Again, that small part of you wants to lash out, to rebel. And once again, the rest of you rises above that part of you, nervous but also curious. That’s a lot of money she’s giving up, and you shouldn’t be as comfortable with it as you are. You tuck that thought away in the back of your mind, determined not to drag your mood down.
Either way, you say goodbye to Sabah, once again giving her a shy smile, and make a mental note that you should definitely come back—and not only because of her flirting with you. You can almost convince yourself of that last one.
By the time the bus arrives at the bus stop and can take you home, it’s already headed towards late afternoon. You have to hurry inside and up to your bedroom, only calling out a loud hello for Dad as you go, so you can change into other clothes to go jogging in. You place your new lingerie carefully away in your cupboard, hesitant to place it in your chest of drawers in case the confined space wrinkles the expensive clothing.
You already know that you won’t have much time to go for a run before it gets dark. The streetlights along your street are mostly fine, but in the streets beyond that, almost one in three flicker or are dead entirely, and the council hasn’t sent anyone out to fix them in months. Jogging in the morning, with the sun peeking over the horizon and cars moving through the roads twice a minute or more, is a very different experience to jogging at night with the sun setting and nobody to accompany you. It’s not safe to be out that late.
Indeed, you’re only out there for forty minutes before you judge that it’s getting dark enough that you should head home. You’re a little disappointed, actually. You’d only just begun to work up a sweat, and you hadn’t yet hit that point where you could zone out completely as you ran. But, oh well.
When you re-enter your house, you poke your head into the living room, intending to tell Dad you’re home. For a moment, you’re confused when you see it’s empty. It doesn’t click until you move back into the hallway and see the flashing red light on the phone, indicating an unread voicemail. Then you understand— oh, yes, Dad would still be at work. He doesn’t get holidays like you do.
You play the voicemails as you move to the kitchen to get a cool drink of water, then make sure to delete them as you pass by on your way back to your room. From there, you move to get out your pyjamas. It wouldn’t do to go to bed sweaty, after all. At least, not alone.
Occupying your time until Dad gets home is relatively easy, once you have showered and refreshed yourself. You briefly consider calling Victoria, although eventually you settle on sending her another cheery text wishing her a good evening; then you settle in at your desk.
Sophia’s new history lessons will not write themselves, and it will be all too easy to simply put them off forever if you don’t invest the time now.
The next day begins much like any other. You shower, although the water is tepid—Dad must have showered before you, and the hot water has not yet had time to reheat properly—and you eat breakfast, although it’s a rather plain mixture of toast with butter and soggy cornflakes today. You don’t have anywhere to go in the morning, so you even have time for you to go for your jog without interruption.
As you proceed carrying out your daily routine, you find yourself rather distracted, however. Plans swirl through your head, formed and discarded moments later, only to be replaced by another poor plan. It’s really quite irritating, but you keep it up, because today is a rather important day; it’s the first time you are going to meet Shadow Stalker.
You don’t know much about Shadow Stalker, really. She’s not one of the most popular Wards in the city; she carries a distinctly bitter and cynical vibe to her, from what you have seen from interviews with her on TV, and it is no secret that she is dark-skinned, so a large number of the people who might have otherwise supported her crackdown in the seedier parts of Brockton Bay instead hold no small level of disdain for her.
You do know that she used to be a vigilante, until that came to a rather abrupt end… you’re not sure when, really; a few months ago, probably. Definitely less than a year ago. Nobody in her thread or at school knows exactly what the catalyst for her joining the Wards was, but one day she just disappeared off the streets, and turned up a week later in the employ of the Wards. A lot of speculation on PHO has lead you to wander if her family had been in trouble, but you can’t know for sure.
She’s not the most ideal recruit, you acknowledge—she’s already been employed by the Wards, so any participation in your hero team is going to be part-time at best, much like Victoria’s. But much like Victoria, you have a different reason for recruiting her; she just looks cute, and her powers look really helpful too.
The PR event isn’t being held at the library until a little after noon, so you have plenty of time to make sure you’re dressed nicely for the occasion. It’s a public event, so you don’t want to draw much attention to yourself, but now that you can actually dress up a little cutely, you think you want to make a nice first impression on your latest recruit.
Even so, your dress is a little wrinkled by the time you make it off the bus in front of the library. A rather large man had sat beside you on the bus, and while he had sat as close to the edge as he had dared, his bulk had still forced you to press yourself uncomfortably close to the bus window. It’s almost sad, really.
Still, it’s not too bad. You’re able to brush your dress once you get off the bus and have moved away from the sidewalk, getting rid of most of the wrinkles in your outfit. It’ll have to do. You can’t afford to wait for another bus, go all the way home, and iron your dress. It would take too much time.
The library itself is surprisingly busy—or unsurprisingly, you begrudgingly admit to yourself after a moment’s thought. Any meeting with the Wards is going to get a surprising turnout, if only because there are a lot of worried parents in Brockton Bay who would attend these meetings in case their children triggered. You wouldn’t be surprised if there were some members of the Empire in here, either, covertly gathering information on the Wards, although the Protectorate might be aware enough to stop that from happening.
Racks have been pulled back, opening up the already decently-sized reading area at the back of the library even further. There’s enough room for eighty chairs here, in neat rows; you manage to grab one of them before they’re all full, only to find yourself quickly sandwiched between a tall woman with a severe sneer on her face and a chattering, excitable child. All you can do is try to tune them out by focusing on the front of the area, a task made possible only by your height.
The first person to walk through a side-door you hadn’t noticed earlier is someone you hadn’t expected to see here today—Dauntless. He cuts an imposing figure in his metallic armour and wicked spear, although the colours of his armour—silver, with inlays and swirling patterns painted deep gold—do a lot to soften your initial impression of him, as do his easy movements.
He reminds you a little of an awkward teenager as he stands at the front of the crowd, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his head. There’s a microphone in front of him, but only a single speaker behind the crowd (though still in front of dozens of others, as the library has definitely filled to capacity right now), so his voice doesn’t carry far enough for you to distinctly hear what he’s saying. You can hear him say “Welcome”, but everything after that is half-heard at best, at least until a technician seems to move behind him and adjust the microphone. His voice comes clearer, then.
Dauntless talks for around three minutes before he slinks off. Somehow, you get the feeling that he hadn’t wanted to be the one to speak here today. You wonder why he did.
Your musings are cut short as someone emerges from the same door Dauntless had just exited through. You watch as a tall boy emerges, dressed in a rust-red outfit with silver trim. Aegis. He’s followed quickly by a boy in strange red and gold, his fists held clenched at his sides and his posture too straight—Kid Win. And finally, the two of them are followed by a girl dressed in a too-large black cloak and a mask bearing the visage of an imperious woman. Those are all the details you manage to get before a wave of nervousness from Sophia hits you and steals your breath away.
You stare up at the stage, too aware of the paleness of your face and the fact that your breaths are coming more rapidly.
No. No, no. Hurriedly, you cast your powers out, settling them around Shadow Stalker. It doesn’t change a damned thing. All you can feel emanating from her is Sophia’s nervousness and wary anticipation.
You shrink back on yourself, trying to make yourself as small as possible, although it’s a useless effort. Shadow Stalker is only staring stiffly straight ahead, her gaze nowhere near you. Still, you curse yourself for not wearing a hooded jacket today—you’d feel a lot more comfortable if you could just hide your hair within a hood.
Damn it. Damn it, damn it.
Aegis begins speaking up on the stage, but you ignore his words, despite that they’re clearer than those of Dauntless. You’re too busy digging your nails into your palm, thoughts racing furiously through your head. Lots of little clues are falling into place in your head, and you can help but actually feel a little foolish.
Sophia being Shadow Stalker would explain a lot, really. It would explain why the only punishment she received for shoving you naked into that locker was a couple weeks of detention. It would explain why Emma dropped your friendship in favour of hanging out with her (hanging out with a bona-fide hero would always be more exciting than hanging out with you, after all). It would explain why she’s so confident in herself, why she doesn’t seem to even think twice about confronting gang members in Winslow’s hallways. Hell, it would even explain why her grades are falling so easily.
But it doesn’t explain other things. You can believe that a series of small kisses in the bathroom might be enough to satisfy a petty bully and leave her panting for more, but you have a harder time believing that a hardened vigilante would let up on a vendetta after just a few kisses. And you’ve been tutoring her for weeks, without even so much as a hint of this. Surely, if you know her that intimately, she’d have dropped some clues for you. And… well.
You know what a trigger event is. Your research online after your own taught you that much, at least. And if Sophia is actually Shadow Stalker, then she must have undergone her own. Something must have twisted inside her, torn her apart the same way—the same way that lying naked in front of all those people at school tore you apart. Something must have twisted her, changed her. And yet, she still shoved you naked into that locker, still allowed you to spill out, cold and half-dead, in front of a host of students.
It can’t be Sophia. Sophia can’t be Shadow Stalker. It makes no sense. And yet your power is telling you that she is.
You don’t know what to think.
Your head throbs, a burgeoning headache building. You glance off to your sides, but people are still surrounding you. You can’t get up and leave. Thus, you are trapped, and all you can do is listen as Shadow Stalker steps up to the microphone and speaks.
“Hi,” she says unenthusiastically. “I’m Shadow Stalker. Like Aegis said before, we’re here to answer any questions you might have about the Wards program and our participation in it.” Someone in the audience throws up their hands, and you can almost see the girl stifle a sigh as she gestures towards them. “Yes?”
You turn your head to look. The person waving is a woman who looks to be in her late thirties, or thereabouts. “Hi,” she says, her voice carrying clearly across the library to you. “Sorry, I don’t have a question for you, I’d like to speak to Aegis. You’re the head of the Wards program, yeah?”
Shadow Stalker turns to Aegis, who inclines his head before stepping forwards and around a retreating Shadow Stalker. “I guess questions can begin now,” he says, a strong note of amusement in his voice. “I am not in charge of the Wards program, although I am the oldest member of the Wards as of Triumph’s retirement last month, yes.”
It’s a bit of an impromptu question-and-answers session. Kid Win and Shadow Stalker both seem a little taken aback at not getting to finish their introductions, although Aegis seems completely at ease as members of the audience fire questions towards him.
It’s actually quite an informative discussion, too. You’ve read up on the Wards before—you’d read their recruitment pitch on the PRT website back when you had first triggered, although obviously the fact that your powers revolve around mind-control had pre-emptively put an end to any desire to join them you might have had—but the pitch had been stiff and formal, more suited for a parent reading up for information on how to help their child.
Compared to Aegis’ warmth as he fields their questions, it seems poor.
Another person raises their hand, this time a man. He’s the fifth person to ask Aegis a question. “David Smith,” he introduces himself. He sounds brusque, enough so to ruffle your feathers, and he’s not even talking to you. Aegis seems unaffected by the man’s demeanour, though. “What benefits does joining the Wards have, insurance-wise and stuff? Just out of curiosity.”
Aegis looks at the man for a long moment, then offers him a nod. “We offer extensive insurance to all participants in the Wards program, on top of the pay rates discussed earlier,” he says, his tone a little stiffer than before. You tilt your head at him. Irritation burns through him now, strong and fierce. Huh. “Additionally, the Protectorate will match contributions to a member of the Ward’s college fund, up to sixty percent of their annual wage.”
