Orb Weaver: Consequences, 7

I would like to say the week went fast. It didn’t. It went slowly. Agonizingly slowly. I got stronger, but not fast enough for all that the staff seemed more than satisfied. Three days after I’d awakened, I was officially informed that I could bathe and use the toilet without someone standing by.

Small victories.

But in between that, I met with some of the people from the PRT to talk about issues going forward. For one thing, mail filters. “You’re gonna need it,” the PRT Image guy said. Mark was older than most, black hair turning gray, and in fact…

Are they pairing me with older individuals? A sign of respect, or a way to intimidate me?

“I’m not certain—“

“You played a role in taking down Kaiser,” he cut me off. “You are on camera shooting an Endbringer in the face.”

“Along with Kanshi.”

“Yeah, well, Kanshi can sic Lung and Oni Lee on jerks.” He said. “Filtering doesn’t make judgment calls save for criminal or hugely gross letters, and I hate to say it, as a female parahuman, there is a lot of sexualization going on.”

“Sexualization. Me.” I stared at him, then glanced at the mirror. I almost reminded him that I had needed to include padding to remind people I was female… as Armsmaster had called out. I didn’t frown at that memory.

I was frowning at something else.

“Uh-huh. Good thing I got permission from your dad for this. Here you go.” He handed me a letter and…

I wish to use my tongue to li—

“Okay!” I said, quickly handing it back to him, and I don’t think even using my bugs could have kept me from turning red. My ability to multi-task had let me read far too much of that letter. I could see Vicky, or Battery, or Tattletale getting letters like that, but me?

“Yeah, we stop those, and, as something we don’t advertise, we also coordinate with the FBI to keep track of anyone who might go beyond writing letters. Ninety-nine percent of ‘em are just people working out their fantasies or playing a joke in poor taste, but… Well, let’s put it this way, New Wave also works with us on this, and we intercepted one guy with a bunch of… really explicit art of Glory Girl and a bottle of chloroform waiting for her outside of Arcadia.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I doubt chloroform would have worked fast enough to keep her from… dealing with him.” You would need something that didn’t give warning, that gave no… I closed my eyes, remembering Lebensraum. Then I opened them and nodded. “I see. And my father would benefit from this service as well.”

“Yes.” He paused. “Then there are the letters asking you to endorse a product, we can’t give you full help there, but I’d secure a lawyer if you do intend to do that—some capes have found themselves legally liable when they endorsed a product that went badly. And also you’re gonna get letters asking for political endorsements.”

I decided not to try to conceal it. I groaned. “I… Didn’t expect this.”

He didn’t laugh. “That makes you more, not less attractive. People are aware that some capes try to toot their horns a lot—but most of them want to live to get the rewards, and shooting Leviathan in the face and walking into a room with a pissed-off Kaiser doesn’t really scream: I have a strong self-preservation instinct. So people know you’re honest.”

“Wonderful.” I paused. “You know, I wanted to be a… low profile cape.”

“I could be snarky, but good news. Unless you keep doing big-time stuff, it won’t take long. There are always other heroes, or a 14-year-old starlet gets knocked up by her stage manager, etc, etc. The news has a crappy memory.”

That was true.

And I could stay under the radar.

I could do that.

****

Later I had just finished my exercise and was sitting in a chair. I was finally out of that damned bed, and I had never imagined that being able to just sit when I wanted would be such a wonderful feeling.

Almost as wonderful as remembering Kaiser, on his hands and knees, before a Number, with his own words and actions tearing the last of the Empire down.

“Oh Hail to the Conquering HEERROOESSS!” the voice was familiar, especially since it was a quartet. Moments later, Aisha, three of her Numbers, Brian and Chris came walking in.

“So, I brought donuts!” Aisha said. “Proven to cure every disease in the world.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I’m sure there’s a cape out there who came up with it,” Aisha said. “Donut-Man? Donut-Boy?” She smirked. “Anyway, while you’re here, we saved the day from the next Incarnation of the Marquis! A battle for the ages.”

“We ran into some new parahumans with chips on their shoulder and kicked their asses,” Brian said. “I think Director Piggot almost smiled in the debrief.”

“I heard about that, what’s happening to them?”

“Oh, you’re gonna love this,” Aisha said, grabbing a donut and handing it to me before she grabbed another one. “Turns out Bowling-Ball Lad had a dream of having a sexy harem team of girl villains that you would worship his manly… B-“

“Aisha,” Brian said.

“-bowling balls,” she continued. “Man, I should have gotten Clockblocker to show up.”

“Please no,” Chris said.

“You have no sense of humor,” Aisha snarked. “But then in the interrogation that got out and his sidekicks almost committed murder with a parahuman power before we got them separated.”

“So he was the driver of the crime spree?”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “He’s going to Alexandria’s bootcamp, and the others are getting moved up to New York with Legend.”

“It does sound like I missed some excitement.”

“Yep. Now eat your donut. It’s good for you.” Aisha said. “We’re doing pretty good, but I can’t come up with a good nickname for Atlas. Tried Mads, but she didn't—What?”

She must have noticed my expression. “That was a nickname that both Emma and Sophia used with her.”

“Okay, Mads’ is off the list.” She shrugged. “She’s made Armsmaster happy…”

“He’s trying to come up with a device to measure her strength limits,” Chris supplied.

Aisha had been looking at me when she’d used Madison’s name. Checking to see if I wanted to talk about her, at all, I expected. Perceptive. Almost what you would want in a… I snorted.

“What?”

“Aisha, you have a habit of running off and doing your own thing. I just had an image of you as a Protectorate team leader like Armsmaster.”

“Do you know how much paperwork he does?” Aisha turned to Brian. “Bro, tell her! Tell her how horrible it would be!”

Suddenly, Brian and Chris were both grinning.

“I don’t know… keeping track of you would be easier… Like you said, you’d be trapped…” Brian said.

“Hey, maybe we could suggest it to Pi—Director Piggot,” Chris said, changing what he was going to say at a look from Brian. “A new educational Ward’s position, paperwork lass!”

Aisha stared at them both. “You get no donuts. They’re for the injured, and me.” Then she looked at me. “And only because you’re in a hospital. Otherwise, they’d just be for me.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed at her expression.

But then, Aisha looked more serious. “And we’re sort of here… to apologize.”

“For what?”

“Me yelling at you,” she said. “I sort of got yelled at for that by Velocity.”

“Someone heard you?” I guessed.

“Yeah. They didn’t have anything in the room, but they had sensors outside. I got sort of loud. Velocity told me that he was handling it on the… ‘QT so Piggot didn’t have to officially notice.’”

“And since I was the one who helped her…” Chris shrugged. “Apology.”

“For what?” I finally asked.

“Well, you know some of the adults here are actually smart, which sucks ‘cause they make sense. He just wanted to know if I was yelling because I was honestly pissed off… or just ‘cause I was super fucking scared and freaked that you almost checked out.” She paused. “Still think you should have called some other people, but yeah, I shouldn’t have come in all “rwar!” like that.”

I blinked, a little rapidly.

Shit. How long has it been since someone apologized to me like that? Not because a teacher made them pretend, but because they really thought they’d done wrong…

“Thank you,” I said. “And you were right. I could have done things differently, but after seeing Ms. Cho… I was angry. Orb Weaver wasn’t pushing me; I was pushing him.”

“Yeah, Armsmaster is kicking himself about that,” Brian said. “He blames himself for some of this.”

I shook my head. “I made my own choices…. But, Aisha if you want to do something for me…”

She protectively covered the remaining donuts. “Not my last donut!”

“No,” I said. “But… I was already fading out at the window. But I looked down and and saw Kaiser on his hands and knees… What was it like arresting him?”

She paused, and for a moment I worried. But then Aisha nodded.

“You know I can feel my Numbers, right?”

“Yes?”

“When he was down there, it was like I was… also feeling everyone else. Everyone the E88 had fucked up. Everyone they’d killed. For a minute it felt like they were all there, watching me as I took that fucking SOB and jabbed him with the night-night juice.” She looked at me, and then suddenly smiled, teeth bright against her face. “What was it like? The best fucking day of my life.”

And then I was smiling as well.