Tick

Even trough my enchanted blanket had done its job, the next morning it was hard for me to leave my bed and face the day. Yesterday I had been a Hero, but the things I had seen, the feeling of skin, flesh and bone parting beneath my hands. I had thought I could deal with everything easily, I mean I had beaten death twice and survive after losing my limbs. But the things I had seen yesterday, I thought I knew just how cruel humans where but the image of the children and even toddlers, just laying there caked in blood, their own and that of others.

I needed therapy, now more than ever, I knew it wasn't a fix all cure all, but I didn't have the tools to deal with this, so I didn't even try. I side tracked myself with work, texting the captain:

'Hey Cap, I still have some info, pics and stuff, you want?'

I hadn't taken any pictures inside the farm, but I still hat the map of the drug dens I had discovered. Maybe I should have, my healing had removed any evidence those people had ever been hurt, but I couldn't do it, I didn't even want to think back.

To distract myself from those morbid thoughts I got ready and went for breakfast. Downstairs only a few people were awake, or rather sleepwalking, I didn't think they had noticed anything but the coffee in their cups. The food tasted bland and missing two meals the day before I only ate a small portion, before I went back to my rooms.

While I waited for the captains reply I went through the surviving snakes. Their enchanted aura had healed their wounds, they were constructs after all and their bodies only a representation of their material's origin. I only had a single guardian snake and 34 small snakes remaining. Rebuilding the armada would be a priority. Checking the radiophone again I kept myself busy by creating new guardian snakes. Because the material had more than replenished I decided to more than double the count of each type of snake. Thanks to my new working tool and the working time being halved it only took me a few hours to build another 19 guardian snakes and 2000 scout snakes were child's play with my new cultivation and the resulting precision in using the light to enchant. Then I enchanted another 200 staffs of regeneration and 50 teleport scrolls. The work went by so fast it hadn't even reached noon and I had nothing left to do.

Desperate for something to do I threw myself into inventing a new healing device, that would be able to heal multiple people in an area and not be used up after healing a single near-death patient. This device would heal every injury within a certain area at gradual speed, no matter how severe or not it was, while being able to recharge after use. It would be much slower and less effective, but being able to reuse it would reduce the time I needed to rebuild after each mission. If only my powers hadn't given me a perfect understanding of enchantments and the ability to instantly create them with magic. In the end it took less than half an hour to create and produce 50 of those healing fields. They locked like Rubik cubes, except completely smooth and filled with an inner blue light.

If I wanted to use more time on things I needed a bigger challenge, something the light wouldn't allow me to use it for. Assassin snakes, that was it, except they wouldn't kill, so ranger snakes. Ranger snakes where like guardian snakes, except very weak to air based attacks, for my sister and instead of strangling opponents they would secrete paralytic venom from their fangs and be able to spew clouds of paralyzing gas at range. And because they had aggressive abilities I would have to carve parts of the enchantments by hand.

After a noon meal, I had barely finished my thirteenth ranger when I go a reply from the captain. It read:

'Ben, drop info at drop box 42 outside building, I stashed a dossier there for you.'

This was good, I had already used light to copy the map the choker AI had made onto a sheet of paper so I put on my costume, transformed into Dusa and looped Amanda around my neck. To disguise the direction I came from I teleported to the roof of the Brockton General Hospital and heard a startled gasp behind me. There, smoking cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth stood a cape I had researched extensively, Panacea. Now, I had just teleported in front of her and as far as I knew I was publicly known as a villain, so I took a steep back and showed her the empty palms of my hands. By that time she had composed herself and asked in a very factual tone of voice:

"Are you Dusa? Do you realize this hospital is neutral territory? Villains aren't welcome here without a good reason. You aren't bleeding out, so leave"

I was more amused than intimidated, but I had a stressful day so my reply wasn't as careful as it should have been:

"Little healer, no need to stress out. I am just passing through, but you know cigs are bad for you, just because you work in a hospital you don't have to be part of the addiction statistic. I thought you knew that."

I gave her my most infuriating smile, which coming from a little girl was probably even more provocative than usual, because she snubbed back:

"Shut it, toddlers have no place here, go, slither off little reptile. This is a big girl zone."

I was enjoying this and answered:

"Year no, washboards like you can't use that, you need curves. And I would rather slither than waddle around like I am pregnant, is that why you wear those robes, to hide your baby pouch?"

Panacea wasn't defeated that easily and the next reply was true scathing:

"Sorry Pumpkin, I don't speak toddler, did Disneyland kick you out because you they didn't need princes whiny puffin, I would challenge you to a duel of wits, but I don't attack unarmed little snuggle puffs."

Choker AI gave me a good suggestion so I replied with:

"That rich, coming from someone who lives with a literal Barbie, do you have a pink little house with a white fence, or are just jealous Ken doesn't spend his time with you?"

Bringing her sister into this hadn't been my best idea, because Panacea went read and stopped joking when she said:

"Fuck off, this is neutral territory, leave or every parahuman who has ever been healed by me will be gunning for you. Do you think you can survive Eidolon? Legend? Both?"

She wasn't kidding but I wouldn't give up that easily, I would get the last word, so I crushed a teleport scroll and left with the words:

"Let them try, you sure have a high opinion of yourselves. What happens when there is a healer faster and better than you, when you powers become second class, can you still keep your ego? So long, triage girl."

This had gone terrible, how could I have fucked of this badly? I should be grateful for her help, she had healed me, but she hadn't healed Desu and she hadn't been there yesterday. While she had cozied up at home or in the 'neutral zone' I had been out there, fighting and healing at the same time, what right did she have to use her abilities against me, it wasn't like she had had to work for them. She was a shaker and simply gifted her ability, not like me who had build everything myself. Damn, I hadn't even checked, where had I teleported to? I recognized the long, squat building from yesterday. I had teleported to Winslow, completely the wrong direction, this was the second time in as many days that I inadvertently found myself here. Maybe I could just ask why Captain wanted me to look into this school.

'Hey Cap, why Winslow?' my message read.

In seconds I had an answer that read:

'Bioterrorism? Attempted Murder? Something went down there and the whole investigation just vanished. No risks, stay safe and call backup if you see anything dangerous. You might be able to defend yourself, but there are older people with more experience working against you.'

That was actually a very suave way to put it, I was uninformed and in unknown territory. I asked Amanda and the choker AI if they could slip in and hack into the systems while I waited out of sight. No need to take unnecessary risks. Amanda agreed that she could take the choker inside and it would shift through all the data. I offered to use the laptop to store some of it, after all that was what I had build it for, but the choker AI refused. It seemed confident to be able to store and process the data quickly. Watching Amanda sneak away I was left alone to find my own hidey-hole. I found an old ventilation shaft protruding from the back of what must be the cafeteria, which didn't have any windows in the back and was thankfully empty. If tomorrow I would have to spend my day in such an ugly building I would bring my own lunch and hope for nice weather. You could smell the sweat and grime from out here and I refused to attend a school with fungal decay.

Further observation of the school grounds only further cemented my impression that this wasn't so much a school as a recruitment center for the gangs. Gang signs, gang tattoos, drugs and shifty looking teens were simply part of the scenery at this place, if anyone wanted to get an education here they would first have to deal with the gangs and I didn't believe for a second the faculty had even tried to do something about it. The gang members where to frank, to at ease with openly displaying their loyalties, almost like the different gangs had made a competition of who could get away with the most forthright displays. The giant swastika on the door to the gym and the stylized ABB banner below the name of the school where only the most obvious attempts at winning that competition. There were metal detectors at the gates, but a single sweep was enough to see multiple knives being twirled in the open. It was no wonder the captain had sent me here.

Waiting for Amanda I amused myself with the idea of releasing a snake for each gang member and just watching the show, maybe with enough snakes I could even get the different gangs to unite and fight the common thread together. That my researches of Brockton Bay hadn't brought up a single incident in which the gangs had united against the PRT and Protectorate only showed just how out gunned they were. My sister might be fielded even faster than I had initially thought, with the way the situation in the Bay was deteriorating. I hadn't hear from her in days. I knew she was well protected, but her temper must have been explosive by now, my sister didn't deal well with being caged, neither of us did, but not being able to walk had increases my patience.

When Amanda returned I immediately asked the choker AI if it had found anything interesting and it gave my a short summary of the dirty little secrets of the school. The principal was not only embezzling money, but also had her own little personal secrets in form of a second laptop. On that laptop the AI had found a very well hidden and secured, at least to normal standards, the AI had hacked it in less than a second, folder in which the principal kept her own notes about every member of the faculty. Another word for those notes would be blackmail, from personal secrets like a Mr. Gladly who was gay and had been caught having intimate relationships with his students, to financial information like a Ms. Knott, whose husband had racked up massive gambling debts before disappearing, to a Mr. Quinlan who wasn't qualified to teach at all and had lied on his resume. Curiously there was an entire section of the folder dedicated to 3 students and someone called Maria Edgecombe, who was a PRT handler and a lover of good food and aged alcohol, which she apparently couldn't afford from her PRT salary. The Principal hadn't been able to find out where the money came from, but she had made extensive notes about Ms. Edgecombe's spending habits.

But corruption in the PRT wasn't even the most interesting tidbit, that were the notes about the three students, all of which were apparently running a long term bullying campaign against one Taylor Hebert, I had never heard that name before, but it sounded important, like she had weight in the light. Deciding to remember the name I returned to the notes about the 3 students and found what was probably the most disgusting prank imaginable. Simply reading the description of the Locker incident made me queasy, why had this not been reported, the Director had to know that this couldn't be hidden forever. That wasn't a prank, but bioterrorism and attempted murder. Checking the data I found my answer, the choker AI provided me with the necessary information to solve the puzzle, it had compared the known photos from Sophia Hess's track meats to those of Shadow Stalker the Ward. This alone wouldn't have been enough, but within the file was a hidden remark that Ms. Edgecombe had been informed of the Locker incident and ordered an information blackout. Something like this wouldn't be done for just any student, no wonder the police case had come up with nothing. The chain of command was compromised.

I honestly had no idea how to deal with this so I asked the captain:

'Cap, big trouble, PRT's little squad member is running amok, police case manipulated, Locker incident, not just once, recommendations?'

Continuing to read the files about the 3 girls I found more and more cases of platen disregard of the law, not just theft and destruction of property but also cases of physical and mental abuse. Reading this, imagining myself in Taylors position made me ill and furious at the same time. Every authority that should have protected her had failed her utterly. She had almost been killed and had had to return to school soon after, because the school shut up her Dad with money. It was telling that the settlement money had been paid even before the girl had returned from the hospital, it was almost like her father was also abusive, just in a different way. I knew what disregard and neglect could do to a person, had seen it with my sister, had experienced it myself. I couldn't in good conscience keep this from her, this was proof, proof Taylor Herbert existed, proof her complains had been heard, but simply ignored by the administration.

'Cap, I am going to pass it on to the victim, give me a number for her to call' was the message I wrote to tell the captain of my decision before I made my way to the house of one Taylor Hebert, her address had been in the normal school register. That register didn't contain any of the reported abuse of her claims of bullying, in the register Taylor simply looked like a bad student who missed a lot of classes and often delivered her assignments late or not at all.

When I had created Desu, I had wanted to make a villain, fun loving and nonviolent but a villain. Now it looked like I was spending most of my time being a Hero, maybe I should just rebrand, it wasn't like my face had been seen. The only one who knew my identity was one my side, at least for the moment, as a police officer he had his own obligations.