2.5

2.5

Saturday, 19th February

After the excitement of the previous day, you knew that you no longer had time to waste: with your mask ripped and your clothing shredded, your order to Rhizome had to go in with no delay.

For most of her order, you were able to skip through without much concern. You weren't ordering vast plates of armour, detailed pieces of embroidery, multi-piece clothing, or costume of various colours; while your did want some improvements on your base design, simple seemed to be best in terms of both pragmatic considerations and pricing, so you stuck with it.

In the end, you settled for a costume much like your previous one, though made of Rhizome's most versatile and durable material; knife-proof, bulletproof, with some degree of shock absorption qualities, Rhizome bragged that it was waterproof, mildly insulated in both thermal and electrical senses, and contained enough silver in various forms to prevent the build-up of rapid smell issues when out in the field for extended periods of time; that was an issue you were yet to experience but were not keen to encounter. The general colour scheme of dark blues and purples was maintained; you asked for your cloak to be made long enough to come down to the back of your knees, and you added a utility belt to replace the rather beat up fanny back that was currently tugging around your gear; all of these came at a price, but all were worth it.

Unquestionably, the biggest shift was the helmet. Moving away from a cloth mask was the obvious choice: your morph-mask had been admirable in its resistance to the elements and your training with New Wave, but it had begun truly showing its wear in the fight against the fire and there were now too many holes to use it without simply declaring your identity to the world. Instead, a full head helmet – shaped to fit your head, with every feature Rhizome listed as possible involved; a re-breather, air filtration, increased cushioning, inbuilt switchable sound muffling, a slot for you to integrate glasses lenses, and of course, a full array of LEDs integrated both within the perimeter and face of the mask.

The cost was prohibitive. The wait time, though sensible, nevertheless limited your ability to actively patrol for the new handful of days. The trust in New Wave's judgements and some online testimonials may have been errant. But you trusted Glory Girl and Laserdream to steer you right, and thus far they hadn't disappointed.

Upon payment, you were temporarily scared by the idea of connecting your personal identity to PHO; in fact, you recalled having that same fear in the past. It was, however, allayed. PHO appeared to be more versatile than you had ever imagined, as it championed connections to an escrow service run by a cape by the rather self-descriptive moniker of The Number Man, whose logo appeared particularly vexing but whose notoriety was such that even you had heard of him. If he was trusted by everyone else, you were willing to place cash into his hands too. Shortly after placing the order, a confirmation message to your PHO inbox came through and with it, your tentative shudders faded.

Rhizome – Fine Capewear: Your order has been accepted; estimated delivery within 3-5 days. Please include a photograph of your body in its current, average shape; Changers and Breakers are advised to know that Rhizome's fine equipment accommodates almost any shifts in form as long as temperatures remain below 10,000 Celsius and no fabrics are stretched more than ten times their current length or width. No refunds shall be accepted in the case of suits being subjected to trials beyond these limits.

Click to expand...

You had almost forgotten about this part. Knowing the power of Rhizome's algorithms, you simply suited up in your costume as it existed, allowing as much of your face to be shrouded as possible, before attaching the image and sending it off; you'd posed in front of the most neutral wall in your house, standing on the landing at the top of the staircase, and you could only hope that Rhizome's curiosity stopped at your waistline and didn't wander far enough to contemplate the worn flooring or the peeling wall-paper.

Dad had promised to get around to it with the settlement money, and you were sure he would, but things took time and you didn't want members of The Guild judging you, of all people. The idea of Dragon seeing such a thing was unbearable.

It was difficult to know how else to fill the time. Without the costume, patrols were off limits, and while you could meet Vicky – in fact, were planning to do so – it had to be either out of costume or in a substitute mask. You weren't feeling entirely confident in wearing no costume at all, given the public nature of most of your meetings. After all, it wouldn't be hard to put two and two together for any intrepid thinker or even simply an astute onlooker to figure out that if Victoria Dallon, known civilian of Glory Girl, started hanging out with a tall, thin girl in her free time that tall, thin girl might be connected to the tall, thin cape that she had recently begun teaming with on the independent scene.

Worrying overly much was supposed to be Dad's job, but you supposed that you had to get it from somewhere. Mom certainly had been a more cavalier spirit; judging from the stories you had heard about her at college, you had the feeling she would have already have been locked in a grappling match with Hookwolf if she'd gained your powers.

You sat on your bed, with truly very little to do for the first time in weeks. You were more or less caught up with schoolwork, and though you desired to be a good student, you hardly felt the drive to push yourself above and beyond now that your future was very firmly pointed in a different direction from college. Tasks to do existed, but they seemed to evade you. You had even attempted activating your wings in the bath, just to see if the water had interefered with them at all, and found that while it hadn't, doing such a thing had caused a rather large mess; apparently dragonfly wings in enough water to fill a bath-tub was a recipe for a wet floor.

Wondering about the previous day, you circled the events of your patrol in your mind over and over. It all seemed to like far too much of a coincidence at the time, and the questions you had asked about it in the immediate aftermath seemed to dismiss any hint of happenstance; but that left a very obvious question to you. Why was it that Coil would send his men to light a fire and watch, but not to act? You weren't even sure if they had seen you see them. For all you were aware, Coil believed that he had escaped notice in his engineering of the blaze.

Briefly, you considered the idea that he was innocent. Maybe some of his men, civilians after all and therefore unable to cause much of the mischief that more senior members of the Empire could, had done it themselves on impulse? You threw the concept away immediately. None of the research you had done into Coil had suggested that his men every acted in any way without his permission.

Everything seemed to lead up to some form of conclusion that he was presumably happy with, but his lack of public statements and rhetoric, or even the lack of his outspoken celebrations as Lung might perform, meant that you were in the dark. Did he consider Friday's attack successful?

All of the questioning circled another, more confounding concept: how did Coil know you would be there? Either he was a precognitive himself and could simply see the future, or he was able to somehow influence you. You weren't sure which possibility was worse. Your own thinker power was potent, there was no doubt about that, and you were using it to steadily hone in on a man about whom barely any information could be found, but the ability to see into the future finely enough to anticipate a single, unknown individual was terrifying. Secondary to that fear was the even more intimidating idea that he had forced you there in some way; influenced you into going out alone after splitting with Glory Girl when you might have otherwise not.

Telling if you had been mastered, especially in such an abstract way, seemed impossible.

You quickly ran the question.

Chances that Coil is a Master?

0%

You breathed easily. Thought it might seem a waste of a question, the reassurance was valuable.

Cracking open the start of the questions was like opening a dam. You had a thirst for information, a need to know more. Safety was one concern, yes, but the malicious actions of the gangs needed to be stopped, and if Coil truly felt the need to connive in the way that he did, it was a good sign that he could be defeated in a straight up confrontation. Lung, after all, had managed to build a criminal empire more powerful than Coil's in many respects purely out of force and fear. If Coil was afraid to follow the same route, it must have been because he knew that he couldn't oust the existing forces of the city in that manner.

Chances that Coil is a Thinker?

100%

Perfect. The specific details of his power were too much to ask. Getting percentages didn't seem as though it would work, and you already felt like the beginnings of a headache. Perhaps another question or two would suffice, though, before you were able to settle down for a short nap to recuperate.

The moles were the priority. If Coil was getting information on you, that remained the only plausible source of that information. But how to locate them? And even worse, how to pass that information on to the PRT itself without Coil also catching wind of the tip? You were certain that if you were to call the PRT helpline right now, or even pass the information on as a warning to a Ward, he would know before the end of the day. Such a thing would cause an uproar among the administration and there was no way it could be kept quiet when something so mundane as an independence registration had been taken in and analysed by the villain in less than a week.

Surreptitious was the name of the game: the only question was how.

Chances that Coil has a mole in the senior departments of the PRT ENE?

100%

Confirmation, while appreciated, was a bitter taste. Your head was pounding. There was only one question left remaining: one that you dreaded asking almost as much as you dreaded the answer.

Chances that Coil himself is involved in the PRT ENE?

100%

There was no way to inform them. Not in any practical sense, not that you could come up with in that moment. Any attempt to root him out would have to wait until either you could identify exactly who he was, with evidence, or until you could catch him in his criminal guise. Anything less would lead to your own criminalisation; anyone in the senior ranks of the PRT would be able to put something against you. Criminal damage for the destruction of the upper floors of the apartment building, at least. It was tenuous and capes regularly did more without charge, but litigation wasn't about fair, it was about power, and apparently Coil had it.

You laid down, your head thudding against your pillow. Blood rushed into your skull as the headache seized control of you; it wasn't the worst you'd had, and if you ever felt the need to fight through something like the headache you had at that point, you would probably be able to manage it, but in circumstances like this – lazy weekend days with no obligations and no way to invent new obligations – it was only natural that you drifted off into unconsciousness, hands loose by your bed side.

When you awoke, it was far later than you had expected – close to midnight. You opened your bedroom window and leaned out, feeling the rush of the cool air against your face. While being a parahuman was undoubtedly good, there were a few things you missed about just being Taylor, a fifteen year old girl, and one of those things was the predictability of life. Exactly what you could predict hadn't been pleasant, for the most part, but other parts had been: knowing you'd be home at a certain time, knowing that if there was trouble you were supposed to get help from others, knowing that the city you lived in had heroes and they were dealing with trouble; now, however, as you breathed in the air and felt the burn in your lungs, you realised quite abruptly that you were the hero. You were the person someone else was supposed to call.

There was a liberation in that. There was also a condemnation in it; if the heroes hadn't saved you then – if, in fact, one of the heroes was the main driver behind your own torture – then it stood reason that there were people you weren't saving as well. Every time you flew out on patrol, stopped a mugger, saved a building from collapsing, there was another dozen people suffering the indignity of being bullied, another family whose sanctity was violated in a home invasion – another life ruined that you didn't even know about. Meanwhile you grappled with who Coil might be, as if that was helping any of them.

You sighed to yourself. On an intellectual level it was easy to justify. Stopping Coil would protect you, thus allowing you to save others, and it would also prevent him from causing any harm in the future that he might otherwise pursue. There was a cold utilitarianism to it, you couldn't deny that. But you also couldn't deny that if a single person told you that on the day of your trigger, told you that sometimes the daily injustices had to wait just because there was something on the horizon, you would have spat in their face. Tell me about the future while I'm dying now, you thought to yourself.

Reaching over to the small book that had arrived in the mail, you decided that it was time you learned a little more of the everyday hero life – stuff you didn't even need powers for. It didn't take dragonfly wings to know how to treat a wound, or apply a tourniquet. Nobody needed to lose their humanity and go into a breaker state to put someone in the recovery position. Sometimes it was important to remember that a hero was more than just the flashiness.

Monday, 21st February

With your new and improved costume still awaiting delivery, it was a difficult and awkward business making your way out to meet Glory Girl. The majority of your costume was fine – ragged, but functional. Nobody was going to identify you based on seeing two inches of your shin.

At least, you hoped they weren't.

Much more of a concern was the mask; you had improved, patching the holes in your morph-mask with some leftover fabric stored in the cookie tin that kept the needles and thread. It looked, frankly, awful, but the majority of the patchwork design was covered by your hood which you had pulled up high to shroud your face in shadow, despite the daylight.

You had spoken on PHO a little and discussed the idea of upcoming patrols, and you had both agreed again that working the city a little more as an independent might be more helpful for your brand as a hero than staying glued to the New Wave; after all, while you were allies, you were absolutely not a member and had no intentions of revealing your identity. The longer you stayed synonymous with the group, the more expectation would build up for your eventual reveal; cutting that off before the arrival of an even more obstructive helmet only seemed natural.

You flew at a leisurely pace, enjoying the view over the city. Even during the day, there was a plethora of lights and sounds that managed to stand out against the sun – signs, billboards, the various milieu of the modern day between which roved vans and cars, vehicles beeping and buzzing as pedestrians cut across and endangered their own lives for the sake of a few seconds. There was something magical about the feeling of a city awake with activity. Not always a pleasant magic, you could admit. As a child, Mom had taken you out of the city camping a handful of times, and there were definitely moments in which you wished for the trees and the forests again, but the fact that different kinds of peace could come so easily in different kinds of places was just a little bit of the wonder of life. There was a bliss in the chaos of Brockton Bay, even if at street level that bliss came with a price tag.

Homing in on the building you had made into an informal meeting spot with Glory Girl, you noted another figure; this one dressed in civilian clothing, slouching heavily against the billboard where you generally sat.

Landing next to Glory Girl and taking her offer of a fist-bump, you looked over and were surprised at the face staring back at you.

Of all the stars in New Wave, Panacea's was perhaps the one that gleamed the brightest in the public eye. Glory Girl was well known, of course, and was exceedingly popular for a number of reasons and her willingness to engage the public only stoked that interest further. Some had argued, and it was hard to dispute them, that Glory Girl was probably close to ninety per cent of the reason anyone still considered New Wave a combat force. Everyone else's patrols had slowly ticked down over recent years, and you got the feeling that even only having been out with her twice, you had seen

Laserdream more often in costume than most civilians in Brockton Bay for the last five years.

Glory Girl's fame, however, was largely local. Panacea's was national. Occasionally you'd see some suggestion that she was known the world over, but that appeared to be something of an overstatement. All over the United States, however, was indisputable; constantly working, she had garnered something of the reputation of Mother Teresa, and much like Mother Teresa, had apparently become more of an icon than a person in the eyes of many. You had gathered by reading over logs and reports of her travels across the North East that she was essentially used as a roving surgical robot, and you wondered how she had the time and energy for it.

The answer stood before you: she didn't. Dark shadows encircled her eyes which were both hard and cold, like flint, but you had the feeling that attempting to spark warmth from her would be counterproductive to all involved. Her skin, a pretty shade in itself, was sallow and the freckles that were scrawled across her face stood out all the darker for it. All these things could be easily ignored, were it not for the storm-cloud of an expression she bore, staring you down with a look that you thought was intended to express boredom and disinterest but instead felt like you were a butterfly pinned to a board.

No, you didn't think much to Panacea upon first meeting her; or rather, you didn't think much to Amy Dallon. As Panacea, it was hard to find fault – but her personality was far less glowing than grating, and it wasn't long after you turned up to speak to Glory Girl that you found yourself wishing that her sister had been occupied at the hospital or something.

'Hey, I was hoping we could talk a little bit about those plans we had had for patrol,' you began, and were promptly cut off.

'Don't you think it might be time for you to patrol a little more on your own? You can't really be a hero if you need your hand held everywhere.'

You twitched underneath your mask. Keep the high road, Taylor.

'Of course, which is why we were talking about patrolling individually but planning our routes together so we didn't overlap too much.'

'You could always try using your eyes. No need for a plan, if you see her just fly the other direction.'

'Amy, don't be mean. We're just trying to be efficient.' Glory Girl cut in, her voice playful as though she took her sister's drone as comedic affect, rather than bitter spite. You were not nearly so generous.

'It's not about efficiency, it's about communication. Knowing where the other is could have benefits in all kinds of operations.'

'Exactly, it's not always about the personal stuff, Amy.'

'Sure. I'm not judging.' The tone had not improved, but Glory Girl was either so inured to her whining or so committed to her affections that she didn't seem to notice.

Quickly, patrol routes and plans were sketched out. If Glory Girl had noticed your patchwork mask, she was tactful enough to avoid mentioning it within earshot of a petulant Panacea, and you were infinitely grateful for it; you weren't entirely sure what you had done to earn the enmity of such a prominent figure but you were certain of one thing: you'd rather cauterise a wound in the future than let Amy Dallon mess around with your insides. She was a teenager with the temperament of Acidbath's pet cat.

Her presence had derailed a number of your plans for organising the patrols, and you realised grimly that you were going to have to contact Glory Girl on PHO again later. Intending to run through a series of questions together in order to determine the optimal patrol routes and ensure that neither of you were likely to be attacked, you had based the structure of your preparation session on exactly that – to have it thrown so thoroughly off tracks essentially by force of pure irritation was galling.

'I was thinking that you could take the patrol closer to the hospital,' you said, outlining a portion of the map. 'There's plaza makes for an easier landing, especially if you're in a rush, whereas if I need to get there I can weave between buildings easily.'

'That makes sense,' Glory Girl responded, 'plus, you're the one learning first aid so if someone gets hit, you can probably keep someone together for the trip easier than I can. Been way too long since I studied that stuff. Spoiled.'

Hyperbole be damned, you appreciated the acknowledgement of your work. While you were far, far away from confident in dealing with any crisis situation it was nice to know that she remembered your brief comment that morning when you had been arranging the meeting.

Much less nice was the scoffing sound that came from nearby. A swift glance in her direction confirmed that Amy wasn't as amused by the light-hearted comment as you were.

'Maybe try getting someone to the hospital instead of killing them trying to do it yourself. Don't get ahead of yourself. People can make stuff a lot worse if they try getting involved in the body when they don't know what they're doing.'

Were it not for Glory Girl and your certainty that it would make her too angry at you to keep working together, you had half a mind to pick Amy Dallon up and fling her into the ocean; you were only half a mile or so from the coast, you were confident you could manage it without too much trouble. Only someone looking to aggravate would be willing to take something so severely out of context. Your patience was growing thin.

Nevertheless, you worked through what you could and resolved to just send messages through when you had the results. Amendments might need coding for PHO purposes – paranoia paid its own dividends – but you had no issue with that.

As you said your goodbyes, Glory Girl gave you a pitying smile, as though she were apologising for the treatment, but you shrugged it off. She had been perfectly welcoming and while you were sure that she knew Panacea was something of a bore, you were also fairly certain that she hadn't expected her to be so pointed in her judgments. Her mutterings as they both reached the edge of the rooftop and eventually took off only served to further confirm your suspicions.

Chances that Amy Dallon hates me?

94%

What felt like a waste of a question was nevertheless vindicating, and as you made your way back home you ran through a handful of the questions you had remaining.

Chances of Empire interruption on either of the routes we're planning for Saturday?

30%

Chances of Coil interruption for me, specifically, on Saturday?

50%

You seethed internally. You still hadn't figured out exactly why Coil was so irregular with the questioning: anything about him and his identity gave a normal sort of result, but anything about his actions gave a response of fifty percent almost every time. His own power had to be at fault, you were sure of that, and you had read a little in your research that Thinker powers could sometimes interfere with one another. It was another piece of evidence for your theory that he was a Thinker, but it didn't help you actually plan around his actions.

Chances that I'll get into a fight if I patrol as expected on Saturday?

61%

A little more than half. Definitely not only Coil then, at least.

Chances that a cape will be involved on their side?

78%

Worries of Coil were replaced. After all, even if he was there accounting for fifty percent, that still allowed for an alarming likelihood of an attack coming from elsewhere. And you were pretty sure that wasn't even how percentages worked: something about Coil constantly blocking up the likelihoods was probably having something of an effect on the expression of other likelihoods. It was a difficult circumstance and for a brief moment you considered going door-to-door with your parahuman detection field before dismissing it.

If anyone figured out what you were doing, that was a good way to get shot.

You'd probably survive it, but nobody likes to get shot at.

Wednesday, 23rd February

That morning had begun with frantic messaging back and forth with Glory Girl about your new costume. Rhizome had sent an alert – or rather, you imagined, an automated alert had been sent from Rhizome's account – informing you that your costume should have arrived. Any tentative thoughts you had about going to pick it up were clarified in the rest of the e-mail: you were to pick it up from a series of Number Man affiliated drop boxes in the city, located not far from the PRT Headquarters, and were encouraged to do so while wearing your previous disguise, as it was Penumbra to whom the delivery was addressed.

While you were loathe to don the patchwork mask one last time, you knew that needs sometimes must, and you were willing to slip it on for old time's sake if nothing else.

Maintaining discipline, however, you ensured that your morning run came first and that you went through your exercises as standard. Quizzed yourself on the first aid text you had begun reading through fully days earlier and hissed at the rare incorrect answer. Checking PHO to make sure nothing surprising had come through; the same with your cape phone, the one whose number was registered with the PRT.

Nothing.

Chances that the pickup is a trap?

0%

Just checking.

Explaining to Dad exactly what was happening wasn't difficult either; he had been forced to authorise such a gigantic purchase in the first place, and though he had permitted it there was still something of a grim resignation to his face whenever the name Rhizome was brought up.

You reached the pickup in the early afternoon and the transfer of the package, which had a reassuring weight, went as simply as you could imagine international coded cape purchases to go.

The man behind the desk had been nondescript at best and had directed you towards the lock box with your parcels inside, along with handing you a key, with all the nonchalance of a cat trying to avoid attention while it tipped something from a counter. The boxes slipped out of the box with very little difficulty, and swinging the door shut on silent hinges felt almost anti-climactic. When you handed the key back to the man, he seemed even lest interested than before.

Flying home was done on autopilot.

Once you were inside, you quickly drew the curtains to your bedroom and threw your existing costume to the floor; gear acquisition shouldn't have felt so good, but it did. Like this was true heroing: a costume rather than just a conveniently assembled combination of clothing.

Opening the boxes one at a time, you were wowed. The fabric, so deep a blue that you could scarcely believe it though clearly rich in pigment, was soft and supple but felt powerful. You gave it a tentative tug using only a modicum of power and it didn't even begin to give beyond normal fabric stretch. The blues gave way to purple highlights that ran up and down the sides of the shirt and pants, which were kept as separate pieces but, according to the diagram provided in the first box, practically merged under the utility belt to provide the look of a singular unit.

Boots were rich, black leather with a polished coating and a pair of buckles around the ankles of each, with an aggressive traction pattern. The gloves matched, matte black and thick but flexible enough that you felt as though you could still write with them; the curse of the signature would bow to no mortal concession. Even your new cloak, recognisable with its deep purple smoothness, moved with a lightness to it that was hard to place. It came down farther than your original cloak had, this time just below your knees, and the rich, luxurious colour had an iridescence to it; in the darkness, it practically dissolved in the shadows but as the light caught it the sheen of other shades peaked through to the surface. It was gorgeous.

You had saved the best until last. Unboxing a singular, solitary item, you found a mounted polystyrene head on a stand. Wrapped around it was the most expensive singular item in the purchase: your helmet. A smooth, bone-white mask that wrapped around the entirety of your head, secured with an internal latching system that meant the silhouette was unbroken from the outside. There were subtle indentations where the ears might be, but otherwise the expanse of the mask was clean and free from features. As you held it, it had a comforting weight to it, and you bounced it gently in your hand for a moment.

Slowly rising to stand in the mirror, ready to snap it on for the first time, your phone began giving riotous alert.

You looked over and saw the signal glowing with a malevolence from your bed.

4:54PM – ENDBRINGER ALERT: THE SIMURGH SPOTTED IN CANBERRA, AU

Your fingers froze to the mask, and another alert came through.

Vicky

Penumbra, are you up? Did you get the alert? Don't make any rash decisions!

You collapsed on to the side of your bed. Suddenly putting the helmet on didn't feel so appealing.

Spoiler: Power Discussions - Some Meta StuffAfter evaluating the chapter to see which goals have been accomplished, I realised that the only member of New Wave you haven't met is Flashbang, who is not an active member right now in story. So that was a goal I hadn't realised was being hit.

With regards to which power type to pick, obviously I'm not going to tell you, but what I will say is that there are powers which offer resistance or immunity to Mastering/Thinkering in a number of categories, so please don't make your choice solely for that reason just because you think only Trump or only Stranger can give you that result. Pick the type of power you actually want