Second Exterlude

“Tell her to stop freaking out.” Hellfire leans back in her chair, thumb moving over the surface of her phone. She doesn’t even look at the messenger. She doesn’t have to.

“Mistress was very insistent! Mistress does not like the PLE in Chicago one bit. Mistress feels Lady Hellfire should leave now!” The shrillness of the messenger’s voice should grate on Hellfire’s ears, but she’s used to worse.

“I’m not worried about the PLE,” Hellfire waves her free hand, “they don’t have the resources to deal with me.”

“The PLE has new Named! A woman, a shapeshifter of great skill!”

This gets a glance from Hellfire. “I said, I’m not worried about it.”

“This new Named could be anyone, could pretend to be someone Lady Hellfire trusts–”

Hellfire raises her hand in a cupped gesture that they both know she often uses to call on her fire. The messenger quiets, fearfully eyeing her empty hand.

“Tell her I’m not worried.” Her voice stays calm, collected. It doesn’t dim the threat.

The messenger bows and leaves, muttering dire predictions. Hellfire shifts in her chair, taps through a few more things on her phone, and dials a number.

Predator picks up after two rings. “Done?”

“Mmhmm.” Hellfire stands, and stretches her arms over her head. Dealing with the messengers is irritating at best; her sister worries more than any one person should be able to. “Are you and Flare still at The Pink Elephant?”

“Yep.” There’s clinking in the background. Someone laughs, someone else yells something obscene in return. “Just waiting on you, Miss Mysterious.”

“I’m on my way.”

The Pink Elephant is only a bus trip away, and before long, Hellfire sits on the other side of Flare from Predator, the three of them in a line at the bar. The bartender doesn’t have to be told her usual, and has it ready before Flare and Predator are done saying hello.

“So?” Predator asks after a few minutes, looking at Hellfire out of the corner of her eye.

“Aiyana changed teams.” Hellfire leans forward onto the bar. “She’s with the competition, and they’re in town in full force.”

Predator purses her lips, and Flare shakes his head. None of the three of them speak for a bit, then Predator says, her usual confidence slightly shaken, “she wouldn’t. If my girl’s with the other side, it’s because they forced it.”

“It doesn’t matter why.” Hellfire sips at her drink. “What matters is that they know about her big mirror trick, they know about you and her, and they’re here.”

“They’re here for real?” Flare speaks up, frowning. “Not just the kid we scared the other night?”

Hellfire nods, slow and heavy. “Smoke and Abyss are both in town, and if they have Abyss, they have a healer on hand.”

“And they don’t ever have just three,” Flare shakes his head. “So there’s Smoke, Abyss, a healer, and that kid.”

“The kid could be the healer,” Predator points out.

“Could be,” Flare admits, “but then there’s still at least two we don’t know about, and they might send in more after a while.”

The three of them drink in silence, then Flare asks Hellfire, “do they know you and me are around?”

Hellfire shakes her head. “I don’t know, my source didn’t tell me.”

“We’re not subtle, the three of us,” Predator says wryly, throwing back a shot.

“Maybe it’s time to recruit more Named,” Hellfire says.

“Maybe so,” Flare agrees, thoughtful. Predator nods, pursing her lips.

Nothing else of substance comes up that night, but the thought stays on all three minds in one form or another.

Chapter Seventeen

Luke comes through the door to Wire’s office ready to go: he’s got a small notebook in one hand with a pen stuck in the binding, and his mask is already off, hung from the fingers of his other hand.

“Everyone’s done with their visits with the Doctor–“

“We’ve got a Predator sighting.”

The silence hangs heavily. Wire sighs, Luke scrubs at his face with a hand and falls into a chair. Their breathing room, so precious and rare in their line of work, just vanished.

“Where and when?” Luke asks finally, setting the notebook on his side of Wire’s desk and flipping it open to a fresh page. He’s sure Wire’s got all the details written down somewhere – and probably copied for Luke’s use – but writing things down himself helps him remember them.

“Last night, Mend thought he saw her outside his window. He stepped outside – yes, I’ve told him how stupid that was – and she winked at him and disappeared.”

Luke pauses, his pen stilling on the page. “She what?”

Wire taps at a few keys on his laptop and runs a hand through his hair. “He says she moved so fast he barely saw her.”

“Shit,” Luke scribbles down more notes. “When did she become a blinker?”

“She’s probably not,” Wire demurs, shifting both himself and his laptop so Luke can see the files on his screen. “At least, not higher than D-class. Depending on how she’s interpreting her Name, she might just be as fast as a cheetah, or some other hunting animal.”

“Just?” Luke asks, reading the file called ‘Predator’. It’s got a new picture, one recently updated by an artist allowed access to the video of Aiyana’s testimony.

“Better than supersonic,” Wire counters, scrolling down a little. He pulls up another window, this one for an email to the Director’s right-hand man. “It’s unlikely anyone but PLE Chicago will have to deal with her any time soon, but they do still need to know that’s she’s either got blinker status, or that she’s working with someone who has the ability to blink someone else.”

Luke tilts his head, admitting that Wire has a point. He finishes his read – nothing new, not that he expected there to be – and leans back in his chair. “What now?”

Wire reaches into a drawer and pulls out a thin stack of paper. “Our original orders were to investigate a newcomer on the scene – a stage magician they think might be a parahuman – but as soon as the Director got my report, he changed them. Now our official orders are to find and detain Predator.”

Luke sighs in frustration. “Are we even sure Mend saw Predator? It could have been someone else.”

“His description matches what we know of her, and she’s the only parahuman we know of who can find people this quickly.” Wire twists the laptop back toward himself, then starts putting the finishing touches on his email.

“Do you think we should be worried about her getting her hands on Mirror?”

Wire shakes his head. “If she were going to, she would have already.”

“But we still expect Mirror to help us capture Predator.” Luke realizes he’s gone quite still, his eyes on Wire and pen hovering above the paper. He forces himself to move again, writing something meaningless down.

“Agent Mirror is on probation, and therefore exempt from assignments unless her powerset is critical to them,” Wire replies, his tone the bland, official sort one might expect from a police statement.

“You don’t think she’s critical to an assignment where we’re capturing her girlfriend?” Luke stares, no longer worried about looking less concerned than he actually is.

“Regulations say that unless her powerset is critical to the mission, she’s exempt,” Wire looks up, meets Luke’s eyes calmly. “Nothing about Mirror’s low-class blinking or any class of shifting sounds particularly critical to a tracking and brute-force capture mission.”

“Are we even going to tell her?” Luke knows his voice is rising, but doesn’t care. He loves his job, but he hates when they have to go about it like this.

The official tone stays in Wire’s voice. “All PLE assignments are classified. Probationary members have no security clearance unless and until the knowledge is considered critical for them to know.” Wire’s eyes say in no uncertain terms that this is the best he can do, that this is the best way to protect her while still getting his job done.

Luke collects his pen and paper, stands, and forcefully unclenches his jaw. “I’ll go tell the rest of our team.”

Wire isn’t fooled, and they both know it.

[*]

“Good.” Shield nods approvingly, looking up from his work bench. His shield lays face-down, and the scent of oil hangs heavy in the air as Shield applies it to the leather straps. “I grew tired of doing nothing.”

Luke shakes his head. “Training is important, too.” A beat, then, “have you thought about what the Doctor said?”

Shield’s eyes move back down to his work, his movements becoming sharper. “I have no one to test myself against, Captain. How am I to tell the strength of my mental defenses if no one can approach the walls?”

“Have you tried against Wire’s energy boost?”

“I have, and it did not stop his effect on me.” A piece of leather gets oiled unnecessarily hard. “I am not sure if it is because I know it is beneficial, or because my shield does not apply to the body working on itself.”

Luke nods in sympathy. One of the problems with having powers that depend on belief and interpretation is that unlike comic book powers, there are very few hard limits, and no reliable way to tell when something is a hard limit, or a soft one and can then be talked or thought around.

“Keep trying, and stay ready. We have to find Predator to go after her, and there’s no way to tell when that will be.” Luke drops a hand on Shield’s shoulder on his way out, and heads out to find Abyss.

[*]

The scent of ink and industrial cleaner greet Luke when he walks into A Fool’s Pride. He’s greeted by a woman who is wearing more in body jewelry than his entire wardrobe is worth, and he cuts off her question – does he have an appointment? – by waving and walking into the back.

Abyss’ text told him to look for a room in the back with a blacked-out window, and the reason for the privacy is immediately apparent when he’s let in: the tattoo currently being inked is on the hollow of Abyss’ left hip, and she’s wearing very little on her lower half to give the artist freedom to work.

Luke flushes and jerks his head up to keep his eyes on Abyss’ face. A slight smile flashes over her face.

“Hey, uh, we’re all going out to meet Aiyana’s girlfriend,” Luke stumbles a little through his planned code, clearing his throat.

“Are we going to try and get her to work with us, again?” Abyss asks, tone casual even through the tension he can see on her face. When Luke nods, Abyss sighs theatrically. “Better not tell Aiyana the Boss is after her woman, again. She’s not going to take it well.”

“No way,” Luke agrees, holding his hands up. “She got kinda mean after the last time.”

Some of the tension leaves Abyss’ face. “Yeah, she kinda did, didn’t she? Let me know what time we’re going; I think Anna will like my new ink.”

Luke risks a glance at her hip. It’s only half-finished, but the outlined name there is Agares.

“Family of yours?”

Abyss almost smiles. “You could say that. I’ll text you about it later.”

They make meaningless conversation for a few more minutes, and Luke’s phone buzzes when he’s in the parking lot.

Beth (Work): Agares: demon dealing with runaway persons and earthquakes. Noble titles, too, but I don’t think that’s going to help.

He hums thoughtfully, slides his phone back into his pocket, and drives toward Mend’s apartment.

[*]

“Okay.” Mend’s voice is surprisingly steady, and he only looks away from Luke’s eyes half as much as he’s used to.

“You’re not worried?” Luke probably shouldn’t be asking that, but he’d expected some kind of worry, not this calm acceptance.

“If she wanted to hurt me, she would have done it.” There’s a calm acceptance in him that Luke isn’t really sure what to do with. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be calm about someone like Predator stalking him, but Mend just seems to roll with it.

“Be ready,” is all Luke can really say at this point without feeling like he’s undermining Mend’s confidence.

Second Exterlude

Mend nods in response. “I will.”

Luke leaves.

 

Fourth Interlude

“I’m working on projection and control, but it’s spotty,” Luke admits, inhaling deeply, then exhaling a thin stream of light grey smoke. “It comes out just fine, any way I want it, but–” his eyes focus sharply on the smoke. The center of it jerks some, then goes back to floating upwards and out, the way smoke typically does. “–when I try to get a hold on it outside my body, that happens.”

The Doctor makes a small noncommittal noise, gesturing for Smoke to go on.

“The thicker it is, the easier,” Luke breathes out a thicker puff, dark and heavy enough to obscure his features. This time, the center swirls, first one way, then the other. It stops abruptly mid-motion, losing cohesion and going back to normal smoke behavior. “But at some point, I always lose it. Any other kind of smoke is worse.”

He pulls a lighter and a piece of paper out of a pocket of his uniform, lighting the paper on fire. This smoke barely twitches when he looks to it. They watch as Luke tries and fails to coax any other movement out of the vapor, then waves out the fire on the end of the paper, setting both it and the lighter on the conference room table.

“Do you believe it is a question of skill, or internal limitation?” The Doctor speaks in Japanese, a language that has been giving Luke far more trouble than his first three. It doesn’t particularly matter that he only barely understands the words themselves; the Doctor asks the same question every time.

“I think it is skill,” Luke replies, switching to Japanese from English after long seconds of grasping for conjugation and sentence structure. “I improve, I have not stopped.”

“And your mental studies?” The Doctor asks this in plain English, and Luke sits up, frowning. The man never speaks in an Agent’s native tongue unless it’s important, and Luke himself has no idea what he’s talking about.

“What mental studies?”

The Doctor studies him for a few seconds, his face expressionless, then speaks rapidly. “Are you the blood in the vein?”

“No,” he says immediately, voice becoming slow, hypnotic. “I am the smoke upon the water.”

His head falls forward, dropping to his chest. His eyes close, arms limp at his sides. A thin cloud of white smoke rises from him all at once, rising quickly. When it hits the ceiling, his head jerks back upward, and his eyes snap to the Doctor.

“Why?” The voice that comes from Luke’s mouth is deeper, rougher, a voice that one could easily come from years of smoke inhalation. Smoke looks out through Luke’s eyes, showing none of the warmth of the man who entered the room.

“Mental wellbeing check,” the Doctor replies crisply, folding his arms over his white lab coat.

“Does my being seem well enough to you?” Smoke doesn’t blink, doesn’t vary his tone. He straightens slowly, methodically, cracking joints as he goes.

“It will not seem well enough to me until you cease this pointless game.” The Doctor’s tone, in contrast, drips with disapproval.

“Pointless?” Smoke chuckles. “Are you not the one who insists on constant self-improvement, Herr Doctor? What better opportunity than this, than working so closely with those women, whose Names grant them such insight?”

“What will you do when they no longer trust you?”

“What will you do when you choke upon your hypocrisy?”

The two men stare at one another for long moments. Then, the Doctor’s lips thin further, and he gestures in one sharp, dismissive moment.

“Return to hiding, spectre.”

“Have fun while I’m gone, Doctor.” Smoke’s head drops once more, body limp, and when he stirs once more, it is Luke who blinks out of dark, confused eyes.

“Get more sleep.” The Doctor says, and leaves the room.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Sixteen

A woman’s voice, teasing, friendly. A man’s, surprised but open. The woman asks a question. The man replies, cautious but with an undertone of curiousity.

Aiyana rolls over, yawns, sits up. The conversation continues through her yawn, just indistinct enough that she’ll have to actually get up and investigate to hear what’s going on.

“-not sure I should wake her up.” Aiyana comes in at the tail end of Franz being almost-believably reluctant.

“Oh, hey.” The woman in the doorframe leans to one side, smiles at Aiyana over Franz’s shoulder.

Franz steps to the side with a confused, ‘who the hell is this?’ look on his face when he turns to Aiyana.

Truth be told, Aiyana doesn’t know. The woman looks vaguely familiar, but Aiyana knows she doesn’t know anyone with that amount of ink on their body. Her hair is that shade of dishwater blonde that a lot of people – including Franz – have within a shade or two, her eyes are a forgettable brown, and her height and weight are both average. She seems a little more toned than most people her age – mid twenties? – but not so much so that’s it’s really a defining characteristic. If not for the tattoos, she’d probably just be “that girl with the spiky hair” until Aiyana got her name down properly.

“Hey, Aiyana.” The woman cocks her head to the side. “Our boss asked me to stop in.”

Aiyana knows everyone at the grocery store by name, and she sighs when she realizes who this must be. “So, you’re–“

“—Beth.” Abyss gives another smile, this one a little more pointed. “I’m also still standing in your hallway.”

Franz’s eyes flick between them, and when Aiyana nods, he lets Abyss in. He shuts the door behind her, steps back, and crosses his arms over his chest. “So, you’re from the PLE.”

His tone has ‘protective older brother’ written all over it, and Aiyana rolls her eyes. She steps forward and reaches for Abyss’ arm with the intent to drag her back into the office. “Come–“

Abyss twists her arm so that Aiyana’s fingers close around her wrist instead, and she offers a half-smile. “I don’t let our kind touch my ink, thanks.”

Aiyana blinks, and starts to pull her toward the back, slowly at first, but with more confidence when Abyss doesn’t resist. “Franz, we’re going to be in the office.” Her tone has ‘bug off’ in it, and he huffs in return, but doesn’t protest.

“Alright, why are you here?” Aiyana asks, when they’re in the office and the door is firmly closed.

“Luke has things to do,” Abyss shrugs, falling into the desk chair.

“So you’re a babysitter?” Aiyana leans back against the door, arms folded.

“Think of me as a language tutor.” She gives Aiyana a slow, lazy half-grin.

“A language tutor?”

“Unless you already speak Esperanto,” Abyss reaches into the pocket of her jeans, pulling out her phone.

Aiyana stares. “Esperanto?”

Abyss flicks a few things on her phone, turns the screen back off, and slides the phone back in her jeans. “Yeah, Esperanto. The Doctor refuses to speak English, and you should probably know how to tell when he’s insulting you during your evaluation.”

Aiyana’s eyes narrow. “What evaluation?”

“The one in an hour, back at base?” Abyss rolls her eyes when Aiyana’s face stays blank. “I should have known they didn’t tell you. You’re going to meet the Doctor. Nobody at our level knows what his actual Name is, but it’s ‘Doctor’ in some language. He’s a Name specialist. He’s also an asshole.”

“Great,” Aiyana grumps.

“So, the word for ‘incompetent’ is….”

[*]

Aiyana leaves her uniform at home on Abyss’ recommendation, and they drive – separately; they may work together, but Aiyana doesn’t trust Abyss quite yet – to Chicago PLE headquarters. Abyss shows her to the conference room, which is apparently where the Doctor will be evaluating her, and falls into a chair where she can watch Aiyana and the Doctor.

The Doctor himself studies her, wide eyes darting this way and that over her. He wears an honest-to-god lab coat, white with dark blue stitching, and she can see bulges in his pockets from here.

“Kio estas tio?” The Doctor’s head turns to Abyss, one finger raised to point at Aiyana.

Abyss replies in lazy Esperanto that is still too fast for Aiyana to follow, and the Doctor rolls his eyes.

“As far as we can tell, he’s asexual,” Abyss says unhelpfully, when Aiyana eyes the Doctor for moving closer. “He just wants to know everything about all of us.”

Despite coming closer than she’d like him, his manner reassures her that he’s all business. He keeps his touches light, cursory, motioning for her to twist this way or that while he mutters in what she’s pretty sure is still Esperanto. He asks Abyss things occasionally, to which she replies off-handedly, and Aiyana feels a muscle in her eyebrow twitch when they show no sign of switching to English.

The Doctor touches her ear, then freezes. His eyes flicker over her face, focusing and unfocusing. He moves his hand to her brow, holding his palm over it as if testing for fever. After a few seconds, he jerks his hand back, cradling it in the other as if he’s been burned.

He whips his head to stare at Abyss, then begins speaking in a voice that starts calm and level, gradually increasing to barely-contained fury. When his tirade ends, Abyss stares at him. Her response is short, flat, and in English: “What.”

The Doctor turns back to Aiyana. “You have been manipulated.” He has a slight European accent, but his English is perfectly understandable, and he huffs when Abyss mutters something about his sudden ability to communicate clearly. “This is more important than forcing self-improvement on my coworkers.”

“Yeah, I already knew I’d been manipulated,” Aiyana raises an eyebrow. “Smith blackmailed me.”

“No, girl, I do not mean it in such a mundane sense. You have been acted upon by another’s abilities.” He frowns disapprovingly. “One of them, I am disgusted but not surprised. The other is new to me. I suspect the one for which they watch. Your lover, the one who walks with murderers.”

“You think Anna– Predator– used her powers on me.” Aiyana wants to say that Anna wouldn’t. Her mouth even opens to tell him as much, but she closes it again. There’s always been something shady about the way Anna found her in the first place. She’d claimed a source she couldn’t reveal, but it would make a lot more sense if she’d set it up herself.

Then again, Names are fairly strict about what the Named can do with them. She’s seen some creative interpretations, but nothing about ‘Predator’ suggests she’d be able to push events like that.

“What kind of manipulation?” She asks finally.

“The first, from the one I have seen before, was docility, cooperation. The second…” He purses his lips. “…lust.”

Aiyana clenches her teeth. No, no way. She could believe that Anna set them up to meet, she could even believe that Flare used his small manipulations to bring them together that night at the bar, but Anna using her powers to make Aiyana want her? No, impossible. She’d thought the other woman was attractive from the moment they met.

“You’re wrong.” She wants to rail at him, to tell him just how wrong he must be, but she keeps it to herself. She doesn’t think Smoke would jump the gun and restrain her just for getting mad, but she doesn’t know Abyss, doesn’t know her powers or have even a hint of her orders. It could be that one shouted word will get her locked up all over again.

“I am not wrong about the manipulation, but I admit my thoughts on the source are only speculation.” The Doctor’s tone is even, the anger from earlier gone.

“What did you mean, about the manipulator you recognized?” Aiyana asks, trying and failing to unclench her jaw.

The Doctor gives her a long, measured look, then lifts his chin. “Take in more protein and calcium. Your Name is restructuring your body, you require the materials to support the change. More calories in general; you have lost more weight than is healthy.”

“Wait, what?” Aiyana asks, but the Doctor sweeps out of the door without giving an answer.

“Everyone’s Name changes them,” Abyss stands, stretching her arms over her head. “The Doctor says mine was mostly mental, but some people get a lot of physical changes.” A beat, then, “I’ve never heard of it being anything harmful. Shield is straight muscle now, Smoke is unbelievably flexible, and one of my old teammates would get stabbed, and start healing around the knife before it was even taken out.”

Aiyana frowns. “That’s not what I meant.”

They look at one another for a few seconds, Aiyana searching Abyss’ eyes, and Abyss studying her in turn. Finally, Abyss says, “it’s shitty, what they’re doing to you. I feel for you – and obviously so does the Doctor – but our hands are tied. There are some questions we can’t answer until you come off of probation.

“And until then, I’m just supposed to accept someone’s messing with my head?” Aiyana glares, folding her arms over her chest.

Abyss stares right back, and something about her gaze makes Aiyana look away. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

They leave. Abyss follows her home, then takes off without so much as a goodbye. Aiyana collapses onto her living room couch, and tries to think about nothing at all.

Fourth Interlude

Chapter Fifteen

Luke falls into his chair in Wire’s office heavily. He reaches up to run his hand over his face, realizes he still has his mask on, and peels it off, dropping it onto the desk in front of him.

Wire enters not long after, sitting in his chair with only slightly more grace. His mask, too, lands on the desk, and the two of them exist in silence for a few moments.

“You’re right, she is going to be the biggest problem,” Luke admits, sighing heavily and reaching over to grab his phone out of the basket on Wire’s desk where he’d stuck it before the meeting.

Nodding instead of saying anything along the lines of “told you so”, Wire leans back in his seat, one hand propped up on the arm of his chair. “Followed closely by Abyss.”

Luke looks to Wire, startled. The other man rests his chin on his hand. “She does not like something about Mirror being with us, and I don’t know what or why. She clammed up the second she got the Director’s orders, and she’s been stiff around me since. She had a problem during our initial meeting when I mentioned Predator and Mirror, couldn’t take her eyes off of Mirror during the meeting, and shot right out of the room as soon as I ended it today.”

Not having noticed that, Luke frowns. He’d actually gotten through her file the other night, and nothing in it pointed toward her having any problems with probationary members. She’s been with the PLE longer than he has, and never in that time had she worked with a probationary member that she’d had problems with, or against someone who later become one. She hadn’t been one herself, and there was nothing about her having parahuman friends outside of the PLE. He knows the files don’t have absolutely everything about an Agent, but they usually pointed the way toward answers.

“She’s worked with shifters before,” Luke says, trying to work out the problem out loud, “with blinkers with a much bigger range and less limitations than Mirror. Shield was an independent long before he was PLE, and those two have worked together before.” His mind shifts gears a little. “The Director is black and she’s worked directly alongside him before. One of her teammates from PLE New York is openly gay and there’s never been any problems between them.”

Wire lets Luke speak, pulling his laptop into his lap and opening it.

“They haven’t exchanged two words, and it’s not like Mirror has a Name that implies she’d care that Abyss contracts things called demons,” Luke finishes, thoroughly baffled. “You think maybe she’s just against lying to someone with us?”

“I don’t think that’s entirely it, but yes,” Wire answers, eyes on the screen as he taps at the keyboard. “It seemed to bother her when I said we’d be aiming to arrest, or at least detain, Predator, but she didn’t start getting really…” he winces at the pun, “…wired until she got her orders.”

“What did the Director order her to do, anyway?” Luke asks, leaning forward.

“I don’t know,” Wire admits, “he just said Abyss would be handling it, and that she should have some space in her duties to do it.”

Luke lets that sit for a few seconds, then changes the subject to something more productive. “Mirror can’t copy tattoos.”

That gets an upward glance out of Wire. “That’s a really weird limitation. Did she say why?”

Luke exhales, shaking his head. “She said she doesn’t make the rules, she just works with what she’s given.”

Wire stares at him. “What.”

“That’s what she said. Swear to God.”

Wire reaches up to bury his face in his hands. “So no one’s told her about hard limits versus soft limits.”

“Apparently not.” Luke scrubs at one eye with the side of his hand. “I don’t know if the independents don’t know about it, or if it’s just her and hers.”

“If the locals think their powers are hard-wired, that’s a huge advantage to us.” Wire drops his hands, looks back down to his laptop. He resumes typing, this time faster. “It does bring up the question of how and when we tell Agent Mirror, though.”

Luke thinks on that. They can’t not tell her and expect her to be a productive Agent. They can’t really trust her right now, though. As much as he wants to trust her, he wouldn’t blame her at all for pulling a runner if Predator showed back up, and it’s a hell of an advantage to lose to the independents.

“We can let the Doctor tell her,” Luke suggests finally, “he probably would anyway.”

Wire nods. “Sounds good.”

They discuss the business end of running a PLE team for a while, finalize plans for what to do for the building, and both men leave feeling exhausted but accomplished.

[*]

Luke throws himself forward. He feels a brief displacement in the air, and hits a solid barrier between him and his target. He floods himself forward, spreading out over the barrier. It’s a dome, and he sends himself over it in roiling waves. The dome extends all the way to the floor– with a small gap just big enough for his smoke-form to get through.

He gathers himself at the edges – sending little bits of himself in as they find gaps might tip off the person inside – and flows in all at once. The target is inside, and Luke surrounds him, pulling himself together in a submission hold.

“Bang.” Luke says, two fingers held in a ‘gun’ position against Shield’s head.

Shield grumbles, shrugging Luke off and stepping forward. He jumps, grabbing the straps of his shield and releasing it back into shield-form, out of dome-form.

“Work on making it air-tight,” Luke advises, as Shield dons his shield.

“I have to breathe,” Shield raises an eyebrow, crossing his arms.

“You’ll be fine with just the air inside for at least a minute, and you can hold your breath for longer than that,” Luke says, “long enough for you to come up with something, or for one of your teammates to get rid of the airbourne threat.”

Shield inclines his head, conceding the point. “Anything else, Captain?”

Luke doesn’t bother hiding the broad grin that results. ‘Captain’ is an unofficial title – officially, every Agent is simply that, with only the Director as anything else – but one he’s wanted every since he first heard it.

“Come back in for team training tomorrow.” Luke dimisses him, and prepares for the next Agent.

[*]

“Again.”

Mend forces his body through the kata once more, his jaw clenched and sweat running down his face. He manages to complete it without a major error this time, though he immediately bends over, hands on his thighs.

“Good,” Luke says encouragingly, nodding. “You’re good for today. We’ll do firearm practice later in the week, and make sure you keep up with your independent cardio.”

He gets a nod in response, a gulped breath, and Mend straightens himself back up forcefully. “Yes, sir.”

Luke rubs the back of his head. “Mend, you don’t need to call me sir. I’m only in charge when we’re out in th field. Just make sure you’re here at five so I can work with Abyss.”

Mend nods again, wheezes out another breath, and starts his cooldown stretches.

[*]

Luke frowns, tilts his head. “What do you do when you’re alone?”

If not for the utter neutrality of her eyes, he would say that her eyebrow lift is amused.”Who says I’m ever alone?”

Before he can respond, her body convulses. In one jerky motion from abdomen up to head, her body rolls, and her hands come up to her mouth. At the top of the wave, her head comes forward, mouth opening wide. A thick, oily stream of black floods out of her mouth, pooling in her cupped hands. She begins to speak to it in a harsh, unfamiliar language full of hisses and tapped consonants. Abyss raises one hand and runs her fingers through the mass, which rolls over her fingers in thick, clumpy blobs that look like they should leave disgusting residue, but her skin is just as clean afterward as it was before.

Luke looks to Mend while Abyss coos at the… demon? The other man has his brows drawn together, lips pressed together in a smile that’s trying harder to be tolerant than it may ever succeed at.

“Does she do this a lot?” Luke asks in an undertone that’s about half-meant to break Abyss out of whatever it is she’s doing.

Mend turns to Luke. He tries to broaden his smile, but only succeeds in grimacing. “This is the tame one. The other one… we all end up hoping she doesn’t have to call the other one.”

He should really ask her to show him one of her other contacts, but in the end, he doesn’t really want to see the rest of them, if they’re anything like this one.

[*]

“Where’s Agent Mirror?”

Luke half-smiles at Abyss’ question, sliding on his mask. “She’s non-combat while she’s on probation.”

There’s a few seconds of silence, then Abyss shrugs. “It’s not like we need another non-frontliner. We’re already Team Bubble.”

Luke opens his mouth to contradict her, but she’s right. Mend is a healer, Shield is a defender, Abyss a projecter. Luke can work as their offense, but he’s little-to-no-use against anyone with a Name that gives them durability, or speed. Abyss’ demons are really their heavy hitters, and if she gets knocked out, they become unreliable.

Team practice goes along those lines: Shield creates a bubble with his shield-dome, Abyss calls out what her demons can and will be doing – she refuses to call on them unless necessary; Luke can’t really blame her, considering the prices some of them exact when used – and Smoke flows around targets and hits them with precision strikes of his body. Mend, of course, stands ready to heal anyone or anything that needs it, and while he spends most of team practice standing in Shield’s dome, they all know he’ll be crucial in the event of a real fight.

“Alright, guys, that’s enough for today. Go settle into your lives and see what you can find out about the local paras. We’ll get back together next week.”

Everyone else files out, but Abyss lingers. Luke turns to her, head tilted.

“Hey, can you… give me Mirror’s address?” Abyss shifts a little, pulls her mask off and lets it hang from the tips of her fingers. “Oh, and I’m going to give her some crap, basically see-through excuse about you guys wanting me to hang out with her. You know, the kind that basically screams ‘I’m your new babysitter because you can’t impersonate me’.”

The whole thing pulls at him – Luke hates lying, hates that they have to do this with Aiyana just to make sure she can be trusted – but he gives her Aiyana’s address, and adds it to the pile of things that make him wonder if Aiyana will hate him when she finds out about them.

Chapter Sixteen

Flashback: Hellfire

For a woman with a Name as evocative as Hellfire, the woman herself was pretty normal.

Hair colored the too-black that spoke of a dye job, a steel stud piercing the crease between her upper lip and cheek – a Monroe, Aiyana remembered vaguely – clothes that were trendy but covered more than current fashion normally called for. White, like the boards insisted, with gold-flecked brown eyes as the only truly striking part of her. She was on the attractive side of average, Aiyana supposed, but not anyone that turned heads on the street.

“I’m Hellfire,” the woman said, when it became apparent that Anna would not be introducing her to Aiyana.

“Aiyana,” Aiyana replied, shaking the proffered hand. She nearly started when she realized Hellfire didn’t run as hot as Predator or Flare; she’d honestly just assumed it was a Named thing.

Hellfire blinked in surprise. “That’s a pretty Name. What language is it in?”

Hearing the capitalization in her inflection, Aiyana shook her head. “My Name is Mirror, I just prefer my birth name.”

The other woman’s eyes flicked to Anna, and the two of them shared a moment of silent communication too fast for Aiyana to make out.

“Aiyana, then,” Hellfire said amiably, dropping Aiyana’s hand. “I ordered appetizers in advance, since this place takes forever.” She flashed a quick, almost-apologetic smile. “I hope you don’t have any common allergies Predator somehow forgot to tell me about.”

Anna scoffed, Aiyana reassured her that she wasn’t allergic to anything she knew about, and the three woman made their way to the table Hellfire had gotten for them.

After a few casual introductory questions from Hellfire – how had she met Predator, what was she studying and did she like it, the usual icebreakers – Aiyana let herself fade out of the conversation, watching the two of them interact.

With Flare, Anna challenged, poked at him, and he let it roll off of his back. She tried to push his buttons unsuccessfully, and he successfully pushed hers by not letting it get to him. With Hellfire, every time Anna flashed her teeth, Hellfire responded with something subtly cutting in return, only the light in her eyes letting on that what she’d said was a slight. Anna was the flash, the open threat, Hellfire the subtle danger, the power behind the scenes, only acquiring a warning tinge in Aiyana’s mind after she’d watched her for a while.

Just when it seemed like lunch was heading toward a wrap without any of the seriousness Anna had implied when she’s said Aiyana had to meet Hellfire, Anna stood, pushing in her chair.

“Call me when you’re done,” she said shortly. She bent over to press a lingering kiss to Aiyana’s lips, dazing her long enough that she could slip away without protest.

Aiyana blinked, trying to shrug it off, and turned to Hellfire.

“Not the subtlest, your girl,” Hellfire commented wryly. She tapped the menus she’d apparently snagged off of a waitress when Aiyana had been busy with Anna’s goodbye. “Dessert?”

The two of them ordered small desserts, and Hellfire fixed Aiyana with a steady gaze when the waitress left.

“Knowing Predator, she brought you in out of the dark as little as possible,” Hellfire started calmly, folding her hands in front of her, “and only brought you to see me because she couldn’t keep you out of the loop any longer.”

Aiyana frowned, torn between wanting to say yes, to get answers, but not wanting to slight her girlfriend.

Hellfire waved a hand. “It’s fine, you don’t have to say anything. It doesn’t really matter how it happened, she asked me to be your guide, so I will. I’m guessing she hasn’t told you what a guide is, or what they do?”

At that, Aiyana shook her head.

“I teach you what the Named are about, what the new world is, and generally serve as a mentor while you’re getting used to our world.” A flashed smile, brighter than Aiyana thought she was capable of. “You can ask me anything, and I’ll either answer or explain why I can’t.”

“So, since I can ask you anything…” Aiyana trailed off, then resumed when Hellfire nodded encouragingly, “what can you do?”

“You’ve met Flare, seen his stuff?”

Aiyana nodded.

“I can do everything he can, but better.” Hellfire paused for a second. “Well, not the emotional part.”

“Emotional part?” Aiyana pursed her lips, not liking the sound of that in the slightest.

“You should ask him for details, but the simple answer is that he can cause brief, intense flashes of emotion.” Hellfire waved a hand. “They don’t last long, but they don’t need to.”

“When you say everything he can, but better-”

“Everything.” Hellfire said firmly. She gave Aiyana a half-smile when she saw the almost-affronted look on her face. “It doesn’t sound fair, I know, but real life isn’t like the comics, where almost nobody has directly overlapping powers.”

“You read comics?” Aiyana asked, blinking.

“If you’re smart, you will too,” Hellfire advised. “Chances are, someone in a comic somewhere can do something like what you can, and they’ll have thought of different uses for it than you have.” Anticipating Aiyana’s question, she continued, “I’ve picked up a few tricks myself.”

“I wouldn’t have thought hellfire would be a common power.”

“It’s really common among villains, actually, and even a few of the minor heroes have it. They don’t really channel it the way I do – unless you take a look at an actual devil from hell – but they put it to creative uses.” A small, not-very-nice smile crossed Hellfire’s face for a few seconds. “I can’t really show you here, and I try not to call on it unless it’s necessary, anyway.”

“Have you seen anyone blink themselves through mirrors?” Aiyana asked wryly.

“No, but there are a lot of shapeshifters.” Hellfire flashed another half-smile at Aiyana’s surprise. “Predator told me what she could about what you can do, hon.”

“Alright,” Aiyana leaned back in her chair, “so tell me about these shapeshifters.”

“First and best is Mystique….”

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fourteen

Smoke: Meeting at the place on Pulaski, 7p. Wear the outfit I got you, bring the welcome package. -Luke

Aiyana eyes the PLE uniform, running her fingers over the badge on it. Different from the others she’s seen only in that it’s made for a woman, and one shorter than both Smoke and Smith, she can’t shake the feeling that putting it on will be crossing a line she’ll later wish she hadn’t. It’s just a few pieces of clothing, but at the same time….

Uncomfortable, she looks instead to the ‘welcome package’ Smoke mentioned. The box had come not long after she’d left the police station and gone home, a nondescript first-class package with a return address somewhere in Montana. It had been heavier than she’d expected, but then, she’d expected a fruit basket.

Inside the box rests a set of metal armor. It isn’t a full set like the ones she’d seen in history books, but rather a set of arm- and leg-guards. Labelled ‘bracers’ and ‘greaves’ by easily pulled off pieces of clear plastic, they came with detailed instructions on how to put them on both under and over her PLE uniform. They were shined to almost blinding brightness, and were made of some metal Aiyana couldn’t easily identify. She’d stuffed the box under her bed until the text from Smoke, and had even managed to half-forget it was there until now.

“They’re serious about having you ready to fight,” Franz comments from the doorway, bringing Aiyana out of her thoughts.

“Yeah, I guess,” Aiyana shakes her head, “you’d think they’d give me a bulletproof vest instead of stuff from the Roman Legion.”

“Maybe they are giving you a bulletproof vest, and that’s why you didn’t get a chestpiece,” Franz suggests, stepping inside to pick up one of the bracers. “Or maybe parahuman fights in real life are as weird as the comic ones are.”

“God, I hope not. I don’t want to live in a world where someone dressed as a chipmunk is the most powerful person in the world.”

“She’s dressed up like a squirrel,” Franz corrects, “and it’s kind of a joke that she’s the most powerful person in the multiverse.”

Aiyana raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said it was true.”

“It is,” Franz says, avoiding his sister’s eyes, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not kind of a joke.”

Aiyana shakes her head, but leave it alone. “I’ll text you about the vest when I get there, now get out so I can change.”

[*]

It looks like any other office building: two stories, big open window out front, a sign that promises a business moving in soon. It’s white-washed that shade of off-grey that buildings default to when the owners move out, and there’s grass poking up in the cracks of the parking lot asphault.

Aiyana pulls into a spot next to two of the most sensible, boring cars she’s ever seen – much like hers, actually – and turns off the car.

It seems so unlikely, that a group of superheroes – her mind corrects that thought even as it forms; she’s sure the PLE thinks of themselves that way, but she’s far from convinced they’re heroes – makes their base in such an ordinary place. It fits with the cloak-and-dagger way they operate, but somehow she was expecting a big bronze tower, or for one of them to front a multi-billion dollar company. Going into this little shop that looks like it could be an insurance business sets her on edge, has her wondering what other expectations they’re going to shatter.

The front room is empty, and no one answers when she rings the bell, so she lets herself in, box in hand and uniform carefully hidden under her normal clothes.

The front room is small, with a desk and a doorway leading back into the building proper. If they actually end up going with a business front, she could see this as a waiting room, maybe with someone at the desk handling customers and a small bench for them to wait on.

Down the hall, Aiyana sees a cloud of black smoke leak out of a vent, condensing into Smoke. For all that she’s known the entire time he’s a parahuman, it still makes her stare to actually see his power in action. Unaware of her scrutiny, he brushes off the arms and thighs of clothes, and turns to face her with a smile.

“Hey,” he says, motioning her forward, “you’re a little early, so let me show you the place.”

The tour doesn’t take long. There are a few rooms on the ground floor that Smoke says they’ll be using for storage. The second floor has a conference room, an office for the guy running the show – “Agent Wire” Smoke says, with the ease of familiarity – and a workshop. The basement is half empty space – Smoke says it’ll be a training room – and the other half is split into a few small bedrooms that Smoke assures her they don’t have to live in, but will nevertheless need sometimes.

He ends the tour with her shoebox room, and turns to face her with a thoughtful expression. “Can you turn into me real fast? I need to check something.”

She wonders why he’s asking now, as opposed to after the meeting, but she sets the box down on the bed anyway, calling up her big mirror.

It’s only the work of a few seconds before she copies him, and he stares at her for a few seconds, then rubs the back of his head.

“I don’t think that’ll ever stop being weird,” he admits, giving her a sheepish smile.

“That’s what my brother said,” she snorts, a small smile on her own lips.

“Hey, take off your shirt,” he says, recovering his professionalism, “I have to check something.” He freezes. A blush spreads across his face, but he manages to keep eye contact. “I’d never ask you to that if you weren’t, um, me, but-“

She cuts him off, holding in laughter. “It’s okay. Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Once her shirt is off, he circles around, then stares at her back for a bit. Wondering if he found a new freckle or something, she turns her head to look at him over her shoulder.

“I’ve got a tattoo right here,” he taps a place on her shoulder blade, “but you don’t. Can you show me your left shin?”

She puts the shirt back on, and lifts her left pant leg. Mid-shin is a nasty-looking scar. Smoke frowns.

“Why do you have my scar, but not my tattoo?” He asks out loud. “You’d never seen the scar, but got it perfect.”

“It’s not really a part of you,” Aiyana suggests, unsure why he’s fixated on the tattoo. It’s important to know that she can’t duplicate tattoos, but couldn’t this wait?

“Tattoos leave scars, though,” he argues, “even if you sucked all the ink out, there would stil be a scar underneath.”

She shrugs, letting his image drop. “I don’t make the rules, I just use what I’ve got.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. A few seconds pass between them, then he says, “it’s almost time for the meeting. Let me show you how to put on the armor, then we’ll head to the conference room.”

[*]

The armor doesn’t itch, or feel too heavy, or constantly remind her she is literally equipped for battle. She wants it to, wants to stop feeling so comfortable with the uniform they gave her, with the armor she suspects she’ll very much need one day. When she’d worn the uniform under her normal clothes earlier, it had been a constant, uncomfortable, paradoxically reassuring reminder that she was being forced out of her depth by the PLE. Now that she’s taken off the clothes on top of it, it stops bothering her the second she stops concentrating on it, and she hates it.

Everyone at the conference table has their mask on, and even the foreign sensation of having something cover her entire face can’t distract her from how weird this is, being a part of a superpowered organization. She still doesn’t think they’re the heroes, but the way everyone around her is taking this seriously makes her feel a little more super.

“Agent Mirror, these are Agents Mend, Shield, and Abyss. You’ve already met Agent Smoke, and I am Agent Wire, the senior Agent for PLE Chicago.”

Everyone at the table is wearing the standard uniform – except Wire, who has a jacket with a bunch of pockets, and Shield, who has backpack-style straps on his chest that lead to a shield on his back – and mask, which makes it hard to judge anything beyond general body type. She’s pretty sure Abyss is female and the other three are male, but that doesn’t tell her anything about gender, age, ethnicity, or anything else useful for her big mirror. She wonders if that’s not the intent.

“We don’t have any official assignments yet,” Wire continues, taking his eyes off of Aiyana and turning to the rest of the group, “but the Chicagoland area has about three million people, meaning there are at least nine other native parahumans running around besides Agent Mirror here, and we know just about nothing about them.”

Aiyana frowns as Wire goes on to say that they need to collect information on the local parahumans. He thinks there are only ten native Chicago parahumans, out of three million people in the city? She’s met at least that many while working with Anna, and she knows there have to be some who are hiding, or who haven’t yet become part of the community.

Wire passes around thin dossiers labelled ‘Flare’, ‘Hellfire’, and ‘Predator’. Aiyana looks in each of them, curious, and finds them severely lacking. They’ve got one grainy picture of Flare, awful artist’s renditions of Hellfire and Anna, and no first-hand witnesses to any of their powers. They know about Flare’s small fire manipulations, Anna’s tracking and durability, and there’s only speculation about Hellfire’s Name. If this is all the PLE can gather about Hellfire, who is one of the biggest cornerstones of local parahuman society, Aiyana is not impressed.

What she is, a little bit, is worried. It’s in Anna’s file that she and Aiyana are in a relationship, but no one comments on it. To her, that says that someone – Wire, probably, since he’s in charge – has already told them about it, and told them not to bring it up. It’s possible none of them have made the connection, but given the choice between having to possibly fight alongside stupid teammates or secretive ones, she’d rather have the secrets.

“Alright, everyone, see if you can’t scope out some of the local parahumans. We’ve got another meeting next week, same day and time. I’ll get in touch with you sooner if we get an assignment, or any pressing information.” Wire nods to everyone, and waves them out. “Go get ’em.”

Aiyana expects him to ask to talk to her, but she’s dismissed with the rest. Smoke bumps her shoulder on his way out, and the rest look to her but don’t speak.

When she checks her phone on her way downstairs to get her regular clothes back on, she’s got a text from Franz.

Franz: How’s that bulletproof vest look?

She snorts and shakes her head, before sending one back.

Ai: I didn’t get one. Didn’t get any answers, either. Fill you in when I get there.

Flashback: Hellfire

Chapter Thirteen

“Agent Smoke, I need to have a word with you. Please wait in the lobby, Agent Mirror.”

Luke sees Aiyana roll her eyes in his peripheral vision, but she leaves, and he’s left face-to-face with the legendary Agent Smith, Director of the PLE. He swallows, and tries to calm his racing heartbeat. It doesn’t work.

“The PLE is establishing a Chicago headquarters. You will be integral to this. Agent Wire will be here by sunset, the Doctor will be coming to examine Aiyana, and I’ll send a few Agents out to give you a small but well-rounded team.” Smith speaks calmly, confidently, his words stated as absolute fact. Agent Smoke finds himself nodding along without consciously deciding to do so. “You will have three days in Los Angeles to do what you need to do, and recommend your replacement. Agent Wire will be the senior Agent in Chicago, with you as his direct subordinate. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Smoke replies immediately. He stands when Smith does, and when the Director reaches out to shake his hand, Smoke feels a torrent of warm, giddly excitement pass through him. He had entertained ideas about what he would do with his own team (it’s technically Wire’s team, but with Wire’s abilities lending better to support, Smoke will almost certainly be the field leader), but never thought he’d get one so soon. Now he can call at least some of the shots, can do something about the dangerous parahumans he’s heard live in Chicago.

“Tell Agent Mirror her welcome package will be in the mail.” Smith says, heading for the door. He pauses, and turns sideways to smile at Smoke. “And congratulations on your new posting, Agent Smoke.”

Smoke nods once, then twice, unable to keep the smile off his lips.

[*]

“Shield, Abyss, Mend. Welcome to PLE Chicago.”

Three manilla folders sit in front of Wire at the conference table. Two more lay behind those, closer to him than the first three. To his immediate right is Luke, who shares the head of the table with him, and the three named Agents sit at various points along the rectangular table.

Wire himself is a tall, skinny man with hair the color of sand and skin one color away from chalk. He wears the same uniform Luke does, only with a white form-fitting jacket over it, complete with bulging pockets. His mask, like everyone else’s, is off, hanging off the back of his chair. He’s a fairly normal-looking guy without it, just a guy with a case of mask-hair and facial scars that suggest acne in his past.

“This is Agent Smoke, who will be field leader, and we will be occasionally joined by Agent Mirror, who is with us on a probationary basis.”

The mention of Mirror causes the first reaction in the assembled Agents; Abyss grimaces openly, Shield shifts in his seat, and Mend suddenly finds his hands very interesting. Luke feels his eyebrows draw togther as he watches them, wondering if they’ve heard about Mirror, or if any of them were once probationary members of the PLE as well. He hasn’t yet had a chance to get through all of their folders – Abyss’ folder by itself is going to take an entire day, talk about a woman with a complex ability – but he doesn’t remember seeing “rehabilitated” or “former probation” in anything he’s read so far.

“How probationary?” Abyss asks, leaning onto her elbows on the table. Luke, not for the first time, lets his eyes wander up and down her the pale skin of her uncovered arms. Her tattoos cover every available inch of skin from her collarbone down to her wrists, each one a name in a different font, color, or size than the one next to it. Most are small enough that he can’t read them from this distance, though ‘Baalberith’ takes up the entirety of her right inner forearm.

“Masks on with her until you’re told otherwise,” Wire says, “she’s one of the most accurate shapechangers we’ve got solid information on. Otherwise, she’s just got touch-teleportation through reflective surfaces.”

“Literal Name, then,” Mend comments, still looking down at his ungloved hands. He glances up to meet Wire’s eyes, then back down at the table. A round, freckled man whose pudge is only just starting to give way to muscle Luke assumes the PLE training regimen is putting on him, Mend is a man easily overlooked. Luke figures he’ll be good if they need someone to interact with the natives out of uniform, especially in the heavily Polish and Irish areas.

“So far,” Wire answers, flipping open one of the folders closer to him, “all we know about her is the touch-teleportation and the shapechanging, but she’s implied she has other tricks up her sleeve.”

No one comments on that one. A parahuman with more tricks up their sleeve is par for the course, as all of them well know. In Luke’s experience, teams have a good idea of what their teammates can do, but not all of that goes in the official reports. Even if everyone were completely open with everyone else, the best Agents are constantly experimenting, researching their Names and thinking up ways for their powers to interact with others.

“Our first official assignment will come after the Doctor has had a look at Agent Mirror, but we’ve got standing orders to be on the lookout for Mirror’s girlfriend, Predator,” Wire hands the opened folder to the left, where Abyss takes it and starts flipping through what little information they have on her. “She’s involved with some of the criminal element in Chicago. The official stance is that Mirror only unintentionally assisted her in crimes, believing she was a private investigator using her Name to track down information.” He pauses. “Agent Mirror is not to find out about any of the information we may get on Predator. Part of her probation is that she’s to report any contact with Predator to us, but the Director doesn’t think she’ll stick to that if Predator contacts her any time soon.”

“Why do we have someone we cannot trust in our ranks?” Shield speaks for the first time, leaning back in his chair. The sharp angles of his face are set into distaste, and he folds his arms over his chest. The metal shield strapped to his back hits the wood of his chair with a light tap, and he shifts to get comfortable against it.

“It’s either take her in, or take her downstairs,” Wire says, referring to the extensive prison facilities the PLE is forced to maintain, “and the Director thinks she’ll be fine after we catch Predator.”

“So, we arrest her girlfriend and then expect her to play nice?” Abyss asks disbelievingly, handing the folder to Shield.

“We do what’s necessary to keep her with us,” Wire says, a warning tone to his voice, “we can’t afford to have a shapechanger like that out on the street, and it would be a waste to throw her in prison.”

That brings a tense silence to the conference room, one Wire breaks after a few seconds. “Our police contacts are Officers Gonzalez and Jones; they’ll be handling any petty crime we come across.”

Shield frowns, handing the folder to Mend. “Are you asking me to ignore a murder if it happens right in front of me?”

“I’m ordering you not to expose yourself,” Wire says, his tone carefully neutral, “and to report any non-parahuman crime you may encounter to Officers Gonzales and Jones.”

“Does anyone have anything power-related they need taken care of right away, or any special needs?” Luke asks. He looks to Abyss, but doesn’t honestly know if the others have anything about them that has to be considered from day one.

“I need a discreet tattooist,” Abyss says immediately, “I have to cut right through one of the names,” she taps one of her tattoos to show Shield what she means, as he’s the only one of them who doesn’t know her abilities, “to call on my allies, and I know Mend’s healing doesn’t heal the ink back up into perfect alignment. They won’t answer if the tattoo is anything but the exact way they demanded.”

Wire nods and reaches into an interior pocket of his jacket, taking out a pen and notebook. “Anyone else?”

“With a healer on hand and my shield bonded, I am fine,” Shield says shortly.

Luke looks to Wire. They both know Luke doesn’t have any particular needs, and Wire will take care of his own supplies. Communication between them on that front passes in an instant, and Luke turns to Mend.

“Mend?” Luke asks, leaning forward onto his forearms. “Do you need anything to work with?”

Mend shakes his head. “I’m fine, but everyone else needs to start taking in more protein and calcium. I make healing go faster, but I don’t create skin and blood out of nothing. I can’t fix Smith’s equipment, either.”

Wire frowns. “Have you ever tried fixing anything a different creator parahuman made?”

“Can’t do it,” Mend says, his eyes darting from one of his teammates to another, “I don’t know why, but it doesn’t work. I can piece together Shield’s, um, shield sometimes, if he lets it go, but it doesn’t always work and we don’t know why.”

“I’ll have the Doctor look into it when he gets here,” Wire decides, pen moving. No one looks particularly happy at having the Doctor involved, but no one says anything against it, either.

Luke and Wire give everyone a few moments to remember anything else they may need, then Wire speaks. “One last thing: this isn’t LA or New York, where every police chief in the city knows about us. Gonzalez and Jones are the only two we know and trust with the PLE’s existence, and the civilians around here know even less. Parahumans dot info says there’s a parahuman community here, but we don’t have any information on it. We’re playing everything close to the chest until otherwise noted. Got it?”

Everyone nods, and Wire waves them out with a hand. “Tomorrow the Doctor arrives to evaluate Agent Mirror, and the day after that we’re going to have a full team meeting, her included. Stick to your cover stories, get settled into your new places, and find excuses to meet one another with your civilian faces on. Dismissed.”

[*]

“What do you think of the team so far?” Wire asks the next day, as the two of them move things into Wire’s office. The PLE bought them a two-story-plus-basement building and gave them the funds to equip it at their discretion, but they still had to either hire movers or put things in themselves.

Luke gives it a bit of thought, running his hands through his hair. He hadn’t had a chance to finish reading everything about everyone (Abyss in particular), but he’d gotten through at least the first page of all their files.

“I think they’ll get it together, but at first it’s going to be rough,” he says, wedging a file cabinet into place.

Wire nods. “I think integrating Mirror is going to be the hardest, but there’s already plans in motion for that. Straight from the Director.”

Luke pauses, turning to look at Wire. “What plans?”

Wire looks at Luke for a few moments, then shrugs. “Abyss is handling it.”

“Abyss?”

For all that she has one of the most flexible Agents Luke has yet seen, nothing he knows about her screams ‘I can handle team conflict’ to him.

“The only reason she’s effective is that she talks things that call themselves demons into making contracts with her, Smoke. I think she can handle one unfriendly college student.”

Luke wants to say that Mirror – Aiyana – isn’t unfriendly, she just distrusts them because they did some borderline shady things to grab her, but he keeps it to himself. Wire isn’t just his contact any more, he’s his commanding officer, and Luke knows he doesn’t yet know Aiyana like Luke does. He will, and then there won’t be any need for plans ‘straight from the Director’.

(He hopes.)

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Twelve

“Aiyana Clarke, Codename Mirror.”

The man sitting in the police meeting room chair stands, unfolding himself from his seat. He strides toward Aiyana, a smile in his eyes, and holds out one hand.

“Agent Smith, Director of Parahuman Law Enforcement.”

Aiyana sizes him up, not bothering to hide what she’s doing.

Agent Smith stands taller than just about anyone she’s met, though not as wide as his deep voice would suggest. He wears what she assumes is the standard PLE uniform, the same whites Smoke wore when they first met. She knows it shouldn’t, but it reassures her that the Director of the PLE is dark-skinned, and that the first Agent she met is Asian. Chicago is pretty good about racial equality, but she’s well-aware that not everywhere else is.

She takes his hand warily, not responding. He knows who she is.

“I’ve heard a bit about you,” Smith says after a few seconds, not seeming bothered by her silence. “Enough to offer you a place in the PLE.”

“What’s the alternative?” Aiyana asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Incarceration,” Smith says calmly, folding himself back into the seat and gesturing for her and Smoke to sit down across from him, “but I’m hopeful that you’ll choose the PLE.”

“I’m not sure why you think I’d want to work for you, after the way you’ve treated me.” Aiyana considers standing out of some petty defiance, but decides to sit. Standing through their entire conversation might make her feel better, like she’s got something up on him, but sitting is both more practical and less combative. They’ll get into the combative part later, she’s sure.

“It may feel excessive, but the procedure is necessary for dealing with parahumans we know very little of,” Smith’s voice is smooth as silk, reasonable, and Aiyana wonders if it’s part of his Name, or something he’s trained into himself. “I do regret the necessity.”

He doesn’t say he’s sorry, or that he’d do any of it different, Aiyana notes, just that he doesn’t like that they had to do what he says is necessary.

“I don’t see how voiding my Miranda rights is necessary,” Aiyana counters, raising an eyebrow. “Or refusing to tell any of my relatives where I am.”

“If you knew the kind of parahumans we have dealt with in the past, you would understand why we take the precautions we do,” Smith replies, unruffled. “If you accept our offer, you’ll see why what we do is so important.”

“What kind of parahuman could possibly warrant keeping me for a week without telling my brother I’m safe?” Aiyana asks, leaning forward over the table. She holds up a hand to stall any potential protests about confidentiality. “I’m going to either be working for you, or locked up where I can’t tell anyone. You can humor me by telling me why I was treated so badly.”

“About a year ago, we had a parahuman who had ‘programmed’ his girlfriend into taking measures if word ever reached her that he was being held by the police,” Smith tells her, “though I will admit it is unlikely you have that same power, ‘Mirror’ doesn’t give us a solid idea of what you’re capable of.”

A smirk curled Aiyana’s lips, one she would have recognized as Anna’s, had she seen it on her own face. “It doesn’t, does it?” She pauses, then says, “so, you want me to come help you kidnap innocent people off the street, hold them in a cell for a week, and then possibly incarcerate them?”

“What happened in your case was unusual,” Smith assures her, his dark eyes steady on hers. “We needed information on Predator and her employers. We still need it, but by now you’ve made it quite clear we won’t be getting it from you.”

“You keep telling me why you need me, or why you’ve done what you’ve done,” Aiyana leans back in her seat, folding her arms across her chest. “What you haven’t told me is why I should help you screw up more people’s lives.”

“We do what is necessary to protect the American people,” Smith says, spreading his hands, “but I understand your skepticism.” He pauses for a few seconds. “How about this: you join us on a trial basis for a year. We were already looking into expanding to Chicago, but this will give us a good excuse. You finish your degree, train with the Agents I’ll station here, go on a few low-danger runs with them.”

“And what if I still don’t agree with you at the end of the year?” Aiyana challenges him, chin up and eyes hard.

“Then we revisit the issue,” Smith says calmly. “You have nothing to lose, and an entire year to gain.”

There’s a few seconds of silence between them. Aiyana looks to Smoke, who hasn’t said a word. He returns her gaze levelly, something she can’t read in his eyes. She files it away for later (assuming there is a later for her in which he matters).

“On these low-danger runs,” Aiyana returns her gaze to Smith, searching his face, “would I be expected to participate? Are you going to ask me to help you destroy people’s rights, or just watch as you do it?”

Smith’s voice cools a few degrees. “You don’t have a choice, Miss Clarke. You’ll either help us uphold the law and protect the people, or know we’re doing it as you sit in jail.”

‘So the lion finally shows his teeth,’ Aiyana thinks to herself, turning the problem over in her mind.

“What makes you think I won’t run for it sometime during the year, or after that?”

The chill in his voice remains, and he smiles coldly. “If you did run, we would have to question those close to you to make sure they weren’t a part of your evasion of justice. Professors, relatives, friends. It could take quite a while to make sure your powers weren’t having any lingering effects on them. It would be a shame if your brother’s reputation in the local circus community suffered because he was unable to make good on his commitments for some months.”

“That’s extortion,” Aiyana balks, feeling anger rise in her.

“No, Miss Clarke, that’s an explanation of due process.” Smith leans back in his chair. “You’ll find that the Parahuman Law Enforcement Agency has quite an expansion of legal powers when it comes to parahumans, compared to the normal police.”

The silence weighs heavy between them, and for one wild moment Aiyana considers making a run for it. She can grab Franz on the way, and they can get their parents somehow– but she knows it for an impossible fantasy. Even if she could collect everyone she cares for and get them all to leave, they would have nowhere to go. In a world where anyone on the street could be capable of reading your mind and turning you in, they would never be safe.

“Fine,” Aiyana says finally, defeat registering in her mind, though she refuses to let it show in her face. “One year, and we have this talk again.”

“I thought you might feel that way.” The chill drops out of Smith’s voice, and he smiles as he did when she first entered. “Welcome to the PLE, Agent Mirror.”

Chapter Thirteen

Posting Delay

Due to holidays, birthday celebrations, Dungeons and Dragons, my new job, and several minor life things (in roughly that order, even), The Named will be resuming normal posts on 2 Jan. Sorry about that.

In an attempt to tide you over, here’s the origin of The Named.

Before I knew anything else about the characters, world, or plot, I knew Named would be a superhero story revolving around a late-teens early-twenties woman who could teleport through glass. I had this really badass-seeming mental image of her running up the side of an office building by flickering from one side of the windows to the other so fast she didn’t fall. She had pistols in both hands, and was shooting at some bad guy either flying by the side of the building, or standing on top or something.

I also knew she had an ex-girlfriend who had an uncanny amount of charisma, and that one of her teammates could turn into smoke. (I honestly didn’t think about the “smoke and mirrors” thing until I started publishing chapters online). They were close, the mirror-girl and the smoke-boy, and for some reason their teammates/superiors knew that mirror-girl’s ex-girlfriend’s shenanigans, and the smoke-boy consoled the mirror-girl when she got upset about their ribbing.

Despite it working particularly well for Worm, I didn’t want to have big superhero teams. I wanted a centralized authority, but smaller groups; the original ‘team’ for Named consisted of mirror-girl, smoke-boy, and someone who make giant domes. (If that person will still exist in Named is up for debate; I don’t even know what kind of Name would allow for such a thing.) I liked the idea of only a couple supers at a time working on something, and on big flashy battles being rare and lethal.

The big problem hit when I started getting into the twenties with my page count for Named. I started to lose steam, and feared losing all the mental work I’d done. I remembered a forum serial story I’d done that worked well (until it didn’t, for reasons that won’t impact Named like it did that serial), and decided to post the first chapter of Named before I lost interest entirely and it languished in my original work folder like so many others have.

I’ve since found that I work best in a forum-esque format. I do really very well when I have people to bounce ideas off of, and even better when complete strangers drop in with their completely uninfluenced views. It’s a weird way of working, I know, but that’s just how I do. Named took off, popular with my friends if not with the internet at large, and the rest is all thoroughly documented on this site.

Phew. That ended up being longer than I meant it to. As an aside, feel free to post any nagging concerns or world-related questions on this post. Named would have far more holes than it does if not for you guys poking at things, and I really appreciate the feedback I’ve gotten so far.