5.11

5.11

Saturday, 16th April

You prepared for a long day. With only one day left before the farewell gathering that Gallant had warned you about, you knew that there was a lot to get through and not much time to do it in. Without even stepping out of your bedroom, you were tired, and the idea of going for your typical morning jog seemed miles away from possibility.

After messaging Amy the previous morning, you had gotten a response from her. She was willing to attend, though she had warned you that she wasn't going to stick around long as she had some volunteering booked in at the hospital. While you found it impossible to begrudge the people in need of serious healing, you couldn't deny that it irked you in some small, petty way. Nevertheless, you had accepted it.

Pushing might have simply caused the taciturn girl to reject your offer altogether, and that would have been a failure you couldn't accept.

Vicky would have been the easier target, and you were confident that Gallant would have been able to rope her in even without the conspiracy regarding her sister. In fact, if he had tried to deny her the ability to attend the event his armour might have found itself in rapid need for repair from the resident tinkers of the Brockton Bay Protectorate.

You really owe Vicky a lot, and you weren't blind to that fact. Having decided in that moment that, ultimately, you couldn't leave Brockton Bay without showing her that in some way, you had stopped off at Parian's boutique on the way home. The cape-tailor had been rushed off her feet, apparently engaged in assembling a particularly large order for a group of businessmen out of town, but she had been available to a quick set of alterations for a large fee.

You had no idea what to buy. Your own wardrobe, though perhaps a more versatile and aesthetic arrangement of garments than you had owned even just a few months ago, was still functional above anything else and when you had come to Parian's weeks earlier to shop in your civilian guise, you had allowed Vicky to control the direction of everything.

Ultimately, you had left it up to Parian. You'd told her who it was for, and a few of the specifics you had in mind that made it a personal gift, and luckily Vicky's reputation in the Bay was significant enough that Parian could fill in most of the gaps herself. That you knew her, even in your guise as Penumbra, was well known and therefore you didn't risk connecting yourself to her as a result of your previous trip to the Boardwalk some weeks prior – and that was even before you recalled the alterations to her physical appearance that Panacea had undertaken.

It really was quite a dramatic shift in appearance. You hadn't realised, prior to that, that Panacea's ability allowed her more than purely medicinal usage. Whatever the limit of such a power was, it must have been fairly dramatic and perhaps good for espionage purposes even if Panacea herself wasn't set up for combat.

Having picked up Vicky's gift, you had gone home and tried to fill your time with productive work as well as you could, though there was inevitably some difficulty – your mind was distracted by all of the goings on and you couldn't deny that there was some fog in your brain due to the entire situation.

Entering the PRT headquarters Saturday morning had, therefore, been a welcome distraction and the presence of a set protocol to follow had helped alleviate a number of your stresses.

With only a few days to go and only a few figures left to empower, your schedule had been compressed. Before doing anything else you were required to step in and empower Dauntless as per usual, and this time, empower Triumph – a figure you had only met a few times.

In your unconcentrated state, you had engaged in a bit of small talk with the older man. Seeing him up close out of the field, it struck you how young he truly was; you had known that he was the newest member of the Protectorate, having only left the Wards in the last year, but in his dramatic – and somewhat silly – costume and exhausted from the confrontation with the twins, the last time you had seen him his aura of command had obscured the softness of his chin, not yet fully matured into what you were sure would be a jawline of steel.

Even his musculature, largely visible through his costume and enhanced by his baseline brute abilities, lacked some of the vascularity you were used to seeing on people with as much mass as he had, and you wondered whether that was a function of age or whether he just didn't bother trying to maintain a physique.

Unfocused, you had paid fairly little attention to his empowerment. The feeling was so familiar as to become background, and the droning voice of the attendant doctor – who seemed content to steer Triumph towards certain methods of admission – were enough to put you to sleep if you hadn't been so nervous. From what you could gather, there was an enhanced degree of physical strength that Triumph experienced and some kind of modification to his amplifying powers that allowed it to function outside of only his own voice. Targeted amplification or attenuation, from as far as you could tell.

Some ideas floated through your head at that – was it truly possible to make a sound so loud you popped someone's head? You were sure you had seen that in an Earth Aleph movie at some point – but you didn't entertain them much. You weren't nearly focused enough, and the grim imagery didn't appeal to the unsettled nature of your stomach at the time.

You moved through the PRT headquarters like a ghost after that. Strangely enough, with the prospect of leaving on the horizon, suddenly everything seemed much more real. As you walked around, you saw the fabrics of the flooring and the occasional curtain, the cracks in the plastering high on the walls in the corridors, the artificial grain veneer on the doors that led into rooms with large glass windows upon which you had never before noticed the smudges and fingerprints. Cleaners must have worked hard, but with the size of the place and the need for security there was no doubt some difficulty in doing a thorough job in all locations, at least on a regular basis.

Or perhaps with the medical centre and the training rooms, there were simply much higher priorities than dealing with office windows.

Either way, it was strange noticing them as you passed through, cataloguing the things you had never noticed despite spending hours and hours in the building since joining the Wards over a month ago. You wondered whether, if you had ever truly taken a walk through Winslow, you would have noticed things then that you hadn't during your attendance. Things that would jump out at you as you moved through the space, aware that you wouldn't be coming back.

You'd spent over a year at that place, and now you couldn't even remember whether the locker you had been trapped inside had one vent slit or two. You knew that both were present in the school, you remembered that much, but general resentment had robbed memory of specificity, and the entire place was associated more with disgust and an undercurrent of fear than with anything precise.

Maybe the same would become true with the PRT headquarters over time. Maybe you'd spend so long away, visiting again so infrequently, that you'd forget which medical room was used for empowerments – only that there was such a room. Maybe you'd forget which bed you'd seen Rachel bleeding in, when you had her brought back after confronting Hookwolf.

Just thinking about it sent you dizzy, and as you arrived in the Wards' corridor you tried to shake it off as best you could. Results were mixed.

Rachel and Regent were waiting for you as you entered their room.

Over the time they'd spent there, it had morphed from something functional and bare bones into something slightly more homely. There was no mistaking it for personal or tailored, but the assortment of Regent's video game cartridges, Rachel's chains and boots by the door, the headphones on the coffee table, and dishes in the small kitchenette sink told you that it had ceased to be a prison and had evolved into something they were at least pretending was comfortable.

You wondered how quickly things would adapt in Atlanta. You'd seen a few pictures of their headquarters, but they were years old at this point and with the news constantly providing updates about the state of the city, you knew that there had been at least two attacks on headquarters since those pictures were taken. Not that such a thing was completely foreign – the Empire had attacked in Brockton Bay only weeks earlier, after all, on the night of Hookwolf's arrest. Clearly, villains didn't necessarily see the PRT as intimidating enough to prevent them from going all-out if the motivation was sufficient.

Regent was present, as usual, though he appeared to be half conscious at best and had probably only woken up within the last twenty minutes or so. Rachel was absent, but you expected her out soon. While you had no real confirmation of it, you suspected she was an early riser. Or, at least, was the kind of person who would sleep in shorter bursts throughout the day rather than in long shifts at a time – her bed, emulating a den as it had the last you'd seen it, implied as much.

You made minor small talk with Regent as he made his way through a slice of toast, and after a fairly short period of time, Rachel emerged from her room, mask strapped to her belt.

'Good morning,' you said, voice as cheerful as you could muster.

'Hey,' she said, grabbing a packet of some kind of food from near the sink.

She looked dishevelled, but no worse than her typical self. If there was anything you could respect about Rachel's appearance it was how much it represented her personality; she didn't have any false images to project or assumptions she needed anyone else to make. She was who she was; if she had ever thought twice about the colour of something, you'd have been surprised and you didn't think she even really understood the concept of a fashion brand, as it were.

Amicable quiet set down among the three of you while breakfast was finished – the clock was ticking nearer 10 AM – and when all was finished the two of them arose to finish their preparations. Regent seemed to grow more animated as the idea of getting his hands on ConFoam at last seemed to spur his action. Rachel's relatively placid demeanour was an astonishing reversal of their normal habits, and the juxtaposition was strangely comic.

Before you could leave, you watched as Rachel put her boots on and slung her coat over her shoulders, before reaching up and tightening leather straps around her arms.

Racking your brain, you realised that they were relatively new. You weren't sure when she had got them, but she certainly had had them when you had been fighting the Empire – they'd have snapped when she enlarged, surely, even with the lee-way sometimes afforded to clothes when powers enabled scale changes. You considered the twins, Fenja and Menja, and the sort of trouble they'd have found themselves in if that weren't the case – you could hear Regent's absurd snickering already, and were glad that it wasn't reality.

The closer you looked, the more you realised that you recognised them. A cold pit formed in your stomach and you felt faint.

Her dogs. You'd seen them before, the same worn leather and metal buckling – one of them even had a fleck of blood still dried, as though the material had been dyed into it. Last you had seem of them, they had been hanging up in the warehouse. When she'd gone to retrieve them, you didn't know, but you felt at once suffused with warmth at her caring and gutted at her loss. Nobody deserved to have gone through something like that – the pain she had felt had been enough to launch another trigger event, even after the damage of the first. You wondered what kind of chaos that could wreak on a mind, and prayed you would never find out.

'What?'

Rachel's voice snapped you out of your memories. When you looked up, her eyes were narrowed and you could tell that she had noticed where you were looking.

Knowing what to say was never easy, especially not for you. Whatever social skills you had as a child had atrophied away while you were at Winslow, and while Vicky had done what she could to help resurrect them, she was a particularly easy-going person. Nothing had ever been difficult when dealing with her, and you got the sense that that was by design. For all the time you had spent with her, you'd never seen her have any difficulty with interacting with anyone, regardless of how experienced they were as communicators – the only exception was her ongoing dispute with Amy, and that was a result of particularly extreme circumstances.

Rachel, on the other hand, was nothing like that. She wasn't as harsh as her outward manner may have initially suggested, but she wasn't far from it; her brusque tone and decisive nature were not a false front, and while she seemed to respect you well enough you weren't sure exactly how committed to that she was. Any gratitude and loyalty you may have won by giving her Hookwolf and asking her along to his incarceration could've expired the moment you irritated her, for all you knew.

Ultimately, honesty seemed like the best policy. Thus far it had served you well enough as a cape and if it irritated Rachel at least it would do so in a manner she felt accustomed to dealing with; trying to smooth talk her was just as likely to fail as anything else, both from her own distaste for it and your own inability.

'The collars. I didn't realise you had gone back, is all.'

'Hn.'

That was it. She said no other words, though as she turned her shoulder against you it was clear that she felt the sting of it. Whether the pain would ever heal up for her, you weren't sure; someone mentioning the locker to you was likely to ruin your day, but it wouldn't turn you against them forever. Maybe that was the same for Rachel – or maybe the second time was magnitudes worse.

'Do you maybe want to do something for them? Memorial, or something like that? We can get that done if you want.'

Rachel didn't answer immediately, and you weren't sure whether that was a sign that she was about to try and eat you or that she was considering the proposal. You weren't even sure of it yourself – while it was certainly meaningful enough for her to want a memorial, you weren't sure whether Rachel was the kind of person who would see much importance in things like that. It was just a symbol, after all, and she seemed to live in the moment more than anyone else you had ever met.

Though, in this, the past seemed to have her firmly in its hooks.

'I don't know how to do that.'

'Could commission a statue. That's what normal people do.'

Regent's flippant tone stuck out like a hornet in a sandwich, but the idea itself wasn't far from reality. You wondered how much a statue might even cost, if that was what she wanted.

The statement about normal people didn't even register. The idea that any of you were normal was so far beyond comedy that you were almost sure Regent had intended it as a joke in the first place.

Rachel, it seemed, had come to a similar conclusion. Her anger, visible on her face which never sought to hide much emotion, was tempered by a level of confusion. Even she couldn't quite imagine that Regent was serious.

'Why not, though?'

Your intervention came quickly. While you weren't really sure that Rachel was going to react badly once she had allowed the confusion to settle, you didn't really want to find out either. Much easier if some kind of conclusion could be reached before someone ended up bleeding – largely because you were confident in which of the two would come off worse in any exchange, and you didn't think there was much hope of Amy patching Regent back together. Heading to Atlanta covered in bandages and stitches was the last thing the group needed.

'I don't want a statue. That's just a thing people look at, it doesn't do anything.'

Regent shrugged and slumped back against the wall, a sort of casual disregard for the emotion of the situation that made you want to shove him over. With only one foot on the ground, you were fairly sure that he would topple without much trouble.

You restrained yourself though. No telling how far a good shove might send him; you weighed less than a hundred and thirty pounds and you weren't sure that Regent weighed much more. He was built more heavily than you across the shoulders, though still narrow for a boy, but he was also a few inches shorter. The idea that the two of you were in the same weight class wasn't entirely out of the question.

'We could do something practical, then. A shelter, maybe? Set up our own or donate to one that already exists. Get their names on the foundation stone or something?'

You cast out ideas, not really sure about them. What kind of infrastructure or legal foundation would be required for something like that in the first place? You didn't know. But if it would make Rachel happy, you were willing to look things up and ask around. Someone had to know the protocol, after all – Brockton Bay already had at least two animal shelters, which was honestly probably not enough for so large a city. That Rachel had been able to find so many dogs herself and that the Empire had never seen themselves running low on supply spoke to that fact, and without both of them patrolling the streets for good and ill respectively the numbers of strays roaming the city was doubtlessly going to increase.

'Maybe,' she said. Her voice was low, and you weren't sure if she was convinced. 'I'll think about it.'

With that, the moment was gone. Rachel moved towards the door, pulling it open without a second thought or a look back, and Regent released the weariest of sighs – as though he didn't spend most of his time doing absolutely nothing at all – and made after her. Without much cause to dispute or challenge, you simply followed. Containment foam training waited for no man, after all.

By the time you caught up to them in the hallway, Regent had overtaken Rachel and was making his way down the corridors with more purpose and intensity than you saw from him most days. The reticence you had initially felt towards allowing him explosives returned in full force, but you managed to quell it; the fact that it would only be available on missions and that Regent was, if nothing else, not likely to take action resulting in his own death, meant that he was probably going to be safe enough with it. At least, you hoped to that effect.

The actual training session itself was, blessedly, more placid than anyone had anticipated. Being shown a training video, having to sign some liability forms, and then being supervised while fittings were made for containment foam packs – useful largely with the hoses that PRT officers made plentiful usage of – and you were on your way. Regent, in particular, was both dismayed and disgruntled in a way that you rarely saw from him.

Perhaps it was foolish, but Regent had quickly become something of an anchoring point within the group. Whatever was happening, he seemed to react in essentially the same way; he had the same lazy negligence when fighting you outside the Ruby Dream Casino as he did locked in a PRT holding cell, and that hadn't differed when he had been tasked with interfering with the Empire's twins or when taking down thugs outside the Memorial Hall.

Consequently, hearing him sound actively downtrodden was a rarity that you weren't sure if you should treasure or try to urgently forget.

'Can't believe they wouldn't even let us shoot each other. We're supervised.'

'You'll have plenty of opportunity to shoot people out on patrol. I don't see why you're so eager to get hit in the head with grenades anyway.'

'They're foam. Not like it would hurt. Besides, it's like pepper spray – we should be trained to know what it's like in case we ever get caught with it in the field.'

While an appeal to practicality seemed like a calculated measure to get you on side, Regent wasn't nearly convincing enough with his application of it. There was something extremely transparent about his manipulations, and you weren't sure if he wasn't trying very much or if he just wasn't very good at it.

'Maybe we should have practiced. Might have saved us your complaining if you'd have been caught in the foam.'

He placed his hand on his chest as though wounded, and the three of you made your way out of the training area.

Containment foam, long associated with Dragon, was a strange sort of substance. You hadn't been caught up in it before, but you wondered what that would feel like – Regent was right about one thing, which was that perhaps knowing how it felt to have some of your powers taken from you could help in some way. Then, you wondered what powers it could even apply to. When it help brutes in place, for example, was it doing so by neutralising their brute force or simply by being rigid enough to resist them – the additional removal of leverage helping prevent them bringing force to their movements? Maybe trying it out could have given some answers.

Or, you thought, you could just ask Dragon next time you spoke to her.

Whatever was the case, you weren't sure how often containment foam would find its way into your combat. You'd take some on missions where you had a chance to be prepared, just for the sake of being equipped for a range of possibilities, but you would probably never have the same instinctual affinity for it that Regent did. Nor would Rachel; she went through the motions, but seemed there more as part of the unit than out of a personal desire to use the stuff and you had a difficult time imagining her accommodating it in her fighting style anyway.

The image of a giant lupine foam factory didn't seem quite appropriate.

As you returned to the Wards alcove, you bade your goodbyes to your team members and made your way out into the hallway. You enjoyed spending time with them, but it was clear from Regent's sulking and Rachel's forlorn contemplation that you weren't going to have a fantastic time with either of them, and you were in need of something to keep your mind off the move.

Absently, you wondered where those two would be staying when you got to Atlanta. Had the PRT helped arrange somewhere for them to stay like they had for you and Dad, or were they doomed to some kind of loitering around whatever the Wards' quarters were there, too?

Maybe that was something to work on when you arrived. Find out where they were staying and make sure it wasn't anywhere too ridiculous.

Before you left to return home, however, you made a detour to see Armsmaster. While you didn't have much for the man, you were chasing down a checklist of things before you left Brockton Bay and your college arrangements for the fall were on that list. While the summer was long, you wanted to have as much forewarning as possible before you turned up in Atlanta. Sorting our a semi-regular schedule, or at least one which took into account major activities, was high on the list and making sure you knew how many hours a week, if any, were going to be devoted to what topics was of utmost importance.

While he wasn't in his office, you found the man wandering nearby, carrying a rather large folder that looked both worn enough to imply regular use, but threadbare enough to imply that it wasn't particularly important. Given the state of Brockton Bay, perhaps it contained everything the city knew about villain containment.

'Armsmaster,' you started, before jumping back at the quick rotation the older man made at the hips to face you directly. 'May I borrow you for a moment?'

'Yes, Penumbra. What is it?'

The robotic tinge to the voice told you all you needed to know, and you resisted the urge to tip the tinker over and wake him with a firm kick. After a morning dealing with Regent's hyperactivity, mitigated by a strange melancholy, combined with your own anxieties surrounding the move, you would have appreciated a human being.

Nevertheless, as long as his automated protocols could answer your questions you were happy to try and restrain violence. After all, Armsmaster had no part to play in the ongoing tumult of your emotions, and it wouldn't do to take out frustrations on people who ultimately weren't responsible for them. Even if they were frustrating in the extreme.

'I was wondering if you had been able to look into my college classes. When I get to Atlanta. You said you were going to arrange them.'

There was a brief moment of consideration, which in a conscious person might have indicated thought but in Armsmaster's current state probably implied either some form of buffering or some process of searching through memory files. Regardless of which, it didn't take long.

'Ah yes, thank you for following up. You sent through rather a large number of options and not all have been compatible, and of course there is the issue of making sure you don't take on too significant a burden – tinkering isn't your sole responsibility, after all. Nevertheless, you should find yourself with an entry permitted to courses in electrical and biomedical engineering – the latter a tribute to your ideas about invasive bodily work. I would advise you complete at least a semester of the latter before you consider taking any further action with regards to implanting. Information on your status as a tinker has been passed along to Flashdrive. The man's a capable tinker and will oversee your future projects.'

By the end of his monologue, Armsmaster's vocoded voice had begun to recede and his natural timbre reasserted itself. You wondered how he could simply fade in and out of consciousness, picking up where he had left off, with such smoothness; perhaps there was something in his systems that allowed it, or perhaps he had prepared this monologue in advance. Whichever was the case, it was impressive.

'Thank you, sir. That's all I needed to know. Can you send me any information on the topic so that I can have it for reference?'

'I will. Make sure that you apply yourself well. You will be a representative of Brockton Bay's Wards, at least to some degree, once you arrive. I trust that you will show them the quality of hero we have here.'

'I'll try, sir. Thank you again.'

Armsmaster nodded, before looking down and contemplating the folder in his hand. A small grimace came over his face, but it vanished before you could make comment, and he turned again in a singular motion before resuming his stride.

Armsmaster, it seemed, was both as distracted and as disjointed as you were, and you didn't envy him. While you had a plethora of ongoing concerns, at least they were for friendship drama and parties. Whatever could bring such consternation to the head of a Protectorate branch was something that you didn't want to get involved in at all.

Sunday, 17th April

The morning came like a conviction, and you felt it in your bones.

You tried to work on some homework, what little was left, but with a transfer of school district on the cards and the end of the school year nearing, you weren't even sure when your regular administrative examinations were going to be held, let alone whether there was much stock to put in them. While you wouldn't want to be forced back into school, the relocation meant that Winslow was off the cards anyway and therefore the worst possible outcome was removed from the table before anything even came to discussions.

Without being able to focus, homework was cast aside. You considered making food, perhaps trying for a nice family breakfast, but the PRT had finally dispatched their affiliated movers and while they weren't taking everything, large items such as the kitchen table had already been packed away into vans before you had rolled out of bed. Some things, such as your old worn desk and your bed itself, weren't going along; there were new things waiting for you, provided as part of the relocation package by the PRT, but anything more personal had to be send ahead in advance.

With studying off the table, and the table taken away in itself, there wasn't a huge amount you could do. It wasn't even as though you could head into the PRT headquarters, as was your habit. Gallant had warned you that there was a party and you didn't want to risk running into people too early, or getting stuck in a party that might stretch well into the evening. For as much as you appreciated anything they were doing for you, and any effort they were putting in, you had no desire to get caught up in an entire day full of socialising and frivolity.

Being trapped in a room with Clockblocker and Regent at the same time filled you with enough concern that you were considering trying to make sure one of the two were knocked out before you made your way inside. Perhaps you could have taken the time to lock Clockblocker in a closet somewhere – even if he tagged you with his power, you'd have lost ten minutes at most. It would have been worth it.

Opportunity, however, had been missed and instead you were meandering around the city in your costume, trying and failing to appear as a vigilant hero on her final patrol. Instead, you were just wasting time. Though you would stop crime if it took place in front of you, you weren't even sure that you would have noticed Oni Lee setting off grenades behind you unless something made contact. Your mind was elsewhere.

And indeed, crime was in the same place. Wherever it was, it didn't appear to be taking place on the streets of Brockton Bay. Sunday morning was not, admittedly, prime criminal hours but by the time you returned home nearing midday, the sun at the peak of its powers, you had seen nothing as dramatic as to even deserve a parking ticket.

Not that you would have known that – while driving had once been a concern, perhaps something to look into in a year or two, the discovery of unaided flight had rendered it largely irrelevant.

You didn't bother to greet Dad personally. While your presence in general wasn't entirely surprising, given that Penumbra's fast flight meant that she was seen all over Brockton Bay while patrolling, stopping to talk to individual civilians certainly would have drawn attention. Calling him, however, was not out of the question. Tinkering for something more subtle had yet to be accomplished, with the orders of your new tinker tools re-routed to your new house in Atlanta, you still had the hands free interaction system that you had adapted from the phone, nestled into the padding of your helmet as comfortably as it could be.

'Call Dad.'

A ringing sound didn't last long.

'Hey, is everything okay?'

'Yeah. Stuff's fine. Just kinda out of it, I guess. Not sure what to do with myself.'

'I'm the same,' he sighed. 'I've been giving them approval on what to move, but otherwise I've just been standing around watching. You would think I could help them with stuff, but apparently they're not covered with the insurance for us to actually help.'

You both laughed at the idea. It made sense, but it was one of those things that seemed like an unnecessary precaution in your case. While Dad hadn't been working on the docks themselves for some years, he had done so in his youth and you were sure that he could move boxes of cutlery without risking a lawsuit, but it probably wasn't worth the effort in any case.

More importantly, it was strangely relieving to know that Dad was feeling as antsy as you were. While his temper was always a distant threat, you didn't consider him a particularly nervous individual, and knowing that you weren't alone in that boat did something minor to pacify your stress.

'I just wanted to let you know I was going to head into headquarters. Finally come face to face with whatever it is they've got set up for me. If I end up having to break my way out, I'll pick you up before I leave the city.'

There was a moment of silence before the response came.

'Just try not to break anyone, Taylor. As long as you manage that, I think we'll be okay.'

'Wasn't planning on it.'

Trading goodbyes, you took another look at your house.

It was strange to think about leaving it. You had grown up in that building. Every major memory you had happened in there, at least the ones that you cared to remember. Mom and Dad, birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgiving. Even the time you had broken your ankle jumping off the stairs as an idiot pre-teen stuck out, and you remembered exactly which step it had been.

To think that you were just leaving, and that you were almost certainly never going back, felt alien. Like you'd been wrenched out of another timeline and shoved into one where something fundamental had shifted to the left; you'd be back in the city, sure, but not in that house. Not your room.

There was a clash inside of you. Part of you wanted to rebel against it – a feeling you'd felt before, as the date of your exit from the city grew nearer and nearer. After all, those memories had taken place at a location and you deserved to have that location forever. But another part of you was glad it was over. Those memories were built around people that weren't there anymore. Mom was the obvious one, but even you and Dad weren't the same person anymore.

How could the Taylor that faced down Coil, blood in her mouth, have been the same child who sobbed at the bottom of the staircase? Who had known her Mom and Dad would hug her better, and dry her tears? That time in your life was over.

That Taylor had died twice. Firstly with Mom, when those hugs had become the whispers of a ghost. The second time, in the locker. Now, your problems were of a kind that Dad couldn't solve. Even if he had known every moment, you wouldn't have wanted him there. Even if he could try to shield you, you wouldn't allow it. How could you? The dangers of your future weren't skinned knees or broken bones; the monsters of the world dwelt in your path, and you would die yourself before you allowed them to take any more family from you.

You turned away from your home and began your motions towards headquarters. If there were tears in your eyes, you tried to forget them.

Actions Remaining:

- Give a farewell speech before leaving Brockton Bay

- Try out the following hobbies: reading, cooking, woodworking, swimming, puzzles

- Look up a guide to sign language online

- Ask Vicky's opinion on music and for some artists she likes

So, we have done everything we can. The only thing remaining is the actual party itself, which will be uploaded soon in the form of the first of three Interludes that will show up prior to the beginning of Arc 6.

You are free to vote for any actions you wish, but remember that the next proper chapter - that is to say, the next chapter in which action votes are taken into account - will begin with arrival in Atlanta. There are no more immediate actions for Brockton Bay. Therefore you may wish to apply your actions to any Atlanta related goals that we have.