[SLTS]—❈—11:: Lone Wolf of Vengeance

“So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Mom says to the woman on the screen, Rebecca Costa-Brown, Chief Director of The PRT, “you want my son to help your organization, after a villain—who was working for you guys, I might add—got his identity from you and almost succeeded in killing him?”

“Yes,” Chief Director Costa-Brown replies unflinchingly. “Because there are over a dozen other heroes in The PRT ENE, some of them teenagers like your son, whose safety are in jeopardy until we clean house.”

“And my power is great at that,” I can’t help but add with some sass.

“As you’ve had to prove too many times already,” Mom throws in.

It’s Sunday, the day after the morning when a local villain I’d hardly ever given much thought to had an assassin put a bullet in my throat.

A villain who, in his civilian identity, was a consultant with The PRT.

A villain whose power—still unknown—had somehow allowed him to avoid all of The PRT’s background checks and security measures.

And now here is the Chief Director of The PRT calling to ask for my help in ensuring that something like that doesn’t happen again. At least in the Brockton Bay branch.

To be honest, I’m all for it, and I’m pretty sure that Mom is too. The thought of there being another Coil in The PRT is fucking terrifying.

By unanimous (and unspoken) agreement though, Mom and I have decided not to make it easy for the Chief Director.

And really, why should we?

“Five million dollars,” Costa-Brown says, and Mom and I both perk right up at the sum.

We stare at each other.

‘Holy shit!’ both our eyes practically scream.

We look back to Costa-Brown.

“The PRT is willing to compensate you, for services rendered, the sum of five million dollars,” the Chief Director elaborates. “Tax-free.”

“Well, um…” Mom clears her throat. “That’s a lot of money.”

“No, it isn’t,” Costa-Brown says seriously. “Not after everything you’ve down for us, and certainly not after everything you’ve been through.”

Even through the screen, the Chief Director’s intense gaze burns into us like lasers.

“In the name of power-testing, you healed over a hundred people, all of them affiliated with The PRT and The Protectorate in some way. The day after that, you helped expose Shadow Stalker’s crimes and get justice for her victims. And even now, after the harm that came to you both thanks to our incompetence, you still haven’t made any demands for restitution.

“You are good people. The kind of people that we need and unfortunately have too few of. So no, five million dollars is not a lot of money. Not for you.”

I swallow, held spellbound by the Chief Director.

“Join us, Aiden,” Costa-Brown says. “And if you won’t join us, then at the very least, help us. Because heaven knows we need it.”

Mom looks at me, letting me know that even though what she wants for me is to join The Wards, she’ll still support me if I say no.

That’s good to know, but I’m not going to say no.

“I’ll help,” I say, and Costa-Brown gives me a small, relieved smile.

“Glad to have you with us,” she says.

I smile.

I still don’t like The PRT and Protectorate. I still think they’re failures at their job; more so now after the events of the past week than ever before.

Regardless of my feelings towards them though, I’m going to help them. In fact, depending on how things go, I’m going to join The Wards.

It may seem ridiculous, and maybe it is, but I’m going to do it. For the same reason why Mom and I didn’t pack up and leave The Bay back when Dad was murdered by a Nazi not even six months into our moving here.

We’re stubborn. Mulish. Maybe even foolhardy. More importantly, we’re angry. And it has taken everything that I have to restrain that rage for the last sixteen months.

I’m tired.

I can’t do it anymore.

I want to hurt people. Bad people. I want to find them, those awful people who think that they’re untouchable, and I want to touch them all over.

I want to make them scared of stepping outside their homes, just as Mom and I, and others like us, have been scared of stepping outside our homes.

Before the Shadow Stalker event, the only way I could think of to accomplish this goal, was by going out there and becoming some lone wolf of vengeance type.

But that never really appealed to me, cause if I do that I’ll lose Mom. And The PRT will gladly brand me a criminal and I’ll probably just end up much like the people I set out to stop in the first place.

Look at Gavel; look at Retribution; look at Vendetta; all powerful parahumans who set out with an understandable desire to correct The PRT’s shortcomings. All people who understandably had to be put down in the end.

I had no desire to have that be my story.

But then Mom talked me into giving The Protectorate a try. And I met The Wards. And the Shadow Stalker thing happened.

Punching Shadow Stalker in the face for all the terrible things she did would have felt good.

Ruining her life, getting justice for her victims, taking down her cohorts, and knowing, that for as long as she lives, Shadow Stalker will likely get wet dreams about murdering me, feels so much better.

So I’m going to work with The PRT, so that one day, I can sit across the interrogation desk from Kaiser or Lung, and tear. Their lives. Apart.

—❈—

Three days; that’s how long the investigations last, and by the end of it, I’ve sniffed out a depressingly large number of cases of treason, corruption, negligence, and just plain old incompetence.

The investigations are held by the Internal Affairs Department of an out-of-town branch, leaving no one involved with the Brockton Bay PRT/Protectorate exempted.

It’s a little awkward for me, to be honest; having to vet all these people, people that I’ll be working with in the future, of their loyalty to an organization that they’ve been in for years (in many cases) before I showed up.

They take it well enough though. All of them understand the importance of what’s being done.

They don’t much like it, but they understand.

The only person who refuses to play ball is the Director herself, Emily Piggot.

I don’t meet her, but word reaches me that she said she would rather die, than have her loyalty to The PRT called into question by a parahuman, right before she resigned.

‘Is it because of her pride?’ I can’t help but wonder. ‘Or does she actually have something to hide and this is her way of walking out with some dignity?’

I don’t know, and in twenty-four hours, when she’s replaced by a black woman named Toni Bell, it hardly matters anymore.

After the investigation, I decide to officially join The Wards, and, on José’s insistence, Mom hires a fancy parahuman attorney; an expense only now affordable thanks to the five million dollars from The PRT.

It turns out to be largely unnecessary.

After everything, The PRT is practically willing to give us the keys to The White House at this point, if we ask for it.

—❈—

Chief Director of The PRT Rebecca Costa-Brown once again picked up the phone on the first ring.

“I’ve walked the path,” Contessa said and the line went dead.

Rebecca returned the phone to her desk.

Three capes for one, she mused. It would seem a loss if Musa hadn’t proven himself worth it ten times over.

—❈—

Dean Stansfield, Rory Christner, and Jamie Holliday, more popularly known as the Protectorate heroes Gallant, Triumph, and Battery, will never know this now, seeing as their memories of it have all been altered, but they never triggered.

No, indeed their powers were quite literally handed to them in a vial. By an organization that will now never come to collect the debt that they’re owed, all because they couldn’t risk a certain nosy thinker getting so much as a whiff of their existence.

How crazy the changes a single life can bring.