6.8

6.8

Making the trip to Cinereal's office became easier each time that you did it. Infused with a purpose, and one in the support of someone else who needed it, make the trip even easier. The stuffiness of the carpeted stairwell faded into meaninglessness, and even when the surface under your feet changed to the hard exposed flooring of the upper story, your momentum didn't slow.

The hollowness you felt after empowering people felt as though it gave you extra space for courage, though you would never tell anyone that. It was embarrassing to have even thought of.

Marching up to the office door, you raised your fist and pounded on it, remembering only at the last moment to withhold enough strength not to knock it through. Still, as your knuckles made contact you could see the surface compress a little, denting as though struck. If anything, you were impressed that it was able to stand up to such punishment; care had been taken, it seemed, to make sure that the entire base was able to take some impact before falling to pieces.

'Come in.'

Cinereal's voice, predictably, invited you in with a sterile tone, and you pushed the door open without hesitation.

Her office was the same as it was each time you had entered, and you only took a brief moment to look around in order to ensure you hadn't missed any significant change. You hadn't.

'Penumbra, what is it?'

Straight to the point. For once, you appreciated it; with the nervous energy building up within you, you weren't entirely sure if you would have been able to make it through the pleasantries that someone like Miss Militia might have employed. There was something of Armsmaster about the brusque and clunky social interaction that set you at ease.

'I wanted to speak with you about the process of empowerments we're currently doing.'

'Then speak. Has something gone wrong this morning?'

'No,' you said, cutting that avenue of questioning. While there was certainly interesting material to be discussed from the empowerment you had just completed, the opportunity for distraction was a pernicious one and you didn't want to allow it. 'It's about tomorrow; more precisely, about Regent.'

'What of him?'

Steeling yourself, you charged ahead.

'When we were first running the process of empowerment in Brockton Bay, he was offered a chance to get boosted then, too. He didn't give a reason for it at the time, and he still hasn't, but it was clear that the idea made him incredibly uncomfortable. I decided then that I wouldn't push the subject. At the end of the day, the choice to be empowered is a personal thing and if if he didn't want it, I wasn't going to be the one to force him to go through with it. Since there's a new process of empowerment underway, I asked him about it and checked to see if his feelings have changed. They haven't. He's still nervous and uncertain about it, and doesn't want to take part. So, having thought about it a little, I wanted to let you know that Regent will not be present at tomorrow's empowerment and I won't be boosting him.'

When you finished, the air stilled and then warmed slightly, as though reacting to your words. While Cinereal's expression did not change, at least the expression that was visible from beneath her half-mask, she gave off an air of displeasure. Not quite anger; you were certain that her fury was far from subtle – distantly, you wondered if she had something of the Hebert family temper – but enough to let you know that the news was not taken in stride.

'And I am to allow you to make that decision why?'

'Because I haven't signed any legal contract forcing me to do this. It's something I offer because it makes sense, and people usually want to find out the results anyway. Regent doesn't, so I'm not doing it. It's nobody else's decision to make.'

Cinereal paused, and the air stayed taut, as though awaiting her response. You held firm. Posture strong, unmoving, and didn't allow there to be any doubt in your mind or body. While you were never going to concede the point, you didn't want to give the impression that there was anything other than firm resolution in your mind. It was not a negotiable issue, and you didn't want to give the impression that there was any possibility of persuasion.

Luckily, it appeared, that Cinereal understood your position.

'Very well. I make no secret of the fact that I don't like it, but I can't force you. I won't waste the time or energy trying. I will expect a report from you, written, explaining this in more detail – including your reasoning for believing him in Brockton Bay. I expect this report to contain a statement from Regent, confirming everything you have said. I put the responsibility for this report on you, and I expect it on my desk by the end of the week.'

Having never had to initiate a full, formal report yourself – in the past, essentially everything you had done had come off the back of a supervised mission, with even the Hookwolf confrontation only part of Gallant's overall patrol report – you weren't looking forward to the process, but you were glad nevertheless. However unpleasant paperwork may have been, it was far from the worst outcome that the confrontation could have had. Cinereal's temper, though clearly present, was under enough control that she wasn't going to attempt to fry any of her subordinates purely for pushing back – whether that was due to your own unique circumstances, her understanding of the points made, or simple recognition that she had no legal mechanism to enforce her will, you couldn't be sure. Whatever the purpose, you weren't going to quibble with it.

Before leaving, you reminded yourself of your investigations. While you had passed on the warnings regarding questioning via Glacial the day before, you had since narrowed down the problems with the scouting of Octave to Oneironaut. While Cinereal had been clear in the past that she didn't need approaching for every small thing, the reality was that knowing a functional gap in an otherwise rather expansive thinker power was helpful for planning if nothing else. Were you in her position, you would have wanted to know.

Rapidly, you ran through some additional questions; if you were there, it made little sense to leave questions for later and then simply have to bug the older hero at another time. There was the added benefit that if the news was bad, she was already in a poor mood. Better to apply it all now and give her time to recover before meeting again, rather than splitting up the negativity into daily deliveries.

Chances that we will be able to take out The Count in the next month if we focus on him?

2%

Chances that we will be able to take out Inheritance in the next month if we focus on them?

31%

Chances that we will be able to take out The Runners in the next month if we focus on them?

71%

You grimaced, thankful that your mask hid any clear visual. While there was an obvious escalation of likelihood, and you couldn't get a true evaluation of Octave due to Oneironaut's interference, none of them were an overwhelming majority. Generally, you looked for numbers above eighty per cent before deciding that something was almost a foregone conclusion; whichever pathway you took, it seemed that there was a significant chance that things could drag on if you weren't careful.

Still, you broke the news without hesitation.

'Before I leave, there's more information that I need to share. From my thinker power.'

A dead glare of yellow eyes allowed you to continue without words.

'I've been able to narrow down Oneironaut as the source of interference when I'm asking questions about Octave. I'm not sure what the problem is there, but it just gives me inconclusive answers. I can get specific questions about other members though, which seems to work okay. I also ran a scan on all of the major gangs in the city, and the Runners seem like they're a team we could remove. I got more than a two thirds chance of us being able to take them out in the next month, with a dedicated campaign.'

'Received. We will apply additional patrols in that area, and I will instruct Flashdrive to relocate drones. Selling out to stop one target isn't feasible in a city like this one; focusing everything on the Runners will simply allow Octave to devour space. Pressure, however, can always be applied.'

Sitting back in her seat, you caught a glimpse of tiredness as she sighed lightly. You weren't sure, but it seemed almost as if she were low on energy – maybe the empowerment had taken more out of her than you had thought. That, or she was in dire need of some rest.

'As for Oneironaut, do not worry yourself. He is rarely seen in combat, and there's nobody who can give you a detailed evaluation of his power and how it will interfere with your own. He is an anomaly, and attempting to understand people such as him is a dead end. Should he ever appear on the battlefield, attempt to strike him down quickly. If you cannot, for some reason or another, scorch the earth around him and do not allow an advance. Ceding ground to Octave is not a tolerable offence.'

Considering the situation, you were able to hold yourself back from asking to whom losing ground would have been tolerable. Cinereal had taken much of the revelations, unpleasant as they had all been, in stride and without too much in the way of fury. Clockblocker might have taken the risk, but you saw no need to succumb to his influence – especially not from thousands of miles away, where he couldn't take the heat for it.

'Understood, ma'am.'

'Dismissed.'

You nodded, turning on your heel and marching back out of the room with the same confidence that had led you in. While you couldn't deny there had been something strange about Cinereal the first few times you met her, and you hadn't really handled yourself with the kind of straightforwardness you might have otherwise preferred, you were pleased with the latest interaction. Perhaps it was due to the Protectorate leader's low energy or simply because you had something to stand for, but you felt quite as though you had come out on top of whatever the situation was – insofar as it was possible for someone to come out on top in such a context.

Descending the stairwell, you rummaged through your memories for another time that someone had been so impacted by an empowerment. Starkly, you realised how rare it was that you actually saw the aftermath; Dauntless had told you that the following day he was left feeling almost as though hungover, and Kid Win had seemed largely unaffected, but aside from that there was little evidence demonstrating what it was like to come down from such an empowerment. Perhaps it was related to the strength of the parahuman prior to the boost, but then, that made little sense; Rachel must have been a fairly potent changer and yet she never showed any sign of fatigue after her power had been at work, and Miss Militia had also shown no signs of changed energy.

Something to investigate, for certain; perhaps it wasn't an issue solely of strength, but of kind? Vista, as a fellow powerful shaker, might have been a good source of information, and there was always Scrivener to ask the next time you saw him. Marking it down as something to pursue, you let the idea fade.

Thinking over your empowerments, the fact that you had almost empowered one of every power type came to mind. The only thing left was a stranger, and while you weren't going to go out of your way to find one (if such a thing were even possible; the nature of stranger powers was such that the moment you made it obvious you were trying to find them, they might well suddenly vanish entirely) you looked forward to the day you would eventually get to empower one; there had to be some in the Protectorate, even if it wasn't their main skill, and with plenty of opportunities for interdepartmental co-operation there would eventually be something.

Grimly, you acknowledged that the most common of the opportunities happened to be somewhere that testing an empowerment was a horrible idea.

After all, if Endbringers were on the horizon it was time to fall back on reliable sources of power.

Endbringers continued to plague your thoughts. Ever since those questions had made it clear your responsibility to fight them, they had haunted your dreams.

Sleep came in fits and starts some nights, and you imagined yourself drowning in endless torrents of water, or boiling in flames so hot that even Lung would find it difficult to breathe. Monsters that no living being was meant to face off against, and yet you knew that you were going to have to – in the same way that every powerful hero did.

Did Eidolon have nightmares like you, or was he so powerful and so experienced that even an apocalypse in flesh faded into routine? You shuddered to yourself thinking about the strength such a person would have to wield. Other than Scion, Eidolon had been responsible for more Endbringer victories than every other hero combined.

Thinking back to the arrival of the Simurgh at Canberra, you wondered when the next one would come. While things were impossible to predict down to the day, the monsters tended to come with some regularity every few months, and it had certainly been long enough that the next six weeks held more of a chance than you were comfortable with.

Chances that the Endbringers have already selected their next target?

Inconclusive.

You cursed under your breath as you exited the stairwell on the ground floor. What was it that made it possible for you to get answers from them before, when it came to fighting, but not now when it came to motivation? The division between what you could know and what you didn't usually didn't matter; it seemed strange that there would suddenly be a distinction between motivations and actions now when there hadn't been for Amy, the Empire, or Coil.

Another mystery to be filed under the Endbringers. It felt dissatisfying to throw up your hands and admit defeat, but what else could you do? Greater minds and greater heroes had been working on the problem since decades before your birth, when Behemoth had first emerged to wreak his horrible wrath on the Earth, and they had found no answers. You couldn't expect to find them with a few cursory enquiries slotted in the gaps of your schedule.

Checking the HUD on your helmet, you saw that the clock was ticking fast. While you had no plans on going home early, you also hadn't really wanted to stay out dramatically late, and things were already encroaching on the earlier hours of the afternoon.

'Message Regent: Talked to Cinereal, you're free. No need to show up to empowerment.'

Speaking aloud to your helmet wasn't really optimal, and one day you were going to get to a point that things could be done by subtler means, but it still freed you up; as one of those people who had to stand still to text, voice activation was both quicker and easier for you and everyone around you.

Being able to fire off messages as soon as you thought of them, regardless of what else you might have been up to, was a just a benefit to your quality of life even if it would never really make a difference on the battlefield.

With a few hours to go before home time and your big afternoon commitment dealt with you, you meandered to the workshop. As soon as you stepped inside, you found yourself stunned.

Littering your side of the room was a huge array of stuff.

'Oh, hi there.'

Flashdrive's voice pulled you back to attention and you looked around to find him; his head, poking up from inside what looked like a miniaturised tank on spider's legs, was the only thing you could see.

'Hey.'

'Your stuff arrived. I told them to set it up, so most of it should be good to go but I didn't know where you might want it placed so just make sure you secure things before you use it. Sound good?'

'Sounds good.'

The closer you looked, the more you did think you recognised some of the stuff you had bought. Much of it had looked smaller in the catalogue, though a few things had looked larger. To the side, set at a safe distance from any of the machinery, was a large box covered in warning labels that told you that the base equipment had arrived too. You weren't sure yet exactly what you were going to be using raw elements for, but part of your tinkering sense had told you it was best to get them in stock and in storage, and you weren't one to question. Not only did you not have the scientific grounding yet to doubt it, but even if you had it might not have helped. Tinkering was, by nature, absurd.

Most of the devices, as you evaluated them, looked in good shape. You dismissed Flashdrive's offer to get a machine to help lift some of the heavier things; it was easier and quicker for you to simply do the relocation yourself, and while some of the machines seemed almost as dense as a neutron star, it only took a few minutes for you to get things arranged in a manner that suited you. Huffing, you took it all in and thanked the heavens that should you decide to re-organise at some point in the future, it would be easier for you than for perhaps any other tinker.

Tinker/brute combinations seemed like something that was relatively uncommon, but you couldn't deny the utility.

With some early organisation complete, you sat down at your desk. Already, it felt more like something that belonged to you than something you were borrowing. While your tools and equipment was still new and shiny, bereft of the sort of dents that littered seemingly everything Flashdrive owned, and therefore you couldn't yet pretend that things were bedded in, it was nice to know that you had things which belonged to you and which you had chosen; you still hadn't made that many changes to your own bedroom at the new house.

Looking over your schedule, you pulled out a sheet of paper. Up until this point, you had largely been flying by the seat of your pants; and as someone who wore a singular body suit, that was uncomfortable at best.

Outlining a schedule of the week, you considered your biggest obligations.

Number one, before anything else, you were a hero. Hero related activities, whether that be empowerment, training, patrolling, paperwork, public appearances – the few that Atlanta actually performed – or voluntary outreach; that was the bulk of any given week. You outlined Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons as opportunities for hero activities, and every morning Monday through Friday for the same purpose.

Secondly, if only to make Dad happy and to prevent Armsmaster from looking silly by getting you enrolled, you needed to make sure you kept on top of your studies. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons seemed ripe for targeted studying, with the idea of ensuring at least an hour of homework on any days you weren't patrolling.

With a break pencilled in midday, and the weekends left open for a little bit of personal time and any overhanging homework completion, you had a rough schedule set out.

Immediately, you knew it wasn't going to last. If you'd had such a schedule lined up in Brockton Bay, it would have been shredded the night of Coil's capture, the night of Hookwolf's arrest, and the entire week you had spent responding to the Empire's public and messy dissolution. Hero work in a busy city simply didn't allow for regimented scheduling.

Nevertheless, having one written down felt like a step towards enforcing regularity on the city, even if you knew it was going to have to be adjusted here or there. It was something to aim towards – and besides, just because it was mutable didn't mean it always had to shift for bad reasons. Perhaps one day, you would forgo a hero opportunity in order to hang out with friends. Anchor had mentioned planning to take you to a concert, so that was going to come up at some point whenever she saw fit, and you had already been out with Rachel to find a shelter.

Maybe hanging out with Regent, or even one of the other Wards, was somewhere in your future. It was impossible to know, but equally impossible to dismiss as a possibility, and in that case the disturbance to the schedule was one that anyone would welcome with open arms.

With that planned out, you tucked the schedule into one of the emptier pouches in your utility belt; something to stick up on the cork-board behind your desk in your room, and give it something of a personal touch. Aspiration schedule making. Thrilling.

Standing up and stretching out, you looked at the time. It was early, still, with maybe two hours before you could even expect Dad to start making his own way home; with his new job starting the day before in something of a meet and greet, you were looking forward to hearing from him about how the first day of actual productivity went. Drawing on old skills in a new context was something that could either be disastrous or extremely rewarding, and you hoped for his sake that it had been the latter.

With nothing else planned, you reached for one of your new tools; a multi-tool which included a laser cutting plasma bit, accurate to a physical resolution of one micrometer, it was something a little less precise than you would have acquired in a dream world, but it seemed that anything that operated on a smaller scale had to be custom adjusted; even the tools you had rigged together during the supervised session under Dragon and Armsmaster wasn't quite so accurate as the device you had acquired from the catalogue.

With that in hand, you pulled out some of the ideas and plans that you had placed into the drawer in your table only a few days prior; you had scanners to make, and while something that you could insert into your helmet seemed a long way off, the road to perfection started with a singular step.

Actions Remaining:

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

- Learn more about Atlanta as a city, beyond the parahuman element (2/3)

- Prank Anchor in your snake form

- Design your own scanner equipment to be installed in your helmet

- Bring up the idea of the animal spy network to Cinereal and Flashdrive to get help ironing out details

- Start designing our scanners, and see if we can maybe collaborate with Flashdrive to improve his

- Look for an evening woodworking class to take with Dad

- Test how your Striker power works on things that should improve with time

Another chapter out! Regent's situation has been resolved, we've asked some questions about good targets for the immediate future, and we've found an irregularity in Percentile when it comes to the Endbringers. Who knows what that's about?

As there are a lot of Actions currently listed, I am not going to give suggestions for potential actions. However, we have a number of goals right now (more than the maximum, actually, since we crossed the max in one voting session) and therefore lots of potential avenues of action you could be pursuing. How do we complete some of the goals we have? You take control!