It Gets Worse Pt 7 (Patreon)

[A/N: The PHO boards section is composed of entries adapted from real comments on real boards about this story. Usernames have also been adapted.]

Emily

Upon responding to the call, the strike team located a collapsed building, with four members of the Empire Eighty-Eight outside it. These were FENJA, MENJA, STORMTIGER and CRICKET. None of these were capable of resistance or escape, as they were all hampered or injured.

FENJA and MENJA were found trapped upside-down in manholes. Both of them were unable to get free, as the shin-guards on their armour had hooked identically on the rims of said manholes, in such a way that it was impossible for them to escape on their own. They were assisted out of their predicament and taken into custody.

STORMTIGER was found covered in tar due to an unfortunate encounter with a road repair crew and a faulty valve on a tank of boiling tar. He was taken into custody and given what medical attention was possible at the time; Corpsman O'Reilly estimated that he has sustained second and third degree burns over most of his body, as well as several suspected broken bones. More will be known once the tar is removed.

Emily stopped reading briefly to allow herself a shudder. Boiling tar. Good god. Picking up where she left off, she resumed reading.

CRICKET was unconscious when we arrived; according to O'Reilly, she has suffered multiple instances of massive blunt force trauma that left both arms, both legs, all of her ribs, her pelvis and a few other bones broken in several places. He also suspects internal injuries. Witnesses reported that she was struck by a bus and thrown into another bus. She was taken into custody and given what medical assistance was possible.

Witness statements all agreed that the Empire capes had been thrown from the collapsed building at the same time as an explosion or impact on the building itself, and very shortly before the collapse. FENJA and MENJA maintained that two more capes, KAISER and HOOKWOLF, were still unaccounted for. With the assistance of the road repair crew, the building was investigated and the cause of the collapse determined; a mass of blue ice composed of water, disinfectant and human excrement. It had broken up on impact, but the original impactor had to weigh at least one ton.

Emily stopped reading again. Blue ice. Christ. She'd heard stories about chunks of blue ice falling off of airliners, but nothing over a hundred pounds. A ton ... how is that even possible? And so precisely targeted … A pause, as she thought about that. Targeted. Strange and unusual circumstances. Wait a minute …

She took a moment to scribble Taylor Hebert? in the margin of the report, then kept reading.

Digging down through the rubble, we reached the basement area. There we discovered KAISER and HOOKWOLF. They were both alive, although KAISER apparently has many broken bones and HOOKWOLF seems to have encased himself in a metal shell and is not responding to outside stimuli.

Witness statements mentioned seeing two people leaving the building just before it collapsed, a male and a female, both Caucasian. The man was in his twenties, of average height and solid build, with either red, brown or dark blond hair. The woman was skinny and either a tall teenager or twenty-something and petite. She did not seem to be under duress. She wore glasses, had long dark curly hair and carried a backpack over her shoulder. They got in a car and drove away; nobody could recall the make, model or license plate of the vehicle.

A throwing blade was discovered embedded in a wall nearby, provisionally assumed to have belonged to Cricket, given that she has been known to use them in the past …

Emily slapped her hand on the desk and re-read the description. Tall teenager … glasses … long dark curly hair. Putting the report on the desk, she gazed into space. It has to be her. There's no other explanation for it. A precision strike on the Empire Eighty-Eight with highly improbable and coincidental results. “I bet Cricket threw that blade at the Hebert girl just before something happened that broke all her bones,” she muttered. “I would put money on it.”

Picking up the phone, she pressed a few buttons. “This is the Director,” she said. “I need you to determine what aircraft were overflying Brockton Bay at precisely …” She checked the report. “ … fifteen twenty-five this afternoon. Special attention to large aircraft, such as airliners. Contact the airlines in question and find out all details of said flights, if anything at all unusual happened in conjunction with those flights. Get that report to me soonest. That is all.”

Putting the phone down, she steepled her fingers and stared over them at the door. I wonder what Kaiser did to require a ton of ice to land on him from a great height.Strike that; a ton of frozen human excrement. Involuntarily, she shuddered. I'm not even sure that I want to know how she arranged that.

Her phone rang; she glanced at it in surprise. For just a moment, she imagined that it was the Operations officer ringing back with the report she had requested, then she shook her head. Picking up the receiver, she cleared her throat. “Director Piggot.”

“Ma'am, are you looking at the PHO boards?” It was Triumph, sounding a little strained. There were odd noises in the background, which she couldn't quite make out.

“I have better things than to look at the ParaHuman Online boards all day,” she replied severely. “As do you.”

“Yes, ma'am, I totally agree. But you need to look at them now. Check the recent posts. There's something there that you really do need to see.”

Such was the tone of his voice that she did not question him. “Very well,” she agreed. Without putting the phone down, she moved the mouse to wake up the computer and clicked on the required tab. Then she clicked on to the Recent Posts list and started scrolling down. Her eyes widened after a moment, and she clicked on an icon.

“Oh my god,” she muttered. “Is that …”

“That's what it looks like, ma'am,” agreed Triumph. Again, the strange sounds occurred in the background. She finally identified them; it was the sound of several people laughing uproariously.

“Thank you, Triumph,” she managed. “That will be all.” Putting down the phone, she turned her full attention to the photos that had been posted to the site. Without a doubt, they were of the scene described in the report. Pictures, she discovered, were indeed worth a thousand words.

“Oh my god,” she said once more. “She got photos.”

Shadow Stalker, she decided, got off lightly.

<><>

“Seriously, wow, I don't believe it.” Kid Win leaned back in the chair he had been using for monitor duty, holding his ribs.

“Guys, we should be treating this more seriously,” Triumph told them sternly, putting the phone down. “They could've been hurt or killed. Stormtiger's got third degree burns there, for a certainty.”

“So what?” asked Aegis, still chuckling. “They're a bunch of racist pricks. Any one of them would do their best to kick my head in if they got a chance, because of my skin colour. Pretty sure that whatever did that to them, they deserved it.”

Triumph shook his head. “Missy, back me up here.” He looked around. “Missy?”

The youngest member of the Wards was lying on the floor in a foetal position, arms around her knees, giggling hysterically. As Triumph moved toward her, she gasped out, “Head … first … down … manhole …” then went back to giggling.

“Clockblocker?” Triumph's voice was resigned; it was the redhead who had told them what the blue ice really was. But he had to try to appeal to their better nature.

Minus his helmet, Dennis was lying on his back on the floor, not far from Missy. He was cackling loudly, rolling from side to side. “They got shat on from a great height!” he managed, then went back to his mirth.

“And Kaiser's under it,” added Missy, in between giggles.

Still laughing himself, Kid Win began to scroll through the comments that had begun to appear beneath the initial post. Some of them he read out loud, as best he could. This did not help anyone stop laughing.

<><>

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■

♦Topic: Empire Eighty-Eight - FAIL!

In: Boards ► Brockton Bay ► Cape Doings ► Villains ► E88

CleverGirl95 (Original Poster)

Posted on January 12, 2011:

So the Empire Eighty-Eight decided to kidnap me to put pressure on my dad to do them a favor. Not saying I'm a cape, and not saying I'm not, but this is what happened. Just saying. [link]

P/S: Kaiser and Hookwolf are *under* that.

(Showing Page 2 of 31)

Walpurgis

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Okay, that's so very satisfying, right there.

SenpaiSan

Replied on January 12, 2011:

You're not wrong. I like this. I like this a lot.

Bookworm419

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Blue ice ... wow. I thought they'd fixed that particular problem.

ElectricPenguin (Moderator)

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Heh heh heh. Hookwolf and Kaiser both?

OP's dad must be someone pretty important.

Imitator

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Okay, if this is a power, I wonder if something similar but more powerful could be pulled on an Endbringer. Like a meteor strike or something.

Glitcher

Replied on January 12, 2011:

So a plane full of people suffering from gastric distress just happened to fly overhead at just the right time? And Kaiser and Hookwolf got shat on from a great height? Mwahaha.

Zarb

Replied on January 12, 2011:

If this is a power, it's awesome. And kind of scary. But mainly awesome.

Vier

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Ow, my sides. Laughing too hard.

DarkHawk

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Are there more pictures? Please tell me there are.

lostallhope

Replied on January 12, 2011:

This is awesomely hilarious. Only in Brockton Bay.

AnAesopMoment

Replied on January 12, 2011:

So, the Empire Eighty-Eight just got taken out by an icy BM? Priceless.

CleverGirl95 (Original Poster)

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Being kidnapped and driven to a secret base: $2.00 worth of fuel.

Phone call to my dad for the demands: 48 cents.

Watching an airborne poopsicle the size of a Buick take out the Empire Eighty-Eight and demolish their headquarters: PRICELESS.

Counter_Guard

Replied on January 12, 2011:

Five minutes, still laughing. Too funny.

End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4 ... 29 , 30, 31

<><>

Emily

Later that Night

She looked around the table at those seated there. A few were in the loop already, and their worried expressions mirrored her inner feelings. Others were not; they merely looked puzzled. This would change.

Taking a deep breath, she began to speak. “Some of you may be wondering why you were called here. It's very simple. There's a new parahuman in Brockton Bay.”

The senior PRT officers, seated down one side of the table, didn't change expression. New parahumans, after all, showed up in Brockton Bay with almost monotonous regularity.

Major Holden cleared his throat. “Ma'am, that's nothing really new. Or is this parahuman something special?” They had better be, he didn't have to say.

“Allow me to clarify,” Emily said. “There's a new parahuman in Brockton Bay, and she's perhaps scarier than any I've encountered yet.” A pause, as she let them absorb that. “And yes, I amincluding Nilbog in that total.”

That got their attention. Nilbog, one of the few Class S parahumans allowed to exist unmolested on American soil, was walled about and kept under constant guard by the PRT in what was once the town of Ellisburg; he and his creations had been in that situation for the last ten years. The Director, as everyone had to know, was one of the two soldiers who had faced Nilbog and survived to tell of the experience.

“What the hell -” That was Holden.

“You can't be serious -” Another PRT officer.

“Scarier than Nilbog -” She thought that might be Assault.

“We've heard nothing -” That was possibly Velocity.

“Quiet!” Armsmaster had risen to his feet. “Let the Director finish!” He banged the haft of his halberd on the floor for emphasis.

The babbling died off and people sat back in their chairs, looking a little sheepish. Armsmaster sat down once more and nodded at Piggot. “Director?”

“Thank you,” she replied. Picking up the remote that sat before her, she clicked a button. The projector mounted in the ceiling hummed to itself, and a picture of Taylor Hebert sprang to life on the far wall. It had been lifted from security footage of the day before, when Taylor and her father had visited the PRT headquarters. She was smiling at something, her eyes alight with amusement behind her glasses.

“Take a good look,” Emily ordered them. “Commit that face to memory. Her name is Taylor Hebert. Remember that too. Do not write it down. You will not be getting a copy of that picture. I don't want the face or name getting out to anyone.”

Major Holden turned back to look at her. “But why?” he asked. “Okay, she's a parahuman. I get that we don't out her, but why shouldn't we let our people know that she is one?”

Emily fixed him with a hard stare. “Because she's the scariest parahuman I've ever met, or perhaps you didn't hear me before.” She clicked the remote again. “Ten days ago, she was shut in her locker and presumably underwent her trigger event. Since then, there have been several attempts to continue what seems to have been an ongoing bullying campaign. This is what happened to the bullies.”

Silence fell as the pictures flicked up on the screen. A red-haired girl, stuck vertically, upside-down, beside a toilet. A brunette, wedged butt-first into another toilet, with a container of chocolate pudding upside down on her head. Chuckles began to arise from her audience.

“Think that's funny?” asked Emily caustically. “How about this?” She clicked the remote again.

“Holy crap,” Assault commented as he studied the picture. He turned his head to one side, as almost everyone else was also doing, his expression becoming a frown. “How did they even …”

“Running with duct tape, chasing the Hebert girl,” Emily said. “One tripped, the rest followed, and somehow …”

“Wait.” That was Battery. “That girl looks familiar.”

“She should.” Armsmaster spoke up. “That's Shadow Stalker. She was in on the bullying from the beginning. In fact, we suspect that she was the driving force behind it. She then went to the Director to attempt to slander Miss Hebert.”

Everyone turned to look at Emily; Triumph, at the end of the table, breathed out a sigh of sudden comprehension. “Wait. The thing with Aegis?”

“Exactly,” Emily agreed. “Aegis accidentally put her through a wall before she could communicate her view of things to me.”

“So how did you get a picture of her?” asked Assault.

The Director smiled tightly. “Miss Hebert herself came to see me, with her father. It was a very … illuminating … conversation.”

Major Holden cleared his throat. “Uh, Director … a few minor incidents doesn't make her as scary as you say. Unless there's more?”

“Yes, there's more.” She clicked the remote. More pictures showed up. The PRT men blinked.

Holden turned back to her, his eyes wide. “Wait, she was there?”

“She was indeed there,” Emily confirmed. “Apparently they kidnapped her. But about fourteen hours before they kidnapped her, there was a power spike at a food storage facility in Miami. The spoiled food was supplied as airline meals to passengers on a plane that overflew Brockton Bay. They … shall we say, filled up the toilet tanks. These leaked – apparently, this has been an ongoing problem that hasn't quite been bad enough to get fixed, until now – and formed a mass of ice on the underside of the plane, roughly one point two tons in weight. When it passed over Brockton Bay, it fell off. With, as it happens, pinpoint accuracy.”

Assault spoke next, trying to keep some strong emotion out of his voice. “One … point … two … tons?”

“That's the number our analysts gave me,” the Director confirmed.

“Fourteen … hours?” That was Major Holden.

“If you two are going to keep repeating everything I say, we're going to be here all night,” Emily replied caustically. “Yes, one point two tons. Yes, that's an order of magnitude larger than any other chunk of blue ice that's ever been recorded. Yes, these events were put in motion more than half a day before she was ever put under threat. And yes, there's a very good chance that she was asleep for some of the time that her power was setting up the situation.”

She looked at each person there in turn, her stare unflinching. “According to her, and I have no reason to disbelieve her, she has no conscious control over her powers. If her power sees someone as an enemy, that is what happens to them. So far it's been non-lethal, albeit extremely humiliating. I have no reason to believe that it will stay that way, especially if someone comes after her with lethal force.”

Assault chuckled. “Not sure if Kaiser wouldn't prefer death. After all, he just got publicly sh- oof!”

Battery elbowed him in the ribs and he broke off with a gasp. “Shut up,” she hissed. “Not here, not now.”

“Precisely,” the Director agreed. “There's a time and a place for jokes of that caliber. Here and now is not it.” She drew a deep breath. “I am assigning her the provisional codename Butterfly. This will be in force until I have a chance to ask her if she would like a different one. What you will be doing about her is … nothing.”

“Nothing?” Major Holden had a hard time controlling his tone. “You've just demonstrated exactly how dangerous she is! A threat assessment -”

“Will not be made.” Emily put all the steel into her voice that she could. It was sufficient; Holden wilted back into his seat. “Making a threat assessment requires that we think of her as a threat. And then we start thinking of how we could deal with said threat. We build a model of how we could potentially defeat her.” She held Holden's gaze as she lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “Do you want to be the one her power decides is her enemy in that case?”

“Shit.” Assault leaned back in his chair, his voice filled with realisation. “We can't even think about how we might beat her. Because if we do, we have to assume that her power started planning how to beat us yesterday. Holy shit. You said she's scary.” A broad grin spread across his face. “I think that's all kinds of awesome.”

“This is no time for jokes,” Armsmaster chided him.

“I'm not joking,” Assault insisted. “Seriously, I'm not. If people don't screw with her, they're fine. If they do, they end up duct-taped to a bunch of guys or stuck in a toilet or getting a ton of blue ice in the back of the neck. Oh man.” Turning to Emily, he put on a beseeching tone of voice. “Can I please please please have the assignment of following her around with a video camera? And can I get an advance on my pay? I'm gonna be buying a lot of popcorn.”

“No and no.” The Director's voice was firm. “Nobody will be following her around for any reason. We still don't know exactly what triggers her power to think someone's an enemy. The only person who's going to have contact with her is me.”

Most of Armsmaster's face was covered by his helmet, but he still managed to look startled. “Ma'am?”

“Yes.” Piggot put both hands flat on the table. “I intend to go around to her house and ask, very politely, if I can buy Kaiser's phone from her.” She nodded curtly. “In the meantime, you have your orders. Butterfly is strictly hands off. You don't make threat assessments, you don't assign threat ratings -”

“Uh, already done,” Assault interrupted. “Shaker: nope.”

A few of the PRT officers chuckled; Battery tried to hide her smirk, even as she elbowed him again. “Seriously?” she whispered.

“That's as good an assessment as any,” Emily allowed begrudgingly. “But no following her, video camera or otherwise. That's an order.” She rose to her feet. “Dismissed.”

One by one, they filed from the room. The picture of Taylor Hebert was once more being projected on the wall, and they paused to look at it before leaving. The last PRT officer to go paused longer than most, then turned to leave.

Well, well, well, thought Thomas Calvert. How very interesting. 

Part 8