Sadde jumps in surprise, dropping his book and yelping. "Who the heck are you?!" he asks.

The boy or possibly fantasy novel character exclaims apologetically in an unknown language and averts his eyes.

Averts his...? Oh, right. Sadde grabs his pillow and covers his bits with it. "You don't speak English."

He says something else in his unknown language.

"Ashras." He bows in Sadde's direction, although he still avoids looking at Sadde's pillow area.

Sadde feels like his privacy has been violated, so he doesn't much care if his state of undress upsets the other boy. "Why are you here?" he asks, pointing at the boy then at the spot where he landed and making confused/question-y gestures with his hands.

He gestures at the spot where he landed, throws up his hands helplessly, shakes his head, and sighs. Then he says something else in his language, which from tone and context sounds like it probably means 'I have no idea'.

Ashras switches from avoiding quite looking at Sadde to watching curiously around the time Sadde has underwear on.

Sadde pulls up a world map, then looks at Ashras and raises an eyebrow. "Where are you from, here?" he asks, gesturing at the map.

He considers the map, shakes his head again, and - tries to mime writing or drawing on a piece of paper, it looks like.

Whether or not he can understand, he definitely seems to be listening. He follows where Sadde leads.

...Ashras seems confused and mildly alarmed by most things here, particularly the sky.

Sadde looks at him. "What's up?" he asks, looking at where Ashras is looking. Cars, alright, buildings, okay, who knows how his Earth developed, but the... sky?

He utters a short, incomprehensible explanation, gestures in vague confusion at the sun, sweeps an arm across the rest of the sky, and shrugs.

...this is somewhat troubling. "That's... the sun. It... gives energy to stuff, here. You know? Um."

—he stops walking. He's bringing Ashras to the PHQ, and then, what? Are they going to turn him into a Ward? What are they going to do to him? He looks at Ashras. That... feels like making a major decision for someone else.

Ashras blinks back at him and makes a questioning noise.

"...never mind, just had a thought about how I probably don't want to hand you over to the Protectorate just like that. Maybe. I might change my mind. In the meantime, wanna grab a bite?" He rubs his stomach to indicate his meaning.

He shrugs agreeably (with another of those probably-meaningful tail-flicks) and nods.

...Ashras absorbs all this communication and then answers it with a confused look and a shrug.

Yes. Confused look is right. He points at Ashras' tail again, then at his own lack of tail, then at Ashras' tail, then makes an X with his arms, and asks again, "Can you hide it?" He also gestures under his own T-shirt, maybe Ashras' could hide it in his clothing, or...?

He frowns and shakes his head slowly.

Sadde scratches his head. "Drat. Okay, how do I—okay. Um." He looks around. The street's empty, no one's looking at them, but that'll change at any time, and people will call the Protectorate on them and...

...

Sadde conjures a—is that a cloak? It looks like a cloak.

Ashras blinks at the cloak, then shrugs agreeably.

"Good! Good." He offers Ashras the cloak and continues leading them to the closest Burger King, because he's just not going to McDonald's again today.

Ashras puts on the cloak, which makes him look like a weirdo and possibly some kind of extremely low-budget cape but at least conceals the tail.

He makes a slightly incredulous face at the pictures and shrugs.

Ashras sniffs the soda dubiously and declines to try it, but he manages a burger and fries just fine after observing how one is meant to eat them. He smiles at Sadde.

Sadde looks interested! He nods. "Okay, disappearing neko who makes needles that create fire?"

Ashras shrugs the shrug of someone who probably didn't understand that question, stops lighting up the fire pin, and puts it away.

"Well, alright, that's not terribly varied. Anyway..." Think and chew, chew and think. Reach decision. Sigh. "Alright, I think it's... better if I take you to the Protectorate. I barely have enough money to take care of myself, let alone you."

Ashras listens to all this with a puzzled but friendly smile.

Right. So after they're done eating, Sadde leads them to the PHQ, via Boardwalk. He talks about stuff, because not having a language in common is no excuse not to communicate, but it's mostly innocuous stuff, where they are, where they're going, what that thing is, etc.

By the second time Sadde names an object, Ashras picks up on the pattern and starts correctly repeating the names of things whenever Sadde offers them, despite variations in phrasing.

Ooh! He starts teaching him other words, being slower and more careful with his pronunciation and using simpler structures.

Ashras successfully learns the words for a bunch of things one finds on the street between that Burger King and the Protectorate.

Ashras, tail still covered by a cloak, observes this interaction without trying to interrupt.

"He... kinda appeared in my room. Like, out of thin air. And he drew me a map of the place he's from, a world map, it's apparently not an Earth, even one like Earth Aleph, it was sorta confusing, and he told me he arrived here when a giant snake attacked him. He also can't speak English. I thought he was a Case—er..." Oops.

"A Case 53," the woman—there's a nametag on her suit with 'Emily Piggot—ENE PRT Director' written on it—completes. "They're not a secret, although not many know the PRT term."

"Um. I've done a lot of research on capes."

"So it would seem."

Ashras listens. It's sort of hard to tell how well he's following the conversation.

Director Piggot finally turns her attention to the other boy. "So you can't understand a word we're saying."

"I told you he can't—" He shuts up when she gives him a look.

He blinks at her and says something in an unfamiliar language, very much with the expression of somebody who can't understand a word she's saying.

His ears flick, turning toward the sound of his name.

Apparently Ashras's culture has a close-enough equivalent to handshakes; he clasps Sadde's hand and then lets go, smiling. (Hint of fang.)

Piggot looks at Ashras, then points at him, says, "Ashras," at Armsmaster, says, "Armsmaster," then at herself, "Piggot. We should probably get you somewhere to sleep and find you someone who can teach you English."

He repeats their names and adds an incomprehensible phrase that's probably some sort of 'nice to meet you'-like courtesy.

"Dauntless," he echoes agreeably, and adds the same courtesy-phrase.

Shrug, nod.

Piggot gives Dauntless a temporary keycard, which he hands to Ashras and shows how to use as he guides him to a room. It has a single bed, a desk, a table, a wardrobe, and a bathroom. Not terribly luxurious, but still pretty neat.

He says some more incomprehensible things, but they sound friendly.

...Okay... Ashras is willing to be shown the functions of this incomprehensible object.

Dauntless grabs his own cell phone, which is vibrating, and picks it up, then speaks into it.

...and the sound... huh. Ashras respects this incomprehensible object. Although he holds it a little ways away from his ear.

Dauntless smiles, then ends the call on his side. "If you need to talk to anyone, call," he says, pointing at the numbers written on a piece of paper attached to the base of Ashras' phone. "Director Piggot," he says one of the names out loud as he taps on it.

Nod, nod. Ashras figures out the pen and scribbles down little reminder notes in his alphabet, probably with phonetic transcriptions of these names.

Good! Yes, good. "Alright, now I should go." He doesn't bother saying things where Sadde would have, but also extends his hand for a shake.

Friendly handclasp.

Yeah, that works. Dauntless leaves.

Ashras commences investigating his new room. And has a nap. And investigates his new room again, more thoroughly. And has another nap. And that is around the point where he starts to consider exploring.

His door opens with a use of his key card, if he so desires.

Nice of it. He goes out into the hall and looks around, tail swishing.

There is a PRT uniform waiting outside his door. "I've been asked to escort you to conference room four," she says.

He answers this with a friendly smile, because he didn't understand most of it.

Taking that for assent, she starts leading the way.

He follows her to wherever she's going. This seems like the thing to do.

"Ashras," says Ashras, with a smile and a sweep of his tail, and he echoes Harry's last statement: "It's a pleasure to meet you." The intonation and pronunciation are a little off, but he's perfectly understandable.

Nod nod tail-flick.

"Perfect! There's a cafeteria here, and people have been warned to wear masks around you."

"Masks?" he asks, puzzled, in his own language.

"Oh, I suppose they wouldn't have explained, would they. Here, I'll explain on the way." He gets up, grabs a thin, large book with lots of colorful pictures, then continues. "So, on this planet, most people with powers, like yourself, have secret identities that they use to... well, basically fight other people with powers."

"Sounds like a huge waste," he comments, again in his own language. Harry seems to be able to understand him just fine.

He can understand in a fashion. That sentence was translated as an opinion of contempt for the system. He shrugs. "It is, but to be fair, if some people like those in this building weren't fighting the other masked people, the other masked people would make the world much worse."

Sigh. Nod. "Sounds about right."

"So, to protect their secret identities, they wear masks." And they arrive at the cafeteria, where they can get food! It's early enough that there aren't any heroes up and about, there.

Food! Ashras is pleased about the food. Also: "Masks," he echoes experimentally in English.

Harry grins. "Indeed! Now, I think I'll start with vocabulary, yes? Point at things and give them names."

"Seems reasonable. What's that?" he asks, pointing a clawed finger at a food item.

And the food item's named, as well as several other items around. Harry also teaches Ashras a couple of standard phrases like "Hello" and "Nice to meet you" and "Thank you" and "Where's the bathroom, please?" and the like, in between some more vocabulary.

He soaks up the language like a sponge, frequently picking up useful words and phrases even from the things Harry isn't explicitly trying to teach him. And he has great fun with the whole business.

Harry is pleasantly surprised! After he deems Ashras ready for it, he decides to take him for a stroll around the city. With a specific destination in mind.

A stroll around the city sounds like a fine plan to him. He can pick up more English while he's at it.

Yes, he can! And eventually they arrive at the old building that is the Brockton Bay Central Library.

Yes! But more than that, Harry wants to show Ashras how to use a computer and set up an email address.

"They're very handy," he says. "And that boy you met when you arrived left an email address you could use to contact him. Director Piggot asked me to inform you of that once you understood how emails worked."

Nod, tail-swish. (Alert interest and consideration. Tails are awfully expressive, it turns out.)

"And even with my power, I didn't quite expect you to be such a prodigy," he confesses.

"I have to learn English to talk to anyone," he says, with a shrug and a wry tail-flick.

"Yes, well, I'm quite pleased. Other people won't be as easily understandable as me," he warns, "nor will they be able to understand the impact of your tail on meaning. It's a whole extra limb's worth of body language."

He resorts to his own language to say, "I'm sure I'll manage."

"I'm still going to follow you around if you don't object to it, the Protectorate has paid me for at least a week."

"No, it's good," he says agreeably, in haphazardly constructed but well-pronounced English. "Lots of chance to learn."

Now, Piggot would like to talk to him again.

Sure.

"Hello again, Ashras. I hope Harry was of help."

"He was very helpful!" says Ashras cheerfully.

"I am glad. Now, have you been told the purpose of the Protectorate?"

He shakes his head. "Not exactly. What is it?"

"The Protectorate and the PRT are organizations dedicated to providing funding and structure to parahumans, and to oppose people who would perform illicit activities, particularly other parahumans who would use their powers to do so. They also organize and coordinate the battles against the Endbringers, and serve as the body that deals with everything parahuman-related that's not under the scope of any other branches of government, as well as some things that are but would best be handled by people focused on that."

"Can you explain the Endbringers, please? I didn't quite catch what exactly they are."

"There is much speculation on their nature, but for our purposes they are giant monsters who coordinate to periodically attack various population centers around the world. There are three of them, and you can look them up on the internet if you like, but the main idea is that their appearance means death, destruction, and mayhem."

"Thank you for explaining. They don't sound like good news."

"They're not," she agrees. "A problem we're not quite used to dealing with, however, is you. Are you familiar with the term Case 53?"

"I've heard it used... something about unusual-looking people with no memories?"

"Correct. Which is ostensibly not your case. For one, you did not speak the local language. Furthermore, you have quite a few memories of the place you're from. So the priority, here, would be taking you back there."

"I find myself in agreement..."

"The problem is that we do not actually possess the ability to send people to other worlds."

"Troublesome," he says, nodding.

"Therefore, we do still find ourselves faced with a problem," she repeats. "Now that you can communicate, we're able to actually get your thoughts on the matter."

"Well, what are the options here?"

"As of right now, you do not yet officially exist. We will need more information to create an identity, and the protocols in place for Case 53s should be enough to cover you. A question of significant importance is how old you are."

"I turned seventeen a week ago."

"In that case you are considered under age, and will need a legal guardian until you turn eighteen. Your options are either going into foster care or joining the Wards program as a member of the Protectorate. In foster care the government would find someone to take you in and provide for you. If you joined the team, the Protectorate would be your legal guardian, you would have free housing, a monthly allowance to spend on whatever your saw fit, as well as some money deposited into a trust fund, to become available one you turned eighteen."

"Joining the Protectorate sounds like a worthy option."

"I am glad you think so," she says, not sounding it. "I'm supposed to give you a day to consider your options, however, so I will need to ask you about it again tomorrow. In the meantime, here I have two forms which I would like you to look at. You should fill out the first one, to create your identity; the second one contains information about joining the team, and you should only fill that one out after having made sure your choice's final."

He nods thoughtfully.

She gives him the aforementioned forms and sends him on his way.

The one he's supposed to fill out has fields for stuff like full name, date of birth, place of birth, parents, etc. Most of it is marked as optional, since Case 53s tend not to remember these details.

His full name is Ashras Kevarsin and, with the help of a computer, he calculates that his equivalent date of birth is October tenth, 1986. He leaves all the family parts blank. And the place of birth. And most other things, actually.

"Hello, Dauntless."

"Hello, yourself," he says, somewhat surprised.

"I learned English! Congratulate me."

He laughs. "Congratulations! I didn't expect it to work quite so well."

"I'm having a little trouble with these forms, though," he admits. "And with deciding whether or not to join the, what was it, Wards. I don't suppose you have any advice?"

"Well, I'm already in, so I think any advice I give would be biased," he laughs. "But yeah, I think you should join. It's fun, and you feel like you're making a difference, like whatever reason we got these powers, we're using them for good."

"Reason?"

He shrugs. "Who knows why some people get them and others don't? Why these powers, why they work the way they do, and why we get them the way we do? We do the best we can with what we're given."

"I suppose," Ashras agrees. "I certainly feel like I should do something about those Endbringers while I'm here."

"We can definitely use an extra pair of hands! So, I'm curious, what do you actually do?"

"That's a very good question and I'm not at all sure how to answer it."

"Which only makes me more curious," he chuckles. "But it's alright if you don't want to answer. If you do join we'll kinda have to know to coordinate, though."

"The trouble is, in my planet I don't have unusual powers. I'm just another Aluvai. But here, well, there don't seem to be other Aluvai. And I haven't seen any hint that you have combat magic. So things that anyone at home would take for granted, here I have to find a way to explain from scratch."

He blinks. "Everyone there has powers? Well, that's... interesting." Pause. "This might be a little bit rude of me, but does everyone go through a trigger event?"

"No."

"I see. That's very different. And you say your powers are all very similar?"

"In theory, anyone can learn combat magic - actually, that's an interesting thing to test, now I think of it." He gets out his fire pin and demonstrates how it makes fire. "At home, I'd expect absolutely anybody to be able to light a fire pin on the first handful of tries with no previous instruction. Want to try it?"

He blinks but accepts the... fire pin. And tries to make fire, whatever the hell that means.

He laughs. "Okay, I get that combat magic involves pins that make fire," he says, giving it back. "What else does it entail?"

"Fire pins - and spark pins and force pins and so on, but those are less common because they're less useful - are the smallest feasible magic weapon design," he says. "Scaling them up increases their power; wands can throw small fireballs, staves can throw big ones. I don't know that anyone's found an upper limit, but after a certain point they get really impractical to move around."

"So, basically, you use very long things to cast destructive magic?"

"That about sums it up. But the very long things have to be made in particular designs. Luckily I know a thing or two about artificing."

"That's really peculiar. And does everyone have a tail where you're from?"

"Only Aluvai, and only some Aluvai at that. Aluvai are one type of human; the other type, Ceirene, look much like the humans of this planet."

"Do Aluvai without tails have powers?"

He laughs. "I mean, anyone can learn combat magic, tail or no."

Dauntless nods. "I see. That's an interesting place you're from."

"We have an... Endbringer-like problem... but rather than a small number of enormous monsters destroying things at scheduled intervals, it's an enormous number of smaller monsters determined to conquer the planet," he says. "If I'm very lucky, I can figure out a way to solve yours and then bring back a way to solve mine."

"How enormous?"

"We don't know how many there are, but we keep killing all the ones we can find and then there keep being more," he says. "Years ago - a hundred and a half? - my planet's population was two billion. Now it's half that."

"We're doing much better now that - hm - politics isn't getting in the way of the defense efforts," he says. "Most of the loss was in the first handfuls of years. But yes."

"And they just started appearing, like the Endbringers? A hundred and fifty years ago, you said?"

"They came from," he makes an illustrative gesture, "far away. Outside the planet. We don't know where."

"I see," even though he doesn't. "Powers here only started appearing about twenty years ago, the Endbringers soon after."

"We've had magic for all of history. We only had the Enemy very recently."

That gives him pause. "I think there are a number of researchers who would be interested in that information."

"Why?"

He shrugs. "I can't say it's my area of expertise, but it's my impression that they expect powers to have appeared at roughly the same time in all parallel worlds."

"I don't think my world is very parallel of yours."

"Maybe not. I'm not the best person to discuss this, my stronger suit is focusing on the here and now."

Shrug. "Who should discuss it, then?"

"Armsmaster is the closest to someone interested I know of here in Brockton Bay, but Director Piggot could probably get you in touch with someone. Parahuman research isn't under the Protectorate's purview but I think there are associated institutions that collect data from and give data to us."

He nods thoughtfully.

Dauntless smiles.

He laughs. "Have fun with that!"

"Yes. Absolutely," says Ashras.

He brings his forms.

She reads them over and says, "I'm glad you decided to join. I see you didn't pick a cape name—given your status as a Case 53, you don't strictly need one unless you want to work on a way of making your cosmetic differences less apparent, so that's not a problem."

"I'd kind of like one anyway, but I don't know what to pick. Is there someone I can talk to about that?"

"The Branding department's job includes this sort of decision, you'll need to talk to them about image anyway before going out so you can get their help there as well."

Shrug. "All right then."

She puts the forms in a box on her desk and says, "Welcome to the team. You'll keep your room and someone will talk to you about setting up a bank account for your allowance."

He smiles. "Thanks."

She types something on her computer and says, "You'll find your PRT issue phone in your room, and you can use it to email or call Branding and set up a meeting to discuss your costume and cape name. Do you have any questions?"

He shakes his head.

"Then I believe this will be all."

He smiles and nods and goes off to email Branding.

A lady called Melissa May replies saying that she'll have time for him in exactly an hour eight minutes. Her email signature is handwritten in a very pretty and completely illegible scribble.

He replies that that suits him just fine, then figures out where her office is and arrives there at precisely the designated time. Knock knock.

"Come in!" a bubbly voice calls.

"A pleasure to meet you too," he says cheerfully. "Not sure about what?"

"The outfit," she says, clicking her tongue again. "Which I assume is why you're here."

"Yes, I was told to come to you to discuss my costume and cape name," he says. "I'm not especially attached to this outfit in particular."

"All the better. What is your power, then?"

"It's a little bit complicated to describe, but in summary, I use objects such as wands and staves to produce effects such as fireballs, force blasts, and lightning bolts."

"Only offensive powers?"

"I also think I have sharper senses than an ordinary human, particularly night vision. But I haven't had a chance to measure that."

"Interesting. That will probably not influence the design much. Do you have any preferences, dear?"

"I'm in favour of maneuverability. I like the colour grey."

"That's easy to work with. Will you want a mask?"

"I'm hardly going to have much luck concealing my identity," he says, with a wry shrug and a flick of his tail. "But it seems traditional. So I don't have a strong opinion either way."

"I see! Well, I'm thinking something wizardly, perhaps, similar to Myrddin maybe..."

"Hmm?"

"What's the size of your implements? How do you plan to use them in battle?"

"Theoretically any size, in practice limited by what I can make and carry - I'm not going to haul around a staff that's taller than I am, at least not most of the time. The only one I currently have on me is pin-sized and basically just a lighter, but I can make more given tools and materials. I'm not familiar enough with local tactics yet to predict how I'll fit into the team, but at a guess, I'll probably be mostly using force blasts and stun bolts. If it matters, the materials for those are brass and silver respectively."

"Do you plan to be moving and running around a lot?"

"Yes. Quite possibly also climbing, when the terrain affords it."

"What are your thoughts on capes and tights?"

"Capes seem mostly more trouble than they're worth."

"That doesn't answer my whole question," she trills.

"I'm not familiar enough with tights to have developed an opinion on them, I've only been here a week."

She nods, and types stuff on her computer as he answers. "How much of your face do you prefer your mask to cover? And in general, how much of your body should your costume cover?"

"I don't care much as long as I have good visibility, and I'd prefer as least as much coverage as this outfit."

"Mmhm!" She continues typing, then grabs a piece of paper and starts sketching. "I'm thinking... medium-light grey... with dark grey accents. Buttons, brass and silver—not actual silver, of course. You'll have a holster on your back, for a large staff, and smaller pockets for other implements—how many do you believe you'll need? Hmm, no matter, it should be discreet enough... And a coat, yes, that's what this is missing..."

She finishes drawing and shows it to him, a quick but pretty well-done and detailed sketch of what she's just described.

"Very nice," he says. "Six wand slots should be plenty - the wands will be about," he gestures a size range between eight and twelve inches, and a diameter range between one and two. "I only really need to carry one or two wands and a staff, but more is good for versatility and in case something happens to one."

"Exactly." She taps her chin with one finger. "Now, for a name, I presume you will want something other than your given name?"

"That seems to be the custom, yes."

"The few Case 53s we have tend to use the same name for both identities. It might draw attention to the fact that you don't."

"My situation is unusual, which is not necessarily a bad thing."

She types things into her computer. "And, again, you have no preferences?"

He shrugs. "I haven't thought of anything spectacular."

"And have you thought of non-spectacular things? Perhaps something in your original language."

"Going around as Sokoreth or Taiva would be almost as odd as going around as Ashras, from an external perspective, wouldn't it?"

"From an external perspective, going around as Ashras would be no odder than any foreign cape names, or ancient and little known mythology. A few obvious but not terribly appealing names are Staff, Wand, and the like. With a power like yours, names referring to mythology or in other languages sound like the way to go."

"Well, if I must... 'Sokoreth' is an archaic term for a combat caster and 'taiva' means 'dawn'." (A slight oversimplification, but he doesn't want to get into the part where dusk and dawn are effectively the same phenomenon in his home country.) "They're the sort of thing I'd call myself if my planet used cape names."

She smiles. "See, that wasn't so hard, was it? And of course, there is earthly mythology. You do resemble certain creatures of Celtic and Japanese folklore."

"Such as?"

"The Irish faerie, for example, the Aos Sí," she says, pronouncing 'Ace Shee.' "The Japanese neko tend to have cat-like ears as well as the tail, but it could fit. They have certain cultural associations that probably would not be to your advantage. Never mind that," she says, waving a hand dismissively.

"So should I be 'foreign word for dawn' or 'foreign word for Battle Wizard', then?"

"Battle Wizard, naturally."

"Sokoreth it is."

"Splendid! Was there anything else?"

"I don't think so. Thanks for the help."

"Quite welcome. Now shoo, I need to finish designing this." She waves her hand in a 'shooing' motion, looking at her computer screen and working on it.

Off he goes.

And that evening, an official welcome dinner will be waiting for him. Which basically means there'll be more people eating.

"Pleased to meet you all," says Ashras, swishing his tail.

"Likewise!" says Titania.

Dauntless gestures at the seat between himself and Leap. "Did you get a cape name, or are you keeping Ashras?"

"Sokoreth. It means 'battle wizard', essentially. I thought it would be weird if I went around using my personal name as my cape name when hardly anyone else does."

"It's pretty," comments Gwen. "I like it."

"I like it, too! Is it in your original language?"

"Yeah."

"I can probably help with that!" says Janine.

"Me, too! If you show me how to do it once I'll be able to copy it."

"Her power is being able to copy and understand any manual or physical skills she sees, perfectly," Dauntless supplies.

"That's... an interesting power to have. I'm not sure how much help it'll be, but you're free to watch me make my force staff and stun wand if you want."

"It's honestly a bit weird," he says. "I mean - imagine being transported to a planet where no humans are able to, I don't know, dance."

"It's that ubiquitous?" asks Miss Militia.

"Anyone can use a magic weapon. Genuine combat casters, who can do the magic without the weapons themselves, are a little rarer."

"I was attacked by a giant snake - not unusual, where I live - and then suddenly I was on another planet, which is very unusual indeed."

"...giant snakes are normal where you're from?"

"Perfectly normal. Not even all that threatening, except to small children."

"How are giant snakes not threatening?!"

"They're just animals," he shrugs. "They do sometimes try to eat people, especially people who are in the wilderness alone, but they're not that hard to deal with."

Echo is looking at him like he's speaking some alien language and also has a horn where his nose should be.

He laughs.

"You're all welcome to try lighting my fire pin if you want," says Ashras. "Normally it only takes a few tries to learn how. But it seems like people from this world just can't."

"I'd like to try," says Miss Militia.

He offers her the pin.

"What should I do?"

"Hold this end, and try to make it light up. It's hard to explain how to do it, and it's usually not necessary; most people figure it out after only a few tries. It sort of... feels like squeezing an invisible aura around the pin."

She nods and frowns in concentration a bit, looking at the pin.

"Strange," she says, handing the pin back.

"I agree."

Of the three of them only Titania can fly, although Dauntless' boots can be used for fast enough movement that he can effectively jump from one roof to the other. In sympathy for Sokoreth, however, he walks on the ground.

The battle wizard is pretty fond of his costume. He's carrying a brass force-blast staff in the staff slot, and has five of the wand slots filled - two stun wands, two force wands, and a just-in-case lightning wand. Definitely enough to be going on with.

"Tell me more about those monsters?" Dauntless asks.

"Which ones?"

"The ones from your home. The Enemy?"

"Ah. Some people also think of the wildlife as monsters, so I wasn't sure," he says. "The Enemy are... well, they're pretty monstrous. They look a little bit like humans but not very much, and they use weapons that work in similar ways but are built differently, and they have strange flying vehicles. And they came from who knows where to try to conquer our planet. No one's been able to chase them back to wherever they came from yet."

"How much not like humans?"

"They have two arms and two legs and one head each, but I wouldn't mistake them for a human even at a distance. They're shaped differently."

"And they just appeared out of nowhere? Without provocation?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks."

Patrol patrol.

"No problem," says Titania. She scoops up Dauntless and heads for the nearest rooftop.

Ashras - Sokoreth, rather - looks appraisingly at the building, and then makes a couple of leaps to get to the bottom of a raised fire escape ladder, which he proceeds to climb the rest of the way to the roof.

"Which direction did you hear the screaming from?"

He points. And steps up onto the low wall encircling the roof, to get a better vantage from which to look in that direction.

Picture this:

Seven people, four men and three women.

Two women are huddled together, and a man in loose pants and a white tiger mask is walking around them casually, every now and then nipping one of them with a blade made of... air.

Blocking off both ends of the street are a masked young man and a teenage girl with a metal cage on her face. The two other men are being thrown around, toyed with. One of them tries to swing against the masked one, but his punch is too slow, unnaturally so, and is responded to with a light shove that sends its target tumbling.

"Stormtiger, Cricket, and Krieg, yeah. We don't know much about Cricket's power, we suspect she has super reflexes and some form of soft clairvoyance. Krieg manipulates kinetic energy, and Stormtiger's a problem with hostages, we need to take him out before they notice us."

"I can do that," he says, pulling a stun wand from its holster and crouching to aim. "Should I?"

"Cricket is making some sort of - ugh - absolutely horrible sound every few seconds," Sokoreth reports, wincing.

Meanwhile, Titania scoops up Dauntless again. Her lacy metal wing-fins spread out and rotate slightly, automatically adjusting for the new weight distribution before they fire their jets to take her into the air.

Dauntless is lowered onto the ground, and the sounds get progressively (and very quickly) closer.

"Ugh, that's awful - Titania, if you don't mind, I would like to use you as a flying vehicle," says Ashras.

"Happy to oblige," she says, zipping back up to scoop him off the roof.

He can't draw his force staff easily this way, but he can hold a stun wand in one hand and a force wand in the other. "Over there!"

Over there indeed! Dauntless prepares for their arrival, which will take a bit still. Krieg is kicking the ground and jumping in leaps and bounds, and the fact that Cricket doesn't have superspeed is merely a technicality, her movements are efficient enough and she's fit enough that she could almost be said to.

Sokoreth's aim is very good but not literally superhuman; he can't hit a moving target as easily as he downed Stormtiger. He tosses a few stun bolts and off-hand force blasts at Cricket just to slow her down, but mostly focuses on trying to hit Krieg in the air, when his trajectory is most predictable.

Krieg decides Dauntless is a better target for his efforts at the same time Dauntless decides the same about him. The villain kicks another dumpster towards the hero, who raises a small forcefield around himself to defend against it.

Cricket stops, glares at him, and the pulse—

—stops—

—and is replaced by a pretty annoying sound. Which probably only Sokoreth can properly hear. "One of them is causing some sort of mental effect," Dauntless says into the comm.

"Augh!" exclaims Sokoreth. This is much worse than the squeaky pulses, which were already pretty horrible.

"Urgh," says Titania. Her wings, being Tinker artifacts, don't wobble, but she's feeling pretty wobbly herself all of a sudden.

Screw it. Sokoreth focuses his aim on Cricket, the source of the godawful sound.

The source of the godawful sound continues sounding, watching Dauntless and moving around to dodge Sokoreth's blasts. Dauntless' knees buckle, and so do Krieg's, but the villain has had the presence of mind to hide around a corner while that happens, covering his ears and using earplugs he's apparently brought exactly for one such situation, so he's marginally less affected by it than the other two heroes. Cricket watches Dauntless intently, waiting for him to drop his shield.

However these Earth folk are reacting, it's differently than Ashras. Aluvai ears, maybe? Whatever. It's putting them out of commission and it is not doing the same to him. He jams his off-hand force wand back in its slot so he can pull a second stun wand and shoot at Cricket twice as fast. Is overwhelming her with a barrage of stun bolts going to work? Yes? Please?

Growling under his breath, Sokoreth takes more careful aim. Can he at least drive Cricket away from his vulnerable teammate, if he applies his barrage of stun bolts more carefully?

"Can I land?" says Titania, her eyes scrunched shut, barely hanging onto Sokoreth. "I would like to land."

"Fine by me."

She begins lowering them very gently and delicately toward the ground.

Dauntless remains on guard, waiting for an attack that doesn't come, and Velocity arrives soon. Dauntless explains what happened, and then someone comms them to inform that Stormtiger was nowhere to be found.

"I don't think that was mental, I think it was sonic," says Sokoreth. "None of you heard the noises she was making, right?"

"Right. I'm still a bit dizzy and have a headache, but it was much worse before, and I was nauseous and having trouble standing as well."

"I didn't get dizzy or nauseous, but I heard a horrible noise. I think it's because my ears work differently than yours, and maybe my balance too. And earlier, the sound she was making every few seconds - it didn't sound quite like any echolocation pulse I've heard before, but now that I have a chance to think about it, that's how she seemed to be using them."

Hooray.

"Thanks," he says. "I guess I did all right for my first time out."

"Capturing a member, even a new one, of the most dangerous parahuman group in the city is quite a bit more than alright."

"Well, when you put it like that."

He laughs, and claps Ashras' shoulder in a friendly way. "Seriously, you did good. You should be proud."

"If you insist. But I'm still going to work on my aim and firing speed."

"Yes, of course, don't take my praise as an excuse not to improve," he says, laughing.

"I generally don't!"

"I see you'll fit right in!"

"That is the idea."

The next time Piggot asks Ashras to meet him, she curtly congratulates him on his part in capturing Cricket, then informs him about High School. Apparently he's the first teenaged Case 53 (or similar) to join the Protectorate, but they have rules for those, given that they tended to have no memory and thus being dropped in school would be highly useless—not even the Youth Guard could argue against that logic.

The compromise is that teenaged Case 53s will be allowed to choose whether to go to High School or not, and if they prefer not to, they will be allowed to test out, and will have onsite time dedicated to studying for those, with occasional unscheduled Youth Guard visits to guarantee they are getting an appropriate education.

Hey, thanks for showing me where to go. I'm settling in nicely with the Wards so far. For some reason I'm supposed to learn about history and literature and mathematics instead of spending all of my time obsessively developing and testing new magic weapons, but at least they didn't send me to high school, which sounds terrible.

Oh, that's good, I'm happy it all worked out for you. So you do magic weapons? And I can't say I dislike high school, I have friends there, but I suppose you have those on the team, too, so it probably loses much of the appeal.

My teammates are by and large pretty great.

I'm supposed to keep some things about my powers secret for tactical reasons, but yes, "magic weapons" is the basic concept. Wands and staves. The ones I've used in the field so far throw stun bolts, force blasts, and lightning (at nonlethal intensities), and you might have guessed I can also do fire, but if I have any other tricks in reserve I'm not talking about them, both for tactical reasons and because I'm not totally sure I have the designs down and I don't want to brag until I have a working prototype held in my own hand.

That's cool. And your English is going pretty well.