19

Discretion 2.6

Once Taylor agreed to join us, I sent Agate to spy on Calvert at the PRT building. He was still locked in an interrogation room. Since he wasn't doing anything, just sitting there with people watching him from the other side of a one-way glass pane, Agate went around to Piggot's office.

Unfortunately there was no meeting going on, so I couldn't get any information that way either. Piggot was simply sitting there, silently fuming. Presumably she would get back into action if Agate waited, and people would come looking for her for various issues, so I let Agate go back and forth between Calvert, Piggot, and other random meetings rooms looking for interesting things going on.

The portal experimentation had to be put on hold. So far the minimum portal time was 21 minutes before dissolution. It seemed that progress was getting harder as the time got shorter. At some point we would need to experiment on the other end, extending the time of the portal as well.

Meanwhile, I was editing our debut video with Amelia and Taylor looking over my shoulder, contributing their ideas.

Video editing is hard work. In most video productions the editing process is several times the length of the video captured or more than ten times the length of the produced video. It was necessary to find the best parts, cut out what was irrelevant, add various effects and subtitles, apply appropriate music, beautify ourselves to look good, etc. Fortunately we were in costume so it the beautifying part wasn't significant.

Since I didn't want to spend all night video editing, our debut video had to be very short. We could consider getting a professional to touch it up later and make long episode-form videos, but it was important to get our first video out as soon as possible, so we had to settle for my inadequate video editing skills and less than five minutes of total footage.

As such, we only worked on it until dinner time. The video started with a very brief introduction of our team, our cape names, a few nice shots of each of us in action, and no explanation of our powers.

Then it showed select very short scenes from our Lung battle, skipping around with a lot of narration on a black background and lots of gunfire and screaming in between to give the sense that the battle against Lung was much longer and more epic than it actually was, with parts undisclosed being too "gruesome" to show, until Lung was shown broken and defeated, and us standing over him. Naturally I included the footage from the camera on Araliac that showed myself being on fire, to emphasize the danger of the battle and our dedication to the cause. With Oni Lee, on the other hand, to avoid showing how I took Lung hostage, all we showed was Oni Lee screaming amidst a cloud of bugs and getting sprayed down, also avoiding the part where Velocity was also taken down.

Then it showed one shot of us talking to Miss Militia while narrating that we cooperated with the PRT to secure the criminals we defeated, giving the PRT/Protectorate no credit for the actual fighting. OF course, the conversation itself was cut out of the video because Miss Militia had told us not to record it.

That didn't however, stop me from including the scene in the PRT hallway where we met New Wave and I made my speech about our purpose in Brockton Bay. That wasn't part of a PRT investigation, just a friendly greeting between heroes, so it clearly didn't fall within Miss Militia's instructions.

When we were done, it was uploaded to our website and PHO.

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Topic: Team CRUCIBLE Debuts! Fight vs. Lung and Oni Lee (Video)

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Polychromic (Original Poster) (Unverified Cape)

Posted On Apr 11th 2011:

Hello! I am Polychromic of CRUCIBLE, a new independent hero team in Brockton Bay.

During the early hours of April 11, the three founding members of CRUCIBLE, including myself, Araliac, and Skitter, engaged the ABB cape villains Lung and Oni Lee, and successfully defeated them, bringing them to PRT custody.

We never expected to fight such powerful villains for our first patrol, but when we overheard Lung talk about shooting kids, we knew we had to do our duty. Fortunately, we were well prepared and won with no significant injuries on our side.

Check out our debut video, including footage from the fight, here.

We are very happy with the results of our first patrol, and will continue to aggressively pursue our mission to protect the innocent, uphold justice, and fight evil in all its forms.

For too long villains have had free rein over this city and innocent people have suffered under their shadow. Justice has been fallen to the wayside as fear, oppression, and corruption have taken its place. Evil has grown rampant, even commonplace across the land. We will not and cannot tolerate this any longer!

We, CRUCIBLE, will change everything! We will not only defend this city from evil, we will take the fight to those who believe themselves secure in their territory, and vanquish any who dare to prey on the helpless!

People of Brockton Bay, we have heard your cries for help, and we are answering the call! We fight on behalf of all those who have not the power to do so themselves! We fight because we are also residents of this city and we are ready to protect our home! We fight for everything that is good and just, for a better future!

Today, we have taken the first step towards ridding Brockton Bay of criminal elements. But our work alone is not enough. Just as the Protectorate and PRT has struggled all these years against being outnumbered and outgunned, we face a tremendous struggle ahead, a crucible before a new and better order can arise.

And we need YOUR help.

If you have what it takes to be a hero, we welcome you to apply to join our team.

If you are not a cape, we welcome you to send us relevant information on people that need to be saved and criminals that need to be stopped.

If you are on the wrong side, surrender now to the hand of justice, and you may yet atone for your sins.

We are CRUCIBLE.

Memento Mori

Polychromic

Stay up to date with us at [CRUCIBLE].me

Then we ordered takeout for dinner.

"Taylor, are you planning to tell your dad about our hero work?" I asked.

She looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I—I'm not sure. I haven't told him about my powers yet."

"Don't worry, the decision is yours, we don't mind either way. If you do tell him, with our video and takedown of Lung and Oni Lee, I'm sure he'd be proud. If you don't, you can introduce us as your new friends instead."

She nodded gratefully.

In the end, she chose not to tell him. Not yet, anyways. She wanted more time before telling him the truth. I thought she might have decided to tell him right away considering that this time, she was part of a hero time, and she already had big accomplishments with us that Danny wouldn't necessarily still pressure her into the Wards. But I couldn't predict everything.

I didn't have a clear plan for dealing with Danny yet, so her decision didn't matter much either way. It just meant that Danny might have a more negative opinion of us for helping Taylor hide it.

O O O

Taylor went home after dinner so it was just me and Amelia again. Regarding Canary, I told her that we would do some more research on it first, try to find out where Canary was being held and the timeline for the trial to finish.

As I sat down for quiet contemplation, Amelia sat down next to me.

"Hey. Are you really serious about rescuing Canary?"

"Hm? Is there anything that makes you think I'm not?"

"It's not that. But rescuing Canary from PRT and Dragon's custody will be really hard, right? I know we defeated Lung and all, but a big part of that was because you knew how the battle was going to play out beforehand, and me and Skitter just happened to have good counters to him. We can't do anything against Dragon's suits," she said furrowed brows.

I sighed. "Well, you're not exactly wrong. The protocols being enforced to keep Canary in custody are very difficult to get through. Outside of her trial time, she's under watch by remote controlled equipment, away from human personal at all times, with heavy restraints. This means our primary obstacle would be Dragon herself, which as you said your and Skitter's powers aren't suitable for fighting against. At least, not at your current level of development."

"Then…?"

"I have a few different ideas in mind. If we hadn't interfered in the Lung fight, the most likely outcome would have been Lung getting captured, then Bakuda breaking Lung free with Oni Lee's help, then after a while, Lung and Bakuda would both be captured again and sent to the Birdcage, scheduled together with Canary. But because we did interfere and Oni Lee has also been captured, the chance of Bakuda successfully breaking Lung free is much lower. Without that delay, the transport time for Canary, Lung, and Oni Lee might be much sooner."

"That makes it even harder for us, doesn't it?"

"Well yes, but because Bakuda is still free…"

"Are you kidding? Are you suggesting that we work with Bakuda?" Amelia turned to me incredulously with wide eyes.

"Calm down, it's just an idea, to show that it isn't impossible to break her out," I held up a hand.

As I spoke, I continued to think on my strategy. Rescuing Canary was more than just a heroic duty for our team. She would be extremely useful for my plans. If I hadn't managed to recruit Amelia so quickly and establish a hero team with Taylor, Canary would have become my queen piece. As it is, now that I did establish a hero team, it would be somewhat more difficult to use Canary to her full potential. Rescuing her wasn't the hard part. The hard part would be to rescue her in a way that maximizes her value to me.

"Hey, you can't just say that then go quiet. Didn't you say you had a few ideas? What are the others?"

"Well we could hire Uber and Leet."

That was a cape villain duo in town that nobody took seriously, gamers who used their powers to act out video game scenes and causing disturbances. My opinion of them was no better, until they could prove otherwise.

"…" Her blank face told me what she thought of that idea. It was only slightly less crazy than working with Bakuda.

"Okay, just kidding. There's something I'm working on that could work. But I don't know yet. There's no need to be stressed over it though. We have enough to worry about for ourselves before worrying about others. The threat of Bakuda retaliating against us, more Coil plots, the PRT and New Wave looking for you, making money…"

"That last one doesn't seem to fit in…"

"It's quite serious. We need more money to buy supplies, equipment, or hire help. Uber and Leet might only be a few thousand but it's still a few thousand that we don't have," I said with an overly seriously face. Even with the spoils from the ABB fight, money was tight with the need the replace our damaged costumes and supplies.

Amelia groaned. "I get it, I get it. We need money to hire Uber and Leet…"

O O O

A/N: Thanks for name suggestions to everyone who offered an idea. The final name chosen came from a reader on SB, because "we're like Cauldron, but better."

Inverness - Kaleidus doesn't care if it's fanon or straight up wrong, just that Taylor and Amy believe him and Cauldron looks bad as a result.

AnimeA55Kicker - I've never actually heard of having the name taboo. But I know that Scion doesn't actively use his version of PtV because it costs a lot of energy compared to other powers.