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Parahumans Series - Wildbow亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon (Anime & Manga)
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Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverDanny HebertBrockton Bay WardsLisa Wilbourn | Tattletale
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Timballisto's Curated Works
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Published:2019-05-24Updated:2020-03-11Words:99,568Chapters:29/?Comments:226Kudos:730Bookmarks:266Hits:29,369
(Restricted) The Shadow Over Brockton Bay
Temeritous
Chapter 8: Lich 2.2
Chapter Text
After-action reports weren't usually given verbally directly to Director Piggot, but apparently it was the standard when things went sideways. Aegis handled a lot of it, standing in front of Piggot to tell her what we'd done and why. Standing up straight, shoulders back, hands behind his back. I wondered if it was his choice to look like a soldier facing a superior, or if they trained you to do that. I found myself unconsciously echoing him either way.
"Once we'd secured the scene, Lazarus requested to send her minion to look for the suspect, which I approved. We pulled the victim out of the wreck, because she was panicking about being stuck and might have injured herself further, and Lazarus reported that she'd apprehended a suspect. She then reported being engaged by Rune, to which I ordered her to bring her minion and the suspect back for both their safety, as she indicated they'd gone deeper into Empire territory."
I kept my face as blank as I could, staring at a spot over Piggot's shoulder. Aegis was lying and taking the blame for what I'd done. From a sensor, I saw his hands behind his back playing nervously with a tear in his costume.
"Rune pursued, so we left the suspect restrained at the scene for the police and tried to escape while fending her off and preventing collateral damage from her attacks. Lazarus stayed on the ground to be able to utilize her minion more effectively. We managed to disarm and capture Rune when her backup and ours arrived. I stayed in the air with Rune to keep her out of the fight, while Lazarus' minion, Assault, and Battery engaged with Victor, Stormtiger, and Cricket. Once Lazarus defeated Cricket and the numbers became uneven, the Empire backed off enough that we could escape."
Why was he lying for me? What did he gain? Perhaps it was to make himself look better, to make it look like he had been in control instead of me acting on my own - but then, what he described demonstrated that he couldn't be trusted with control at the same time.
Was he protecting me?
"And how did Lazarus defeat Cricket?" Piggot asked. She was stone-faced and unreadable behind her desk. I didn't understand her, and decided I wasn't going to try. She'd show me who she was eventually; I didn't need anything from her enough to force the issue.
"Coryn picked her up and dropped her in the middle of the others' fight," I said, raising my chin a little. Would she chastise me? Would she praise my tactical thinking? "I know exactly what height it takes to kill a person, and I know they have Othala for healing."
Piggot's eyes narrowed at me for a moment. She leaned forward over her desk. "And did you check for civilians holding camera phones? Did you look around for businesses with security cameras, or CCTV, or traffic cameras? Did you look for witnesses?"
Surprised into honesty, I said, "No. Was I supposed to?" She made it sound like we were petty criminals, or bullies. It's only okay if you don't get caught. Don't make us look bad.
It left a bad taste in my mouth.
"Always," Piggot said. "Always be aware of whose eyes are watching you. Your brutality could make the news, but the Empire's won't. People expect the Nazis to be brutal. We can't be seen the same way."
"What was I supposed to do?" I demanded, anger bubbling up. It was going to be chastising, not praise, and that was infuriating.
"Aegis could have let Rune go," she snapped. Then she sat back with a deep exhale. "Although you weren't ordered to, and we don't know if that would have helped or just given them another cape in the fight. That's why I'm not punishing either of you, but do take this as a lesson for the future. You'll understand the importance of image someday."
Aegis and I left, heading back to the Wards' section of the base. We were silent; I was lost in thought, and Aegis didn't seem eager to start up a conversation. It was uncharacteristic of what I'd seen of him so far.
"Why did you lie to her about what I did?" I asked him as the elevator took us down. I didn't look over, but I watched him with my Dust.
Aegis glanced over at me, his brow furrowed, and shrugged. "You're new. Piggot can be a hard-ass sometimes, especially with newbies so they'll learn. You know what you did wrong, right?"
"Not really," I said. I scanned over the events of the night, but kept coming up with all positives. "We got the guy, captured Rune, and nobody even got really hurt. Aside from you, I guess. Sorry."
He waved off the comment about his stab wound. "I've got backup kidneys, don't worry about that. The problem is that you picked a fight we might not have been able to win. Rune was coming to save that guy, right? You realized that?"
I nodded. "It wasn't hard to figure out."
"Yeah, and you picked the fight anyway. That all could have gone way worse - what if Hookwolf showed up with the rest of them? Or Kaiser? The Empire can field more capes than the entire Protectorate East-North-East. We'll fight them over important things, but if we lost a hero to a little fight over a car crash?" He grunted. "Plus, we're not even going to be able to keep Rune. They'll break her out of wherever we put her."
I bit down on whatever was coming up, my jaw clenched. After all that, it was inevitable that she'd escape? What kind of revolving door prison were these people running?
The problem of Rune occupied my thoughts while I slept. To just sit back and let her go galled me, the same way the idea of letting the man get away with his crime had.
Aegis had seemed so resigned to it. Inevitable.
I had a little more Dust now, both from dying during my fight with Hookwolf and collected from the battleground. It was the first time I made the connection between a site where I found free-forming Dust and a site where people had fought and emotions ran high, but it made sense to me now.
And in the morning, it would be Monday and my first day of school at Arcadia. I'd use sensors, but I probably wouldn't find a need for Coryn, and sometimes she did get in the way. But could she do what I thought she could?
I pulled my command from her Dust, still aware of it but not controlling. She stayed where she was, crouched in the corner of my room watching over my body.
Coryn.
I said it as I would have if I was embodied; as I would have if I were speaking through her. I can't explain how that feels to you, unless you've ever thought so hard about saying something that you can trick your mind into thinking you actually have.
She shifted, cocking her head and ruffling her wings.
Find where they're keeping Rune. Guard her, be her warden. Don't let them take her back.
I waited to see if my Dust understood. If she was as independent as I thought she could be. And then she did - she crawled to the window and slipped through the crack I'd opened for some fresh air, reforming into her usual shape on the other side. She took off flying straight for the PHQ; I followed her to the edge of my range with a sensor and watched her leave it.
This was worth some more experiments later.
"How was school?" Dad asked through the open window, as he leaned over to hit the lock on the door. It always locked automatically, but the button to unlock it was stuck.
"First day, you know how it is," I said, hopping up into the truck's seat. "I got introduced and stared at a lot. It's nice, though - a lot cleaner than Winslow, and I didn't see any gang colors."
I stared at the school as we pulled away, collecting the last of my Dust. I'd heard a lot of speculation about which of the new transfers in my group today was the new Ward; I was not a front runner.
Dad cleared his throat. "Did you make any friends? Meet anyone?"
I shared math with Dennis, science and language arts with Chris, and they'd both made contact with the 'new girl'. I still ate lunch alone, though: it was a Monday, and they all left before the lunch period for their work release. I'd get into the work release program next week.
"Not really. People are friendlier here, but I'm still pretty new. I'm friends with the others."
I saw dad's hands flex nervously on the wheel. "Well, as long as you're happy. And there weren't any problems?"
I turned my head away so he couldn't see my annoyance. He danced around what he really wanted to ask like he thought the question would break me. "Dad, stop worrying. I'm fine."
He heaved out a sigh. We didn't talk for the rest of the drive to a Ward drop-off point.
Patrol was the Boardwalk with Clockblocker, strolling along smiling at civilians and signing the occasional autograph.
I had recalled Coryn from her task when I was outside the PRT base, waiting around a bit nervously for her to return from wherever she was. Probably the PHQ if what I thought was right. She couldn't tell me.
On our patrol, I kept her in the sky above us; to look for threats or disturbances, I told Clockblocker, but really just because I didn't want people crowding her. She was the closest thing we had to a Case 53 in Brockton Bay.
The Boardwalk was a boring beat: too high-end to spawn Merchant trouble, too white for the ABB, and the Empire didn't cause the same kind of trouble those two groups did. We got to break up a few overly-loud arguments, and our very presence disrupted anyone with light fingers. My sensors in the shops saw a few people duck their heads and hurry out as we passed.
The Enforcers nodded at us as we passed. That felt strange, knowing if I came here as just Taylor they'd throw me out of whatever store I walked into.
"See anything nefarious yet?" Clockblocker asked me in a lull between people approaching us.
If I were smoother or at least better at thinking on my feet, I'd have a witty retort for him. Instead, I said, "Petty thieves and a pickpocket. They've all scattered now, though."
"Sh-dang, you can see anything through this crowd?"
I pointed up at Coryn. "She can."
"Eyes in the sky," he nodded. "Hey, Aegis said you can fly with her, right?"
I nodded slowly, with an idea of what he wanted.
"Take me up? C'mon, Aegis won't let me do piggy-back rides anymore."
Aegis was usually pretty accommodating, so that sounded off.
"It's because last time I may have kicked him in the… well. Where it hurts. By accident! He was trying to drop me." Clockblocker looked over and after a moment of examining his over-acted body language, I realized he was trying to give me the masked equivalent of the puppy-dog eyes.
"...Sure. Don't scream too much."
Coryn scooped him up, taking them both back into her usual hovering altitude near the top of my range. I heard a distant whoop from Clockblocker, much louder through Coryn, and some people nudged their friends and pointed up with big smiles.
Walking with Clockblocker was one thing; walking alone was a whole other. Apparently, two heroes are an invitation, but one alone is intimidating. You'd think it would be the other way around really.
This was supposed to be a boring, uneventful patrol, a break after the excitement of last night, and it was. I was so bored I started trying to make Coryn's movements look more natural, starting with modeling the beat of her wings after the videos of owls I'd looked up.
We neared the end of the Boardwalk, the edge of another patrol zone although our timeline didn't intercept Armsmaster's. I heard a distant crack of lightning and in Coryn's grasp Clockblocker jerked in surprise.
I looked up, but there were no clouds covering the night sky. More information started filtering in, things that were just now registering: the sound echoing through my sensors, amplified louder in some than in others. The world was oddly silent in the aftermath, as though all other noise and air had been sucked out of it.
The noise rushed back in with the sound of another gunshot, a bullet boring through Coryn's chest.
Once I understood, once the shock passed, things started making a lot more sense. People around me were screaming and ducking for cover, the Boardwalk cleared out in a minute. Coryn and Clockblocker had been shot at. Clockblocker wasn't moving.
I split a sensor off of Coryn to look closer at him. There was a hole in his abdomen, staining the costume bright red, and not a scratch on Coryn after she reformed around the hole.
"Clock, talk to me," I whispered through Coryn. Louder, aware that we were too far up to be heard, I shook him and demanded, "Dennis, wake up."
He groaned. "Mm not sleeping, 'm dying. Laz, I don't wanna die." He sounded scared.
"Dead people don't talk, aside from me. And that's a gut wound, this isn't the movies, nobody dies from those. Calm down."
"Fffffuck," he croaked, breath hitching. There was a strange guttering noise in his chest. "This doesn't feel like my sto-hh-mach."
I kept using more of Coryn's Dust to clot his wound, but I looked at where he was clutching as well. His shoulder armor was dented ever so slightly upwards.
No exit wound.
"Sorry about your armor," I said, then Coryn tore off the shoulder piece, letting it fall. He shrieked, and then apparently blacked out for a moment. I saw another wound underneath, messier than the entry but without the power to punch through his armor anymore. A tiny glint of metal in the wound. I started pouring Dust over that, too, but I knew I couldn't do anything for whatever hell the bullet had wrought internally.
On the Boardwalk I scanned for the direction of the bullets, head spinning dizzily for a moment. My sensors were following the echo back, trying to find the sniper.
Suddenly, Dust started streaming out of Clockblocker's wounds, and I couldn't make it go back in. I was aware of it, and I was surethat I could control it, was currently in control of it, but it wasn't doing what I told it to. In a second all the Dust was gone, flowing into Coryn where it had come from, and then the blood stain was shrinking too.
As I watched, a bullet came sliding out of Clockblocker's gut, floating backwards.
The bullet dropped, and I had control of my Dust again. I did what I should have done in the first place and pulled Coryn down with me on the boardwalk; this time I made her wrap her wings around Clockblocker, just in case someone wanted to take another shot at him.
New rewind-powers or no, I didn't want to risk a headshot.
"What the fuck?" Clockblocker whispered to me when they landed. "Hey, Lazarus, what the fuck?"
"You got shot," I said. "Doesn't seem to have stuck, though."
"Yeah, but like why?" he demanded, still whispering. He was crouched down even after Coryn let go of him, and motioned for me to crouch as well. I rolled my eyes and did so.
"I assume someone was trying to kill me, unless you'vepissed someone off recently?" I asked.
"Just the usual. I don't think Armsmaster was thisangry about the halbeard joke."
"Uh, Clock? Lazarus? Care to explain why I'm getting reports of shots fired on the Boardwalk?" Aegis, on Console duty for the night.
"Then it's probably the Empire, because I captured Rune and made fun of Hookwolf. Sorry you got shot." I was apologizing for other people's injuries pretty often lately. I hit the comms to say, "Someone took a shot at Coryn and Clockblocker, we're both fine and no one else was hit."
"I got better," Clockblocker sounded confused. Then, "Oh my god, I second triggered. I can rewind stuff now!"
"Cool," I said absently. I toggled the comm again. "I've been looking for the sniper. I think I've found his spot, but he's gone. Permission to investigate?"
Clockblocker's head twisted around to look at Coryn, then back at me.
I pressed my lips together. Well, I hadn't really been trying that hard to keep it a secret. I said to him, "I can see and hear through all my Dust, not just Coryn."
"Neat. So is that also a second trigger, or…?"
His whole face was covered, but I thought I read his tone right. I decided to trust him, which seemed the least I could do since I nearly got him killed. "Yeah, let's go with second triggers all around."
"You have a go on investigating the sniper nest. I've activated your GPS beacons, Armsmaster will be meeting you there."
"Looks like he might get his revenge for the halbeard joke after all," I told Clockblocker. He was taking his own resurrection about as well as I had for my first few. "You okay?"
"Peachy keen, let's go," he looked down at his hands, curling and uncurling the fingers. "And I think I might have a trick when we get there."
The sniper's perch was the bell tower of an old, dilapidated church. It wasn't a stone gothic type of church, although it had once tried hard to make people forget that detail. Now every window was boarded up with plywood and the whitewash paint was peeling away everywhere.
The bell tower stood out above the other buildings in the area, with a clear line of sight down the Boardwalk. It was just on the edge of affluent, a few unusable empty lots between the church and middle-class strip mall. The area looked familiar, I thought I might have buried some extra body parts in one of the overgrown lots.
"Up there," I nodded to the red carpeted stairs leading up, past an open door behind the altar. It would have been pitch-black except for the flashlights we both carried.
The structure swayed uncomfortably as we ascended, and I kept Coryn near Clockblocker to grab him up if it collapsed.
At the top, where the bells used to hang, there were two huge spent casings and a space cleared from the debris of various boards and planks of wood. The open window looked right out over the Boardwalk, lit up as a glittering stream of lights.
"What did you want to try?" I asked, waving at the casings.
He came closer and put a hand on my shoulder. I was about to tell him that now was not the time for a freezing prank, and then I realized he was concentrating on the sniper's perch.
The world jerked around us, a feeling in my stomach like when an elevator dropped quickly. There was a noise behind us, and I turned to watch a man come up the stairs backwards. Walk backwards to the window. Start unpacking a rifle.
It was incredible, but at the same time I was also aware that it wasn't real: I could still feel the Dust outside of the effect, still control it as usual. We weren't in the past, just watching it like a movie. Clockblocker didn't realize, and he reached out to grab the man as he pulled the trigger.
His hand passed right through, and the man didn't react. "Damn," he muttered, pulling back.
We watched the rest of it in silence, as the sniper pulled the trigger again and then sat for a little while, aiming. Then he packed up, moved some boards and wooden pallets over near the window, and walked backwards to the stairs.
The effect ended but the vertigo in my stomach remained; I felt like I might have thrown up if it went for very much longer.
"I think that was Victor. Empire, like you said." I thought from his tone that Clockblocker was upset, too.
Victor hadn't been wearing a mask. We knew his face now.
"Clockblocker, Lazarus, report," Armsmaster's voice broke our silence.
"Shit." Clockblocker said, his eyes wide. "Do we tell Armsmaster?"
"We're up in the bell tower, Armsmaster," I said into my comms. I locked eyes with Clockblocker and said to him, "Have to. He'll want to see the image for himself, and this guy took a shot at you. He would have killed you."
"You shouldn't have entered the structure without knowing how stable it is, but my scan indicates it's sound enough. I'm coming up."
"I don't know what the fuck is going on," Clockblocker said in a harsh whisper, and then fell silent. Armsmaster could be heard, his footsteps creaking on the stairs.
Since Clockblocker was busy poking alternately at his side and his shoulder, I explained everything to Armsmaster: being shot, a second trigger, finding this place. As expected, Armsmaster wanted to see the sniper for himself.
I watched from the outside with my own eyes this time. Nothing changed, and based on how long they took things weren't happening in exactly real-time: the five minutes they spent staring at the window weren't enough to have seen the whole thing played out moment by moment.
When Clockblocker's rewind ended, he staggered away from Armsmaster and flicked off the bottom half of his mask, letting it clatter on the wooden floor to the side. He hunched over and vomited, although not a lot came up.
The nauseous effect must compound the more he does it, I noted.
Armsmaster's mouth was a thin line of anger. "This was… unacceptable. They've gone too far."
"They might have thought it was me flying with Coryn," I volunteered. I'd used the time to think. "Since I was the one who started the fight with Rune." And taunted Hookwolf, not that they knew that part.
"Your costumes look completely different," Armsmaster dismissed. "Even if he was only aiming at your minion, Victor took a shot at a Ward. He was acting as a cape, whether or not he was wearing a mask."
"What does that mean?" Clockblocker asked, wiping his mouth as he took a wobbly step back to us. "And does anyone have some water on them?"
Armsmaster took a thin canteen off his hip and handed it over. He said, "It means that if you ID him in your civilian identity, you report it as soon as you safely can. It means we can get a forensics team in here to sweep for prints or DNA, although I didn't see him take off his gloves. Clockblocker, report tomorrow for power re-testing."
"Got school tomorrow," Clockblocker said, and then tipped his head back to gargle some water and spit it.
Armsmaster took a calming breath. I wondered if Clockblocker practiced being annoying. "Wednesday after school, then. Let's go. I want full reports by tomorrow evening. Piggot will probably also want to talk to you."
Clockblocker's lip curled up, and I'm sure there was a similar expression on my face. Great .
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