---

"Power dampeners are a little hit-or-miss on if they work. They're hard to find, and harder to apply to one person in particular. I'll ask around, I know a tinker or two who can try and work something out. But I can't promise anything right now,"

Ethan grit his teeth in annoyance. Of course it wouldn't be that easy - if it was, why aren't all the villains slapped with power dampeners the second they're arrested?

"Fine, whatever. But try and talk to them as soon as you can, got it?"

Abrasive, demanding - you're being an asshole. Keep it up an-

"...Please."

From someone as socially obtuse as Ethan, that was about as pleasant as you could ask for. Grandmaster's commentary was a bit annoying, but Ethan felt that most Thinkers would feel that way when someone was a step ahead of them.

Axiom removed her helmet, before having a heart-to-heart and reassuring the Wards. Her words did little to assuage Ethan's anxieties - he could see the platitudes and falsehoods, the little cracks whether known or unknown, the fact that it wasn't guaranteed they would make it to 18, let alone graduate to the Protectorate.

But of the Heroes present, Axiom was probably the one whose attempt at comforting the youths was the least aggravating.

"Trained to do what exactly? Feds never gave me anything I didn't already know how to do. What exactly are we all workin' with here? What powers do we all have around here?"

Ethan smirked. He actually found the training to be pretty helpful - over the last few weeks he got workout routine and dietary advice, experienced some basic close-quarter combat, and most importantly received first aid training. His power allowed him to make a lot faster progress than almost all of the other Wards in that regard, and while still a novice, he felt confident in his ability to stop someone from bleeding out.

Ethan would have brought that up and tried making Shattercrash feel like a dumbass, but he was thankful she brought up the power question, so he let it slide. He was planning on broaching the subject after the meeting with each member, but this was a lot more convenient.

The first to respond was the clone girl, one of her bodies speaking up. The fact she had multiple bodies was obvious enough, but her storage ability was unexpected. Some kind of pocket dimension? It was a great power for shoplifting and general thievery, especially if she could create clones through walls or barriers...

Thick barriers are a good counter - her items displace objects when drawn out of her storage space, allowing her to bypass locks and damage objects, but this doesn't matter if a large enough barrier impedes her. Avoid direct combat, has dangerous weapons within her storage that could prove lethal in close quarters. Clones must maintain a set distance from one another, area of effect attacks should prove use-

Enough of that. Ethan grabbed a handful of the candy that the girl offered, shoving it into one of his many pockets absentmindedly. He couldn't eat any with his mask, and he sure as hell wasn't gonna be the first ward to take his mask off. He cringed as the massive canine-bird changer grabbed one of the candies that was offered, some kind of taffy or gum, shuffling about nervously and carefully placing the sweet in his mouth. He almost immediately relaxed, his form shrinking slightly and fur evening out.

Clearly had some kind of effect on him, maybe his power was reliant on his mood? Positive emotions weakening him? Could be useful, give him a false sense of security and then slit his throat, he might bleed out fast befo-

The guy bowed and profusely thanked the clone girl for the sweets. The entire interaction lit him up like a Christmas tree to Ethan's power, and the boy's discomfort was clear despite the full body covering his costume provided.

"Jesus fucking christ, this guy..."

Ethan muttered under his breath as he glowered at the Changer until another girl, the blond one in the dress, decided to introduce her power next - thankfully providing a distraction. She revealed that she was the Master who warranted the creation of the earpieces. He could have guessed that, considering his power was practically screaming at him to stop her from speaking at all costs... Masters were always a hot topic on the news - Ethan wasn't a big cape geek, and even he could recount incidents of Masters forming cults or trying to rig elections across the globe. At least this girl had the decency to give some warning about her powers, so she could be worse.

And having a tinker-made device that rendered Ethan immune to her was some insurance. He wasn't sure how his power interacted with Master abilities like that, but Ethan felt confident it would provide at least some protection - at least enough to last the meeting, and let him put his earpiece on in private.

The Changer decided to take initiative and go next, and Ethan was already biting his cheek to stop from verbally lashing out at the stuttering wreck. He couldn't speak for an entire sentence without pausing or inserting an 'um' or 'ah', and he kept glancing at everyone in the room as he spoke like some kind of prey animal.

One of the only good things about him was that his desire for approval pushed him to share far more about his power than the other two - enhanced strength and durability, flight, silent movement, improved senses, and natural weapons in the form of talons. That, alongside what Ethan's power could pick out (-form grows stronger the more anxious he is, calm him down and then go for the kill. Bash his knees in, his bones are hollow and will give way with a good wack from a club or tire iron. Grab the nearest chair, that can work if you hit him in the right s-) gave him a more detailed understanding of the Changer's power than any of the other wards present.

Didn't make up for the constant stuttering, the hunched posture, the little neck turn thing he was trying to show off, and all the other little minor annoyances that meant nothing but still pissed Ethan the fuck off. As soon as he finished and awkwardly shuffled off behind the blond girl, Ethan couldn't help himself.

"Keep practicing, I'm sure you'll be able to do the neck thing eventually. Will definitely come in handy against guys like Necrophage and Sundown."

Not missing a beat, Ethan took a small step forwards and continued speaking, his tone immediately shifting from sarcastic to nonchalant and uncaring.

"Keystone. Thinker. Hypersensitivity to flaws and vulnerabilities in systems. I know the best ways to break things, literally or metaphorically. I can crack most locks and passwords within seconds, bash a guy in the face with a bottle just the right way so the shards blind him, and can emotionally abuse someone into the fetal position if I get long enough to read them."

He pointed a finger at the girl in the black catsuit and dress with the ponytail. "I shouldn't get close enough for you to touch me, but other than that you're just a normal person - pepper spray you, throw a knife, anything to keep distance and keep others away from you. Definite Striker vibes, maybe Master or Trump ratings too?"

Not a trump, Striker/Master. Shoot her in the neck with your crossbow-

Ethan's finger moved to the changer, rising a few inches until it was pointing at his chest. "Your bones are hollow, so I hope you don't fly into any buildings. And avoid dudes with baseball bats or lead pipes."

And avoid me if you keep being a neurotic mess...

"The first four digits of the admin computer account password is 4I82, the tinkertech material the walls are made of are great at absorbing kinetic energy but can be fucked up with rapid heating and cooling, and if I was suddenly bleeding out-" Ethan drew a knife and quickly pressed it against his own throat, pausing for a few seconds as he observed the reactions of the crowd. "...At least three people here would have the first aid training necessary to attempt to save me, and the clone girl already has a first aid kit on hand. You win points for being prepared."

Ethan smirked a little beneath his mask as he flashed a thumbs up in the girls direction. He could do this all day, but he had probably burned more bridges than he wanted to already with that - people didn't really like getting their flaws pointed out, even if he avoided the emotional and personal shit.

"I don't get Thinker headaches, but seeing a lot of this shit without pointing it out or attacking it really pisses me off. Can't turn my power off either, so if me knowing your computer password or emotional baggage creeps you out or you have a lot of shit going on around you that aggravates me, we should keep interactions to a minimum."

Ethan stepped off to the side, not bothering with any other pleasantries now that he finished introducing himself. Even with the mask covering his face, his body language was notably more positive - clearly the chance to talk about brutally assaulting his fellow Wards had helped ease his mood.

---

Quinn listened intently. It may have looked like she was being ambivalent to those around her, and truth be told she couldn't care less about them, but she was still hearing them. After all, she would be working with them, much to her disappointment. She knew the preventions set up for her to protect the others. It wasn't like she hadn't been controlled before.

As the others continued, a bright pink spark barged in. Another recruit it seemed. Quinn fought off the urge to vomit. Could these idiots be more predictable? A "couldn't care less about the rules so let me show up late and have an attitude" type. If this were a movie her character would be ridiculed for hitting every teenage rebellion trope known to man.

Quinn rolled her eyes behind her mask at everyone introducing themselves. What was this? Kindergarten? "Ethos. Move along though. We aren't here to hold hands and sing kumbaya together. We're here to get shit done." Quinn returned to her resting state as the others continued anyway.

The pink blur, Shattercrash, then asked about their powers. What the hell was this? And people blindly answered? They were going to get themselves killed by being so open with each other. They weren't friends. This wouldn't be some teenage drama story where the unlikely so-and-sos learned to respect each other. If any of these people died, Quinn would not bat an eye.

Quinn gave an exasperated sigh as it was her turn. "My powers? Fine. I can make a nice old grandma stab her grandchildren 20 times each. I can make a warlord in a foreign country give all his belongings to the poor. I can make a narcissistic bastard who beats his wife run and play in traffic. All with a simple touch and a command."

Quinn looked over at one of the guys. Richter she thought his name was. "I shouldn't get close enough for you to touch me, but other than that you're just a normal person - pepper spray you, throw a knife, anything to keep distance and keep others away from you. Definite Striker vibes, maybe Master or Trump ratings too?" Quinn started laughing. Not like a little giggle, a full on guffaw as she held her stomach. Once done, she wiped a fake tear. "I dare you to fucking try me."

Quinn spun on her heel and took her seat. "Are we done with the fucking icebreakers yet and can we move on to what we are called here to do? The room is beginning to stink with all the bullshit being thrown around."

Hornet

Wow, okay. Looked like Shattercrash wasn’t the only person with an… abrasive personality here. They even came in three different flavours; Ethos seemed like the intentionally abrasive type, while Shattercrash gave off more of a I just speak my mind kind of abrasive where she just didn’t care if she offended anyone. With Keystone she kind of just got the impression that he was always at the end of his tether and end up sounding like a jerk because of it; he seemed to be trying though, and his power sounded like a real downer, so Jessica would give him credit for that.

Even so, she didn’t know how she was going to be able to deal with any of them long term. Five or ten minutes alone with either Ethos or Shattercrash with no one else to talk to, or act as a witness, and she might just take a swing at them; damn the consequences. And even if she gave Keystone the benefit of the doubt his grouchy jerk act was going to get to her eventually; add to that the fact that his power sounded incredibly invasive and legitimately terrifying, plus the fact that he just pressed a knife to his own throat and held it there like he was daring someone to do something about it…

Jessica didn’t want to spend more time around him than necessary. As harsh as that sounded.

“Shit, that sucks.” It was only after the words slipped out of her mouth that she realised how they might come across and hastily stumbled out the next few words. “Sorry! I mean, it seems like a useful power, both for the obvious and because pointing out our weak points means we know what to work on. It’s just… no, that sucks. It sounds like a lot to deal with, all the time.”

Other than him and Shattercrash, whose power Jessica already kind of knew, there were two people with Master powers. That explained why the earpieces were being pushed so hard; she wondered if they were designed specifically because of Ethos and the other girl, or if they would have been given to them regardless. Then there was big bird, who was obviously a Changer and even more obviously a giant pile of anxiety; their power was cool, if a little disconcerting to look at, but he was another person that Jessica couldn’t really see herself interacting with long term. Then there were the triplets, who had a whole bunch of different powers and despite being one person in three bodies, out of everyone somehow seemed to be the most normal.

Her only hope.

It was a strange group, to be sure. There were a lot of… intense personalities mixed together here and things were already starting to get a little tense. Jessica wondered how long it would be until things boiled over and if there was anything she could or should do to delay or prevent that. Usually she considered herself pretty good at dealing with people; making friends, soothing hurt feelings and stopping arguments were all things she could and did do at school. She’d had to, both as someone moving to a new city and also as someone who was part of a sports club; competitive teenagers could get a little worked up from time to time. But with this group? Jessica had no idea where to start, or what any of their problems were.

Well, actually no. She kind of did.

Jessica knew that she wasn’t completely fine after what happened to her. She wasn’t over what she went through. Sometimes it felt like she was, like it was in the past and the only thing that day had left her with was a scar on her face too large to properly cover up and a hole in her life where her friend used to be, and she’d feel like that for days or a week at a time. But then she’d have the nightmares again and she wouldn’t be okay, or she’d be in a situation where she felt cornered and she’d start to panic and the best solution her stupid scared brain could come up with to get away was to put her fist through the cause even though that was an entirely inappropriate response to have in math class. And so far Jessica had been able to resist those impulses, except for the one time she put a hole in the drywall, and luckily she’d never thought to use her powers in any of those cases but she was really worried that one day she might and what she’d do to someone if she did. Like, putting her fist through something wasn’t an exaggeration for her; she could do it pretty easily.

She had a point to this. What was it?

Oh, right. She knew she still had issues after her Trigger event and probably would for a while. And a couple weeks after hers had happened and her dad had already done all of the paperwork to get her signed up as a Ward she’d been shown the standard presentations on what Trigger events were and how they worked, so she knew that everyone else in this room had gone through something similar but it was only now that she was in a room full of Parahumans that she was really starting to understand what that meant. Every Cape went through something really bad to get their powers and a lot of them probably still carried some baggage because of that.

This probably went a long way towards explaining why half the people in this room were assholes and the other half seemed like nervous wrecks. They were also mostly teenagers to be fair, but Jessica had been around a lot of teenagers and this group seemed to be beyond the average.

Food for thought.

“Guess I’ll go next. I’m Hornet; I can teleport to people and then I can hit them really hard, for a little while. Temporary invulnerability and strength.”

---

Protectorate HQ
June 19, 9:07 AM

Val heard footsteps approaching. Judging by the weight of the steps and their sound pattern, it was probably Nightstalker. He wondered what the senior Cape wanted.

A crisp snap rang out next to him. It might have been loud if he hadn't already been focusing on something else.

"You can sleep later, Richter."

So, that was it. A simple misunderstanding brought on by the fact that his eyes were closed.

"I appreciate the sentiment, Mr. Nightstalker," he intoned before shifting slightly to face Axiom and Grandmaster, "But that is just wishful thinking."

Val watched Axiom remove her helmet, revealing most of her face—huh, she had freckles—as she began talking, trying to reassure them about their choices and potential indecision. She was being genuine from what he could tell, which was something, he supposed. It didn't do much to sway his heart either way—if only she'd been there when words actually mattered to him.

The fact she made an attempt was nice, at least.

Grandmaster followed up after her, though his words were more succinct. A simple, harmless statement.

Except for the Neon Eyesore, apparently.

The latest Ward's viewpoint was understandable. The Ward training wasn't exactly useful for Val. He was already better trained than they could ever have made him if he had been inexperienced before. He wouldn't have survived this long if he'd been so incapable as to need to learn these things so late in life. Nothing they taught him was particularly helpful, but then again, it hadn't been very long since he started. The other, less-experienced Wards probably gained a lot more from the training. Not her, though. He could tell that she actually knew how to handle herself.

The same couldn't be said for most of them.

Oh, and the Neon girl also asked about their powers too. It was a good thing since he had no intention of bringing up the subject himself. Though, he would be lying if he said he wasn't at least somewhat interested.

The first person to respond to the question was the cloning girl. Val was already aware of the cloning aspect of her power, but the second part came as a bit of a surprise. That was super useful. Why didn't his power give him a pocket dimension instead of just breaking things? It certainly explained some things. Like where she got that candy she was now offering everyone.

Of course, he wasn't going to accept any. Even he knew not to take candy from strangers.

That cloning ability of hers would make it difficult to take her down since she could be in several places at once. There were quite a few ways she could be put to good use by a better strategist than he.

Val's attention was drawn elsewhere and he watched as the rat-thing grabbed one of the candies that the cloning girl offered and popped it into its.... fur? Did it even have a mouth? It could talk so he assumed so, but he wasn't an expert on whatever kind of biology a rat-thing would have. Its outward appearance wasn't the only thing that was screwed up. Still, Val watched in interest as the creature staggered back as if struck and.... shrank? Huh, that was weird.

The girl in the white dress was the second person to actually reveal her power. According to her explanation, she was a Master with the ability to make people do whatever she said. Her voice cut out the moment she said it, and he had to read her lips to find out the rest. He'd have to address that particular issue posthaste.

Trust making her power more effective wouldn't be a problem though. Probably.

At the very least, she didn't seem too bad, considering she had given them a warning beforehand. It could have been worse.

Anyway, on to the third Ward; the aforementioned giant rat-thing.

He was a Changer with the ability to turn into.... a big ol' rat-thing. Obviously. He also proceeded to list off the advantages his rat-thing form granted him — flight (obviously), super strength (but he hadn't tested it for some reason), sound-muffling fur (and feathers), enhanced sight and hearing, and bird-like talons, but not the ability to turn his head 270 degrees (disappointing). On further thought, he was more of a rat-bird creature than anything else, though that didn't explain the scales. Val did, however, note that the transformation seemed to be tied to his emotional state somehow.

He wondered if the rat-bird had hollow bones like a real bird, too.

The Grump was the next to introduce himself, not that Val cared much for it. He was probably the least interesting of the Wards so far. He was a Thinker, as expected. Val didn't see how giving someone emotional damage was a superpower, but the rest wasn't entirely useless. The Grump showed off his power at work by calling out the weaknesses of two(?) of the other Wards and a part of the password to the admin computer, whatever that was. He even knew about the weirdness of the walls too and–

He just put a knife to his neck.... Huh. This was an odd time for suicide. Then again, was there even such a thing as a good time for self-offing?

Aw. He knew it was just posturing, but it would've been cool to–

A loud laugh cut his thoughts off and drew Val's attention to the girl in the black catsuit. It was a full-on sociopath laugh. He would know; he grew up around them. Her power was also incredibly well-suited to that sort of personality. Being able to change people's morality was something, for sure, especially in the hands of a unique individual like Ethos. He couldn't imagine what it would do to someone like him.

If she could touch him, that was.

The next Ward to make an introduction was the yellow-armoured girl, Hornet. She was a teleporter, with a pinch of invulnerability to go along with it. Neat. He wondered what the range on it was.

After her, no one else spoke up for a few moments, so Val decided to do so himself.

"Guess now is my turn, then," Val straightened on his couch, not quite sitting up yet, "Call me Richter. I can do this."

Val held up the coin he'd been spinning and allowed his concentration to falter for just a moment. In the blink of an eye, the metal turned into dust and drifted away. His glove remained spotless.

He flashed a lopsided smile at his fellow Wards, "I suggest you not get too close. I cannot turn it off."

With his piece said, he fished out another coin from one of his many pockets and began spinning it between his fingers once again.

Evie might’ve been brash from the moment she walked in, but she didn’t ask questions just to hear herself talk. She genuinely wanted to know what her new teammates’ powers were. It helped to know how they’d be approaching their problems from here on. As far as Evie could tell, none of them were tinkers.

Tandem made clones and had a pocket dimension. Useful for a numbers advantage or stashing emergency supplies. Most of these jokers didn’t seem to have pockets on their gear. Meanwhile, Evie’s armor was essentially an upgrade to her vigilante costume the whole city recognized; Perks of being a pre-established cape included having your identity immune to being fucked with. Even now, she had a few minor medical supplies in her pockets out of habit. Maybe Tandem had more, or would start packing them around once shit hit the fan a few times.

The chick in the dress was a master. Great. Her power was a textbook image of one, no less. She could just mind control people with a single command, and do so even more if they trusted her. That wouldn’t be too big of an issue, seeing as Evie wasn’t inclined to trust any of these people until she saw their true colors, who they really were when their lives were on the line. And as rude as she was, Evie expected no less from them, since that was how their lives were lived now. They stepped into her shoes, and Evie believed in fair game at the very least.

So with that in mind, Evie took the earpiece offered. ”Loud and clear,” She said, with no amusement.

Decree and Tandem could at least speak their minds, but the next guy… Evie didn’t think he’d last a week. Munnin, the big ass bird-looking motherfucker, was a changer and not a case like Nightstalker. Wings, sound-muffling feathers, good strength and intense senses. Night vision and better hearing, which was probably why he jumped so much when Evie walked in. Evie didn’t understand that look her gave her. She didn’t have a PhD in Changerology, so whatever those giant puppybird eyes were trying to convey was lost on her.

The snarky little shit named Keystone didn’t waste any time. He pointed out flaws and weaknesses. Little did he know that the password digits he named had been changed 20 minutes before he walked through the door, as it does at random (thanks to his existence). He immediately started calling out weaknesses of his teammates, which Evie almost laughed at. The nerve on this kid made her feel like there was a bit of hope after all.

He definitely seemed to piss of the Ethos girl, who had some other mind-scrambling power. Some sort of impulse thing, maybe? She wasn’t very specific, despite the graphic details she used. Evie shrugged it off, having heard worse a time or two. Her attitude was funny, though. ”Yes ma’am,” Shattercrash made a mocking, sarcastic salute in Ethos’ direction, clearly unbothered by anything she just said about dropping the icebreakers. At least, until she made her point more clear. ”You wanna wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, because you didn’t know what your so-called teammates could do? Be my guest, princess. I’ve been doing this shit a hell of a lot longer than most of you, so pardon me for getting down business.”

Ethos may not have been here to play games, but neither was Shattercrash.

Hornet had an interesting power. Teleporting specifically to people, and then getting a power up to blitz them. It sounded like she was good for ambushes. But Richter’s power was just plain weird. He had something that looked like a striker power, which vaporized the coin in his hands. And he couldn’t shut it off, which was definitely a problem. Useful if they needed to get past something, but a problem regardless.

And the Wattson girl wasn’t offering shit, so that left Shattercrash to take a turn.

”Cool, not bad. My turn. The name’s Shattercrash, if anyone didn’t know. I do this-“ She reached up and pointed a finger at an empty wall. Nightstalker got visibly nervous and bounced out of the way as her hand began to glow with a violet-pink energy. She curled her middle finger and flicked it forward, causing a burst of the vibrant energy to fire off like a bullet, and hit flat against the wall. Keystone was correct, the wall material did one hell of a job in absorbing impacts, as they all felt in through their feet. No one was hurt, but it was still a somewhat unwise display.

”If that wall was a person, they’d be flat on the ground and too dizzy to stand.”

Her other hand balled into a fist, and lit up like a pink fireball. ”See this? Pure kinetic energy stored up by my power. Don’t ask me why it glows like this, it just does. I hit things, and I hit them hard. I could kick open a steel vault, launch high enough to swat a helicopter out of the sky, or punch someone from about 30 feet away.”

Someone’s phone started ringing. Grandmaster’s. He pulled it out, and put it to his head. ”Foster.”

There is indication of what is being said on the other end of the line, but he is presumably speaking to the director.

”I’m on my way.” He quickly slid the phone away, and Axiom shot him a look.

”I can take over.”

Grandmaster nodded, and walked past everyone. Anyone paying attention might have realized that he didn’t make any noise when he walked across the floor.

Once he was gone, Axiom got everyone’s attention. ”Okay. So, the PRT’s been training you guys for a while now. You know the protocols, the procedures and everything else. Tomorrow you’ll start patrols on a regular basis with us. Later today, you’ll receive a schedule that outlined who you meet with, and where you’re headed.”

”They should’ve already told you this, but you’re not going to be in active fights against villains too often. Usually, it’ll be us doing that. Or if you are deployed to a direct engagement, we’ll be there as backup.”

”Any questions?”

---

The girl, Ethos, laughed as Ethan finished speaking.

"I dare you to fucking try me."

Shoot her in the throat with your crossbow, even if you miss you can lunge with knife or smash her head in with-

Ethan shrugged his shoulders, not bothering to respond to the other Ward. He expected some pushback from the little display he did, but not that much direct hostility. Guess she has some emotional hangups. Probably like everyone here...

Everyone in this room had gone through a Trigger Event at some point, and if it was anything like what Ethan went through for his, then every kid in this room needed some serious therapy. He tried keeping that in mind, hoping it would help him cut the others some slack when they didn't use a coaster or some other inane shit that would piss him the fuck off.

“Shit, that sucks.”

Ethan was knocked out of his internal monologue, turning to face the girl in the body armor. She quickly elaborated, sounding apologetic as she did so.

“Sorry! I mean, it seems like a useful power, both for the obvious and because pointing out our weak points means we know what to work on. It’s just… no, that sucks. It sounds like a lot to deal with, all the time.”

A few tense seconds passed before Ethan let out a light chuckle, a stark contrast with his demeanor this entire meeting thus far. He seemed a little less tense, shoulders slumping slightly as he spoke.

"You're right, it fucking blows."

At least one person here could kind of get it. Ethan wondered how long she'd be able to hold onto that sympathy - it was only a matter of time before he snapped at her, and she didn't seem like the type that would take it lying down.

The girl, Hornet, introduced herself and gave the briefest of comments on her power. Nothing for him to work off of, but teleporting was always useful.

Another Ward, the boy who had a similar outfit as Ethan, was next. They boy introduced himself as Richter, and decided to give a demonstration of his power rather than a direct explanation. He held the coin that he had been playing with most of the meeting, and promptly caused it to disintegrate.

...Well, that explains why his power didn't recommend he get close to the kid. Some kind of disintegration ability? No. Vibration Manipulation. Don't let him touch you, he'll find your resonance frequency and turn you into a puddle. Trigger a fight between him and Ethos, worst case scenario one is seriously-

So he's one of the heavier hitters on the team. Between him, Shattercrash, and Hornet, the team could probably compensate for having so many non-offensive capes. The thought of throwing a smartass comment about how descriptive Richter was crossed Ethan's mind, but he decided against it. For some reason, annoying the guy that could disintegrate shit didn't seem like the smartest idea.

The tinker-looking girl seemed to skip introductions - must have had her cards close to her chest?

... Attack fast before she can react... Crossbow? Sneak behind and stab in the back of the neck...

Ethan frowned, shaking his head a little bit. At first he appreciated his power not really working too well on the girl, but when he actually wanted some information, the delayed and imprecise responses were a little annoying. Thankfully, Shattercrash's introduction quickly drew Ethan's attention, as she flicked a blast of violet energy into the nearest wall. Thankfully, the tinkertech material the wall was composed of did its job, and Ethan didn't even sway on his feet as he felt the vibrations echo through the floor.

Kinetic energy manipulation sounded strong on paper, and based on the few pieces of information he knew on Shattercrash from the news, Ethan could tell that she was experienced and her power was strong. But the complete lack of subtlety was definitely gonna be an issue in the future, he didn't even need to use his powe to figure that one out...

Grandmaster answered his phone and was making his way out the door within seconds, leaving Axiom to take over the rest of the meeting.

”Any questions?”

Ethan had a lot of questions - 'Do we get to pick our babysitter hero' and 'Does the health insurance cover getting brained by a lead pipe' were some of the big ones.

"How many hours are we working on average? Dad wants to make sure I get caught up at the new school you guys set me up with." Ethan paused for a few seconds before adding; "You guys probably already covered it, but I didn't read the documents that much. The weird margin spacing and small font kept fucking me up."

He'd save some of the questions about pay and benefits for later, but this one was pretty important and would at least fill the silence.

---

PRT Headquarters, 9:08 am
June 19th, 2021

Faith nodded in silent approval as Evie took the earpiece from her, and saw that Landon had also taken one, before watching him as he grew in size slightly again. She assumed it must be because he was about to speak again. She wasn't sure whether he'd have been this shy and anxious as a person before he changed into this bizarre form but it certinly wouldn't have helped. He gave a full explaination of his powers before retreating behind Faith. She turned to him and gave him a reassuring smile and thumbs up to wordlessly communicate 'good job' before the abrasive boy then gave the explaination of his power. After him, the girl in the black catsuit went next.

Faith went cold listening to her. Was she describing her own power or Faith's? No, her power apparently worked by touch. So, she was another Master. And her tone was not one of somebody giving a warning. No, she was proud that she could do those things. Faith felt a little queasy as she listened to her. Somebody with the same power as her but none of the guilt disgusted Faith to the core. Was this person even a hero? Did she want to be? What was she here for? Was it no deeper than the same 'join or prison' choice Faith had been offered? Why had somebody like this even been given the choice!? Faith realised she wasn't the only reason for the earpieces. She wasn't even the main reason.

Ethan and Quinn had a little back and forth, followed by Evie also admonishing Quinn. Faith may have been too harsh on Shattercrash. She was full of herself and had a bad attitude but it was clear that she was taking this seriously and cared about being a good cape. Maybe the group needed people like Ethan and Shattercrash in it and greatly benefitted from their prescence. After all, they were the kind of people who could speak their mind and put somebody in check if they needed it. Faith was still trying to gague everybody and wanted to make as many friends and as few enemies, so was holding back many things she wanted to say.

Ethan wasn't done and turned his attention to Landon before talking about the admin password and the walls. When she saw him raise the knife to his own throat, her face became one of surprised concern as she took at step forward and was about to yell 'wait!' before she caught herself. He wasn't going to hurt himself. As he carried on talking it was clear that was merely to make yet another point. Not everyone was wearing their earpieces yet. In fact most of them weren't. The last thing she wanted was to significantly delay today's plan because everybody was standing around waiting for no reason, knowing it was all Faith's fault.

So, Ethan could never turn off his ability off. He also looked a lot happier and more relaxed getting all of that off his chest. He must be holding in a lot more than he said today, at all times. The girl in the the yellow bodysuit said a lot of the things that Faith wanted to see.

"I agree," she added. "You don't-I don't think you need to worry about letting it all out around us. Now we've heard how your power works, we'll understand."

The girl who reassured Ethan then gave her power of teleportation, before the boy who had been dozing on the sofa decided to instead disintergrate a coin and told them absolutely nothing about how he just did that other than that it's based on proximity and he couldn't turn it off. Well, that wasn't terrifying at all. Faith made a mental note not to get too close to him. Finally Shattercrash gave her own power, which looked strong and certainly fit her cape name to a tee.

Grandmaster then left the room to take a phonecall, leaving Axiom to brief them. So, they start patrols tomorrow, huh. So, today was more...orientation? Faith asked her own question after Ethan's.

"Yes, I have a question. Besides getting our schedules, what else should we do for the rest of today?"

All Tandems | PRT Headquarters
June 19, 2021, 9:08

---

Any questions? Of course she had questions, so many questions! Not about their schedules though. That wasn’t all that interesting and the other's could deal with sorting that out if they cared.

Faith had been the first person to introduce herself after Tandem. Her power was cool but Tandem had already had the chance to discuss it with her extensively, so that didn’t interest her as much as the others. Although Tandem still thought it was a little odd how careful Faith was about not using her power, avoiding accidents made sense with a power like that, but surely no one would care about little slip-ups. Not using her power at all must really suck big time, Faith was too nice for her own good.

As one of the people who’d accepted her offer of candy, Tandem decided she liked the bird person. Their power was as they put it, a bit self-explanatory. They were a big bird creature and could do big bird creature things. Being silent and having enhanced senses was pretty cool though; Tandem bet they’d be awesome at scouting things out in the dark. She briefly wondered if they were strong enough to carry people around – well they did mention their claws being quite sharp, but maybe someone could ride on them like a horse? Also, she’d seen them do a size-changing thing when they took the candy? Was an aspect of their power that could be used?

Keystone had gone next in his explanation he seemed to be a bit grumpy, but Tandem could deal with grumpy and it sounded like that was a result of his power anyway, which made it the extra cool kind of grumpy. For that matter, of all her teammates, his power was probably the one that interested Tandem the most and she definitely wanted to probe him for information, both on her own weaknesses and those of her teammates – as well as just to find out where exactly the limits to his power lay. It helped a bit that Tandem figured that with a power like that on their side the chances of there being a secret double agent on the team seemed significantly slimmer, not when calling out someone's secret allegiances probably counted as a weakness… unless his power didn’t work like that, but it probably did, he’d been able to pick out that she was carrying a first aid kit in her inventory after all – several actually – so he should probably also be able to do that. She should ask.

Where Decree was the kind of master Tandem could get along with Ethos was anything but. Tandem immediately decided Ethos was the one cape in the room who she didn’t like one bit – and the only cape whose power she wouldn’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole.

Hornet’s power was also interesting, even if she decided to leave all the important details out. A teleportation ability that granted short-lived super strength and invulnerability? It sounded as though Hornet’s teleportation targets were a little more restrictive than Tandem’s own since she said she apparently had to teleport next to people, but depending on her range that might still be better and she wouldn’t have to worry about ‘clone weaving’ so she would probably be able to pull off teleports in quicker succession. How did her invulnerability work and how long does it last? Also if she could teleport to people could she sense them with her power as well, or did she have to know they were there first?

Richter was second to last to speak. He didn’t really explain his power so much as to demonstrate it by disintegrating a coin. He also warned the group that he couldn’t turn off his power, which put him in a similar boat to Tandem, though more inconvenient in his case. Some part of Tandem wondered if getting disintegrated would hurt or not – on the one hand if it did she definitely didn’t want to try it, but on the other, a not insignificant part of her wanted to poke him to find out.

Since the tinker girl didn’t speak up, that just left Shattercrash. Tandem still didn’t like her very much – she was too loud and intimidating – but at least her power looked cool and she was still quite a bit better than Ethos personality wise. Annoyingly Tandem wasn’t able to get a whole lot from Shattercrash’s explanation of her power. What the hell was kinetic energy? She’d almost asked but decided not to, that was probably the sort of thing that everyone was meant to already know.

Seeing as it was question time, Tandem decided she should ask some of her own. Debating it amongst herselves for a moment, Tandem's curiosity finally won out over her paranoia and she reluctantly shuffled her clones around so they were all in the room.

Tandem 1 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | @Mintz, @Silver Carrot
June 19, 2021, 9:08

---

Popping into existence behind Decree and the bird guy Tandem immediately set about trying the get the changer’s attention.

“Psst. Hey bird guy. What was that thing you did with the size change earlier? How does it work?” Tandem’s whisper could barely be called a whisper for how loud it was. “Also I think some of my friends were calling you mothman before, but you don’t really look much like a moth. Maybe you should fly around during the day so people can see you're not a moth.”

Tandem 2 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | @Duoya
June 19, 2021, 9:08

---

The second Tandem approached the thinker where he was asking Axiom questions, waiting for a moment to slip in and speak to the guy. While there were a whole lot of questions she had to ask the guy regarding her own weaknesses and the weaknesses, the weaknesses of her various plans, and the weaknesses of her teammates, not to mention the guy’s power in general, first she had a more pressing issue to get out of the way.

“Hey Keystone. If your power hypothetically maybe at some point tells you that I’ve got something in my inventory that I could get in trouble for could you keep it a secret?”, unlike her counterpart this Tandem spoke in a voice that was actually deserving of being called a whisper. “I promise it’s not to hurt anyone, just for emergencies and stuff like that. You seem like you get being prepared, right?”

Tandem 3 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | @King Cosmos
June 19, 2021, 9:08

---

The final Tandem popped up next to the Hornet girl, not hesitating any longer than it took her to take a deep breath before immediately diving into her questions.

“Hey, you said you were Hornet right? You said your power lets you teleport to people, how does that work? Do you need to see your target or does your power let you know where people are? What’s the range and is there a limit on how quickly you can use it? If you can teleport to me, maybe we can practise coordinating our powers? Also, you said you gain invulnerability? How does that work? Can you still be thrown around or do you become super heavy or something?” Tandem’s excited stream of words continued without pause until the very last of her breath had been exhausted and she’d needed to wheeze out the final words.

Hornet

After Jessica had given her little introduction the rest of the group followed suit. Shattercrash’s demonstration came with few surprises; she hadn’t actually known exactly what the girl’s power was, beyond what she saw on the news or heard from people, so finding out that it was just pure kinetic energy was cool. But yeah, why was it pink? Then the last guy, Richter, demonstrated his power and… yeah, his power sucked too.

I mean, yeah, it was cool. And strong and good in a fight but… he couldn’t turn it off? Well, clearly he could turn if off because he was holding the coin before it disintegrated and then grabbed another one straight after. Maybe he just meant it was something he had to turn off, rather than something he had to turn on?

Some people really did just get screwed over by their powers, didn’t they? Even hers, as basic as it sounded, came with the added feature that she could tell where everyone within a set distance of herself was and where they were looking. It was useful and probably something she would get used to with time but there’s no real way to describe what it’s like to suddenly have a sense that wasn’t there before; no one to ask for advice when you couldn’t get to sleep because you kept feeling your neighbours walking around their living room and didn’t know how to ignore it.

Still, at least her power wasn’t telling her everyone’s deepest insecurities and turning everything she touched to dust. At least Jessica didn’t have to constantly watch what she said, lest she accidentally mind control people.

Being a Parahuman kind of sucked, didn’t it?

Grandmaster left the room in a hurry soon after and Jessica allowed her back to unstraighten just slightly at his exit. Axiom took over after that, but it didn’t seem like there was much left to this meeting; just an update on when their first patrol was going to be, which was tomorrow oh god, and a Q&A session. Jessica took the opportunity to think over everything she’d been reading in the lead up to today, all of the protocols and training and so on for any questions she might ask. Before she could think of any however, one of the triplets from earlier suddenly appeared right in front of her and nearly caught flailing hand to the temple for her trouble.

“Jesus, kid! Don’t do that!” Jessica folded her arms across her chest, trying to regain some of her composure and, let’s be honest, some of her dignity after jumping like that. “I mean, I’m definitely going to do the same to you at some point, can’t help it, but warn a girl first.”

What was she even asking about? Her powers? The girl… her name was Tandem, right? Tandem’s curiosity and enthusiasm was kind of endearing, if overwhelming, and Jessica saw no reason not to answer. “Yeah, Hornet, because like… I fly around and sting people? I don’t know, it seemed to fit. I don’t need to see anyone, I can tell where they are… sort of. It’s more like I can feel the places I can teleport to, which happens to be near people. Not sure about the exact range; it kind of fluctuates? It’s pretty far though. And the invincibility stuff… I don’t know? Like, it hard to test for that sort of thing. They didn’t want to throw too much stuff at me during the trials and I kind of agreed; since, you know, they might kill me by accident. I can just kind of tell when I’m invincible and when I’m not, but I don’t know what the limit is. But when I was hit during the tests I didn’t really feel it at all; not just that it didn’t hurt but that I just didn’t feel anything, so maybe I won’t get thrown around either.”

Was what everything? That seemed like everything.

“Uh, was there anything else?”

@TheMushroomLord

---

Okay, that was it; if he wasn't already officially shook, then the next few introductions definitely sealed the deal.

First to speak up past him was the one with the mask that freaked him out, though before that was a definitive bash against his pathetic attempt at humor. Landon didn't recoil or anything of that sort, or even start growing again from a spike in tension; it had been expected, but hearing someone bring it up like that caused in to deflate, what energy he had managed to put forth for his introduction violently sucked out from him. Yeah, he probably would've just been better off staying quiet, right? He'd hardly said anything important, anyhow. Still, perhaps it didn't hurt as much simply because somebody was trying to be in his corner; it might not've seemed like much to anyone, maybe even Faith herself, but a smile and a thumbs-up were a vote of confidence that, however unearned it felt for him, went nonetheless appreciated.
He didn't get to dwell on it for long, however, as the masked boy continued forward with his own description of his power, which...Certainly changed things. Wow, that sounded...Just awful. Landon could barely contend with his own shortcomings; trying to grapple with that from everyone else in his vicinity? He couldn't even fathom it. And yet, here someone was who did have to do it, without pause. However, he couldn't help but widen his eyes in fear as he started pointing across the room at one of the Wards, describing their weaknesses. Oh please, please don't....

...But when he did point at Landon, it was mercifully impersonal. Just about his bone structure, which honestly, he'd already figured. Something as big as him flying definitely would need hollow bones or ungodly powerful wings; of which his form possessed both, admittedly, so perhaps if his power was kinder it wouldn't have given his bones the density of a wooden table, but it was what it was. Internally, he gave an exhalation of relief. He could've imagined a lot worse stuff coming from him.
However, whatever thankfulness Landon possessed from that choice in words was quickly dashed as Keystone abruptly held himself hostage, a knife teetering at the edge of his throat. His already massive eyes somehow widened more, as his fur stood up in shock, watching the situation with mounting terror. Though, it was mercifully brief situation, dropping the tension the moment the bladed instrument did the same. Okay, so he was way too intense for himself, he could say with confidence. Still...He definitely felt as if he'd judged him far too quickly. Was he a good person? Well, that was far harder to say, but...He didn't act out without reasoning, and he wasn't being overtly malicious. Landon could take a small victory.

...He got a much different vibe from the new voice joining in, however. The one in the catsuit. She'd introduced herself as Ethos, but quickly brushed things off...That is, until people were openly sharing their abilities. Something about that must've set her off, because, well...To put it bluntly, she was acting quite unpleasantly. Her choice of words in how she described her ability brought a twisted knot to Muninn's stomach. If he were to compare how it sounded to the other Masters he knew of, where Claire numbed you, and Faith gave you a push, Ethos, well...She scrambled you entirely. What a horrifying thought, to be something so utterly not you. Especially to Landon, who was still so uncertain as to who he wanted - or needed - to be. When she had finished her piece, Landon hadn't even noticed, but he'd grown considerably; nearly a foot in size, and had instinctually taken steps away from Ethos. She wasn't the sort of individual he wanted to associate himself with, he could say that much!

Especially because of all that vulgar language, too.

That just made him all the more thankful for who spoke up next, the yellow-and-black armored one who, for one, seemed to share his sentiments on Keystone, though was more verbal about them, and also gave a mercifully short and non-hostile introduction. Hornet was a pretty cool name, he thought, and fit her power quite nicely; to pop up and strike when one least expects it, just like the titular insect. Granted, he imagined it would also be a pretty startling power to have used near you...He'd just have to get used to it, though. There was a lot he was going to have to get used to. Muninn was still noticeably enlarged, but at least this introduction had done nothing to cause it to spiral any further.

The next one, however...

It was brief; startlingly so. He had walked up, dropped his name, and Landon watched in abject horror as he watched a coin get obliterated from existence. Only to then be followed by the suggestion that they keep a distance from him, since it couldn't be turned off.

What?!

That had to mean...He could do it to...To people? Just break them apart into nothingness? Or would it be more...His run-off imagination nearly brought him to a gut-hurling experience, and he quickly turned his attention directly away from Richter, as if keeping him out of sight would prevent Landon from considering those implications yet again. Okay, new other person he wanted to avoid! At least it was nothing personal, this time, but he would've been lying if he wasn't absolutely freaked out by the flexing of such a power. He had grown, yet again. Probably close to 14 feet in height now, and trying even more desperately to keep his ever-growing mass as hunched and unnoticeable as possible. It wasn't going very well. And somehow, despite quite literally having grown a few heads taller, Landon himself seemed unaware of the changes beyond his innate instinct to keep himself as small as possible.

It didn't help when it was back to the loud, abrasive girl. Shattercrash was her name, right? His body tensed up when her voice raised against Ethos, brutally telling her off for her own shitty attitude. Perhaps some people could've taken solace in the face of watching Ethos getting put down, but for Muninn, he was just getting more concerned that they were all so riled up about all of this. Weren't they supposed to be teammates? Sure, they'd just all met properly for the first time, but...It didn't feel very team-like right now. Especially when Muninn was scared about approaching nearly half the group so far.
His feelings weren't assuaged when Shattercrash (perhaps predictably, if he'd thought more about it), gave a more direct display of what she was capable of, abruptly firing off a bright pink blast of concussive force at the wall, causing a shudder to pass through the room as it dispersed. The abrupt shot was more than enough to set Landon off again, though he did his best to keep it non-verbal...But couldn't surprise a quiet, bird-like squawk of surprise when the attack was launched. Welp, that at least told him that they either totally missed his nonverbal request from prior, or more concerningly, that they might have understood it and willfully startled him anyhow.

This really wasn't his day.

Still, the demonstration was made, and her capabilities made apparent. She could shoot blasts of energy and perform physical feats so absurd he couldn't even imagine it. He knew for sure he couldn't jump high enough to reach a helicopter, much less kick a steel vault door open. It was equally impressive as it was intimidating. He had shot up again. 15- or, no - more like 16 foot now. Things were getting a mite bit out of control, though he was still just as clueless.

Out of nowhere, it seemed Mr. Grandmaster had received a call and departed from the scene, leaving them under the watch of Ms. Axiom. That, honestly, was an improvement for him. Even the room simply lacking the intimidating presence of the Protectorate leader managed to chill him out just a smidge, bringing him back closer in line to 14 feet. Speaking of Ms. Axiom, she asked if there were any other questions, and also took the time to outline what the rest of the day, and tomorrow, would look like. So they weren't doing anything today? Whew! Honestly, that alone took another weight off his shoulders; he was almost able to forget all the other mortifying things that had happened in recent succession, pushing his size back down again; 12 foot. He could handle looking at a schedule. And patrols shouldn't be too bad, right? They'd be supervised, and they'd have each other, and heck, even the nature of a patrol meant that some days you might not run into anything. Landon felt as if the winds were reaching his sails again. Everything felt so much more manageable now!
Pleased with the turn of events, his eyes briefly shifted into those happy little crescents again before dropping back into their full-moon neutral expression. He didn't have any special questions; not off the top of his head, at least. So...He was off the hook, for now! Landon was partway through approaching that all-too-comfortable couch once more, but was cut off by the very sudden arrival of a familiar face.

"AH!"

Embarrassingly enough, this made the second time Muninn nearly jumped out of his skin; and this time around, he felt even worse about it, given that he had gotten startled by someone so diminutive. Er, not that that was a bad thing, or something, just...Especially given his own size in this state, it struck him just how small she was, even in comparison to the other, normal-sized Wards. However, when he picked up that Hornet had gotten startled by the same experience, it helped him feel a little less bashful over the experience. Still, the shocking nature of it had caused one of his shifts, getting a little closer to 13 feet once again as his fur and feathers puffed out. "Um, what is it they...?" Lost in his own thoughts for a moment, Muninn was speaking more to himself and Tandem before he came to his conclusion with a start. "Right! Um, ditto. To her point." He bashfully pointed a claw towards Hornet; a little warning next time would go a long way. He took the moment after this to consider her point. His...Size change? What? Was-was that a thing he did?! Evidently coming to that conclusion for the first time, Tandem could watch his huge eyes widen once more, and hastily give his form a twice-over.

...She was right! He was bigger! But...But how?! This never happened before? Granted, well, he hadn't tested much with this form, and Claire was always around to make sure he didn't start freaking out too much. Maybe that had something to do with it? Still, suddenly realizing he was still under the scrutiny of his fellow Ward, he finally spoke on the matter. "Oh, uh...I...I honestly didn't know that happened. Until you, you know, pointed it out. Hehe...Heh..." He laughed a dry, nervous laugh, awkwardly scratching at one of his arms. Look at him; he'd rattled off all that crap about his power, and then he just got sucker-punched by a new part of it. Now he really must've looked stupid...
Still, there was another thing she'd rattled off. Something about a...Mothman? Oh! That actually got a laugh out of Landon; brief and quiet, but an honest laugh all the same. "Oh. That! Well, when I fly around at night, it's really hard to make out anything except the eyes. Cause I'm all dark." He shuffled in a circle, as if to show off himself and prove the statement correct; he wasn't wrong. His feathers and fur were pitch-black, and even the greens of his arms were dull and muted. It'd be hard looking at any of this in the darkness. "So, uh, my eyes were the only thing people saw, and, well...Bright-eyed spooky thing flying around at night? It would be fair to call it a mothman, I suppose..." He...Wasn't all too sure about that. Honestly, he hadn't even known about mothman until he heard people calling him that in the past. What an awkward question to Claire that had been...Especially since she hadn't known anything either.

The last bit of her questioning brought a new rising anxiety in him. Flying around in the daytime? Heh...Well, it'd be inevitable now, but that didn't change how terrified he was of the idea. What would people think when they honestly saw him like this, Ward or no? Some freakish bird monster that silently flew in the skies, watching over them like a hawk. Heck, thinking of that to himself was enough to raise his own paranoia a notch, and he was talking about himself! "W-well....I, uh, I imagine I'll have to be doing that soon anyhow. So...I think the problem will solve itself? Hopefully..." He didn't sound very hopeful.
The conversation they were holding, and, indeed, any conversation being held at all, was cut abruptly short by the arrival of a crisply dressed man, though otherwise plain in appearance, beyond the fact that, well...Putting it nicely, his expression was dire. Landon's attention turned to the newcomer, equally confused and concerned. Something told him things were about to get bad...

---

The Vice Director | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room |
June 19, 2021, 9:10 AM

---

Talk about a load of shit. Even as he unceremoniously barged his way into the meeting room, the Vice-Director couldn't even be bothered to mask the exhaustion and disappointment across his otherwise measured expression. It was one thing getting late to this all-important shindig because of completely shit traffic. It was another thing to be told about a crime in-progress the moment you walked through the damn doors. And it was another thing entirely to...

He just sighed. His eyes scanned the room, because that was all he needed to judge the situation. Looks like they'd handled the chit-chat section of things, but he was about to throw them a meteoric curve-ball, and he wasn't pleased in the slightest. First, though, he could at least introduce himself.
"The name's Vice Director Fukuda, if you aren't familiar with me. Which, in an ideal world, you won't be. The actual Director uses me to handle all the dirty work." He gave a grin, but it lacked any mirth to speak of, with it drawn tight and getting closer to a grimace by the second. Luckily, it was broken by an undeniable frown. Or, maybe that wasn't lucky? Well, it was better than looking at that depressing-ass grin, at least. He looked past the teenage angst to lock eyes with Axiom and Nightstalker, giving what could best be described as an apologetic shrug before he pushed forward. "I don't know what Axiom's been telling everyone, but a change of plans hit. Grandmaster seems to think you're all ready to swing for the fences," he said coolly, yet again glancing across the mass of the Wards. The look didn't offer that he had any confidence in that sentiment, but he pressed on nonetheless. "so you're all slated to handle a commotion we've got; the robbery of a local bank. By a trained, powered mercenary group. Not exactly a typical starter mission..." He almost growled that last bit to himself, but didn't quiet it enough to prevent the kids from picking it up. Not that he cared; he'd made it very clear he was against this idea on a hundred different levels, but...Well, the Director had the final say, and she seemed to be convinced.

Somehow.

After briefly glancing away from the crowd with his thinly-veiled animosity towards the situation, he looked back upon the Wards. "Axiom and Nightstalker can get you all prepped; you're shipping out in ten." He'd done his part, damn him to hell. With that, he casually made his way over to the nearest chair, plopped his ass in, and took out a cigarette and lighter in one smooth motion, lighting it up. You know, there was one thing he was thankful for; being here meant he was away from the one person he knew would actively try to nag him out of this awful habit. That, at least, brought the smallest of smiles to his face.

---

For Muninn's part, as far as the two people nearest to him, Decree and Tandem, were concerned, he seemed to have become completely statue-like. And just about doubled in size as all that escaped him was a monstrous wheeze of exertion, whether from trying not to let out a full-on screech over the new development or over the general shock of shooting up to nearly 24 feet in what had almost looked like a single second of activity, it was impossible to say.

Well, his hunch had been right!

---

Ethos lightly chuckled as Shattercrash went on and on. Getting down to business? That implied pursuing what they were here for, not playing back-and-forth with the lot. "We get it. You're a rebel with a heart of gold. If I wanted to watch every trope announce themselves I would read fanfiction."

I mean was Ethos going insane? They were not here to be superheroes, they were here to do the dirty work that needed doing. Hell, one of their "own" was actively going through how to take each of them out if they went rogue. And it wasn't like they were given free reign. There were surely protocols on how to manage all of them. Put to death or put in prison, made an example of. If anyone thought otherwise, if they thought this was a way to make up for past wrongs, they were idiots and deserved whatever came their way.

Ethos knew the things she did in the past could be questionable for those with more white morals. That's not how the world worked. A man who regularly beats his wife and child is seen as a monster so the wife kills him. Is she not a monster? Or is she only pardoned because she did so to save herself and her child? And what if you found out she enjoyed it, got pleasure from it. Do you call her out and send her to prison or allow her to live because she took someone arguably worse off the streets?

Morality is gray. Always has been, always will be.

"No questions here. Eager to get started." She responded before someone else came into the room, detailing their actual mission. A bank robbery? Still, this was probably better than whatever baby starter mission they had lined up for them. This would be a way to show what they could actually do in dangerous situations.

Ethos stood up, cracking her knuckles. "That's more like it."

---

Ethan noticed that one of the cloner girl's bodies had approached, and when a lull in conversation appeared, she was quick to interject and start speaking with him.

“Hey Keystone. If your power hypothetically maybe at some point tells you that I’ve got something in my inventory that I could get in trouble for could you keep it a secret? I promise it’s not to hurt anyone, just for emergencies and stuff like that. You seem like you get being prepared, right?”

Her voice was a hushed whisper, so quiet that Keystone doubted Axiom would be able to hear despite only being feet away. Axiom smirked a bit beneath his mask - his power had already filled him in on this girl's paranoia, so it made sense that she'd be trying to get on his good side before he snitched on her.

"The only reason I'm using a crossbow is because they said no to a pistol - still pretty pissy about that, so I'll keep quiet. Just don't point shit at me or set something off when I'm in the room, and we're cool."

Ethan hesitated as he finished his whispered response, a second or two of pause filling the conversation as his power started filling in more details on the situation. Some of the things this kid had was pretty fucking dangerous, but if she was able to hide it from the asshole PR department, more power to her. No, what made Ethan hesitate was something a bit deeper than something related to her power.

"...Hey Clone gi- oh, Tandem, you're Tandem apparently. While we're talking favors, you mind partnering up for the patrol tomorrow? You and Shattercrash look like the most experienced ones here, and I could use the pointers. Plus I don't want to get randomly assigned with Bird Boy, he's setting my powers off like crazy."

Pointless. All the Protectorate heroes here are more experienced than any Ward, ask one of them for help instead. The changer probably heard that last part, you might have hurt his feelings. Keep it up.

Ethan was trying his best to be friendly, but damn it was hard to do that without stepping on toes or invading people's privacy. Offering to tutor her would probably offend her, and Ethan doubted he'd be patient enough to handle teaching her anything substantial. Asking to hang out after work would be way too annoying - he wanted to be friendly, not waste all his free time with people he worked with every day. This way he could make small talk with a Ward that didn't set him off too bad during work hours, and he'd probably be able to badmouth the PRT without too much retaliation on her end.

Plus he'd be able to tell his dad he made a 'friend' without lying to him. Win-win.

It wasn't even two minutes after Grandmaster left when another figure entered - well-dressed, somewhere in his 30s, and clearly annoyed with the situation at hand. He gave a sweeping glance across the room, taking in the various wards that were present, before introducing himself as Vice Director Fukuda. The name sounded vaguely familiar - Ethan might have seen him in a news report a year or two ago, or learned it via cultural osmosis. What mattered a lot more than this guy that Ethan didn't really care about was the news he was bringing them - instead of the relaxed schedule overview, team building exercises, and whatever other bullshit Axiom had planned for everyone, the Wards were apparently going to be stopping a bank heist.

On the first day.

Ethan had never even went out in costume before, so the fact that they were going up against a group of seasoned mercenaries was making a pit form in his stomach. The fact they only had 10 minutes to prepare was even more concerning - within seconds Ethan was already sliding his helmet off so he could equip the earbuds, throwing anonymity to the wind.

The changer almost seemed to explode, limbs and torso shooting vertically until he was pressed against the ceiling, chest shifting rapidly as he hyperventilated. Surprisingly, this helped ease some of Ethan's own anxiety around the situation - the buzz of his power in his head was able to hold his attention much more easily than the fact he might die in a half hour.

"Ugh, fucking piece of... Okay, someone calm him down before I have an aneurysm..."

It took a lot to not demand one of the master girls try to fuck up bird boy's perceptions or emotions (wouldn't work, they'd ignore you at best and attack in relation at worst. Better to bash his knees in, then go for-), and if the Engineering department had actually made the tranq bolts that Ethan had requested, he almost certainly would have unloaded half a dozen into the changer on the spot.

Instead, Ethan pried himself away from the scene, walking over to the small kitchen area to look over his costume. He breathed slowly. In. Out. In. Out.

Don't look, don't listen, don't think. Focus on the now. You're about to go fight mercenaries who you don't know, so ask Axiom or Nightstalker about them once everyone settles down.

Ethan patted himself, feeling the various pieces of equipment hidden beneath his cloak. Knives, crossbow bolts he barely knew how to load let alone aim, his phone, pepper spray. The first aid kit he felt at his side was probably his biggest contribution to the team in this situation, though he wasn't sure how useful it would be for wards like Richter or the changer.

Ethan saw a small bag of flour sitting at the edge of the counter, and instinctively snatched it, already jamming it into one of the many pockets lining the inside of his cloak. It could be useful - blocking line of sight was a pretty good defense against most powers, and worst case scenario it's combustibility would surprise an opponent and create an opening.

Excuses. Scared, looking for distraction. Painfully aware of your own inexperience, you're afraid of dying like he did. Focus on the others, hide behind them and rely on striking from range. You know more about this than any of the other wards - use that to your advantage.

Ethan stopped himself from scavenging anything else from the room, moving on to making final adjustments to his costume and cocking his crossbow. He would return to the group as soon as things settled down more, not trusting himself to not lash out right now. He could get filled in on the details and make a plan on the drive to the bank.

I'm a 14 year old, a thinker, and this is my very first day in costume. I'm probably just looking over the blueprints and asked to comb through strategies, not throw punches or some shit... Yeah, that's probably it. Nothing serious, relax.

The breathing exercise and logical reasoning helped ease some of Ethan's tension - he hadn't expected to get so wound up over this, but then again, he also hadn't expected to be stopping a 'real' crime within the first month, let alone the first day.

Ethan unconsciously gripped one of the knives at his side, practicing his quick draw to distract himself.

Practicing something Grandmaster remarked on, doesn-

Shut the fuck up already...

Tandem 1 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | @Mintz
June 19, 2021

---

Huh. So apparently the birdman hadn’t even known he could change his size. Well, he was a fairly new cape, so that sorta made sense; as much as Tandem thought powers were awesome now, when she’d first gotten hers she’d been terrified of parahumans, it had probably taken her a year or so to finally realise how cool powers were and to start properly figuring out how to use her own.

Tandem figured the size-changing ability must be the sort of power to do its own thing when the bird guy wasn’t focused on it, but she wondered whether it was something he could take conscious control of when he wanted, like breathing was, or if it was always out of his control, like a heartbeat. If it was the latter that’d be somewhat unfortunate, but there would probably still be rules behind when and how it did what it did that could be exploited once bird guy figured it out.

As for the mothman thing, bird guy’s explanation sorta made sense - his feathers and fur were, as he’d pointed out, very dark - although Tandem still thought that people jumping to him being a moth was kinda weird. Even if moths only came out at night, Tandem was pretty sure they didn’t have white eyes, and for that matter, could moths even be black in the first place? Still, being hard to see in the dark was an interesting aspect of his power, especially since he’d already mentioned he could fly silently and see in the dark.

Did Wards do night missions? She’d never seen Wards out after dark, but it wasn’t like cape encounters were all that common in the first place. Thus far it looked like the Wards followed normal people schedules, but it’d make sense if they sometimes had to operate after dark; Tandem knew from personal experience that some criminals were very much active at night.

Before Tandem could continue her questioning of the nervous cape or share her speculations on how his power might work, she was interrupted by a man in a suit entering the room. The newcomer introduced himself as Vice Director Fukuda and addressed the Wards…

Tandem 2 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | @Duoya
June 19, 2021

---

Tandem decided that other than being a bit of a grump, Keystone was actually pretty cool. He’d said that the only reason he didn’t have a gun was because he’d been denied a pistol, which checked out with all the stuff she’d been told she wasn’t allowed to carry. Well in her case her power let her ignore those particular rules, so if the situation called for it she’d be more than happy to hand Keystone a gun or two, though she wouldn’t say so right now - even if she whispered it, it’d be really silly to say she had firearms while standing so close to Axiom.

More importantly, Tandem had picked up some interesting bits and pieces about Keystone's power. For one, Keystone had pretty much confirmed his power could see into her inventory to some extent; if his comment about her having a first aid kit hadn’t been an admission, his request that she not to “set something off” certainly was. More interestingly, Keystone’s power seemed to have given him her name - or her cape name at least, though she reasoned it wasn’t all that unlikely that it had given him both and he just hadn’t used her real one because secret identities were meant to be secret, even when they absolutely weren’t.

He’d said his power was about finding weaknesses; did that mean her name was somehow a weakness then? Or did his power give him extra information along with the weaknesses? A ‘that’s Tandem, you should blow her up’ sort of thing. She’d ask him about that in a bit, but for now, she was interested in the other part of what he’d said, that he wanted to team up on patrol with her.

Of course Tandem really wanted to patrol with Keystone… well she really wanted to patrol with any of her new teammates, except for maybe Ethos, but Keystone’s power was the most interesting of the lot and she was itching to ask him all about her weaknesses and those of her teammates, and then trying to come up with workarounds. Very few powers had the intrinsic capacity to grow, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t improve their use, and thinking about how to do so was always lots and lots of fun.

"Sure, sounds fun.”

Before Tandem could say any more, Vice Director Fukuda entered the room.

Tandem 3 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | @King Cosmos
June 19, 2021

---

Tandem had startled Hornet when she’d teleported in front of her. Oops. In hindsight she probably should have seen that coming, it wasn’t like surprise was an unusual response to having someone teleport in front of you, actually, it was probably the normal response to that happening. Still, it was a lot more convenient than having to walk around everywhere and there were plenty of cases where she needed to dismiss and resummon her selves, so it wasn’t like she could just not do it…

“Um– sorry… would it be better if I appear behind you next time?”

After a moment she had a better idea, or rather thought of a way to apply an idea she’d already had. “Ah! What if I gave you a signal first? Like with coloured paper or something.” Excited to show off her idea, Tandem didn’t bother waiting for an answer before demonstrating her idea by summoning a piece of yellow confetti in the air between the two of them.

Moving on. The ability to sense where she could teleport was awesome, and frankly, it made Tandem a little jealous. There was so much she would be able to do with a power like that.

“You’d be awesome at search and rescue! I tried to go into a burning building once, but my power’s not really good for that so I had to run away… but you’d probably be able to find everyone really quickly and could jump right to them! That’s really, really cool!” Tandem paused for a fraction of a second, thinking, before having another thought. “Does your power only work on people? If it works on animals we could all carry around boxes of rats or bugs or something and then you could teleport all around us… well, I wouldn’t be able to, but the others might.”

Tandem briefly considered pulling a dead mouse out of her inventory to illustrate her idea, but recalled how she'd gotten in trouble when she'd done something similar during official power testing, and decided against the idea. It'd be annoying to lose time getting told off right now.

It was kind of a shame that Hornet didn’t know how potent her invincibility was, though it did make sense as to why they couldn’t safely test that. Tandem supposed she was lucky in that sense - if she ever wanted to try something with her power that might be dangerous she only needed to make sure one of her bodies came out unscathed, which certainly made power testing a lot easier. Still, there had to be ways to safely test Hornet, right?

“Does your power strengthen other things you teleport with you? What if you teleported with a stick or piece of paper or something and then tried to break that?”

Tandem moved to touch the piece of confetti she’d dropped before with her shoe, shunting it back into her inventory. She was about to suggest the two of them try training together at some point, especially since their respective mover powers seemed like they’d synergise really, really, well with one another, but before she could get the words out, Vice Director Fukuda arrived.

All Tandems | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room
June 19, 2021

---

Two of Tandem’s three heads whipped around to observe the vice director as he addressed the room, the third instead looked to Axiom and her new teammates to gauge their reactions to whatever was said.

They’d be dealing with a bank robbery? Tandem had never really understood why someone would try to rob a bank or steal money at all for that matter. Wasn’t it easier to just take the thing you wanted the money to buy in the first place? Whatever, that detail wasn’t the important one, what mattered was that the robbers were mercenaries. Cape mercenaries.

A knot of anxiety bloomed in Tandem's chests. She’d gotten by all this time by avoiding any head-to-head conflict with other capes, generally satisfying herself with observing them and at most heckling them a little, but it looked like today she’d finally be getting into a proper fight. Tandem could feel her hearts pounding as her minds rushed with countless possibilities for ways this could go wrong, yet despite her anxiety, she couldn’t help but also start to grin beneath her masks. The option to avoid intergang conflicts had been lost the moment she’d decided to join the Wards, and scary as it was, getting to finally try out some of the ideas she’d been sitting on was really, really exciting.

From the looks of things, bird guy was also excited, judging by how large he’d suddenly grown.

Hornet

“Please don’t just appear behind me. That’ll just startle me more.” Or at least give her more reason to panic, because the person that just appeared out of nowhere was also in her blind spot. Jessica wasn’t sure teleporting the contents of a confetti cannon into her face was all that much better either.

Hell, was there any way to make suddenly appearing in someone’s personal space not alarming? “Maybe just… appear behind me but like, give me a second to realise your there with my power? I’ll feel you arrive, I’m pretty sure, so just don’t sudden shout out and it should be fine.”

Tandem had all kinds of ideas for her power, including things that Jessica had never even considered. Really, rats? They were both teleporters, though the younger girl could do way more than just teleport, so maybe this was stuff that Tandem had already thought of for her own power. Or maybe she was just really good at this sort of thing; now that she had a moment to look around, she could see that other Tandem’s were talking to some of the other new Wards in the room. Asking them about their powers too?

“Yeah, probably best not to dive into burning buildings; good of you to try though.” Brave and reckless. Good kid. Still the most normal one here, too. “I could find people, yeah, even teleport to them. But I can’t take anyone with me when I do that, so I’d have to lead them out myself. I’d probably be able to tell the rescuers were to look though; coordinate things from outside?” That was something to consider. She would have to talk to Axiom or someone about that later; maybe she could volunteer to be on call for the fire department or something, when they need to do that sort of work.

“My power only works on people, as far as I can tell. At least, I can only tell where people are with my… whatever sense. Otherwise I’d be able to feel every rat and bug in this building right now and that, urgh, being able to sense insects must be the worse power. Like, I know every building is full of bugs, but if I could feel them too? All the time? I’d never feel clean anywhere I went.”

Did her power affect things she carried? It definitely affected the things she wore, but whether it extended further than that she didn’t know. Her power testing so far had been focused on learning the basic limits of her power and getting used to using them alongside her basic training; two months, yada yada, it wasn’t enough time to really dive into it. It was a good idea though; they could test her invincibility by shooting at a sheet of paper she was holding rather than at her, or she could try breaking a stick over a training dummy’s head. “Good idea!”

It looked like Tandem was going to say something else, but then someone Jessica only vaguely recognised as being someone important stepped into the room and grabbed all of their attention. “A bank robbery?” By powered mercenaries? Wait, that didn’t sound like something small time. Wouldn’t something like that be done by one of the bigger name villain groups? It was literally her first day, what the fuck?

“Shit.”

@TheMushroomLord

---

PRT Headquarters, 9:10 am
June 19th, 2021

Faith watched as the Vice Director walk in, and her face dropped as she listened to him talk. Well, that answered her question at least, though she now wished it remained unanswered. a bank robbery. By superpowered mercanaries. Why would mercanaries be robbing a bank? What could she do to help in that sitation. She looked over at her teammates. Many of their powers were better suited to fighting. Faith would probably be most useful as crowd control. Still, she'd be putting herself in active danger to do that. Was her training enough to fight mercenaries?

She turned to see that Munin had grown. A lot. He was the size of a building now. She couldn't even reach higher than his leg let alone pat his back. She noticed he still wasn't wearing his earpiece. She could say it. She could say 'calm down' and get him to shrink. It would help them all, and help Landon. But she couldn't bring herself to say the words. Not to somebody she liked and trusted. She didn't want him to change in any way, even one as small as being calmer. Because she knew from experience. Little things that you think will help are how it starts, and before you know it, they're no longer the same person you were friends with. Instead, she patted his leg wordlessly, hoping the gesture alone would hopefully reach him. She pulled at her necklace, slipping the crucifix out from underneath her costume, and kissed it before tucking it back in. If there was a time in her life she needed God, that they needed God, it was right now.

---

Protectorate HQ
June 19, 9:08 AM

Val watched Shattercrash's introduction with a modicum of interest in seeing her power in action.

Her powers were pink, too? His decision to refer to her as the Neon eyesore felt ever more validated at the realisation. Who knew he was psychic?

His eyes traced the trail of her energy blast until it hit a wall. Even then, as the kinetic energy dispersed throughout the material of the room, he still kept track of its effects.

Val sensed more than he felt the vibrations of Shattercrash's little demonstration. An ordinary person might have been bothered by it, but that wasn't the case for him anymore. Instead, he was more interested in whatever the material was that the room was made from. It was weird, to say the least. Weird in a way that he couldn't quite understand, yet. There wasn't much he could glean from its capabilities. It was still a bit off-putting how much more his power made him aware of sometimes. Cool, too. If you could get past all the negatives, that is. Eh, it could've been worse. He could have been stuck with–

Suddenly the door was flung open once again, and a new person stepped in. This time, it wasn't a Ward, nor was it anyone Val even vaguely recognised. So, probably not a member of the Protectorate, then. The newcomer introduced himself as the Vice-director of the PRT. His name faded into irrelevance in Val's mind, but something else he said didn't.

Val's fingers paused.

A bank robbery?

.... Maybe this day wouldn't be so boring after all.

That said, the change did require confirmation on something. To that end, Val raised a hand languidly, barely waiting a moment before asking the only question he needed answered.

"So, "excessive force". Is that a thing or...?"

The words left an odd taste in his mouth. He never quite understood what all of the fuss was about. He considered it a job well done as long as the enemy was down and out for the count. That was the miss-job in the end, right? And they were bad guys, too. Still, he'd rather ask now than later be reprimanded for pow–breaking a few too many bones. It wasn't even a big deal anyway; people had like a hundred of them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Val noticed the rat-bird had shot up in height significantly. It was practically the size of a building now!

Would he crumble like one too?

---

Ten minutes later, the Wards were deployed to the downtown area of Birdgewater to deal with the mercenary group known as Blackburn. They were known for being ruthless in their operations, and for disappearing as soon as they're finished. Blackburn's numbers are relatively small, but each member was capable of taking down an entire PRT squad individually. The PRT briefed them on the group's powers, and then piled them into the back of an armored vehicle with half a dozen senior officers. More were on the way, but first contact came down to the Wards themselves. Each member was given specific advice on how to approach this by the officers they road with. This began with a simple warning to proceed with caution, as Blackburn was seen using firearms as they attacked, and to always assume that the mercenaries wanted to kill them.

Decree, Munnin and Keystone were advised to take a backseat and play a supportive role. That meant sneaking in and "convincing" the hostages to follow Decree out, flying over the roof to monitor stragglers and the upper windows, and pointing out strategies and the inherent flaws in their approach. Keystone's power gave him a combative edge, so he would have the easiest time against Champion. While Ethos' power didn't do much in a direct confrontation, the PRT recommended that if she did decide to directly engage Blackburn, she should avoid Ironsides and focus on the other three. Ironsides' power could potentially negate hers, where the others did not have any abilities that physically altered them. She was given the approval to use her powers "as she deemed necessary."

Hornet, Shattercrash and Richter were advised to be the strike team. Using their mobility, Hornet and Shattercrash could get around Champion and Sundown's explosions the easiest, and Richter only had to touch Kintsugi's minions to take them out. Their powers were the most offensive, so they were tasked with taking the heavy hitters out. This left Tandem, who was strongly advised to spread her clones out between all three subgroups, so no one is left fighting one-on-one while she stole their weapons into her pocket dimension.

Of course, the team was more than welcome to handle this however they wished, if they didn't like the advice. So long as they did not outright kill anyone or injure the hostages, they should have no trouble explaining their approach to the Protectorate after the robbery is done. The PRT's officers would be on standby to avoid a crossfire, rather than rush in to help these mostly untrained children against the brutal villains. They were on their own, and would only be assisted once they incapacitated someone. Would they be able to bring down some of the most dangerous capes in the entire state, all alone?

The bank itself was big. Twenty-five stories of floor to ceiling windows and a brutalist exterior of concrete and metal jutted out from the surroundings and offered very little vantage points to scale the building from. Bridgewater Bank was built to last, during the reconstruction period after Confessor, and its architecture showed that off, with thick concrete crenelations lining the faces of the building that offered shock absorption in the case of natural disasters. Overall, it looked uninviting, as any heartless corporate building was, but at least it would take a lot to knock it down.

Keystone's power would notice a substantial flaw in the plan of the buildings; While it was very sturdy, it had no external methods of escaping from the higher floors. The elevator system operated on an independent circuit, meaning it could operate in the event of a blackout, but getting to them wouldn't always be easy. Especially when Sundown had already destroyed them, according to a few text messages from inside the building.

Police cars and riot barricades littered the front of the bank, with cops and special forces ready to open fire on anyone who looked like a villain. Numerous broken shapes made of twisted metal, asphalt and concrete littered the ground, vaguely formed into animals. These were the work of Kintsugi, a construct master who made minions from the environment.

The Wards were dropped off on the opposite end of the street, while the van swerved off into another direction. The officers simply said "good luck," and left them to it.

"Don't know about you guys, but I'm going in through the front. Munnin, just fly up and use the earpieces to tell us what you use. Don't get punched. I fought Champion once, and she'd snap your neck with a broken wrist if you looked at her funny," Shattercrash said, as she stepped out and immediately offered some of her personal insight.

Having said that, her hands and feet began to crackle with a neon pink glow, and she stormed across the street to the front door. Glowing footprints slowly faded away behind her as she pulled from her internal well, stepping across the barriers and hopping through a broken window, disappearing behind fake potted plants and chairs.

And then...

BANG!

Barely a few seconds after she was out of sight, a loud and sharp blast rang out from inside. Then another, and another. The cops outside tensed up, not able to see what was happening clearly.

All Tandems | Bridgewater Bank
June 19, 2021

---

It took 10 minutes for the Wards to be loaded up into a van and driven to the bank where the robbery was taking place. Along the way, they were briefed on the details of the robbery and suggestions were made as to how they might handle the situation. Tandem didn’t particularly agree with the suggestions made for her – she could better utilise her power if she operated her clones together, especially if she was going to be putting those bodies at risk, not to mention that she couldn’t separate them by more than 24 feet in the first place.

Despite her disagreements, Tandem didn’t voice her opinion on the matter, they were only suggestions after all, and in any case, she was distracted by something that had been mentioned earlier in the briefing.

There were hostages. It was a hostage situation in a bank.

When that part had first been mentioned in the briefing, anyone paying Tandem any mind at all, or even just looking her way really, would have noticed her clones flickering in and out of existence for a few seconds after the fact. Dismissed and replaced one after the other in a desperate attempt to cut off the inevitable trains of thought before they could take root. It hadn’t worked, and now, whatever excitement she’d felt only minutes earlier at the prospect of engaging with capes in a proper fight, was completely gone, replaced by an all-consuming panic that threatened to overwhelm her.

Tandem was standing outside the bank building. Right. She’d teleported out the moment the van had come to a stop. She had to focus…

It was one of the things she’d thought about a lot since signing up for the Wards, so she knew the first thing she should do was get her hands on a proper weapon. She might have to fight someone, and while she had plenty of things she could use, it’d be a problem if the Protectorate found out she was carrying even a fraction of the stuff she was.

Scanning about, Tandem quickly spotted what she was looking for. Creating a clone over by a manhole, she quickly used its foot to shunt the cover into her inventory. The manhole cover would be far too heavy to throw with her own strength, but she didn’t need to rely on that in order to throw it with her power, and its weight would allow it to do quite a bit of damage to whatever she threw it at.

Normally, the idea of using her power for something like that would get Tandem excited, but somehow the fact that today she might end up actually needing to do it made it distinctly less so. She didn’t want to hurt anyone… An imagining of what the manhole might do to a person if she launched it at them, bubbled to the surface of the clone that’d collected its mind, and she quickly replaced the clone.

No. It was just a precaution. It was fine. She didn’t have time to think about that right now. What she needed to do was plan. Figure out a way to make sure everything stayed okay.

Right. The hostages.

Could they find a way to get the hostages out, or short of that, secure wherever the hostages were being held before they could be executed? That might work, right? Hornet could probably identify where all the hostages were being kept, sorta like they’d talked about before, and Keystone might be able to do something similar with his power. Then it’d just be a matter of getting into the room, which probably wouldn’t be all that hard with two teleporters and a flyer on the team, after which they could work on protecting everyone.

Bang!

Just as a plan started to come together in Tandem’s mind, a loud bang rang out from inside the building, causing all three of Tandem to jump and shattering what little stability she’d managed to regain.

Suddenly whatever plan Tandem had been formulating was gone from her minds, and she found herself having teleported her bodies directly into the bank.

If being outside the bank had been bad, being inside the bank was a nightmare to Tandem. She vaguely registered that Decree had said something in her earpiece, but her attention was elsewhere so she couldn't say what; actually seeing the hostages forced memories Tandem had long since repressed back up to the surface of her mind, and this time there was no just dismissing the offending body. She’d started to hyperventilate at some point, her breaths seeming to get shallower and more rapid with every passing moment.

Tandem felt tears starting to sting at her eyes, and bile rising in one of her throats; she shunted it all into her inventory. Now wasn’t the time to feel sorry for herself, getting to test out her ideas on capes was supposed to be fun, right?

---

Ethan breathed an anxious sigh as he stepped out of the PRT van, one of the last wards to exit the vehicle. The building in front of him was cordoned off by police cars and officers kneeling around their vehicles, with a few setting up partitions of police tape to keep the especially curious pedestrian or reporter from getting too close to the danger. Ethan looked up at the bank itself, grimacing beneath his mask as he did so. It was a massive 25 story structure, the sides a sheer face of glass and concrete. Despite a significant portion of the building being composed of windows, the foundation and design of the concrete was clearly engineered with stability in mind - a focal point of Bridgewater architecture in a post-Confessor city. There were still weak points in the construction, but nothing that was applicable here, let alone useful.

Three points of exit and entry on the ground floor, no readily accessible rooftop exit. Windows are reinforced, but a strong blow can knock them out of frame - much easier pushing from the inside-out, though this will lead to the hostages falling to their death. Push some of the Blackburn capes out the windows? Two should be able to circumvent this or survive the fall, but the rest are dead from a high enough drop, easy kills. Likely have some parahuman mechanism for escape after they finish the heist - exploitation of Ironsides portals? Flying Kintsugi minions? At least two stairwells in the building, one for daily usage, and a fire escape. The main stairwell likely cordoned off by Blackburn, but fire escape potentially overlooked due to lack of time. Access the fire escape through the back entrance, the code to enter the back is 58-

Ethan grunted a bit under his breath, his glove clicking lightly against his ceramic helmet as he moved to cover his eyes. His power was even more active than usual, flooding him with information. Was it the fact he was finally in a real 'cape situation'? The stress? The proximity to other parahumans?

Didn't matter. He had to work through it, couldn't get lost in the input before he pulled together what he needed. He fished his PRT issued phone out of his pocket, looking over the text messages from hostages, blueprints of the bank, and various other documents that were shared with him by the PRT on the ride over. He did his best to glance over everything he couldn't finish on the ride, allowing his power to fill in the blanks as he read and as Shattercrash began talking to the other Wards.

The elevator system was already taken out? Had to be Ironside or Sun- okay, definitely Sundown. Leaves the stairwells for most of us, fire escape being the safer option. Hostages were probably moved to higher floors to prevent escape, but the question is where... Worry about it later, would take too much time to play 20 question with my power for that answer. Bird boy can maybe fly some of us up- can't support the weight, could maybe haul Tandem or some lighter Wards at best.

Ethan frowned, looking up at the bank once more. Scaling it was out of the question, even with Ethan's ability allowing him to pick out optimal hand points and climbing pathways. It was clear that the stairwell was the only real option for him, as well as most of the other non-movers.

He was about to speak before Shattercrash raced forwards, leaping through one of the shattered windows as a trail of neon pink light trailed behind her. Several tense seconds passed before a crashing sound could be heard from within the bank, Tandem teleporting away an instant later. Ethan snapped back to the reality of the situation, a wave of cold tension washing over him.

Yeah, he could probably die in this situation.

There were experienced capes here, but Ethan sure as hell wasn't one of them. Despite this, he was surprisingly calm about that - a far cry from his panic attack only a dozen or so minutes ago. With his power acting in overdrive like this, he was able to detach himself from the situation, focus his attention elsewhere to distract himself from the danger and the fear.

This was a puzzle, and it had a correct answer. He just had to figure out the pieces and what he had at his disposal, work out a plan that he could focus on. He followed the trail his power laid out for him, speaking out to the other Wards. He fumbled his words for a second, before figuring out how to turn on his earpiece and share his message with anyone who had already left the main group.

"Don't know exact positions, but I'm leaning towards the hostages being pretty high up - Sundown broke the elevator system to limit their escape, and the lack of external fire exits means they can't safely get out from higher floors."

He turned towards Hornet quickly, barely pausing in his rapid fire speech.

"Can you sense the hostages from this range? I can probably narrow their location down while looking over the bank schematics, but that's gonna take some time with all the rooms I'd have to check over - might be quicker for you to pop in and look around first. Just knowing the floor would cut down a lot of time."

Ethan barely slowed enough to allow her to respond before continuing.

"There isn't an entrance on the roof, but I doubt helicopter extraction would be an option anyways. You might be able to break into the higher floors through the windows, Bird boy, but I'd avoid it - might break your neck, the laminated glass is pretty tough. Easier to pop out of frame or slice a hole through than it is to break."

A pause as he unlocked his phone again. Ethan quickly began typing on the phone as he spoke, screen flipping between schematics and the text message he was typing every few seconds.

"There are two stairwells we can use, a main one and a fire exit. Both are probably compromised, but I'm thinking the fire exit might've been overlooked - they only had so much time to lock down the main stairwell and elevator. Probably the safest way up for the non-brutes. Shattercrash and Richter might be able to climb the elevator shaf- Nevermind, stupid idea. Sundown's gravity distortions might still be active in there. I'm headed to an employee entrance near the back if anyone wants to take the fire exit."

Ethan finished typing his message a few seconds after he was done speaking, sending out an updated image of the bank schematics, with the entrances and stairwells highlighted, and some of the unlikely hostage locations (bathrooms, storage closets, etc) already crossed out. He was making his way towards the back entrance of the bank, not bothering to look to see who was following him. He was too busy looking over the building more, checking the officers on sight, noticing the tarnished remnants of metal and asphalt that littered the ground - didn't even need his power to tell him those were some of Kintsugi's minions.

Vault and high security safety deposit boxes located in a basement level, but unlikely to be the primary target. Mercenary groups like Blackburn most likely going after documents and deeds on higher floors. Kintsugi likely to be guarding the hostages, his minion creation keeping larger groups in check more easily. Rely on stealth and assassination to take down quickly, minions should be easier to handle without coordination from a Master. Sundown probably keeping an eye over the main stairwell and elevator shaft, maybe support from Champion? Avoid confrontation. Ironsides has almost certainly diffused teleportation waypoints throughout the building, but unlikely to have gotten to all parts yet. Identify metal growths in environment, request Tandem cover them in containment foam or trap with explosives. Maintain stealth as long as possible, rely on Shattercrash to cause as much havoc as possible to pose as a distract-

Ethan got to the back entrance, barely slowing as he hammered a code into the keypad next to the steel door. Against most of the capes in Blackburn, Ethan was cannon fodder. This was his first time in costume, all his combat experience coming from schoolyard brawls and practice in the PRT training room. In every way imaginable, he should not be ready for this - he thought as much less than 15 minutes ago, when he had calmed himself by telling himself that he probably wouldn't even enter the building, just go over schematics and plans.

Now he was walking into danger of his own volition. He had no idea why he was so calm as he snuck towards the fire exit stairwell, avoiding the shattered remnants of the lobby. His power needed more input to help him out here, input he couldn't get from outside the building. Or at least, not fast enough to matter. Not for the hostages.

Was that it? His power needed more information to work off of, so he was risking his fucking life to get it? What stupid horseshit was that-

Shallow and rapid breathing, must relax to conserve stamina and avoid hyperventilation. Adjust your gait, ease into balls of feet for softer foot falls. Avoid shattered glass on ground, noise may attract attention.

Ethan drew his knife, measuring his breathing carefully as he continued to climb. He made a stupid mistake - he relied on his power to ease him into this mission, to keep him calm and avoid letting his fear and anxiety get ahead of him. And it, for some reason, didn't tell him how stupid of an idea it was to enter here.

Ethan paused as he rounded the stairwell, reaching the second floor. No point regretting it and thinking logically now. His power got him into this mess, now he just had to hope it could bail him out too.

He continued making is way up the stairs.

---

It had been a complete blur.

If someone asked Muninn what had happened in the past 10 minutes, he simply wouldn't have an answer for you; all he knew was that, somehow, he'd left the building they were in, and had been flying outside for the past few minutes, silently trailing the heavy-duty vehicle the rest of the team were on. That was one bit he vaguely recalled; however it was he made it outside, he didn't wait for a single word to exit an authority figure's mouth before he was airborne. He'd needed this after that miserable bombshell. Bad.

It gave him time to think. Mostly, think about how he was going to die a gruesome death or look like an utter moron in front of his team in the next few moments. What on Earth were they doing?! Trained Parahuman mercenaries, busting into a bank? This had to be a job for the Protectorate, not them! It was insane! His spiral into pure, utter panic continued as he silently glided through the sun-streaked skies, now much harder for the civilians below him to miss, given his massive size at the moment caused him to black out notable swathes of the city as he flew overhead. Yeah, his size situation hadn't improved much since leaving the building; while it was infinitely less suffocating out here than in there, it also gave him time to think about what he was getting into, which was slowly twisting his insides into a solid ball of sheer, abject horror. God, he'd never felt less sure of what he was doing than now...But he was here, whether he liked it or...No, there was no way of sugarcoating this. He pretty much felt like he was about to puke. This was awful.

And yet, he landed down all the same as their armored ride found itself outside the massive and imposing Bridgewater Bank. It felt extremely odd to be so obviously massive, and yet dwarfed by something else all the same, which was what he felt looking upon the utilitarian nightmare before him. Landon was positive he'd never seen a building so devoid of any emotion. At any rate...They were here. Through his comms (which were quite tricky to keep in his ears, he'd learned rather quickly; and his growth in size certainly hadn't helped that), he'd picked up the possible game plan laid out by the officers the rest of the squad had rode in with. They suggested that he, alongside Decree and Keystone, take a subtle approach and try to do their best to defuse the situation while avoiding any direct confrontations. That...Actually eased him up a bit, losing a few feet off his gargantuan form. That felt manageable, almost, and it involved one of the Wards that didn't hate him. At least, he felt vaguely confident she didn't. So that was progress!

His rising spirit was dampened back down to expectations when his team actually emerged, with Shattercrash directly referring to him. It felt very odd to have someone who felt as imposing as she was to look up at him, but, well...She would've had to do that even if he was in a more average state of things, so perhaps it wasn't as odd as he thought. Still, as she made her request for him to take flight and scout the building out, he couldn't help but flinch as she described how Champion would absolutely crush him if she even caught a glimpse of him. Not a confidence booster, to say the least. His size was around 20 feet at this point; monstrously large to the rest of the team, yet still comedically dwarfed by the building they were tasked with invading. For a moment, he wordlessly glanced over to Decree. He didn't know how she intended to tackle her place in the situation, so maybe he could wait with her and help wi-

His train of thought was utterly derailed when Shattercrash slammed her way into the bank, and with it, everything fired off at once. Keystone slipped away off to the backside of the building, while the Tandems all popped out of existence, probably entering the bank as well.

The commotion riled him up. Muninn needed to do something, if only to keep his mind off the fact that it was really, truly happening now. Without a sound, his giant wings spread out, and he took to the skies once more, making swift rounds around the building as he took in each sight with his razor-sharp eyes. He needed to find the hostages and the Blackburn mercenaries, so he could try and fill in his team as much as possible. In the interim, however, Landon remembered something important. "I-If anyone needs it, I can give a lift. I can get you wherever y-you need to be. Probably." Even in his enhanced size, if it were even possible, he sounded quieter than he had before. Still, the offer was made, and he knew should it come to that, he could handle it. Especially given his current physique, picking up a few teammates shouldn't be a hassle for him, and even with the scale of the bank building, it would only take him a few seconds to pass from story to story, so he could make for convenient travel for anyone who needed it.