Week 4
Flechette finished the arrest process, leaving the mugger suspended a few feet above the ground. It was still a bit alien to her, leaving pieces of trash like this lying around for the police to pick up, but it was necessary here in Brockton. The police couldn't send out a car to pick up each arrest as they happen, and the Wards couldn't afford to wait around every time they subdued someone.
Brockton Bay was in a sad state. Flechette could hardly ever go a full night without running into something awful. Beatings, rape, attempted murder, gang wars… they were just normal here after Leviathan. If she hadn't found friends to pull her through, there was no way she could have lasted this long and kept her sanity.
Flechette was only here on loan for a few months, and had been relieved to find out that there were two other girls on the team her own age. All three of them had turned 18 only a few months ago, kept in the Wards mostly to avoid any hostile thinkers figuring out their birthdates. If not for Leviathan, Vista would have already been promoted to the Protectorate, but the PRT considered stability more important in a time like this. All being the same age hadn't necessarily helped much, of course. She and Sophia, Shadowstalker, had never really seen eye to eye.
It had still been one hell of a shock when she'd vanished. She'd gotten into a fight with Vista and run off to do a solo patrol. She'd been involved in the fiasco fighting against Fenrir's Chosen, and then nothing.
The courts were out on whether she'd been killed by a skinhead or killed someone while under the effects of that tinker made chemical weapon and freaked out. She was on probation; if she didn't realize she'd been drugged, she might have tried to run away to avoid being tried as an adult. She had, after all, verifiably committed two murders. Even Miss Militia, leader of the local Protectorate, was under investigation, though it was only a formality. Nobody had been able to tell what was happening to themselves in the moment, but everyone had seen the effect it had on their comrades.
Vista blamed herself; she'd tried to confront Sophia about something or other that night, and it had either lead to her death or breaking her probation. As little as anyone liked Shadowstalker, they all hoped she'd just gotten spooked. Even so, she hadn't visited her home. It wasn't looking good.
Lily walked alongside Vista, lamenting that they'd been put on patrol together. The two girls were friends, but their powers didn't quite mesh and Missy was too professional to chat much when she was in the field. Vista could bend and warp space like putty, which was incredibly useful and powerful. Unfortunately, it fucked with Lily's head.
Lily was hyper aware of distances, trajectories, angles, and basically everything else that Vista made a mockery of on a regular basis. Even worse, if Flechette managed to wrap her head around a specific construction she still needed to remember how things had originally been if she wanted to use her primary power. For whatever reason, her charged bolts ignored any adjustments made by her teammate.
Even so, she was extremely happy to have Vista on the team. She was a good cape, almost certain to go far in the protectorate. Lily hadn't exactly come into her life at a good time, a few days after she'd lost multiple teammates, but they had still been able to bond over the last month.
Lily looked around for a moment, letting Vista walk ahead a few steps. It gave her a chance to look at her target. Gil had noted that Vista was an exceptionally high value target due to the mission, and Rose certainly hoped she'd be able to complete the mission for multiple reasons. If nothing else, Vista was adorable.
https://postimg.cc/fJbxgKZd
She was a petite girl in green and white, with her blonde hair kept in a sensible bob. Her armor was designed in such a way as to suggest curves that she didn't really have, but no practical design could hide quite how small she was. Rose felt Flechette's knowledge augment her own, and was slightly disappointed to find that the question had already been raised and hastily dropped. Flechette shared Rose's tastes. Vista did not seem to, especially not so soon after the death of a crush. That didn't make the mission completely impossible, but it certainly made things harder.
Flechette resolved to focus on getting closer to her. She was no master seductress, but in the utmost worst case scenario she believed she could be an excellent wingwoman. Besides, she hadn't ever had many female friends as Rose, and Flechette always wanted more.
••••••••••
Gil naturally granted himself Soul Talent once the dust settled from "selling" Rose. He liked his girls, sure, but players gave themselves talents first so often that it had become company policy. Soul talent would make him much, much better at learning magic. It served as a multiplier and a limit remover, essentially. Any time he spent practicing or being taught magic would be worth ten to twenty times as much dedicated effort, and the bigger the gap in skill between himself and his teacher the larger the multiplier would grow, up to a factor in the low hundreds if he were personally trained in a new skill by a deity.
There was only one key problem. He didn't have a teacher. He had a book for a style of magic, which would be better than nothing if it was one he could actually use. Hell, Rose's spellbook had even been a primer. It was specifically intended to teach someone the basics. In a test where he wasn't supposed to planeswalk every work day, it would be ideal.
He checked his own status, and noted with some interest that he was now capable of jailbreaking the weave for himself if he wanted to spend 5 credits on a magic system with totally unknown utility and virtually no immediate benefit. If he wanted to do that, he'd want to jailbreak Rose too so she could actually teach him, or else burn a day in Barovia looking for more spellbooks. Complicating that further, Rose had a new option on her menu.
5 credits- Jailbreak: Sting - replicates the powers of the Passenger known as Sting even when not in its home multiverse. Half price as the entity's powers are intended to cross planar lines. Double price as the entity is sapient and aware of its power's use.
That just sounded like a whole can of worms that Gil had stumbled into, and knowing The Company that was the point. He'd been stripped of his memories specifically so this kind of thing would happen, he was certain. He decided to leave Rose as she was for the moment. He might need those credits for something else.
"Ah well, might as well check the stamp shop." Gil grumbled. "Should be a new unlock, right?"
Tattoo Storage (20 stamp credits): Allows stamped retinue members to store items associated with them in their bodies by transforming them into tattoos. These tattoos may be stylized, but they must be recognizable and at least half as large as the real object.
"Not useless, but it's not something I have too much need of right now." Gil mused. "Main use would be letting Ireena run around with her sword. Or I guess Rose Flechette could keep her sword and crossbow. I'll get it eventually, probably?"
He spent much of the day reading through Rose's spellbook, with soul talent allowing him to slowly piece together the contents by turning them over in his head after every few paragraphs. The simplest spells did look like they'd be useful if he could wrap his head around them, but he wouldn't be able to use any of them until he could practice. He wouldn't be able to practice until he went back to Barovia or spent five credits to do so.
Gil sighed. Hopefully this gambit with Flechette would pay off.
••••••••••
Day 2
Lily focused on weight lifting in the PRT gym, after her patrol. She'd been getting more than enough cardio since she came to Brockton Bay, since she had to do her patrols entirely on foot. Unless she was with Vista, that meant parkour and climbing that would make the average urban explorer proud. One of the soldiers was kind enough to spot her.
The Rose part of her found these non-super soldiers odd. They varied in their attitude towards the young heroine wildly. Some held her in awe as a mere mortal who had managed to harm Leviathan, if only slightly. Some treated her as an equal, or at least as a junior colleague: inexperienced but essentially just another person working in the same force. Others very clearly resented her and saw their primary job as controlling her kind, though they masked it with professionalism. Director Piggot was one such individual, though that was operating mostly off of Flechette's memories.
What would they think if they knew she was no longer entirely the young Ward they had known? Likely she'd be quarantined and questioned by therapists and interrogators, then escalated to thinkers if she was deemed a threat. It was lucky then, that none of them had noticed a damn thing. Rose hadn't even tried very hard to hide the changes; neither side of her had been particularly good at acting. If anything she aroused more suspicion that way. Then again, nobody had even noticed that she was white now, so it was hardly shocking that they overlooked small changes to her mannerisms.
Her armor was tailored to fit Rose, not Lily. Lily had been slightly shorter, with slightly broader shoulders. She could remember looking differently, and it didn't matter one jot because the whole world had changed to fit this version of her. Even her official records fit her new build, rather than her old one. Not her powers, though. No Master or Stranger classification for her, which meant they likely didn't know about her ghostly abilities.
She completed her workout, then returned to her quarters. It was a small, spartan room with a fairly simple bed, desk, and chest of drawers. She even had a laptop, not that she got many chances to use it with her busy schedule. Nobody was surprised when the hardworking young girl slept during the day; after all, she had been patrolling all night. Some may have been curious about just how quickly she could get to sleep after closing her eyes, however.
Flechette's soul rose from her body, invisible to the naked eye. Occasionally someone would think that they saw her somewhere else in the base, but that was a risk worth taking. While her body slept, her mind wandered free. Flechette knew that true telepathy was essentially a myth in this world outside of a single terrifying individual, but Rose could enter a waking person's body and read their thoughts with ease. She could watch, listen, and nudge people's behavior quite easily. She suspected she could push if she wanted, as she had when she was a ghost, but she didn't want anyone to know of this ability yet. Her current plan was to "discover" it out in the field, if a time came where it would be useful. After that, she'd no doubt be monitored far more carefully.
Even if someone detected her, she could plead that her wandering was the result of strange dreams and proceed with investigating the power from there. She was in good standing; the PRT would take her word to some degree unless she did something truly heinous. Besides, it was an ability so useful that she'd get the benefit of the doubt. Flechette had trusted the system, but Rose's more cynical eye saw a pattern form when she looked back.
That night, she managed to catch Vista during a moment of private intimacy. She took care in her approach, ducking back out of the room through a wall before she could be noticed. A flicker in the corner of the eye was exactly the sort of thing that could spoil the mood. Flechette's superior spatial awareness came in handy, allowing Rose to circle around and enter Vista from behind by rising up through her bed.
Her fantasies were awfully vanilla, and tinged with melancholy. A young man named Dean, recently deceased and always out of her reach, was the centerpiece. He'd chosen another, a girl by the name of Victoria, according to a little bit of digging. The mucking about caused Victoria to appear in the fantasy, enraged at Dean's cheating.
No. I might not have another chance like this.
With an effort of will, the fantasy changed and Vista continued to work her slick fingers. Victoria was not angry. Why would she be? The two of them were friends. They had agreed to share Dean, and he'd accepted. It was plausible as a fantasy, though extremely unlikely to have ever been brought to fruition. Victoria was a bit spoiled, and unlikely to have ever agreed to sharing.
Quite beautiful, however.
Almost in spite of herself, Rose altered the dream further. Vista imagined not only Victoria's assent, but her participation. Her soft, pristine hands touched the small heroine. Her teeth found Vista's earlobe. The fantasy was intense, detailed, and pushed forward by Rose's will. Making Victoria an active participant even made it easier for Missy to rationalize in a way; Glory Girl would have wanted something out of any such arrangement. Vista came three or four times over the course of an hour, before settling down for sleep.
Rose didn't know if such an indirect sexual encounter would count for the mission. Even if she'd been aware that it did not, she'd have considered it a victory. A step in the right direction, one that Vista would hopefully not question. Even better, her own body had been sleeping restfully the entire time.