2.1
"I hate robots." Yes, I know that is just -asking- Murphy to fuck over my weekend. I don't care. I thought 'fight fire with fire' was a good plan. Turns out their lasers are super tinker lasers of physics breaking proportions. When I use my laser it does almost nothing to the things. I managed to get one to fire at another through sheer luck (and I'm not fully discounting a little pity from Shard) and it punched a hole through the damn thing. That's the second robot I've taken out in four days. The rest of the evening I spent thinking over lasers and weaknesses - because one day I -am- going to be shot by a laser, I'll need some protection, and if I can figure out something I can use here then I should be able to beat this 'level' since the stupid robots use lasers as their primary offensive weapon. The rest of the night I worked on adjusting the properties and structure of the solidified mana I can make.
Shard was doing the equivalent of jumping up and down on my mind demanding that I let her out, so I summoned her... only to have her try to roll my head out of bed ignoring the fact it's attached to my body.
I grumble "Ack, fine, getting up, just stop" I roll out of bed and blink away sleep blearily. I grab clothes for the day and-. Mom is on the other side of my door. I was asleep all night, I can't possibly be in trouble. I crack open the door and peer out at her "Yeeees?"
She smiles brightly, "Oh my favorite son! Such a coincidence to find you here. Give me the money from yesterday. And Shard. We're going shopping!"
I blink. I close the door and go back to bed. Nope, not happening. It's a dream.
Shard uses a Boost to -toss- me out of bed, eliciting a startled yell from me right before the floor introduces itself.
She's glaring at me. And mom is patiently waiting on the other side of my door. I breathe out a frustrated sigh, "Fi-ne." and I go open the door and let mom in. "You know I'm going to be late?"
Mom shakes her head with Shard landing on her shoulder "No, I asked Shard to wake you up early, you've got three extra hours" she says while smiling happily. I would almost be upset about that, but it's not like I really relax in my sleep anymore. Hell, now that I think about it, the only times I 'relax' are when I'm flying around or lighting people on fire. In school I'm training, the trip to and from school I typically deal with either Taylor or the PRT, lunch I've been having to deal with Sophia and Wards and when I sleep I'm actually fighting super tinker laser robots.
I nod "Fine, come in, kneel down, focus on meditation and keeping your mind open to bring Shard into your aura. You pretty much know how all this works."
She follows my instructions, sitting lotus style instead, she takes a deep breath through her nose, lets it out slowly through her mouth, then takes another deep breath-... and her deep violet aura -pulses- with a ripple of power. I haven't even started yet. I see a wave filter through the 'void' between auras... wow, ok. That gives me -so- much to think on.
I tilt my head "Um, mom, what did you just do?" The density of her aura is still climbing but it seems to be filtering back into her body now, though a lot is filtering out into the 'void' showing it's reached some upper limit.
She opens her eyes but keeps her meditative breathing going "Meditating, why?" Shard is looking at her curiously too.
I raise an eyebrow and point at her "You just somehow -pulsed- your aura and it's thicker now, not in size but the amount of it. You'll have to teach me how to do that later."
She smiles thinking about it, "This is just something I learned to do when I was pretty big into martial arts, it was a way to recover from fatigue faster and center yourself to sharpen your focus. So... Does this mean I'll be able to use magic?" her eyes are wide with hope
I shrug "You know about as much about how this stuff works as I do. Taylor couldn't do -anything- with it." I almost mentioned her secondary core... oops. "But that doesn't necessarily mean it's -impossible-... though if it -were- possible, you'd think we'd have heard of it before. Either way it does seem to be doing something to your body, a lot is coming out of your core to be absorbed by your physical body."
She nods "That would explain why it helps to recover from fatigue." Then she shrugs "Oh well, don't have all day come on, start the whole possession-transferral thing, I want to take my daughter shopping."
I roll my eyes "And this has -nothing- to do with wanting to fly -at all-." But I start the transfer. Even with the bit of practice from yesterday it still takes more than an hour to build up and convert the mana, it's even more difficult with how -dense- my mother's mana is. To match to Taylor's I felt almost like I was creating a small vacuum pocket and adjusting the... 'frequency' for lack of a better term. For my mother's I feel almost like I'm trying to compress water and boil it at the same time.
Eventually Shard was sitting comfortably in mom's aura and hugging her tightly before merging into her mind. Mom smiled brightly and says "No, you get up here, you're my co-pilot, we're gonna teach you how to cook!" After that the entirety of mom's eyes had turned the dark glowing violet of her aura. "There we go, now show me how that flight thing- " she frowns "Well poo. I guess I can't control it. Not -yet- anyway." She seems to be focusing "Alright Shard honey, when I do -this-... yeah, just like that" and she starts floating and turning in the air she starts slow but is picking up speed surprisingly fast as she zips down to the kitchen to apparently teach Shard how to cook. Giggling maniacally the whole way in dual tones.
I'm a little worried about how Shard is going to act when I get her back - they're impressionable at that age. Well, I think that's just a part of who Shard is, she'll -always- be impressionable. I shake my head and disperse the horrifying thought and go with my natural defensive mechanism; ignore it and hope it goes away.
The rest of the morning goes -mostly- without incident. I got the burned pancakes and what I can only assume were supposed to be eggs. I told my mom where the money was when I left and headed out to wait for the bus.
The bus was a little early today so I ended up jogging part of the way to catch it since my mom and sis had wasted so much time 'cooking'. I sat in the back with Taylor again. "So, Shard is hanging out with mom today. Feels a little odd to not have her little comments."
Taylor blinks for a moment then she realizes "Oh that's right, you get those -all- the time"
I nod "So, any news today?"
She smiles a bit "Yeah, 'Oblivium's team' rescued four girls yesterday, one of which had been missing for nearly a month, the others a couple of weeks or so. Based on the info that leaked they hadn't been ready for 'sale'." She shudders, "I just... that's horrible. The guys in that building deserved -far- worse than they got." She sighs a bit, "But we did a good thing, rescued them and kept them from being... well, -more- injured. The mental damage will be the worst of it though. On a lighter note they were rescued by a 'fairy' and her 'knight'" she smirks and laughs a little, "Maybe we should change your name to 'Fairy Knight'?"
I roll my eyes "let's just put it in the book and hold onto it until something happens where 'Oblivium' needs to go into hiding."
Now Taylor's laughing. Once she calms down she continues, "In other news, Armsmaster refuses to speak about Oblivium at all, Miss Militia seems fairly neutral on him and his team and Oblivium's team 'might' be attending the conference." She looks serious now, "This conference will be a -huge- boost to the PRT. There's something I want to try to work out with them so I'll need your help tonight."
I raise an eyebrow "I'm -not- playing leader for a real meeting with the PRT. Using that to bust out Impact was one thing, using it for a meeting where I'll be looking to you every few seconds is another."
She nods "I know, you'll start off and explain that I'm the leader but you can be the 'visual representative' or whatever they want to call it during the conference as long as they don't have you do too much talking." She holds up a hand to forestall my complaint, "Wait. We will only agree to it if we can get what we want from them. The PRT has branches they call on. One of those branches is the Wards. I want us to create a new 'branch' as a sort of contractor. We get minimum funding for patrols, even less than the Wards, but our main focus is recon and pinpoint strikes. The PRT always needs information. If we find suspicious activity we can take care of it if it looks dangerous, bring in the protectorate to assist if it's important, or call in the Wards to get them some experience if it looks like a normal group and we just act as backup. We're also on call for emergencies. I think if we show ourselves as a separate group from the PRT it'll be easier to sell; if a mission goes badly for PR purposes, we take the PR hit, but if it goes well we were 'hired' and 'worked alongside the PRT for this victory' and all that. It -does- mean we can't just let our reputation plummet though. If it gets bad enough then the PRT wouldn't be able to 'hire' us."
I understand, it basically lets us get away without any real restrictions but gives us a little bit of income by letting the PRT have the ability to point us in a direction or let us roam and when we make a big success like with Lung they get part of the credit. I know there was something going on with Sophia though, so I'm waiting for the other shoe. I motion for her to continue.
This time she lets out a deep breath, "I also think we can twist this to bring Sophia in so they have an 'inside man' though she may have to legitimately change personas. I'm also not sure but we may have to have a PRT 'handler'. Just a contact we go through, he wouldn't -really- have any power, but the PRT might require it."
I nod "Alright, I get most of it, I even understand the handler thing. But what about Sophia? You -despised- that girl. Are you -really- okay bringing her in on this? Hell, -I- don't like her and I'm pretty much the poster boy of apathy."
She just shrugs "I don't know. I just don't care anymore, it's like that was an entire -other life-. If I ended up in that same situation again I don't think it'd bother me that much now. It's just... that stuff doesn't matter. I mean who cares about having to re-do a project when we saved the lives of four innocent girls that can grow up to live semi-normal lives now? Or the excitement I can look forward to each time the team goes out." She looks out the window as she continues, "The other thing is, I don't think I'd handle it the same way. I don't forgive her, but I just don't care as much about it." She shrugs.
I left Taylor to her thoughts as the bus continued along until it stopped for Sophia. Aaaand, yep, she's coming back here. She has a small smirk on her face, "I heard about what you did last night."
Taylor and I look over to her as she seats herself across the aisle. Taylor speaks up "And what's the news in the Wards about it?"
The smirk on Sophia's face is a little terrifying, it's the hint of bloodlust I think. Like if her smile opened up there'd be fangs instead of teeth. She speaks up, "Armsmaster said it was unprofessional, but the Wards were all on your side. Did you -really- break both legs of every ABB member you found?"
I look at Taylor "Was he -really- that thorough?"
Taylor nods "Yeah, he was -not- happy with them."
I shrug "Eh, he stayed within the rules." then I turn back to Sophia who was grinning, "Yep, no legs left unbroken." Sophia sits back in her seat. I think she's pretty happy with the idea of joining us. I'm... a little torn. We'll have to come up with some codes for basic 'slaughter rules'. Like the two bones thing. If we have two people with the two bones rule then things could go overboard. Maybe we can just split up their 'zone', Sophia gets the runners, and we let them run if they try to, while Impact only gets the guys inside. Parahumans would be free game.
The rest of the bus ride was idle chat.
School was pretty normal, Carlos and Dean and... well that whole group left me alone at lunch, however bad news happened. Apparently Taylor has a class with Sophia that I didn't know. She told Sophia to let me know I need to check out the Oblivium thread in the library asap. So I went to the library after eating and booted up a comp to check out PHO.
It took a bit to browse through, apparently I had more pictures out there than I thought. Lots of complaints of 'not trying hard enough' when it comes to my costume since half the time I don't bring my 'outfit' with me... I should start doing that I guess. However the thing Taylor wanted me to see was close to the end. There was a series of images and comments that played out a story.
My sister and mother were indeed shopping. During their trip they had come upon a domestic dispute which culminated in the man hitting his girlfriend. About that moment sis/mom let Shard's power flare up creating the deep violet glowing skin, floating fire-like hair and wispy wings. Shard doesn't know how to fight, so the punch was all mom, I'll just say this, she has a -mean- hook, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Shard boosted it. By that point a crowd had gathered so I saw the rest from multiple angles. She took off his leather jacket, propped him against a lightpost and put the jacket back on around the post with some adjustments from my sewing pen and a bit of material from his shirt. Next, she sewed the leather jacket shut around him. Sewed his arms to his sides, and his pant legs together. -Then- she bought a homeless guy's cardboard sign and marker for fifty bucks, turned the sign over and wrote 'I punch my girlfriend in public' on the blank side of the cardboard and sewed -that- to the chest of the coat.
Then she went on her merry way, the glow dissipating to normal and bags back in hand. When asked who she was, she said one word. "Oblivimom"
I... I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I decided 'yes. I do.' so I laughed so hard I cried. Then promptly decided I would consider the ramifications of this tomorrow, because Saturday would give me a whole day to figure it out.
I didn't get any odd looks, so the connection from 'Oblivimom' to 'William R. Taylor' had not been made yet at least.
After school I changed to Oblivium - Shard's been in my head too much, I almost said 'Transformed'. And I met up with Arachne outside the PRT building. We needed to get this worked out because the conference was this weekend. I mumbled to myself "I guess I -won't- have a full day to figure it out".
I'm absolutely -certain- Taylor was smiling at my misery, "Well, look at the bright side, once they figure it out you can just float around school."
I blink for a long moment. True. That's actually a pretty awesome bright side. Hell, I could start using some of my more overt powers for stuff during class. Who needs to imagine an atomic particle if I can just make a custom model in real time?
Then I glare at Taylor, "Yeah but, Oblivimom? Really?"
She shrugs, "She's -your- mother. Honestly you should have expected this the moment you let Shard spend the day with her."
I deflate, "Yeah... I know. But you can't just say -no- to her."
A guy in streamlined armor showed up, the half-helm he had showed his mouth and jaw. The guy had a laugh in his voice. It was like how some people just -sound- happy all the time, his voice sounded like he was in on a universal joke. "Hey Oblivikid! Nice to meet ya. Anyone that can get under Armsy's skin like you did is a friend of mine. Oh, and Hi other person." He holds out a hand to shake mine and waves to Taylor. "The name's Assault, my better half is busy 'not being here'. Some excuse about the two of us in the same room would be enough to break any mortal mind."
I shake his hand while he uses his free one to wave away the excuse his wife had given, "She sounds like a smart woman," I look to Taylor, "I'm not insinuating anything but maybe you two should hang out, maybe pick up a few pointers."
I'm pretty sure Taylor rolled her eyes.
Once the handshake is done he turns around to lead us off "I'm supposed to take you up to the meeting room with Piggot and Armsy, that is, unless you're here to recruit Lung?" He... almost looks hopeful.
I look at Taylor "We have that on the list for Tuesday don't we? How did he get -The List-?"
Taylor stares at me for a moment, then says dryly, "Obviously he's psychic." Which makes him bark a laugh.
We continue the idle chat and joking all the way up to the meeting room. I like this guy, need to get him and my parents into the same room. Oh, maybe we can do a barbecue and invite some heroes?
Assault wasn't allowed in the meeting room. I'm personally of the opinion that his wife shared her theory with the others.
Piggot and Armsy are the only ones in the room besides Taylor and I. We take our seats and I cough, because that's what you do to let everyone know it's your turn to talk. "Just a heads up," I point my thumb over at Taylor, "She's the brains. I'm just here to sit and look pretty."
Taylor turns to me and says flatly "Thanks for that." Then turns back to Piggot to start her speech. Piggot knew this was the determining factor of our team showing up to the conference, she apparently wasn't aware of just what kinds of... forceful requests we were going to make. She -also- apparently learned not to be overly aggressive while I was around - because I was perfectly happy to just smile, wave and fly out the window.
Mostly I tuned out the meeting while I created little fun constructs that Armsmaster stared at -intently-. I think he was scanning them. I kept making minor adjustments to the structure and dissipating them after a few seconds so each partial scan would look different, just to irritate him. Just a few minutes into the meeting he was frowning deeply, but -still- trying to scan. Piggot on the other hand kept flicking her eyes my way, I think she was upset I wasn't taking this seriously. Personally I didn't care that much. I didn't particularly want Sophia on the 'team' and we could get money for Impact from gang raids.
Taylor planned out the whole thing pretty well. She had opened stating she was going to be recording the meeting for her records and to have evidence of any verbal agreements and would supply a copy to the PRT after the meeting. Taylor had anticipated exactly what Piggot would push for and she fought just enough to let Piggot think she 'won' the handler and point of contact with the PRT. Our handler was some guy named 'Agent Hutchison'. I ignored the rest, I'm pretty sure our handler will be the one in touch with our contact. As for Sophia... that one surprised Piggot. Taylor made the sale by saying it would split her actions away from the PRT - swept under the rug basically and any future actions would be pinned on our group while still having to stay within her probationary status to be enforced by Agent Hutchison as well as attending her counseling sessions. She is also to still be a Ward in the records but not to the public eye. We all will also be expected to give, at a minimum, verbal reports of anything that happens for PRT records.
Our first 'mission' was finding out about possible dissent among the parahumans within E88 and see if there's something to it, either because someone was ambitious enough to try to take over, or if there's someone who was forcibly recruited somehow. A -side- mission was to reduce their strength. With Lung gone and another ABB parahuman having been captured, even if he wasn't exactly a powerhouse, the ABB could feel threatened or E88 may try to pull them out by the roots, which would end with a -lot- of damage to Brockton Bay. We were to have a report of our findings to our 'handler' by Monday evening.
Piggot promised to get the paperwork ready to meet what we discussed and Taylor supplied a copy of the recording of the meeting to Armsmaster so they had a record. She didn't think Piggot would go back on her word, but better safe than sorry.
After the meeting I just jumped out the window with Taylor and flew to the ground. She screamed at first, then hit me once she was on solid ground.
I shrug, "Okay, I deserved that. I'm headed home though, don't want to be black and blue for the conference, and I need to have a -discussion- with 'Oblivimom' and ... 'Oblivisis'."
Taylor just laughed. She pulled out her talisman and held it out "Fill me up, I want to do a bit of patrolling tonight. We'll meet up tomorrow morning and I'll have a speech ready for you. I've got to call up Impact and let him know we're getting some spotlight hero treatment. I don't think it'll be a hard sell, he likes the attention."
I nod and spend the time to re-enchant the talisman for another deflection shield. "Be careful and if things look bad give me a call."
She sticks it in her pocket and waves as she walks off, "Will do"
And I fly home to see what kind of trouble my mother and sis had gotten up to. I -really- doubt 'Oblivimom' only made -one- appearance.