Brockton Bay, Boardwalk
July 24th, 20:06
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"Thank you both for your hard work, I'll see you ladies next time."
Miss Militia gives the PRT worker, a man by the name of Clarkson, a glance as her and Falcon make their way back into the PRT building, heading for the parking lot after finishing up with their patrol for the day. She notices that the man seems to be talking to Falcon more than he is her, which she finds more amusing than insulting, especially considering his rather apparent youth.
"Please, don't feel the need to thank us, we are merely doing our duty, no different from you." Falcon's response is as expected, filled with a kind of calm, serene tone that just attracts people in and makes them feel as though they can trust her.
She has to hold back from cringing, knowing exactly how fake Falcon's tone is. Just as fake as the kind expression on her face, and the friendly smile on her lips. Even her posture, all so fake.
A part of her feels like she should do something to stop this. To stop indulging Maryam with her manipulations and expose her. Especially when she sees how well they are working. All throughout their patrols, people have been coming up to her asking for pictures and autographs and the like.
After being credited with taking down Lung, something that has been exaggerated by the media to the point that the populous couldn't tell you who else was present and helping her in that fight, her popularity has skyrocketed.
Even after Lung predictably didn't last more than a week in his cell, the public for once aren't blaming the Hero who caught the Villain, but instead the institution supporting her. Which is to say, the public opinion is leaning towards Falcon being a force of good, and the PRT being too incompetent to properly assist her.
It's certainly not a new thing for the public to hold distrust in the PRT, especially in Brockton Bay, but it is a first for one of the Wards to be treated like a full-fledged Hero. Though that is likely in large part due to her being only a few months away from the Protectorate.
The only exception naturally being the Youth Guard, who stubbornly refuse to see Maryam as anything other than a child, until she turns eighteen, when they will likely all forget about her within the week.
Either way, she decides against it. Even if her intentions aren't truly altruistic, that doesn't really matter to Hannah. What matters is results, and Falcon's façade is making the public feel more safe. Falcon is good for the city, even if Mary doesn't care about it.
It's only once they get in her car, a black Humvee, with it's tinted windows, that Falcon lets the act drop, seemingly transforming into a different person, even if she looks exactly the same.
Her smile drops to an indifferent frown, her shoulders unwind as she takes on a more languid posture. As they drive back home, Mary reaches up to her stark white hair and unties the blindfold hiding under it, peeling the cloth off of her face, revealing her deep green eyes, and also allowing Hannah to see the inside of the blindfold, which is translucent one-way.
She still finds it unsettling to see Mary change personality so easily, and normally it would make her doubt whether or not Mary was also manipulating her, putting on a false appearance for whatever reasons.
But she doesn't think that's likely. She can't really see a reason Mary would benefit from acting the way she does, instead of keeping up the Falcon act all the time. Then there's the fact that she does know that Mary hides her personality, at least somewhat, when interacting with people as herself.
Because despite everything, most people still genuinely think she wants to be a Hero. Meanwhile, when the girl is alone with Hannah, her attitude is, well...
"Sheeesh~, what a lame day. Did you see the way that loser was looking at me? What a fucking creep."
She acts like a caustic delinquent.
Withholding a sigh, Hannah pays half a mind to the familiar streets while half-turning to give Mary her attention. "I don't think he was being creepy. If anything, I think it was sweet, he clearly has a bit of a crush on you. There's no reason to be mean to him."
"First of all, I wasn't mean to him, I was perfect. Second of all, the loser was at least twenty, maybe even twenty-one, and I am still a minor, that makes him a ephebophile, ergo, creep. And lastly, he doesn't have a crush on me. He doesn't know anything about me, not even my name. He has a parasocial delusion that he can understand me, that he can even have a chance of standing equal to myself. Ergo, a fucking loser."
This time, Hannah fails to hold back her sigh, deeply hoping that her bet is right and that Mary truly will continue to do good, no matter how superfluous her intentions. And who knows, maybe Mary can change and grow, maybe one day she'll see the world in a brighter light.
Still, she can't find it in herself to begrudge the girl, Mary's been through a lot. It took her nearly a full year before she really integrated with society properly after being brought to America, and even then, what she experienced only lasted a few days, while Mary has had to endure for over a decade, a majority of her life.
So she will remain patient.
"Oh, by the way. Will Suzuya be at the house when we get there, or is he staying late?" Mary suddenly asks, as if she just remembered something. She feels a brief sting of disappointment that Mary still insists on calling her house as such, instead of simply 'home'.
"He should be home, yes. Probably racking up my water bill as we speak."
Mary snorts alongside the mirth in her tone. "Yeah, he likes his baths. Must be the Jap in his blood."
A slight frown worms its way onto Hannah's face. "I'm pretty sure 'Jap' is considered an offensive term."
"Don't be retarded, Jap is just short for Japanese, and it's only in the States where people think it's racist cuz've all the propaganda going around during the Second War, cuz it was easier to use 'trap a Jap' as a slogan for rat traps or whatever than 'fuckaseize the Japanese'. Now, if I were to have said 'Jape' blood, then yeah, it'd have been racist."
"Ok, I, uh. First of all, language-"
"Suck my dick."
"-second of all, retarded is also considered an offensive term." The look Mary sends her is all to familiar, and she feels another sigh building up.
"Why? I mean, I get it in this case, since I was using it as an insult, but it just means 'to hold back', like fire-retardant shit or whatever. Saying Jap is an offensive term is wilfully ignoring that it's literally just shortening of Japanese, if that's offensive, then I should be mad at you every time you call me Mary."
"I think it's less about the original meaning of the word, just that it's been used as an insult so much that it can't really be used in it's proper definition anymore without the assumption being there of an insult being present."
"Yeah well, that's retarded."
The sigh that escapes Hannah at her charge's petty retort is full of exacerbated weariness. They've been living together for just over a month now, and she's already just used to these kinds of conversations by now.
Mary seems to enjoy having offensive conversations, always taking the point of devil's advocate, or really just saying whatever it is that will get the most people upset with her. It only makes the contrast between her Hero persona and her actual personality all the more severe.
And the worst part, is that she doesn't just speak out of her ass. She actually has facts and statistics and examples ready most of the time, perfectly ready to deconstruct your argument, seemingly purely because she enjoys making people doubt their beliefs.
She really is a handful.
Deciding to take a hold of the conversation as they sit in a small bout of traffic, caused by a cape fight the other day that ruined a road, she brings the conversation back around to it's start. "You asked about Suzuya, do you need him for something?"
"Yeah, we're going out." As she processes this new information, Mary pauses, resting a finger on her cheek as she seems to recall something, and turns away from the window to give her a smile. "Oh, by the way, Suzuya and I are going out."
With her piece said, Mary returns to her usual position of leaning her head against the car window, staring at the outside scenery with an unnerving stillness, like she's some kind of doll.
"You're going out? At this hour? What are you going to do? All the stores will be closed."
"Don't worry about it," Mary says, causing a significant amount of worry to build up in her chest, "I already bought everything."
"Mary, what are you planning on doing?"
"Snort cocaine and stab homeless people."
"Mary, please be serious, what are you planning to do?"
"It's a se~cret~."
"Please, just tell me whether it's illegal or not?"
"Hmmm, I don't think so."
"Not filling me with confidence here."
"It's most likely not legal, but it's illegal to sell a car on a Sunday in this state," her head snaps to Mary, brows raised, though the girl in question continues to stare out of the window, "so who knows if there's some obscure law?"
"Wait what?" She interjects, not being able to hold back her curiosity.
"What?"
"It's illegal to sell a car on Sunday?"
"Yeah, the law was implemented in nineteen ninety-nine, same year the bill that let the President give Rosa Parks a gold star 'in recognition of her contributions to the Nation' on behalf of Congress. Though it got amended in two-thousand five, but I'm not really sure what changed. The uh, the car thing, got amended. I'm pretty sure Rosa Parks got her participation trophy."
One again, she finds herself baffled, both by the random amount of knowledge Mary possesses, as well as her casual disregard to figures of recent history like Rosa Parks.
"How do you even know all of this?"
"Got bored, looked up 'fun laws in New Jersey', found the car thing and them spent the rest of the day reading through bills that were passed in ninety-nine."
That...checks out. But doesn't alleviate her befuddlement. "But how do you remember it all?"
"Pshh, says the woman with an eidetic memory."
"Touché."
The rest of the short drive is enjoyed in comfortable silence.
The house that they pull into is a standard family home, with two floors, plenty of space and a garage so they can get out of the car without worrying about their costumes being seen.
Mary is out first, bounding across the room and into the house, making her smile at the thought of Mary being excited to spend some time with Suzuya, even is she'd prefer they not go out at night. But she knows that trying to stop them would only make things worse, so she'll just have to content herself with doing paperwork in the front room as she waits for them to come back.
It's not like she needs to sleep anyway, perks of being a Noctis cape, that along with her perfect memory.
When she enters the house proper, she is almost immediately greeted by a bang! Coming from upstairs, followed by a rather girly scream that she is fairly certain came from Suzuya.
And as she makes her way to the kitchen for a snack, she hears another thud that she unfortunately recognises as the sound of another knife being thrown into her walls, followed by a splash! And the sounds of struggle.
She wonders if this is what it's normally like for a parent to have children in America, before shaking the thought away. If all kids acted like these two, then the country would have been doomed long ago.
By the time she's finished making herself a sandwich, tuna, mayo and cheese, the sounds of bangs and thuds have stopped, replaced by screams and shouts that she can't make out through the walls.
Soon enough, that too stops, and she is just settling down in her sitting chair when the pair of trouble makers come bounding down the stairs.
Suzuya is the first to reach the bottom, his short black hair still wet and his loose black clothes floating under what she recognises as the effect of his power. However, Mary soon follows, conspicuously wearing a new set of clothes and with damp hair, and literally throws herself at the younger boy, causing them both to collapse and roll on the ground, with more shouts and groans following them.
She only watches, amused at their energy and not really worried about their safety. Despite how them might act, she knows that they are always sure not to let things go too far, at least with each other.
Granted, with both their powers they can stretch what could be considered 'too far', but either way, trying to get them to behave like 'normal children' would only cause them to lash out and resent her. So she leaves it be and just lets her worry stew silently in her mind.
"Get off of me!"
"Get out from under me then!"
"What kind of logic is that!?"
"The logic is you can suck my dick!"
"Why do you keep saying that! You don't even have one!"
"'Cuz you can suck my dick, that's why!"
Amused as she is by their energetic babbling, there is a limit to what she's just going to sit back and observe. So, putting on her sternest voice, she addresses the two of them. "Mary. Suzuya. Stop fighting, and what did I say about throwing knives in the house?"
Suzuya is the first to straighten up, giving her a salute for some reason. "Hai! It was Ma-chan who threw the knife!"
"What!" Mary shouts, her head snapping from Hannah to Suzuya, back to Hannah, "that's bullshit! He's the only one with so many knives in the first place!"
"Suzuya." She says, cutting the boy's retort off and making him straighten again, "do not throw knives in the house."
"Hmph, fine," Suzuya reluctantly says, making Mary immediately give him a smug grin, only for it to falter as she turns her attention to the girl.
"And Mary. Do not barge in on Suzuya while he is bathing."
"Tch, fine."
Shaking her head at their antics, she watches as the pair of them disappear for a minute, only to reappear with a backpack each and head out of the door. It's only when the door clicks shut that she realises that Mary never actually told her what she is planning to do, or how legal it is.
...She sure hopes they don't get into too much trouble, because at least some trouble is practically guaranteed with those two involved.
Meanwhile, twenty minutes later finds Suzuya and Mary in a certain spot on the boardwalk. Around them, the area was mostly empty, with only drunks enjoying their Friday night and the occasional Boardwalk security wondering about.
As a pair of teenagers, they don't really stand out, wondering around in the night, for any reason other than Mary being exceptionally attractive.
The pair of them soon make it to their destination, which is a fancy water fountain in the centre of a plaza surrounded by storefronts.
The two of them walk up to the fountain and take a seat at it's edge, just a pair of totally normal teenagers on a totally normal teenager hangout. As one, they spin their backpack over and into their laps, getting the attention of the nearby security, only to lose said attention when they both pull out some snacks and start casually eating.
However, once the guards look away, they both share a mischievous grin and glance at what else is inside their packs. Each of them has another bag in their bags, this one filled with some kind of liquid, and in one fluid motion, they both pull the inflated bags out and deposit them in the water behind them before ripping the bags open.
Then, after zipping their backpacks back up, they quickly start speed walking away, giggling to themselves.
"What the hell?" they hear someone say behind them, and immediately they both break out into a spring, glancing back to watch as the fancy fountain starts to overflow with bubbles and suds and foam, no doubt thanks to all the dish soap they just put inside of it.
"Hey! You two! Stop right there!"
The shouts of the guards only makes them laugh harder, and Mary turns around to throw her half eaten sandwich into a chasing guard's face, making him stumble and sputter. With both of them being parahumans, it's no real challenge for them to get away to a safe distance, giggling to each other at their little spontaneous prank.
And spontaneous it was, there was no reason behind it. Mary was just bored and thought this would be fun, easily convincing Suzuya to join her by literally shoving the boy out of his bath and giving him no choice in the matter.
"Hey, Suzu-kun," Mary says once they've made it a safe distance away and are just casually enjoying each other's company as they walk through the dark streets.
"Yeah, Ma-chan?"
"You mind waiting over there for a minute? I got a surprise for you but I gotta go get it, I'll be like, two minutes."
He eyes her sceptically for a moment, but ultimately he trusts her implicitly, so he just shrugs and walks over to the park bench indicated. "Sure."
"See ya in a bit, Suzu-kun."
And, like she said, it is only a couple of minutes later that Suzuya hears a rumbling approaching him, and when he looks up, he is greeted by the sight of a helmeted Maryam riding on a motorcycle.
Without a word, Mary slides back and offers Suzuya a helmet with one hand, patting the seat in front of her with the other. With the helmet on her head, no one will ever see the smile that graced Mary's face as she saw Suzuya's eyes practically light up with stars, before he leapt forward, pulling Mary into a bone crushing hug.
"Heck yes!!" He yells out in his native Japanese, before putting the helmet on and leaping onto the bike, smiling even wider when Mary wraps her left arm around his waist.
"This," she says as she points to the right handlebar, "is what makes the bike go, by twisting it this way. That lever is for the front brakes, while you control the back brakes here," she pats his right leg, and gently shows him to the lever there.
Swapping her arms around, she brings her left out, "this handle does nothing, but the lever is your clutch. You need to be holding the clutch down when you change gear, which you do here," she pats his left leg, manually showing his foot where the gears are.
"You will feel when you need to change gears, cuz the bike'll start making weird noises. Just don't go all out on the throttle right away, or you'll stall. Ease into it, we have plenty of time to speed later. Now, what are you waiting for?"
Despite having never driven anything before, Suzuya doesn't need any more encouragement than that. He's been wanting to drive a motorbike since Challenger let him ride with her, and now he finally gets to!
It does take some getting used to, but within half an hour they are cruising through the streets at unsafe speeds, all the while Suzuya is hooting and hollering, having the time of his life.
At least, until he loses control nearly an hour in and they crash into a bodega.
"Owww."
Ignoring Suzuya's complaints, Mary pushes a set of shelves off of herself, thankful that it was just the bread isle. Suzuya was less fortunate, crashing into where all the sauces were, leaving him covered head to toe in various liquids.
Focusing on her hearing, she realises that there are indeed sirens approaching, and quickly grabs the bike, picking it up easily enough and setting it down out the shop.
"Come on Suzu-chan! We gotta go!" She calls back, shortly followed by a soaked Suzuya making his way over, pouting when Mary gestures for him to get on behind her.
She doesn't really want to get caught, and while she knows she's safe from security cameras, this is Brockton Bay, getting caught red-handed, literally in Suzuya's case, would not be optimal.
But once again, this is Brockton Bay, so it is no trouble at all for them to get away home free, briefly breaking into another bodega to steal a towel so that Suzuya stops getting mess everywhere.
"Alright Suzu-chan," she says once they get to a more isolated area of the city, "get off and wait here, I need to return this bike, I'll be back in like, half an hour-ish. Clean yourself up a little in the meantime, my jacket too, I want it clean by the time I get back!"
Luckily, her jacket was the only item of her clothing ruined by Suzuya's saucy touch, allowing her to drive away from the pouting, but still smiling, Suzuya without having to worry about being dirty.
Which is great, because she's got one more stop for the night, this one a secret.
She only brought Suzuya to do all of this as an alibi. After all, if she were to get caught for being out today, it's unlikely anyone would look for anything beyond the obvious crimes she's committed so far.
Such a busy night~.
She sure hopes Hannah doesn't get too mad when she sees the morning news.
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Downtown, Wells Tower, Apartment #54
July 24th, 22:15
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Dressed in comfortable pyjamas and curled up on a sofa with her black hair down, Dr Jessica Yamada stifles another yawn, and reaches over a cardboard box filled with files to her phone, and briefly powers it on, checking the time.
"Haaah, when did it get so late?" She sleepily murmurs to herself, letting her phone drop back on the wooden coffee table with clank.
Leaning back into her new sofa, she considers the room around here. A fairly nice place, nothing too fancy, but that's to be expected of government accommodations. Better than the flat she was staying in in grad school, that's for sure.
But with her rather abrupt relocation to Brockton Bay, the place kind of looks like a mess. She only just arrived that day, after all. She hasn't had time to unpack everything yet, so her living room is filled with cardboard boxes.
It's not even like she has a lot of personal effects or anything, just that her job requires a lot of paperwork that she needs to keep with her.
And thinking about her job, she looks back to the table in front of her, where a few files are spread out detailing her newest charges' status, and she can't say she's impressed. It seems like the Brockton Bay Wards have been working with the bare minimum of therapy. They only see a hardly qualified therapist every week, and even then they miss most of the appointments thanks to their work.
Four of them don't even have a proper psych eval for Christ's sake!
And she's going to be meeting some of them tomorrow, something that she is honestly looking forward to. These kids need some help. How they have functioned without psychiatric help in a city like Brockton Bay is beyond her, she feels like she's going to have her work cut out for herself.
She didn't even know about this city a week ago, beyond just it's name and title as the Nazi capital of America. But everything is just crazy here! Plenty of cities have their problems, but usually it is limited.
Brockton Bay has the single largest Nazi gang in the country, with more capes than there are Heroes in the city, not counting the Wards. Then there's the Red Hearts, a rising gang that has built itself a massive, interstate drug empire in what feels like overnight.
The fact that having one of the biggest suppliers and distributers of illegal drugs this side of the country in the city is possibly one of the more tame aspects of Brockton Bay is disheartening to say the least.
Because one also has to consider that the city also houses Lung, the only cape to have ever fought an Endbringer one on one other than Eidolon. The man who sunk Kyushu just in the aftermath of said fight.
He's a monster, and he also happens to dabble in sexual slavery and other illicit business practices, with his clone-generating, teleporting serial killer minion Oni Lee. Getting defeated by a seventeen year old girl, one of her new charges at that, doesn't change any of that.
And that thought brings her back to a specific file laid out in front of her.
Maryam Malaki Bint Al-Chire Kadir Bin Abdullah Al-Hakim. A long name by American standards. She has a feeling that Maryam and her friend, Suzuya Rei, will be her most challenging cases, followed by Missy Biron. Poor girl triggered before she even hit puberty.
Tomorrow, it's been decided that she'll start her sessions with the ones who need them the most, so those three will be the only ones she meets for the day, starting with Maryam.
She's happy to help, but she would like having more to work with ahead of time, as she doesn't think she can trust anything her file says about her psyche. You don't go through the kind of stuff she's been through and just turn out perfectly well adjusted.
But, that's for later. She's going to need to be well rested tomorrow, so it would be best to go get some sleep and think about this over her morning coffee.
With such thoughts in mind, she heads off to bed, taking off her pyjama bottoms because she doesn't like the way they wrap around her when she fidgets in her sleep, leaving her in just a top and panties as she drifts off to sleep in the dark of her new home.
It's as she's drifting between sleep and wakefulness that she takes note of an oddity, causing her face to scrunch up slightly.
Addled by fatigue, she doesn't know how long it takes her before her mind properly registers that something is amiss, and it takes even longer before she figures out why.
Bleary with her mind half a step into the realm of dreams, Jessica's eyebrows furrow, though she keeps her eyes closed, her tired mind hoping to hold on to the sleep in it's grasp. She moves her body slightly, not enough to really move, but enough to get a feel for where her body is, when she figures it out.
There's a weight on my bed. The thought hits her like a gut punch, startling her into wakefulness and causing her eyes to burst open, only for her blood to freeze in her veins as, instead of the dark, empty ceiling of her new bedroom, she is greeted by the sight of a face.
A tanned woman, who's stark white hair flows either side of her head, like a curtain capturing them both within a veil, wearing a smile that does nothing to make Jessica feel comforted. Adrenaline and ice pour through her veins in equal measure, forcing her out of the realm of Morpheus and into the real world, a pit of fear forming in her gut at the unexpected presence.
"Hey there, Jess-chan~."
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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Lol, the second part is 1k words long, and I wrote it first, planning to finish that scene, before I realised how perfect of a cliff-hanger it was and deciding I had to end the chapter where I did. So I then went back and came up with a whole chapter of stuff to precede it, only to end up writing a whole ass chapter.
So, I guess this is a longer than average chap then lol, nearly 5k words.
Also, again, if it isn't clear, I'm planning for there to be a lot of slice of life, even if the character's being slice of lifed are maybe not exactly sane and average, as typical slice of life's are.
Also, for my non-worm fans, Jessica Yamada is a psychiatrist character that's become something of a meme in the worm community for her exceptional therapeutic prowess (I also referenced her in my first fic) so I have a question for you.
Do you think an exceptional therapist such as Yamada will be able to positively impact the psyche of my oc's? (That's Maryam, Suzuya and Emma btw. Mimic too, but she works with juveniles.)
(5)Advanced chapters on pat.reon, link in description and profile. Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses