Chapter 20: 3-1 Charmed

Charmed 3.1

2000, July 2: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I'd hoped that making the Tear of the Goddess would have gotten me what I needed to ignite a third star in the World Rune, but it wasn't enough. Perhaps I needed to make a "finished product," though that notion was already flawed seeing how I'd had access to the Petricite Elixir for days now. Or perhaps, this was the World Rune's way of telling me that there was more to build with the corrupted Water of Life.

'Maybe it wasn't satisfied with just the Tear?' I wondered.

I woke up at six in the morning and meditated for an hour, not to replenish my crystal stockpile, though I should do that too, but to sink all my gathered mana into the Tear of the Goddess hanging from my neck. It had become my new routine in the past few days. The whole point of the Tear was to slowly increase my body's tolerance for channeling mana. Basically, I wanted to sculpt my body in the same way someone from Runeterra could.

I got up and went through my stretches, everything I could remember being practiced by Lee Sin's acolytes. I didn't know exactly what my fighting style would be when I fully matured, but I figured being flexible enough to make contortionists jealous would only help in the future.

The forms were difficult for this young body. I was left sweating buckets after a single cycle through the basic forms. There was a pressure inside of me, a feeling that I wasn't doing this quite right even though I was, as far as I could tell from the hazy memories.

"Not having a master is going to slow me down so much," I grumbled.

I emerged from my room and took a shower before greeting my mom with a hug. Back in my old life, my Korean parents weren't huggers. They showed love by kicking my ass, not letting me watch The Simpsons, demanding I get straight As. This time around, mom was definitely a hugger and the reason why depressed me a bit.

I saw her off to her ESL class. Then, nearing ten in the morning, I decided that I wasn't done with the Water of Life and went back to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

X

It was one in the afternoon when I made my way back home, a quart of holy water in my backpack. Mass was both similar and different to many of the sermons I'd attended as a Baptist in the past. I'd stuck around for a bit after the service; churches always left me feeling somewhat introspective, even if I didn't always agree with the message.

I took a sip of Oracle's the moment I got home and turned on my laptop. I found an email waiting for me addressed to all Wards.

Phoenix Wards,

Large-scale prison breaks have been reported all across the Phoenix Metropolitan Area and its surroundings at roughly 11:30am this morning. The coordination and methods used in these instances indicate a high likelihood of parahuman involvement.

You are hereby ordered to remain alert. There is no declared emergency at this time, but you may be required to act in a greater capacity for the good of the community according to the Critical Response Clause of the Wards Charter.

Regards,

Levi Silva

Deputy Director of the PRT

1 (602) 555-0112

prt_

I let out a frustrated sigh and ran my fingers through my hair. "Well… that's ominous. And yet they've told me virtually nothing. How typically of the PRT."

I opened up several local news sites and began to search for more information. As it turns out, there were quite a few prisons in the Phoenix area. Including all the city jails run by the municipal authorities and the private jails of… questionable… repute, there were well over a dozen. It didn't take me long to find out what was going on. Even in the early days of the internet, word travelled fast. To say the city was blowing up would only be a slight exaggeration, and I feared not for much longer.

According to one blogger who lived near Arizona State Prison, there was a large explosion near the gates. I managed to corroborate the information with four other entries. One of them even had a shaky video of the explosion.

It didn't take a genius to extrapolate: Somehow, they'd managed to coordinate a simultaneous attack on every local prison to devastating effect. Or, close enough that the detail was a matter of semantics. Question was, who were "they?"

"Shit," I summed up in a word.

I fixed myself a bowl of leftover miyeokguk, a type of Korean seaweed soup, and ate a light lunch before giving Agent Morrison a call. He picked up on the second ring.

"Rubedo?" he asked, his old country drawl sounding a bit worn out.

"Sir, are the Wards being called in?"

He sighed. "Told him this wasn't a good idea," I caught him muttering under his breath. "No, no you are not being called in."

"I heard about the bombs. Is it like that everywhere?"

"You're not going to let up, are you, kid?"

"Probably not."

"Fine. Yes. Over a dozen complexes were hit, causing massive breakouts. Someone's smuggled the inmates weapons and the mayor's asked for reinforcements from the state."

"How is this not our problem?"

"It's not our problem until there is a clear case of parahuman involvement," he said sternly. "Rubedo, son, I know you want to help. The best thing you can do now is to make more of them potions."

I sighed. "Yes, sir."

I gave the other Wards a call as well. Stingray and Ranchero were unusually high-strung, already tired from their patrols. Hat Trick was no better. Playing ride-along on an ambulance had to be no less exhausting than patrols expecting combat.

I let out yet another sigh and settled down to make as many Mana Crystals as possible.

X

My mom came home a few hours later and we talked about our day. I told her about my new favorite jazz band. It was heavy on the sax and drums, just perfect to vibe with while meditating. I started singing and listening to jazz as a hobby for two reasons: First, I wanted to relieve mom's worries that I was spending too much time on my cape life. Second, I wanted this hobby to be something a blind child could enjoy so I'd have something to talk about when talking to my peers or teachers at school.

I had no true talent for music, not like my mom, but I was a passable singer and I was slowly learning to match pitch mostly successfully. I had to admit, I was happy with myself. Musical talent was something I'd lacked in my past life as well, ever since I ran out crying from my piano hagwon when I was my current age. It felt almost like I was fulfilling a long lost ambition, however minor.

The doorbell rang at four in the afternoon.

I glanced outside using the Oracle's pericognition and smiled. Standing at our door was one Alice Nohara in jeans and a white t-shirt with Royalle and Oathkeeper's faces halved and spliced together. It looked cool, honestly. I would've appreciated it more if I didn't keep hearing so many negative stories about the monarch-themed hero. "Alice is here, mom."

"Right. You have all your hero things put away?"

"Of course."

"Your room clean?"

"Yes, mother," I drawled.

"Are you rolling your eyes at me?" she said in that tone all sons know. Sure, I was mentally in my thirties, but it never failed to send a chill down my back. Fear the slipper for it brings pain.

"No, mother," I replied dutifully. "This hyoja would never dream of such a disrespectful thing."

She flicked my ear. "That's what I thought. Now open the door and let her in, won't you?"

"Yes, mother."

I made a show of grumpily walking to the door. When I got there, I flung it open, arms spread wide for a hug. "What do, Scooby-Doo?"

"Hi, I'm here for… What?" My Oracle's Elixir had not worn off yet and confusion on her face was positively delicious. She was a cute kid, with the expected dark brown eyes of someone with Japanese ancestry, but her hair was a bit lighter than I thought it'd be.

'Does she have some Caucasian in her?' I wondered before mentally shaking my head. It didn't matter. I made a note to pretend to be fully blind in her presence.

I felt mom's knuckles on my head. "Alice, welcome, welcome," she said in a thick accent, all smiles. "Ignore my son. He blind and stupid."

"Right, hello, Mrs. Kim," she said, bowing towards my mom. She held out a small shopping bag labeled with the Izakaya Nohara logo, a cute snail with a green and blue striped shell. "Mom asked me to give you this. It's mochi."

"Oh, very nice. Thank you, thank you."

I shook my head in amusement. I didn't know what I was expecting, but her Asian mom hospitality instincts were kicking in hard.

"I'll leave you two to the violin lesson," I said as I excused myself. "Before I go, Alice, want something to drink? Water? Soda?"

"Mom says I can't have any soda," she said, nose scrunched.

"Have soda," mom said, grinning. "Shigure don't know, don't hurt."

"Lovely example you're setting, mom," I muttered under my breath. I grabbed a can of Coke for my new friend anyway.

"How did you know where the fridge is?" Alice asked curiously.

"I know my own house," I said simply. "Stub your toes on the same table enough times and you figure it out sooner or later."

I closed the door to my room and spent the next two hours in a mini meditation session trying to drown out the music lesson. Alice was… horrible. To be strictly fair, I was being rather harsh on a nine year old, but that didn't mean I didn't reach for my headphones.

X

2000, July 3: Phoenix, AZ, USA

I walked into the Wards common room on Monday and decked myself out in full Rubedo regalia. With all the Mana Crystals I'd been making over the weekend, I was able to easily knock out the increased weekly quota. Strictly speaking, I wasn't supposed to work on the weekends outside of sanctioned PR events, but I doubted they'd make a fuss of it given the circumstances.

I spent that morning machining out four additional Petricite handcuffs and mixed a single Petricite Elixir. The elixir was confirmed to work, first tested on Sawtooth, the SSM tinker captured by Cloudstreak and Bunyan. There was an ongoing study into the psychological impact of denying a tinker their fugue and the results ranged from "not pretty" to "possibly worse than solitary confinement." The sample Petricite they'd taken hadn't decreased his urges in any way, but the elixir did.

Keeping Sawtooth in a manageable, fugue-less state had become one of many things added to my to-do list. He got one a week. Once consumed, the elixir disseminated the microscopic granules of Petricite through his bloodstream, the process aided by the health potion used to craft the elixir. The Petricite could eventually be filtered out by the liver, but seven days was already an immense boon.

Around two in the afternoon, I piled everything I made, thirty-one health potions, eight Elixirs of Iron, four Petricite cuffs, and the single Petricite Elixir, onto a small cart and began pushing them out into the hallway. I made my way to the research department on the first floor and knocked.

"Dr. Sanchez?" I called. "I have the week's potions and a few other things."

The egghead-in-chief opened the door to his office with a welcoming grin. His wispy, brown beard had been combed into something vaguely resembling order, a tidy point rather than the smoke-like mess it usually was.

"Ah, excellent, Rubedo. You're right on time as always," he said. He was the one who handled the distribution of my potions, and was also the one who helped me test them when I first began making them. "Go ahead and put them over by the corner. How've you been, young man?"

"I've been well, doctor. It's getting a little crazy out there, huh?"

"Yes, yes it is, and I'm afraid it'll get much worse before it gets better," he said gravely. That's what I liked about the good doctor. He didn't mince words. Maybe it was the mask that allowed people to disassociate the eight year old from the hero, but regardless of the reason, I found that he was one of the adults most willing to fill me in.

"How so? The prisons are empty so the worst has already happened, right?"

"Yes, that's one way of looking at it. But now, the gangs have their unpowered members back. Thankfully, we've managed to hold on to Sawtooth."

"Well… fuck," I swore under my breath. Not loud enough if the warning look he gave me was any indication.

"Now, was that all? I'm afraid I'm a bit rushed today."

"Yes, doctor. You have a good one."

I bid him goodbye with a polite bow and headed towards the canteen for a late lunch.

The Phoenix PRT canteen was a mysterious beast. On one hand, it reminded me of my old life's high school cafeteria, with a buffet style row of counters on one end that served sandwiches made to order and a juice bar with added coffee machines. Hell, there were even some obvious cliques that translated over: The researchers sat in one group, the field agents in another. Strip away the quasi-military paintjob and you'd have the nerds and jocks.

On the other hand, there was a sense of solemnity in the atmosphere, a pressure that definitely wasn't there in high school. It was the air of people who knew shit had hit the fan.

I grabbed myself a premade roast beef sandwich and sat across from a fourteen year old boy named Poundtown. He was a part of Wards Team Three led by Wildshot. The older boy was massive, standing at an impressive six-two. He towered over me even while seated. He was dressed in a gray muscle-shirt, with a metal and ceramic breastplate. He wore no pauldrons, showing off some massive muscles. On his head was a stereotypically fictional Viking helmet, unwieldy horns and all. Two gauntlets with exaggerated spikes on the knuckles, rubber, not metal, were laid out next to his lunch tray.

"Hey, Poundtown, how's it going?" I greeted. It wasn't too often that I saw anyone from the other Wards teams, but I saw no reason to be distant.

He shot me a surprisingly gentle smile that was at odds with his aggressive costume. "Not too bad, all things considered. You, Rubedo?"

"Just got through delivering a batch of potions. What's new on the grapevine?"

That was another good reason to talk to the others. They generally kept abreast of the PRT rumor mill better than I did, purely by stint of not being cooped up in a lab most of the time. Poundtown was an especially good one to know for the purpose. He had an unexpectedly mild-mannered, talkative personality and often volunteered for PR tours of elementary schools, daring kids to work together to "wrestle" him. How he ended up with such a ridiculous name escaped me.

He tore open a bag of chips, sour cream and onion, and took a handful. "Yeah, funny you should mention it, but I heard from some of the PRT troopers that Royalle's in hot water."

"Oh?"

"You know about Loud Crowd?"

I nodded tentatively. It was a bar and grill with only one claim to fame: It was a well-known gang hotspot ever since the Crips took over the place. It, and its general neighborhood, was one of the places I was briefed on to avoid even in my civilian identity, as though I could go anywhere as Andy Kim.

"Crips bar?"

"Yeah. Royalle, Nine Lives, and Hotflash apparently hit the joint after getting a warrant through. The place is torched."

"Anyone hurt?" I asked. This rang some bells for me; Royalle was a dick. Impulsive, too, but he wasn't stupid. You didn't become a Protectorate team leader without more than two brain cells to rub together.

He shook his head. "None of ours. The bar's ashes now though because La Torcha herself showed up to defend it. I heard those three got reamed by the directors."

"I'd hope so."

"Why? What do you have against Royalle?"

"Nothing personal," I snorted. I chewed as I thought about the situation. The more I thought, the weirder it sounded. "He's strong, but I don't think he was thinking that through. Think about it. How many gang hangouts and safe houses do we know about?"

"Probably more than they're telling us Wards, but less than we'd like."

"Right. If so many unpowered mooks broke out of prison yesterday, the cops would naturally try to follow up on where they went, right?"

"Mhmm," he hummed assent as he took another bite of his sandwich, a turkey, bacon club.

"Well, one of the few places we knew about just burned to the ground because Royalle got impatient. Now, it just got a lot harder. Plain clothes officers could have been sent to try and get an idea of gang movements and stuff like that."

"Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Explains why the directors weren't happy. Bet the cops weren't either."

I nodded. "Yeah. I guess he got twitchy from sitting around while Oathkeeper took point on the gang war thing." I doubted that was all, but I could hardly say so.

Poundtown took a sip of his sweet tea. Really, it was more sugar with a side of tea. "It's not all bad, Rubedo. I hear they caught Beartrap out of it so the Crips are down a cape."

"At least there's that," I agreed.

We shot the breeze for a bit longer before I told him I had to go do more work in my lab. Still, I couldn't suppress the feeling that things were about to get worse. Too much was happening. I'd managed to stay on the sidelines so far, for both good and ill, but I worried that I wouldn't get that luxury for much longer.