5.7

Interlude: Goodbyes and Memories

Saturday, 9th April

It was a colder morning than you had come to expect. Whether that was just because you were more used to being outside in costume rather than civilian clothes, or an actual reflection of meteorological phenomena, you couldn't be sure.

All you knew is that as your Dad held the gate open to enter the cemetery, your breath fogged in the early morning air in a way that you hadn't seen very much recently.

The sky was grey, more with frost than with rain, and the bustle of the city had faded into the background as the two of you had ascended the hill in Dad's truck, still rickety despite the improved cash flow you'd seen since joining the Wards and beginning to receive some degree of financial help. Even with the influx of money from Winslow, Dad had wanted to fix the truck up to meet baseline safety standards but otherwise leave the money untouched. Not his to spend.

Still, the thing had rattled and banged in a soft rhythm as you had made your way out of the city proper and traded the buildings for the trees. Not much in Brockton Bay could be called rural, or even close to it – even the large park, with its trees and grassy verges, was equally broken up by metal benches, stretches of woodchips beneath swings and slides, and a large jungle gym over some rubber padded ground – but the nearest thing you had was probably the hill upon which the cemetery sat, grand old trees that predated most of the city itself hanging overhead in a thick ceiling of branches and blossom.

You'd parked outside, a reasonable distance from the gates to allow for other people to come through but you didn't think that was going to be a problem. The majority of the city had been asleep when you had left, enjoying the virtues of the weekend, and you had only just been able to make a stop at a florist's shop to pick up a small collection to leave as a gift. You'd settled on two, one for either side; Dad had chosen a mixture of dark red roses, some softer carnations, and some filler flowers to break up the mass of red at the florists' behest.

Your bundle, altogether more rag-tag in comparison to Dad's classic choices, skewed far more towards the blue end of the spectrum; forget-me-nots and cornflowers providing a soft backdrop for the striking blue and white gladioli that took a central place in the bundle, the oceanic hues tempered by the occasional stem of greenery and the white that split the two sides in twain.

It was far from the most beautiful collection of flowers you had ever seen – it was a miracle you had ended up with so aesthetic a costume, given your own taste in things – but it had seemed honest enough and you had felt as though Mom would have appreciated that more than any number of colour charts and hue selections.

Each of you held a firm grip, pale skin pinked by the cold, as you made your way into the cemetery.

Making your way to Mom's grave didn't take long. She had been buried a short distance from the front gates, in one of the newer plots that had yet to be crowded with headstones and was still many years from succumbing to the elements. Some of the older plots – gravestones and grand tombs alike – were perhaps only a hundred and fifty years old but had already begun to suffer from the endless New England rain and the snow. Brockton Bay might have been mild in comparison to most of the area, but not even that could spare the dead from the ravages of time.

You felt your breath hitch as you came close. There was a ball in your stomach, one that you remembered appearing each time you had made your way up shortly after Mom's death, and which never seemed to go away. It was, perhaps, a touch smaller than you remembered it but you couldn't identify whether that was because it had shrunk or whether you had simply grown around it.

It was cold, heavy, and painful.

The mist that you breathed out spiralled into nothing without consideration for how you felt. You needed something to hold on to, to ground you, but that fact did not instil any sense of obligation into the universe, which continued in accordance with its own rules and saw no need to consult you on the matter.

You reached out and grabbed Dad's hand, gently but applying just enough pressure to let him know you were there. He started in surprise, but gripped back far more firmly; your fingers were numbed by the cold, but even if they weren't you didn't know if you would have felt it in any meaningful sense.

The days of being able to appreciate the sweet pain of a crushing embrace were gone. Your brute strength meant that you could still feel, but the context was gone. The only things in the world that could make you feel that warmth again were those least likely to give it; perhaps one day you would be able to convince Alexandria to give you a hug. You doubted it, but it was at least somewhat more likely than getting one of the Endbringers to do it.

The moment you came upon the gravestone, you shuddered. It felt as though a long, pale finger had run down your spine; the image was cliché for a reason, and you couldn't help but look over your own shoulder.

Mom would have held you, and you knew that you would have felt it. There was a weight to her grasp that pure strength couldn't emulate. As you knelt in front of her and placed your flowers down, fingers brushing against the stonework, you felt it even then; the warmth of her grasp. Not even death could tear that from you.

For a brief moment you wanted to change your mind. To run to Director Piggot and tell her that you were staying. That, with your Mom here, there was nowhere else you could go. To leave would be to abandon her to the city that had ripped her from you. The city where the streets drank her blood and where the Earth had swallowed her corpse and left you with nothing.

But that moment was brief.

Dad had been right. Mom was many things but she was not the kind of person who would want you to see things in that way. For her, there was injustice in the world that needed to be fought; she'd been on enough picket lines and raised enough hell for you to know that much. Faded photographs of her in Dad's photo albums told you that much; you could count the number of images from before your birth that didn't include a picket sign or a political pin on one hand.

If she were alive, she would want you to be where you were needed most. You could feel that from her. She didn't need a body to tell you where you should be; her spirit spoke that to you.

'I'll do my best, Mom.' You whispered to yourself, brushing a tear away from your cheek. 'I promise I won't let you down.'

You wanted to say more, but the words wouldn't come. In the end, you pressed your forehead into Dad's shoulder and allowed the tears to fall.

Later, you would tell yourself that there was no way it had happened like that. It made no sense. Even in a world where people gained super-strength and flew, there were some things that were simply impossible.

But she was there with you, that morning. Each spiral of breath, fading into the sky; each petal of each flower, blowing in the thin zephyrs of the morning; each tear that seared heat into the frozen flesh of your face – they all told you the same thing. You were alive, and until that changed you could never stop yourself from fighting. Mom would have accepted nothing less.

5.6

It took a while after getting home before you were ready to do anything again. While emotionally taxing, the trip to see Mom had only taken around an hour and a half, closer to two if you included the trip to the florist, and you were back before noon and that left you with an awful lot of time in your head to contemplate.

Even tinkering couldn't help, as any attempt to focus while scribbling at your desk was met with failure; designs that were nonsense even by tinker standards came out and you screwed up the papers before launching them into the trash can left by the cabinet. Each successive throw mounted up until even bulls-eye shots teetered out, unbalanced, and toppled to the floor.

Ultimately, there was only one choice. If you couldn't go to the PRT – professionalism be damned in your current mood – and you couldn't focus on tinkering or, merciless in its generation of boredom, homework, you picked up the phone and placed a call to the one person you knew that you could fall back on.

Moments later, you were thanking your stars that it was Saturday and Arcadia High was closed; you needed Vicky.

The plan matched the one you had followed only a few days ago. Meeting up above the market, the two of you were going to make a long and circuitous route surrounding Azn Bad Boy's territory, tracing the streets that delineated the land of the dragon from the rest of the city which was, in light of the Empire's newfound vanishing, starting to enjoy a little bit of freedom.

Of course, that freedom was mild. The reality was that the Empire had such a grasp for so long that it was probably going to be months, if not years before the stains faded enough for Lung's grip over the non-white criminal underworld to slip. Part of the reason that Lung had been so successful in the first place was the existence of a rival gang that drove certain elements of the criminal underworld into a search for security and protection.

What Lung took away in dignity and pride, he certainly gave in protection; destructive as it might have been, there was no doubt in your mind or in the minds of Brockton Bay's other parahumans that Lung could have done what you and the Protectorate had done to the Empire on his own. The only difference is that he would have destroyed many more buildings and left many more corpses on the ground.

You didn't consider yourself an expert, and you couldn't really say why the Dragon had accepted being pushed out of Los Angeles by Alexandria when he had first come to the United States – even with her prodigious strength, he could have fought back far more vociferously than he did – but the reality was that he faced off with an Endbringer solo and walked away. More than that, he drove Leviathan away, something even your most generous interpretation of your thinker questioning only gave you a marginal shot at doing.

Could you have defeated him, had the Empire laid low and allowed him to run wild instead of dominating the news instead? Maybe.

Could you have done it without going through hell, and taking half of the city with you? Absolutely not. Even to consider it was high fantasy.

And so you found yourself, shortly after the sun peaked in the sky above Brockton Bay, flying alongside Vicky in companionable silence. Her costume almost glowed in the fiery light of the sun, and you resisted the urge to squint whenever you looked at her – it was unnecessary, Rhizome's work tinted to account for major glaring lights, but her brightness couldn't be overstated. Next to her, all in dark purples and black, you looked like a bruise. Only the iridescence of your cloak saved you from seeming dour beyond compare.

Cliche as it was, it fit your mood; you felt rough.

Despite that, Vicky's company was helping. She hadn't questioned why you needed to hang out so soon, and had made her excuses to meet you. She hadn't even pressed for conversation after the details were arranged, simply meeting you at the agreed upon point and the proceeding along with the patrol.

The two of you found very little, at least at first. It was a two-fold curse; firstly that of patrolling during the day, when even the roughest parts of Brockton Bay tended to lay low away from the risk of police and Ward patrols, and secondly of the fact that you were strictly patrolling outskirts. Orders still stood to remain cautious around ABB territory and leave any patrols deeper inside to the authorised, and while you didn't fear Lung, your concerns over the rest of the city prevented you from disobeying that particular order without good reason.

And as you soared together, the mood grew less toxic; the atmosphere began to slacken until you finally felt able to break the lull without giving off a false impression of eagerness.

'I went to see my Mom this morning.'

Vicky let the words sit, but you could see the surprise on her face. She'd met your Dad, but you'd never talked about your Mom and she must have assumed she had either left or died, and it was clear she wasn't sure which angle to pursue. How her tiara stayed straight on her head as she gave it the golden-retriever head tilt, you would never know.

'How did that go?'

An open question. Safe and not too presumptuous.

'It was quiet. My Dad and I went up to see her,' you nodded your head in the direction of Captain's Hill, less a single peak and more an expansive rolling lump to the far side of town where the cemetery lay. 'It was hard.'

Your resilience and strength was unparalleled, as far as you knew, but when Vicky's arms wrapped around you and squeezed, sixty feet above the highest nearby rooftop, you worried that your ribs were going to snap like match-sticks.

The fact that it didn't happen seemed a thing of luck, rather than anything else, and you were only able to discover how intact they were after nearly a full minute of Vicky's vice grip embrace.

Smiling despite yourself, you wondered if that was how Purity had felt when you had ensnared her in forty feet of python coils, suspended above the warehouses.

Eventually, she let go and you followed up.

'It really wasn't that bad. I just didn't expect it to hit me, you know? Like it did. We both thought it was a good idea to go say goodbye, since we're leaving soon and it just made it feel real. That we're actually going.'

'It does feel kind of strange. Your life has gone pretty crazy since we first met, I'm not sure I could have kept up with it.'

'Really? Feels like you've been keeping up with something like this since before I was even a parahuman.'

Vicky waved her hand in the air, as though to dismiss a bothersome insect.

'Nothing like this. I've been doing hero stuff for a long time, but that came with the family – there was no big change. Even when I got my powers it felt more like something I had been waiting on, instead of something that changed my life. And I've definitely never done anything as crazy as you did taking on the Empire, even if I've had a few fights here and there. Then you're off to Atlanta which is basically a war zone, no offence, so yeah, I'd call that going pretty crazy.'

'I know, I know. It's just that, everything seems to make sense as the next step in the moment. It's only when I look back at it that I realise how quick it's all happened. It feels like it's been forever since that first day, and no time at all, at the same time.'

'Been there. Sort of.'

Weather had warmed significantly that morning, with the dew that had lined the streets and the grey skies that had blanketed overhead dispersing and giving way to a balmy spring temperature, but despite that the air so high above the streets still held a crisp breeze. You had read somewhere, as a kid, that when you flew above the clouds it was ice cold but that you could still burn from the sun, as though it was a summer's day. That never made sense to you.

'Have you ever left Brockton Bay?'

Vicky shook her head.

'Never long term. I did summer camp, as a kid, and we've gone on family vacations sometimes for a couple of weeks but that's not the same. Always structured, always planned out. Mom's like that.'

That came as no surprise. Carol had been hugely important to you establishing yourself as a parahuman in Brockton Bay, particularly with regards to your dealings with the PRT during that awkward moment of enrolling as a Ward and still demanding a degree of freedom, but she didn't seem like the kind of mother who would be willing to let her children go off on their own while out of town – not even when they were nearly adults, as Vicky was.

But then, who knew? Before you'd become friends with Vicky, you hadn't really kept too much track of New Wave. For all you knew, that last out of state vacation had been when the children of the family were only small, and then it made complete sense.

'I'll be leaving in the fall though, for sure.'

'What, really? Where to?'

'Not sure yet. Kinda took inspiration from you, honestly. I've been taking my college classes at the community college here so far, but once I leave high school I think getting away and seeing some new places would be good for me. Applying to a couple of places, we'll see if I get in anywhere. Maybe even somewhere close enough that I'll be able to visit you – who knows? Texas isn't far, right?'

You laughed.

'Not too far, I think. A little long for a day trip though.'

'Maybe.'

The silence was comfortable now, rather than strained. It was strange how quickly just talking to someone could help drain a lot of your problems away. None of the melancholy you had felt at the cemetery was gone, but it was cushioned somehow – as though you weren't feeling the sharpness of its edges quite so directly.

'Is it hard, to do the college stuff?'

'What?' She asked, the question striking her out of a momentary stupor; staring off into nothing. 'Oh, not really. I think as long as you can prove that your grades are up to the challenge and get some responsible adults to vouch for you, it should be doable. That's how I got in, Mom basically acted as a guarantee.'

'Makes sense. I'm kinda planning on trying something like that, if it's possible. I don't know if it can be done, but ever since I got a tinker power I was thinking it might be a good idea to actually learn some tinkering that isn't breaking the laws of physics.'

'You got a tinker power? That's pretty cool.'

'Yeah, not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with it yet though. Still working out the kinks in the system, I guess. Kid Win didn't find out what his specialty was until a few weeks ago, so I figure that I've got some time.'

Vicky hummed her assent, not really seeing the need to push deeper into the conversation than that. You got the idea that she found tinker stuff kind of uninteresting conceptually, and you couldn't really blame her: it wasn't like normal science, and even if you were the kind of person who loved technology it was easy to see how technology that you literally couldn't understand by definition might be more irritating than marvelous.

'Got any other plans?'

Her tone was unassuming, but there was a mountain of implication buried in it.

'What do you mean?'

'I meant like, for doing stuff that isn't just hero work and then studying. Anything to keep yourself from going nuts.'

Instinctive denial on the tongue, you seized it. You weren't going to lie to Vicky, but even you knew that it was kind of embarrassing to admit that your only hobby was doing hero work. If you weren't trying to beat up the Empire or making sure your school work was done, you weren't even that sure what you were doing with your time. Last weekend after busting Kaiser had been the first time in weeks that you'd taken a day to yourself, and even that featured some tinkering and a few questions using your thinker power; you'd spent more hours as Penumbra than as Taylor over the last month, even if you hadn't sat down to work out the exact split.

'I'm not going nuts, I think.'

'Okay so that means no, you don't. Honestly, you have got to get a hobby. Especially when you're in Atlanta and I can't drag you out on the Boardwalk to make sure you still get sunlight.'

'There's nothing to do, I'd rather be patrolling.'

'That's only what you say because you haven't found anything yet. Promise me that you'll try some stuff out and find something you enjoy doing? If you go to Atlanta and turn into my Mom, working all day with no break, I think I'll cry.'

Perhaps one of the most underrated features of Vicky's costume as Glory Girl was the foregoing of a helmet or face mark. Obviously that was an obligatory move; a member of New Wave, even if she had attempted to hide her face there would have been no success. Every criminal smart enough to actually commit a crime that needed stopping would have worked out who she was immediately, and when that was the case there was no point in pretending.

That was in general terms, however. In the immediate term, the most valuable aspect of that particular sartorial choice was that Vicky was able to hit you with puppy-dog eyes so shiny and large that you briefly wondered if she had a minor changer ability hidden somewhere that she had never seen fit to mention.

There was no choice but capitulation.

'Fine, I'll find something. It's not going to be big though.'

'Not demanding anything big. Just making sure that you do something, that's all. Take up knitting, for all I care.'

Picturing yourself with a pair of knitting needles making a sweater didn't exactly sound like your idea of fun, but you supposed there were worse things that someone could do. The idea of playing golf, for example, put you to sleep, and even briefly imagining gardening felt horribly unpleasant. You could take interest in plants, but you had never even enjoyed playing in the sandbox as a kid – entrusting yourself to care for a whole ensemble of greenery was a recipe for disaster and you were smart enough to admit that to yourself.

You could always figure out what kind of hobbies you might want to try out later, but in that instant it felt far easier to rule things out than to rule them in.

Deciding that you had spent far too much time being picked on for your workaholic tendencies, you switched the topic.

'I'll do it once I've finished with some of the extracurricular stuff I'm doing with the PRT right now. You know they have me boosting people up, right? Trying to figure out what exactly happens. So far I think it's more dependent on the individual than on the type of power they have but we've had some weird stuff, for sure.'

'Boosting? Like you did for Bitch back on the Boardwalk?'

'Skýla, but yes.'

One thing you had noticed – both in online discussions, on the brief occasion her name was mentioned, and in talks with people who had known that Skýla had been Bitch prior to her employment with the Wards program – was that sometimes names stuck. You were lucky that nobody was calling her Hellhound still.

'So, I was wondering – would you like to get boosted?'

Vicky gave you a look that made you feel particularly stupid, but despite her judgement you had switched the topic from hobbies with a decisive move and so you counted the change as a victory for your own agenda. Sometimes it was worth looking stupid if you got what you wanted out of it.

'And they're just letting you go around boosting people?'

'I didn't ask. They have me in there every other day, boosting Dauntless and one other person. My third boost is up to me to use, and I haven't boosted anyone yet today, so if you want it you can have it.'

Though you had imagined her leaping at the opportunity, reality didn't quite align in that fashion. Instead, Vicky surprised you by taking almost a full minute to consider things, even pressing her index finger to her chin in perhaps the most stereotypical thinking posture you had ever seen.

'We should probably land first, in case it stops me flying normally. Don't want to fall out of the sky.'

'You know I'd catch you, right?'

'Not the point.'

Which you supposed was true; even if you caught her, and even though you couldn't see anyone around, it was an inevitability that your extended presence in the sky had drawn some attention from someone, somewhere – potentially one of those people who speculated about the non-existent romantic bond between the two of your on PHO – had taken notice. And if they were to see Glory Girl suddenly fall out of flight, even if she caught herself moments later there would be conspiracy theorists coming up with any number of absurd propositions before the day was out.

Was Eidolon your Dad, indeed.

And so you found yourself settled atop a nearby roof. It was high enough to avoid the majority of potential onlookers, but not high enough in itself to draw attention from the tallest of the skyscrapers that still rose above the town. Brockton Bay had apartment blocks, but the aquifer beneath the landscape meant that extremely tall buildings were rare, and performing parahuman activities atop any of the few that existed was essentially an invitation for people to watch from the tops of the others.

That fact alone had been part of why Miss Militia had been able to snipe-net Rune and Othala so effectively during the capture of their unit. Only Victor had been left for you, and he had been hopelessly outclassed.

When prompted, Vicky held out her arm, and you grasped her hand; she never wore gloves, and so unlike a number of your empowerments it wasn't difficult to find a spot on her body to empower her.

You weren't looking forward to whenever they got you to work with Battery. Just imagining having to poke her in the cheek or press your palm to her forehead made you feel stupid, and you were sure that actually doing it was going to haunt your nightmares for months to come.

The pulse of power that had by now long grown familiar shot through you, and you could feel Vicky's power respond eagerly, as though picking up on the new energy source. By the time you stepped away, she had already begun to react; a kind of slow, wondrous movement as though she had seen herself for the first time. Turning her hands over in front of herself, she gasped aloud; you hadn't seen such an immediate and powerful reaction since granting Vista her boost – though admittedly, the younger Ward's boost had been so dramatic that even Vicky's emphatic surprise paled in comparison.

Visually, there was nothing different about your friend, and she seemed too enamoured with whatever shift she had felt to be quizzed so immediately. Instead, you left her to consider the shift in her power. She was a smart person and of course, an incredible communicator – once she figured out what she wanted to say, if anything at all, she would tell you and you'd be grateful to learn.

'My forcefield,' she eventually said, looking up through the few loose blonde hairs that had escaped the captivity of her tiara. 'It's like it's alive.'

An array of question marks drifted through the LEDs on your helmet, and she laughed – suddenly the sense of awe that surrounded her dropped, and she began to explain.

Glory Girl's invulnerability, it seemed, came from a forcefield that she essentially wore like a glove at all times when out on patrol. She didn't have to wear it, and sometimes she didn't, but it could be activated with no tell and therefore as far as anyone knew, she was permanently invulnerable to outside damage as long as she had a moment to recover between significant shots.

At least while empowered, this didn't seem to be entirely true.

Certainly, there was a forcefield and as far as Glory Girl's intuition could say, it had the same invulnerability as it always had, and would continue to grant her the super strength for which she was so well known.

That was not, however, all. Almost instinctively, though without much in the way of fine control, she felt the boost allow her to move that field away from her body, extending like a singular large, blunt limb. At first, as she demonstrated, the movement always seemed to emanate from an existing limb; effectively using the force field to extend out from her hands by as much as a foot – the air as clear as ever, but resistant when you raised your hand to meet it.

As the time passed, it became clear that that wasn't all; the extension could emerge, she had realised, from anywhere at all; like a tail – like a plate across her back; even from her head or face. And anything covered by it, even if not herself, seemed to be granted the same invulnerability that she had when it covered her.

Yet, still, there was more; as she practiced – the minutes ticking away, leaving you hoping that this was one of the more extended boosts, closer to the maximum rather than minimum time – she realised that she was hearing more; feeling more. As though her body had been covered in sensors or receptors of various signals – sound was more sensitive, the frissons of the air now buffeting her in relative terms. Beyond that, there was even a sense – though dim, and incommunicable from what you could tell – that she had a vague notion of danger. With nothing present that posed a threat, it was dormant but Vicky could still register it.

'Like how even when your eyes are closed, you can still tell that if you opened them you could see. It's not totally black, you know? It's like that.'

You didn't know, but it sounded impressive; more useful than whatever Velocity's power had been doing, though perhaps the doctor present at the time might have disagreed with that.

As the power wore away, Vicky seemed irate.

'I can tell there's something more to it, but I can't put my finger on it. Like, I know it sounds greedy but there was something else for sure.'

She was right – it did sound greedy. As far as you could tell, the only power that you had enhanced with dramatically larger consequences had been Vista's, and by virtue of being a powerful shaker her power implied drama to begin with. It was always going to be more of a visual spectacle than anything a physical, body-bound power like Vicky's could manifest; even Rachel's power, dramatic as it was, gained nothing more than enhanced power and speed and resilience from your boost. Brute powers seemed to just use the boost as fuel. For Vicky to gain some degree of extrasensory perception and phantom limbs seemed more impressive than you could have expected.

You didn't say that, though.

'Maybe we can try it again at some point. See if it helps to revisit?'

'Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. For sure.'

With the situation petering off, derailed by Vicky's intrigue over her power boost, you agreed to part ways for the night and the two of you flew off in separate directions, Vicky's mutterings audible in the air until far further away than seemed sensible – either she was purposefully getting louder to mess with you, or sound travelled with a notable ease so high above the bustle of the city. Either seemed plausible.

Arriving home, you turned over the previous twenty four hours in your head like a Rubik's Cube, examining every angle and trying to see what had happened and what you could learn from it to move forward.

Obviously you were still going to Atlanta. Your momentary lapse of confidence had been patched up shortly after it had happened and you weren't going to go crying to the Director to try and cancel your decision – it wouldn't be fair on Dad, who had been preparing for a month now to uproot his life from Brockton Bay, or to the Atlanta Protectorate and Wards, who had been expecting reinforcements in what appeared to be one of America's most brutal cities. You couldn't bring yourself to do it even if you wanted to.

Beyond that, Aster had triggered. You'd learned as much the day before, and you were still surprised. She must not have even been a full year old yet, and as far as you knew it wasn't possible for someone so young to become a parahuman. If it was, you hadn't heard of it before.

It raised another issue, though; with Night and Fog still on the loose, and both of Kaiser's children empowered – the entire goal of sending them to Gesellschaft in the first place, if you remembered correctly – it seemed plausible that the foreign funders of the Empire might swoop in and try to protect their investment by extracting some kind of assets; even Purity might not be able to defend against Fog, whose toxic smog had been enough to sear its way through your own brute power.

Chances that Gesellschaft will try and make a play for Kaiser's kids within the next six months, or so?

78%

Definitely something to watch out for, and you made a mental note to inform someone senior to you as soon as you were inside; a text message to Armsmaster would do the job well enough – he'd get it at some point.

And so you made your way inside, remembering to send that message, and then trudging off towards your room to get ready for dinner. You were exhausted. Almost all of it was mental, your body still feeling fresh, but the urge to rest was overwhelming and you knew that you probably had no chance of making it up past even nine in the evening, as early as that seemed.

Eating with Dad went quickly enough and then you headed back to your room. Dad hadn't seemed to mind, as while he didn't appear as outwardly tired as you felt, there was a certain glum countenance to his speech that told you he wasn't feeling significantly different. An early night for the two of you was on the cards, clearly.

Before you headed to sleep, you slumped down in front of your computer. You had told Vicky that you were going to look into some possible options for schooling in Atlanta and it was probably best you at least take the time to pull up some websites to bookmark for reading later, even if your mind was too fogged over to do the specific detail work in the moment.

And so you logged on to your account and pulled up the search engine and got to hunting through academic referral pages, youth education programs, and university facades. The majority of them even offered extracurriculars that might have caught your eye, if you were able to get involved in them; language clubs, including for sign language, as well as courses for the same. Maybe, if you could worm your way into the baseline classes – maybe leveraging your status as a Ward, if that even worked that way – you would see if you could get involved in that too. Accessibility was a big part of the PR manual Aegis had referred you to. You wondered if he knew how to sign, or if he just relied on his natural aura of harmlessness to defuse situations.

A few pages seemed promising – though you weren't sure how much confidence you had in pulling off gold and white as your own colours, given how markedly different it was from Penumbra's colour-scheme. It would either be a welcome diversion, distinguishing your personal life from your professional life even further, or it would just make you feel weird. It seemed a lot more Glory Girl than Penumbra, after all.

Though, you weren't likely to feel as weird as you felt when you realised you were assuming students were even intended to match a school's official colours. The sheer ridiculousness of it was enough to sap the last of your energy and you bookmarked the page; the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering would have to wait for another day – perhaps after you had consulted Armsmaster. Indeed, maybe even unlocking your specialty would point you in a different direction; maybe electronics was a poor place to start.

With that decided, you took a final moment to open up PHO and check your messages before heading to bed, and were surprised to see something in your inbox.

Clicking it open, you saw something you hadn't expected; Scrivener had even told you not to expect it.

AlaskanBullWorm: Hey P : ) You looking forward to coming down? The big C finally gave us the briefing so we know you're coming now : ) DONT BE SHY

Do you like music? lmk

What were you even supposed to say to that?

Actions Remaining:

- Begin writing a farewell speech

- Get Amy coffee and suggest she take up a hobby

- Propose empowering multiple tinkers at once

- Give a farewell speech before leaving Brockton Bay

- Acquire your ConFoam certification

Got through a bunch of major goals here - empowering Vicky, visting Mom's grave before we leave, going on patrol again, looking at the science options in ATL, looking into learning sign language, considering Gesellschaft's influence for Kaiser's kids. Just chopping through stuff. We also heard from Anchor for the first time - and she's informed us that all of the relevant people in ATL now know we're coming; apparently Scrivener didn't divulge all of that information himself, and Phyton still hasn't checked her PHO!

Please suggest any actions that could contribute towards the completion of goals. Please note that some goals will naturally conclude in the next update or two, as they already have listed actions working towards them (for example: ConFoam) whereas others will require new actions to complete.

And how do we respond to Phyton? And what hobbies do we try?

[X][ACTION]Write-in

Current Goals:

- Win a confrontation with the ABB

- Learn sign language

- Help Rachel learn to read (if she wants)

- Figure out your Tinker Specialty

- Find a hobby of your own that doesn't involve hero work

- Acquire a Confoam Certification

- Boost multiple Tinkers at once

- Try to get a college education in engineering in Atlanta

- Look into scientific fields to gain Tinker inspiration

- Make at least 3 friends (2/3)

- Learn a real form of unarmed self defense (2 class of 3)

- Find out what's going on with your power

- Meaningfully engage with the community in Atlanta

5.7

Sunday, 10th April

You swept through the air alongside Vicky for the second time in as many days, outlining ABB territory and making sure to note down anything suspicious. Very little was making itself apparent, and you got the feeling that Lung and his cronies might even have been showing some small quantity of intelligence by avoiding making obvious moves. Perhaps he had interpreted the crackdowns on Coil and the Empire in succession as evidence that the PRT was planning on sweeping through the city, and had taken to strengthening his own position rather than making overt moves.

Whatever the reason, Sunday's patrol was as uneventful as its predecessors, and you found yourself speaking idly with Vicky again in the air, as though the last dozen hours had never happened.

While the subject hadn't come up, you could tell that Vicky was still thinking about her empowerment; it had been a pretty significant change, as far as you could tell, and it was the kind of thing that dwelt on someone's mind. You wondered what kind of thing might happen if you were to empower yourself, and you couldn't help but feel a little envious that the experience would forever be beyond you.

There didn't seem to be any way to make it work in reverse, and as far as you knew, nobody else had a boosting ability that worked in quite the same way as your own. Othala was Brockton Bay's closest approximate, and her options were extremely limited; far more control than your own boosts, of course, which seemed to do something different on nearly everyone they were applied to, but with significantly less range as a consequence.

The two of you agreed before even two hours were up that it might be worth calling an early end to the patrol; the only thing you had seen which even implied a level of wrong-doing had been a couple of teenagers, at least one of which you swore you recognised from Winslow, hanging out around a liquor store. But without anyone actually going inside and with no liquor visible, it felt like getting the police involved was pre-mature at best and potentially just wrong-headed at worst. On top of that, you felt that busting kids for drinking booze was probably beneath you; you were a hero because you wanted to stop super villains ruining the world, not because you thought someone needed to arrest more teenagers for being annoying. Even if they were annoying.

Even Vicky was against it, and given her generally gung-ho attitude towards crime fighting, that was saying something significant.

'Are you just heading home?'

Vicky seemed tired, her voice a little hoarse, and you wondered how much sleep she had gotten the night before.

'I was planning on it. Maybe go to the PRT after lunch to hang out, I haven't really got a packed schedule today.'

'Want to give me a hand with Amy?'

Sighing to yourself, you couldn't help but think about how much trouble the attempted intervention had caused. Amy was, you knew it from your own interactions, a somewhat abrasive human being but even you hadn't expected a week plus of drama – especially when your own conversation with Amy shortly after had implied she was going to seek support in some form or another.

'What kind of hand?'

'Nothing too crazy just, she's at the hospital right now. I want to say hi, but if I just go on my own she's going to ignore me again. She didn't even let me drop her off this time, she got a cab. If you go, though, she'll probably feel like she has to talk at least a little.'

'So you want me there as what, an ice-breaker and trojan horse for conversation?'

'Pretty much. So, you in?'

Looking out over Brockton Bay, you saw how dead it was; with no crime going on in the Asian majority districts, there was no reason to continue pressing the perimeter of the ABB's territory, and without any sharp deadlines in place you had very little reason not to. Maybe you'd even be able to use the opportunity to subtly remind Amy your last conversation; you were going to get that girl into therapy before you left for Atlanta if it was the last thing you ever did.

'Sure. We'll get her coffee though first, she seems to enjoy that. I think she's come to expect it from me.'

The two previous times you had met her outside of something Vicky had pre-arranged had both begun with you taking her a hot drink, and you were keen to avoid any backlash that might come around as a result of defying Pavlovian instinct; if she didn't get coffee from you at this point, you felt as though it might make her melt-down into something more terrifying than you were willing to face.

Vicky took the lead, navigating her way with ease towards a coffee shop not far from the hospital itself; your own knowledge of the local cafés was less developed and so it made sense that she would know a better spot. You made a mental note of it – and you also tried to forget the atrocity that Vicky herself ordered at the same time.

Watching the small crowd of customers crane their necks to see Vicky, resplendent in her usual costume and with her movie-star smile, was amusing at first until you saw one or two of them turn their attention to you. Aesthetically, there was no question that you were less eye-catching than Glory Girl's trademark white and gold, but with your recent reputation building the moment one person saw you, the crowd began to turn.

Their trailing eyes, swivelling to take you in and pin you to the spot under their needling glares, was all the opportunity that Vicky needed to order what appeared to be half a gallon of foam and syrup; you couldn't drink while wearing your costume, at least not easily, due to the constraints of the helmet but you were also pretty glad that you couldn't smell particularly well through it either. Something that powerful might have induced some kind of blood sugar issue from scent alone, and you were mildly surprised that no villain had yet to weaponise that kind of thing. At least as far as you knew, anyway.

The blonde paid and you shuffled out of the confined space as rapidly as you could without putting a Penumbra sized hole in the wall; the stares followed you both, and you were grateful at least for the drama of the hospital once you arrived.

While you would never pretend to be glad that people were hurt or in need of urgent care, you were at least appreciative of the fact that people had bigger things to worry about than you, and more important things to see; it helped that Amy was, herself, one of the more popular heroic capes in the North East and she was a regular sight at the hospital. Even Glory Girl, a regular presence due to her history of accompanying Panacea, drew less attention than she had in the coffee shop.

In places like that, she was a superhero who flew through the sky that they were getting a rare chance to see up close. In the hospital, she was second fiddle to her white and red robed sister, whose presence was so frequent that you wouldn't have been surprised if they named a ward after her.

Finding her, as a result, didn't take long; you followed the trail of gratitude and shock, from one healed emergency patient to another, until both Vicky and yourself were waiting outside of a nurse's station for Panacea's return from yet another healing job.

You didn't have to wait long.

'Oh. Hi.'

Not, perhaps, the most enthusiastic welcoming you had ever had, but far from the worst. You weren't sure whether that was something to be concerned about.

'Hey,' you said, handing over the coffee. Amy took it as though on autopilot, nodding her thanks, and Vicky stood nearby sipping her own concoction through a straw. 'We just wanted to stop by, see how you're doing.'

'Busy. Lots of stuff going on.'

You didn't doubt that. For a Sunday, the entire hospital seemed surprisingly active; it appeared that everyone had taken the time away from their weekday work as an opportunity to do themselves some kind of serious bodily harm. Most of them would have been fine even without Panacea's intervention, but from the blood that had flecked up the white of her costume you assumed that much wasn't true for everyone.

'I can see that. Do you know how long you're going to be here?'

Vicky took special notice of that, as though hoping there would be a sign that Amy planned to be available for later on, but she was denied.

'Probably all night. Nothing else to do, I think.'

Glancing towards the clock and noting that the time wasn't even yet two in the afternoon, the idea of her lingering all night seemed egregious at best and much more likely, irresponsible; surely she couldn't be at her peak healing when she was that tired? Coffee could only do so much.

'You shouldn't hang out here that long. Don't you ever take time to yourself?'

Aware of the hypocrisy of the statement, you nevertheless didn't point it out yourself. Vicky had done that enough, and you'd already pledged to find some way to spend your time that didn't involve crime fighting or training. Passing on good advice was the least you could do, if Amy wouldn't listen to Vicky to hear it herself.

'I can't. People need me here, and it's pretty clear that I'm not wanted elsewhere.'

You winced, and Vicky did the same, visibly shrinking away.

You weren't, however, the kind of person to allow a sharp comment to cow you away.

'We spoke about this, I think. So you already know my thoughts, and if that's how you feel you should talk to someone. Is that still on the table?'

Amy looked Vicky from the corner of her eye, a surprisingly cold glare the likes of which you hadn't expected from her; you'd known that there was some animosity, and indeed a degree of chill to their relationship, but the gaze appeared positively Arctic.

'I don't want to talk about it.'

'Fine, I won't make you. Again, you know my thoughts, and you said you'd think about it so I'll trust that. You should use some time to yourself though. People need you here but they're going to keep needing you for years – no use burning yourself out before you're twenty and going crazy. Can't heal anyone from a padded cell.'

It may have seemed harsh, but you hadn't said anything you didn't believe. Needing an intervention at sixteen years old was more than most people required, and reacting to it poorly enough could go anywhere. Pushing for a degree of self-care hardly seemed like the epitome of selfishness; basic self-preservation always had to take priority, whether that was a lesson exclusive to Amy or not.

'Don't push. I'll do something when I'm ready,' she peered up through the overhanging hood of her own robes, and it was only then that you noticed how short she was. You towered perhaps three inches over Vicky, but even she was at least a few inches taller than Amy. If the healer was taller than 5'4, you would have been surprised. 'Besides, what do you do other than hero stuff?'

'This isn't about me. I'm working on it anyway, I'm going to try out some stuff once I can figure out what to do. Maybe I'll try drawing. You should do the same.'

Vicky seemed to warm at that, part of her downcast expression brightening, and you felt bad that you hadn't been able to give a firmer answer; Vicky, after all, was the one who had pushed you to partake in a hobby and if you had been able to nail one down already maybe it would have totally rebuffed Amy's point. As it was, the most you could offer was a lukewarm counterpoint.

'Maybe I'll try that too. If I can get a few minutes. After my shift, maybe, if I don't go straight to sleep.'

'All we ask is that you try.'

'Hm.'

Mentioning we seemed to spoil whatever good health Amy's emotions had taken, and she took the opportunity to slip away; she claimed she was needed, but you weren't sure how much of that was a healer's intuition or pure excuse. Neither you nor Vicky had heard an alarm or a pager, and the pace that Amy left at didn't seem particularly rushed. Still, you had reminded her of her pledge to get some kind of help, and she'd tentatively agreed to get something to do which wasn't wading elbow deep in gore, which could only help.

After you left for Atlanta, you'd have to see if Gallant was up to the task of keeping Amy to her promises – that, and maybe you'd have to keep on top of annoying the girl with regular PHO messages. You were not above or beyond being a pest to get your way; if bothering Amy into a better mental state was what was required, you were prepared to harass her into stability more effectively than anyone else had ever been harassed.

Though you were also sure that you would never repeat precisely that statement to anyone aloud.

You parted ways with Vicky after that. She seemed down, but determined to press on with her day and she had an afternoon planned with Gallant. Far be it from you to intrude on their relationship, you left her to it and decided that rather than going home for lunch, you would simply proceed straight ahead to PRT headquarters; you had a few things you wanted to get sorted out, and a few people you wanted to talk to.

Which was how you ended up entering the room adjacent to the Wards' room, where Regent and Rachel were sat as was their habit, doing fairly little.

'Hey,' you said, walking in and taking a seat opposite Regent, but facing Rachel. 'You two up to much?'

'Never are. Unless we're fighting giants, apparently. Or Kaiser.'

Regent's voice was neutral, but you felt as though you dedicated more than a modicum of sass.

'I didn't realise you were so eager to get in fights, Regent. Maybe next time, I'll put you on the frontline.'

He snorted, the sound reverberating under his blank mask, and you wondered why he even bothered wearing it; Rachel knew his face perfectly well, and you'd seen him without it at this point, but you weren't going to begrudge him it. After all, Vicky and Rachel had both seen your face too and it wasn't as if you felt a need to take your helmet off every time you saw them. There was just something different about being shielded in that particular way, and you wondered whether it was the same emotion or attachment that caused the boy to cling so hard to the mask.

'Bored. Working out a lot.'

You didn't doubt that. Rachel seemed like someone who needed to be active to stay happy and while you thought that she was technically allowed out of headquarters without you by that point, she didn't seem to be particularly eager to head out alone. Whether that was because she valued your company so highly, or simply had nothing to do was a question for another time – largely because you were just going to assume it was the latter and didn't see the need to question it too deeply.

'Makes sense. I've mostly been flying around and dealing with friends stuff. You know I got a message from one of the Atlanta Wards last night? Apparently they only just told them I'm going to join them soon. I had to be the one to tell them that you were going to come along too.'

Rachel had little response, but Regent shook his head.

'Some people, huh? You'd think that they would need to know at least three weeks in advance, to set the party up. At this rate they're not even going to have a fucking red carpet, let alone the champagne.'

'Regent, we're not even old enough to drink.'

'Maybe you're not old enough to drink. Don't speak for me.'

'We're the same age. Roughly.'

He simply waved his hand in the air as though that dispelled any and all concerns about his age, and you supposed that for someone who had lived at least a portion of his life as a criminal, it probably was a new concern to him. While you weren't sure whether Rachel was the kind of person who would have ever found herself interested in alcohol, Regent's lackadaisical personality and love of indulgence meant that he had probably sought out the stuff with some frequency. Once again you found yourself wondering how he had even ended up with the Undersiders – he didn't seem to have Rachel's own troubled past, or Grue's reliance on criminal employment. You didn't really even know what led to Tattletale's employment with Coil, but you had heard that it too was something illicit; Regent felt almost like he had just wandered in and had nothing better to do.

'Anyway, I've spent most of the last week boosting people up. Got most of the Protectorate and Wards now, only a few names left to go. You thought about it any further, Regent?'

You kept your tone as light as possible, but you knew that you'd failed to mask the inherent probe of the question – why was it that he had been so averse in the first place?

'Yeah, probably not for me right now. We'll see another time, maybe.'

'Okay, okay. Not going to push. I boosted Glory Girl the other day, and it was surprisingly effective – it's always fun to see how different powers react to it. Data at least, you know? You can rule stuff out as much as you can rule it in – like Armsmaster for example. Never going to boost him on a day we need him, he gets carried away with tinkering.'

'Uh huh. Tinkering? Is that what we're calling it?'

A horrible flashback rushed through your head – Dad making the same joke. The idea of Dad wearing Regent's crown appeared unprompted, and you cast it away as quickly as you could. No. That was not allowed.

'Yeah, because that's what it is. Anyway, I let them know you two were coming anyway so they won't be surprised. They might have to get you to sign some paperwork or something before we leave though, so don't be surprised if they get you with that last minute. Transfers seem to be pretty disorganised, at least from where I'm standing.'

That was a mild way of putting it. You had chosen Atlanta weeks ago, and to find out that Cinereal had only just passed on the information to her Wards either told you that she herself didn't get word of it being officially put through until recently, which you doubted, or that there was some kind of delay between her getting the news and her passing it on, and there didn't seem to be an obvious justification for that. You'd been keeping up with the Atlanta news, at least in a vague sense, and nothing major enough seemed to have happened that would have made such a thing slip through the cracks.

Perhaps that was just the dangers of paperwork; maybe warning the other members of your trio was a good idea after all.

'You two can help each other if there's anything to do anyway, I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem.'

'Why would it be?'

Rachel's question was unexpected, but not unwelcome; it had, after all, been one of the things plaguing your mind.

'It can be pretty complicated stuff with contracts and so on. I had a lawyer, and I know you might not be used to reading through that kind of thing so sometimes help can be useful. Even if Regent doesn't get it, I'm sure I'd take a look too. Just let me know if you need it.'

'I'll just sign whatever. You wouldn't be telling me to do it if it was fucked up.'

She was right there, and you weren't going to push back on it. You weren't really sure how much literacy she would even need to be part of the PRT. You had been an official Ward for a while now, and had taken part in multiple high profile arrests and actions, and you'd only filed a bare minimum of paperwork. The majority of briefings and debriefings you gave were verbal and directly to the Director or Armsmaster, both of whom seemed to prefer recording audio for later transcription over written logs – you assumed, for the sake of having a spontaneous recounting rather than a carefully edited story. Though, that may have been your own paranoia at work.

In any case, with a memory as sharp as Rachel's, she might never need to write a lengthy report.

Regardless, you had given her the offer; if she needed help with the reading and writing, you were always there, and if you weren't for some reason, Regent existed. If Regent himself caused issues? Well, while you didn't want to break him, you weren't fully against stabbing him with his own taser staff a few times.

Behavioural modification could be powerful, in that way.

The three of you hung around for a little while, exchanging some conversation. None of the three of you seemed particularly prone to small talk, but Regent's flippant nature provided some much needed grease to the social situation and Rachel's brusque manner of speech allowed plenty of opportunity for him to make his comments. You got the feeling that their dynamic before you had met them must have been fairly similar, and you wondered whether it was Tattletale or Grue who had filled the role you now took – preventing Rachel from taking Regent's head off his shoulders.

You had to imagine that it was Grue; Tattletale, more than anything, seemed like she would have appreciated the irritation. Modus operandi in the field couldn't be tracked straight to individual personality – after all, you had spent months at this point trying to create a sense of control in the field when you barely had any idea what was going on half the time – but it did display something about what someone thought was most effective, and if Tattletale's first port of call had been to try and talk you to death, it didn't seem entirely out of place for her to be a little bit chatty in her private life too.

After some time, the clock ticked around and you decided to get into motion; after all, you still had one thing you had to do before returning home for the day.

Excusing yourself, you stopped at the door.

Rachel and Regent had both been there at the first aid training session, so it stood to reason that they weren't averse to getting involved in the PRT-specific offerings of the entire Ward arrangement, and they had been complaining of having nothing to do.

'I'm going to get permission to use containment foam. Either of you two want to come with me?'

Regent was on his feet immediately, and Rachel wasn't far behind – though you got the feeling she was more willing to go just out of social inertia than a particular love or desire for ConFoam.

'If I can strap it to my staff, I'm in.'

You weren't sure how to take that, but you weren't going to argue with it either.

Making your way to reception, you had put in the requests all as one. Requiring only a signature, the secretary – who you had come to learn was far from a regular receptionist and was herself a trained PRT officer, with a degree of administrative power – had headed off into the back room. Visible through the glass panel in the upper half of the door that led back into the offices, you could see her opening drawers and filing paperwork, withdrawing other sheets and occasionally stamping something with a machine clunky and loud enough to be audible even through the door.

When she returned, she handed over a few small pieces of laminated plastic, like credit cards.

'Licenses for basic authorisation. Issued to all Wards upon request. These clear you for usage of standard, single person sized Containment Foam grenades to the sum of six per patrol; any taken are to be signed in at the armoury and signed back in when you return. You are not to carry them around inside the building. Any further usage, such as spraytanks, pellet guns, rocket propelled munitions, containment foam traps or tankers, and electrified containment foam all require an advanced permit which can be obtained via the completion of a single hour long training module available every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from any given PRT Wards training facility. Do you have any questions?'

The tone in which she delivered the explanation was so bland that you found it almost painful, and you wondered if she felt as uninspired giving it as you did hearing it.

'Yeah, I got a question,' Regent's voice came loud and clear. 'Can you sign me up?'

Your heart ran cold. Picturing Regent with a rocket propelled containment foam launcher, you shivered. Perhaps you had made a grave mistake.

Monday, 11th April

Allowing Regent to sign all three of you up for advanced ConFoam lessons was probably a bad idea in hindsight, but it was the first time you had seen him genuinely motivated since you had met him and you weren't about to let that go to waste. Especially when, out of the three of you, he was the one who had by far the least capable parahuman ability to defend himself at close range; there was a good chance that him having some kind of containment foam at the ready could save his life in Atlanta, and you weren't going to begrudge him the desire to maximise the utility of such a thing when both yourself and Rachel were such powerful Brutes; still, it did mean you had some more things to consider on your schedule. Saturday the sixteenth was quickly pencilled away, and you made sure to keep an eye on your calendar. With a week left before leaving, it would be easy to get overwhelmed.

What that in mind, you were determined to get more done and finished. Sitting in Kid Win's workshop, tinkering away at your headset, you felt close to a breakthrough.

The problem was the mechanism. Your spare cellphone had been miniaturised to a point that you were vaguely comfortable with; there was room for improvement, but any more than you had already done was going to require making your own pieces, and that was a project for after the concept itself had been proven.

Remaining was the issue of operation; Kid Win's suggestion of using voice signals to operate it had worked, and you had been able to rig up a microphone that translated your voice into digital instruction, but that was still far from what you had intended. Making the thing operable without having to make sound was one of the key motivations of the entire project after all, and the more you tinkered with it and found no success the more you were inclined to think that maybe the solution lay elsewhere.

Most precisely, in another one of your initial tinker ideas. Out of the three concepts you had initial presented Armsmaster, the idea of bone resonance kept coming back over and over. Not in itself – after all, you suspected that in order for your bones to resonate effectively enough to get any sensor to which you had access to resonate, you would have to speak anyway – but the general idea of implanting something to pick up the signals from within. The only problem was that that implied interacting with your brain somehow, and you had absolutely no faith in messing around with anything like that.

Even ideas that came to mind, proffered up as if from some infernal laboratory, seemed dangerous and risky to the extreme.

'Maybe you should just ask Armsmaster about it. He's done some stuff to do with the brain, right?'

Kid Win's suggestion piqued your interest.

'He has?'

'I think so. Doesn't his new lie detector stuff rely on some brain scans he got a hold of? Emulating brain-states when people lie, I think, and scanning for that in real time. Pretty genius stuff. Even his weird autopilot zombie suit thing has something to do with his brain, even if it's just AI.'

The more you thought about it, the more it seemed plausible. Not that Armsmaster had constructed an AI – as far as you could tell, that had never been done and if Armsmaster could do it, he'd have to be a computing tinker before anything else – but that he had some insight into the brain and working with it. After all, he'd been a tinker for a long time. Even if it was just out of curiosity, he was bound to have come up with something.

'Maybe you're right. If I get the two of you working on it together, maybe you can solve my problem for me.'

Kid laughed, before yelping as his soldering gun slipped and burned into the tip of his finger.

'Maybe give us a boost before that,' he said, sucking on his finger tip. 'Unless you want us messing up. Or me, messing up.'

You smiled behind your helmet, but the more you considered the idea, the more sense it made. Boosting the two tinkers at once and seeing what could be done seemed like an obvious way to try and extract additional value from their powers; tinker collaborations had seen positive results in the past (Dragon's career had been accelerated rapidly due to her flexibility when it came to such collaborations, after all) and what the two of them could do boosted seemed promising. Promising enough to distract from your dead end with your headset.

'That's actually a pretty good idea. Hey, I'm going to go speak to Armsmaster and see if he has any ideas – can I suggest a boost for you two? I just want to make sure you would actually be willing to try it before putting it to him.'

Kid Win considered it for a moment, but his carefree personality won out.

'Sure, go for it. Just make sure he doesn't start harvesting me for parts and we'll be cool.'

Gathering up your stuff, you quickly made your way out of the room and began the ascent to Armsmaster's office. While he had a reputation for spending his entire life in his workshop, it was actually surprising how often the man was in his PRT office, sat at his desk in full blue power armour like some sort of misplaced android.

And yet again, he was there for your attentions, and answered the door after only a brief knock.

'Penumbra, what can I do for you?'

He had a sort of grim downturn to the corners of his lips and from the looks of the stacks of paperwork, he was going to welcome any kind of distraction that came his way.

'I was just working with Kid Win and he brought up the idea of potentially boosting two Tinkers at once for collaboration reasons. Since you and him are the only ones here that I can work with, I was wondering if it might be possible to arrange something surrounding that.'

Feeling that going with a straightforward approach, crediting Kid Win, and not giving any kind of ambiguity to the statement was the best idea, you felt the request clunk its way into existence like a clay brick dropped down a jam funnel, but there was no taking it back once it had been voiced.

Armsmaster himself seemed to think for a moment, allowing the brick to finish its descent before splashing into the confection beneath, and when he spoke it was in a measured voice.

'I think that should be doable. You're scheduled to empower Dauntless and Assault tomorrow, I believe, so would Wednesday be appropriate?'

You saw no reason that it wouldn't work, and told him as much.

'Fantastic. It's a good idea, I'll have to let Kid know; who knows what could come about now that he knows his own specialty; Wednesday should give enough time for me to organise coverage of our daily schedules and to slot in with your own regular rotation.'

He made a quick note to himself, and you were surprised to see that his handwriting was – while perhaps blocky – quite neat. For some reason you had assumed that it would have deteriorated given how much time he spent working on a computer and with other electronics; it didn't seem like the kind of thing he would be able to dedicate much time to. Since leaving Winslow, you had definitely seen that process in action and while your handwriting had never been artful, the chicken scratch you were producing now was an embarrassment to the penmanship you'd had only a few months ago.

'Speaking of which,' he spoke up, 'have you had any luck in identifying your own specialty yet?'

You felt your mood collapse.

'Not really. I was wondering if there might have been any way the PRT had to narrow it down? A test or something? It feels like the kind of thing that should exist. The only solution for my project I can think of might involve messing with my brain, and I would rather know if that's something I can actually do before attempting it.'

'Unfortunately no. If it did, Kid wouldn't have spent the last year trying to figure things out.'

With that, he allowed the downturn of his lips to slide into a full frown, before speaking again.

'You do, however, have a power that could help you and which he doesn't – have you considered using your thinker ability to narrow the possibilities?'

'What do you mean?'

'Simple enough. There are broader fields – since you know yourself, and your power is part of you, it stands to reason that questions about it should return successful answers. For example, your current project is prompting you to interfere with your brain; is there a chance that you are a neurology specialist, like Cranial? Or potentially, given the need to reduce your phone from a larger structure into the most simplistic, minimal version of itself, it's a simplification tinker specialty. You can ask yourself these questions and get some sort of answer, I'd imagine.'

And he was right. You ran the questions and came up with definitive negatives; whatever your power was, it wasn't neurology or simplification. You told him as much.

'Well, you have plenty of time to figure it out. Perhaps go home and research a list of types of technology and simply work your way through the list one at a time – a few each day, so as not to aggravate your thinker power with headaches – until you get some positive indications.

'That makes sense.'

And it did. You weren't sure how other tinkers found things out other than by accident, and for powerful or dangerous tinker abilities the discover process could be an enormous risk – perhaps the most famous evil tinker in the world, Bonesaw of the Slaughterhouse Nine, had a power whose discovery process must have been so grotesque as to not bear imagining. The fact that you didn't have to go through any such process was a blessing.

'Of course you can rule out particularly dramatic types of power. Biotinkering for example, would have no correlation to your current ideas. Weaponry such as advanced guns seem out. Nanotechnology, naturally, is out of the question. You'd have been hauled into the asylum already if that was the case.'

As he spoke, you fed the prompts into the calculator of your thinker power, having denials spat out of its psychological gears one after the other – biotinkering, no, guns, no – until you felt a warmth in your gut and a simultaneous nausea in your stomach.

'Sir?'

He was cut off mid-sentence, still listing potential out-of-bounds tinker abilities. Apparently he had once heard of a tinker who was exclusively able to manipulate the weather using large devices he called Cloudbusters, though why he'd called himself Orgonon was beyond Armsmaster's limited knowledge of the subject, and the fact that you had yet to try and warp the sky meant that it seemed particularly unlikely.

'Yes?'

'I used my thinker power, while you were speaking.' Finding the right words to vocalise something Armsmaster had just said was impossible was difficult, and you found yourself running his words over and over in your mind (asylum, asylum, asylum). 'I think you found it.'

To say that his face portrayed surprise was perhaps an overstatement. With half of it covered by his smoky visor and the other half at least partially disguised by a moustache, and a general sense of emotional suspension, Armsmaster wasn't the most visually emotional person in the world. But his jaw did drop a quarter of an inch, and you felt his silence was a mixture of incredulity and giving you the space to continue.

'Nanotechnology, sir. My thinker power, at least, seems to think that's accurate.'

When his jaw shut, it was with a click so loud that you weren't sure whether his teeth would survive the impact.

'The next time you tinker,' he spoke, after a brief silence. 'It will be in my workshop, under supervision. Dragon will also be present. And you will become familiar with real, functional robotics before attempting anything beyond standard circuitry. Not just for everyone else's safety, but your own. I am not overstating the danger you are in, if this is the case – and you have yet to be wrong when consulting your thinker ability. I don't doubt you. But this is not something to be taken lightly.

You swallowed past a lump in your throat that felt like wires and cables.

'I was already looking into maybe studying some college classes once I got to Atlanta.'

'Tell me where and what, and I'll get in contact with the relevant individuals. I'll make the arrangements.'

You nodded, fearful in a way that you hadn't really been in a long time.

Asylum, asylum, asylum

'And Penumbra?'

Snapping your head up, you met Armsmaster's eyes.

'Please keep this to yourself until we have had the opportunity to help you through the early stages. I don't think it is exaggerating to say that even as a Ward, there are some individuals who would take an unhealthy interest in a power such as yours.'

'Yes sir.'

Actions Remaining:

- Begin writing a farewell speech

- Empower Multiple Tinkers at Once (Wednesday 13th)

- Give a farewell speech before leaving Brockton Bay

- Complete advanced ConFoam class with Regent and Rachel (Saturday 16th)

- Tinker under Armsmaster and Dragon's supervision

- Look up a guide to sign language online

- Look into DIY hobbies; drawing/writing/making clothes

- Reply to Phyton telling her that you're bringing other Wards, and sharing your music tastes

- Subscribe to some science magazines

So, a lot happened in this one. We spent some time with Regent and Rachel, in which time we tried to help Rachel learn to read if she wanted (she doesn't, but she'll come to us if it becomes a problem: note, foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at something which may become a factor later in the story) and Regent professed an eagerness to get into ConFoam - leading to all three of you being signed up for the advanced classes.

Meanwhile, spurred on by Kid Win, you have arranged to empower multiple tinkers at once finally, and using Armsmaster's brute-force logic, you accidentally discovered your Tinker specialty. And everyone is worried about it.

We also tried to push Amy into getting a hobby, but she seemed extra cranky and stormed off rather than committing to anything. Oh well, we've still got hobbies to look into.

What do we do?

[X][ACTION]Write-in

Current Goals:

- Win a confrontation with the ABB

- Learn sign language

- Find a hobby of your own that doesn't involve hero work

- Boost multiple Tinkers at once

- Try to get a college education in engineering in Atlanta

- Look into scientific fields to gain Tinker inspiration

- Make at least 3 friends (2/3)

- Learn a real form of unarmed self defense (2 class of 3)

- Find out what's going on with your power

- Meaningfully engage with the community in Atlanta