by wildbow
“It shouldn’t matter.”
“Cauldron’s evil,” Arbiter said. “They experimented on people to get the powers Pretender has.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Satyr said. His voice was rough. “Pretender’s gone, and so are we. We’ll get our teammates and we’ll go.”
He nudged Nix, and they turned to go.
One Protectorate team gone.
Arbiter dialed her phone, shifted restlessly. “Chevalier. It’s an emergency.”
There was a long pause.
“The Vegas team,” she said, finally. “They’ve broken ranks. There’s more, but if we’re going to arrest them, Dragon needs—”
A pause.
“No,” she said. “They aren’t. No. Yes. Yes, sir.”
There was a defeated tone to her body language as she let her arm fall to one side, disconnecting the call.
Arbiter looked from her phone to Prefab. “Dragon collapsed just before this began. She was meeting a Las Vegas rogue.”
“Yeah,” I said. I thought of the woman who’d been so handy with the computer. The censor, the bogeyman. They’d taken out Rime, no doubt because she could have sealed the box behind a wall of ice.
Yet they hadn’t taken out Prefab, who could have done much the same thing.
Every step of the way, every action perfect.
“The Vegas heroes?” I asked.
“He said to let them go,” she said, her voice small. “That we need them, even if they aren’t Protectorate. He’ll send people to talk to them and arrange something later.”
I nodded, mixed emotions stewing in my midsection. It was bad, it was disappointing, to see a failure on this level, after I’d given so much up to help the Protectorate out.
“We lost on every count,” I said.
“Rime’s alive,” Arbiter said, looking at her phone.
“Every other count, then,” I said.
“There’ll be better days,” she said.
Not like this, I thought, and it wasn’t a good thought. As nice as the feeling of rescuing civilians had been, this was an ugly idea, a pit in the depths of my stomach.
The person I wanted to be, the person I was, reconciling them wasn’t so easy. The hero on one side, Skitter on the other.
This has to change.
Drone 23.3
“Mr. Chambers? Weaver’s here to see you.”
He called out from the opposite end of the room, “Send her in!”
I ventured into his realm, staring around me as I entered the space that was apparently the hub of costume design and marketing for the PRT.
The wall to my left had a map of North America. Cities had been identified, with clusters of portraits around each major city. Protectorate members on top, Wards on the bottom.
To my right, there were glass cases showing off costume designs, old and new. A woman was inside the case, dressing a dummy.
Further down, there was Glenn.
Power was a funny thing. I’d seen it expressed in a number of ways, with parahumans, but the unpowered weren’t quite so flexible. There were people like Tagg, who relied on bluster and bullying, and people like Calle, with sheer confidence and a strict reliance on their own abilities in a particular field. Piggot had been something else, someone who had known how to leverage people and situations, more like Calle than anyone, but with the added advantage that she’d had the authority to call in airstrikes and requisition Dragon’s A.I. driven craft. Like Tattletale had said, Piggot wasn’t a genius, but she had her strengths.
I’d suspected that Glenn Chambers would be more like Calle, with a touch of Tagg’s tendency to bulldoze through problems. Seeing him operating in his home territory, I wasn’t so sure that was the case.
Glenn Chambers wore plaid pants with red and green, and a pink dress shirt, His belt bore a buckle with the PRT logo on it. His hair had changed too, parted neatly into what I assumed was ‘geek chic’, and the glasses had changed as well, with thick, round frames. An ID card hung around his neck. He didn’t fit any of those particular archetypes.
I looked at him and the person who came to mind was Skidmark. Brockton Bay’s onetime loser villain, meth-head and drug dealer, later the head of the depraved, anarchist Merchants. It was hard to pinpoint why, at first. They were nothing alike, on an aesthetic level. Their demeanor, their status in society, their appearance or goals, there were no similarities.
People milled around him. Twenty-something men and women, who carried coffees and portfolios, cloth and paperwork. Fat as he was, Glenn moved swiftly. He sipped a coffee, handed it back to the assistant who’d delivered it, and sent her off with a command or clarification. Men and women with portfolios were told to set up at his desk while he examined action figures in the light of the window. His pudgy hands, almost childlike, took hold of an action figure by the arm. He shook it violently, his cluster of minions backing away at the sudden flailing of his arm and the plastic figure. The arm snapped off, and the toy went sailing through the air. Someone scooped it up and brought it back to the group.
“Go, and hurry,” Glenn said. “Tell them to fix it and cast another prototype before the run starts. These are toys, they’ll be in the hands of children and collectors both. The people who are buying these are fans. What’s it going to say if their most immediate association with Esoteric is the broken toy sitting on a shelf? It’s going to convey that he’s flimsy.”
The action figure people fled, and Glenn approached his desk, where the portfolios had been set out. I approached, a touch lost in the midst of all of this, and nearly stumbled as another group entered the room, vacating to fill the void left by the group that was exiting.
“Weaver, come. Look and tell me what you think.”
I approached the desk, and the group parted to give me space. It was hard to put my finger on why, but I couldn’t help but feel like they were doing it at Glenn’s bequest and not mine.
The massive portfolio folders were open, showing poster images of various Protectorate members. The leaders of the new teams. The images were stylized, with splashes in pale watercolor in the background, an almost sketchier appearance to the heroes. But the masks, necks and shoulders, the emblems and their characteristic tools were all done in hyper-realistic detail. Chevalier, Rime and Exalt, with backgrounds in gray, blue and yellow, respectively. There looked to be more behind them.
“They’re good,” I said.
“They’re crap,” Glenn countered. One finger tapped on a blossoming of yellow and red watercolors at the tip of Chevalier’s Cannonblade. “The last thing we want to convey are that things are a mess, and that’s exactly what the blobs in the background will do.”
“I’d buy one,” I said. “If I wasn’t already a cape, anyways. Things are a mess. I don’t see how you’d convince a non-cape me otherwise.”
Glenn sighed. “We’re treading into philosophical and hypothetical territories there. It’s a no-go.”
He turned to one of the artists, “Something cleaner, tighter. And don’t use a side-profile of Rime. If she doesn’t want the post-effects, she’ll have to accept that her waist isn’t quite poster material.”
The poster people disappeared, fleeing Glenn’s presence.
I stepped into the gap, “I wanted to talk to you—”
“One minute,” Glenn dismissed me. He turned to the group that had just arrived, “The interview?”
“It’s good,” a young man said, handing over a print-out. “Chevalier is personable, but different from the old leaders. Fits the ‘New Protectorate’ atmosphere you described.”
“Of course it does,” Glenn said. He skimmed the paper, turning pages. “I based it all around him. Good call on the interview’s quality. Quite good.”
Skidmark, I thought again. Skidmark, who had built up a kind of momentum around himself, like-minded people falling into his orbit. Despite being utterly repulsive and foul-mouthed, Skidmark had charisma. People followed him. Glenn wasn’t repulsive, but he grated.
>
Maybe that was part of their charisma. Maybe the natural, casual narcissism, as much as it didn’t jibe with Skidmark’s meth-mouth or Glenn’s obesity, conveyed that they were the center of the universe. Everyone wouldn’t necessarily be swept up in their delusion, but the fact that they drew in weak-willed sheep lent them a measure of clout that forced people to acknowledge them. For Skidmark, it had been depraved homeless, addicts and thugs. For Glenn, it was a cadre of college students hoping for a career in marketing, advertising or public relations within the PRT.
Or maybe I wasn’t thinking too generously about Glenn Chambers, given how pissed I was. Maybe he wasn’t that bad.
“Well?” he asked me, as if I was making him wait.
I resisted the urge to react, forced myself to stay calm.
If he was really like Skidmark, in how he surrounded himself with loyal and terrified sheep and minions, there were two ways to mount an attack. I could take the fight straight to him, like Faultline had with Skidmark, or I could strip him of his flock.
“I’d like to speak to you in private.”
“Impossible, I’m afraid. I’m busy enough I shouldn’t even be taking the time to talk with you,” he said. He offered me a smile, “But you’re my most interesting project.”
“It’s a matter of courtesy,” I said. He wanted to play this on a political level? “Please.”
Put him on the spot. Force him to play along or look bad.
Glenn only smiled. “Isn’t it just as discourteous to interrupt me in the middle of my work, when I’m already doing you a favor by meeting you?”
Fine. He wanted to play it that way?
“Last night, Pretender got broken out of Dragon’s craft, our team crushed, and Rime shot. I almost died.”
“I heard,” he said. He looked at the woman who was just arriving with his new coffee, “Kayleigh, can you go talk to Mr. Payet? He was supposed to call me in ten minutes and it’s been fifteen.”
“Yes sir,” she said, running off.
He either doesn’t care or he’s deflecting.
“Your insane restrictions on powers were a big part of that, Mr. Chambers. The bad guys won, and it’s partially your fault.”
The heads that turned my way, silent and staring, only confirmed my suspicions. The crowd of twenty-something assistants and designers around him were a defense system. Not a power, but power in general.
“My fault? I wasn’t even there.”
“I asked to speak to you because I wanted you to know about the damage that’s being done.”
“Ah, this is about the butterflies.”
“It’s about a lot more than butterflies. It’s the whole mindset. The attitude of the heroes. I’d talk to Chevalier, but he’s too busy. I’d talk to Rime, but she’s recovering from being shot three times. You’re the only other person I’ve met so far who really seems to be in a position to know what I’m talking about. Besides, as far as I can figure, image and PR seem to be at the heart of the problem.”
“A complicated issue, something you could study for six years in college,” he said. “But you’ve figured it out after two brawls? The rumors of your intelligence must be true after all.”
“I wouldn’t make light of it. Pretender got captured. Either he’s in enemy hands, and there’s a body snatcher out there, or he’s dead. Because of a fight we could have won.” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“There’re no certainties, but come on. There’s got to be a point where the kiddie gloves come off and we actually put up a fight. I saw the Wards struggling in Brockton Bay, as they faced pressure from outside forces, me included, and serious threats. They got whittled down because, as powerful as they are, they didn’t get the chance to put up a fight. Now the rest of us are starting to face the same pressures, and the PRT isn’t learning from past mistakes.”
“I’m trying to understand what you’re wanting to argue. Are you saying our Wards, children with powers, should take your cue? Fight more viciously? Intimidate? Be merciless?”
“All your capes could stand to stop holding back. Wards and Protectorate both. At least in situations like this. We lost Pretender, and we didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Vegas teams. That played a part in losing them.”
Glenn frowned, glancing at his collection of underlings. “Everyone but Weaver, out. I hope each of you can find something to do.”
The flock scattered.
“You already know what happens if you speak on the subject,” Glenn called out to them, raising his voice as they got further away. “I personally know everyone you might try to leak details to. It’s not worth the risk! Discretion!”
A moment later, they were gone. His office seemed so empty without the young professionals running around.
“We must have a talk about which things can be said when,” Glenn said. He took a second to tidy up stray pictures on his desk.
“I did ask if we could speak alone,” I told him.
“And I said no. I’m much too busy, and as much as I relish our future discussions, hearing how you did what you did in Brockton Bay, the Vegas Wards are a large part of why I’m racing to provide the public with our new, upgraded Protectorate.”
“Misdirection and deception,” I said. “You know, I do know about subtlety. I kind of ran a group that ruled a city.”
“And I’m sure you did an excellent job,” Glenn said. “But you’re a dog in a duck pond here. You’re out of place, you don’t know the usual precautions, the customs and conventions. You gave evidence to that when you talked about the Vegas wards, something that should be kept more discreet.”
That would be his mode of attack then. I was the ignorant child, who didn’t quite know how the Protectorate worked.
“I’m not sure what you want, Glenn. You guys know I can hold my own, but you ignore the fact that I took down Alexandria, that I’ve fought against three class-S threats.”
Glenn sighed. He walked around his desk and plunked down in his chair. “You’re going to be one of the challenging ones, aren’t you?”
“I only want to help people. The PRT and the hero teams are falling apart, but you’re more focused on testing me than letting me do something.”
“Chevalier would be a better person to talk to about this,” Glenn said.
“You want me to fight with nerf weapons? I can. Put me up against just about any Ward, I could probably give them a pretty hard time, whether I’m using regular bugs or just butterflies. I could win against most.”
“Your strength isn’t in question. We’re not sure you’re dependable.”
“I can show you that I can make the butterflies work. I just want the A-okay to use my full assortment of powers against the real threats. Like the sniper and whoever that woman in the suit was, last night. If I’d had a real arsenal in reserve, I could have attacked either of them before they really get underway. Give me the ability to match the strength of the tools I’m using to the strength of my enemies.”
“Beginning an endless loop of serial escalations,” Glenn said. “No, Weaver, that’s not what I mean when I say ‘dependable’. Wrong word. We have footage of you snapping, shifting from calm to homicidal in an instant. Was there motivation? Yes. But it doesn’t inspire confidence in your allies. We wanted to see how you functioned in high pressure situations, your willingness to follow our restrictions, as unfair as they might seem.”
“Always testing me,” I said. “Okay. I listened, I followed your orders, and the test doesn’t serve a purpose as long as I know about it. Can we call it quits, at least with the butterflies?”
“You didn’t follow the orders,” Glenn said. When I glanced at him, he locked his eyes onto mine. “You stung Bambina.”
“To save people. She was going to pick us off. Would you blame me if I picked up a dropped gun and shot someone who was aiming a surface-to-air missile launcher at me?”
“It’s a little different.”
“It’s an almost exact par
allel to what I was doing! She’s a living surface to air missile, only she ricochets all over the place, and she keeps going. I didn’t even use a gun. I debilitated her, maybe enough that Vantage could hit her with his bolas. Nonlethal weapons, exactly like what the Wards are supposed to use.”
“The focus isn’t on lethal or nonlethal,” Glenn said. “It’s on whether we can trust you to keep on the path you’re walking. If you start taking shortcuts now, what happens a year down the line? If we decide you can go all-out in one specific situation, does that open the door for another?”
“Maybe, instead of setting rules and restrictions in place, you could ask. Talk to me like a human being, negotiate certain rules.”
“Rules you then break or circumvent. You take rather naturally to it, and no, that isn’t a jab at your iniquitous background. It’s a statement about your particular abilities.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m good. I have more experience than some of your Wards who’ve been on their teams for two years. I’m versatile. If you need someone in Vegas to deal with thinkers and strangers, I can hold my own, the embarrassment with August Prince aside. If you need someone to track down groups like the Nine, I can do that. Recon, assassination, communication…”
“The public’s watching this too closely for us to let you off your leash so soon after Alexandria’s death. When things quiet down, it might be a possibility. Our heroes in Vegas tend to be a little grayer than white, and an ex-villain would fit. But not now.”
I exhaled slowly. “You guys wanted a newer, shinier protectorate. You guys need wins. Give me the chance, I’ll give them to you. But this isn’t me. I’m not about butterflies.”
“We know what you’re about,” Glenn said. He touched his keyboard, then typed out what I presumed was a password. A second passed, “Look.”
He spun his monitor around.
It was me, entering the PRT office in Brockton Bay. A video feed from a surveillance camera.
It was me, crawling through a window. That would be from the night I retaliated against Tagg. Odd, seeing how the bugs moved in coordination with me. When I turned my head in the video, the orientation of every bug in the swarm changed in the same moment.