Chapter 12

A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter Twelve

by Skysaber

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Story Day Eleven, April 16th 2011, Saturday - Mid Day

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Armsmaster arrived somewhat late for the emergency joint meeting called by Director Piggot, and with a somewhat sour expression on his face, announcing even before the meeting began, "We have found more references online to The Amazing Doctor Whodunit."

"Excellent," Piggot broke proper meeting protocol to order. "Let's have them."

"You are not going to like them," Armsmaster warned. "I don't even like them. Some of the implications are terrifying."

Piggot glared at him. "Give. Me. The. References."

Her open hostility escaped him. "Affirmative. Three more posts by The Amazing Doctor Whodunit have appeared online, listing out plots numbered three through five..."

"Why do you keep calling him that?" Piggot interrupted poisonously. "I know you know perfectly well that his official name in all PRT records and correspondence is The Amazing Doctor Whodunit!"

Piggot stopped, suddenly looking far more sour than usual, as if wanting to stare at her own mouth in betrayal.

"It is not by choice or preference that I refer to The Amazing Doctor Whodunit as The Amazing Doctor Whodunit, I assure you." Armsmaster sounded bitter himself - something that if Assault had been present, would surely have been commented on, it was so rare for the Tinker to show even that much human emotion. "But I see you have noted the effect."

Armsmaster visibly radiated anger. "In The Amazing Doctor Whodunit's Thread of Extreme Awesomeness! Plot #3, posted online..."

"Just bring it up on the screen," she growled nastily.

He did, and they all read, "Bwa-Ha-Ha! Director Poo-get of the PRT thinks she gets to call me nasty names, does she? Well! Let's see her try it after I activate my Epiglottal Morphic Transducer! Soon all officials of the American government will only refer to The Amazing Doctor Whodunit by his full name and appropriate title!"

"Can he really do that?" Battery asked, disbelieving.

"The essence of science is the Scientific Method, and the core of the Scientific Method is the repeatable experiment," Armsmaster said sourly. "So I invite you, in the interests of science, to try the experiment and see if you can refer to The Amazing Doctor Whodunit by any other name or title."

"What?" Battery returned, "You mean, just call him... The Amazing Doctor Whodunit?"

She paused in horror. "That isn't what I meant to say!"

"Indeed." The scorn in Armsmaster's voice invited her to reach the obvious conclusion.

"I think I may be sick to my stomach," Velocity grumbled, before speaking up, "You mean this... Amazing Doctor Whodunit ... has some kind of Tinkertech that can just reach out and MASTER the entire American government?! What's to stop him from doing *anything else* to us?!"

"Nothing." Armsmaster bit off sourly. "As of this moment, The Amazing Doctor Whodunit has been upgraded to an S-class threat. And before you ask, No. There is no other reference anywhere, online or off, that we can find to an Epiglottal Morphic Transducer. We checked. We checked thoroughly, and Dragon is busy double-checking now."

Piggot's scowl made it seem she ate angry cats for breakfast, and sour lemons for every other meal. "Well? Let's get this insanity over with. What were his other two posts?"

"In his second post today," the Protectorate lead began, "Apparently the De-Crapulator you caused us to invent caught his notice and..." he made a sour expression, "evoked his sense of whimsy."

"Oh, no. What has he done?" Triumph groaned aloud.

"Well, on the plus side, he has not impaired its function," the Tinker continued. "Merely made what he considers an improvement. Purely cosmetic changes. As a minor side note, I do not believe you will like the cosmetic changes." He said this last as an aside to Piggot.

"Let's just read it," she commanded, looking like a volcano about to erupt.

Armsmaster hit a button on a remote (really missing his halberd, which had once served this function) and the display on the screen had changed to a related, but different posting. "The Amazing Doctor Whodunit's Thread of Extreme Awesomeness! Plot #4! HAHAHAHA! Director Poo-get's minions have attempted to mitigate her punishment. Their attempts amused me and reminded me of something. So I thought it should remind you of something, and thus I have activated my Hologrammatic Co-rectification device! Along with my Quantum Psychic Truth Revelatron!"

Piggot's eyes crossed as she tried to untangle the meaning of the no-doubt infernal device's name. Giving it up after a moment with no progress, she instead demanded, "What does that mean?"

Splut.

BANG!

"Trick or Treat!"

"Thank You!"

Piggot scowled. It was difficult to tell anymore, because after a very rapid sequence of events, which involved a very splattery poo appearing in mid-air before her, followed almost instantly by the triggering of her De-Crapulator device, which had extended the catch bag as usual, only for it somehow to have morphed into a very realistic plastic Halloween pumpkin. No sooner had the catch pumpkin extended, than a small chorus of children's voices had called out "Trick or Treat!" followed immediately after the poo splattering into the catch device with another chorus saying "Thank You!"

All of that Piggot's rather dim and limited mind understood. She got that much. The part which she did NOT understand was why her grunting sounded so deep, or why, looking down, she was wearing fur and leather, and her arms were green.

The rest of those in her emergency meeting sat frozen, staring at Piggot, who now appeared to be wearing a perfect reproduction of a costume used in the last Star Wars movie, The Return of the Jedi. Specifically, a Gammorean, one of the pig-like green skinned guards of Jabba's palace, complete in every detail right down to a foam rubber battleaxe leaning up against her chair.

After Piggot was sedated and moved off to the Medical department, the collected heroes and bureaucrats gave up on cleaning all of the flung poo off of the walls as a bad job, leaving that for the maintenance department, and relocated to another briefing room.

They left the impact-shattered bits of her foam battle axe where they were lying on the floor, and across the table. Armsmaster had already, and very efficiently, combed the remaining bits of foam rubber out of his beard. He was lucky to have been wearing a helmet. Others would just have to deal with the bruises.

As one of the PRT bureaucrats was taking his seat in the new room, he was shaken enough, and feeling enough relief in Piggot's absence, that he forgot the cardinal rule of surviving these meetings: Never Say Anything! and let loose the errant thought, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was the only time I've ever heard a 'thank you' from Piggot - even if indirectly."

The nearest two other bureaucrats rose immediately with fiery indignation, and began to beat on him with their three-ring binders of meeting notes. "That's because she is always right!" screamed one.

"You just don't understand her!" howled the other.

After knocking the offender unconscious, they then proceeded to drag him from the room, already scheduling him for more of the mandatory Employee Sensitivity Training.

Deputy Director Renick took over the resumed meeting smoothly. Trying to start out on a lighter note, he exclaimed in the PR-approved way, "Well, that was smurfy."

The Deputy Director froze.

"I see you have discovered what the third one is, already," Armsmaster said dryly, bringing a new thread up on screen. It said, "The Amazing Doctor Whodunit's Thread of Extreme Awesomeness! Plot #5! MWAHAHA! Since Emily Poo-get was setting a bad example by swearing on national television, and I note I still have lots of extra capacity on my Epiglottal Morphic Transducer, I have decided to act to correct the damage her bad example has caused, and highlight how often people use foul language by replacing all of it with the word: Smurf!"

"Wow. That's smurfed up," Assault claimed, having somehow been recalled from his house arrest to attend this renewed meeting.

"No, smurfing way!" Clockblocker breathed.

"What are these two doing here?" Deputy Renick demanded. "Get them back to their confinement!"

As they got removed, Deputy Renick assumed a pose that had been rigorously drilled into him by the PR department, but that he had mastered badly. It was meant to make one looked serious and caring, and all it achieved on him was to make him look constipated. "This Epiglottal Morphic Transducer is terrifying!" he repeated the obvious. "How soon can you have it captured, reverse engineered, and placed under our exclusive control?"

He made the standard demand, and got the standard answer.

"We know very little about that device at present," Armsmaster gave off the traditional response. "But whatever it is, its range appears to be global. The US State Department is busy confirming this information now, but so far there has been no employee of the US Government, at any level, whether in direct government employ or in branches like the military, local or at our embassies overseas, who has been able, upon being tested, to refer to The Amazing Doctor Whodunit as anything other than The Amazing Doctor Whodunit."

"What kind of societal impact are we looking at?" the Deputy Director demanded.

"Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, along with countless other major comedians, have discovered they are unable to do their jobs anymore. They smurf it all up, whenever they try." Armsmaster stated dryly.

"Well, smurf," the Deputy Director stated in amazement. He blinked rapidly several times, as if waking from an incompetence-induced haze common to bureaucrats the world over. "Was there anything else?" he asked, ignorantly.

"Just one thing more," Armsmaster replied. "The Amazing Doctor Whodunit had already placed a follow-on post in his Plot #4 thread before it got locked. In it, he issued a warning that if we escalate by continuing our efforts to minimize Piggot's punishment, he will add a multi-planar rotary oscillator to the mouth off the de-crapulator to rapidly and randomly distribute incoming materials via contact with rapidly-spinning mini-planes."

Enough had already happened to outspoken people in this meeting that Triumph tentatively raised a hand. "Uh, do I understand properly? I mean, did he just say that if we mess with the de-crapulator that the smurf will hit the fan?"

"Essentially, yes," the Tinker said roughly.

Hours later the meeting adjourned, everyone going their separate ways. Kid Win waited, small and quiet in the back, head down and pretending to study his binder of meeting notes, until Armsmaster and Deputy Renick had long gone, along with the rest of the heroes, before getting up and moving nonchalantly towards the exit to the building.

When someone had called an emergency all-heroes meeting, and forgotten to exclude those in solitary, he'd thought it was too good to be true.

As it turned out, Assault and Clockblocker had spoken up and proven that assumption true.

Thanks to the delays caused by their release, they had arrived late, only as the meeting was about to reconvene, so had been lost in the rush of pretty bureaucrats laden with coffee cups making their own last minute entrances.

Kid Win had stayed silent, and forgotten, head down with his face towards his papers, taking the time to fill out all of the appropriate forms to have his tools, gear, Tinker equipment, and all of the spare parts in his workshop packed up in crates by maintenance people and shipped to a certain new off-site storage location.

He had also just completed the paperwork registering his parents' garage as a PRT approved off-site storage location, rated for Tinkertech.

The paperwork would go up to the review board who oversaw all Tinkertech, who would doubtless deny it. But unless somebody submitted an order shipping all of the stuff back, those crates would just get abandoned in his parents' garage. And, as owners his family could hold said abandoned property until thirty days had passed, and if no one came to reclaim it, claim it themselves in lieu of unpaid back rent, and either sell it off at auction, or keep it as they desired.

The last item of paperwork was his official resignation from the Wards - an option his parents had left up to him, with their approval for that course of action already registered if he chose to exercise it.

Once more the child gave thanks for not having abusive idiots for parents.

Kid Win dropped his pile of paperwork off at the appropriate desk, before walking out the doors of the PRT headquarters and very carefully casual down the street.

He would have whistled, but was still too afraid of drawing any attention to himself.

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"Smurf this! I can't smurfing understand a smurfing thing about this smurfing change to the smurfing language!" Lisa shouted, irate.

Jared stepped up. "Yes. Sorry about that. I wanted to warn you ahead of time, but time got away from me - events are going on in a bit of a rush," he apologized.

Lisa tried her level best NOT to incinerate him with her eyes, visibly calming herself. "Explain. Now," she demanded, more to get the headache-inducing problem out of the way than any real anger, now that she knew who the source was.

Who knew? His reasons might even be funny. Jared's often were.

"Thank you, I shall," the wizard promised. "Piggot basically issued a direct challenge to Dr Whodunit with her remarks on television, so he had to answer them, and that meant another curse. Only he had to escalate, so she would not want to keep pushing him. Now, in the Munchkin Player's Handbook there is a variant of the Bestow Curse spell that allows one to apply any curse found in the Munchkin card game - among the *many* options is to cause the subject to 'change race'. So I changed her into a Gammorrean from the Star Wars universe."

"You mean that Star Wars is *real!*" Dinah shoved her way forward to demand incredulously, her reaction being a bit more severe than the rest, but generally speaking for all of them.

Lisa and Taylor, for their part, were too shocked to.

"Yes." He nodded calmly, a bit confused over their reaction. Star Wars D20 existed. All D20 products were compatible. So you could go from one to another with no trouble at all using any number of existing spells and other methods. He did not understand what all the amazement was over.

After all, that was one of the *easy* universes to visit!

Pretty much anything anyone had imagined existed somewhere. There were *lots* of Material Planes like this one. And, in fact, probably the *reason* for people to imagine them and write them as fiction was minor bleed-through from the appropriate plane. They saw bits of it in dreams or other receptive periods, and off they went.

The boy shrugged. "It's actually kind of funny, George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, used so many costumes during his films they were literally pulling every costume they had out of the wardrobe department for some of his scenes - and it was hard to keep up with the continuing demand. So the guards for Jabba's palace? The race that eventually got named Gammorreans? Those costumes represent exactly how the fantasy orcs of the time period got envisioned, pig-snouts and green skin and all. One has to wonder what fantasy epic got canceled and left those to him."

"Anyway," he continued boldly. "I cursed her to become a Gammorrean, and she became a generic orc. Proof enough they are the same race."

"Interesting as this movie trivia, somehow inexplicably intermixed with disturbing insights into the multiverse is, that's not the question I want the answer for," Lisa was rubbing her temples, trying to keep the headache at bay. "What I want to know is how you smurfed up the language!"

"Oh, that? It's simple. I cursed the entire United States," he answered casually.

"How?" Lisa drilled him with her glance. "I was certain you could only curse people like that."

"Creatures," he amended, holding up one finger to correct her. "Curses can be applied to any creature - and there are a lot of variety of creatures on fantasy worlds. There are undead things walking about which shouldn't, 'cause they're dead. There are unliving golems made of solid stone, clay, iron, and other things. In D20 Modern there are even entirely digital creatures. Throw in giant single-celled organisms, actual angels and demons, dragons, fey, and other creatures out of myth and legend and you've got quite a variety. So 'creature' is not quite as strictly narrow a term as 'people' is."

"Whatever," Lisa sighed, her headache hurting her. "So just kindly explain to me how you got a country to count as a creature?"

"I can't." He shrugged, then explained, "That's 'cause I didn't. I think it was a ruling of the United States Supreme Court in...1896? I think that's what it was. Anyway, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people. So they had rights, and could own property. They were made legal entities with all of the same rights and protections as people, and since then even accumulated a few more. Now magic is *very* flexible about what a creature is. There is even a type, called aberration that are *defined* as having a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset, or any combination of the three - a category that gives us giant, floating, clinically insane, eyeballs with laser death beams, and other things just as odd."

He paused, hands in pockets, considering. "Still, an idea given rights, a legal fiction granted the same privileges as people is a bit of a stretch, even for magic."

"Corporations aren't just a legal fiction," Dinah objected, nose in the air, having listened to her father talk about them with her uncle. "They are very important."

Jared just felt amused. "I'll tell you what I've been telling people for years: Government is a mass delusion. The only proof that it exists is that people say that it does, and are willing to commit acts they blame on it. Those same evidences, applied the same way, also prove the existence of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy."

He finished with a smile.

Dinah felt rocked back onto her heels. She'd felt quite proud of herself for discovering that Santa wasn't real, only a few years ago.

Jared turned back to the subject at hand. "So anyway, accepting made-up fictions as people is a stretch, even for magic. So I can't do much when laying a curse on one - or else I would have already cursed the entire US Department of Justice to always tell the truth! It would have destroyed them within hours, I am sure. No, what I've done is pretty much at the limits of my ability."

He could not fault his DM for ruling that the curses he laid upon mere 'legal entities' as opposed to actual creatures be limited to ones having no game effect.

But then, a simple and obvious change to the way people spoke didn't. Just talking did not have any game effects. Not without a skill roll, anyway. And his curse in no way affected anyone's skill checks.

It was legal, by his DM's ruling.

"So I laid two curses on the United States of America, one on its government to never refer to The Amazing Doctor Whodunit by any other name or title, and the other on all its members to replace all cussing with the word 'smurf'."

He smiled, then paused, admitting, "Actually, skin color has no game effect either, so I slipped in a *tiny* little joke, that people who swear, like, a really extreme amount might slowly have their skin turned blue by it. But how likely is that to happen? I mean, they'd have to cuss a literal blue streak."

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"Smurf that smurfed-up smurfiness! The smurf-eating smurf smurfer doesn't smurf the smurfing smurfy smurfs he smurfed!" Skidmark shouted. "Sssssssssssssssmmmmmmmmmmmmmuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrfffff!"

"Hey Skiddy, this must be some good stuff. Either I'm seeing things, or your skin is turning blue," Squealer lazily drawled.

His next rant reached appalling heights of smurfiness.

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Carol Dallon, known publicly as Brandish, wife of Mark Dallon, aka Flashbang, and mother of Victoria Dallon, sighed heavily as she looked over the papers spread all over the desk and around the computer before her. The files all said the same thing.

She'd never before in her life thought, even once, that she'd miss the little brat that was her adopted daughter.

But there it was. The figures did not lie. She was going to.

"How bad is it?" Carol's sister, Sarah Pelham, otherwise known as Lady Photon (or, as the press had labled her, Photon Mom), inquired once Carol gave forth her very revealing sigh.

Carol began rubbing at her eyes. "It's bad."

"Well?" Crystal Pelham came into the room bearing a tray of coffee mugs, enough for all, which the girl otherwise known as Laserdream then began passing out, to each their own mug, carefully personalized with their name, colors, and team logo.

Sarah noticed that Crystal must have forgotten, and just grabbed the group's mugs as usual, because Amy, aka Panacea's mug stood there alone on the tray at the end, steaming with fresh coffee - coffee that now the group's healer would never drink.

Carol cloaked her feelings behind a shell, just as she had to do for courtroom proceedings. "New Wave is finished," she declared flatly.

Eric gasped. Everyone reacted. Even Mark flinched.

Carol dealt with stress by focusing on the business side of life. She did so now, focusing on the numbers - and the numbers were close to as bad as they got. She gave her sister a look. They shared silent communication together. Sarah sighed, and then nodded. She was the better one to deliver bad news.

Lady Photon dropped her head, but explained clearly, "New Wave is primarily funded by donations. Of all of us, only Carol has a job..."

"HAD a job," Carol broke in to emphasize. "As a cape, I am not allowed to practice law without an appropriately licensed law firm, and mine just vanished into a literal black hole on Thursday, victim to one of Bakuda's bombs."

She was kind of bitter about that. The only reason she had not been present when the device went off was that she had already flown out, responding to the crisis that was the high schools being destroyed.

But if she had been five minutes later in getting out, that would have been the end of her, too.

That had begun as one of Mark's rare good days, too, when the depression had not been so bad. He had been out shopping for supplies for his hobby when the bombs went off. Following Sarah's call to gather, they had all met at the Pelham's house.

They'd sent Vicky a text, but she'd never responded. It was possible she'd never gotten it. A lot of cell phone towers had been taken out in those early strikes.

"Alright," Sarah allowed. "Had a job. Hopefully you can find one again." Sarah gave off a bitter laugh, then reached into one of the desk drawers and drew out a flask, from which she poured a generous dollop into her coffee, before passing it to Neil, who took quite a swig, before adding his own amount to his coffee, then passing it on to Carol, who drank from it straight, coffee ignored.

Mark just sat miserably in a corner, more depressed than ever.

Sarah giggled, more drunk from the stress than the alcohol. "This was never the plan, you know," she blurted. "Living like this? We needed a hit, one major success, to launch our careers from. Then it was supposed to be talk shows and conventions. Fleur had her eyes set on a professorship. Mike, our brother who you don't see around much, wanted to teach at a police academy. That was the plan, anyway. Get an honorary doctorate in the new field of parahuman studies - after all, why not? Nobody knew anything about the field back then, we were among the best, most informed people there were. So we unmasked, planning to spend the rest of our lives being the experts everyone else consulted on all things related to capes. We were supposed to be celebrities, not..." she waved her mug around, "...this."

Seeing his wife on the verge of losing it, Neil took over the explanation. "Being heroes is dangerous. We were in the field long enough to know that. As large as our group was, we still lost more fights than we won. Lots of times, we got injured. Concealing that and going to work the next day? That was never fun."

"Neil worked at a gas station," Carol broke in, eyes dead, as if she was speaking to the wall. "I babysat for pocket change, racking up student loan debt trying to pass law school, with barely passing grades due to having almost no time to properly study..."

"And Mark was a delivery driver," Sarah took back up the story. "While I had you barely out of high school. We were all just barely getting our starts in life, and this looked like the golden opportunity. But we needed something big, a real kick-off to get us started, to get us in the news, something to make our names with and get us popular enough that we could build careers based off just that popularity. After all, others had done it without powers, why couldn't we?"

"At first it was working," Neil supplied. "We got on television. People paid us for interviews. Important people wanted to have their photographs taken with us..."

"Donations started flowing in," Sarah cast her eyes back, as if gazing on the past. "For the first time in our lives we had money! We were able to buy these houses, pay off student debt, get real costumes made of our own designs. Mike was in discussions with a toy maker over an action figure line. Then Jess died, and suddenly New Wave reeked of failure, and... well, that was it. For our dream careers, anyway. Our popularity had been kicked in the head before we could make a real start of it, and that, as they say, is that. The publisher with the book deal I had been working on suddenly never wanted to hear from us again. I've still got the manuscript somewhere..."

She trailed off, wistfully.

"But why?" demanded Crystal. Her confused daughter added, "I thought we were a hero group!"

"Heroes die!" Neil countered, swirling the coffee in his mug, wishing he'd added more from that flask before Carol drank it all. She had left the room, and from the sound of it was raiding their liquor cabinet. He resolved to join her soon. "Even back then that was clear. We worked and fought on the streets, without all of the fancy armor, radios, and backup arriving in their own armored vehicles that the PRT and Protectorate have now."

"We knew our lives were in danger every day we went out and fought," Crystal's mom hiccuped, then giggled. "So one night, after one very close call, we got together and talked about it, brainstorming for any ideas less dangerous than, say, a soldier on active duty back in Vietnam - which is what Brockton's streets felt like, even back in those days."

"And being paid speakers, recurring talk show guests, and book deals was the best you could come up with?" Crystal demanded.

"If you can think of a better way to make money from having our power sets that does not involve getting shot at, the floor is still open for suggestions," her father challenged, taking a swig of his coffee. "We can't go back to full time hero work. For one thing, it doesn't pay enough, and for another the risk is too high, especially not without our group's healer, and with no company anywhere willing to offer us insurance."

Crystal stood, unable to speak, sure there must be something, but... even if flying and shooting lasers did have a peaceful use, there was Nepea-5 to consider, wasn't there? Stupid government law locking all parahumans out of virtually all kinds of business - outside of working for that same government, that is.

A blatant power grab by the government aimed at forcing all parahumans into their service... evoking disturbing shades of slavery... and that had done more to swell the ranks of the villains than anything else she could think of, before or since.

She found herself at a loss for words. Nevertheless, she sputtered, "But... but isn't making money off of our fame wrong?"

"Where do you think your scholarship comes from, young lady?" Carol had returned with three bottles. She began placing them out on the desk, along with four glasses.

Sarah hiccuped again, speaking into her glass. "I know you put hard work into your grades, dear, but the world does not have one percent of the scholarships available that it did when I was a girl. I am sorry to tell you this, but it was your fame as Laserdream that caused that college to select you."

Crystal Pelham felt her self-image as an independent, self-employed, scholarship student crushed.

It had been favoritism all along.

"Why tell me now?" the now-drooping college student asked.

"The problem," Sarah began, already hard at work getting drunk. "Is that New Wave is a local hero group. Local heroes depend upon local donations - and the poorer the location, the less grateful fans have available to donate. Brockton Bay has an economy that is a dumpster fire. Nobody local has much cash to spare, and that amount has been declining nearly every year that I've been alive, just like the economy. We bridged the gap between recent success and our failed attempt at living on the celebrity circuit by going out as heroes and confiscating money from the gangs, so we know what that's like, and pickings are pretty slim. It's really hard to find their stash houses, for one. For another thing, the PRT claims 70% of all assets seized from gangs, and as open heroes we had no choice but to declare it so we had funds to pay our bills. It would be worse now, of course. So our income from that would leave us homeless, if we did not already own them free and clear. They'll still shut off all our utilities next month, and kick us out once we can't pay taxes next year."

"Then how have we been doing so well?" Crystal demanded, desperate to understand. "Vicky's new car! Mom, you got me my own new car for my sixteenth birthday. Aunt Carol's BMW. Our clothes. Everything! If we're broke, how do we afford to live like this? I always thought we were rich!" Crystal proclaimed, arms flung wide to emphasize the last point.

Indeed, she'd never lacked for anything. Their two families had as many cars as they had legal drivers, a thing which was almost unheard of anymore. Most families, even in the richest countries, had to take dilapidated and ill-maintained public transportation, with all of the risks that involved, or walk.

What had changed?

"Panacea."

Carol had spoken the word like she still was not sure whether or not it was a curse.

"What?" Crystal repeated.

"Let me guess," Eric, otherwise known as Shielder, butted in. "Panacea was not just a local cape."

Lady Photon snorted so hard liquor went flying in small droplets out of her glass.

"Panacea was a world-class healer who drew international attention," Carol spoke hollowly, as though admitting to a crime. "She healed heads of state, celebrities, sports stars, you name it. She even saved the Pope's life once. From cancer, as I recall. Donations from people like them are generous."

"Why have we never heard of this?" Eric gestured to his sister and himself.

"Because to survive in a world with super villains, most public figures travel in secrecy. They dress like normal people, travel by ordinary means, and do their best to blend in with the crowds as nobody special. Many politicians have the same problem, so have even arranged to add clauses to cape laws allowing celebrities and other public figures their own 'civilian' identities, with legal support and documentation to prove, 'No, I'm not Tom Hanks. I'm Steven Miller. Gosh, do you think if I were Tom Hanks I'd be here drinking this terrible beer with you? Where do you think they buy this swill at, anyway?'" Neil chuckled. "That was a quote, by the way. We had Tom Hanks here in town a couple years ago, getting healed from a car crash. He even signed my copy of Splash."

"I don't think Amy was even told." Sarah stared into the depths of her glass. "We sure never said anything to her."

"But... what does that matter?" Crystal was, once again, confused. "All of the healing Amy did was for free."

"With a waiting list nineteen years long," Carol said hollowly, slowing adding heat as though announcing her own execution. "Do you want to know how we made all of our money? Fine! A full thirty percent of Panacea's daily healing slots were open to anyone who paid in cash to get ahead in line. We'd worked out that deal with the hospital before she even started."

Crystal just stared at her aunt, then her mother, who nodded, confirming it.

"So what?" Eric asked. "So we charged for healing? I'm not surprised. Doctors do it, and that's what my friends have been telling me we ought to have been doing all along. We've probably made millions, right? Enough to live on until we've all got degrees and careers, right?"

"Unfortunately, graft became an issue." Their mom was starting to get tipsy. "Sure, we started out with a deal granting us a sweet, sweet share of the loot, but then the mayor's office learned of it and demanded their share, or they'd put us out of business. Then the police would not arrest us for the unlawful practice if they got their cut, the firemen..."

"Half of Brockton Bay's city budget came directly out of Panacea's healing," Carol bit off angrily. "Leaving us barely enough to live on. The rest came from my job as a lawyer."

"HALF?!" Eric protested. "It can't have been that much, right?"

"Do you see any industries around here?" Neil asked calmly, refilling his glass. "Brockton Bay doesn't make much. No factories, or shipping, or fishing, or farming worth speaking of. We can't all work at Medhall, and their taxes can't pay for everything. Most of the rest is from tourism. Now why do you think tourists would come to a place with a murder rate as bad as ours is?"

"Panacea," the family all echoed as one.

"So that's it?" Eric asked, frustrated.

Carol took another sip from her glass. "I'd propose we sell the houses and move out, but they're not worth anything, as everyone else appears to have that same plan. I looked over the property lists and it seems nearly all of Brockton Bay is for sale. People are looking to move out, get away to someplace saner; and with everyone trying to sell and move out but nobody foolish enough to buy and move in, property prices are dropping like a rock down a mine shaft. Our houses aren't worth a tenth of what they were last week. We'll probably do what most will end up doing and just walk away from the unsold properties and let the city take them over, just like what happened to the docks, and the warehouse and factory districts."

"But... I go to school here," Crystal protested.

"Not anymore," Carol said heartlessly. "Not unless you think Brockton U is going to stay open with no students to pay tuition. I think, if you knew someone in administration who'd give you an honest answer, they'd tell you that nobody has dared to go to class there since Lung started bombing schools earlier this week, and that half the out-of-state students have already withdrawn and are on their ways home - with the rest expected to follow shortly, and the local students all having the same problems we are."

"So... Brockton Bay is a ghost town?" Eric asked.

"With the population fleeing and tax base collapsing, and half their budget already gone with Panacea, the city government having a worse credit rating than Nicaragua did before it dissolved (so much so the only response they get to their loan applications is laughter!) Brockton Bay's city government is going to follow the usual pattern of a handful of government officials stealing everything left and skipping town before the banks foreclose. Police, power, water and other utilities, busses, all of that gets shut off as we get tossed from system to system like a hot potato, with no local, state, or federal agency wanting to get stuck with us and forced to pay to support a deadweight city out of their limited budget. So the gangs steal everything not nailed down, forcing even more evacuations, until the only thing left is a heap of garbage. Soon, even the Merchants will be moving out," Neil proclaimed with authority. "If only to find a still-open convenience store they can rob for chips and drinks."

"It's happened to cities before," Sarah agreed.

Seeing everyone else too depressed or stunned to act, Eric got up from his chair. "You know, I think I am going to go turn the TV on. Who knows?" he tried to force a chuckle. "Maybe there is some good news?"

Already concluding that was a vain hope, the rest of the family moped in their unresolvable misery until Eric unexpectedly called out, dashing into the room, "Hey! Glory Girl is on TV! She's fighting Lung!"

Horror lit up in the eyes of all of the adults present, including Crystal, going roughly along the path of realizing: Glory Girl fights with Lung could only result in extreme property damage, which costs a fortune. We're already broke. Our income is gone, and our houses are worth nothing.

One thought went through all of their heads simultaneously: We are already ruined. But this on top of that will land us under so much debt we will never recover!

Carol, in addition, felt betrayed by her daughter, someone she both loved and trusted. Sarah felt the same for her niece. Mark could only look back to that boating accident where despite having a family full of capes it seemed nothing could be done to fix the disaster and everything was hopeless, while Neil had never felt this way since coming face to face with Damsel of Distress.

Every last adult cape in that room had just been subjected to significant stresses well beyond their normal ability to cope, with no relief in sight - stresses that had then suddenly spiked and gotten dramatically worse in an instant. In fact, they had all been so close to a Second Trigger already that no one would know who went first. But whoever did seemed to kick off a cascade of other triggers, and all the adults in the room simultaneously collapsed.

In the split second of seeing their fall, Eric, in a panic over having his entire family collapse (the mechanism and process of triggering still being very poorly understood), leapt to a conclusion as only teenagers could, that he had somehow killed them, and that pushed him over the edge, and he collapsed himself.

Up in the attic, where Circus had built a nice little pad all for herself (after all, the best place to hide is where no one is looking - and who would ever look for her in a hero's house?) had been listening to music on her earbuds when suddenly something passed over her and she fell, striking the heavily reinforced and soundproof flooring she had installed so they would not hear her up there.

OoOoO

The PRT had almost never seen a cape they did not want to control and dominate, by fair means or foul.

This was not some prissy recruitment deal, where everyone would all be friends amidst sunshine and rainbows. No, it was control, pure and simple. The organization looked on any uncontrolled parahuman with some elements of fear, some of minor disgust, but full measures of both hatred and loathing.

Unallied parahumans represented a threat, plain and simple - and threats were to be eliminated.

It has been observed that actual Mafia families generally exert far less pressure on someone they wanted to recruit.

After their last appearance, Director Piggot had decided that if she could get that dancing duo that had visited Arcadia high school reporting to her, that would not only allow their Public Relations department to milk all of the goodwill those capes had earned, and turn it to her organization, but that by withholding their services over the rest of the children turned to glass, she could be owed favors from city government, and nearly everything else in Brockton Bay.

She could not lose, having that kind of influence.

So as the first thing she'd done after learning of their existence was to order those two capes captured. The trouble was, they had only ever appeared on that one, specific occasion, doing that one specific thing. However, she'd considered there were decent odds if they'd done it once, they'd try to do it again. So she'd laid a trap for them, and the first step of that would be to move all of the turned-to-glass children away from their present, unsecured site, to a place where she could have them watched over carefully, at all hours of the day and night.

The PRT headquarters had an extra, underground parking structure that would be perfect. They already had it locked down tight with security set up all over it, and her troopers were literal seconds away should that duo reappear to finish what they'd started.

So she'd given the orders to do it, before going in to her busy schedule of meetings.

Within hours of Piggot giving the order, her troops were moving to carry it out.

Per orders, they moved to Arcadia first. This was supposed to be the safest site to begin with, because it had been surrounded by a force of fully armed PRT troopers around the clock since the cape incident earlier.

They pulled up in seven armored trucks, deployed, formed a double line of troopers creating a corridor between the trucks and the portable barricades that had been put in place around the school, then began to drive in forklifts with stacks of pallets and cable ties.

Unfortunately for the sanctity of this operation, something Piggot had dismissed as completely useless so failed to account for in her planning, was irate parents had been demonstrating in force around Arcadia ever since the PRT had driven off that pair of capes who had been healing the students. Angry parents out in numbers, with nothing else to do now with so much of the city still in lockdown, were quick to perceive what the PRT would be using forklifts with pallets and cable ties for - the only possible purpose to move those in to the school was to carry out their still petrified children!

Angry cries broke out. Phone calls to important people got made. The television crews who had been hanging around bored suddenly had objects of great interest to film as the crowds began exploding with energy, forcing themselves against the PRT lines.

And these were not ordinary parents.

Lawyers appeared, issuing very official, very LEGAL Cease and Desist orders. No troopers would accept them. Judges got called, who made calls in turn. The mayor lodged an objection. That got ignored. Congressmen got called, who called the PRT and got the run-around.

Director Piggot had been determined to carry this out swiftly, hoping to get it all done before any serious objections could be lodged, and had issued orders to that effect before locking herself in her emergency meeting and refusing to take any calls.

However, she had seriously underestimated the opposition.

Angry, desperate parents got to one of the PRT trucks and, pressed in on either side, crowds of people began rocking it back and forth on its wheels as though to turn it over upon its top.

To this, the PRT troopers responded with clubs and beatings, driving the crowds back by main force.

One parent's response to this was to call up a friend he'd made in the FBI forces that were then-currently within town. At that agent's suggestion, dozens, then hundreds of parents began to fill out online forms, accusing the PRT of brutality and corruption. There were quite a few lawyers and city government employees within the limited wealthy class of Brockton Bay, and those same wealthy had educated their children at Arcadia.

Those parents KNEW bureaucracy. They KNEW how to fill out forms, and they KNEW how to lay on charges so they would stick, and they gladly advised those around them on how best to do so as well.

The local on-site commander of the FBI contingent was a young, ambitious man. He had connections higher up, and friends in other agencies, so was exactly the sort of person who felt they could take a few well-chosen risks to secure rapid advancement.

And this situation had delivered to him the golden apple.

One of the FBI's founding and primary functions was to investigate charges of corruption in other law enforcement agencies. This screamed 'opportunity' to the ambitious young commander, and he gave the order for the Federal task force under his command to move out.

The reason for this was very simple.

Governments are always ready and willing to expand, and can do so at blinding speed. They are never, however, any good at something every ordinary human has to master - getting by on less than your former income. Partly, this was because they refused. They wouldn't do it. They would increase the people's tax burden, pass their debts off to someone, *anyone* else, do all kinds of legal and financial chicanery before they would allow their budgets to shrink by even a single penny. Indeed, merely holding them to the same budget, just denying them an increase in pay, was deemed intolerable! They would not abide it!

But then, sometimes, there just wasn't any choice.

Backed up by the greatest economy of the most prosperous nation in the entire scope of human history, the United States government had bloated up enormously. It had become the largest non-religious organization in world history; larger than any corporation, larger than the Chinese Communist Party, larger than any army ever assembled. They'd spent more per year on condoms alone than most historical countries had spent in total across their entire national history, even allowing for the different currencies. But then the world economy had begun crashing in the eighties. Along with the economy, the available tax income of every government on the planet had been going down, and down, and down, shrinking at an alarming pace.

It had been impossible not to feel the squeeze.

Banks had begun crashing, important banks. The central banks of most of the countries on Earth had folded as debtors defaulted; not small debtors, either, as entire countries just gave up on servicing their debts (in countless cases because those countries no longer existed in any practical sense - their governments having dissolved completely, sometimes to reform in another style, other times just leaving their former people living ungoverned, in tribal conditions), each collapse piling up one after another, dumping huge loans that could never be repaid.

Major corporations shattered as nations collapsed and the contracts they'd held there became worthless. The complete collapse of the People's Republic of China erased countless business ventures that had begun to move there. That loss, along with the Chinese banks and stock market's default, forfeiture, and closure during the following period of anarchy, had torn a large amount directly out of the global financial community that had begun forming.

A global shipping crisis followed, that only became worse as Leviathan appeared and began destroying ports - on average four port cities per year, with some truly catastrophic appearances sinking entire islands.

Businesses are not inclined to send things to a port when there is good reason to doubt that city will even be there to receive the shipment. No, businesses thrive on stability, and there was none to be found anywhere.

Easy credit was forgotten, and insurance became something barely anyone could afford as risks skyrocketed in every department. The predominance of electronic money vanished completely after a few, well-publicized cyber attacks, presumed to have been caused by parahumans.

Virtually every government on Earth had gone bankrupt, and defaulted on whatever debts they'd had piled up at the time, leading to thousands more bank foreclosures as those governments had thumbed their noses at those lenders, and said basically, "What'cha gunno do, call the cops on us?"

Many of them had done this more than once during those turbulent decades of the 80's, 90's, and 00s.

The US government had gone bankrupt four times during that period. Almost a record holder, only beaten out by New Zealand's five, and Saudi Arabia's seven.

Initially, California had refused to accept spending limits, and broken off from the rest of the US, forming their own republic where they printed all of the money their government wanted. Like all other countries that had tried such things, it was a disaster, with inflation rates so astronomical it required an entire shopping cart filled to the brim with their newly-printed one trillion dollar notes to buy a loaf of bread that cost $2 in the rest of the United States, before they gave up and shamefacedly rejoined the Union.

Accepting California and their debts back in was what caused the United States government's third bankruptcy.

Accepting back in all of the other states that had tried the same thing was what caused the fourth.

Interestingly enough, one could still go to any one of those failed states and trade a shopping cart filled with their now-defunct cash for a loaf of bread. It was debated in some circles as to whether that transaction was monetary or barter at its heart, because the value of that much paper, whether as toilet paper or firewood, was similar to the value of the bread.

California would probably have persisted with their experiment, except that they could not afford to buy paper anymore.

Now, nobody was giving anybody loans on anything if they could avoid it. Banks were few, and interest rates high (despite the supervillain Crawler having eaten the entire board of the Federal Reserve Bank, and Harbinger somehow stealing everything that was left of it). Cash had been restored as the principle medium of exchange, which meant the US had returned to printing $500, $1,000, and higher denomination bills in paper currency. In fact, the $10,000 bill was no longer the highest denomination ever to be printed for public consumption, as the $100,000 bill had been returned to printing, and was no longer legally restricted as to who could own one.

There was even talk of printing a half million dollar bill. Or maybe even a million, to facilitate large exchanges between businesses.

Credit cards were rare, and highly sought after. But not everyone was deemed a good risk for carrying one.

Insurance companies had gone out of business in such numbers as to make banks look stable. That was sadly inevitable, as insurance was, at its heart a gamble. The customer was betting that they would get more money out of paying for insurance than they paid into it, and the insurance company was betting the opposite. And, like all betting institutions, the house cheated, using thousands of niggling little tricks and details to avoid paying and skew the odds as much in their favor as possible. But, with all of the disasters, bankruptcies and societal collapses going on all over, the odds turned so far against the insurance companies that they closed their doors rather than pay out all of the money they suddenly owed.

So all of those people who had faithfully paid their insurance companies for all of those years suddenly found their policies worthless.

Disruptions along similar lines had been seemingly endless, as trusted institution after trusted institution vanished, or betrayed those who had once relied upon them.

All of which summed up the reasons behind why the United States Federal Budget of 2011 on Earth Bet was around 13.6 percent of that same country's 1982 budget, in that same world.

And every year that budget was dropping as the tax base collapsed further. Nobody would lend the US government money (even kindergarteners knew better than to offer them a dime) and they were being forced, kicking and screaming, biting and yelling, being dragged unwilling every step of the way, to actually do business with only the money they had - and not the money they would like to have.

Federal agencies, important ones that it was felt would last forever, had been popping like soap bubbles and vanishing, never to be heard of again. The military had been deemed unneccesary, so those budgets had been among the first to be slashed (it was a subject of much debate online whether the current US Army had enough soldiers under arms to be able to win the war of 1812, if some random parahuman event should cause a distortion in time that led to them facing those same musket armed British redcoats again; and the Navy had shrunk so much it was now in danger of being merged with the similarly reduced Coast Guard - which at least still had responsibilities. Although online nerds still debated whether that combined force could have held off Napoleon's navy of wooden sailing ships - the lack of fuel and ammo among the modern vessels being a key consideration). Dozens of agencies tied to Federal departments that had once been giants had disappeared, and the remainder were merely ghosts of their former selves, specters haunting those halls they had once ruled over with iron fists, now all turned to rust.

All except one.

The Parahuman Response Team's budget got a larger chunk of the Federal budget's pie than anyone else, and they'd been getting more of it every year since their creation. While other agencies shrank, budgets diminished or cut entirely so their responsibilities got either dumped on another department or just abandoned, the PRT just kept getting bigger, and bigger, soaking up nearly every spare penny and gradually squeezing out everyone else.

Well, there was one FBI agent who was not going to allow that to happen to his agency.

Not willing to go out on a high risk venture without his rear covered, the ambitious young commander dotted his 'i's and crossed his 't's in making certain all of the evidence he'd needed to take action was real. He'd even called up several judges, and found offers of total support from both them, as well as the local city government.

That done, there was no *way* he was letting this opportunity go to waste!

You see, every Federal department had their own area of responsibility, and were very jealous of that power, guarding their areas of responsibility from all threats and rivals. The turf wars were bitter, and no one simply gave up without a life or death struggle - because to them it was. Departments were constantly waging war against other departments for who had the most authority and thus the biggest share of the budget.

With the advent of parahumans there had been something new for the Federal agencies to fight over, a new bit of unclaimed territory, and the fights over who got jurisdiction over it had been so bitter, so heartfelt, and so extreme, that to resolve the crisis a compromise had been forced upon them, in that none of the then-currently existing agencies would get jurisdiction, but a whole new department would be created to cover it.

So the PRT, more properly called by its full title as the Parahuman Response Team, had been created, funded, and empowered to deal directly with one (and only one) problem: Crime by Parahumans. Thus their name. But it was only that, because nobody, NOBODY! in Federal government was willing to give up any authority they already had to this new upstart. So parahuman crime was all they got.

With regard to the gangs there was considerable grey area, as virtually all gangs had incorporated some kind of cape support soon after the appearance of parahumans. There was still considerable debate at the highest levels over exactly where those lines were, and so far the PRT had been winning those inter-agency turf battles.

However, no one, at any point, had even lodged a vague hint of a suspicion about any of those parents being parahumans. Nor were the petrified students parahumans, as the PRT had already removed their petrified Wards from the site soon after learning it was possible, however unlikely, to restore them to life.

Thus, the PRT had crossed the line.

They were not allowed any authority whatsoever in dealing with ordinary humans, whether crowds of angry parents or outright criminals. Those were the jobs of the police and other agencies to handle.

It was as clear cut a case of a US Agency overstepping their bounds as anyone was likely to find. What's more, the Parahuman Response Team was an official Law Enforcement Agency - And dealing with corrupt law enforcement agencies was the FBI's single most important job.

With more and more carefully detailed and annotated accusations of corruption pouring in by the minute, filled out by some very responsible people, many with influential positions in local government, there was simply never going to be another chance like this one. No, he had a perfectly legal excuse to bring the PRT to heel, humiliate them, put a stop to the endless expansion of their share of the Federal budget, and once more place the FBI back into a position of strength, like it once had.

Because without a valid excuse to believe suspicion of active parahuman involvement, the PRT had no more legal authority to arrest or detain people than a local ice cream store clerk did!

And there had been enough abuses of that vague wording, such suspicions had to be documented ahead of time!

WHICH. THEY. HAD. NOT. BEEN!

He'd checked with all of the people who were supposed to deal with those forms. The PRT had filed nothing concerning this. They had skated on grey areas for the longest time, taken every advantage of dirty tricks most departments took a couple of centuries to learn in abusing the bureaucratic process to support their growing power and interests, so they'd probably grown to think they could get away with anything. But this time he had them cold. They'd overstepped their bounds without even the thinnest excuse, and he was going to call them on it.

"A parahuman did something here once," was not enough to excuse their action. From the start that had been too obvious a trap for the rest of the experienced, veteran agencies of the Federal government to fall into, giving away way too much authority. A child could have wrestled that into a license to do anything, anywhere! So that, and everything like it, had been blocked as excuses before they'd given the go-ahead for the PRT's formation in the first place.

No, the PRT had to prove actual, current parahuman involvement, or reasonable suspicion of same - which they had not!

And he was going to nail them for it.

OoOoO

There were actual crowds forming in the stands at Brockton Field.

The gate guards had not been able to stop the first few groups of die-hard sports fans showing up, showing off their season tickets. Nor, it has to be said, had the ill-paid guards really wanted to. Then, steadily, ever after more and more people had arrived. Lights had been turned on, and display boards activated (which was a real trick, as the owners of the field were halfway out of Brockton by now, nor had they seen the news, nor given permission for any of this).

Concessions had opened and were now selling hot dogs, popcorn, and other things to the wildly cheering fans.

Victor had taken over the announcer's booth, and was running color commentary at the same time. News crews had set up, only to nearly get sent packing when the media company that had the contract for filming sporting events at the stadium tried to crowd them out. Only some desperate, last minute bargaining had allowed the newsies to stay.

It was all shaping up to be a regular party.

Rune and Purity had been playing as Airfielders, fliers ready to intercept any high flying ball - a position not possible without cape powers, but then it was a bunch of capes playing baseball, so who cared?

Night and Fog were both playing shortstop together, him laying down an impenetrable, knee-high covering of his namesake fog, and her concealed within it.

Any short balls going in came out heavily chewed upon.

Hookwolf had been granted superspeed by Othala, and was playing outfielder. It was perversely fun to have a dog made entirely out of sharp and nasty blades playing Fetch with Lung's head, and the superspeed allowed him to return with it in moments, even after Vicky batted it outside of the park.

Which was a necessary thing, because none of them wanted to give Lung a chance to regenerate.

That would be bad.

Which was, of course, exactly what the ABB wanted. So when a new cape appeared to intercept and snatch up Lung's flying head before Hookwolf could reach it, everyone just naturally assumed they must be ABB.

But no, it was Dauntless, one of the local Protectorate heroes, who flew up, captured the head, and flew away with it.

OoOoO

In the time it took for the local FBI commander to check all of his sources, confirm his information, and get his people moving, the situation around Arcadia had gone from bad to worse. Pretty much all of the parents had gathered there, seeing as how they were in contact with each other and word had spread at lightning speed, especially since their levels of legitimate concern were catastrophic.

The PRT had called for reinforcements twice. Once, from their own people. Those reinforcements had already arrived, having been pre-authorized for this event just in case of pretty much exactly this happening. Then once more from the police. However every police station in the city had already received their orders from the mayor and their local commissioner, who had told them not, under any circumstances, to assist the PRT on anything until the FBI was done reviewing the allegations against them.

So, with great relish and sincerity, the police had politely told the PRT to smurf off.

On follow-up calls, the replies got less polite and more smurfy with each repeat.

After being given the brush off by the cops, the PRT tried calling on the National Guard, who had already been called up and were in the city helping to deal with the aftereffects of the ABB caused disasters, only to receive the same answers, as those same angry parents whose children the PRT was intending on carting off to lockup had beaten them to it, having already been in contact with the governor, who had issued new orders to the guardsmen, which were effectively the same as the ones given to the police.

So the PRT asked the same question, only to get the same smurfy answer.

This was a far cry from what the PRT was accustomed to. They were used to operating with the full aid and assistance of every local, state and Federal agency, and were not prepared to deal with the lack of it.

Director Piggot had grown so used to throwing her own weight around, and being given whatever she wanted by local government forces, that she had begun to feel that her power was unlimited, and so gotten careless.

This was to cost her.

The Feds drove up, arriving in three cars of four agents in each. They got out, the ones from the main car going up to confront the PRT command group, while the other Feds fanned out. At first this was an item of only mild curiosity to anyone paying attention. But a minute or so into the conversation between the leaders of the FBI and PRT contingents, the loudly raised voices and evident anger coming from that group began to draw notice - especially among the waiting PRT troopers, some of whom turned to watch.

Shortly thereafter, even louder raised voices were followed by an order sent out to the FBI by their leader, followed by verbal orders issued by all FBI agents present to any PRT near them to stand down, because they were under arrest.

They got laughed at derisively.

The FBI drew their pistols.

The PRT unlimbered their assault rifles.

One PRT trooper, highly trained that if he saw a threat he should immediately hose it with his containment foam sprayer, followed his training and foamed up the closest FBI agent. This led to a flurry of shooting on both sides, of which the FBI took by far the worst of it, since the average PRT trooper was dressed in something equivalent to riot gear, and carried assault rifles as part of their standard uniform, whereas the FBI agents had largely been limited to pistols and light, low-profile, bulletproof vests.

Institutional inertia kicked in almost immediately, and having foamed, shot, and beaten down the opposition, the PRT did what they normally do with criminals during arrest procedure and disarmed, cuffed, and contained them. The FBI were already loaded into the back of a truck and had pulled away before many of the actual PRT troopers began to think that, perhaps, they'd screwed up.

It was at that dramatic moment that two PRT troopers came out carrying a glass girl, whose pose was such that she would not easily fit on a pallet. The girl's mother had somehow slipped through the PRT lines and tried to stop them via passive resistance, getting in their way and refusing to move. The troopers grew frustrated, then they grew angry. When one of them adjusted his grip on the girl so he could reach for a piece of equipment on his belt to deal with the problem mother, his gloves slipped on the glass and they dropped her daughter.

Cameras and others had turned toward the mother's impassioned screaming, so it seemed like the entire world was watching just as the girl slipped out of their grasp and shattered on the road surface, causing a riot to break out among the parents, who literally tore the entire PRT contingent present limb from limb.

Riot gear was great, but when you are outnumbered that badly by really impassioned people, it only goes so far.

There were only two survivors from among those troopers, both in a PRT truck that escaped. Having arrived late with the reinforcements it was on the edge of the crowd, where it was not nearly so dense. The driver and vehicle commander were still inside, having deployed their cargo of troops but stayed with the vehicle, easing its way forward as opportunity presented, so it could go join the others, parked in formation.

There hadn't been many opportunities to ease forward before the crowd turned ugly.

As far away from the rest of the formation as they were, it was deemed retreat was safer than pushing in to join the rest of the troops. But even that was complicated, the vehicle commander shouting "Drive over her!" as a pedestrian got in their way.

There came a dull 'thump' as the armored vehicle did exactly that. Then, as they accelerated down the roadway, the driver quietly responded, "Sarge? You just ordered me to drive over a city councilwoman - while news cameras were broadcasting over live TV. I hope you know what you're doing."

OoOoO

Despite her medication Director Piggot had blown her top when Armsmaster turned on a television set in the clinic and showed her live footage of Glory Girl playing baseball with the Empire, using Lung's head as the ball. Nor had she hesitated a second in ordering Dauntless, Assault, Battery, and Velocity, along with a hefty contingent of PRT troopers, to go contain Lung's head and arrest everyone involved.

She was so upset Piggot had not actually managed to say any words, grunting and squealing instead, but the intent behind her wild gesticulation had been obvious, and dutifully reported as those orders by her sycophants.

Sadly for her, the search algorithms Armsmaster was running to keep himself alerted to any ongoing news concerned mostly names of individual Brockton Bay capes. There were far too many references in various media sources just to search for news concerning PRT generally.

So he'd managed to miss the ongoing news of the developing situation at Arcadia high entirely, as the riot had not even started back then. But that would probably not have helped, as riots were also too common, there were always some happening somewhere in the world anymore. So that, too, would have been missed by his search algorithm.

And Dragon could not help him, being fully involved in carrying out orders Chief Director Costa-Brown had given her, searching for any online traces of the Amazing Doctor Whodunit.

The PRT trucks were still rolling to a stop when Assault and Battery were each sent off, supported by numerous troopers, to block off the main exits. Constructed in the mid 1960s, Brockton Field was built along the so-called "cookie cutter" concept, a great big concrete donut when seen from the air, meant to house both baseball and football, yet not ideal at either and a target of scorn for purists of both. However, wide aisles and exit ramps made it possible to empty the stadium in as little as 15 minutes, so it was vital to the PRT's plan to secure those right away, lest everyone they were trying to arrest escape and vanish.

Troopers were still setting up barricades when Dauntless flew in, securing Lung's head before anyone even knew there was an interruption to their game coming. Taking that head back to the closest PRT truck before anyone could react, where they foamed it, contained it by slamming into the back of an armored truck, then closing and locking those hefty doors upon it, Dauntless had time to grin over the operation starting so well.

In the commotion of setting up, almost no one outside of the field noticed Victor in the announcer's box yell "Interception!" As Dauntless stole the head, nor "Touchdown!" when they slammed it inside of the van. But it sure woke up the stadium crowds to their situation.

Really, the fault was the Protectorate's for what happened next, for having failed to account for changes in the enemy tactics.

Assault was a kinetic energy manipulator, but only on himself and things he touched. He could take a hit from the strongest brute and suffer no damage from it, in fact it would allow him to use the energy in a variety of other ways. This made him an excellent choice for countering most of the Empire's lineup, as most of them could merely punch or slice things. Pairing him and Battery together was only natural, as the married couple made for a very effective team.

There was no doubt in Dauntless' mind they could handle the responsibility of the entrances.

However, there was no way Rune was entering battle anymore without some large chains under her control - especially not when that battle was expected to be against Lung. Once Victor called out over the loudspeakers, "Game called on account of enemy attack!" she got those chains in the air, and upon seeing Assault enter the stadium, wrapped him up as gently as a baby, imparting almost no kinetic energy to him as she did so, thus granting the Protectorate hero no fuel for his abilities.

She then began to fly immediately out towards the bay, with a jaunty, "Be right back after I flush this!" over her shoulder as she left.

This sent Assault into an immediate panic, knowing that he was about to receive the Lung treatment, and knowing that he had no way of stopping that as he was.

As the villain Madcap, who Assault had once been before being captured and forced to choose between rebranding and working for the Protectorate, or the birdcage and rotting among the other supervillains imprisoned there, it would have been easy. But he was under a lifetime parole never to use his abilities in any of his original ways, under threat of going directly to the birdcage if he did.

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Realizing that, as Assault, his life would be extinguished within minutes anyway, so it no longer mattered anymore, the hero sighed, resigning himself, whereupon he felt an immediate sense of great relief - something about never having to sit through another joint PRT meeting, or letting Piggot steal from him or tongue lash him again, and he realized that there was quite a lot about his old life as a hero that he would not be missing as he left it.

So it was with considerably more of his old zest for life and sense of humor as he turned his face to his captor and asked, "Excuse me, miss. Are you hiring?"

Rune stopped what she was doing. "WHAT?!"

That was when Assault/Madcap dipped back into his old bag of tricks and ripped apart his chains.

Unfortunately for some, he did this where it seemed half of the stadium's cameras were still focused on him.

It did not matter to Assault/Madcap, as he knew that the PRT/Protectorate would never forgive him even the slightest of offenses, after all their treatment of him did not incline him to expect any mercy, and they had assured him endlessly that this line, once crossed, was not something they could ignore, and could never be undone. So he had been a good boy and played their game...

... right up until it would have cost him his life to do so.

And if he was going to go villain again (and the heroes had sworn they would hunt him down and never forgive him should he ever do so), he might as well do so with a decent-sized organization at his back, right?

The big organizations kept each other out of jail pretty well, after all.

Considering that his choices were between the Merchants, who controlled their people by addicting them to several kinds of hard drugs, thus destroying their health and sentencing them to short and miserable lives; the ABB, who were tarred with the stink of Lung's rampages at the best of times, but with the recent bombing spree the whole gang probably had a Kill Order issued against them - and besides, he wasn't Asian. That left...

... what kind of a world did he live in that the Nazis were the *least bad* of the available choices?

A pretty messed up world, by any standards.

Idly, he spent a moment wondering how many of the rest of the Empire's members had signed up over similar reasons.

Some days Assault just had to wonder if those conspiracy theories weren't true, about the Protectorate/PRT being the result of some vast criminal conspiracy to destroy the American government's ability to deal with cape crimes.

OoOoO

Omake - Television Ad

"Are you having trouble expressing yourself? Would you like to learn words other than 'smurf'? The Amazing Doctor Whodunit's Vocabulator can help, teaching you all new interjections, and even what the word interjection actually means! Call now for your free trial. Just go to smurf that smurfing smurf-eater dot smurf, and sign up today!"

Armsmaster killed the television add with one click of his remote - still desperately missing his halberd.

"Well?" he asked.

Dragon's image on the other monitor just went on shaking her head. "Unbelievable. What I want to know is how he reprogrammed the entire internet to accept 'dot smurf' as a valid address."

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

In order to write a good comedy story, it must have elements of both comedy, and story. This is not a stand-up routine that rattles off jokes one after another. It cannot be. There have been sections of exposition that seemed 'all story', but there were included others, like raising the Frankenstein's Monster, that leaned toward all comedy.

As for "comedy has to make fun of someone", as should be obvious by now I have chosen as my primary target those stuffed shirt authority figures who have no sense of humor, and feel they must control everything. Because if they can't be a valid target for mockery, who could be?

If we could not poke fun at pompous windbags, they might actually think they were as important as they'd like to believe. And we've already had more than enough 'Dear Fuhrer' regimes in this last century.

So sometimes you've just got to tell the emperor that he's got no clothes.

And having bad things happen to bad people has been an essential part of comedy since time beyond memory. It is as classic a comedic element as it is possible to find. Humans of all races, genders, cultures and languages have shared in laughing at it. It is as universal a part of the human experience as has ever been identified.

I know this goes against the grain of the authority worship they try to teach us; but in my opinion, any human being who declares "Don't worship God, worship ME!" has set themselves up for mockery - which, once you decode their official yet unstated stance of "All religions are false, the only thing you should be trusting is ME!", is exactly what our governments have been saying.

So our various government institutions present us with a target-rich environment for well-deserved ridicule.

Now let it be said that, yes, Assault could have (and probably should have) just waited until the net he was in was underwater before performing his forbidden trick and escaping. However, the reason he was in trouble in the first place is because he has impulse control problems. So he did not think of that, and just went with his first idea that would work.

Beta work by Dogbertcarroll