3 Prologue 3: Boring Discussion

Brockton Bay

PHQ, Training Room #1

June 14th, 09:50

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The main training room in the PHQ is a large, open area, roughly a hundred metres long and an extra twenty wide of dull grey walls and padded blue floors. To the right upon entry, there is a selection of exercise equipment set up and ready, from simple weight racks, to what seems like hydraulic presses that serve the same function, but for people capable of hefting much greater weights, or even complex looking devices clearly designed to measure the strength of one's punch.

But while all these devices do take up a large portion of the room, the majority of it is still left empty of anything but the padded floors. The room is, after all, reinforced for the sake of sparring with powers.

Walking into this room, Miss Militia barely pays it a glance before focusing her attention on those who are already inside. Assault and Battery stand to one side, flirting with each other, or rather Assault is flirting with Battery, who is pretending she doesn't enjoy it. 

Standing a short distance from the couple, is two men and one woman, all in lab coats and holding onto a clipboard each, seemingly locked in a riveting discussion.

Heads turn in her direction as she enters the room, closing the door behind herself and approaching the clipboard wielding people. Assault and Battery are quick to approach too, Assault being the one to greet her.

"Yo, Bosswoman! How're things?"

"Good, actually," she answers with a light smile, thinking rather bitterly on how rare it is for 'things' to really be good in her city.

"Cool beans. So, why're we here with the nerds?" Assault asks, thumbing at the trio over his shoulders, and not seeming to notice his partner elbowing him in the ribs.

"Hey! We're not nerds!" Exclaims one of the nerds, Sheldon.

"Weren't you literally just telling us about a model 0-4-0 class 06 British diesel shunter that you're going to start painting today?" Asks the female nerd, Amy, her tone self-deprecating and droll.

At her rebuke, Sheldon can only sputter uselessly, before slumping forward with a sigh and muttering, "w-well. That doesn't mean he has to say it..."

Clearing her throat, Miss Militia gives Assault a look, to which he simply averts his eyes and whistles innocently. "Most of the paperwork has been sorted by now, so I thought it was about time we put our new Wards-to-be through some power testing."

"Ah, that explains the nerds," Assault nods his head sagely, stroking his chin as if he had a beard, while Battery merely drags a hand down her face in dismay.

"Moving on," Battery says with a scathing look directed at Assault, "how are things with those two anyway, what're their deals? I've not really been kept in the loop."

"Well," Miss Militia starts, somewhat awkwardly, "there's a lot to unpack."

She takes a moment to decide where to start, brows scrunching slightly in sympathy. "I'll start with Rei Suzuya first then. He was kidnapped into slavery at a fairly young age by Big Master, however no one would buy him, so he ended up getting thrown into the fighting pits instead. However he managed to survive and impressed Master, who then 'adopted' him. He triggered not long later, and was at some point mutilated," her grimace does not go unseen, "though I haven't asked him about it, for obvious reasons, so I'm not sure if the events are connected."

"Wait- hang on a minute. Mutilated? Other than looking like a doll, he seemed pretty unmutilated to me?" Assault interrupts, making Miss Militia sigh despondently.

"Yes. That is exactly the reason. According to Mary, Juuzou, I mean, their 'Papa'," another grimace, her disgust at the man's behaviour clear, "wanted them both to be perfect dolls. He made them wear makeup and dresses, and in an attempt to make Suzuya as doll-like as Mary, he, well... got rid of what separated them."

It takes a moment of staring incomprehensibly at her before Assault seems to get her meaning and almost instantly experiences a wince of sympathetic pain, his hands subconsciously twitching to defend his crotch. "Ah... I see."

With the mood having taken a sombre turn, Miss Militia can only sigh, having known that such would happen. Their stories are not pleasant ones, but they need to be told if they want to help the poor pair.

"Yeah. As it is now, Suzuya is relatively well adjusted. At the very least, he's a very positive boy, fifteen years old, and he does truly seem to be kind, though his upbringing has left him rather lacking in terms of empathy. So if he ever hurts someone, something, or anything similar, then please just gently let him know that it's wrong, he really just doesn't understand. It's the same case for Mary, neither of them seem to have any real empathy left, except perhaps for each other. In short, Suzuya is pretty easy to deal with so long as you stay casual. He'll probably annoy the hell out of Piggot, but beggars can't be choosers and all that."

Assault smiles at the thought of Director Piggot getting annoyed, while Battery merely sighs again. The trio of nerds however are all studiously jotting down notes for whatever their purpose is. She only knows that they were sent by Director Piggot to help 'assess' the potential two new charges. What, exactly is being assessed, was not clear however.

"Then there's the more troublesome of the two, Mary, formally Juuzou."

"More troublesome than an excitable, sociopathic child with a body count that's probably higher than he is tall?" Assault asks, voice laden with sceptic sarcasm.

Miss Militia doesn't so much as blink. "Yes, very much so. Her identity alone is troublesome enough, so I'll give a similarly abridged summary of her life so far. She was born seventeen years ago as Maryam Malaki Bint Al-Chire Kadir Bin Abdullah Al-Hakim," she ignores the raised brows and low breaths at the length of her name, "daughter to an old family of doctors in the Middle East. Unfortunately, she was kidnapped as a child, and not because of the wealth of her family, but simply as a target of opportunity. As a side note, whatever the slavers who took her away made from her, it will have been pennies compared to what they could have gotten holding her ransom, so they clearly didn't know her identity."

It really is morbidly amusing. It's still a horrible thing of course, a little girl was stolen away from her family at such a tender age. But her family is old and wealthy, if her kidnappers held her ransom they could have made millions, instead they probably only sold her for less than one hundredth of what they could have gotten.

"Wait a minute, if she's from some rich old family, wouldn't they want her back? Like, we can't just keep her here away from them, right?" Battery jumps in to ask, only for Miss Militia to sigh once again.

"Unfortunately, her family was killed in the last Endbringer attack. She doesn't have anyone to go back to."

If it was possible, the mood of the conversation only gets more sombre at the admittance, but she pushes forward regardless.

"According to her, she spent the next decade or so being traded around like a super-rare collectable," seeing the flat look Assault is giving her, she quickly adds, "her words, not mine. More importantly, is that she triggered some time during her early teens, she doesn't know exactly how old she was, and started also being used as a bodyguard and or fighter. It was only about a year or two ago that she was bought by Master and met Suzuya and Party Trick. And speaking of the one who got away, Mary said that we should give up on trying to find them, before refusing to give any information on her erstwhile companion."

That was an interesting conversation, and one that has actually only served to heighten Miss Militia's opinion of the cynical girl. Even if it is vexing to not get any leads on how they might find Party Trick. They seem to have completely disappeared, but the way Mary spoke makes her think that Party Trick is still in the city.

"Now, as for what makes her more troublesome, it's that Mary seems to delight in making people uncomfortable. She's probably developed something of a sadistic streak, and for all that she may not act like it-" 

Miss Militia pauses, suddenly feeling like saying what she was about to say would be a mistake, and then she panics briefly, realising that she's paused for too long.

"-she is actually really protective over Suzuya," she finishes, rather lamely. But if any of them are suspicious, none of them voice it.

In truth, she was going to mention Mary's clear and vitriolic dislike of Heroes as a whole, and how though she may act friendly, she actually really seems to dislike them all. However she realised that doing so would only serve to sour everyone's opinion of her.

At the end of the day, Miss Militia wants both Suzuya and Mary to feel welcomed, to experience warmth and happiness here. Letting everyone around here be suspicious of her intentions wouldn't do well in providing that sort of environment.

No, Miss Militia will keep that to herself for now, and hope that maybe the girl's mask will start to become truly genuine.

"Cool. So, a pair of troubled youths are at our doorstep, in need of reformation. Doesn't that sound familiar, Puppy? I hear they even demanded not to be spilt up and everything." Assault says, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively to Battery, who's face scrunches up in annoyance. And, luckily for her, her mask hides most of her blush.

Luckily for her, she is saved from further teasing by the sound of the door being opened. 

Collectively, they all turn to look, only for their greetings to die on their, now twitching, lips at what they see.

First to enter is Suzuya, who has cut his black hair down to just above his shoulders and lifted and tightened his black sweat pants so that they stop half way down his shin. Other than that, his black sweats remain the same as always as he happily skips into the room, arms swaying side to side.

Behind him however, is Maryam and their escorts, a pair of faceless troopers. Her white hair is just as long as before, but she has also modified her outfit, tearing her sweat pants until they are so short that they can barely be considered shorts, and then wrapped her white shirt around her waist like a makeshift skirt. Beyond that, she has also torn her sweat top into a crop top, also tearing off the arms to show even more skin. At the very least, she seems to have crudely attached the ripped off pieces of her sweats to the shirt around her waist, lengthening the skirt somewhat.

Neither of them have any makeup on this time, making Suzuya actually seem more boy-like, while Maryam actually seems more attractive now than she did before. She also notably has green eyes now, instead of black like Suzuya's.

But what really catches their eyes, is the large set of cuffs wrapped around her hands as she waddles in. They aren't just normal cuffs either, they are Brute rated cuffs. Designed to cover all the way up the forearms in solid steel, both hindering movement and leaving her lugging around a not insignificant weight.

"Ohayo~!!!" Is Suzuya's enthusiastic greeting, paired with an excited over the head wave that only Assault and Amy returns.

"Why is she in cuffs?" Miss Militia asks the troopers, her tone not quite demanding but a near thing. She notices the way Maryam turns to the side at her question, a pout on her lips and a faint blush on her cheeks.

The two troopers share a glance, not that they can see each other's faces through the helmets, and the one on the left seems to lose the silent conversation. She watches as they straighten their back, hands falling to clasp behind them as they fall back on their old military mindset, a common way for ex-soldiers, who make up a large majority of PRT troopers, to deal with awkward situations.

"She broke off one of the bars of her cell door into a javelin and through it at Miss Suzuya hard enough that it embedded itself in the wall opposite, Ma'am."

At his words, Miss Militia turns her eyes to Maryam, somehow managing to convey an extreme level of disappointment through just her eyes. The younger woman fidgeting lightly as she continues to avert her eyes. Eventually however, Miss Militia's gaze of motherly disappointment becomes too much.

"It's not my fault! He started it! And it's not like anyone was hurt anyway, just a stupid bit of metal!" 

At her exclamation, Suzuya simply sticks his tongue out at her and pulls down one of his eyelids, taunting her while the adults smile slightly at the childish antics.

"Mary." Miss Militia says severely, silencing any further outbursts. "Please do not assault people. You're still on probation, remember, so behave."

Seemingly sufficiently chastised, Maryam lets out a huff of air and mutters some vague sound of acceptance, almost making Miss Militia roll her eyes.

Teenagers, she thinks with some bemusement. Only for that bemusement to quickly fade away as the girl starts grinning.

"Anywho," she says, but whatever Miss Militia was expecting her to say, she was not prepared for what she did, as Maryam's eyes suddenly start to glow with power. Or, more specifically, they glow red, and the world seems to freeze.

She hardly even notices as Maryam spreads out her arms, tearing through the steel casing with ease, far too focused on watching with bated breaths her eyes. Her red eyes.

Somewhat distantly, she notices that her power has transformed into a Remington shotgun in her hands, and she just knows without looking that Assault and Battery are frozen in the same position.

But then the moment passes, and she can see all the differences.

Only her irises turned red, and more of a pale-red, than a blood red. Her sclera are still white, her face still the same, her body unchanged.

It's not Her. She thinks to herself, though it doesn't bring as much comfort as she would have liked. Memories of red eyes filled with madness, tearing through Heroes like a farmer culling wheat flashing in her minds eye, a tense, knot of instinctual fear settling in her gut. It's not Her.

"Are we gonna get started or what?" Maryam says, her eyes fading back to green as she massages her wrists, hardly seeming to notice just how tense everyone other than Suzuya has just become. "Or are ya just gonna stare at me instead? Look, I get it, I'm sexy as all hell, but I was under the impression I'd be getting to punch someone today?"

And suddenly, the tension in the room fades away. Miss Militia's power dissolves back into green energy, reforming as an M1911 by her side, the others all relax, tense shoulders slumping in slight relief.

"What?" Maryam asks, noticing now how everyone is looking at her.

"Your eyes." Miss Militia says, gulping slightly as she masterfully represses her latent fear.

"They shine like emeralds and compliment my beauty? I get it." Suzuya snorts slightly at her conceited boasting, but Miss Militia pays it no mind.

"They were red," she says instead, getting only a curious look from Maryam.

"Ok? That happens when I use my power on my eyes. So what though?"

Sighing at her ignorance, Miss Militia takes a couple steps closer, so that she can lay a hand on the shorter girl's shoulder. "Just..." She pauses, unsure how to phrase this. "Red eyes make people nervous. Bad memories. Just... Just try to avoid showing anyone your eyes when they're red. Please?"

She's going to have to make sure to pass this on to the PR people, because Maryam is going to need a visor or something when she gets her costume designed.

In the face of her worry, Maryam simply looks at her, her expression falling into one of blank consideration, and Miss Militia feels like she sees a hint of something in her eyes, before the moment passes and she is unsure if it was even real as the girl simply shrugs off her hand, face turning bland.

"Sure, whatever. Gonna have to give me goggles or something then. Wouldn't want the public to be nervous around me if I'm supposed to make 'em feel safe, right?"

"Exactly," Miss Militia agrees with a smile, moving away and clapping her hands lightly, "now, I suppose we should get started, no?"

Maryam shrugs her shoulders, and Suzuya makes some sort of exclamation of agreement, before on of the lab coats speaks up, the one who had been silent so far.

"Alright then, could we start by just getting an explanation of how your powers work, please?" He, Leonard, by his name tag, asks.

"Ooh! Ooh! Me first! Me first!" Suzuya exclaims, before continuing on without waiting for confirmation. "My power lets me control things wrapped around my heart!"

The room descends to silence for a moment as they wait for more explanation, only for Suzuya to remain silent, rocking back and forth on his heels as he looks at them all with wide, happy eyes. Maryam meanwhile, plants a palm on her face and shakes her head in exasperation.

"Uh. Can- can you uh, give a little bit more detail than that?" Leonard asks, somewhat awkwardly. However the awkwardness only grows as Suzuya looks uncomprehendingly upon him, as if his question simply doesn't make any sense.

"Retards," Maryam mutters under her breath, quite enough that Miss Militia only heard it due to proximity, before speaking again, louder this time. "Suzu-kun is a neanderthal," she says, and judging by the face Suzuya makes, Miss Militia is pretty sure that her word choice was specifically so that Suzuya wouldn't know he was being insulted, "if you wanna know stuff, just ask me instead, or you're wasting your time tryna throw starfish into the ocean."

An odd choice of phrase, especially since it's use in this context implies that Maryam interoperated the story in the exact opposite way it was supposed to be heard. A short story about a girl throwing starfish back into the ocean after being washed up with the tide. A man approaches and asks her, "why do you bother? There are so many starfish on the beach that you could never make a meaningful difference."

But the girl simply picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean before replying, "I made a difference to that one."

The moral of the story being that helping someone always makes a difference, even if the greater picture remains undisturbed. But the way Maryam used the story tells her that the girl sees it how the man at the start did. Just a pointless endeavour.

It's amazing what you can learn about someone from the simplest of phrases, and it's nice to know that if she wants Maryam to understand something, she'll have to focus on using the bigger picture to convince her, instead of the little things.

Regardless of her thoughts, Leonard changes who he is addressing as advised. "So, uhm, could you please explain Miss Suzuya's power, then?"

"Sure!" Maryam exclaims with false cheer, "she can control things wrapped around her heart!"

Leonard's expression freezes and Miss Militia sighs as the girl bursts out laughing.

It takes a long moment for her to calm herself down before she speaks again, wiping a tear from her eye, glancing again at Miss Militia with a look of something she can't describe in her eyes. "Kidding~ kidding~. Suzu-kun has a suuuper weak telekinesis outside his body, Manton limited and only capable of controlling like a few grams worth of weight. But that part of his power is just supplementary really."

That would be the weakest power she would have ever heard of if that was all it was, so it's no surprise if that aspect is supplementary.

"The real sweetness come from when he wraps something around his heart, because then he just gets to control the whole of that thing, whatever it is. So he uses the telekinesis to grab onto a couple threads of his clothes and drags them through his body to wrap around his heart. Show 'em, Suzu-kun. They'll want to see it anyway."

At her words, Suzuya shrugs and suddenly his clothes come to life, stretching and puffing out before splitting down the centre, opening up to show his bare chest. Miss Militia was expecting to see scars, considering his past, but she only sees an unblemished chest of toned, if slim, muscles.

With the exception of the skin over his heart, where three individual threads can be seen, seemingly growing out of his chest in a triangle formation. Though, as if worried they wouldn't know what to look at, Suzuya helpfully forms a heart with both his thumbs and forefingers and circles the threads with it.

"Those threads are from his clothes and wrap around his heart so he can control them. Simple as that," Maryam says, though Miss Militia can't help but feel like there is something that she is keeping from them. However she won't blame her for that. It's nothing new for parahumans to want to keep an ace or two hidden.

There's a moment of quiet as the trio of nerds scribble who knows what down on their clipboards, during which Assault and Battery mutter quietly between each other. Suzuya makes his way over to Maryam, jumping on her back and wrapping his arms around her neck with a closed eye smile, seemingly content to just rest on her back, not that she seems to mind.

"Right," Leonard says, done annotating, "could you, uh, tell us about your power now?"

"Sure. Mines a lot simpler though. It works by trade; I give my power one of my senses, and it returns the favour by doubling my stats, oh and I can generate some fire too."

"Stats?" Sheldon asks, only making Maryam roll her eyes.

"Yeah, like strength and stuff. You know, like in video games."

"Ah," he responds, jotting something down before pausing, tilting his head and then looking back at Maryam, "is that limited to just the five senses?"

"Proprioception." She answers without answering. but Sheldon seems to understand if the way he nods his head is any indication, and he jots some more words down before pausing and scrunching up his face as if an idea suddenly came to mind.

"Six doubles makes for a twelve time multiplier, unless..." He mutters to himself before raising his head back to Maryam, "is that linear? Or exponential?"

"I want to hold your hand~~," she sings out, once again answering without answering.

This time however, Sheldon doesn't seem to understand the answer, but is saved by Amy who almost recoils as the lightbulb goes off in her head and she understands. "I Want to Hold Your Hand is a song by the Beatles. It was the number one hit of '64."

The two men with her both have their faces light up with understanding, but other than makes vague noises of understanding, none of them deign to explain what is going on to everyone else in the room, who is simply looking between the two parties with confusion.

"Uh, someone mind explaining what just happened?" Assault asks the question on everyone's mind, only for the trio of lab coats to glance up at him in befuddlement, as if the answer is obvious.

"Sixty-four." Sheldon says, as if it explains everything. It does not.

"Uhuh," Assault says drily, "it's a nice number."

Luckily, Leonard seems to understand that he needs more explanation. 

"With a base of two and six as the exponent, you get sixty-four. Basically, her power is exponential, so instead of having a max output of twelve, it's max is sixty-four."

"Coulda just said that," Assault grumbles, before turning to Maryam with a raised brow, "wait, does that mean you can multiply your strength by sixty-four times?"

"Sure, if I want to be deaf, dumb, blind, anosmic, anaptic and completely incapable of balancing myself or any kind of hand-eye coordination, then yeah, totally." The sarcasm in her tone as she answers is the kind that can only be found in teenagers, but Assault is shameless enough that it doesn't bother him at all.

"Cool. Still can't move me with your punches though," he says, grinning tauntingly at her, a grin that is returned.

"Oya~? Wanna test that theory, old man?"

"You say that like it's an insult, but really it just makes it more embarrassing that you can't even knock over an old man like me, no matter how hard you hit~."

Luckily, Maryam seems to take his taunting in good humour, and simply cracks her knuckles with a smile.

Well, Miss Militia thinks, somewhat bitterly but still amused at the same time, I guess we'll to the testing in reverse then, and start with the spars.

Unfortunately for Maryam, she was banned from using her fire for safety reasons, and no matter how hard she can punch, it doesn't really matter against someone who can manipulate kinetic energy.

Still, Miss Militia would call today a successful day, if only because no one was left bleeding or otherwise injured. But maybe she's just setting the bar too low.

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Almost done with the prologue.

Also, what do you think about Maryam and Suzuya's powers? I think they're pretty interesting, especially Suzuya.

Also, I did a little funny by making it so that when Maryam goes blind from her power, her irises turn red, partly just because it's funny, but also partly because I love references that aren't explained, and because it adds a little bit of mystery for anyone who hasn't read Jester, while also being hopefully amusing for everyone who has read Jester first :)