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Rating:
Mature
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Graphic Depictions Of Violence
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Gen
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Parahumans Series - Wildbow亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon (Anime & Manga)
Characters:
Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverDanny HebertBrockton Bay WardsLisa Wilbourn | Tattletale
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Canon-Typical ViolenceCanon-Typical Body Horrorshard-altered psychologytags to be added as we go
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English
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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:29,374
(Restricted) The Shadow Over Brockton Bay
Temeritous
Chapter 26: Wraith 3.9
Summary:
Please don't expect a full revival of this story. I got up to the beginning of 4.1 and lost all inspiration for this story. I'll be dumping up to 3.11 and the interlude, and possibly what little I have written of 4.1 (which begins with one of my favorite things, a flash-forward!) and then vanishing to continue working on my Secret Projects. I may also be starting a snip thread for the Secret Projects that went far enough to be worth it.
Chapter Text
Alexandria called ahead to the Protectorate while I called Tattletale. The call rang six times and went to voicemail.
"If this is the boss, the job went bad and I hope you had our backs. If this is anyone else… how did you get this number? Why are you calling me? Hang up now and leave a text like a normal person."
I pulled the phone away and frowned at it. It beeped, indicating it was ready to receive a message.
"I hope you check your messages, because I'm not typing this out," I said grouchily. "I met Alexandria again, she says my dad's death was faked and that he's probably still alive as Coil's hostage. I'm going with her to organize a rescue with the Protectorate, I think they're my best bet. Call me when you get this message. Be careful and lay low."
I hung up, caught Alexandria's eye, and jerked my head that we should get moving.
The last time I went out to the PHQ… was when I was dropping off Stormtiger, actually. But the last time I was inside was on one of my visits to Armsmaster's lab where we experimented with my Dust.
Alexandria raised her hand to a subtle earpiece and tapped it twice. "Alexandria to Armsmaster," she said, "Open the shield in the south-west octant."
I couldn't hear the response, but the dim glow of the rainbow shield faded in front of us as one of the eight shield generators switched off.
"I think he and the others will be happy to see you," Alexandria commented as we flew in. I brought Coryn inside the shield, but resolved to keep her outside the PHQ itself. My range covered the whole building, and I still had the other half of my Dust. "Some of them took your actions to mean that you didn't trust them."
"I don't." I said, not as harsh as the words would make it seem. "They would have tried to imprison me for my own good. Most of them refuse to understand what my power means." The only one who seemed to accept it was Armsmaster.
"The way your power works makes it difficult to accept. We know and understand regenerator Brutes, or powers like mine that grant invulnerability. None of them can say they die and come back, just that they're death-resistant. You, on the other hand, are as squishy and breakable as any normal human, and you just so happen to come back when you take fatal damage. It causes you to be perceived as frail even though you are arguably more durable than most other Brute capes."
"I just thought it was because they didn't want to see me die a lot," I muttered. It had been my dad's biggest complaint.
"...That is also a little unsettling, yes."
"You wouldn't think so," I said. "People see just as much gore on TV and in movies. In fact, most of the time when I die there's less gore. They emphasize it for the big screen."
"Perhaps your power has just given you a unique perspective," Alexandria suggested.
Like how Aegis had no problem talking about it with me because his power let him get hurt too. "It's still annoying," I said. Then we were landing on the flyers' pad on the roof and Armsmaster and Miss Militia, in full costume, were waiting for us.
"Alexandria, Lazarus," Armsmaster greeted. He turned half a step, indicating the nearby door. "Let's get into one of the conference rooms."
Our little group started toward the door. Miss Militia cleared her throat and said, "Good evening, Lazarus. Glad to have you back."
The muscles around Armsmaster's mouth had tightened when Miss Militia cleared her throat; some sort of signal, if I guessed right. He added, "Yes. It's good you decided to come back."
"Not permanently," I said, ambivalent about bursting their bubble. "Not yet, at least. I'm just here to coordinate with you guys to rescue my dad."
Armsmaster waved a hand over the scanner next to the door, a chip in his suit sending the keycode signal, then tapped the scanner three times. The door buzzed and dropped open, disappearing downward into the floor.
"You know where he is?" Armsmaster asked. He stepped inside and waited for the rest of us to come through.
"No, but I know who has him. Coil."
He nodded. "If you have more to tell us, please wait until we've reached a secure room."
Alexandria was the last through the door. As soon as she was past the threshold, the door slammed upward so forcefully it could have taken a hand off.
"Hm." Armsmaster said, staring at it.
"As a Stranger gate, it's good," Alexandria offered. "But from a workplace safety perspective… it could use some work."
"Accounting for human error is… frustrating."
I smiled.
Miss Militia took the lead while Armsmaster tapped something out on his phone. We wound up in a room I recognized: this was where the weekly briefings were held.
Assault and Battery were already inside, Assault slumped onto the table with his head propped up on a bent arm, Battery sitting up straight and sipping from a tall travel mug.
Assault perked up a little when Alexandria pulled the door open, a small smile appearing. "Heya, Lazarus, good to see you again."
I nodded at him and his wife, and took a seat near the head of the table where Alexandria was standing behind one of the chairs. Velocity appeared behind Armsmaster, catching the door before it could swing shut.
"Am I late?" he asked. "Sorry, I was just finishing up showing Changeling to the dorms when I got the ping."
Was Changeling the name of a new cape, or some sort of code I didn't know?
"You're not late," Miss Militia said. "We were just about to start the briefing. Dauntless and Triumph are off-duty and on patrol, respectively, so this is it." She nodded at Alexandria with the words.
Alexandria nodded back and sat down. "While we were conducting our investigation, Lazarus has been doing some digging of her own. She is confident, and I see no reason to disbelieve her, that the person behind her identity leak and her father's kidnapping is Coil."
"How did you find this information?" Armsmaster asked, leaning forward. "And what do you know of his power and his operations?"
"I have a… spy. She was sent to spy on me, in fact, but has since decided that I'm the better choice. She told me about his power to split timelines and choose whichever option goes better for him. She doesn't know much about his mercenary operations, he's careful to keep that separate from her. He doesn't trust her."
"If he doesn't trust her, how does she know what his power is? And who is she? A normal, a parahuman? We've never heard of another parahuman in his gang." That was Assault, looking a little more awake now that things were happening.
"She's a Thinker, she figured it out. He only keeps the rest of it secret by keeping it completely hidden from her, no cross-interaction." I paused for a moment, a final moment of conflict before I steeled my resolve. Sorry, Lisa. "It's Tattletale, of the Undersiders. Coil funds their group, feeds them some jobs. The others don't even know who their boss is. Tattletale was recruited under duress."
When this was all over, maybe I could get her pardoned. Maybe I could get that for all of the Undersiders… except probably Bitch and Regent; they'd killed people. Then again, so had I.
The others around the table were exchanging glances. I knew I was missing something, and waited for them to work themselves up to saying it.
"What you've said fits with what we know of Tattletale, for the most part. But are you sure she was recruited under duress?" Alexandria asked.
"That's what she told me. I don't think she was lying." And I still didn't. I believed her. But why were they looking at me like that? I asked, "Why?"
"With all of the interest in Brockton Bay right now, we've been doing in-depth profiles on all of the villains. Tattletale is wanted for questioning regarding the death of her brother and the disappearance of her parents."
"You know her real name?" I asked, voice steady despite an inner turmoil. I'd never questioned her about her past or how she came to Brockton Bay, although I knew she wasn't a native. I wondered what had happened.
"Sarah Livsey," Miss Militia said. "It's… suspected that she caused her brother's suicide because her parents favored him more. After his death, her parents experienced some stunning success on the stock market and asset trading, enough that they came under scrutiny, until their wealth disappeared with a few bad trades. Both Sarah and her parents went missing. We don't know anything for sure."
"From what you've said so far, it sounds like she's playing a similar game with Coil," Alexandria said. "If you believe that she told you the truth, then we'll operate under that assumption. Just be aware that she has a history of propping someone up just to watch them fall."
Lisa Wilbourn reached across a table and offered me an open hand. How much of her was real? How much of this was a lie?
Who can I trust?
Truth is objective, but you can twist it to mean different things. Someone was lying to me.
Focus on the outcomes. What do I want, right now, from this?
"I know that Coil has my dad, because it fits. Whether or not Tattletale was recruited by force, it's true she's working for Coil, and that she wants him gone now. I can trust her information toward that end.
"Coil has spies in the PRT. Whatever's going to happen, the PRT can't be informed." I stared around the table, making sure they understood how serious I was about that. I wasn't sure what I could do to stop them if they ignored me, short of knocking them out and taking them all prisoner, or outright murdering them.
Still there were those were two viable, if extreme, options.
"I understand what you've been led to believe, but everyone in any position of power or information in the PRT undergoes regular screenings for compromise by a Master, Stranger, or more mundane means." Armsmaster sounded irritated. "Vulnerabilities are identified and isolated from vital information. There's no need to cut ourselves off from the PRT."
I opened my mouth to argue, but Alexandria raised a silencing hand and beat me to it. I sat back, disgruntled, as she spoke. "The protocols are as good as we can make them, but mistakes happen. Given how slippery Coil has proved to be in the past, I find it easy to believe that he has some way of getting information from the PRT. That could be as simple as a particularly good hacker targeting the human element of any system, guessing passwords and login information. Whatever the case, I agree with Lazarus that the rest of this operation should be kept from the PRT until it's over, one way or another."
She sat back, finished. I jumped into the pause, ready to push my plans first so that they would focus on working around me instead of me having to fit around them.
"I don't know where Coil's base of operations is, or where he's keeping my dad, so I'm going to brute-force a lead by grid-searching every single block of this city until I find him."
"That's kind of an invasion of privacy," Velocity pointed out. When my attention turned on him, he raised his hands as if in surrender. "Hey, I get why you want to do it, but we usually don't pull out stops like that without talking about it first. Maybe asking permission."
"It's authorized," said Alexandria, the final authority in the room. "An example needs to be set here, Lazarus' power can make the search subtle, and the only man who will know enough to complain about it will be on a fast-track to a closed trial and the Birdcage."
Death, actually, but I wasn't telling them that.
"If you disagree with the methods, you may sit out on the operation, no questions asked. I will of course request that you keep your complaints private until the operation is complete."
A thread of admiration wormed through me. Whether it was her power or her presence, she really knew how to command a room. I wished she would be a little more consistent with me, so I could decide if I liked her or not.
Nobody left or even moved. Velocity shrugged and sat back.
"How were you planning to search the city?" Alexandria asked, turning to me. "I assume you realize that flying around so systematically will draw attention."
This was going better than I'd expected, to be honest.
"If I have to, I'll walk and avoid people and cameras wherever I can. But if you guys have a better idea, I'm glad to hear it." Walking would be slow, and came with its own risks. There were parts of the city where you needed to be dressed a certain way just to blend in, and the 'uniforms' weren't similar to each other.
"A car would be faster than walking, but probably still draw some attention," Miss Militia said. "Especially if it was noted first in one area and then another."
"Sewer system?" Assault suggested, then broke into a jaw-cracking yawn.
Battery picked up the thought for him. "It's discreet, and we don't have any evidence that Coil uses it himself. We might run into some Merchants down there, though."
"It doesn't go everywhere," Armsmaster shot it down. "The walkable tunnels frequently narrow into cramped spaces, difficult if not impossible to navigate. The storm drains are broad but not comprehensive enough, and they house a sizable Merchant and homeless population. I previously looked into the situation for a project."
It was looking like walking was the least worst option.
"However, I have a car that will take care of the discretion issue posed by Miss Militia. It's mostly my own work, but it's based on tech confiscated from one of Uber and Leet's escapades. Lazarus might remember it - she was on Console the night they used the car."
That was the night I'd sent Coryn off on a solo mission. She had apparently done enough that their car was found and taken into custody.
"I remember it," I nodded. "What does it do?" Some sort of invisibility? That would be dangerous on the roads, though.
"Once I stripped out the more mundane modifications and replaced them with more efficient pieces, including - " Miss Militia cleared her throat again and he broke off. Definitely some sort of signal between them.
"Sorry," she said, and drank from the travel mug Battery offered her. "Please, continue."
"Its appearance changes," Armsmaster said shortly. "Slowly enough to be invisible to the naked eye. Within about two hours, it looks like a completely different car in both model and color. The rate of change can be sped up, with a loss of discretion of course."
Alexandria was skeptical. "Doesn't Leet's tech tend to… explode?"
"It does, but I've checked the system myself. It's solid."
"That's transportation sorted out. I'll be doing the actual searching, but I'm not exactly legal to drive…" I trailed off.
"I'll be driving. It's my car and my tech in case something does go wrong." I nodded at Armsmaster, accepting. Miss Militia had looked like she also wanted to volunteer, and I was glad he'd spoken up first.
"The rest of us will play backup, then. We'll keep in touch through comms. Lazarus, once you find your father or Coil, I'm asking you to hold off on immediate action."
I hesitated with inner conflict. I'd been planning on holding off, but now that she wanted it I suddenly didn't. I recognized the childish contrary impulse for what it was, and pushed it away. "I know. My best idea for getting around Coil's power is to do a complete search of the city, staying on top of him when I find him. Then I act at a predetermined set time. If he's in the docks in one of his timelines and downtown in the other, both versions of me will still strike at the same time. He won't have advanced warning."
Alexandria dipped her head, smiling slightly. "My thoughts exactly." She sounded surprised; I was simultaneously proud and annoyed at myself for being proud.
"Are we doing this now?" Assault asked. He hand one hand shoved under his visor to rub at his eyes. "Because it's kind of late already. It's - fuck, it's tomorrow already."
I didn't need sleep in quite the same way they did, but I knew I would be fresher for having laid my human body down. "It can wait for the morning."
"Sweet." Assault stood up so fast his chair rocked back. Battery kicked him in the leg. "I mean… sorry Lazarus. See you tomorrow?"
"It's fine." I waved one hand. I didn't expect the rest of them to act like they were as invested as I was.
"Velocity, show Lazarus to a room?" Alexandria suggested, standing up.
We left, but I left some Dust in the room to listen in.
"Armsmaster," Alexandria leaned over the table, planting one fist on it knuckles-down. "Go to sleep. No last minute tinkering, no distractions. You're going to be driving for most of tomorrow, and I do not want you to have to be hopped up on amphetamines to do it."
"I may have overstated the car's state of preparation," Armsmaster began.
"Does it start?"
"Yes, but - "
"Does it camouflage?"
"Yes, but - "
"Then it's fine." Alexandria pointed at Miss Militia. "Militia, hit him with a tranq if you have to."
"I am not a child to be managed," Armsmaster snapped. "It doesn't have a steering wheel right now."
Alexandria's tone softened a little. "Fine. Go tinker it into working order. But Miss Militia will make sure you don't lose track of time."
Armsmaster still didn't look satisfied, likely frustrated at being assigned a babysitter, but he nodded stiffly and left the room.
When the door closed, Alexandria sighed and reached under her mask, pressing on the bridge of her nose.
"...and here's the temporary dorms." I tuned back in to Velocity. I would have felt bad about ignoring his conversation completely, but he didn't seem to need my input at all, and he didn't seem to have noticed, either. "You're actually not alone in here right now, we picked up a new Case Fifty-Three yesterday. She's been through a lot of power testing today, so she's probably sleeping right now. Still, if you see her, we've been calling her Changeling. You'll get it when you see her."
Velocity was dropping me off in a dorm-room sort of situation, a shared main room with smaller bedrooms splitting off all around it. It was meant for temporary housing during a crisis, or for visiting capes. I picked a room, idly sending Dust to phase through the other doors and get a look at this Changeling.
She saved me the effort; one of the doorknobs rattled and swung out, revealing a human figure with inhuman features.
She was dressed in plain dark green scrubs, but the first thing I noticed was her skin, marble-white and glittering, dimly luminous. A mass of delicate, fire-red curly hair floated around her head and face as though gravity didn't affect it, framing unnaturally large green eyes. She was shorter and looked younger than the last time I had seen her, like she was thirteen again.
"Emma," I said.
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