So it turns out that walking into the PRT as a new parahuman who wants to report an assault by a different parahuman gets you seen to impressively fast. Putting out just enough aura that my eyes went clock-face might have helped. Not that I did it on purpose, it just turns out that wanting justice and talking to the authorities is enough to push my radius out a bit. I guess it is "bringing order" of sorts. I suppose the control mechanism for my power is a smidge more organic than I thought it was.

Taylor, due to being the one who’d actually approached the desk, thunder in her expression, got just as much attention as I did. That kind of official attention was always hard, especially for somebody whose main experience with authority was the Winslow administration, but she could handle it. I hoped. I really don’t have all that much evidence to support that hope, but sometimes you have to have faith. She’d recovered from the Juice Incident pretty quickly, but she seemed to see the PRT, since they represented authority, as a bit of an antagonist, something she’d have to *force *to do their job. Hard not to, in her position, but I hoped she’d be able to recover from that in time. It probably wasn’t good for her.

The room I was ushered into was nicer than I’d been expecting. Nothing over the top, just a bog-standard conference room, but it had decorations and softish chairs and a whiteboard, and there were refreshments on the table. Helping myself to a glass of water, I was looking away from the door when someone came in. A cough seized my attention with slightly embarrassing alacrity.

I hadn’t been expecting a cape, particularly one I didn’t recognize. Not that I recognized all that many heroes, Jacqueline’s knowledge of the cape scene was mostly focused on who to avoid, and my grasp on her knowledge wasn’t as good as hers had been, her memories weren’t quite as real to me as I remembered them being to her. If that makes sense.

Actually, even if it doesn’t make sense, it’s still true. Deal with it. Though they were getting a little clearer. I hadn’t even heard of Brockton Bay before all this, and by now it was like I’d lived here for at least a couple months. Old Jacqueline had been here for years though, so clearly it wasn’t all the way. At least not yet.

This was presumably a hero, since the PRT had sent him to talk to me. Bright red everything and that cocky grin on his face indicated the "subtlety, what’s that?" school of thought that pretty much required either great stupidity or serious backing. At least that was true back home, not sure how accurate that is here. Superpowers might let you get away with that kind of thing. Probably did actually. I know I’d find it a lot harder to stand up to someone who could splat me with a flick of their wrist. Sassing Patron-baka aside. They’ve earned it.

"Hey, kid, are you alright? You’ve been staring off into space for the last minute" he said, entirely correctly, much to my chagrin. I shook myself and nodded. He smiled even more, and introduced himself. "I’m Assault, with the local Protectorate. I hear you’ve had an interesting day?"

Okay, be friendly, be polite, you need all the help you can get. Also, be cute. Be freaking adorable.

Seriousness is one of the more basic acts to learn, but making it look like an act is trickier. At least making it look like an act *on purpose *is trickier, anyway. Practice is your watchword there. In this case, I was deliberately letting through just a bit of my (genuine, but deliberately poorly concealed) nervousness and childishness.

"A bit of an understatement, I am most afraid, Mr. Assault. Since the lunch bell rang, I’ve stumbled across a vicious campaign of torment and harassment waged by three school-age girls against another school-age girl, been brutally assaulted when I tried to talk them out of it, discovered that the school-age girl who assaulted me was a parahuman, discovered *I *was a parahuman, helped the target of the aforementioned campaign through shock, or at least tried, and gone across the city twice trying to sort things out."

I was leaving out the part about mergers, patrons, and alternate universes. I didn’t want to seem any crazier than I actually was. (I wasn’t silly enough to assume I was perfectly sane. No one is, in my experience.)

"Like I said, interesting. And you don’t need to call me Mr." spaketh the wiseguy.

"I should *probably *explain. Let me start at the beginning." I told him, ignoring the second part of his statement. My "probably" was laced with just the right hint of nervousness. I was rather surprised how well I pulled it off, actually. Just a bit of frantic essence sold the image perfectly.

Yes, I used exactly the same phrasing at the start of these reports. I find myself making cryptic statements I need to elaborate on a lot, so expect to hear it again. Full disclosure, I cribbed quite a bit of what you’ve read here from the explanation I proceeded to give Assault. "Patron" may be able to force me to make these reports, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a little lazy about repeating myself, especially if it’s the first time for you lot anyway. If Patron doesn’t like that, or the way I’m dropping the "the" from their self-appointed title, they can tell me themselves. Or just suck it up, it’s not like I really owe them anything. Jerk. I’m not going to try putting the adorableness into text though, except in quotes and stuff. These reports are annoying enough already.

I started with how I’d overheard the ongoing incident, proceeded through falling on my face and my unsuccessful attempt at diplomacy, went on to getting punched in the face, carried that through to my counterattack and seeing Miss Hess go through the sink, covered the vicious beating I received afterwards in more detail than I like to think about, the clockwork aura (and *there’s *that catchier name) and my revelations about it, a brief sweep of what I’d learned from Taylor, deciding to go to the PRT, picking up Taylor’s journals and actually going to the PRT. "And then I got seen to really quickly and ushered into this room and I was thirsty and then you walked up behind me and coughed and then you know what happened"

Assault looked uncommonly serious. Or maybe he was usually serious and his prior behaviour was what was uncommon. I tended to doubt that theory though, he did not give off that impression. I think it was his eyes, they glimmered with amusement far too much. I’d never actually seen eyes glimmer before, but they did. Maybe Jacqueline had a better eye for that sort of thing than I did, or maybe it was a power thing. I know she had better eyes in general. She had to wear glasses, yes, but her prescription wasn’t anywhere near as strong.

"And you are completely certain of all of this?" he said.

"As certain as I can be. There *are *head injuries and parahuman powers involved, after all." I conceded.

"Bleepedy Bleeping Bleep."

He actually said something else, but I’d rather not repeat it. I hope you don’t mind. I wondered why this case made him so angry. I mean, it was awful, yes, but awful things happened in Brockton Bay all the time. Seriously, there hadn’t been a day without a violent incident of some sort in decades. I guess most of them were less protracted? Or maybe he was just getting fed up. He seemed like he’d been a cape for a pretty long time.

A small amount of time later (I was the only clock in the room, and I didn’t have a second hand) (and I couldn’t see my own face without a mirror, which I didn’t have) (and my aura wasn’t turned up enough to go full clock-hands for eyes) (and I didn’t know if my eyes in clock-face mode corresponded to the actual time anyway), he said something less profane, remarkably politely for how angry he had been, and probably still was: "Would you mind staying a little longer, I’m afraid my superiors will have further questions? Also, do you have a preferred cape name?"

"Not at all, Mr. Assault, and I rather like La Mademoiselle de Ma’at. It’s a little on the nose, but I feel it carries the right impression", I demurred.

"Isn’t that a bit of a mouthful?" Mr. Assault questioned

"Mayhaps, but it will serve for the moment" I replied

"Indubitably" spaketh the Mr. Assault

"Indubitably" La Mademoiselle de Ma’at verbalized

That’s when we both broke down giggling.

---

After that, things returned to normalcy, such as it was. People came in, asked questions, received answers, and left. Some of them made sense, like the one who tried to help me recall the fight blow-by-blow. Others less so, like the one who asked me my opinions of each of their Wards one by one. I had no reaction to most of them, not having heard of them before, but one, a "Clockblocker" stood out. I was, after all, sort of a clock, and clocks that don’t work get thrown out. If this individual could block me, that was all sorts of terrifying.

Maybe that doesn’t actually follow, but it had been a long day with several shocks to my system and multiple blows to the head. Fears don’t have to be rational to be scary, especially when you’re already off-balance.

After a while, some of the people were less "asking a few questions" and more "explaining a few things", but that was alright. Some of it I already knew, like why picking superpowered fights by yourself wasn’t a good idea, and some of it was clearly a "subtle" attempt at pushing me into the Wards, but a lot of it was new and useful information, though it was all clearly oriented towards the parahuman as warrior/parahuman as champion of justice mentality. I guess that’s what they see the most. Parahumans apparently almost all just jump into conflict like it was catnip or something. They certainly seemed more than a touch surprised that the idea didn’t appeal to me in the slightest.

The unwritten rules were interesting. A sort of moderating force on the raw chaos that was the constant parahuman struggle for dominance. No going after or revealing civilian identities, no rape, keep combat non-lethal (though accidents did happen, as was inevitable with even "non-lethal" violence when you had enough of it). Such were the strictures that kept the forces of order from dealing with some of the worst, but also kept villains from making a complete mess of society. Moderating *that *sort of conflict was a good thing, in my book. Parahumans posed almost all the problems of terrorism and/or irregular warfare back home, but worse. Keeping that from bringing society crashing down was a constant necessity, and the unwritten rules were a big part of that.

The no revealing civilian identities rule was sort of like the rules about disclosure in the trans community, but if *these *rules got broken it wasn’t just the unfortunate disclosee who could get murdered. Though there were a lot fewer open capes here than there were open trans people back home. New Wave did it, and did it well, but they were just about the only ones. Aside from the capes who simply couldn’t pretend to not be capes, but almost all of them had to take a lot of extra precautions.

The director poked her head in briefly, I think just to get the measure of the new parahuman in town. I made sure to be extra respectful to her, that’s got to be a really tough job, especially here. If I was in her position, the city would be on fire within the week. Quite possibly literally. There were *multiple *villainous pyrokinetics in Brockton Bay, after all, and hundreds of gang members with access to lighters and gasoline. Most of whom hated each other and the forces of law and order. Despite her unimpressive appearance, I was in more than a little bit of awe at the woman who’d held *this *city together for nearly a decade.

Assault also had me make a quick stop at one of their medical areas. When a building is as likely to be attacked as a PRT headquarters was, it was apparently only common sense to have more than one. Especially given the number of very nasty villains who liked to attack medical personnel and the wounded. I didn’t know the exact number, but the guy used the word villain*s, *as in plural, so clearly it wasn’t a one time thing. I didn’t have a concussion as far as they could tell, although that might just have been my aura fixing things, and my other injuries were healing very nicely. As in, faster and cleaner than would be possible without parahuman powers or Tinkertech being involved, even if I had gone to a hospital, but not nearly as fast as most parahuman healers could do. Panacea apparently would have everything but the possible concussion done in less than a minute, and the concussion only wouldn’t be fixed in that time because she couldn’t affect brains.

There were a lot of other stops and questions, but they weren’t as interesting. They did get me to do a little demonstration, putting a lot of little mechanical things and broken electronic devices around me for my aura to fix, which it did. Though I did have to pump it up a little. This wasn’t *official *official power testing, but they wanted to have *some *idea of what I could do and scheduling the official lab had to be done in advance. We did that for half an hour, conversations continuing for most of that time once it became clear that talking and listening didn’t stop my aura from working. Several people, including me, received or were sent things after that, though I didn’t recognize most of the names.

I got a little baggie with a PRT-issue cell phone, a couple basic masks, a neat little miniature first aid kit, and a little thingy of pepper spray. The cell phone had been one of the testing items, having been thrown into a television during something they wouldn’t tell me about, but after half an hour in my aura it was better than new. Or maybe just like new, or possibly even a little worse than new. I didn’t really have a good picture of how well it worked when it was new, but it was perfectly serviceable now, which was what was important. Not sure how it compared to the baker’s dozen other cell phones they put in my aura.

Anyway, they said they were giving me all that for my safety. Apparently they didn’t want me getting killed. I had suspected as much, but it was nice to have confirmation. Even if the agent who ruffled my hair when she said that didn’t know how to ruffle hair properly. You have to be gentle and not rush things, Wolfe. They’d even been really nice when I told them why I didn’t want to join their Wards. Apparently most young parahumans reach out and punch somebody and stir up trouble, and regulating that impulse was one of the major driving forces behind the Wards organization. Since I had zero intention of doing that, it wasn’t as big an issue. They did say they’d look into alternatives and ways around the violencey requirement, which was also nice of them.

Eventually, I was released back into the lobby, where I found Taylor speaking with a strange man. Strange as in I didn’t know him, not as in weird. It saddens me that I had to specify that, but after the day I’d had…

Welp, in for a penny, in for a pound. I went to speak with Taylor and the man who was presumably her father.