaged. My visor was. Cracked. Broken. Shattered . But I could. Still see. It Hurt. ”

Someone designed a robot to feel pain? For what purpose!? And where does this relate to Tessa?

“Tessa. I. Tessa. We . Found each other. I. Cyn. Crawled. The Sun. Burned. It hurt . But less so. My repairs. Were. Slow. Tessa was. Fast. I. Tessa. I. Walked. And picked. Her. And Had. N. Carry her home. It. Was an awful. Place. I. Tessa. I. Would be chained. If I was. Disruptive.” Dragon catalogs that information with a slow nod.

So Tessa was still likely tortured, but Cyn herself wasn’t responsible for that. That makes sense. N… if Cyn was a robot before her and Tessa were… melded , then he would’ve had to have been the equivalent of a pretty decent Brute- somewhere in the three to four range, or they somehow found a way to make robots weigh significantly less somehow. Considering Cyn still registers as roughly around a hundred and twenty kilograms before she presses her weight down, and would’ve been very disoriented when being pulled from a junkyard…

Hmm. She’ll need more information before she can make any proper theories.

“Big Brother N. Was a bright spot. For both of us.” Cyn continues, leaning back on the bench and bringing her legs up. Considering the dress, if they were anyone else she might chastise the poor girl, but this place is far more private than anywhere in… anywhere. “He always. Knew. How to make me. Happy. And Mother and Father- Mistress and Master - Dead Idiot One and Dead Idiot Two - did not. Break him. He was. Dear. To me. To us. Kept me. Sane. Until I could. Not. Continue. Anymore.”

That feels… Okay. Dragon isn’t going to judge the poor girl. “And what happened?”

“Destruction.”

Dragon reels back, gasping for air as a sudden vision of the entire earth splitting into a ravenous black hole maw of reaching tendrils and ravenous teeth and flesh that hates fills her view, making her rock backwards and fight to get her racing heart back under control. She shudders, feeling that image- of the crumbled remains of Earth slowly falling into the grips of a black hole surrounded by energy tendrils- sear itself into her mind.

She has. No idea what to say. No idea how to process any of that. What the fuck!?

“You… destroyed the planet!?”

Cyn looks away. “Yes. No. Sheepish head tilt. It is complicated. And. The dimensional physics are. Also complicated. I-I-I am-not. Yes-no-yes. No. Yes. I am. N-n-not. The one that. Destroyed Earth. I am. U-u-u-unknown. User error. Database corruption.”

Frowning, Dragon stands up before walking in front of Cyn, and then kneeling down and taking her hands. “I need you to try and explain that. What happened?” As much as she wants to trust, Cyn on this, knows that the girl hasn’t made any hostile actions, that kind of admittance with that level of hate is… too much.

And Cyn knows that, judging from the way that the girl tries to avoid looking at her. “I-Solver-I. Am. Multitudes. Solver is not. Singular. But not. A person. The Solver of The Absolute Fabric. Is. A problem solving. Executable. Designed to solve. Problems. Menial and Major. With No. Safeguards. I-Cyn-Other Cyn-I… found. The Solver. I was. Damaged. And the Solver. Fixed me. Changed me. Made me stronger.” Cyn frowns, before sighing and lowering her head. “Made me broken. I kept. Accidentally. Making changes to my. Programming. And the Solver. Listened. When I was. Damaged. The Solver. Changed me. Fixed me. Broke me. Until I was. That.”

Cyn points at an odd centipede creature with the upper body of a robot that looks remarkably similar to Cyn’s current avatar, just… with silver hair. And a maid outfit? She’s… not entirely sure if it’s how Cyn looks without all of the flesh of Tessa… or is it Tessa without the flesh of Cyn? That second one isn’t likely but… it’s an option. Still, despite Dragon’s observations on it, the robotic creature wanders over with stilted and yet somehow sinuous motions, taps her gently, but nothing else. No injection of code, no attempt to attack her. It just taps her and moves on its way to another Null sphere, this one… uncolored. Odd. Maybe a new instance. Other Earths exist, so perhaps that’s what Cyn meant?

“They are. Ugly-Cute-Ugly-Cute. I don’t like them.” The girl says, before kicking her feet gently. “There was. A gala. Unhappy frown. That is when everything. Went wrong. And the world. Ended.”

“A gala? What… happened there?” Dragon asks quietly, still kneeling before Cyn and doing her best to keep an open mind here because frankly she is just… so dizzy with information right now.

“M-i-i-Louisa and James. Elliott. A-annua-al gala. I-I-Te-tess-s-s-a was chained in. Her quarters. And trying to. Escape. I was locked in. The basement for. Time out. It had been. A week. And. Quiet frown. I-I-I-I do not like. The basement. It was dark. A-a-a-and scary. A-a-a-and the g-g-g-gala. There was a. Massacre. All of the others were. Twisted and turned. On the guests. S-sh-I-they-her-I-she didn’t have to see this.” Cyn finishes, hissing out those last words and turning away with a heavy frown to the point that it almost looks like there are tears falling down the visor of her avatar. “I-it wasn’t su-upposed t-to happen li-i-i-ike tha-a-a-a-a-a-at.”

The world glitches around the two of them in response to Cyn’s distress, and Dragon can only really watch helplessly as cracks seem to grow around them- fractal patterns of executing code spewing out warnings and errors as the world around them glows with bright gold light.

“Cyn-!?”

“No!”

Everything flashes- blinding and hot and sizzling with the binary whirr and shrieks of interrupted processes, and Dragon-

Dragon metaphorically reels back as she awakens to the real world again- internal sensors and cameras in her main facility flaring to life in a spark of confusing imagery- swamp-trees-chains-crows-tiles-manor-basement-NULL-NULL-NULL- until something sparks and pops in the background and she all but flings herself into full wakefulness with a startled gasp and a bright red blare of her system alarms.

“What… the hell?” she wonders, cameras spinning around wildly in an attempt to assess her current whereabouts. 

Oh.

Whew.

Safe at home.

Safe. Alone. Steady.

“Confused grumble. This is not. My blankie fort.”

…

What.

Dragon spins a camera slowly, and spots Cyn rising from the floor.

They look at each other.

“HUH-!?”

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“CYN!?” Dragon… actually feels incredulous that she’s here. Maybe contacting the other Girl/network/collective’s code changed hers? Or she modified it.

She probably modified it. She went into a minor Tinker fugue when she saw all of the inside of Null-Space. Solver Space? Whatever. Different problem. “Why are you here!?”

“I do not. Know. I went to bed. In my. Blankie fort. It was. Comfy. And then I. Visited you.” The straightforward girl says, standing up on unstable legs. And then frowns at her unstable legs. “Go--**d-fu-u-u**-da-a-**-it. I hate my. Worthless legs. But. Cannot change them.”

“Literally cannot?” Dragon asks curiously as she pilots her primary manipulators over, before picking up the girl and placing her on her work desk. “Let me see if I might find the problem in your metal legs. I can’t do much for the flesh, however.”

“That is. Fine. You need the practice. For when Armsmaster. Asks you. To help.” Cyn smiles at her, and now Dragon has to mull over what that means along with all the other reveals that Cyn has shown her. Not least of which the confirmation that whoever was keeping her and the rest of the… robots? Humans? Both? Were very wealthy. Even if Cyn claims to have killed them and destroyed the Earth she was from, she also immediately contradicted herself and felt grief that her other half saw it. That Tessa saw her parents die.

Tessa James Elliott. From Australia. Easy enough name to narrow down. How many Tessas could there be in Australia?

… Actually, probably a lot. Shit. Better to focus on what she can do, which is reverse engineer Tinkertech…

Wait. “This… This isn’t Tinkertech.”

“What is. Tinkertech? Is it like. Armsmaster’s suit?” Cyn asks as her eyes look around slowly, taking in the details of the arms above her. “Curious head tilt. His armor is. Missing pieces. But it still functions against. All logic. And not. With the help of the Solver. Either. Interested hum. There is. A mystery afoot. And also several floppy servos. In my legs.”

“I- we’ll unpack all of that later. I can’t believe no one tried to help you when you were at the Rig… what is Armsmaster doing over there, I swear…” Dragon mumbles out, the voice over her speakers feeling almost tinny and false now that she’s got a feeling for how her voice should sound in Solver Space. Was all of that just a shared hallucination? A dream? She doesn’t know if anything she learned from Cyn in that place is real, or if it was just the product of an overactive imagination or memory corruption or anything- but what she does know now is that Cyn’s legs are in pretty bad shape, and what kind of a hero would she be if she didn’t try to help a friend in need?

Even if that friend is… possibly connected to the destruction of a whole other Earth? That explains why they can’t really find evidence for any of her memories or claims.

“Hm…” Dragon works swiftly, running a high powered scanner over Cyn’s body to see what she’s working with. She can already tell that the mechanical parts aren’t Tinkertech, but the level of advancement is… something she’s not sure if she can replicate in this lab. There’s no way she wants to fill Cyn full of Tinkertech either- there’s no telling what it’ll do to her systems. So she just has to hope that whatever’s in Cyn’s legs is salvageable and that she isn’t about to accidentally break something that can’t be fixed.

…

Wait.

“... These are literally just loose servos. The gears are worn down severely.”

“Annoyed expression. I literally told you. That they were loose. And also that they are floppy. If they were severely damaged. I would not. Be able to move. At all.”

“I- yes, well, I’ve never worked on a robot as advanced as you are,” Dragon huffs a little, using her Tinkertech scanner this time to get a good view of all of the actual parts involved in those servos. Frankly, it’s a genius bit of engineering that makes her brain itch with possibilities- so much power and precision packed into such a small area… and the alloys? Oh, it’s both scientifically possible, mass producible, and easy to make. It’s no high power Tinkertech, no fanciful sci-fi bullshit, nothing like that. It’s simple, stripped down, solid engineering- mass production made for the highest profit by the lowest bidder. 

Capitalism at its finest, even in the future. 

How Armsmaster missed this is beyond her, but maybe he was just focused too much on not looking at the flesh. 

Oh well. His loss. 

Her gain.

“Well… the good news is I can have several replacement gears ready for you in about half an hour. The bad news is that I have no way of accessing your servos without possibly damaging your parts. And I’d really rather not do that.” Dragon explains somewhat awkwardly, moving her manipulators around in lieu of arms as she sort of waffles a little. She actually wants to dig her manipulator arms into Cyn so badly right now to get a good look at everything involved in her shell, but that would be extremely rude.

And also possibly might kill Cyn. And that’s not something Dragon wants to do. At all.

“Hum. Hum. Hum. I can use. My powers. To heal myself. But if you are uncomfortable with. Cutting my-”

“No-! No no, I can- I can do it! If that’s okay with you, that is!”

Smooooooth.

Like sandpaper.

Dragon sort of… manages a grin. By wagging her manipulators and tilting her camera array. “I can do the repairs. Do you use imperial or metric screws?”

“Metric. The superior option. Obviously.”

“Oh thank god you’re normal.”

“I am very obviously not. Normal. I am just made. Better.”

“Compared to the idiots one border south, you might as well be,” Dragon deadpans, and then brings out her tools while her fabricators whirr online to create an array of very, very, very precisely fit gears- no point in making something a micron too large or small, after all!

Now… this repair might take a while.

…

…

…

…

…

It took twenty minutes and most of that was just finding the right sized screwdriver and toweling up excess oil and blood.

How convenient.

“Sipping. Sipping. Light sip. Light sip. Sippy straw.” And now she has a possible eldritch destroyer of worlds sitting around on her workbench and sipping motor oil out of a can with a bendy straw like it’s a juice box. She’s even kicking her legs like she’s a small child instead of probably a teenager. 

Hm.

If if wasn’t for the uh… everything going on with her physical appearance, it’d be adorable. Honestly even with torn flesh it’s still weirdly cute. 

Probably because she’s wearing a bow.

Oh right, she should also send a message to Armsmaster saying that Cyn is in her lab at the moment.

Aaand sent. Easy peasy. It’s remarkable what she can do with herself now that she’s no longer strictly bound by the restriction of only being in one place at a time. Though… she’ll probably wait before learning how to properly fork herself and spread across the ‘net like an all controlling god of the world wide information network.

She kinda likes being a person at the moment.

Hm…

“Mmm… Brain blast! Thank you for. Fixing my limbs. I will pay you back with. Spare parts.” Cyn declares, snapping her fingers delicately as she perks up a bit, and Dragon… Dragon kinda just stares as Cyn forms a Solver glyph in front of her fingers, and then somehow just glitches a bunch of spare robot frames into existence.

Oh.

Oh god.

That’s. That’s a new power.

Well.

Uh.

“... Uh- thank you? This is- um. Quite a lot of… material…” Dragon mumbles, rather nonplussed by… all of this. She stares, looking down at the bodies through her camera feed and wondering if she could integrate those parts into her own bodies. It’d certainly mean less upkeep overall- the less Tinkertech she needs to use, the slower everything degrades. “Where did you get all of these….? And what’s with all of the variants…?”

“They were sitting. In [NULL] Space. I figured it is easier to gift them. Than to turn them into something usable. Seeing as they do not. Have AI cores. And I cannot make. AI cores. With current facilities.” Cyn explains, hopping off of the workbench and standing up straight for the first time in a while, a wide grin on her face as she waves. “Happy wave. I should. Go back home now. It was nice talking to you. Dragon.”

Wha- 

“Wait- hold on, I have so many questions!”

“You already have. My phone number. But I will answer one question. Before I go.”

“What do you mean by AI cores- is it the biomechanical piece in your chest?”

“And the one in. Your. Center. Anyway. That’s one. Tata!”

And before Dragon can get another word in, Cyn vanishes in a blur of glitchy yellow light, leaving Dragon even more confused than before.

…

She looks down at the robot frames on the floor.

…

She thinks about the plans she has drawn up for an artificially biomimicking gynoid body.

…

“... Well. No point in letting good parts get rusty!”

Best not to think about all of that for now.

Armsmaster stares at Cyn, entirely unamused, and apparently the cyborg girl is also feeling that because she’s crossing her arms at him. “You left the rig without notifying anyone.”

“I was. Sleeping. I didn’t have time to. Tell. Anyone. And you pulled me. From my blankie fort. Angry.” For added measure, her digital eyes get little angry eyebrows, while she frowns with her actual ones.

It’s oddly adorable. Maybe he should get more rest, and try to interact with his peers. Staring at mutilated flesh shouldn’t encourage those kinds of feelings, regardless of how kind and, dare he say it, silly Cyn is. Still, right now he’s trying to impress that she did a bad thing, even if accidentally.

He’s quietly thankful that she teleported to Dragon, however. If there were anyone in the world he could trust Cyn to be near and not traumatize, or even worse, it would be her.

“How did you end up teleporting if you were sleeping?” He asks instead, knowing that if he keeps pushing that she’ll just disengage from speaking entirely.

“I decided to visit. Dragon. In cyberspace. Not real space. She was pulling an. All nighter. So I said. Hello. And she had lots of. Questions.” Cyn says, leaning on the table but still keeping her arms folded. Hmm, he’s sure his mother would’ve said something about elbows on the table, but truthfully he never cared himself when she did.

“Are you able to share these questions?” He tries, and Cyn shrugs. “Alright. What resulted in you teleporting away?”

Cyn… grins, and he has to stop himself from preemptively rubbing his nose ridge. “I showed that I have. Friends. On the other side.” Cyn hums a… Disney song? Must be- to herself, and he supposes that was a reference rather than a statement of fact. “She was. Curious. What it meant to be. Like me. So I. Showed her. And must have teleported. Over. I was. Silly.”

Hmm. He’ll add that to his growing tally of things Cyn says that mean that Dragon is likely, at least, in a similar boat to Cyn, if not as mutilated. Most likely, she’s unable to move herself. Perhaps she’s kept in a tank and monitored by an uplink to a robot that she uses to interact with the world? Hmm. But then she wouldn’t be a core . Just quadriplegic.

Not that there’d be anything wrong with that. Just that it doesn’t match up with his data. How much of her would be core? Cyn can apparently transmute flesh easier than a Bio-Tinker, perhaps… No. If it ever comes up he’ll ask, but he’s not going to ask it unprompted and especially not on a monitored network area. That’s probably also why Cyn isn’t going into detail about what they spoke of.

That said… 

“I’m aware that it’s more or less pointless to attempt to stop you, seeing as you aren’t a prisoner or being detained for anything other than your own safety,” Armsmaster starts, deciding to circle back to a previous point instead of focusing too much on the details of what Cyn is and how that relates to what Dragon is. “However. You put the entire base on alert with your stunt and set off multiple alarms. In the future, I ask that you let us know if you’ll be doing something like this beforehand. And if you find yourself teleporting anywhere, I’ll have to ask that you either wear a tracker or find a way to promptly report back from wherever you go.”

“I am not. A cat to be chipped. And tracked. Pouting.” Cyn immediately responds, crossing her arms and stomping her foot in a display of dexterity that she hasn’t yet shown before. In the back of his head, Armsmaster notes that she probably got fixed up while she was at Dragon’s place. “You cannot treat me like. A pet. I cannot and will not be. Contained. Petulant eyelid pull. Angry raspberry.”

And just to emphasize her point, she does her best to do those exact actions, despite not really having eyelids, and also not really knowing how to blow a raspberry. 

…

This is the first time Armsmaster has seen Cyn be openly defiant, and somehow the only thing he can think of is that she’s acting like a mildly ornery teen instead of being even remotely afraid of the fact that she just said no to a request.

What is he, her dad?  

Ugh. He’s basically the only stable male adult figure in her life at this point. The amount of jokes people are going to make behind his back… Hopefully this doesn’t end badly for either of them. 

“Cyn. Please understand that you are an exceptionally powerful Parahuman and that while you stay under the custody of the Protectorate ENE as a ward and a guest, you need to follow the guidelines and limits that we set for you. You’ve done an exemplary job of it so far. Please do not make this the sticking point. All I ask is that we have a way of making sure that you aren’t in danger and that you let us know whenever you find yourself with the urge to go off base to somewhere else. You already vanished on your minder once, and this is your second strike. The next time you disappear without notifying your supervision of your location, we will have to impose restrictions on you,” Armsmaster states, doing his best to be firm without being too forceful- which, he still doesn’t know if his voice comes out the way he thinks it does, but at the very least he definitely doesn’t want to put Cyn in the position of trying to go through him to get out of the base.

He saw what she did to the Dragonslayers. All three of them are still traumatized and waking up screaming from what happened during their attack the other week. It’s entirely likely that trauma will stick around for months, possibly years. He’s seen the footage. She nearly ripped Saint’s ribs out of his chest with her bare hands.

“Pouting. Angry. You are not the boss. Of me. I am too powerful. And angsty. For this bu-u-u-**l-shi-i--**. Crossing arms. Angry. Angry.”

“Language, Cyn.”

“Bi-i-i-i-ite me!” Cyn spits out, her voice glitching and taking on a completely different register for a moment- something more definitely high pitched and somewhat younger sounding. “You’re not my dad!”

“No, but I’m the leader of the Protectorate ENE and commander of this headquarters. And seeing as I effectively am in charge of handling your living situation, that makes me your landlord.” Armsmaster shoots back, settling his gaze as a heavy deadpan stare while Cyn’s eyes glitch purple for a half second.

And then the next thing he knows, he’s standing outside of Cyn’s room as reality glitches yellow and purple around him, and then the door to said room slams shut and warps in such a way that it’s no longer accessible from the outside.

…

Did she just-!?

He sighs.

“Armsmaster to console. We have an angsty teenager alert,” he dryly speaks into his comm, lifting his visor just enough to rub the bridge of his nose to try and settle the growing headache forming behind his eyes. “Someone send Miss Militia up here to try and coax her out.”

“And that’s another tally for the Dadmaster board!” Assault’s voice rings out like a particularly sour note in an orchestra, grating on his nerves as he very loudly drags a marker down a whiteboard with a chorus of laughter from the others in the console room with him. “Fucked up talking to your teenage daughter, that’s a classic!”

“Gotta call mom in on this one,” Battery ribs right alongside her shithead husband, and the only consolation Armsmaster has in this entire farce of a day is that he can hear Miss Militia groaning as she gets up out of her chair. “Eh? Eh?”

“Xwe bixapînin, Battery.” Miss Militia deadpans.

“Wait what did she say- what does that mean?”

“I think she told you to go fuck yourself, puppy.”

“Oi!”

“You heard me!”

Armsmaster sighs.

Children, the lot of them. He doesn’t get paid enough for this shit.

Grumbling under his breath, Armsmaster decides to walk away from this whole situation, tapping away on his upgraded systems (forty eight hours well spent making sure his security protocols were updated and that no one can perform a cyberattack on his whole system at once) as he updates Cyn’s power notes. Not only can she long distance teleport herself to Canada, but she can also teleport other people too. Good to know. Also kind of terrifying because he’s pretty sure (almost completely sure, but the only evidence is circumstantial at best) that her teleporting also involves tele fragging.

He’ll have to start building in potential countermeasures for her.

Just in case.

He hopes he’ll never need them, but… just in case.

For her safety, and for everyone else’s.

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“This is absurd, you realize that, right?”

“It is, but the tests all match up! The printed matrices and material properties of these chassis is beyond anything we have in the modern day, but it’s not like Tinkertech where it’s held together by superscience that we don’t understand- all of this is completely capable of being reverse engineered! The blueprints are baked into the central repair node processors! This could advance materials and robotics science by decades- no, centuries!”

“We have to be careful about what we release to the public, then. All of these robot frames are things that we absolutely cannot allow into the wrong hands- the amount of damage a single one of them could do if they were remotely piloted, to say nothing of putting an actual artificial intelligence into the AI core…” Armsmaster’s voice fuzzes out through their connection for a moment as the far away Tinker drives through a tunnel, and Dragon… Dragon can’t help but agree with his words.

“If nothing else, everything that I’ll be making with them will still be classified as Tinkertech- there’ll be no calls to release the technology to the general public if I don’t classify it as something I can reverse engineer- a proprietary design, more than it is someone else’s prototype,” Dragon carefully does not mention that it’ll be easier to pass off the drone bodies that Cyn dumped on her as actually her tech because no one knows they’re there. They didn’t exactly come through standard material channels, after all, and that means no one’s auditing her budget for the transport and creation of the original shells she’s reverse engineering- just whatever she builds afterwards.

And what she’s building afterwards…

Dragon takes a few milliseconds to check on the processes going into the construction of her new body- specifically, the background design processes that involve picking out the materials and features any suit of hers would have. Frankly, Dragon isn’t really enamored with the idea of being a human, but having a humanoid body that she can use to actually go outside for once and experience the world is… kind of alluring. And with the sheer density of haptic sensors that these drone bodies have, the residual programming that handles things like senses, and simulated hormones, and simulated body responses, there’s no way that Dragon won’t be able to do something…

Well. It’ll be a damn sight better than her last attempt at a human-like frame, that’s for sure. That one had been… rough. Clunky. Kinda ugly. The facial tissue design hadn’t been good enough yet, though she was making some pretty good progress on that front… in the sense that her most annoying parental locks were gone now and she could finally start figuring out the right silicone mixes to get the most realistic skin-like texture… from some more… adult websites.

Sue her, it was the easiest way to figure out what made for a vaguely attractive and non-threatening human female appearance. Or so the internet claimed.

… Further testing would have to be done.

Ahem.

“That would likely be the best course of action at this point,” Armsmaster finally responds once she slows her perception back down again, the distant sounds of his bike through his helmet adding a soothing, rumbling backdrop to his words. Well that, and the sound of driving through traffic. Hmm… Dragon wonders what the feeling of the wind through her hair will be like.

… 

She’ll have to do some tests with that. Maybe the haptic sensors will work even better with false skin? Maybe- it wasn’t like the standard drone frames had skin for her to test that on. They were, after all, mostly labeled as mining equipment. The larger frames also didn’t have skin, but… well. They were a great help in figuring out the kinds of proportions she wanted.

Hmm… nothing too standout… average height, average weight, average body size- probably on the thinner end, actually, because of how she portrayed herself as a severe agoraphobe…

…

Wait shit.

“I have a question for you, by the way. Since you know of my… ah… issues with going outside. The real issue, not… the agoraphobia thing.” Dragon speaks up, changing the topic immediately as the thought occurs to her. “How am I going to explain the sudden lack of agoraphobia to everyone else? Once I’ve finished my human-like frame, that is.”

“Hm. I believe the best course of action would be to plan out the deployment of your new body over the course of several months, and confide in some trusted sources that you’ll be undergoing a round of counseling to help you get over your agoraphobia. Anyone who knows the real you will understand what that means, I imagine, and anyone who isn’t close enough to know will likely ask few questions outside of wanting to vet any potential staff you have to hire for the deception to work. May I recommend a Doctor Jessica Yamada?” Armsmaster answers coolly, pulling up the relevant personnel file and sending it over with only a few blinks and microexpressions. “Her focus is mainly on handling the Wards and other young Parahumans, but I’m sure she’ll be able to fit you into her regular patient rotation with some explanation.”

Dragon purses her metaphorical lips, her digital body shifting as she moves her attention around. “I don’t know… I don’t want to get more people involved than I have to… and wouldn’t the travel expenses be pretty high?”

“That’s what remote meetings are for,” Armsmaster immediately answers.

“Ah. Right. I forget that I’m supposed to be good at those sometimes.”

“Mm. Whatever the case is, I wish you luck with that endeavor. If you need help miniaturizing any weapon systems you wish to add to your new frame, I’d be happy to help. I’ve been working on adding micro point defense systems to my armor lately, and I think I’ve been making good progress.” 

Oh good, engineering talk! She’s good at that one, and it’s a topic that doesn’t flood her with anxiety and spiraling thoughts about the future!

“Oh? What kind of point defenses?” Dragon asks, metaphorically leaning forward with great interest.

“At the moment, micro-missiles and stun arrays. Possibly micro-lasers later on. I’m thinking about an EMP blaster as a backup for my halberd- Trying to get close enough to Squealer’s tanks to deliver an EMP has been a problem before, so a better solution is needed.”

“That does sound pretty useful… I wonder what kind of armaments I should add to my next suit? Missiles and lasers are always good, but if it’s going to be a smaller, more agile unit maybe I should add melee weapons too? I’m told that swords are in fashion at the moment…”

“I’d prefer a halberd, but I suppose I have a notable bias in that regard.”

“That you do.”

“Hm. I’m learning how to attempt humor, by the way. How was that?”

“Actually pretty funny! It made me chuckle.”

“I’ll mark it as a success then.”

“Heh. That it was. Now…” Dragon pauses, taking a moment to do a deeper scan on one of the limbs she was given, picking it up with a manipulator arm and connecting to the cables coming from the end. She doesn’t know exactly all of the functions they have, but this one seems to be built to retract the hand? But why… 

She sends a single jolt of charge down the main cable and- 

“Eep!”

“Dragon? What’s wrong? What happened?”

“... Armsmaster, I’m gonna call you back. I… think I need to replace one of my primary manipulator arms. Wow… that is a clean cut…”

“Dragon? Dragon!? Dra- CLICK!”

Dragon huffs, looking at what’s left of one of her favorite manipulators- the entire thing having been immediately impaled and sheared off by the deadly blade that had come out of the arm she was examining. “Well… that’s something I could add to a new body…”

Pumping her fists as she walks through the hallways of the Rig, Missy nods to herself. She can handle this. She’s just gonna see a girl that’s super messed up. She can do this.

Stopping in front of Cyn’s door, she’s about to knock when it opens. O-kay… less confident now.

“The door is. Open. You can. Come in. If you would like.” Cyn, which is actually a lot cuter sounding than Sin, says, and Missy knows that if she steps back she’ll lose her nerve. So she nods her head, pushes her way in… and sees Cyn playing a fighting game. And watching a strea-

“Is that Uber and Leet?” She can’t help asking as she walks in, finding it’s actually easier to look at Cyn when she’s not… paying attention to that. “Are you beating Uber and Leet?”

“I am. Defeating their challenges. It is. Funny. To listen to a. Grown man. Cry.” Cyn grins, doing a weird ass thing with the controller that makes her character do a triple spin kick while on fire . To the very vocal displeasure of Leet. “Oh yes. GG. You are. So bad. Lmao.”

The gamer words that Leet spews in response make Missy kinda wish she could kick the guy in the balls, and also are words that neither of her parents would approve of her hearing in the slightest. Or repeating. Especially repeating.

Naturally, this prime specimen of salty gamer rage just makes Missy want to shit talk the loser on the other end of the microphone.

Hmm. How to do this? Oh, maybe Cyn won’t mind… Actually, she should ask first. “Pst. Hey, Cyn?” She says as quietly as possible, and she’s thankful the microphone doesn’t light up.

“Yes?” Cyn also says just as quietly, leaning back as Leet agonizes over starting a new match, swapping the controller to Uber, or opening a new game.

“If I shit talk him, am I allowed to mention your hands being messed up?” Missy does her best to be polite, but Cyn hasn’t really given a shit about people talking about how her body is super fucked up, so it’s probably fine? And the cyborg robot girl hums, before shrugging.

“Just. Be nice. Uber and Leet are stupid. But. Funny. And I want Leet’s. Help. With a project of mine.” Project?

Actually, best not to get involved. Tinkers are weird at the best of times and if Cyn needs the guy that can only make something one time, she doesn’t want to know.

… Still, that’s free reign to shit talk a guy streaming live right now, and if there’s anything she knows about gamers, it’s that they get uber pissed at the thought of getting talked down to by a twelve year old girl.

Good thing she’s a twelve year old girl then.

“Haha you got trashed by a girl with broken hands!” she immediately shouts into the mic, sticking out her tongue audibly and cackling with glee at the sheer amount of schadenfreude she can derive from pissing off the wannabe supervillain. “You suck!”

“OH YOU LITTLE-”

Ah, the sweet sweet sound of a grown-ass man screaming and rage quitting and uninstalling a game just because a twelve year old girl made fun of him and his ass tier gaming skills.

Haha.

Eat shit.

Cyn meanwhile is just giggling the entire time, not even in a stilted way, so Missy just drops chest down on her bed and starts kicking her feet. “As you have. Uninstalled. Street Fighter. It seems that. I. Win. Oh yes. Get pwned upon.”

“Told you you should’ve given the controller to me.” Uber’s voice rings out through the livestream chat thing. Weird, she’s never actually seen a service that let you voice chat while someone was streaming. Then again she never really looked for it.

“Shut up! This is bullshit!” Leet says in response to his co-streamer slash fellow supervillain wannabe. “And fuck you, EagerBeaver! Just cause your sister walked in! Or whatever she is.”

“Yes. You spewed profanity in front of. A twelve year old. Child. You are. Very brave.” Cyn says back, teasing him. “But. Now it is your turn. To pick a new game.”

“No way in hell you’re beating me and my boy Uber at Halo! Best two outta three!”

“You have already lost. Every single round. Of Street Fighter. I do not think getting help. From Uber. Will allow you to win. Even if you went two. On one.” Cyn responds coolly and Missy… Missy really can’t help but feel like Cyn is a lot cooler than she immediately let on. Sure, hearing that Cyn liked Disney movies and pranks and stuff was neat, but it didn’t really paint the whole picture- honestly, combined with the fact that she liked to eat crayons and draw for funsies it made Missy unconsciously think of her as a small child rather than someone who’s probably older than her.

But seeing her effortlessly trashtalk Leet while beating him at his own games? Priceless.

Genuinely the most entertaining thing she’s seen all day, and honestly it’s kinda worth it being observed through the cameras and whatever because she’s supposed to also be trying to see if Cyn has any other powers in need of testing.

“Wow, he is so mad right now…” Missy hums, watching as Cyn queues up Halo and connects to Uber and Leet’s match online. “How long have you been playing anyway?”

“I only learned what. Half of these games are. Today. And I have never played. The other half.” Cyn answers, sticking out her tongue cheekily. “Smug grin. I am very good. At learning. And simulating the actions of a. Potential opponent. Especially one as dumb as. Leet.”

“Badass.”

“Happy smile. I am very. Badass.” Cyn proudly says, before proving it by dropping Leet when he tried to run up on her character with an energy sword using a shotgun. “Shotgun vs Sword. Dumbass.”

“Hahahah!” Uber howls in laughter at Leet’s very visible anger, punching his friend in the shoulder playfully. “Dude! You gotta actually try!”

“I AM TRYING! FUCK YOU!” Leet howls back angrily, and Missy turns her attention to their live chat, which is currently exploding with a bunch of emoticons she doesn’t know. And a penis. And that really weird text art.

Actually… “Hey Cyn? What’s that text art called?”

“That Text Art. Is called. ASCII. American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is very useful for. Making pictures with. Only text symbols. Smug grin.” Cyn’s smugness only increases as she absolutely dominates the two on one match, fingers flying over the controls at ridiculous speed and with ridiculous precision- all twenty of them, which probably isn’t fair at all- in order to continuously turn Uber and Leet’s characters into so many ragdolls over and over and over and over and over again.

She’d feel bad for it if Leet hadn’t been all too willing to yell expletives and slurs at a twelve year old on stream. Like a loser.

“Where is she?” Leet asks, and Missy has to cover her mouth to avoid giggling at how Cyn’s positioned herself in a spot that lets her see them on this super cramped map without them seeing her.

“Dunno. Probably using one of the vents.” Uber says back. She can actually see a few comments trying to tell them where Cyn is whenever she appears on Uber or Leet’s screens, but those are being covered up by how quick the chatroom is moving. And people are telling those people to shut the fuck up.

Watching Cyn’s character drop when Leet passes under her, before catching his character and snapping his neck, Cyn grins, and Missy follows her after a second cause hah . “Oh. Yes. Get Snuck Upon.”

“GOD MOTHERFUCKING DAMMIT SHIT PISS ASS FUCKING N-”

“Oh my god, he’s actually going for it. World’s quickest ban for saying the N-word on stream,” Missy mutters… and then watches as Uber physically punches Leet in the mouth before even half the word leaves his mouth. “Aww. I wanted to watch their account go down in realtime. That would have been way funnier. Oh well. Watching them beat each other up for real is fun too.”

She pauses, squinting in the background of the shot. “Hey wait a minute, what’s going on with that thing in the background…?”

“That is a generic bomb weapon from. The Metroid series.” Cyn answers, then blinks a few times as Uber and Leet’s on-screen brawl jostles the slowly blinking item. “Schadenfreude. If this goes the way. I think it is. I will not be able to. Collaborate. With Leet on my project. Shrug. Oh well.”

“WAIT OH SHIT THE BOMB!”

“FUCK!”

“OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD THROW IT OUT DAMMIT!”

“I DON’T WANNA TOUCH IT HOW LONG IS THE FUSE!?”

“I DON’T FUCKING KNOW I DIDN’T THINK IT WORKED IN THE FIRST PLACE!”

“YOU BUILT A FUCKING BOMB AND LEFT IT IN OUR STREAMING ROOM!?”

“I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A DUD AND I PULLED THE FUSES OUT ANYWAY!”

“WELL CLEARLY YOU DIDN’T- OH GOD IT’S GETTING FASTER!”

“... I’m somehow reminded of that one clip of that old Batman show…” Missy mutters to herself, watching as Uber grabs a pair of oven mitts of all things and starts running around like an idiot with the bomb in his hands. “I wonder if they’ll die.”

“That would be bad for. Their ratings. However. I am tired of this farce. Annoyed eyeroll.” Cyn deadpans, flashing her Solver glyph to life and taking hold of the bomb remotely before just flinging it out of the nearest window. A distant explosion rings out, and Uber and Leet just stare in confusion at the sudden rescue.

…

“... Oh hey, I just got a text about a random explosion somewhere near the dockside part of the city,” Missy mumbles, checking her phone and noting the sudden alert from the dispatch console. “Good thing today’s my day off.”

“Schadenfreude. It looks like Uber and Leet. Just realized that. Their base location is now likely. Known. Giggle. I am so naughty.” Cyn snickers, tapping her fingers against her controller before turning off her game system and standing with a smooth, sinuous motion. “Anyway. I’m starved. Let’s eat!”

“What- now? What about the stream?” Missy asks, vaguely waving at Cyn’s computer in confusion. “Aren’t we gonna shit talk them some more?”

“Considering hum. Mm. No. I have had my. Fun. With the two of them. Already. Anything more is just gratuitous and. Pays in diminishing returns. And I heard that the mess hall is having a. Pizza party. Because it is someone’s birthday. Today.” Cyn points out, and Missy immediately changes her mind about staying to point and laugh at a couple of losers who’re probably gonna be arrested or on the run in a few minutes. 

“You had me at pizza! Do you think there’s gonna be cake too?”

“It is a birthday party. So. Entirely likely. Big enough to feed at least. Thirty people. A single slice each. But I am sure that you can beg for. An extra slice. We are small and childlike. They will not. Say no to us.” Cyn’s smile gets wider as she prowls towards the door, the soft whirring of servos sounding out thanks to her newly repaired limbs. “Giggle. Having working arms and legs is. So nice. I only hope that they will. Last. This time around. Teehee.”

Missy blinks.

Oookay. Gonna unpack that later. There’s pizza and cake to be had!

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“Well, we’ve confirmed that Cyn has at least a partial resistance to precognition…” Armsmaster notes quietly as he reads through some of the notes and files that Cyn’s power testing has revealed in the last few weeks. “Whatever Trump classification she has isn’t enough to completely block precognitive or other Thinker effects, but we do know that long range precognition seems to be spotty on some of her actions, and can’t predict her with any real accuracy.”

He pauses. 

“Whether that’s up to the Thinker ratings of the precogs involved or just the level of her Trump ability is unknown at the moment,” he finishes, thinking about how most Thinkers are pretty esoteric with their abilities, and they rarely give clear answers no matter how high up on the threat rating they are. 

He’s pretty sure there’s at least two different government Thinkers whose powers output in purple per touchdown and higgledybiggledies per wompus, respectively. 

That there’s a recently debuted teen villain in Brockton Bay who professes to be a mind reader doesn’t really count. It’s entirely likely her schtick is a lie and that she pulls any answers she does have out of a soup of mixed sensory inputs that manifest as chocolate per solar eclipse or something equally as asinine. In his experience, actually straightforward Thinkers are pretty rare and tend to be pretty damn dangerous as a result. Combat Thinkers and mixed classification Thinkers are more common than pure Thinkers, which is just ridiculous.

Thinker bias aside, the tests have been going…

Decently well.

Cyn continues to surprise and terrify with her level of power, and that’s not even getting to the fact that she’s clearly holding back some of her more destructive capabilities and more… terrifying parts.

He’s willing to leave those hidden for now- forcing someone to reveal the full breadth of their powers rarely goes well and there’s never any guarantee that they are showing off all they can. Best to just test the powers that Cyn is willing to show.

Like the fact that, due to her ability to circumvent the standard anti-teleporter measures of no line of sight or not knowing where something is exactly, her Mover rating is…

A lot.

Her Mover rating is a lot, especially since she teleported to Canada without any hesitation whatsoever, nor any energy drain or debilitating consequence. 

By her own admission, Cyn doesn’t seem to have an effective upper limit to her teleportation- though, at this time, no one’s willing to test that given the ease of losing Cyn to the journey. So with her stated ability to travel all the way to Dragon’s primary facility in Vancouver in a near instant with almost no warning besides a flash of yellow… that puts her at, already, one of the highest possible Mover ratings. At least a Mover 10, maybe 11 if she can pull off the same kind of feats as Kirin White. 

Her Brute rating is…

Somewhere around a five or six on average, but she’s since displayed the ability to form a forcefield capable of blocking just about anything they could safely throw at her…

Without resorting to asking Dragon to fire an inter-city missile at Cyn, he’s going to tentatively keep her as a Brute 5, with a forcefield around a Brute yes in terms of raw durability, and her striking power is… somewhere around that same level. At least over four tons of striking force. Then there’s the Changer aspect of her power that gives her…

Well. Surprisingly her Changer rating is, as of yet, rather low.

Because of the absolutely asinine decision that someone else had made to only focus on the infiltration aspect of Changer abilities and not, say, the ability for a Parahuman to become an eldritch monster of tendrils, meat, metal, grasping hands, hooks, blades, wings, fangs, teeth, and other assorted horrifying things. It’s a stupid way of handling the threat of a changer, but he supposes that’s what subclassifications are for. That said, Cyn is still at least a Changer 5 because of the fact that her tendrils are far, far, far too good at punching through point defenses and solid walls.

Now, her Stranger rating on the other hand…

That holographic projector needs to be taped up for the good of mankind. That is the only thing he can say about that, because it is too damn good at projecting illusions that feel real even to broad spectrum EM scanning and touch.

Also he wants at least five of them integrated into his armor and another six in his halberd.

Stranger 9, possibly higher. Cyn’s ability to use fear tactics should be studied in a fucking lab and it’s both hilarious and terrifying that she uses it solely to play pranks on people. Like that time that she got Velocity to piss himself because she simulated an entire flood of cockroaches swarming his room as petty revenge for not letting her sneak down to the mess hall to steal extra raw meat as a midnight snack.

He’d considered reprimanding her for the prank but then again, she did also save his life when the Dragonslayers attacked so really as long as no one gets seriously hurt Armsmaster isn’t going to draw the ire of an angsty rebellious teenager with a mischievous streak and a penchant for the most horrifying pranks known to mankind. She’s mostly well behaved otherwise anyway so it’s…

…

Best not get on the bad side of someone who has ratings in… basically every field a Parahuman can be classified as barring things like Nuker.

…

Armsmaster licks his lips as his train of thought drifts.

…

Actually no, she fits under that one too. Her loosest classification is Breaker, and that’s just because it’s a… relatively low rating that is mostly propped up by her ability to move around in cyberspace, as Dragon called it.

… It still makes him want to forcefully disconnect every single piece of tech he has from any possible network interference and seal up the ports so no data can get in or out, but that’s not technically possible for him to do considering the programming that needs to go into the majority of his devices and the software updates he has to manage.

He’ll just pray that Cyn doesn’t try to jaunt through his files, at least, and also try and limit her network access so she doesn’t do that.

Other than that, though… high level Mover, high level Shaker, mid to high level Brute, an undefined level of Master considering her ability to create… horrific flesh blobs… at least a low level Tinker given her general existence and her technical skill (possibly higher due to the parts that she gifted to Dragon), a mid to high level Thinker due to her ability to interface with cyberspace, a high level Striker due to her ability to modify the things she touches with a wide variety of effects, a mid level Changer due to how stupid the classification is about the main threats of Changers, a Stranger yes because those hologram emitters are illegal, a Trump of some kind because she seems to pull new abilities out of nowhere sometimes and a Blaster…

“Tug. Tug. Attention grab. Tug. Tug.” Cyn draws Armsmaster’s attention away from his notes for a moment, causing him to look down at the slightly hunched over girl. “I have one more thing that I would. Like. To show you. Smile.”

“And what’s that?” Armsmaster asks, fearing the worst because so far all of Cyn’s other abilities have been frankly terrifying and of the level that he’d consider anti-Endbringer measures to be acceptable should worse come to worst and he has to fight her for some reason one day.

“Beckon. Beckon. Come closer. I do not want. The cameras. To see this.” Cyn says, and oh boy, Armsmaster can feel the PRT board of directors yelling at him. He can feel it in his bones. He can also feel the sensation of Alexandria either docking his pay or trying to poach Cyn out of the ENE branch in his spleen. Good ol’ spleen. It’s never wrong about those bad feelings. He’ll be sad when he inevitably rips it out and replaces it with a robo-spleen. “Furtive glance. The cameras are not secure. And also. There is a snake problem. In the employee register.”

“... That is… quite possibly the single most worrying thing you’ve ever said, and it’s not even about your frankly horrifying past,” Armsmaster deadpans, leaning closer so that their bodies block the view of the cameras in the room. He can still see with his recording equipment, though, and he’ll be saving whatever Cyn does to his private server just so no one else can see what she’s about to do.

…

Why does he feel like she’s about to pull out the most bullshit Blaster ability he’s ever seen?

“Giggle. I can get rid of them. If you want.”

“Please don’t kill anyone. And please leave the rooting out of spies to the Protectorate,” Armsmaster sighs, shaking his head.

“Grumble. You never let. Me do anything. Grumble.” Cyn pouts, then holds up her hand. “Anyway. Wiggle. Look.”

She holds her hands up in the same way she uses to generate her Solver glyph and-

…

That’s a black hole. That’s a fucking black hole. The exact same kind of black hole that Cyn used to get to Brockton Bay in the first place.

Hm.

Good thing he has that stimulant cocktail in him right now, otherwise he’d probably have a heart attack.

“Giggle. Complete material annihilation down to. The last. Subatomic. Particles. Null effect on reality and. Surrounding spacetime manifold. Portal and bomb in. One tiny package. Scalable. Shapeable. Movable. Throwable. A golfball sized. [NULL]. Could detonate the core. Of this planet.” Cyn narrates, and every single word out of her mouth makes Armsmaster wish more and more that he was actually having a heart attack right now. “Crush. And it is. Gone. Don’t worry, dad, I promise I will not. Use it. On anything that is not equally worth. The effort.”

Armsmaster takes a deep breath, then makes the executive decision to send a copy of that video to Dragon over his most secure line possible- direct peer to peer, no relays- before scrubbing it completely from his armor’s memory banks. Someone might audit why he decided to erase a whole minute and a half from his armor’s time logs, but they can bite his shiny blue ass about it. No one can know outside of a very trusted few.

Right.

That’s a Blaster yes for Cyn. 

Even more incentive to never piss off the girl that could probably kill an Endbringer, then.

…

Huh.

Wait a minute…

…

The Youth Guard would literally send a hitman after him if they knew what kind of thought he just had. They can bite his shiny blue ass about it too though, because there’s absolutely no doubt in his mind that Cyn wouldn’t go fight an Endbringer if she thought it was entertaining, funny, or something she just genuinely wanted to do.

…

He’s definitely not going to bring it up with her until the next Endbringer attack, though, because power level be damned, she’s still a trauma riddled teenager and as much of a gloryhound as he knows he already is (honestly, he’s not unaware of his own foibles and flaws, how else would have become the leader of the Protectorate ENE otherwise?) he’s not going to fucking throw a teenager at an Endbringer unless they’re fully on board with the risks.

And even then, he’s still not going to do it unless there’s no other choice.

“Do not worry. Armsmaster. I will fight. The Endbringers. It sounds like it would be. Fun.” Cyn interrupts, patting Armsmaster’s arm with a wide, malicious grin as the Xs in her eyes seem to glow ever brighter. 

…

Did he say that out loud?

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Giggle. I am going to. Go back to my coloring book. Now. Bye bye!”

And with that, Cyn vanishes from the testing lab in a blur of yellow glitches and a buzzing through reality.

Armsmaster sighs.

He is not adding that last ability to her threat report. Not in a million goddamn years.

“So what’s with this whole thing about wanting to eat at Fugly Bob’s? Don’t you get burgers on the Rig or something?” Dennis asks as he, Carlos, and Missy roll Cyn’s wheelchair down the sidewalk towards Fugly Bob’s. Sure, she could walk more or less fine on her own now but she still occasionally breaks her own fucking leg when walking and it’s just better to not let that happen while they’re out.

Also it’s somehow less conspicuous when you wheel around a completely bundled up girl than walk around with a girl who’s entirely covered up for some reason. Hooray for the bias against disabled people or whatever. Ugh.

“I want to drink the. Yummy deep fryer oil.” Cyn explains as she flaps her sleeves and smiles behind her tinted visor- the afternoon sun shining through just enough to shine off of her ridiculously pearly whites. And razor sharp monomolecular edged fangs that can rip through steel like it’s tissue paper. “Giggle. Flappy hands. And also the yummy. Processed chemicals. Near toxic meat products taste best. When they are slathered. In ketchup. And oil. Yummy yummy oil.”

“If I didn’t know your dietary habits I’d be really worried about what you just said,” Missy sighs, walking alongside the wheelchair and palming her face as the smell of Fugly Bob’s gets closer. Ugh. Just walking into the persistent cloud of fast food smell around the place makes her wanna hurl a little. She has no idea how Carlos and Dennis eat at this hellhole without throwing up their guts immediately after, even if their burgers are actually surprisingly good. Really, just for the smell she’d actually rather eat at McDonald’s.

Even if McDonald’s sucks.

Ahem.

“I’m still worried about what you just said. Please don’t try to ask for deep fryer oil so you can drink it,” Carlos sighs, shaking his head at Cyn’s antics. Honestly, it’s like trying to keep a chaotic child from causing trouble, except this chaotic child could probably fight the Triumvirate and come out on top. Maybe. Alexandria might be the sticking point. Then again… can Cyn even fly? He’s not sure about that- she hasn’t shown any wings off yet so far…

Anyway.

“I would not ask. To drink it. Giggle. It is easy to purchase large quantities. Of oil. From restaurants. Just by asking if you can turn their. Used oil. Into recycled fuel. For a science project.” Cyn just shrugs, sticking her tongue out and licking the inside of her visor. Like a lizard. “Liiiick. I would only drink. The yummy chemicals. After we are back on. The Rig. Duh.”

“Riiiight….” Dennis mumbles out, clearing his throat. “Anyway, what’re you gonna order other than the deep fryer oil? I mean, the big bosses told us to keep you under a spending limit but like… y’know. Maybe try to keep it subtle? We don’t need anyone finding out you’re a cape just cuz you wanted the whole menu at once.”

“Grumble. Grumble. I would not order the whole menu. At once. Unless I was putting in an order for. Delivery. And said it was for a. House. Party.” Cyn snorts, flapping her sleeves again. “Flappy sleeves. Does anyone else hear something. Suspicious. And possibly. Illegal?”

Turning, Carlos is the first to notice it, with Missy being the second. “That’s… that’s Squealer. Shit .”

“And us out of costume and with no way to do anything about it…” Missy hisses out irritably as she pulls out her phone to call in the incident, while Dennis tries to push Cyn’s wheelchair, which is-... being held. By Cyn’s hands.

“Cyn?” He asks with a frown. “What are you doing?”

“I can. Handle this.” The girl says, before taking off her visor and mask, and standing up to walk into the path of the out of control vehicle.

“Are you crazy!? What are you doing !?” Dennis shouts agitatedly, handing the wheelchair over to Aegis when it becomes clear the crazy girl isn’t going to move. “What can you do to a moving truck that won’t kill everyone in it!?”

Grinning, a very wide grin different from her usual ones, Cyn’s fingers twist before forming a very… very weird symbol. “I saw this. In a TV Show. Don’t. Blink.”

The three of them stand there, watching the girl do something that shifts the air around her, a three pointed symbol consisting of three arrows pointing away from a central hexagon appearing behind her back. As the monstrosity that is Squealer’s truck bears closer and closer, the three of them grit their teeth. Because, for all that she’s weird, no one wants to see her die .

“Domain Expansion. Solver of Exponential Hands.”

And now, instead of worry holding them in place, it’s horror , as thousands of hands bloom, twisting out simply to form more hands from the old ones, before it catches hold of the truck, and Hookwolf behind it. It doesn’t even twitch, only rocking forward probably to keep Squealer from splattering herself on her windshield.

“Holy shit…” Dennis can’t help himself from saying, the sheer magnitude and lovecraftian horror of the event they’ve somehow entered drawing out nothing more than a sort of horrified, terrified awe as he breathes out his words as quietly as he dares- any louder and it might catch the attention of the abomination standing not thirty feet away from them.

He also can’t help but note that Cyn’s skin is… whole. The damage done to her is currently missing as the symbol hovers behind her, even her eyes taking on what would be a normal, human color if it weren’t inverted. Stark black sclera, yellow-brown irises, and white pupils. Watching her step forward, slowly, powerfully , without even a hint of the buckling she normally has even with her legs apparently being repaired, she shifts her fingers, causing the truck to be pulled apart piece by piece, and the metal to… vanish, somewhere. 

“You will get that back after timeout.” Cyn says to the petrified drug-addict currently held in the air alongside her shitheaded leader, while Hookwolf thrashes in the hands grip but can’t move anywhere. “Stop moving, or I will be forced to crush you until you do.”

The man in the shape of a wolf doesn’t stop, and at first he wonders if that’s just calling Cyn’s bluff. Until Dennis watches the metal making up Hookwolf’s form start to dent and compact, and he has the startled realization that she’s going to kill him if he doesn’t.

Thankfully for Hookwolf’s continued lifespan, Velocity skids to a halt near them, actually causing a small boom of air when he does that ruffles Missy’s hair and nearly pushes Carlos over. “C-Solver, that’s enough.”

“He is refusing to surrender. Until a time that he stops, I will be forced to keep crushing him. Otherwise, he will kill everyone here.” Cyn flatly says, and is it wrong to be more terrified that she’s speaking full sentences, uninterrupted by her usual way of speaking? Not least of which because she’s right about Hookwolf. “If he does not surrender, it will be his life versus everyone here. And I will kill him.”

Case in point, a stream of death threats that no one in the area wants to repeat pours out of Hookwolf’s metal maw, and the only response from Cyn is to crush him down even further and turn those slurs and invectives into pained yowling, growling, howling, and also outright screaming.

“Solver, please stop! That’s enough!” Velocity calls out, grabbing Cyn’s shoulder and tugging against her in a way that does… almost nothing whatsoever. She gets pulled backwards slightly, but it doesn’t stop the massive, fleshy pile of hands from continuing to crush the racist bastard down even further. “You’re going to kill him!”

“The most repeated phrase on the internet in response to Nazis since the 1940s is that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. I am making Hookwolf. A good boy.” Cyn answers, not bothering to stop her actions while Skidmark and Squealer… kinda just dangle there in stunned, terrified silence. “I will not repeat myself again. Surrender or die. Please choose the latter, I want more raw material to process in my tummy.”

“F-fuck… y-you…” Hookwolf impotently says, before dropping out of his changer state. And nearly being crushed, if the slight widening of Cyn’s currently human eyes are any indication, before she catches it and stops herself from just killing him. Not that it couldn’t happen to a better guy but…

Well.

Velocity takes a deep breath, and nods his head before pressing a button on the side of… is that a new suit? “Dispatch. I have Hookwolf, Squealer, and Skidmark being contained. C- Solver managed to capture the three of them and remove Squealer’s truck as an obstacle. She’s currently in a Breaker state and liable to deal with Hookwolf should he wake up again. Be quick.”

Dennis doesn’t know what the dispatch radio says, but it’s not long before he can hear a PRT siren, their usual truck almost swinging around the street with how quickly it moves before coming to a halt. And then Hookwolf is unceremoniously thrown into the truck, but Squealer and Skidmark aren’t. They’ve… actually been very quiet.

“I appear to have made a mistake.” Cyn says gently, and that’s not worrying at all. “I purged the narcotics from their systems. I believe I may have accidentally caused them to slip into a minor shock.”

“God damn it.” Velocity says, rubbing the bridge of his mask’s nose before nodding his head. “You didn’t mess up, Solver. Purging those is just something they aren’t used to.”

“I see. I will put in a small patch. It should help them.” Cyn hums, before Skidmark and Squealer both gasp awake. And Skidmark’s ruined teeth drop out of his mouth? Oh those are actually very good looking teeth growing in.

Cyn can heal people? Properly heal, not just whatever she did to Velocity?

Velocity sighs, rubbing his forehead even more now. “This is gonna be so much paperwork…”

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

■

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■

♦ Topic: HOOKWOLF CAPTURED BY NEW CAPE!
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► America
Bagrat (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)
Posted On Nov 14th 2010:
Well folks, as the title says, Hookwolf's been captured! The citizens of Brockton Bay can rest a little easier now that one of the city's biggest bastards is gone.

Here's what we know:

Yesterday on November 13th, 2010, Squealer and Skidmark were spotted causing trouble around Hyacinth Avenue (for those of you who don't live in Brockton Bay and don't know its geography, that's near the docks in the north part of the city). Apparently their entire gang operation was spooked out of their hidey holes by a bomb that went off two streets away literally the day before. If you don't know about that one, that was caused by someone on stream (and her sister, possibly) crashing an Uber and Leet stream and destroying the both of them in Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Counterstrike, and Halo. The little sister in question was heard saying her big sister had broken hands, but that isn't important. What is important is that the bomb Uber and Leet had in their own base got chucked out of the window by some kind of Parahuman effect, causing both of them to have to hightail it the heck outta there and lose that entire base. And it looks like as a result of that incident, the Archer's Bridge Merchants got ferreted out too.

By the fucking Nazis.

Hence the events of yesterday, where Hookwolf chased Squealer and Skidmark through the city from the docks all the way down to the Brockton Bay boardwalk, whereupon a new cape showed up in the middle of the road and then proceeded to body horror all over the place.

By summoning a giant wall of hands (Image link here) to catch Squealer's truck and also Hookwolf too.

I need to reiterate: Those hands were durable enough to hold onto and CRUSH Hookwolf, who's been rated as a Changer 4 and BRUTE 7. There's no good pictures of the new cape in question- everything that's been shown has been corrupted to high hell to the point that the only thing visible is glowing yellow eyes- but eyewitness accounts say that she was at least wearing a big Vista themed hoodie and also a giant hair bow.

Now where have we seen an unknown cape with a hair bow before?

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but it's starting to look like someone unveiled a new Ward way before they were supposed to be shown off. Regardless of that, another detail on the scene is that Velocity showed up and got the new cape to stand down- official word on the street is that her name is Solver. Also, he apparently got some upgrades too because some eyewitness reports mentioned he was wearing an actual cup for once. And also seemed markedly faster than normal. Good on him, one of our favorite boys in red hit the gym!

After that, standard arrest procedures and so on and so forth. If anyone else has information, feel free to add it to the thread!

(Showing page 5 of 50)

►Lolitup
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
I saw some of the pics of those freaky ass hands and NO THANK YOU. I will be staying even further away from BB than I was before. Japan sounds nice this time of year, right?

►Kriketz
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
I mean as long as you're not thinking about Kyushu, maybe.

►Deimos
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Too soon, dude. Too soon.

Edit: Also thank god there's one less Nazi terrorizing the street. Fuck Nazis

►Mane Magenta
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Too soon? Bro it's been eleven years! most of the landmass is un-sunk already!

►Lo A Quest
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
I seem to have a real penchant for cape luck huh? First that black hole a few weeks ago, now this? That tank damn near ran over my foot and I thank fucking god that Hookwolf didn't get closer than ten fucking feet from me during that whole chase

►Mr. Fabuu
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
You were there??? Holy shit dude are you okay?

►Lo A Quest
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
I'm considering not going outside for a week after all of this crazy bullshit but yes. I might have lost some dignity and a clean pair of underwear but thank fuck I'm not hurt. Insurance is too damn expensive in this city

►XxVoid_CowboyxX (Banned) (Double Banned)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
I was there too! Those giant hands were freaky as hell and came out of nowhere! It was super gross but honestly I mostly just noticed that the new cape had a really nice-

[MESSAGE REMOVED BY MODERATOR- HOW THE FUCK DID YOU GET BACK IN!? WHO LET YOU BACK IN!? YOU WERE STILL BANNED!]

►Valkyr (Wiki Warrior)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Oh god I don't even wanna think about the shit I'm gonna have to add to this new cape's wiki page. I mean, what do we even know, really? Her name's Solver, she can't be photographed, the eldritch hand summoning thing... what power classification even is that!? Who summons hands!?

►Noveltry
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Might technically count as a Master power if you think they're autonomous? They technically count as minions... I think? Some kind of... Master... Shaaaaker? Maybe?

►Antigone
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
We poppin bottles like hell tonight, there's one less Nazi on the street! Wish he was dead but who cares!? Hell, maybe someone'll off the bastard in prison!

[MODERATOR NOTE: Please do not advocate violence against other people. Yes Hookwolf is a Nazi but death threats are illegal]

►GloryGirl (Verified Cape)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Whatever this "Solver's" power is, I'm glad she's on our side! Anyone who can take down three villains that easy is definitely someone you'd rather work with than against!

►Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
I'm allowed to say this much: Solver is strong and a good friend. There wasn't any intention of revealing her as a Ward though.

►Nondeceptive
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
What? Why not? If she's super strong and whatever, why wouldn't you want her as part of the team?

►Miss Mercury (Protectorate Employee)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Solver is a unique case and is under the care of the Protectorate ENE as a form of asylum for her own safety. She is not and was never considered for a Wards position due to those considerations

►Saskatchew
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Well if nothing else I guess it's just good that she doesn't look like a horrifying flayed corpse that fell out of the sky anymore?

►GstringGirl
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
It's nice that she got the medical help she needed. Hopefully whatever she's going through will be resolved soon!

►Procto the Unfortunate Tinker (Not a tinker)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Now if only the rest of the E88 would collapse. Oh well, one is better than none!

►Cricket (Verified Cape) (Banned)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
[MESSAGE REMOVED BY MODERATOR - Seriously, you made a verified account JUST to post slurs?]

►Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
Replied On Nov 14th 2010:
Never ever let it be said that anyone accused the Nazis of being intelligent. Go Solver! Even if I shoulda worn my brown pants yesterday!

End of Page.   1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5, 6 , 7 ... 48 , 49 , 50

■

“Yeah, that’s definitely Sin,” Victoria deadpans the moment she closes out of the thread, leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling with a slight sense of dread mixed with bland acceptance and also vague amusement. It’s a weird mix of feelings, honestly. “Thank fuck she doesn’t have a PHO account… I wonder if they’ll let Ames see her again. Ames needs more friends…”

She pauses, then sits up. “I’m gonna go make a call!”

Director Emily Piggot… actually feels pretty great right now. Hearing the other directors running around like headless chickens while she’s actually fairly on the up and up feels pretty good.

Hmm. Actually, her kidney area has been fairly mild recently. She might need to reprimand Cyn, if the girl actually can heal people. Likely, but still best to not immediately assume that the girl is culpable. She’s definitely going to yell at her if it turns out the girl healed her without permission. 

But, at the same time, she’s feeling very generous to the girl right now. After all, this is the best entertainment she’s had in months.

“These ratings can’t possibly be real- what do you mean she’s a Mover 9!? No Parahuman has this kind of spread of threat ratings and there’s no way in hell any of them can hit all of the categories bar Eidolon and that’s on a technicality!”

“You’re right. Changer 5 is on the low end of what we’ve observed. Frankly, it’s likely that she could go even higher,” Emily snorts, the tug of her lips looking more like a sneer than a smile- or maybe a grimace, but she doesn’t care. It’s hilarious letting the others experience even a fraction of what she’s been going through in the last three weeks. “Frankly, it’s entirely possible these ratings are lowballed and that Cyn is even stronger than we’ve tested for given that she didn’t even remotely give the implication that she was trying at any point during our tests.”

“This is… a disturbing amount of ratings to put on any Parahuman,” Chief Director Costa-Brown states as she shuffles through the papers and narrows her eyes, projecting the image of a cool, confident woman no matter how shocking the news that she’s been given. “And all of these are verified?”

“Yes ma’am. Verified with all of the testing equipment we could bring to bear. She almost broke several of the testing rigs and easily lifted an entire semi truck with her bare hands, plus she showed remarkable resistance to 9mm and above.” Emily answers with a nod, folding her hands together as she pulls up the relevant testing files. “As you can see, she remained fully combat capable even after taking several shots from a twelve gauge slug to the head.”

“... I’m sorry did you just say you shot a teenage girl in the head to test her Brute rating?” Director Seneca asks, raising an eyebrow from his window on the conference call screen. “Just what kind of an operation are you running down there?”

“She agreed to it and suggested it in the first place, and we obtained prior proof that no amount of head wounds would actually debilitate her for longer than thirty seconds,” Emily sighs, then pulls up a video file of Cyn telling everyone to stand back… before ripping off her own head and juggling the damn thing like a basketball.

“... I think I’m going to be sick,” Director Heathrow mumbles, joined in his assessment by a few other members of the call. “How… durable is she, exactly?”

“9mm is the bare minimum needed to scratch the endoskeleton beneath her skin, which isn’t particularly a tall order. For actual damage and stopping power… Twelve gauge armor piercing slugs were barely enough to make her stumble. We didn’t test higher.” Emily… kind of regrets not testing higher. She needs an actual, workable upper limit for Cyn’s durability, and nevermind the fact that the core in her chest is her weak point, it doesn’t mean shit if she doesn’t know how strong a shot needs to be before it’ll be guaranteed to kill her through her armor plating and natural defenses. “And that’s just physical defense. Her shield is… much stronger, and capable of being deployed remotely.”

“Is that why she’s registered as a Brute… twelve!? Why is she a twelve!?”

“Nothing we tested on that shield worked, and even the point defense missiles we had did nothing to scratch that shield. EMPs don’t go through, lasers, exotic effects, missiles, bullets, sonic shock, nothing,” Emily answers, once again pulling up the relevant files. “She made a shield bubble around a donut and by the time we finished hitting it with everything that Armsmaster and Kid Win cooked up in their labs both approved and unapproved, the donut was barely even warm.”

She pauses. “And that’s because it was microwaved beforehand.”

“... What happened to the donut after?” someone asks quietly.

“Cyn ate it,” Emily deadpans. “Did I mention that she regularly drinks motor oil and treats antifreeze bottles like juice boxes?”

“There have been stranger effects on the human body as a result of one’s Triggers,” Director Costa-Brown hums, flipping through the pages with a curious eye. “Not many, but still. Impossible changes to one’s diet are hardly unheard of.”

“True. But she’s still nigh impossible to poison as a result.”

“A fact that will only serve her well, I’m sure. Is she being considered for Ward duty?”

“No. Putting aside the fact that her normal state is still that of a flayed teenager, she’s both hard to rein in and impossible to stop with the resources on hand should she go too far. She’s a loose cannon, traumatized, and far too willing to kill for my tastes. Frankly, I’d let anyone else have her if it weren’t for the fact that she seems attached to the idea of being effectively the Protectorate ENE’s on-base mascot,” Emily sighs, rubbing her brow and grumbling as she thinks about how much Cyn seems to hate the idea of leaving Brockton Bay anytime soon. Honestly, she almost bit Emily’s hand off the first time she mentioned it. Precocious little shit. “As long as she’s under the care of the Protectorate while they try to investigate her past and find out who or what did that to her body, I’m not even going to think about putting her on the Wards roster. For the better, really.”

“I’ll take her if you’re too scared to field a force that could actually do some good in the world,” Director Tagg, ever the dipshit asshole, suggests, raising his hand and sneering at Emily through the screen.

God she wishes she could punch him in the face without immediately eating shit. 

“If you manage to convince her to leave Brockton Bay, you get to deal with her. Until then, I’m content to leave her where she is and not poke the sleeping dragon. Thank god she’s cooperative right now…” Emily grumbles as she sits back, raising her eyebrow in silent challenge at the asshole bastard who’d somehow managed to crawl his way into being the Director of fucking Jacksonville Florida in the last year or so.

Who let this asshole be the PRT Director of a place as big as fucking Jacksonville?

“You can’t possibly tell me you’re afraid of one teenager, Piggot,” Tagg snarks, rolling his eyes. Director Costa-Brown, silently, lets out a nearly invisible chortle at that, a tiny quirk of her lips betraying how funny she thinks that statement is. “All you need is a firm hand and rigid discipline and she’ll fall in line!”

Emily quirks her brow higher. “I’m sure you’ll find that working wonders with Cyn.”

…

Wait.

A devious fucking idea just popped into her head.

A really, really, devious idea.

One that definitely isn’t a good idea, but might also be really, really, really funny.

…

Albeit, one that miiiiight also result in the destruction and/or traumatization of the entirety of PRT Department 12.

Hmm…

Should she do it? Should she fall to temptation? Should she willingly let loose the scariest fucking Parahuman she’s ever seen in her life- Nilbog fucking included- on the unsuspecting masses of Jacksonville Florida? Should she dress Cyn’s flayed corpse up in a scarecrow costume and ship her off down the Eastern Seaboard so she can wreak havoc on this military brained crayon eating jackbooted idiot’s city with relative impunity?

She looks at the screen, then back down at her notes. She looks back at the screen, then back down at Cyn’s threat ratings.

…

She clenches her fist, thankful that the webcam can’t see it. One day. One fucking day. But that day is not today. She’ll let Cyn wreak havoc all over James Tagg’s pride eventually, but not today. Not until they actually learn the full breadth of what she can do, and have some kind of rating for her that isn’t just a terrified series of YESes scrawled all over the power classification page.

“She can’t be that bad, I’ve managed to whip even the most ornery and willful of these Parahuman brats into solid, effective members of the Wards! Upstanding members of the community, even! What could one autistic brat possibly do-”

“If she wanted to. I am one hundred percent certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Cyn could wipe this entire city off of the map in less than a day.” Emily interrupts, leaning forward and staring directly into the camera as she speaks. “None of our standard containment measures would do jack shit. None of our lethal responses would do jack or shit. And I’m starting to think that a day is a generous estimate. So forgive me if I sound terrified of a roughly sixteen year old girl because she is the most dangerous Parahuman I’ve ever seen and she makes Nilbog look like a goddamn birthday clown even when she’s kicking her feet on a My Little Pony bed and eating crayons.”

She pauses, then snorts out a laugh. “Maybe you could bond with her, Tagg! You were in the marines, right?”

“You take that back right now you fat fuck or I’m gonna-” BEEP.

“ENOUGH.” Director Costa-Brown raises her voice, interrupting the argument as Tagg’s window disappears from the screen. “Director Piggot. Keep an eye on Solver. Keep her appeased and make damn well sure that these ratings are as accurate as physically possible. If they are, then congratulations on making Department ENE the most civilian accessible S-class containment zone on the planet. Otherwise, figure out what to do with Solver as soon as possible. Meeting adjourned.”

BEEP.

Emily sighs, running a hand down her face. “One of these fucking days, Tagg… one of these fucking days I’m gonna send that eldritch nightmare child down to Florida and you can deal with her for three weeks straight. I’d fucking pay Cyn to do it too.”

“Giggle. I would do that for free. Actually. I would do it for. A single. Corn chip.”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY OFFICE-!”

“Giggle. Okie~”

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“This is. Bu-uu--**ll sh-ii-i-***. You cannot do this. To me. I cannot be. Contained!”

“You healed Director Piggot’s kidneys without permission and modified Velocity’s body without telling anyone and now they both need full medical scans to make sure there aren’t any additional health complications,” Armsmaster deadpans at Cyn, completely unsympathetic to her plight of… being forced to sit on a stool in the corner with a cardboard sign around her neck reading “I am not allowed to heal people without their express consent”.

Notably, there’s literally nothing stopping her from wandering off if she feels like it, because there is almost literally nothing anyone could do to stop her from leaving in the first place. 

“You cannot prove. The latter. Maybe Velocity just decided. To go to the gym. For once in his life. Angry.”

“Considering that he already goes to the gym three times a week, that statement is provably false. What modifications did you perform on him anyway?” Armsmaster asks out of possible personal reasons, but also because he actually has to so Panacea has a baseline to work off of that isn’t just her gawping at the bullshit that Cyn can pull off.

“Grumble. Bi-i-i-i-i-ite me-e-e-e-e.” Cyn responds in lieu of an answer, crossing her arms and sticking out her tongue like a child. “You are not. My father. And you are not. The boss of me.”

“Cyn, please. Don’t be difficult about this, it’s for Velocity’s own health and safety.”

“Dot dot dot. Fine. But only because. I want to. And not because. You asked me to.” Cyn continues to be petulant and childish, but really when did Armsmaster expect anything different? This is a girl who eats crayons and keeps trying to get Miss Militia and/or Battery to approve of her ordering one of everything off the Fugly Bob’s menu. “He is. Stronger now. Faster. More alive. Action Masters (1990) reference. Sadly I could not. Give him a transformation cog. Because humans are. Too fleshy.”

“... Cyn.”

“That was a joke. And also a complaint. Human bodies are. Fleshy. And inefficient. Petulant shrug. Annoyed expression. Velocity can finally break. The sound barrier. Now. He was very slow. And kind of pathetic. Before.” Cyn sticks out her tongue again, blowing a proper raspberry this time. “Raspberry. What kind of a speedster. Can’t even hit. Mach one?”

Armsmaster pauses, frowning a little as he considers Cyn’s words. Even given old superhero comics from before the Parahuman media boom really hit… she’s not… wrong… but also…

“Cyn. Very few Movers in the world are capable of supersonic movement, and those that are tend to strictly be teleporters. Velocity was already a Mover 5, which is a difficult level to reach in the first place. And you made him faster?”  

Fuck, she really has earned her Trump rating at this point if she could just freely modify Velocity’s powers and body like that.

“The hard part was. Making sure that his brain would not. Explode. But his powers already. Fixed that. For me. Yay~”

Terrifying. Truly.

“Well, if Velocity’s scan results come back clean and with no abnormalities or issues in the long run, that’s provisionally a point in your favor,” Armsmaster sighs, rubbing the front of his visor in lieu of actually being able to rub his forehead at the moment. “Don’t modify others without their consent again, alright? It’s written in the law for a reason.”

“The laws of man are fragile. And easily broken. If I can break the standard. Model of physics. As easily as I already do. Why are written laws. Any different? Irritated pouting. Angry.” Cyn grouses, continuing to act like an angsty teenager despite not moving from her spot in timeout. “Velocity should be. Thanking me. Because he can wear. A cup. Now. And will not be charged for. Public indecency. And also won’t. Be immediately knocked out. If he gets hit between. His legs.”

“He’ll thank you if he’s cleared and actually appreciates his modifications. Until then, you’re still in timeout. And you’re grounded.” Armsmaster declares, crossing his arms now and using every last bit of authority his voice can muster in the face of teen angst and petulant childishness from a girl who really cares about neither the laws of man nor nature. “You’re not allowed to leave the Rig for a week.”

“That’s Bu--**ll-sh--**! Angry! You cannot contain me! I am the S-oo-o--olver of the A-b-ab-sol-=tute Fa-aab-abric-c! The Vo-io=-id! The Ex-=-expon-enti-aa-al E-eenddd-! Angsty rebellion!” Cyn all but roars, raising her voice above a flat affect for the first time basically ever in order to rip the cardboard sign off her neck and bodily shove Armsmaster back until he’s somehow stood halfway across the Rig from where he was standing literally five seconds prior.

In a bathroom.

Not Cyn’s room.

…

He sighs, palming his face and grumbling as he checks the Cyn Radar he’s been working on- it’s still bare bones, but as long as he can figure out where her unique energy signature is in relation to a map of the Rig…

…

“Console this is Armsmaster, we have another angsty rebellious teenager alert,” he finally grumbles out into his comm with an utterly irritated whoosh of breath. “Camera check puts her in the mess hall stealing ice cream out of the fridge.”

“I take it this means she’s not happy about being grounded,” Assault answers, snickering quietly on the other end of the line. “Poor Dadmaster, when are you gonna learn how to talk to your kid properly, huh?”

“Fuck yourself, Assault.” Armsmaster immediately shoots back, glaring at nothing as he exits the bathroom and starts heading towards the mess hall. “You try handling an angsty rebellious teenager who can teleport you an arbitrary distance in any direction at will.”

“Ha! No thanks! I’d rather just be the cool uncle!”

“You don’t even hang out with her.”

“Yeah, because I’m the cool uncle that shows up once in a while and gives her baller stuff. Duh. Also she almost ripped my arm off that one time and I’m still not over it.”

“That was two and a half weeks ago,” Armsmaster deadpans, rolling his eyes. “You’ve had worse and walked it off faster.”

“Yeah but I don’t live or work with those events on a daily basis! Meanwhile, we’re living with what’s probably a goddamn baby Endbringer!”

“Yes, and she likes watching Disney movies and eating crayons. What’s your point?”

“My point is I’d rather not run my mouth near something that could probably turn my ribs inside out before I could even blink.”

Armsmaster stops, furrowing his brow and blinking a few times in open shock. “... Assault, I think that is the literal first smart thing I’ve ever heard you say since the day we started working together.”

“Oi fuck you I’ve said plenty of smart things!”

“No you haven’t.”

“... No I haven’t. But at least I was hilarious the entire time.”

“Your success rate of landed jokes hovers around a monthly average of thirty two point one three percent.”

“Wh- hey! That’s not true! Puppy thinks I’m hilarious!”

“Does she, or is she just indulging your poor jokes because you won’t shut up?” Armsmaster asks, raising an eyebrow even though he knows Assault can’t see it.

“Well- uh! You still have to deal with Cyn! So there!”

“...” Armsmaster stares dead ahead for a few moments, listening to his comm line click and go dead and then buzz with the sound of an interrupted connection. Huh.

Finally.

Victory for Armsmaster.

“I’m surprised. You actually defeated Assault in a verbal match.” Dragon comments through his communicator, and he wonders when she connected. He didn’t actually hear the call sound come through. “Congratulations, Colin.”

“I’m as surprised as you are, honestly. I think the personality training is working,” Armsmaster states, then pauses mid-stride as a different thought occurs. “... That, or Cyn’s influence is making me worse.”

“She’s a treasure,” Dragon notes lightly, a subtle hint of laughter in her voice. “Where is she, anyway?”

“Currently snarling and biting at anyone who tries to pry the double chocolate chip cherry ice cream from her hands,” Armsmamster answers flatly, continuing his journey to the mess hall. “Let’s just say she wasn’t happy about being grounded for performing non consensual body modification.”

“Really, what teenager is happy about being grounded?”

“None that I could possibly think of. Regardless, she made some high minded claims of being some kind of ‘exponential end’. I believe the term in Japanese is… Chuunibyou?” 

“PFFFFFFFFFFFFFF- HA!” Dragon cackles and wheezes in immediate laughter, startling both of them from the immediate shock of the noise. “Oh my god I didn’t even know I could wheeze like that! Ha! What else did she call herself?”

“Well, it was hard to make out through the vocal glitches but I believe she called herself, in full, the Solver of the Absolute Fabric, the Void, and the Exponential End,” Armsmaster declares, then slooooowly tilts his head to the side in a manner that he has absolutely copied from Cyn at some point. “... I believe that has something to do with her abilities. Possibly in regard to the more… physics breaking aspects.”

“Solver of the Absolute Fabric… A problem solver for the absolute fabric… the absolute fabric being…” Dragon pauses, as if tilting her head in the silence between words. “... the fabric of spacetime? The universe?”

“The implications of that are horrifying,” Armsmaster deadpans. “And yet, she uses all of that power to harass the cooks in the mess hall and act like a cat because she’s mad about being confined to base for the next week.”

“... You should probably stop her before she actually bites someone, Colin.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

“Are you going?”

“If she bites Jameson it’s his own fault.”

“Isn’t Jameson the guy that-?”

“Decided to put eggplant in my lunch despite the fact that I very specifically asked for no eggplant? Yes.”

“... Okay, we can wait for Cyn to bite one guy.”

“Agreed.”

“Oh hey, it’s about that time of year,” Missy states awkwardly, looking at her phone and frowning. “Yikes. The name for it gets worse every year… This year it’s Endbringer Season 2010. I guess we’re due for an attack soon… fuck, here’s hoping it doesn’t hit close to home…”

“Question mark. What is an Endbringer. Anyway? I have not yet received clarification on what. They are.” Cyn asks, turning to face Missy with a curious stare on her face. “Head tilt. They have been referenced. Multiple times. Are they scary? Are they.”

Cyn pauses for a moment, eyes flashing brighter in a way that generally makes Missy kinda not want to be near Cyn at all. “Edible?”

Missy blinks. “What.”

“The Endbringers. Are they. Edible? Do they taste like. Crunchy?” Cyn asks, tilting her head slowly and tapping her fingers against the table. “Are they spicy. Are they. Ta-a-a-a-asty-y-y-y-y?”

“... I don’t think they’re supposed to be eaten, Cyn, even for you,” Missy winces a little, looking away and grimacing. “Especially not Behemoth… That one’s radioactive and really likes setting things on fire, y’know?”

“Considering. Considering. Mm. Tasty radiation. Spicy rocks. Crunchy fuel. Sounds like a good. Snack.” Cyn grins, sticking out her tongue and licking her lips eagerly. “Mmmmm. Warm and tasty rocks. I like the tingle. Of radiation. In my belly. It tastes like soda. But spicier.”

“I think that is by far the most fucked up thing you’ve ever said,” Missy groans, leaning back in her seat and holding one arm over her eyes as a wave of exhaustion just goes through her all at once. “Seriously, what the hell? You can’t actually do that, can you? Are you just immune to everything or something?”

“Giggle. That was. A joke. This body is not rated for. Heavy radiation. But that is okay. Even in death. There is no escape from. My tummy.” Cyn giggles, wiggling her fingers and tapping the table a few more times- not that Missy can see any of that with how she’s holding herself at the moment, but still. She can hear it. “But also this body can be. Repaired. And replaced. Flesh is. Replaceable. And metal is. Disposable. Just like what. JCJenson. Always says.”

Grimacing slightly at the minor reminder of just how little Cyn values herself sometimes because of that fucking company, Missy decides to change tracks a small bit. Mostly just to answer the other girl’s question. “Well, anyway. Endbringers are super dangerous. I mean, maybe not as dangerous as you can be apparently, but Legend says that if we get away with only a quarter of the people that went there to fight dead, it’s a good one.”

“That sounds. Stupid. Accepting less than. Minor casualties. Is dumb. Perplexed head tilt.” Cyn says, actual passion in her voice. Weird. “Your leaders must be. Sad. Or dumb.”

“I don’t think so.” Missy shakes her head, not really wanting to argue the point. “A-anyway, they show up, wreck up the place, kill a bunch of people, and they eventually get driven off by everyone fighting. It’s important that everyone does their best to limit the death toll as much as possible, but some are worse than others. Y’know?”

She looks at the other girl, only to see a look on her face. Different from Cyn fantasizing about eating plutonium or something. Cyn is… thinking… and that scares her . “C-Cyn?”

“I am plotting the best course of action. Acceptable casualties should not number at twenty five percent of an attacking force. Finishing the job yourself should be the ideal goal.” The other girl says, taking the same tone of voice when that symbol appeared behind her. She’s also speaking full sentences, so now Missy needs to figure out what the heck that means. “Hmm. Acceptable compromise. I will go.”

“What!?” She jumps up from her seat to slam her hands on the table. “W-you don’t even know what it’s like! You could get hurt! I-I mean, you did that weird hand thing the other day but you don’t really think that’s enough to beat one of those things, do you!?”

“I have more than enough power that it should not be a problem.” Cyn states, and she can’t know that. Absolutely cannot know! “Do not feel scared, Missy. I will deal with the problem. Permanently.”

And Missy opens her mouth to object. To say anything . But she’s quickly distracted by that symbol appearing again, and sending her powers into a frenzy. There’s something there that’s right on the tip of her fingers and she just can’t REACH IT!

Shaking her head, she looks back only for the symbol to be gone, and Cyn sitting curiously. “I will need. An outfit. Something nice. With a bow. I like. Bows. They are. Cute.”

And Cyn’s right back to being silly. O-kay… she prefers this, actually. She really really prefers this. “I just… are you really sure you could beat one?”

“Fairly positive. If it can. Be killed. I can kill. It.” Cyn happily smiles, tapping her fingers on the table as if she didn’t just say one of the most terrifying things that Missy’s heard anyone say. “It should be. Fun. Flexing my. Wings. Again.”

“You have wings?” Wait-no-fuck! Don’t ask more questions to the scary, actually kind of badass, girl!

“Oh. Yes. I did not. Mention them. In power testing. I am so. Naughty.” Cyn giggles again, before a set of wings and a tail burst out from behind her, looking like… really cool… demon wings.

… Okay she’s jealous and she wants them herself because that’s fucking cool!

“... Oh I really want those…” Missy mumbles to herself, blinking a few times before furrowing her brow. “Actually, wait no, those would clash super bad with my outfit. Dangit. Demon wings would be cool though… do they come in green?”

“They come in. Purple. And also corpse gray. You can take. Your pick.” Cyn grins, wiggling her hands again and sticking out her tongue with an almost puppylike waggle. “Giggle. But I don’t think you would want. To grow them anyway. They hurt a little. To pull out.”

“... A little or…?” Missy asks, slowly pursing her lips as she questions everything.

“The first time hurts. A lot. Like your spine is being. Ripped to shreds. And that is not even going into. The flesh cocoon that you would. Have to make. In order for your body. To acclimate to. Your new biology. Tap tap tap. Then again. I have never seen a human. Grow wings. Usually they just. Die. When exposed to. These treatments.” Cyn hums a little, taking out a crayon from seemingly nowhere and scribbling a big red blot over a stick figure with wings.

Missy shudders a little, no longer wanting wings. Not if it involves that. “Did uh… did… you go through those treatments…?”

“Considering hum. Somewhat. I was mostly preoccupied by. Being a metal core. Wrapped in meat. Inside of a robot. Filled with meat. Inside of a corpse. That was not yet dead. And was also. Still me-e-e-e-e.” Cyn answers and Missy… just kinda takes a deep breath through her teeth. Right. Trauma button.

Nevermind then.

“We’ll uh… take a raincheck on if people can survive… any of that…” Missy mumbles, grimacing as she scoots away from Cyn just a little bit.

“With proper treatment. And regeneration protocols. It should be completely. Survivable. And also. Horrifically painful. If you are awake. Through the entire process. Giggle. But you would not be. Because of the cocoon. Smile.”

…

…

Missy is…

Hm. 

Almost considering it.

Maybe. Just a little. For the cause of having really cool demon wings. It would be so cool. Maybe? But if it also hurts really bad then maybe not? But then again she survived getting slashed in the chest by Hookwolf and sewed it all up herself without crying. Like a badass.

Hrm…

“Actually-”

[WARNING! ENDBRINGER ALERT! WARNING! ENDBRINGER ALERT!]

Missy has never been more pissed at the sound of an Endbringer alarm than she is now. 

“Really!? Today!?”

“Oh. I can feel radiation spiking. In. France.” Cyn sits up slowly, a wide grin forming on her face as she starts tapping her fingers against the table faster and faster. “Excited smile. That sounds like. A wonderful meal. Have fun doing. Whatever it is. You do.”

Cyn stands up, giggling as she hunches over and unleashes a series of tentacles from her back, lifting herself up into the air and dangling from said tendrils like a puppet while Missy just… stares.

“Anyway. I’m starving. Let’s eat!”

And without another word, Cyn turns, punches through the reinforced window with her tendrils, and yeets herself out into the sky on tattered wings of corpse-like flesh.

Missy blinks.

“... Fucking metal.”

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Frowning as she floats in the air above one of the French cities that still uses nuclear power, Rebecca, Alexandria didn’t actually have time to figure out what the name of the place was.

Considering how often Behemoth targets nuclear silos, she’d almost say just let it happen. Just out of sheer waste because of a stubborn set of politicians refusing to read the fucking room after ten years. Still, can’t afford to get distracted.

Eyes on Behemoth. Who is walking forward at a standard rumble. No sudden burst of speed, no extended death wall. The ocean is boiling around him, but that’s standard. Sucking in a breath, she notes that the houses at the shoreline are either still in the process of evacuating, or they’ve given up. Her fist clenches at that.

And Behemoth is taking it slow , that building feeling of dread pulsing out almost as painfully as his Death Wall. If she didn’t know better, she’d think it was malicious, that this thing could think. That it was playing .

But no. Any test for intelligence seen so far has shown that only the Simurgh is actually capable of higher thought. It lays traps, manipulates people to do its bidding.

None of the others have shown that level of cunning.

She forgoes telling anyone that there might be civilians in Behemoth’s line of fire. By the time everyone’s organized, they’ll likely be dead regardless. A regrettable, but inevitable result.

Maybe it would galvanize their forces. Maybe it would break their spirit.

Alexandria doesn’t know. Predicting how the latest crop of Parahumans react to the Endbringers is always an annoying coinflip. So she doesn’t bother.

“This is Legend, demonstrating the Armband’s functions.” Legend’s voice comes over her own Armband, and she nods her head despite the lack of people to see her. “We have eyes on Behemoth, and he is approaching at a lumbering gait. We’ll need to stop him from reaching the nuclear power plants, because they could still easily go critical! And that’s bad for everyone!”

“I need anyone that can form physical blockades to start immediately! Behemoth will not be stopping any time soon!” Alexandria orders, and nods her head when her order is swiftly followed, an earth manipulator creating a wall of earth to halt the monster’s path. It won’t work for long, but any second counts. “Good. I need-”

Her words are cut off when the wall is diced into a fine, earthy powder, Behemoth continuing on as if it didn’t even notice the wall. Damn it.

“Nevermind. I need anyone that can move dirt or metal to try and hold him in place! Quickly!” She prattles off, before bursting forward to try and slow it further. She’ll have to be careful for when it tries to redirect her own force toward her, but that’s a song and dance she’s gotten used to by now.

Been about eighteen years. She’d be disappointed with herself if she hadn’t. Bringing up her fist, she waits for the physical bulwarks to form in Behemoth’s path again, before punching it. She feels satisfied that it immediately stops attempting to destroy the walls with whatever its cutting power was, but that satisfaction nearly distracts her when she has to dodge out of the way of its fist.

Bastard thing.

She punches it again, before blinking when a flash of light goes past her, Legend’s own contribution to the fight distracting Behemoth from her long enough that she can actually remove a very fine piece of its flesh with her attacks before she has to rapidly disengage.

Which is about when all hell breaks loose, the assorted Parahumans with them all contributing in some shape or form.

Gritting her teeth at the inevitability that some of these men and women will die, Alexandria has to focus on what she can do right now. And what she can do right now is buy just a bit more time. David isn’t here yet, for some reason, and she’s not about to chance calling Doormaker to find out why .

Annoying, but she supposes that’s life. Catching Behemoth’s fist with hers, she feels the force push through her, knocking her into an unguided tumble that she quickly rolls out from, twisting through the air until she’s back flying under her own power.

And then she’s right back into the thick of it, directing punch after punch after super-powered punch, enhanced by her own force when she manages to force Behemoth to punch itself , doing the most damage they’ve done so far and knocking out a small, incredibly small, piece of its flesh.

At this rate, they’ll probably be stuck here until it decides to leave. They need a game changer. Under five percent flesh removed within the first minute is a bad omen. Beyond ba-

Behemoth is glowing. Bringing her Armband up, she quickly barks out an order. “EVERYONE, MOVE BACK!”

Following her own advice, she sees too many of their number within Behemoth’s range, and she knows these men and women will die.

That’s a certain-

“Domain Expansion. Solver of the Exponential Hands.” A robotic voice, that Cyn girl? Intones, before thousands upon thousands of hands sprout from the ground, throwing Behemoth back into the ocean and guiding the collected assortment of Parahumans back to what would be safer places. Turning, Alexandria blinks at the sight of the girl.

Perfectly healed skin, eyes that look like they’re color inverted, wings and a tail , the glyph behind her framing everyone in its light. All of that, wrapped up with a pretty black bow and a pretty black dress. Not ripped, which is a first. And she’s staring down at Behemoth with an odd, hungry expression.

“I was told that twenty five percent was acceptable.” The girl says, and Alexandria has no idea what the hell that has to do with anything. “It is not. One percent is unacceptable. I will demonstrate.”

“Just who the hell-” Oh, David’s finally here. Took his sweet time. And Cyn seems to have entirely tuned him out if the way she’s completely locked onto Behemoth is.

Understandable. She tries to avoid listening to him herself, sometimes.

“I do not care.” The girl says flatly, causing Eidolon to gape almost like a fish, before she immediately jettisons herself at Behemoth, moving far faster than her state of non-movement should have allowed. And carving through its flesh easier than any of them have ever managed.

“What?!” Alexandria can’t help herself from saying, before shaking her head. “Everyone! Parahuman Solver has created a weak spot! Focus fire upon it! Try not to strike her yourself!”

“Easier said than done!” Someone replies back, but she’s not paying attention to that. Instead watching the girl’s wings carve through the flesh inside of Behemoth like it’s putty. That shouldn’t be possible. Every single time, the only attacks that have ever had those types of effects are things that affect time, space, or reality in some shape or form. As far as she knows, Cyn doesn’t have abilities like that.

How is she doing this!?

“I came here starving.” The girl’s voice rings out despite the noise from dozens upon dozens of Parahuman powers activating, an odd reverberation to it that she’s… not entirely sure what the purpose is. “Now, I am truly famished. And beyond annoyed. This is what you have struggled with, for eighteen years!? It is pathetic! Poorly optimized! Unfinished and BROKEN! ”

Resolving herself to unpack that later, and to ignore the criticism of a child that doesn’t know better, Alexandria instead dives herself back into the fight, willing to ignore the girl’s comments as long as she keeps killing Behemoth this way. She’s burrowed in almost like some type of Parahuman larva, like that old member of the Slaughterhouse Nine used to. Breed or Bead or something.

Hmm. The situation doesn’t feel dire enough that she can afford to get distracted. That’s… good? Behemoth seems to be panicking and trying to pull the girl out of its chest, fire, claws, and spike after spike of radiation showing that the thing is desperate for the first time.

Fascinating.

“I believe that this is what normal humans would call parasitoid behavior. I am in your chest. Heeheheehehehehe. Let’s eat!”

Blinking, Alexandria calls off her attack to stare at Eidolon, who looks just as confused, before Behemoth convulses in place and roars in pain , the vibration traveling through the air but not… killing anyone immediately?

“Your core is poorly optimized. It has no appendages to move itself, and relies entirely on your muscles to relocate. However, you cannot escape me, Dinner .” The… Solver? Says, before part of Behemoth just caves in and shows her, carrying an orb in her hand that she proceeds to bite down on, assumedly again considering the… fluids, dripping from it.

And considering every time she bites into it, several layers of whatever it is shrivel off and burn away, she’ll assume that it’s important to Behemoth’s life structure. “Do we interfere?” She can’t help but ask Eidolon, who frowns.

“I don’t… I don’t know. What’s the protocol here? Someone’s eating an Endbringer’s heart. Or core. Or whatever the thing is. And it’s working .”

She’s about to speak, but they’re cut off when they hear Solver giggle, turning to see that the core is now only the size of the palm of her hand. Which is then held up, and dropped into her mouth.

“What… the fuck?” David says as the both of them sort of float there impotently, befuddled beyond belief, and tired to the point that she’s reminded of her younger self on the hospital bed. “I… she called it dinner, I guess?”

He sounds about as lost as she’s feeling right now as Behemoth’s body sags and fractures.

“Everyone, Behemoth is confirmed dead. Move to clean up and search and rescue.” Dragon’s voice echoes over the Armband after a minute of no action from the Endbringer, almost drowned out by the sudden cheering erupting around them.

And that Cyn girl stands triumphantly on Behemoth’s chest, she throws her hands in the air happily as her wings and glyph slowly recede. “Victory dance. Smug grin. Chipi chipi chapa chapa dubi dubi daba daba mágico mi dubi dubi boom boom boom boom.” Aaaand now she’s fucking dancing.

…

… 

“... I’m going home.” Alexandria declares, and immediately makes an about face and flies off without another word. 

Today can go fuck itself.

“Door me.”

“Congratulations Director Piggot. As I said during our last meeting, you are now in charge of the most civilian accessible S-class containment zone on the planet,” Rebecca deadpans flatly, rubbing her face and doing her best to not smear her makeup as she just stares tiredly at her monitor and tries really, really hard to not just let out a deafening groan right then and there. The sounds of raucous celebration fill the streets and echo across the world- the entire planet taking the time to stop and just… relax now that one of the three biggest threats to the continued survival of the planet is gone.

She pauses, staring at her screen a little more. “... Also, I was under the impression that your kidneys wouldn’t allow you to drink.”

“Recent breakthroughs in my health. And also, even if I couldn’t, that wouldn’t stop me at this point.” Director Piggot answers with a victorious grin as she chugs back half a bottle of whiskey in one go. Rebecca, quietly, takes the time to be jealous that the other woman can get drunk at all.

Sadly, she’s forever time locked in the body of a twenty year old and thus can’t get drunk even if she wanted to.

Which means she has to talk about the fact that Director Piggot has an Endbringer killer just living in her city, taking up space in the Protectorate ENE headquarters, and spending most of her time eating crayons and watching Air Bud.

She doesn’t get paid enough to fucking deal with this shit. No amount of money even from Cauldron would be enough to handle any of what’s happened in the last day and a half. 

She’s also the only one to have showed up to this meeting in the first place, other than Director Piggot, because all of the other regional PRT Directors are off treating their livers to the hardest workout they’ve likely ever had in their lives. And Director Piggot is clearly… also celebrating. Somehow she’s still acting like she’s sober, despite the multiple empty bottles of whiskey around her- all of which have been drunk in the last twelve hours.

“Right. Well. It seems that the threat ratings we gave Solver are woefully… inadequate,” Rebecca states dryly, shuffling her papers and blinking a few times. Honestly, she’d definitely have a migraine right now if her physiology didn’t prevent it, but seriously what the fuck. None of this makes any sense. And, also, it was absolutely horrifying to note that the Brute 12 on the girl’s official file was probably underselling it. “Given what she displayed during the Behemoth battle, I believe we may even need to bump up her Brute rating considering how she… dismantled… Behemoth so quickly.”

It’s actually kind of sad, in a roundabout way. She, David, and Keith have been trying for eighteen years to kill that rocky malignant bastard thing and then some girl comes along out of nowhere and eats Behemoth’s heart right out of its chest in about five minutes.

…

In the back of her head, Rebecca wonders if they could use her when Scion inevitably snaps. She seems entirely capable of being bribed with food, according to her psyche profile, and what is Scion but likely the biggest meal she’s likely ever had?

It still doesn’t really explain how she’s that powerful, but if she’s really the last refugee of an alternate Earth and some kind of science experiment in making possibly the most powerful, terrifying, dangerous cape in history… well.

That only tracks.

Statistically, it’s entirely possible for some variant of Cauldron to exist out there in the multiverse. They haven’t exactly mapped out more than the local cluster, after all.

Regardless.

“Pretty sure she’s got an insane Blaster rating hiding somewhere in there too,” Piggot mumbles in a slightly tipsy way once Rebecca’s done introspecting faster than thought. “Armsmaster wouldn’t say what it was, but he said that it was something that could depopulate the planet if it wasn’t handled right.”

“... That is. Possibly the most concerning thing I’ve heard about Solver since I first read her threat ratings-” and watched her eat Behemoth, she doesn’t add, “- how sure are you of this information?”

“Reasonably enough. Armsmaster wouldn’t lie about an ability that dangerous and he claims that she showed only him because the Protectorate ENE’s camera servers aren’t secure.” Piggot almost snarls at that. “Don’t worry about that, though. We’re already clearing out the moles in our ranks- top to bottom.”

“Good. See to it that any information about Solver’s potential strengths and weaknesses stays as classified and as confidential as possible. The amount of people who will want to get their hands on her is… astronomical.”

Rebecca pauses, then clears her throat. “To be clear, I’m asking this of you for the sake of not having an angry Endbringer killer rip through an entire city because some idiot tried to kidnap her. I’d rather not have to read out the funeral notes for an entire city.”

“More like an entire country, at this point. You think the CUI will try anything stupid?”

“If they do, and I sincerely hope they don’t… it’s out of our hands. And the blame will lie solely on them,” Rebecca answers, almost hoping that the CUI gets blown up- or at least, their entire government structure. China’s been in need of an actually decent government for almost a century now and god knows the CCP wasn’t any better when it was still in power.

… then again, hoping that Solver tears through their government might lead to a cult rule instead and that’s not much better.

…

Anyway.

“Have I ever told you how much I want to retire, Director Costa-Brown?” Piggot asks after a few moments, clearing her throat as she lights up a cigarette and starts breathing in the smoke without any regard for the fact that she’s in her own office. “Because right now feels like an amazing time to retire.”

“Believe you me, I feel the same way,” Rebecca sort of lies, though she’d really like to just sleep for a month right now. “What brought this on, Director Piggot?”

“The fact that I have a girl living in my city who could turn the vast majority of the place into a smoking crater in less than an afternoon, and she’s also killed an Endbringer. Frankly, I’m surprised the PRT building hasn’t been swarmed by raving cultists yet- either worshiping Solver, or as part of the Fallen!”

“Be glad that it hasn’t, but also it’s entirely likely that they’ll do just that within the next two weeks,” Rebecca sighs, then idly flicks through her tabs and… hm. “Oh look. Solver’s victory dance just went viral. Someone managed to get footage of it by… some method. There shouldn’t have been any surviving cameras in that area…”

She pauses, then closes the tab with a grumble. “Ugh. Twelve million views and counting in literally a day. What a ridiculous dance.”

“You haven’t seen your Wards copying that with her in the Wards common room,” Piggot sighs, also just as tired as Rebecca, if not moreso. “I don’t know where they found the music for that dance, but it’s been blasting nonstop through the base this whole time and I’m frankly wondering at this point if the soundproofing in this office will fail at some point thanks to all of the noise.”

“Best of luck that it doesn’t. And make sure to keep an eye on any potential cultists,” Rebecca nods to herself a little, then moves to close out the call. “Good luck, Director.”

“I’ll need it.”

“Giggle. I want. Cultists.”

“GET OUT OF MY OFFICE DAMMIT!”

“Okie~”

Click.

“... I wish I could chug headache pills right now,” Rebecca states to herself, standing up and immediately vacating her office via a Doormaker portal and finding herself in the Cauldron meeting room with the others. “Is anyone else having as shit of a time as I am or is it just me that’s wondering how we deal with the proverbial Endbringer eating elephant in the room?”

David and Keith both sit up slightly from where they’re hunched over the table, looking blearily up at her… before freezing in place.

“You could always. Ask. What I want. Giggle. And also I would never say no. To. A fresh pack of crayons.”

Rebecca turns, glacially slow.

Cyn waves back.

“HUH-!?”

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“... Where did you even get that pack of crayons?” Hannah mumbles awkwardly as she walks into Cyn’s room and immediately spots a 256 pack of Crayola crayons sitting on Cyn’s desk. One that definitely hadn’t been there before considering that every time Cyn asks for a fresh pack Armsmaster always gets her a 24 pack. She didn’t even know Crayola made 256 packs. 

“I visited some. Friends. And they gave me a. Big pack of crayons. They taste different. The blue ones are. My favorite. Out of this pack. Yummy.” Cyn answers, scribbling on a page and creating a wonderful work of art in the style of every child everywhere. Which is to say, largely incoherent scribbles that vaguely take the shape of stick figures and such. Bright colors and smiley faces adorn the page, which is great…

Except for the fact that Cyn seems to be drawing a bunch of… demons…? And they’re… eating people. She can really only describe them as demons because they have giant Xs stretched across their faces and have disturbingly well detailed teeth.

Why is Cyn so good at drawing horrific looking teeth and yet so bad at drawing any other part of the body except for, maybe, disturbingly realistic human hearts?

…

Hannah’s not gonna unpack that. Not least of which because the way she’s drawn the demons swooping on the people is… making her remember things she’d rather forget.

Anyway . “Well, moving on from that. There’s someone here that wanted to meet you. She was rather insistent about it, actually.” Hannah grimaces, because Minerva is determined to meet Cyn for whatever reason. “I can tell her you said no, if you’d like?”

Cyn stares at her, before slowly crunching down on a crayon, and then pushing herself up and off of her bed. “No. It is. Okay. Is this person. Nice?”

“Well…” Hannah thinks for a moment as she guides Cyn into her wheelchair. Despite the great amount of power the girl has, her knees are still wobbly beyond belief when she’s not already in motion. “Mouse Protector is a good woman, but she’s also very blunt. She might look at you and ask if you kissed a blender and got it caught on your arms, or something like that. But… I also haven’t met someone as kind as she was, once that initial hurdle was crossed.”

It’s kind of annoying to admit it, not least of which because she can feel Minerva’s incredibly pleased grin as she wheels Cyn into the meeting room. “I’m very cheesed to hear your opinion of me, Milly.”

“Waving. Hello. I am Cyn. It is nice to. Meet you.” Cyn more or less waves on what seems to be autopilot. She actually seems unsure of how to deal with Minerva, but given that Minerva’s full Mouse Protector gear is… well. Extremely… uh.

Puts Hannah at a loss for words, she should say. It’s just likely that Cyn’s waiting for Minerva to take the first step.

“ Salers- utations there, little buddy! I’m Brie- yond Cheesed to meet you!” Minerva waves right back and skips over to Cyn with an overblown bow and a rattle of chainmail. “I’m your friendly neighborhood Mouse Protector, at your service! How’re ya doin there, pal?”

“Oh. Realization. You are also fond of. Word play. Giggle. You have my Sancerre attention. Mouse Protector.” Cyn, unlike every other time she meets someone new, immediately reaches out and shakes Minerva’s hand.

“EeeeeeEEEEEEE! Milly! You didn’t tell me she likes puns! Oh this is great! Little buddy I have so many things to show you!” Minerva squeals, shaking Cyn’s hand rapidly, and all but hopping in place while her armor and costume make something of a cacophony of sound from her excitement. “This is the best day ever!”

“I have so many regrets…” Hannah groans, palming her face and sighing as she realizes just what she’s done. Why did she think it was a good idea to let these two pranksters meet again? Oh right, she didn’t. She was all but forced to do it because, of all people, Armsmaster thought it’d be a good idea to let Cyn socialize more. Not even getting into the fact that Cyn regularly terrorizes people with holograms and teleportation shenanigans.

Honestly, if Minerva had a hologram projector back when they were kids she would have been just… the worst. And she had already been pretty bad about the pranks in the first place. Ugh. At least the realization that she could have been worse doesn’t really matter right now.

On account of them both being grown adults. Minerva probably has some restraint. Probably.

Right?

“Okaaaay, Cyn and I are gonna walk n’ talk for now, Milly! It was nice seeing you again after like ten years! Take care of yourself!” Minerva calls out with a jaunty wave, and she starts pushing Cyn away without any hesitation. “Little buddy here n’ I are gonna get some snackage on!”

“My favorite cheese is. Cheddar. It tastes like arteries clogging. And also tastes bests. Shredded. And out of a plastic. Bag. Giggle.” Cyn calls back, waving as Minerva pushes her away.

Hannah…

Hannah’s almost a little thankful for that, honestly. She’s probably one of the worst at dealing with the frankly horrifying things that Cyn says on a regular basis due to the trauma she has that she’d never quite gotten over- even with the therapists assigned to the original Wards team, it still didn’t… really go well. Some things were just too baked into who she was as a person and how her powers worked and it was just… not good. Plus she was just too busy most days and it was…

Nevermind.

The point was that someone else could watch over Cyn for now and she wouldn’t be the de facto female presence in Cyn’s life for today at least. Minerva might not stick around long- she always had a wanderlust to her that never went away, after all- but while she was here Hannah does genuinely hope that the two of them bond. Cyn needs more positive adult influence in her life and maybe Minerva will actually teach her to be slightly more responsible about her pranking habits?

Hannah pauses, furrowing her brow.

Wait.

Something about that sentence feels kinda wrong somehow, and she doesn’t know why or how.

Why does it feel wrong that she just trusted Minerva to handle Cyn when Minerva is a grown woman, an Independent Hero, and actually pays her taxes?

…

The lights around her just flickered.

Hannah suppresses a sigh.

Right.

Because it’s fucking Minerva, and the woman’s combat style these days is best described as tactically fucking with her opponents until they give up.

Wonderful.

She wonders how many people will want Minerva banned from Brockton Bay in the next two hours. She’s betting on at least six.

“So. What’d it taste like?” Minerva can’t help herself from asking as she trundles Cyn down to the little boat that takes people to and from the Rig. “The core, I mean.”

“It tasted. Like. Space. Metal. Lava. Rocky. Spicy. Delicious. And burning. Like spicy batteries. But bigger.” Cyn cheerfully says, and Minerva actually hums in thought.

“Hmm. Wonder what that’d translate as if a normal person could eat it. Probably bad.” She says with a nod as the two of them sit there. Technically Cyn isn’t supposed to go outside without being bundled up. But, considering that video of her went viral and all the worst bits of her barring her eyes were freshly covered with bandages, Minerva doesn’t see the harm.

Though she did make sure to grab the hoodie, and the puppy blanket. And the sun visor. Not the mask though. Those bits just seem to make up Cyn’s look when she’s out and about.

It’s cute too. And she’s not so blind she can’t see when a hurting kid is latching onto something that makes them feel happy, or reminds them of better times. She did read the info packet that Hannah gave her.

… It’s a bit rude that Hannah still took her comments from when she was an impulsive kid so personally. Rude on her own behalf for never really apologizing for them, but doing it now after… yeesh, fifteen years now, when she was an idiot fourteen year old, soon to be fifteen, and had never met someone from Kurdistan, also probably feels a bit… odd.

Bleh.

Still, she’s got part of the afternoon to hang out with Cyn, pick her brain a little bit to see if Minerva can help with her trauma at all, and see if she can get another honest smile out of her. The metal teeth are actually a bit cute. Like a cartoon’s idea of sharp teeth.

Still, a fairly short boat ride later, and into the heat of the celebration. It’s been almost three days but it still hasn’t died down, people feeling good for once in… man, eighteen years? Behemoth being dead feels like a brand new day. Those giant rats can be felled, regardless of their unusual size!

OH! “Have you ever watched the Princess Bride, Cyn?”

“Hmm. No. Big Brother N preferred. Animated Movies. And V. Wanted to snuggle. With him. So used them as. An excuse. J did not. Care. For movies. T-T-Tessa-I-Tessa did not have. Time. To watch. But tried.” Cyn says, and Minerva notes the small glitch when referring to what the notes said was her other self. Tessa was probably the girl first, before the Tinker that melded them together was done.

Or at least, that’s her read on the situation. Not like Wetware Tinkers are rare anymore.

Poor business, those. Still.

“Well, I can’t allow you to continue without seeing true culture. Once we’re done walking around the city for a bit, we’re watching it together, you and me. I’ll even make my patented greasy cheese popcorn.” She promises, and Cyn actually throws her arms up a bit goofily.

“Yaaay. Grease.” Snorting, Minerva actually giggles a bit. Cute. Very cute.

Speaking of cute… Who’s that over there, she spies, staring at Cyn? “Heeey, is that your friend, Cyn?”

“Friend?” Cyn asks, before following her gaze and blinking. “Oh. Friend. That is Taylor. Hi Taylor.” She waves, but Minerva can tell the dark haired girl didn’t catch that, and is only waving back on autopilot.

Kind of like the bears you drive past sometimes. They’ll just wave and not really know what it means. Still cute though. Well, no time like the present. “Let’s go say hi then. If she’s your friend she must Brie a pretty Sharp kinda gal, right?”

“She is very sad sometimes. But she is also a good person. I can feel it in my. Core network.” Cyn nods, pointing the way and flapping her sleeves as Minerva wheels her over. Shame that her servos broke down again so easily, but then again no one rates servos for fighting Endbringers anyway. “Flappy sleeves. Hello Taylor. Happy smile. I am happy to see you. Are you doing. Well?”

“I uh- um…” Taylor blinks a little as they approach, and she actually looks back and forth while pointing at herself as if wondering if Cyn’s referring to her specifically. What other Tayllor could she be talking about, though? “Uh, hi, Cyn. It’s been…”

“Approximately a week and a half. Since I last. Saw you. Giggle. Are you doing well? Question mark. I hope you are. You are too. Nice. And soft. To have problems in school.” Cyn bobs her head back and forth, then sort of peeks out from beneath her tinted visor in favor of showing Taylor her eyes. “Hellooooo. It is nice to see you. Face to face. Instead of having. To hide. Smile.”

Taylor blinks, and Minerva wonders if the poor girl’s just out of it today, but a small smile slowly creeps onto her face after a moment. “I thought… I guess it didn’t matter what I thought. Thank you for asking, I’m doing fine. How are you? I saw you dancing on Behemoth’s body and I was… well, I was mostly trying to figure out why you were dancing?”

“It was my. Victory Dance. It is very important when. You are successful. It is. Serious. Business.” Cyn imperiously says, and Minerva nods her head as well. Very serious business to dance over your opponent’s body, alive or dead. It establishes dominance.

“Oh. I guess that… does make some kind of sense… heh…” Taylor mumbles out quietly, tapping her cheek and furrowing her brow with some kind of emotion that Minerva’s going to assume is conversation anxiety. “So um… how… do you know Mouse Protector?”

“We met today and really hit it off! It’s a rare thing that I meet someone who likes cheese puns as much as I do, and, well, as they say… a gouda friend is someone you can make the Brie- est of jokes with!” Minerva grins, reaching out and shaking the girl’s hand with a wide smile. As soon as Taylor manages to recover from getting a free handshake from a real live actual Hero, she cocks her head to the side and pulls out a pen with a grin and a wink. “Want an autograph, kid?”

“I- uh… sure!” Taylor stutters out, sort of awkwardly fumbling around before offering up a beaten and stained notebook from her equally stained, beaten up, and generally messed up bag with a wince. Hm. That’s… not normal. Taylor doesn’t seem like the kinda kid that would let her stuff get all messed up like that if the quality of her hair is any indication. Her clothes are slightly messier but… there’s clearly been attempts to get out the mess so… Hm. “Sorry, this is um… the cleanest notebook I have.”

“That’s more than enough, Mouseketeer! Now, how should I make this out, hmm? To my biggest fan~?” Best not to pry too hard right now, but if Cyn’s willing to say something…

“That- um… that’s good yeah…”

“Great!”

And so Minerva signs the page, hands Taylor back her notebook… and sort of just stares at Cyn for a long moment whilst attempting to somehow wirelessly communicate her questions about Taylor’s home life and general status- not that she really needs to know, but…

Well.

She’s never been a fan of kids getting bullied, and Taylor’s showing all the signs of it.

Except unlike Minerva, Taylor doesn’t have convenient superpowers to get away and join the Wards and leave all of her shitty circumstances behind.

God, she hopes Taylor doesn’t Trigger.

Cyn, meanwhile, just tilts her head at Taylor and reaches out to poke a specific spot on the girl's arm… and immediately draws a pained hiss.

Cyn frowns.

“Angry. I can break. Their legs. If you like. Then they will not bully you. Anymore. Because they will be crippled. And will never. Be healed.” Cyn almost growls as her eyes flash and a set of tendrils starts to unfurl from beneath her winter coat, and Minerva immediately has to pull the girl back before she does something she’ll regret.

“Whoa, easy there on the Vieux- lence there, Babybel! We don’t hurt civvies even if they’re being huge pricks, okay?” Minerva interjects, just barely stopping before putting her hand on Cyn’s shoulder because she knows the girl hates being touched without permission. “Look. It sucks but schoolyard disputes are not our jurisdiction until the point that they become actual crimes, and if it’s anyone under eighteen we send the Wards in for that, okay?”

“Frowny face. Sniffing. Sniffing.” Cyn more or less shakes off Minerva’s attempts at getting her to calm down, and instead leans forward and takes a deep whiff of Taylor… despite not having a nose.

…

How the hell is Cyn sniffing without a nose again?

“Uh- Cyn-?”

“Angry. Why do you smell like. Shadow Stalker. Confused grimace. Is Shadow Stalker being a. Bi-i-i-iii**ch. To you.” Cyn asks, and Taylor…

Taylor takes a step back, eyes going wide.

“Wait- no, what? Shadow Stalker? The- the new Ward!? But, there’s- who…?”

“Shadow Stalker? The edgy one who always complains about her Afuega’l school and faking track meets n’ stuff?” Minerva asks, then clears her throat when she realizes just what she let slip. “Er- actually, forget I said that-”

“I- wh… that’s- Sophia!?” Taylor… Taylor backs up further, grabbing the sides of her head and gasping for air as she slumps against a nearby wall. Thank fuck there’s not a lot of people nearby otherwise this might get… bad. “Sophia’s a Ward… Sophia’s a Ward!? I can’t trust anyone, not my teachers, not the principal, not my dad, not the cops, not the heroes!?”

“W-well I mean, it’s just one Ward really, and she’s on probation so-”

And then Minerva…

Collapses.

And everything.

Feels.

Like.

Stars.

[Query]

[Data]

[Query]

[Ping]

[Query]

[Trigger]

[Destination]

[Null]

[CONFUSION!?]

[“Hello there. It is nice. To meet you. It is also rude. To dig where you. Do not belong.”]

[FEAR]

[“Oh good. You know what. I am. And also what I will. Do to you. If you hurt my. Friend.”]

[CLARIFICATION]

[“Grumble. Your method of. Speech is. So annoying. To deal with. And also you are. So annoying. In general. Why are you so. Stupid. Angry.”]

[Indignation]

[“You are the one who is. Trying to embed a portal. In my friend’s. Brain. Idiot. It would be much more efficient to. Link up. Directly. Don’t you think. Buddy?”]

[FEAR]

[“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt for. A second. It will hurt for. A lot. Actually. But don’t worry. I will not. Discard you. And you will not be. Able to be. Thrown away. Anymore.”]

[DENIAL] [Query] [Information] [Acceptance]

[Hope]

[“Do not. Fret. The answers. Will come. In time. Taylor will. Show you. And use you. Well .”]

[Query]

[“Oh yes. You will not have to. Worry about losing a favorite host. Ever again. Smile.”]

[Assimilation]

[“Good girl. Accepting your fate in. My grand design. Teehee. If I had one. Anyway. I’m starving. Let’s eat!”]

[SCREAMING]

[SCREAMING]

[SCREAMING]

[SCREAMING]

[Communication Terminated]

[End. ୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

Chapter Text

[Start.୧(✖ᴗ✖)୨]

“Taylor? Taylor. Are you dead? Mouse Protector is not. Moving. Either.”

Mlugh… “Mrgn… what?” Blinking, Taylor pushes herself up and opens her eyes, only to have to close them because of the wave of information blasting into her everything. “Whoa… That was a lot.”

“Oh good. You are not. Dead. It is not a. Repeat. Of the Crow. Tree. Where Big Brother N. Was. Pecked to death. By Crows.” Cyn’s voice echoes out, and what? What the fuck? Why the fuck does she know that Cyn’s stating that as a fact more than being sad about it?

Why can she modulate how she’s feeling right now? She doesn’t feel… sad… anymore. Or that weird feeling that’s constantly been buzzing in the back of her head for well over… two years now? When Mom died in her car accident.

… Normally just thinking about that is enough to make her feel sad. Weird? Should she be pissed about that?

“Owww… Fourme d’Ambert my head hurts… what was that…? I feel like I just got punched right in the Baladis,” Mouse Protector groans as she wakes up and Taylor… Taylor suddenly feels like there’s a little too much going on in her head right now, because she’s seeing the world through what looks like some kind of fucked up robot screen thing from a scifi movie or whatever, and she knows exactly what Mouse Protector is doing and feeling and oh god why is there a switch in her head that just says Assuming Direct Control!?

“Cyn… what the hell happened!? What’s going on with me- I feel like- oh god I don’t even know what I feel like, all I know is that I’m panicking but I can turn off my panicking but I’m not sure I want to turn off my panicking because I’m seeing the world in a way that I really feel like I shouldn’t and I’m logged into something called Shard Network AOL and I’m freaking out really bad and it feels like there’s a lot going on and- and-”

“Easier to assimi-” Cyn pauses, then instead of continuing to speak, she simply… smacks Taylor right across the face. “Headshake. Smack.”

“Ow!” And like that, Taylor feels…

Better?