Interlude 2# Johansen

She had to admit, the Nightcastle case was a very interesting challenge, even for someone as experienced as her. There were quite a few parahumans who lost their parents and needed foster families, there were also a number of cases where court judges had been paid of to give custody to the wrong people, through it hardly ever happened to involve gangs from other cities, the Empire 88 was special that way. In cases where orphaned children lost their parents in violent ways, there were a standard recommendation of psychological assistance, same for newly triggered capes and survivors of abuse and rape. Combine that with the horrifying guilt of having almost killed your brother, twice, there was a wonder little Leandra hadn't gone completely apathetic. She had seen it before, many times, first they went unresponsive, then lethargic and in the end they would try to kill themselves or those that hurt them. Combine this with the power to level buildings and the difference between victim and perpetrator became a matter of opinion. In hers, they were victims who needed help, but the public and law enforcement often saw them as the worse thread and decided to excise the symptom instead of dealing with the cause. After all, the symptom was highly visible and easiest to deal with. Children like her didn't have backers, they weren't established and important members of the community.

She had some of those "respected" members of the community vying for custody of the siblings right now, as if the Youth Guard didn't know they were gang affiliated. No one in the PRT had jet to understand that the Youth Guard knew more about the underbelly of any city, the major players in any crime syndicate, than the publicly known law enforcement. After all, they were the ones who talked with the kids who had been saved from their gang member relatives, they talked to the underaged girls forced to work in the illegal brothels and they were the ones to pick up the pieces of the picture after the full force of the law had done their duty. Some police officers had caught on, and there had been a measure of success cooperating with them to get the perpetrators away from the children. She remembered those times, even if no one else did anymore.

The increased appearance of parahumans had destroyed most of those initiatives, just like they had impeded or downright ended most of the Youth Guard programs. The chances of an orphan who was cared for by the Youth Guard triggering were many times higher than your average child, which lead to less honest foster families, but tons more of opportunistic ones. The number of foster parents outright selling capes in their care to gangs or even the PRT was to damn high. At the same time, the Youth Guard had to waste massive amounts of time and resources every year on those parahumans that had gained stable and legal employment. Every Ward had to be supervised and cared for, because the PRT and Protectorate just didn't care enough. Wards might not often be used as child soldiers, like she suspected to be the case in this city, but the excessive amounts of attention, combined with public and internal pressure to take on responsibility they often weren't ready for, in addition to the excessive rules and regulations to control their powers, lead to an disproportionate number of mentally and emotionally damaged children. This was after their trigger and in most cases, a fight for their lives against recruiting gang members.

Was it any wonder that the Youth Guard was stretcher so thin, that it was practically non-existent in more rural areas. Not that she could blame this case on the lack of funding, there had been a Youth Guard representative on file for both of her charges in this case, a representative who had apparently signed of on anything without ever visiting or checking in on the children. It could have been wealth bias, a belief that those with money would care or at least ensure proper care for their children, but the second round of signatures for the new guardians not even two weeks ago, spoke of something more malicious than ignorance. She had already ordered a review of all cases signed by the same representative, which also included a survey of his finances, just in case he had been stupid enough to leave a trail. She didn't think so, he had been operating to long under the radar if what she thought was true, to be caught that easily. But they would find out, they always did, after all they had the second largest number of parahuman contacts on file. And quite a few capes had entered the Youth Guard after they reached adulthood.

Now she just had to decide what to press the PRT for, she was certain to get a few concessions, but the fact, that she had only been able to take the case of Leandra Nightcastle directly, while the other had gone to a colleague of hers, based in Brockton Bay, meant that the higherups of the Youth Guard, the major's office and the PRT were already vying for influence. All together it painted a very ugly picture, one even more misaligned than her usual cases and she was the premier expert for difficult cases. This one took the cake in quite a number of ways, almost none of them positive. The only good news was that the brother had been healed, which besides not giving him further pain would also reduce the amount of guilt the sister would be feeling. It rarely happened that something so horrifying had such a positive and workable outcome. If it just hadn't come at the price of attacking the only other hero team in the city and making enemies of the strongest healer in the states. Even those aligned with the forces of good would now be under suspicion of seeking revenge for their life saver.

Finding anyone in this city not entangled with any of the established forces would only lead to them becoming a target. New Wave would have been the only viable option for Benjamin, without giving to much power to the PRT while ensuring his protection. The current solution was meant to be temporary, but she honestly couldn't think of anything better. At least she would have direct access to both of them soon. Even without the gangs this case would have been difficult to solve, now she had to triple check each and every one for possible conflicts of interest. Starting with her own colleague Miranda Norberg.

She hadn't expected the first person to check would already be a problem and even worse, she couldn't do anything about it, Miranda was the best person in Brockton Bay for this case. Her only option. She would have to work around her, but it looked like the temporary solution had just become even more permanent. Maybe emancipating Leandra would give her more leeway. She would have to go over every interaction with Miranda and change her plans on the fly if what she suspected proofed to be true.