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A Hero's Retirement (Internship) - a Post-GM Worm/Dispatch crossover fic

Chapter 17

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‘A solution to your problems’ taunted the words on the calling cards in his hand, raised up so he could still read it while laying down under the Mecha Man suit. The card itself was of surprisingly good quality, including the printing in a neat serifed typeface, although Robert didn’t recognize the font itself. For a moment he wondered if Shroud was enough of a narcissist or a neat freak to create his own damn font to use in his own business card… before remembering exactly who he was thinking about, because yes that was absolutely something he’d do. Almost surprising there wasn’t a custom logo printed alongside the text, too.

“What a joke” he couldn't help but mutter. But it was a joke that he knew would be tempting for quite a few people: Shroud was a bastard and a wanted criminal, yes, but going by his personal experience with his goons and what he had been able to research, he was undoubtedly up there when it came cybernetics – the current success of the Red Ring was enough proof of that – so he could easily imagine someone down on their luck being taken in by the promise of power or, going by Taylor’s brief summary of the offer, just general healthcare.

“Blazer, I already told you I’m fine. All we did was talk and then I left” he heard Taylor say, continuing the argument that had led to him being under his mech like a mechanic ignoring his customers while they were arguing.

For all that Taylor was quite mature for her age, it seemed she was still enough of a teenager to be underhanded about sharing bad news. Instead of waiting for the meeting time they’d scheduled and going to Blazer’s room as usual, she’d used the fact she always arrived early to the office to find him in Royd’s workshop and basically kick the big mechanic out of his own workspace so they could talk.

Thankfully Royd, being the cool gentle giant he was, didn't take any offense to it and just went for an impromptu coffee break in the break room.

Not so thankfully, Taylor had clearly and severely understated how things had actually gone on Friday night. Mainly due to the fact that, sure, she did have an interaction with a Red Ring goon in her own home… but that was only the first – and less relevant – half of the story. Because of course she'd end up close enough to the man that had almost killed Robert the Third and had successfully killed Robert the Second that he could have certainly killed her no problem had he not apparently just wanted to have a civil conversation and give her a job offer with a cybernetic arm as payment.

“Taylor,” Blazer replied in a tone that absolutely failed to hide how angry she was “I do not need to tell you that ‘everything worked out in the end’ is not a good excuse for reckless behavior. That is something you regularly criticize in the reports of our heroes!” Oh wow, that was a new tone of frustration coming from Blazer.

Taylor might have claimed that the reason she came to talk to him first was just to get his input on Shroud as a person who had done his best to hunt the man down, but she wasn't fooling anyone. She just wanted to get his reaction out of the way so she wasn't that outnumbered when Blazer brought up the very good point that having clandestine meetings with supervillains in the middle of the night was not something neither a kid nor an SDN employee should be doing.

Honestly, he probably had much less of a reaction than she was expecting, if her almost successfully hidden confusion was anything to go by. She had just dropped the information in a deliberately nonchalant tone and his response was just to reiterate whether or not she was okay and to ask to see the card she had been given. This wasn't because he wasn't worried, of course, but having blown his inheritance while working as a vigilante from the age of 18 up until he got his mech blown, he certainly had a glass house from which he didn't want to throw too many stones. Taylor had fucked up, for all she was pretending otherwise, but the only reason nobody had chewed him out when he had done similar shit at her age was because there was no one to do it – like Blazer, who was always going to do a better job than him at it – so he'd saved her at least one lecture.

Chase, for his part, probably would have ripped her a new one with all the profanity he was fond of if he hadn't arrived alongside their boss. So far, from Robert’s admittedly bad view, he had limited himself to crossing his arms and frowning with enough worry in his eyes that it counted as its own form of guilt tripping. The kind that a disappointed grandpa like the one he looked like would foster, despite his actual age.

“I wasn't being reckless," Taylor lied. “I made an informed decision. I've dealt with Thinkers like Shroud, the only way I'd get anything out of him would be by accepting a situation where he felt in control, and by at least forcing a fast timetable I could gain some ground. If I had waited to talk to you about it, he probably wouldn't show up to any meeting that I tried to schedule anyway, if you didn't just block that altogether.”

Taylor always was a bit too intense when compared to the average teenager, but that was probably the closest she had come to actually raising her voice, from what he had seen so far. Trust the teenager in the room to meet valid concerns with a stone wall… And trust the famous charismatic hero to try anyways. Something something unstoppable force and immovable object something something.

Before things could derail any further, he dragged himself out from under the Mecha Man suit and sat up to look at everyone in the room properly.

“Taylor," he said, cutting the conversation off before things got worse, louder, or both. “Thank you for coming to us and telling the truth about what happened-”

Because yeah, you just needed to consider the timeline of events for a second to realize that Taylor had taken almost two days to actually tell them about what happened and, going by the fact that the messages she’d sent him were extremely vague about it, she probably considered not telling them at all or not sharing the full story. So, even if he agreed with Blazer, he was going to take the olive branch for what it was.

“- also, what’s a ‘Thinker’? That felt like an actual thing, not just a description” he finished, shifting the topic into something Taylor was more likely to be comfortable discussing. For now.

The workshop was never fully quiet, considering the machinery that was still running, but the sudden silence from everyone in the room was a bit jarring. Taylor had turned to look at him with a frown of confusion, which meant she missed Blonde Blazer narrowing her eyes and him before turning to trade looks with Chase, who just shrugged at her and led to her raising a hand to rub her temples.

Meanwhile, Taylor had apparently taken the opportunity to change the subject for what it was and started explaining:

“It was part of the power classification back home. A Thinker is a parahuman – a person with superpowers – whose abilities work by providing more information than they would normally have access to or a way for them to process information more effectively. Additional sense, precognition, that kind of thing,” she said. “Shroud told me himself that he can model projections of the future, which is a clear case of a Thinker power.”

“Even if he does it by augmenting himself?” He asked “He might be smart, but I don’t think he’d be ‘predict the future’ smart without his implants.”

“Fucker wasn’t all that smart about anything that wasn’t tech, either” Chase added “was always a bit of a weirdo even when he was a hero.”

“He’d certainly get a Tinker classification to go with the Thinker one” Taylor replied with a nod “probably a higher rating for that, too. That’s what we called those whose powers were centered on building things, it’s what you’d get, for example,” she finished saying while nodding towards Robert.

“Really?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow “I don’t really have a super power at all. I might be able to maintain this thing-” he patted the suit right beside him “-but I’m not sure I could have built it from the ground up. That’s not even counting the Astral Pulse.”

“The classifications were created for threat assessment more than anything” Taylor explained with a shrug “you are a guy with a robot suit, so they’d treat you with the relevant protocols, which would be the Tinker ones. Plus Brute, Mover and Blaster ratings and countermeasures for the enhanced strength and durability, the speed and flight, and the projectiles respectively.”

“That’s all interesting and shit, but we should get back to the topic” Chase said… though from the look he was giving Robert he was giving him the benefit of the doubt to lead the conversation. Good old Track Star.

“Yeah, we can discuss the power classification later, maybe salvage some of it for our own use” Robert conceded “So, you went to talk to him because he was a Thinker. Is that the standard protocol for dealing with that kind of villain back in your home dimension?”

Taylor had a frankly unfair poker face, but even she couldn’t fully hide the wince at the question.

“No, it tends to be the opposite” she answered with a sigh “Thinker countermeasures usually center on two things: First, take out the Thinker threat as soon as possible. Second, prevent the Thinker from gathering information and using it. The usual tip is ‘Don’t let the Thinker talk’.”

As she finished explaining, the glare she sent his way made it clear she, too, knew exactly what he was doing. Tough luck, kid.

“Which is, to be clear, the exact opposite of what you did, yes?” he asked, to make a point if nothing else.

“Maybe, but I have a lot of experience with Thinkers. Particularly the evil mastermind kind.” She said “the thing about that kind of villain is that, sure, they will use their power to analyze anything you say and they can be either very convincing or very dangerous when they talk to you… but also they’re obsessed with the sound of their own voice.”

Neither Robert nor Chase could quite control their snorts at that. Blazer could keep the unimpressed look all she wanted, Robert noticed her hiding her reaction too.

“Shroud wanted me to work for him, so by hearing him out I could figure out both what he wanted and what he knew about me” Taylor continued “also the fact that he knew to be there to meet me already tells you something about his ability or at least his willingness to use his powers for things that aren’t that relevant. Some Thinkers I worked with would get terrible migraines from overusing their powers, but if he bothered to check how I’d react to his offer then either he cares a lot more than he let on about me accepting it… or he doesn’t have any limitation like that.”

“Ok, so what did you actually learn, in the end?” he asked in turn, but did not wait for her to reply. As he continued speaking, he finally stood up and walked towards the rest of the group, stopping when they were basically in a circle. “Sure, we learned that Shroud thinks the original Astral Pulse is still around, which is very useful to know and will probably explain the behavior of the Red Ring, if they are tearing different places apart looking for it. It’s also good to have some information on how exactly he’s recruiting people… But him knowing more about you than you wanted or expected? That’s his whole thing. Him having some insane plan to take control of all crime in the state? That’s what half the megalomaniac villains around will monologue about if you let them. Him being able to use his augments as much as he wants? I had already figured that out when I was hunting him down.”

He gestured at Blazer and Chase before continuing, “the thing we’re worried about is that nothing about this situation required you to put yourself in danger like that. You had already basically captured one of Shroud’s lieutenants, you could-”

“Should” Blazer added.

“-have called any of us immediately the moment Toxic got into your house. You are working with professional heroes, some of which have direct experience with Shroud. There isn’t a lot of information he would allow you to get out of him that we couldn’t have told you ourselves” he finished speaking.

“He knew I used to have powers” she said, the line all but blurting out of her mouth.

All three of the adults in the room looked unimpressed at her, letting the silence stew for a couple seconds.

“Kid, from one retired hero to another” Chase finally spoke up “you don’t really keep that a secret.”

“What?” Taylor asked, baffled.

“I’m not saying anyone would look at you and immediately go ‘damn, that bitch looks like she used to control spiders’ but you have that…what would you call it…” Chase waved at nothing, looking at Robert for assistance.

“That ‘retired hero’ vibe?” He threw out, getting a nod in response.

“Yeah, that works. You just have that energy of someone who’d get into a fight with a supervillain, right?”

“That makes superheroes sound like just thugs looking for a fight,” Blazer replied.

“Eh, close enough,” Chase said with a shrug.

From the look of bafflement Taylor was giving them, she clearly thought she was being subtle about her work history, bless her. This was likely why she was off kilter enough that, again, words came out of her mouth without her apparent control:

“He said he could give me my powers back.”

That was something new that Taylor had apparently decided to leave out of her story until now. Great.

“Oh shit, for real? You think he’d be able to fix mine, too?” Chase immediately asked, though his tone made it clear it was just a joke. Blazer still frowned at him for it regardless.

“Would you like to have them again?” Robert asked.

Taylor’s reaction was complicated. There was some eagerness that told him she would, in fact, love to have her powers again, but it was mixed with clear apprehension. For a moment she almost looked like she was going to nod at him, but in the end she shifted her gaze downwards so she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.

“I don’t think so. Just before I came here someone had messed with my powers and I don’t know what it would look like, if Shroud did whatever he implied he could” was her eventual answer.

Honestly, if the bastard could do it then Robert didn’t see why he couldn’t also fix whatever mess Taylor was implying, but he was the one person in the room who had never had powers so he wouldn’t be the one to argue the point.

“Ok… while it is worrying that Shroud is apparently that good, I still don’t think that information is important enough to be worth the risk of going out to talk to him” he said, with Taylor immediately frowning at him again. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed before continuing. “Look, you just admitted that the biggest thing he tried to tempt you with was getting your powers back, because you don’t have any right now. You are, for all intents and purposes, just a normal person with a lot of fighting experience. Just like I am, and if I had gone to meet with a supervillain without any backup, with no way for anyone to know where I was if things went sideways, that would have been a stupid idea.”

“We are not angry at you for wanting to help, Taylor,” Blazer chimed in, putting a comforting hand on the intern’s shoulder. Great, she was much better at playing the role of the good cop in the conversation. “And we are not underestimating you either. But we are your co-workers and, if we are going to do anything about the Red Ring, we need to do it together, which means communicating before you do something dangerous. I am going to share whatever details you think are relevant with the authorities so they are aware, but anything beyond that? I need you to promise me that you won’t just go out in the middle of the night looking for Red Ring members, or something.”

Taylor looked like she was going to argue back immediately, but the earnest look Blazer was giving her was apparently enough to stop her short. Again, she was silent for a couple seconds, a conflicted expression on her face, before finally conceding with a sigh and a reluctant “Fine.”

“Great. Robert already said it, but thank you for telling us, Taylor.” Blazer said with a final reassuring squeeze on the kid’s shoulder “Every hero has at least considered keeping an interaction with a villain secret, so we all understand the temptation.”

Robert had still been worried that, no matter what they said, Taylor might have still gone and done something stupid like running out in the middle of the night doing her own investigation on Shroud. But from the mix of surprise and guilt that was all over her face after that last line, he supposed that Blonde Blazer’s charisma was enough even for a prickly person like their intern.

“In the meantime, I suppose we keep an eye out for the Astral Pulse” she continued “I’m not sure how exactly it could still be around, but I’m not the tech expert around here. If Shroud thinks it’s still intact, no harm in looking for it ourselves when we can. Maybe we can talk with Roy about it, see if he can… I don’t know, create a pulse detector or something-”

As she was speaking, Blazer had turned his way, which put her line of sight right towards the one clock on the wall of the workshop. When she focused on it, she immediately straightened up.

“Darn, this conversation went a bit longer than I was expecting… I need to rush to another meeting right now” the hero said, already floating towards the exit “Taylor, please feel free to write down everything you think would be relevant to share with the police and I’ll make sure it reaches them… and if you want to talk about your world’s power classification in more detail, my door is open as always!”

“Yeah, remember kid, it’s all about teamwork” Chase said, kneeling down to pet Beef who, after being content to just lay down on his little bed while everyone was talking, had finally moved to demand the petting he deserved “don’t want to poke the hive all by yourself or some shit like that.”

“Yeah,” Robert agreed, “first we prove Shroud wrong by remaking the Astral Pulse, or just beat him to it depending on what Royd can come up with. Then we send him and all his goons to prison where they deserve.”

“Well, that or the morgue” Chase countered, getting his own bewildered look from Robert. “What? It can happen, you never fucking know. Or are you saying you wouldn’t kill Shroud, if shit hit the fan?"

Robert didn’t really have an immediate response to that. For a long time, his focus had been on simply finding and beating Shroud, mapping out the people and places he controlled through the Red Ring and figuring out a way to beat him with only his smarts and a mech suit. He couldn’t deny that, every now and then – particularly when he had been laying in bed in the hospital, after waking up from his coma – he had imagined crushing the man with his mech, or beating him with his bare hands but for the most part he had been too busy with the chase itself, trying to stretch his extinguished funds as far as possible to at least make sure the man who killed his father was dealt with. He didn’t have enough time to decide what ‘dealing with’ Shroud actually entailed.

He was still considering a response when Taylor re-joined the conversation.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you” she said, meeting his gaze head on. He would have assumed she was just suggesting the standard heroic path of avoiding bloodshed, but something in her expression made him think this was a lot more personal than that.

“Did you ever-” he started saying, his curiosity getting the better of him. He cut himself off before actually finishing the question, but there was no doubt about what he had been about to ask.

Like in previous cases where Taylor had been asked about her past, she looked conflicted about saying anything at all but, before she could decide either way, Beef had apparently decided that she would be a good source of pets. The little dog walked towards her and laid down belly up, presenting all of his rotund magnificence to her and making her show a smile for the first time since she had arrived in the room. Like Chase, she kneeled down to pet Beef’s belly and, while looking directly at Robert’s perfect pet, finally spoke up.

“I guess you’d say it was back when I first got started” she explained “there was this villain… a lot like Shroud, really, another megalomaniac Thinker. He had pretty much won, gotten every villain in the city working under him and even infiltrated the heroes. We tried our best to beat him, but not only did he have his own powers, he’d kidnapped a kid with an even stronger ability. A precog with almost unprecedented power of prediction he kept either drugged or completely cut out… all so he could use the addiction he forced on her to demand cooperation.”

That… shit, that sounded like a nightmare.

“I really didn’t want to kill him. Didn’t want to be someone who would kill anyone… In hindsight it’s almost funny” she continued with a bitter chuckle “‘You’re not a killer.’ That was the last thing he said before I pulled the trigger.”

For several seconds, the only sounds in the workshop were the ticking of the clock and the panting from Beef who was apparently receiving some top-grade petting.

“Do you regret it?” Chase finally asked, coming closer to rub Taylor on the shoulder like Blazer had before.

“I don’t see a way things could have gone different at the time,” she replied, still focused on the dog in front of her “I don’t regret taking him out, if nothing else because it meant Dinah didn’t have to suffer under him any longer… But yes, I do regret that he was able to make me into a killer in the first place.” She finally turned away from Beef to look at Robert again. “Do what you think you need to do, Robert. But maybe don’t give Shroud that final victory when the time comes.”

“Sounds like a plan” he replied with the solemn nod her story deserved. “Now, we should also go back up to start our shift… but feel free to come pet Beef any time you want, Taylor. I’ll tell you, it’s just as effective as therapy while substantially cheaper.”

At least that final joke helped with the somber mood. Even got a rare snort out of her.

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There you go, folks, was able to write down another chapter despite everything.

For some reason I think my writing shifted due to the days going without writing anything (either fiction or work-related e-mails) and maybe I'm being inspired by all the reading I've been doing these past few days.

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