Unbroken 1.2 (Patreon)

Emily Piggot

“So what the hell happened?” Director Piggot growled.

“Judging from Mr. Hebert’s behavior and later explanation, Richard Lindt has extreme difficulty in standard social situations,” Armsmaster said, reading from the notes scrolling across his visor. “The meeting with the Wards was the result of a compromise between the two of them, contingent on exposure to the Wards not aggravating his social difficulties. Based on Mr. Hebert’s reactions both after Clockblocker used his power and upon the effect ending, it is probable that Richard Lindt possesses a greater than average temper.”

Piggot closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath before letting it out. Opening her eyes, she turned her glare to the nervously shifting Ward to Armsmaster’s right. He had the dignity to look embarrassed and ashamed, but it didn’t make her any less furious with him.

“I have four different apologies based on how mad you are,” he said quietly.

Her teeth ground together and she told the head of the local Protectorate, “Leave us, and shut the door behind you.”

“That mad, well shit,” Clockblocker muttered under his breath as Armsmaster stood and left the office.

Piggot stood up, her joints and bones protesting the movement, and placed both hands on her desk, “Refresh my memory, how many times have you been told to stop using your power on people the first time you meet them?”

“Twenty times,” he answered easily, “including the three lectures I received about this particular incident.”

“Yet you continue to do it. This isn’t acceptable. Until further notice, you are restricted to Public Events and Console Duty. Be glad that’s all you’re getting. Now get out.”

Taking the opportunity offered, the Ward all but flew out of her office. Sitting back down, she pulled up the files showing everything they had on Richard Lindt, tentatively dubbed Prometheus. There was concern at first, given the presence of Hellhound in the city, but further investigation showed that it was unlikely they’d had any contact since they were toddlers. Part of her wondered what the CPS agent at the time had been thinking, splitting up two siblings while they were so young, but what’s done is done. His powers appeared to be a standard Brute/Mover package. Looking through his recent history, she frowned. Something wasn’t right…

She read through his history again, and her eyes narrowed. After working alongside Parahumans for such a long time, she knew more than most, and in general had pretty good instincts about them. She knew about Trigger Events, and due to her position she also knew the patterns between the powers a parahuman got and their Trigger Event, but there wasn’t anything in his history that suggested his powers. The most notable recent event was his foster sister being hospitalized, but that wasn’t the sort of Event that would result in Brute powers.

The patterns weren’t set in stone, and it was plausible that whatever his Trigger Event was hadn’t been in the public record. But from the rest of his record, he was long used to the sort of things that typically resulted in Brutes. Most Brutes weren’t used to fighting prior to their Trigger Event, whereas Richard Lindt had been in fights at school ever since he was first admitted. That was ignoring the fact that the CPS agent who brought him in was still missing a finger.

Miss Militia’s personality assessment of the teen suggested that he was a reserved individual when calm. The issue was the fact that he wasn’t liable to stay calm, and when his temper was raised he was a Brute/Mover 5. Had Clockblocker not utterly fucked up the introduction, they’d have been able to either assign him an anger management therapist or foist him off on another city where he would be someone else’s problem.

Letting out a sigh, Piggot pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered, “This job’s going to kill me.”

She’d have an eye kept on Lindt, but for the moment there wasn’t anything she could do to ease her paranoia.

[hr][/hr]

Amy Dallon

Amy glared at the bane of her existence. She just knew that it delighted in her misery, savoring each and every moment it made her suffer. No one believed her when she told them, but she just knew that it was cackling behind their backs, like a witch over a cauldron as she prepared to make a feast out of some stupid toddlers. When the opportune moment came, Amy would have her vengeance upon her most hated enemy, and then she would…

“Glaring at the coffee maker won’t make it go faster,” came the voice of the one who normally made each day worth living.

Amy turned her glare to Vicky, even as the way the morning sun reflected off her hair, making her look positively angelic, made her throbbing, caffeine deprived migraine worse. Vicky just grinned, the light reflecting off her perfect, pearly white teeth like something from the stupid family drama shows Vicky pretended she hated. Amy closed her eyes and groaned at the stab of pain that shot from her eyes to her brain and turned back to face the coffee maker, which finally submitted to her will and began releasing the steaming black elixir of the gods.

Every drop, falling from the top was pure, black perfection. The way it fell through the air, descending to join the rest on the bottom of the pot, it was watching art, it was poetry in motion, it needed to go faster. Finally, after a veritable eternity, the coffee maker’s water tank ran out, and the last of the coffee dribbled into the pot. Giving a slow nod, Amy pulled out the coffee pot from the machine, before lifting the lid on the water tank and pouring the contents of the pot in for its second pass.

“Ames, I love you, but you have a problem,” Vicky said behind her as Amy put the pot back in place and turned on the coffee maker.

“Yes,” Amy agreed. “No coffee yet.”

“Seriously, if you need your coffee that strong, just buy an espresso machine!”

“Too expensive. Doesn’t taste right,” Amy shot down the idea with impeccable logic.

“That’s because you’ve killed your taste buds by doing this!” Vicky said as she floated over to her sister’s side, gesturing towards the coffee maker.

Amy glared at her sister, floating in the air like an angel from heaven. Walkist bitch, showing off her lack of respect for Gravity like some smug, asshole jaywalker. Even songbirds weren’t so evil, with their high pitched tweeting that made her head pound like the drums at a Civil War reenactment. Just a touch, and Amy could enact vengeance on the angelic form of perfection that was her smug, walkist cunt of a sister. That sounded very appealing right now.

Fortunately for Vicky, the coffee machine chose that moment to finish. Vengeance could wait, caffeine now. As Amy savored the liquid ambrosia in front of her, she listened with half an ear as Vicky started talking about her latest date with Dean, the emotion blind dickwaffle.

“…mentioned Clockblocker chasing off a new Ward, and I think I might have bumped into him the other day. I was patrolling the Boardwalk and saw someone flying over the bay, so I went to check it out, and it was obviously his first time flying, he had the same grin I did the first week after I got my powers. Like, I get it, but flying gets old after a while.”

If Amy wasn’t busy chugging down her second mug of coffee, she’d have flipped Vicky the bird. Walkist bitch.

“So when I asked him if it was his first time flying, just to make it more obvious it was, he lost control of his flight path and flew face first into my chest!”

…the caffeine had by this point had just enough time for Amy to be envious of the lucky bastard.

“He was spinning around like when we’d put Binky in the dryer and turn it on, so it was an accident. S’why I didn’t mess him up for breaking my barrier when he flew into me. My barrier came back before he got his flight under control, so I figured I’d ignore it for the moment. I tried to get some info out of him, but he flew into the bay and I lost him. So when Dean mentioned the potential Ward and described him, I figured they might be the same guy.”

Whoopty-fuck, they were back on the dickwaffle again, now Amy’d have to listen to her gushing about the date or ranting about how he’s a limp dicked douchebag.

“The new cape weirded Dean out though, he said that trying to read his emotions was like trying to make out a really staticky radio station. At least until Clock’s power wore off. Then the new guy was more pissed than the time that Uber and Leet did a Mario Cart video with Lung filling in for the turtle dragon guy.”

Amy turned to look at Vicky with a raised eyebrow, fourth cup in her hand.

“I know, I know, I was skeptical too. But that’s what he said. So the new guy’s dad gets in front of him, says it’s just a stupid prank, and the guy storms out. Apparently the new cape’s got a temper problem, the dad’s been trying to help him with it, and the hope was if he joined the Wards he’d get more anger management. But then Clock screwed the pooch big time.”

“Is there a point to any of this?” Amy asked, speaking for the first time that morning.

Vicky shrugged, “Just filling the quiet, plus letting you know in case the new cape decides to go vigilante and you have to clean up after him.”

Amy directed a flat stare at Vicky, who had the grace to look embarrassed. “That was one time! And I’d only had my powers for a month!”

The stare continued unabated, and Vicky pouted, before blinking as a thought occurred to her, “Are you just waiting for the caffeine to finish kicking in?”

No response, so Vicky drifted to the side, and sure enough, Amy continued staring, waiting for the caffeine to finish waking up the brunette.

[hr][/hr]

Taylor Hebert

Taylor swallowed as she walked across the rooftop. The last few months had been… a thing. Even ignoring The Locker and the powers she’d gotten in it, there was the tangled, confusing mess of feelings she’d started having when she got back from the hospital. Rick, her brother, had somehow turned into an absolute hunk and she hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t physically changed, she’d just realized that puberty had been far kinder to him than it had to her.

Setting aside that tangled batch of hormones and banjos, there was the fact that, the day after she’d returned home, Dad had sat her down and put her bullying diary in front of her. He’d stated in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going back to Winslow. It didn’t matter what she thought on the matter, no argument she’d made budged his mind, which meant that the Trio were going to win.

Then came the reveal that Rick had gotten powers of his own. He was an Alexandria Package, and strong enough to use their fire poker as a stress ball. The decision to take her out of Winslow suddenly made more sense. She wasn’t sure if it was a joke when Dad had said that he wasn’t sure that if she went back, and the Trio so much as gave her a split end, that Rick wouldn’t tear down the entire building. From the look on his face, he didn’t know if he was joking either.

Taylor sighed, pushing the memories of the last few months aside. Even after months of homeschooling, she was still thinking about the Trio, about their response to her just up and disappearing. That couldn’t be healthy, but she honestly preferred it to when her thoughts focused on Rick.

She knew they weren’t blood siblings, that had never been a thing. She could vaguely remember before he was brought to them, but in all of her clear memories, he was there. Throwing himself in front of anything that even looked at her the wrong way. She remembered sitting with him in the playground, wiping away the blood from his broken nose after he fought a boy six years older than him. Because the boy’s sister had pulled on Taylor’s hair, and Rick punched the girl for making Taylor cry.

Her knees protested as she rolled onto the next roof, pulling Taylor from her thoughts. At least it happened before her mind progressed to the time last summer when she walked in on him as he was getting out of the shower. Shaking her head, Taylor paused as she heard voices in the alley down below.

A glance over the edge of the roof let her see a number of ABB gangsters, along with a man who could only be Lung. Taylor’s eyes widened behind her mask, and she turned to leave. She controlled bugs, her power was not suited to fighting the most powerful cape in the city.

“...you see those kids, you shoot them. Don’t give the bitch a chance to speak.”

Her shoulders slumped, and Taylor closed her eyes. Lung was going to kill some kids. She couldn’t leave knowing that. Eyes opening, Taylor turned around and made her way back to the edge of the roof, calling upon each and every bug in her field of control. Every fly, every wasp, every spider, every beetle, cockroach, mosquito, ant, all of them obeyed her command. The gang members panicked as an ever increasing number of bugs flooded the alley, spiders crawling up their legs and flies from the dumpsters flying into their eyes. She had the spiders bite lung as soon as they found skin, it was the only shot she’d have against the gang leader.

“KILL YOU!” Lung shouted as flames poured off him, killing all of the bugs she had on him. Reaching into a pouch, Taylor pulled out her can of pepper spray. It was only a matter of time before she ran out of bugs or he found her.

What happened next took a moment for Taylor to process. There was a gust of wind, and Taylor was nearly blown off the roof as Lung folded in half. Scales covered the gang leader as he slammed into the opposite wall. Taylor’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw the cape who had flown into Lung.

With a roar, Lung lashed out with a fire shrouded punch that knocked Rick down the alley into the street.