WHAT THE FUCK WHERE IS SHE

On a rooftop of a decrepit building, windows shattered. It's hard to tell where in the city she is exactly given the white fog that seems omnipresent.

...what the hell is she wearing, is that a skirt? Why do her hands look like that - is this Brockton Bay, are there any landmarks above the fog -

That might be the right skyline, if fog had crept up and over all the buildings.

But it's not raining. So the Leviathan fight is over. Which kind of prompts the question of how she could be alive but also abandoned on a rooftop without any of her gear. She shifts her weight and - stumbles - does she not even have her implants anymore??

Okay, what does she have. The skirt at least has pockets.

She has a pack of spearmint bubblegum, a wallet, and a pocket knife.

The wallet contains Nikki Carter's learners permit.

Who is Nikki Carter and why is she wearing her clothes.

Is there anything useful to be had on the roof if she gets on her hands and knees out of an abundance of caution and searches it.

There's quite a bit of shattered glass on the ground! She can see far enough that she doesn't need to get on her hands and knees though - not much of use on the roof. A fire escape if she wants to go down that way, a door to get back into the building if she wants to go down a different way.

If she opens the door is there any clue what kind of building she's on?

A building filled with fog! And apartments, if she looks further down the stairwell. She can hear the sound of someone crying and someone else screaming inside.

Okay, well, there's nothing to be accomplished here on this roof, there's plenty of fog up there too, and somebody seems like they're in trouble. She goes down the stairs.

Her proprioception informs her that the patch of roof she was standing on earlier is still in the same place! And it is whole and undamaged!

Excuse her?

The patch of roof, it is okay! It is an okay patch of roof.

Okay she's going to go back up the stairs to the okay patch of roof and further investigate this phenomenon.

She gets closer to the patch of roof as she approaches it - a fact that is very apparent to her. She feels oddly ... centered when she stands on it, like all of her body is in one place. And somehow all of her being in one place isn't a default aspect of her body anymore.

Did she... have a second trigger... or... Butcher into poor Nikki Carter's body... or... what...

- okay, no, simple test for this. If she wanted to do that update to her bot's algorithm for blocking advertisements she'd been postponing -

She has no idea how to do that. What if instead she continued being this patch of roof.

What the shit.

Can she be... any... other... patches of roof.

Sure, though it takes a couple of seconds to switch to a different patch of roof and there's a bit of a gap where she's no patches of roof at all. It feels odd, being no patches of roof.

IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO FEEL ODD BEING NO PATCHES OF ROOF.

If she goes all the way to the opposite end of the roof from her patch does that do anything.

Nope, the feeling of being this new patch of roof (which is whole and unharmed) remains steady.

...kay. She's gonna go down the stairs away from her patch of roof now.

Then she will eventually approach a woman screaming at a man to get away and a man cowering and shaking and attempting to lash out if the woman gets to close.

Why are these people in the same room if they do not want to interact.

They are in the lobby of the building. The way the two of them are acting does not give the impression that they are thinking particularly clearly.

The woman notices Lorica first.

"STAY BACK!!" she screams, brandishing a particularly long shard of broken glass at her.

"I'm staying back! How about you let this guy get wherever he's trying to go, and I will exit the building altogether, and you can be by yourself."

"YOU'RE WITH HIM!!"

"No, I have no idea who he is! Sir, where are you trying to get to?"

The man edges away from her, his eyes darting around wildly.

"I don't think any of us want to be here. How about he leaves first, and then you and I can part ways, ma'am."

The man startles at.. something, it's hard to tell what, and bolts for the door.

As long as the woman doesn't chase him or anything!

The woman seems to consider but decide against it.

In that case she's going to give the guy a head start and then edge out of the building herself, eyes on the woman with the glass.

She's a block away when she feels herself straining, her patch of roof getting too far from her regular body. It would probably be more comfortable if she just used her "moving her patch of roof" muscle or something.

That's going to get so annoying!

She slows down, trying to figure out how much of an actual handicap this is.

Her range is large enough and the process of changing her anchor instinctive enough that it's not a very noticeable issue.

That being said, the moving her anchor muscle is entirely distinct from her ability to choose a new anchor.

Can she just - not have one, peel herself off the roof and not put herself down anywhere.

Yeah she can do that. Feels uncomfortable though. Like her body is entirely in her body and nowhere else.

THAT'S WHERE IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THOUGH?? Ugh. She will claim a chunk of asphalt by a bench and sit down; it's not like she knows where she's walking to.

She can hear the occasional sound of screaming in the distance, and see strange lights in the sky a few blocks from her.

Well, her current superpower, for some fucking reason, is to be one with the road. If it does anything else it is not obvious. Plus she doesn't even have her implants. So she's not very a superhero right now. She's gonna. Hang out.

Things don't change much, at least for the next hour.

She is going to spend this - downtime - poking her new power. She misses her old one real bad, but this one probably isn't just The Power To Identify An Incredibly Bizarre Amount With Concrete.

She can anchor to things other than the ground, so long as it's big and solid enough. 

After anchoring herself to a nearby car she discovers she can move the things she's anchored to - levitating the car a foot off the ground.

Oh! Okay. That's cool. Can she attach to smaller things? Can she move them fast? Precisely?

The things can't be that small, the bench is the smallest she can find and she gets the sense that if it weren't have of metal it would be too light to be... part of her.

She can move her anchor pretty darn fast and with more precision than she can move the rest of her body (now that she lacks her implants anyways).

Okay. Can she tell if she can rip the bench out of where it's bolted to the ground, without actually doing it?

She could! It might hurt her? Or the bench. Which would be her during the ripping portion.

There are other people in this city who dare venture outside, evidently. Lorica can hear a group of them in the distance, voices indistinct but just possible to make out:

“So I end the world?  Interesting.” says a man's voice.

It's not a very emergent emergency, just weird fog, maybe making people paranoid or something? so it wouldn't be that weird for somebody to be taking a walk and talking about video games, but it's not where she'd place her bets. She ducks behind a dumpster. Peels herself off the bench and pastes herself onto the car again.

The conversation continues:

“The source is a little unreliable,” replies the voice of Skitter

The man does not sound convinced, “Still, I would love to see how that comes about.”

“You won’t live to,”

A young girl's voice responds with complete confidence: “I’ll make sure he does,”

As the group turns the corner Lorica can recognize the man and girl, it's not very hard. Jack Slash and Bonesaw aren't easily to mistake for anyone else.

Ahahah holy fucking shit and her without her kit on. Will they find her? She doesn't care to bet! She throws the car at them at maximum velocity!

Jack Slash has a preternaturally talented ability to dodge sudden attacks by capes, some would say a superhuman ability to do so.

Apparently this does not apply to the van Lorica just threw directly into him, leaving a vaguely Jack shaped smear across the ground and the front of the van.

And now she isn't that van any more. She is that station wagon instead. And also still hiding. Maybe they will leave and regroup.

(Lorica spends a brief moment switching her anchor, during which time she feels oddly dented.)

For a moment, Bonesaw and Skitter both seem frozen.

Then Bonesaw screams, a high pitch sound cutting clean across the city. Skitter backs away just as the Siberian appears, seemingly out of thin air, to pick up and spirit Bonesaw away.

Oh good, that would have been worth dying... uh, again... and even worth killing the next Nikki Carter, but it's better not to have to. Hiding. Hiding hiding.

Skitter lifts up into the air, riding what appears to be a giant beetle. As she leaves what few bugs remain of her swarm eat away at any last scraps of Jack they can find.

Giant beetle. Cool ride. Since when does she have one of those, did she and Hellhound collaborate on - not the point. She's going to cut through this store with the broken windows to be Not Here Any More.

Half a hour later the miasma starts to clear.

Can she, like, read street signs now?

Yup!

Okay so where is she. How does she get anywhere familiar.

She's in an only mildly unfamiliar part of downtown as it turns out. It is about an hour walk to her house.

Nope, not her house, she's not going to show up at her house right now like this, she wants to go to the PRT.

The PRT office she is closest to is collapsed in on itself, abandoned. A laminated sign outside directs her to a temporary office a few blocks away. 

The temporary office is in a slightly less wrecked building, wooden paneling replacing the windows that were broken by Shatterbird's scream. 

That will do her. She will go in and see where she falls in the triage.

It'll take a bit, PRT staff and volunteers are largely busy taking down descriptions of people who went missing during the miasma.

Yeah, she's less urgent than all of that and is, relatively speaking, content to sit here.

The missing persons cases wind down and eventually the only person in-line ahead of Lorica is a woman trying to explain that all the medical aid in her neighborhood has been stolen by Skitter who keeps it at this address and can't the PRT go and get it back and give it to people like they are supposed to. The woman is informed that unless Skitter is keeping all the medical supplies for herself this is not actually a thing they are going to bother with. She can go to this clinic here if going to Skitter isn't okay but the wait lines are long and they'd really prefer she just get her medical supplies from the source nearest her home, whether or not that source is a supervillain. The woman leaves for the official clinic after a brief argument.

"Next?"

"Um, hello. My situation is very weird and I'm not sure where to start."

"Are you or others in imminent danger?"

"No, that's why I waited."

"If you can give me an overview I'll direct you to the relevant resource."

"The identification in my pocket belongs to someone I have never heard of and I am concerned I may have Butchered into her body, more or less. I believe I would have died in the Leviathan attack."

Well, that's not exactly in the handbook.

"If you can provide proof of identity we can contact your next of kin?"

"I could have gone to my house, but it seems like there's an ongoing crisis. Oh, uh, also, I have new powers."

Oh, powers. This is definitely above this staff member's pay grade.

"I can contact someone more senior than me to talk you through registration. Or uh, re-registration. Do you want a temporary mask in the meantime?"

"Yes please."

Here is a very cheap domino mask!

And after a bit, here is a Miss Militia approaching.

"Hi, Miss Militia."

"Hi, I'm told you're claiming to be a cape who died in the Leviathan attack?"

"Yeah. Lorica. - I'm just assuming I died then, I don't specifically remember dying, I just woke up about an hour ago in this body."

"Do you have a way to verify this?"

"I could identify my previous face out of a picture array, I remember passwords to my software that should convince my bot if it hasn't been dismantled or anything, I will be able to refer to shared history with people? I think my memories of being Lorica are of normal quality for my subjective timeline, I don't actually know how long it's been."

"About a month has passed - could you verify your identity with your bot remotely?"

"If you can get me on a call with it, probably, yeah."

Miss Militia has an unshattered phone Lorica can use.

Lorica has a cryptic conversation with the bot and then hands the phone back over to Miss Militia.

"I believe it is likely that this is either Lorica or an extremely powerful Thinker emulating her," reports the bot.

"Okay."

"We'll get thinkers to finish verifying your identity but I'm for one convinced."

"Welcome back," she says, smiling.

"Uh, thanks, though I'd be happy about it if I hadn't killed whoever this used to be in the process. In other news have a new power now and I am not a tinker any more."

"I can have your previous identity be reported as deceased and have the next of kin notified."

"Do you have a sense for what your new powers are?"

"Yeah and I killed Jack Slash with them."

"Come again?"

"I was experimenting with it, and Jack Slash appeared, and I killed him. Bonesaw was there too, and Skitter, but the Siberian appeared and took Bonesaw away."

"You confirmed he's dead?"

"I guess it is not totally impossible that Bonesaw has an upload of his brain and can reconstruct him with that and a drop of blood. I did see Skitter's bugs eating the remains but some probably splashed her too."

"Splashed her?"

"I hit him really really hard with a car."

"Jack Slash died because you hit him really really hard with a car?"

"That's at least what it looked like, I can't rule out that something exotic is interfering with me?"

"Where did this happen?"

Lorica gives the intersection.

"Congratulations?" Miss Militia offers not sounding very sure of herself.

"All the chaos of today aside, this will be a great day for the world if Jack Slash is no longer in it and you are."

"Yeah. Just, uh, poor Nikki."

"Yeah."

Miss Militia is silent for a moment.

"Do you have somewhere safe to stay for the night?"

"I could go home if you'd vouch that it's me. And if my house is there."

Charlie was never as careful about unmasking as her and had Miss Militia over for dinner once.

"Your house is still there - comms says the Think Tank confirmed your identity so I'll let Transit know. It's getting pretty late and I need to report back to HQ - you can come in for power testing soon?"

"Yeah, I can do that."

The walk home is barely familiar - buildings toppled during Leviathan's attack and most of the rubble is left- albeit with trenches cutting through places where intersections were blocked. Every window in Brockton Bay was shattered when the nine arrived, plywood put up in its place to keep out the weather. 

The trenches become more frequent as she gets closer to home, paths that were carved for water to flow through during Leviathan's attack have been reinforced, additional lighting making them into safe corridors for pedestrians - better than the city sidewalks that remain unlit following Shatterbird's "performance".

Home sweet warzone.

A cape she doesn't recognize approaches her, with a durable looking costume the color of asphalt. 

Oh right, she's wearing a domino mask. She puts herself in a nearby taxi and slows down a little but doesn't say hi.

Tattletale had the most wild guess about who killed Jack Slash.

"Um."

"Are you."

Lucien's voice is obvious despite the change in costume. 

She stops. "- uh, do you have a new name now -"

"Um."

"Oh yeah, Lacunus."

He picked it to remember a friend who died.

... Probably died.

"Seriously? I would've told you to go with Chasm or something."

"It was to remember a friend." he says, reflexively. 

"Your friend would've told you to go with Chasm or something. It's better than the last name, at any rate. I assume Miss Militia told you?"

That certainly sounds like something Lorica would say!

"Tattletale, actually."

"Huh. I guess maybe Skitter told her enough to put it together."

"There's a long range empath involved who sensed someone with an emotional void. Also I think someone in the PRT might have tipped her off."

"Well, I did walk into a pretty random PRT office."

"Mm... Um."

"What happened?"

"I - Butchered into this random girl, sort of, apparently."

"Is she in there with you?"

"If she is she can't talk to me."

"Maybe Tattletale can tell. Or the empath."

"It'd be nice to know if there's anything to be done for her, yeah. Her name was Nikki, I have her ID."

Lucien is honestly not sure what the conversationally appropriate way is to respond to the recently resurrected friend whose death you were responsible for about the person who probably died to make her resurrection possible! 

Hopefully the correct answer is awkward silence cause it's what he's going with, apparently.

"I have a different power now - I guess the same defensive one but I'm not a tinker anymore."

"Skitter said Jack Slash got hit with a van?"

"Yeah, I can hit people with vans. It's less, uh, fun, but it's oomphy."

"There's a reward for killing him, 2 mill apparently. Would have been more but the PRT capped it to prevent people from making bad decisions."

He will leave out the bit where Regent said the reward might even cover Lorica's speeding ticket. 

"Way less than I figured I could make tinkering."

"Oh um. About that."

"I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be recruiting you."

"I have no idea how old I legally am now."

"How old you are?"

"Would I be a Ward, or, uh, in for the duration."

"Oh, I'm not sure."

"I'd be recruiting you for the Undersiders, not the Wards." he says, embarrassed. 

"- why would I want to be an Undersider. Why would you, for that matter."

"After Leviathan attacked, the PRT was unsure about whether to promote me or punish me. His retreat through my trenches killed a lot of capes - a fourth of the ones who died during the fight were killed then. A few of them blamed my parents, said it was a simurgh plot."

"Skitter showed me her territory afterwards - it was one of the harder hit places in the city but was recovering faster than most. She told me she was a villain because it's how she thought she could do the most good, and that if I joined she'd want me to do the same - focus on construction and infrastructure rather than fighting. And she told me they paid better, and would fund my parent's tattoo removal as a signing bonus."

When he had joined he had not considered how embarrassing explaining this to his dead friend would be!

"They um, also are probably a safer team to be on than the Wards right now. And a more politically powerful one - within the bay at least."

"Safer and more politically powerful. How?"

"Leviathan changed things. Killed Armsmaster, Dauntless, Gallant, a bunch of New Wave. And um, you."

"The Undersiders all survived, and with Kaiser dead the Empire collapsed. The Undersiders inherited a lot of resources from Coil and an alliance with the Travelers. With the ABB defunct after the bombings they're the most powerful group left. Even the Merchants are gone - the nine killed most of them."

"Undersider's divided the city up among themselves and their allies and no one is left who can challenge that.

"Politics-wise Tattletale's been using Coil's money to fund relief and reconstruction and she's persuaded quite a few politicians that they'd be better off if they were friends with her." 

"I guess that sounds like the sort of thing she'd do. I don't really see myself going villain."

"I'm actually a rogue - unless you count unlicensed construction as villainous I suppose. So's Parian."

"Parian?"

"Controls dolls, had a fashion career. Went up against the nine to protect the people in her neighborhood."

"There's also a thinker who's a rogue that the Undersiders are allied with."

"Are the Undersiders all done with robbing banks and stuff now or are they just making nice with rogues?"

"As far as I know they only ever robbed the one bank. The Undersiders own a bunch of the banks in Brockton Bay now - easier to finance reconstruction through loans to local business then most other methods." 

This was non-zero his idea.

"I was planning on going rogue after graduating but in a private enterprise sort of way."

"Yeah, Tattletale had a Savings account marked 'Try to Buy Lorica'. She's a fan of the way you mess with almost every Thinker who isn't her."

"Um, to clarify - they are still villains themselves, just less... chaotic ones."

"Well, uh, I can't say I'm not flattered, but. I have two million dollars coming and a lot to catch up on and parents to go home to. We can talk later?"

"Sure."

He also wants her to join selfishly but this probably shouldn't factor into any decisions she makes. 

"Yeah. I don't know if I'll be able to get into my old email... I guess the bot can finesse it if it's still operational, so, email me?"

"Will do."

"It's good to see you again. I guess it was longer for you, but still."

"Yeah. It's been... rough with you gone."

He's still not really emotionally registering that this person is Lorica.

"Have fun being an Undersider or whatever you are, I guess, Lacunus." And off she goes. It would be pretty rude to follow her home.

He returns to patrolling his territory, checking on how people are holding up after the miasma.

And Bella is returned to the bosom of her family, who are confused but tearfully happy.

She receives an email overnight.

(This is Lacunus, PHO confirmation [here].)
Letting you know that this is my email.

Not really certain what to say. Tattletale says Jack Slash is dead - it's unlikely but possible he survived the van but not Skitter's bugs eating the remains. I'm not sure who leaked the news, but there's a "Jack Slash, cautionary tale of the dangers of jay walking" meme going around.

I think he was actually on the sidewalk but I admit that checking was not a priority.

Makes sense.

Lorica begins the process of having her original body disinterred so she can retrieve her implants. They weren't hard to install, she was never a biotinker, so she should be able to use them in this body too, which seems equally clumsy.

The tinkertech was actually removed and put into storage before her body was buried - the PRT can get it to her once they find a Tinker to handle ongoing maintenance for it.

The implants weren't supposed to need maintenance, since they were supposed to be in her body. She should be able to just slice and shove.

Is her power informing her of this? Use of tinkertech without dedicated tinker maintenance is very dangerous and not recommended, much less tinkertech which requires... impromptu self mutilation. They must recommend against that in the strongest of terms. 

[Here] is a helpful PRT Branded e-brochure on the dangers of using unmaintained Tinkertech.

Also, [here] is an overproduced video where Boston Protectorate member Velocity talks about the dangers of self-harm. 

It's hers, she built it! She couldn't build it again but she remembers how she installed it and how she designed it and her bot has confirmed!

If she can't build it again than presumably she also can't perform maintenance on it? PRT regulations are very clear on the dangers of unmaintained tinkertech. 

They're letting her dad wear his suit!

They can't comment on the maintenance routines for a specific piece of tinkertech.

(If she asks her dad he'll inform her that there's a Protectorate Tinker in Boston who is technically responsible for maintaining the suit.)

Fucksake. Is their strongest possible terms recommendation actually binding on the disposal of her personal effects given that they have acknowledged she is who she says she is?

Their legal team will get back to them about that, probably within the next week.

(Translation: at least a month.)

She can of course have all her non-tinkertech things.

She has two million dollars. She is going to hire her own lawyer to demand her shit back.

Sure, as soon the PRT finishes processing her bounty she is welcome to do that.

Yeah, no, there are lawyers who work on the expectation that you will have money later, right, she's getting one of those.

This apparently scares the PRT into being marginally quicker - her reward money is delivered and they dig up a tinker to check the devices over for maintenance. She can have them back, though installing them without a suitable tinkervdedicated to their maintenance is against  regulations.

(Lorica's lawyer informs her that this is not the sort of rule the PRT enforces, though they might bring it up if she's ever on trial for something else. Worst case it'd mean a fine.)

Regulations that apply to civilian rogues? She is not at present a Ward. Since she died. She reinstalls her disability accomodations.

There are absolutely regulations that apply to civilians, tinkertech blows up or otherwise catastrophicly fails far far more often than basically anything else. The PRT is aware that they can't stop tinkers from making their own tinkertech or supplying it to their team but what they can do is require someone qualified is responsible for making sure the tinkertech doesn't blow up. Or at least, that's what they can do when the person asking didn't just kill one of the most feared villains in the world. They don't want bad PR after all.

Well, now that her implants are where they... newly belong... she can again walk and chew gum at the same time. Or, more relevantly, walk and grocery shop at the same time.

Completely coincidentally, Tattletale (or Lisa, given that she's in her civvies) had the very same idea!

"Bet you'll enjoy that one,"  she says, pointing at a block of jalapeno pepper jack cheese.

Sure, she'll put it in her basket.

"You know, I coulda got your stuff out of lockup without so much rigamarole if you'd asked."

"I won't pretend it didn't occur to me."

"I meant by getting a Tinker to sign on to nominally be responsible for it without actually doing anything. I know a guy."

"I'll keep in mind your guy-knowing." She gets a pint of sour cream.

"That brand's crap, it's worth splurging for the bougie stuff."

"I don't really have bougie tastes."

"Huh, what do you plan on spending on all your good gotten gains on?"

"There's always index funds."

"Ah, really living it up."

Shrug. "None of my previous vast wealth plans stopped at two mil. I'll think of something."

"I've settled on fancy dairy products and hiring competent people, personally."

Oh the goat cheese suspended in olive oil - she'll put some of that in her own basket.

Bella grabs a loaf of bread. "Hiring competent people can be very expensive and my previous plans mostly didn't involve it at all."

"Well, I'm willing to pay out enough to afford competent people, even for cushier postions."

"Out of, what, tax dollars?"

"Some from sales tax on goods the local governments decline to handle themselves. Some I inherited from my old boss and other bosses who weren't up to snuff. Honestly most of it isn't even mine - I just happen to know who's it is and they owe me a favor."

"I suppose you save a lot of time bypassing regulatory compliance. I hope everyone involved is happy with the results."

"I expect I'll make most of my money in real estate eventually, once the city pulls itself back together. I've got some great construction workers to help with that."

"So I hear."

Okay, reminding her that Lucien joined the bad guys is not the best idea. Her brain reflexively files that away in case she ever wants to upset Lorica, which she does not want to do right now, at all.

"It;'s really unfortunate how my company's branding can be so off putting."

"Well, I'm sure if it's ever your top priority you can fix that."

"That sort of thing a priority of yours?"

"Branding? Not as such."

"Well I don't take you as someone concerned with dotting their Is and crossing their Ts...."

Honestly she's starting to feel like bible camp lied about how easy it is for people to be tempted into villainy.

"No, no, not at all. I just care about, well, what the passages I'm writing actually mean."

"Honestly, I think half my company is in the same boat, and those are the only ones who care about the mission statement these days anyways. I wouldn't ask them to do anything they felt was unethical for them to do."

"Oh, good. Maybe one day you won't ask anyone to do anything I feel is unethical to do either."

"I'd expect our mission statement to be inline with yours? Most of how we differ from your former company is in how much latitude we offer our employees."

"Really. What do you know about my mission statement?"

"Honestly not enough - I was hoping you could help with that."

"I can't imagine why I'd invest the effort."

Man, this is a pain.

"I can't exactly offer you neat stuff if I don't have any idea what you'd want."

Next time she needs to hire someone she's just going to show up in costume with a pack of goons and a suitcase full of unmarked bills, like a normal supervillain.

"Then I guess I imagine I'd invest the effort if I were hoping to be hired."

Fuck it, she'll cheat. What's her power got on why this girl won't work for her and what she wants in life?

She wants universal sapient flourishing, or at least to save the world, of course. Also her dad would probably be pretty disappointed if she went supervillain.

Great, Taylor if Taylor was more ambitious and more upstanding.

"Hm. I wonder if you'd work well with the person we outsource our forecasting to. They wanted to thank you for help averting the quote End of the World unquote."

"My old email forwards."

Sigh, you win some, you lose some.

"I'll see that she has it."

And off to her next meeting to blackmail a sewage company. She misses the simpler days when she could traumatize teenagers in spandex for a living.

Bella brings her groceries home.

Starts learning to code the long way. Her bot helps her. (Its physical hardware still lives at the Protectorate headquarters, but it has the internet.)

The next two months see the start of Brockton Bay healing, slowly but without major incident. Evacuees return and things are out back together, as best as people can manage. The protectorate isn't quite recovering but so far that hasn't been an issue. The Undersiders (and allies) are far more peaceful than the gangs that existed previously. Sure the odd electronics store is ransacked by Regent or a dog breeder traumatized into finding a different profession by Bitch*, but overall things are better than they were before the Leviathan, when gang warfare crippled the city for months.

*The PRT designation of Hellhound becomes less popular as her preferred name becomes more wildly known.

For the first time in half a year, Lucien has free time!

Hey, any chance you would be interested in a board game night?

It's possible! Guest list?

Taylor, Missy, Dinah, you, me, Tentatively: Tattletale but I'll drop her if you mind. 
Missy and Lisa you already know, Taylor is Undersider-affialiated and I think she's pretty great. Dinah is Missy's age and ~rogue affiliated.

Do these people mind if I tell my dad where I'm going?

Nope.

Then sure. She can come, she's sort of entertaining and I'm not really worried she's going to seduce me to the dark side with cookies.

Can I mention you said that? I want to taste the cookies she'll inevitably bring.

Well, now I do too, go ahead and relay my remark.

Why does Lucien need to schedule his board game night so close to a city council election. She is very busy, democracy is hard work. 

... Fuck it, she's already got a lock on the majority of the seats and she can figure out things as needed for the others. Now who makes good cookies...

Lorica arrives at board game night without cookies but with a six-pack of root beer to share around.

Tattletale is late!

Lucien is on time. Which isn't very impressive considering it's hosted at his house but he'd have been on time regardless.

"Hey! Lorica!" he waves from where he is attempting to figure out how Missy and Dinah are cheating at Chutes and Ladders. 

"Hi!" She plunks down the root beer on an appropriate surface. "How goes? Please tell me you have something better than Chutes and Ladders. Risk can be fun with enough house rules."

"Missy and Dinah insisted that we had to play, I assume because they figured out a way to cheat. What house rules?" 

What if he spins the spinner where they can't see. 

Then he will still land on a chute!

"Oh, I usually play Risk with some rules about supply and population happiness but it requires extra tokens we made."

"We could pillage some of my other games for spare tokens if that'd work?"

"Sure, you can do a slightly stripped down version with Monopoly money and six-sided dice, but I'm also up for learning new games as long as they are not Chutes and Ladders."

"Risk with Monopoly money sounds good?"

Missy leaves after the (brutally short) Chutes and Ladders game winds to a close, leaving Dinah, Taylor, and Lucien to play Risk+ with Lorica.

She will explain House Rules Risk. Risk populations do not like being conquered if they've been under their previous management long enough and do not like being occupied by large numbers of soldiers and hate being attacked; they are happiest with a light garrison and stable governance and tales of military success by their guys abroad.

"How does being reconquered work?" asks the shy girl who's name was given as Taylor.

"That's what the dice are for, when you conquer a territory you put a die with the one up in it. Every turn you hold it, increment it; when it passes six you can remove the die and it counts like it's been yours all along. Do we have dice in enough different colors - okay, cool, so, yeah, you also decrement a die for whoever held it before."

"Mm."

Taylor can work with this.

During unit placement Lucien proposes an alliance with Dinah - the two of them can conquer everyone else before fighting each other. 

(He's pretty sure that Dinah, the youngest of the group, is outmatched without such an alliance, and he'd like her to have fun too.)

Sure, she can do that.

Lorica's the only person at the table with House Rules Risk experience and she's good at it. She will make short term deals but will generally not go for a long term alliance.

No alliance. Okay then.

Taylor is new to these rules but really good. She can put Lorica in situations where the only reasonable option is to focus on fighting Dinah and Lucien with her. 

Okay, if that's how she wants to play it, sure.

The two of them make short work of Lucien and Dinah.

Time for Lorica to cash in her accumulated population happiness into more units and get into a land war in Asia.

Taylor makes the war grueling for the first few turns but once it's clear that she's not going to get an opening she surrenders.

"And that is House Rules Risk. Usually it takes longer than that."

"I suspect I prefer the house rules, though I've never actually played the original."

"The original's more a matter of rolling dice and holing up in Australia forever. This is more interesting without going full friendship-ruining Diplomacy."

Soon after the game, Tattletale arrives! She looks worse for wear, dirt in her hair and her clothes thrown haphazardly over her costume.

She holds out a tray with seven intricately decorated cookies as she stops to catch her breath.

"...they are lovely. Where did you get them from, a mud wrestling competition?"

"Hookwolf's new gang had more security than I expected."

"Well, at least the cookies are intact." She selects a purple-frosted one.

It is exquisite.

"I considered stealing from the mayor's cookie jar but his taste in pastries is pedestrian at best."

She grabs herself a vanilla glazed one.

"Yummy. Please conduct my Sith initiation ceremony at midnight. Bring a lamb and a sharp knife."

"Sure thing. Really it's a steal, Taylor didn't properly join up till I had a city to give her."

"Lowball offer. I want a continent. And while we're dreaming I want my Tinker power back."

"Hmmm..." says Tattletale with the look of someone figuring out how to acquire a continent. 

"I'd be complaining but honestly tinker tattoo removal is pretty great."

"All I got was a headache," complains Dinah.

"You should print that on a T-shirt. I became a supervillain and all I got was a headache and this T-shirt."

"You do still need a costume..."

"No I don't. And also I'm not a supervillain, I just help the Undersiders out every now and then. For money. I also help the Protectorate."

"Costumes per se are overrated. D'you have a cape name?"

"No."

"Kid Cassandra."

"No."

"Pythia?"

"What's it mean?"

"Oracle of Delphi."

"I like it, it sounds ... right."

"I'd be tempted to change mine but people are already confused about my first name switch."

"Well, do you still care about PR?"

"Not much, but I like that people remember that I used to be a hero. Even if they don't think I am one now."

"I guess some people might lose track of that if you changed names twice."

"I still can't believe that you got a worst name than the one the PRT gave me when they were trying to give me a bad name." Taylor says to Lucien.

"They may have been somewhat pressed for time."

"Hm, why?"

"They wanted to name me before I got a chance to name myself."

"It was right after Clockblocker."

"I'm not a fan of the PRT's habit of naming people, even if people aren't always great at naming themselves."

"They were fine with my name, which is good, but I agree they could stand to lighten up about juvenile puns. What would you have called yourself?"

"I hadn't decided."

"And she never would have," jokes Tattetale.

"When I was little I used to dream up very unrealistic powersets and imagine calling myself 'Pinnacle' but it didn't really fit with what I got and still doesn't."

"Oh mine was Minerva but it doesn't fit with my powers at all."

"Cube. I really liked Sphere back before things went bad."

"We have come to the point in the conversation where I admit I don't know who the heck you are," Lorica tells Taylor.

"Oh. Uh, Lucien didn't tell you?"

Tattletale grins.

"Taylor is Skitter, my boss and leading crime lord of Brockton Bay."

Crime lords do not get embarrassed and hide behind their hands. So she is not doing that.

"Ah. Well in that case you could've gone with Arachne. Unless it's taken."

"Arachne's story isn't particularly the sort of thing I want to be associated with. Mocking people and then getting turned into a spider about it."

"Hm, I think mocking people is a reductive gloss, she was pushing for a sort of freedom of speech in a way. Mocking people may not be nice but it absolutely shouldn't carry the spider penalty, you know?"

Taylor has considered this several times and admits that mocking does not deserve the spider penalty.

"I"m not saying Athena wasn't acting worse in the story, just that Arachne wasn't great and unlike Athena this is the only story people know about her."

"Reasonable not to want to be Arachne. I just think she gets an unfair rap."

"I don't think I'd switch anyways, people knowing who I am is pretty important for me nowadays."

"And at least the Branding people didn't come at you with 'Ladybug Lass' or some such nonsense."

"Makes me happy I didn't sign up to be a Ward." 

"It wasn't all bad but it also was not a recreational sports club."

"Recreational sports club?"

"It was not organized for the enjoyment of a wholly voluntary participant population."

"Ah."

"Speaking of uh, things not organized for the enjoyment of a wholly voluntary participant population. Any of you returning to school in the fall?"

"I have finagled myself into lightly supervised independent study."

"I'm staying in school - it's where I know Missy from." says the middle schooler.

"Nope."

"Um. My dad wants me to but I probably won't," says Taylor, looking embarrassed. 

"Dang it, just me in the high school?"

"Well, if you miss me too keenly I can be bribed with cookies to come trounce you all at house rules Risk."

"I hope you don't expect Victor cookies every time, getting him to make them in time for me steal them was hard enough once."

"I don't have expensive tastes, we've been over this. Chips Ahoy will do me."

"... No."

"We can get Chips Ahoy."

"It's just an example, I will also take, like, those soft Lofthouse thingies, or Oreos, or homemade snickerdoodles, or whatever."

"I will get fancy cookies and you will like them goddammit."

Giggle.

Eventually people filter out - Dinah first followed by Taylor and Lisa soon after.

Lorica takes home the surplus root beer.

Two days later, Behemoth attacks New Delhi. 

She probably is not worth transporting to New Delhi. She'll let Dragon borrow her old software if that's still useful, though the chassis are now irreplaceable and she'd rather not deploy many of those.

Dragon takes just one.

The Undersiders go, bringing most of their allies as well. Dinah stays. Vista goes, the Protectorate continuing to feign ignorance of her forging her parents signatures on the relevant forms. Lucien goes.

The battle is like any Endbringer battle, until it isn't. Rumors swirl afterward on PHO about just what happened and who was involved. Many of the rumors are about Brockton Bay crime lord Skitter. Some say that she helped the mad cape Phir Sē, sabotaging a hero's attempt to stop him. Other say that she attempted to coordinate the heroes to direct Phir Sē's attack, to prevent collateral. Those rumors include footage of a towering half-cylinder shaping the blast, protecting the most populated areas of New Delhi from an explosion that was visible as far as Pakistan. 

No one has the energy to debate over whether Behemoth retreated after the explosion because of the damage it did to him, or because the damage it did to the city was enough to satiate his appetite for destruction. Over a million dead - the highest death toll of any attack by the beast.

Whatever happened, there's really not supposed to be infighting at Endbringer battles. Disappointing that it happens anyway.

The surviving capes return home, exhausted and weary and in desperate need of sleep.

Hey um. My powers make it so I cannot sleep but I do not particularly want to be alone with my thoughts right now. Any chance we could chat or something?

Yeah, of course. Online or do you want to meet up?

Meet up would be nice.

I'll pick up a thing of coffee ice cream so I can stay up a bit late and meet you at the plaza out front of that boarded-up pizza place on the boardwalk?

Okay. I'd take some strawberry ice cream if it's convenient to pick up at the same time.

The walk to the plaza is weird. He'd never seen Brockton Bay as ... whole and undamaged before.

Lorica arrives. On a motorcycle.

The motorcycle does not, strictly speaking, work. The owner fucked up the engine somehow and sold it on Craigslist for peanuts rather than getting it repaired for more-than-peanuts. But the wheels turn. And it's big enough that Lorica can be it. So she shows up on her weirdly quiet Suzuki that she barely has to touch the handlebars to steer, and parks it and walks over to him and offers him a single-serve Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream.

"Thanks."

He is distracted staring at the skyline, and how not on fire it is.

"No problem." She peels open her coffee one. "Do you want to talk about it or about literally anything else?"

"I um. Hadn't though that far."

"Anything else? Though I might change my mind."

"I got the bot to make me a new Civilization mod. It's not exactly revolutionary, but it's novel software work that I didn't specifically program it to do, and it's also not a half-bad mod, it reskins everything to make it fantasy-themed. Art and all."

"Oh neat. Did the bot make the art?"

"Yes. It's not as good at that but it's, like, fine, it just wound up working in a much simpler style for anything it couldn't just recolor. I'm waffling on whether to tell it to self-modify - it can't without my say-so and might still not be able to with it, I'm not sure, I don't exactly - remember how I put it together on that front, and it can't access capacities I'm not letting it use in order to check."

"Huh, I'd have thought art was way outside of a bots capabilities - seems like the sort of thing computers would be bad at. What would it self-modify to do?"

"Well, in this case, be better at art, but it's the sort of thing you want to be a bit cautious about, self-modifying AIs aren't much safer than self-replicating biologicals."

"How would you go about making sure it was safe?"

"Probably ask Dragon for help. She thinks it's cute."

"Man, Dragon is great. The more things I learn about her the more I like her."

"She's really cool. I wanted to get more chances to collaborate but now I guess I will have to settle for asking her to do my homework because I have lost my metaphorical hands in a tragic accident. Also my literal hands and the rest of my original body."

"Unfortunately, it was a good body." says Lucien, too exhausted and emotionally out of whack to filter anything he's saying.

"...thanks."

Aaaaaaaa.

"Not recognizing myself in the mirror is pretty weird but at least I'm, like, a young woman, as opposed to six or a dude or an old lady or something." Sigh.

Okay, maybe he can pretend he never just said that.

"Yeah. I'd have suggested Panacea help you but that's wouldn't actually be possible anymore."

"I think there are a lot of more urgent cases or I might have asked, but, uh, what happened, is she okay?"

"She uh, had a breakdown and demanded to be Birdcaged.- insisted she'd release plagues if she wasn't."

"...shit. I always really admired her but I guess there was not anybody in the background looking after her health."

"Yeah"

"Reminds me that I should probably check in on Taylor tomorrow - Tattletale doesn't seem cut out for helping with this, as close as the two are."

"Taylor seemed fine to me on game night but we've just seen how much my occasional casual observation is worth. Was she... at the Behemoth fight? Wouldn't bugs just crisp up anywhere in range? I guess they could be scouts for search and rescue..."

"Oh you uh. Haven't been online I take it?"

"...usually my bot sends me digests, is it all unconfirmed rumors or something, it skips those."

"Yeah that's filter it out."

"Uh, my best impression about what happened is that Skitter found a cape hidden near where Tattletale thought Behemoth was targeting, and the cape was preparing a... sort of super weapon to attack Behemoth with. She didn't find a way to stop him but did manage to convince him to hold off on firing line enough for her to warn other capes. Eidolon was able to put up a forcefield to direct the blast away from the most populated parts of the city, but the blast still killed... easily more people than Behemoth killed before that point."

"Uh, I also think someone did try to kill the cape with the weapon and Skitter... let them fail or something? I'm guessing she didn't think the super weapon was safe to disrupt."

"Wow. Is the superweapon cape dead now?"

"I think he was caught in the blast?"

"Rookie superweapon mistake."

"I'm uh. Not sure if someone using an energy weapon against Behemoth is thinking all that much about their own survival."

"I think Taylor blames herself for all the people who died."