Downtown, Hannah's Home

September 29th, 18:15

---

"What do you mean I'm not getting promoted?"

Mary's scathing query is made less intimidating by the forkful of spaghetti that she is pointing at Hannah as she says it.

Letting out another sigh, the feeling starting to become far too frequent for her, Hannah patiently repeats herself. "Your probation doesn't end until December thirteenth, so it was decided that your move to the Protectorate will be delayed until then."

"That's retarded!" Mary exclaims, furiously, "I'm turning eighteen tomorrow! It kinda defeats the point in separating Wards and Protectorate if I stay a Ward for months after turning eighteen."

As if to emphasise how her point is final, she brings her fork of spaghetti to her mouth and chomps down on it with fervour. Hannah smiles at the image.

"Again, you are on probation, so the rules are different for you. And besides, if you were to join the Protectorate on your birthday exactly, then everyone would know when that is, thus compromising your identity, which is why these promotions are almost always a month or two in either direction, otherwise it would defeat the point of having a secret identity."

Mary scowls at her use of Mary's own words back at her, but silently acknowledges her point. Really, they both know she's just sulking and not really complaining wholeheartedly. She's smart enough to understand all the little details of the situation, and just how much easier it is for everyone to get her all sorted in one fell swoop.

"But enough about that," Hannah changes the subject, "how is school treating you two? Anything interesting going on?"

Predictably, Suzuya is the first response, always so full of energy. 

"It's great!" He exclaims as he fishes for more spaghetti, "Claire-chan got a new boyfriend and he buys us all sweets!"

"Claire?" Hannah asks, not recognising the name.

"Uhuh," Suzuya responds, nodding his head and not elaborating, choosing to focus on his food instead.

"Who's Claire?" Hannah tries again.

"Y'know, the girl who gave that other girl funny brownies?"

Hannah remembers that story. One of his new friends giving someone weed brownies without telling them that it's got weed in it. That story was just one of many that has Hannah frankly concerned about Suzuya's choice of friends. 

The only thing is... "Wasn't that girl called Clara?"

"Huh? I mean, I'unno, maybe?" Suzuya responds over a mouthful of food, making Mary kick him under the table because of his bad manners.

All the while, Hannah sweatdrops at the fact that Suzuya seems to be genuinely unsure as to what his supposed friend's name is.

Choosing to ignore that, she turns to Mary, "what about you, Mary? Have you spent much time with your new friends?"

And wasn't that a surprise. Hannah honestly never expected Mary to actually make any friends. She figured that Mary would just refuse to do so out of sheer spite, if nothing else.

"I guess," she shrugs, "we had some fun the other day wrapping copper wire around some rocks and throwing them at power lines."

Hannah can only glare disapprovingly at the now giggling Mary, knowing that half her amusement is coming from the memory, while the other half is coming from how she just admitted to a felony to the face of an officer of the law.

Thus, the rest of the night continues with Hannah patiently and exasperatedly listening to her charges cheerfully admitting to a plethora of crimes, and giving a token reprimand of how they shouldn't be breaking laws.

She'd try harder, but only Suzuya would listen to her, and even then, he'd likely just forget by tomorrow anyway.

But Mary doesn't care about any of that, as she is still somewhat peeved about not getting straight to the Protectorate, and enjoying the extended freedom that comes with the position.

So, when the next day comes, she sets in a plan for some petty revenge.

Granted, it's nothing as vindicative as she'd like, but imagining the awkwardness of the situation is enough to make her giggle in schadenfreude.

The plan, if it can even really be called as such, was incredibly simple.

In the morning, she acted as usual, went to uni as has become unfortunately usual. The only difference this time, is that she spent her first two classes for the day on her phone texting her friends, instead of doing something typically more worthwhile, like playing Tetris.

She honestly wasn't expecting to make any actual friends, but Stacy and Tasmin were entertaining enough that when she came across them both again a few days after their first meeting, she didn't outright reject their offer to hang out.

From then, she was introduced to Karla, Cody and Zach. The best part? All of them are as much assholes as Stacy. It's very entertaining for Mary.

Seriously, she met Karla and Cody first, and that was a mostly normal interaction, if with more insults than is probably normal. But Zach? That motherfucker greeted her for the first time by throwing a fucking frog at her like he was pitching in fucking baseball.

She dodged it, obviously, but that caused the frog to hit Karla right in the face and the thing fucking all but exploded.

It. Was. Hilarious.

So Zach swiftly became her favourite, the white skinned, black haired, stereotypical high school drummer-looking guy charming her with his absolute disregard for morals and principles of any kind.

But back to the point, her plan was simply to get the others to agree to hang out after uni, though she had to bribe them all with pizza so that they'd actually stay out, but honestly she doesn't care about something like that. Money will cease to ever be a problem for her once her inheritance comes in, after all.

Now, as for why this is revenge, well, that's because Mary knows for a fact that Hannah has planned some kind of surprise birthday party. No doubt some misguided attempt to bring some normality into her life.

Which means, inside of Hannah's house, there will be a hopefully not insignificant number of people standing around uselessly waiting for her to show up, not knowing that she doesn't intend to at all.

It's making her laugh just thinking about the face Hannah will make when she finally realises that she's not showing up.

Of course, she's not an idiot. She didn't tell her new friends that it's her birthday today. She might not have known them for long, but they're enough like her that she knows exactly how poorly releasing such information would go.

So instead, she's tempted them with something even more fun than hanging out and eating pizza! Once a few hours have passed and night falls, they're going to go to one of the shitty neighbourhoods, and throw rocks at the homeless druggies.

Maybe wave some notes in front of their eyes and get a couple of them to have a knife fight or something. It's practically a tradition at this point, so she's been told anyway. Apparently the city used to have a gang called Merchants before the Red Hearts came to town.

That gang was apparently basically just a bunch of homeless druggies rallying under a homeless parahuman druggie. They used to go up to random people and sick 'em with heroin needles as a way to get more customers.

Honestly, not the worst tactic. You can't deny that it'd be effective, at least.

Point is, they were useless, violent scum, and there would be a homeless knife fight at least every other day. Plus, Brockton has grown something of a systematic distain for the homeless thanks to those Merchants, so no one's going to look too closely at another group of sadistic teenagers being as amoral as teenagers are wont to be.

Unfortunately, as she is waiting for the others to show up, it's Zach that arrives first.

While normally Zach is her favourite, that's only when there are other people around to take the brunt of his...Zach-ness.

Seeing as she is alone however....

"Oi, Dicklips!" Mary turns around at the shout, recognising the voice, and immediately has to lean to the side to avoid the frog sailing right for her face.

"Stop fucking throwing frogs at me!" She yells at her approaching friend, her brows twitching, "where the fuck are you even getting all these frogs from!"

"There's a pond by my house," he shrugs, "a whole bunch of the fuckin' amphibians spawn there."

"You're such a fucking retard. Stop throwing frogs at me, or I'll salt that fucking pond."

"Eh, I know a guy who knows a guy."

"You have a fucking frog supplier?" she stares at him in bafflement for a moment as he acts as if having a frog supplier is completely natural. "You have issues, man."

"You have cancer," he quickly retorts, sounding very much like a child.

"That is just, not accurate."

Before she has to deal with actually interacting with Zach for too long, instead of just watching him interact with others, he is saved by the approach of Karla and Cody.

Karla is a pretty tall girl, and definitely the most goth among them, Mary got bored of wearing goth stuff, and is now just wearing blue jeans, a white blouse and black cardigan. Karla is wearing basically what Mary wore on her fist day at uni.

She's got long boots with thick soles, tight leather pants and a crop top that shows off plenty of her milky-white flesh, and a pair of gloves, all in black to match her lipstick, with a thick black leather jacket on top of it all.

Cody looks like a relatively normal white kid, with brown hair, a smattering of freckles and a face that just seems polite and nice, wearing cargo pants and a simple T-shirt despite it being a cold day out. Of course, he is none of those things, but he's very good at playing the 'good guy' to manipulate people. He's still a major asshole though.

"Wassup Dumb and Dumber!" Karla greets, to which Zach pulls another frog out of his pocket and throws it at her face.

"What the fuck!" Karla screams, barely ducking under the unlucky amphibian, with Mary and Cody laughing at her, "stop fucking throwing frogs at people you fucking psycho!"

Soon after Karla, Stacy and Tasmin arrive, and Mary expectantly stares at Zach, who just gives her a wry smile and a shrug. "I'm outta frogs."

"Tch, don't talk about the French that way."

Before long, the group of six in wandering about in search of a good pizza place, only finding one at nearly six in the afternoon.

"Pandejo's Pizzaria? Sounds crap," Stacy says as they stand before the building.

"That's just 'cuz you're racist," Cody 'kindly' responds, "this place has the best deep pan I've ever had, I swear to god."

"I think the word you're looking for is 'based', but whatever, if the pizza's shit, then I'm gonna steal food from your fridge."

"You bitch, you need to stop breaking into my fucking flat. Do you have any idea how much you're costing me with groceries?"

"Sound's like a you problem."

"You mother-"

As those two continue to fight, Tasmin goes ahead and orders a bunch of pizzas, going overboard with full knowledge that she isn't going to have to fit the bill, while Karla, Zach, and Mary all sit down in their own conversations.

"So you're telling me," Mary states, her voice laden with disbelief, "your new boyfriend has paid your rent for the next half year, what, because you asked real nice, batted your lashes and said pretty please?"

"Pretty neat, huh?" Is Karla's simple response, while Zach rolls his eyes.

"You get used to it Paki-"

"I'm not Pakistani." Mary interrupts, though Zach pretends not to hear her.

"-Mrs Dommy Mommy here is a massive gold digger, she basically never pays for anything with her own money, which is good for her, because she's completely fucking inept at everything and would literally never be able to scrape together enough brain cells to make any kind of decent living."

"You say gold digger, I say whore with extra steps," Mary answers, getting a laugh from Zach and an indignant yell from Karla.

"Man, you have no idea," Zach responds over quiet chuckles, "you should hear about her last boyfriend, Karla, tell her the story with what's-his-face, fuckin', what was it? David? Derick?"

"It was James, you fuckwit, you weren't even close," Tasmin suddenly interrupts as she joins them in the booth, forcefully pushing Mary to the side to get a seat, "but I totally agree that you gotta hear this story, it's fucking gold."

Now feeling rather interested, Mary gives the sharply grinning Karla her full attention, finding herself smiling even before Karla opens her mouth, the girl's sadistic smile carrying an infectious amusement.

"Alright, Chink-"

"That's even further away from being right."

"-it's story time." Karla takes a deep breath, sorting her words for a moment before telling her story like one would tell a child their bedtime story. "Once upon a time, I was dating this guy, uhh, Mark?"

"Mike," Tasmin corrects.

"Right, Mike. Now, Mike was kinda meh. Unfunny, unfit, small dong and shitty stamina, buuut, he had a whole lot of Daddy's money, y'know? So that was cool, but it kinda just stopped being worth it after, well, not that long honestly. But that's when it got interesting."

At this point she stops to look around, as if wanting to be sure they're paying attention, which they are, except for Cody and Stacy, who are still fighting.

"See, one day, I was at his place when he got a call from his little sister. 'Parently she got stuck up or something and wanted him to pick her up, so he went and did that, which was honestly fine by me, since it meant I got the house to myself 'till he got back, and his house was nice, full pantry and everything."

She gets a far off look in her face, as if imagining the mere thought of a full pantry is heaven. Mary gets the feeling she's not from a particularly well off family. But she soon shakes her head and continues the story.

"So, I was chillin' there, walking around just in shorts and a bra, 'cuz I figured I'd be alone for a while. Except, that's when the door opens, and guess who walks in?"

There's a brief silence before Mary realises the question isn't rhetorical, making her roll her eyes. "The fuck am I supposed to know? Was it Kaiser?"

Her guess gets a couple snorts at the idea of the local Neo-Nazi leader showing up, before she continues.

"Totally. Nah, it was just his dad, Mr Mike-"

"That's not how names work."

"-who, by the way, is actually kinda hot. Middle aged but fit, full head of hair, strong body and taller than me by a good few inches. Real DILF material. Now, I'm not exactly one to be ashamed, so it's not like I made any effort to cover myself, but what's interesting is that he didn't make any effort to look away either, despite still being married."

Mary notices Zach practically bouncing in his seat like a kid in a movie theatre waiting for the best part to happen.

"We both kinda just stared at each other for a bit 'till I asked him if he liked what he saw. Next thing you know, I'm getting railed against the kitchen counter and experiencing one of the best fucks of my life. It was a bit of a close call, but we managed to avoid getting caught by Mark-"

"Mike."

"-by Mike, and I spent the next few weeks doing both the father and the son, and getting nice 'gifts' from both. Except, I kinda just got bored of them both, mostly Mike honestly, he was a real buzzkill, so I decided to break things off, but of course I can't just waste so much potential, can I?"

At this point, Zach has already started giggling and is doing his best to keep it down, his good mood infectious and making both Mary and Tasmin smile wider.

"So, I let Mike catch me and Mr Mike doin' the dirty, and the face he made was hilarious. I struggled not to just laugh then and there, he looked like that fucking PTSD meme face thing, y'know the one?"

Zach quickly pulls out his phone and a few seconds later, Mary is looking at the meme in question, and when she imagines the situation being described, she joins Tasmin in her laughter.

"Don't forget the best bit!" Zach excitedly interrupts, to which Karla rolls her eyes, smirk firmly in place.

"Yeah, so, fun fact about that story is that it was before I turned eighteen, so I was technically a minor. Used that to blackmail Mr Mike into buying me a car, as 'restitutions', of course."

"You got a fucking car out of all of that?"

Karla practically preens, feeling complemented when a normal person would probably be ashamed. "Hell yeah, a Porsche too."

"Dayum girl, respect the grind, I guess."

"Was that a pun?"

"What?" Mary asks, pausing a moment before she figures it out, "oh. Huh. Totally, yeah. Meant that."

Further conversation is put on hold as their pizzas arrive, and they quickly dig in, though Mary finds her brow twitching at how much she's going to have to pay for all of this. Who actually buys drinks from pizza places?

A sudden staccato of bangs grabs everyone's attention from their food, and they look out of the window in curiosity, no one in the pizza shop showing any amount of concern for what was so clearly gunshots.

This is Brockton Bay after all, it's nothing new.

And indeed, as they look out of the window, they catch sight of a figure dressed like an actual clown running too fast to be natural down the street, soon passing them by. A moment later, another figure appears on one of the roofs opposite them, before similarly disappearing, no doubt chasing after the clown.

Observing this cape altercation with all the interest one watches the weather, most of the people int he pizzeria simply go back to their food.

"Any of you recognise that guy on the roof?" Mary asks, mildly curious but not enough to bother getting in costume. It's not like she brought it with her.

"I think he's one of those Red Hearts guys. Don't know which though."

"Huh, neat."

And that was the end of that conversation.

---

Commercial District North

September 30th, 18:30

---

Emma isn't sure how she's supposed to be feeling.

On one hand, she was kind of mad that she was forced to patrol instead of attending Mary's birthday party, but on the other hand, she's been informed that Mary has decided to simply not show up to her own party.

Suzuya even facetimed her so that she could experience just how awkward it is. Their house has a birthday banner and some balloons in the front room, and Miss Militia, Assault and Battery, alongside Vista are all just sort of awkwardly sitting around.

So, she's kind of glad she didn't make it, because that whole situation sucks. Though, Suzuya seems to be enjoying it. She doesn't think he's capable of feeling anything like awkwardness anyway, so she's not surprised.

But still, if she had to patrol, she'd rather have someone other than Mimic be her partner. 

Piggy has decided that Wards aren't going to patrol without an adult for the time being, at least until they have a better understanding of the situation regarding TGT, and she got stuck with Mimic.

She'd have preferred...literally anyone else. 

It's not that he's a bad person or anything, it's just that the black-clad man so clearly has problems, and she doesn't want to be his therapy. He's constantly cautioning her about shit and trying to keep her from actually doing her job. It doesn't help that his mask if basically a fucking mirror. It's incredibly annoying to argue with someone while looking at your own reflection.

She kind of gets it, at least. She's heard through the grapevine that Mimic used to be an actual leader of a Protectorate branch, but his city kind of got fucked up by that old band of serial killers, the Slaughterhouse Nine, and is now one of the Quarantine Sites.

Apparently, he lost a couple of the Wards under his wing to one of those Nine, who would later become known as The First Clown. So now he's acting like she's going to keel over and die at every opportunity.

Like, she doesn't want to be a dick about it, she gets why he's got the issue. But that doesn't mean she's just going to be fine with being treated like glass. It's annoying.

Besides, it's not like anything is even happening today.

As if to punish her hubris for ignoring Murphy, almost as soon as she finishes the thought, she hears the tell-tale sound of several pistols being fired together. In Brockton Bay, that means either one of two things. 

Either a gang fight is taking place, or a gang is just murdering some innocent people for whatever reason. Or, it could be the police murdering innocent people, she cynically thinks to herself.

"Mimic to console, we're hearing gunfire not far North of our position, please advise." She hears Mimic call in from behind her, and turns around while trying to hide her scowl at the fact that he's calling for advice instead of just doing the obvious and going to investigate.

Luckily for her, she doesn't even have to open her mouth to suggest they investigate, as the situation comes to her instead.

She may be young, but she does have plenty of experience. Enough that when a figure moving too fast to be natural rounds the corner at the end of the street they're walking down, she notices right away.

She only takes a moment to take the figure in. She can't really say if they're a boy or girl with how androgynous they are, but their costume makes Emma freeze.

They're wearing a clown outfit, tassels, bells and all, and for a moment, the image of a certain woman overlaps with the person in front of her, making Emma's skin feel clammy. 

But the vision soon passes as, with a shake of her head, she focuses on reality, idly picking out the differences between this person and the woman from her nightmares.

This person is shorter and slimmer, for one, likely due to being younger. And they actually seem like a real, professional clown, instead of a half-hearted one. The biggest difference though, is that this person is running away.

She would never have to run.

"Circus," Mimic's sudden voice from her side startles her slightly, not having realised he got so close, "they're a new solo Villain, petty theft mostly. Powers are low Brute, mostly speed and acrobatics, as well as a small hammerspace and minor pyrokinesis."

The list of powers strikes a chord of recognition in her mind, and she quickly turns on her comms to ask about it.

"Redemption to Console, is Circus Party Trick? The one Falcon and Gypsy knew?"

"Unconfirmed," Gallant's voice responds, "but probably, yes."

That's good to know, she supposes. Though she doesn't know how it will help beyond knowing that Circus is probably insane, if she's from the same place as Mary and Suzuya.

As if to prove her thought, the moment that this Villain spots the pair of Heroes staring them down, they don't turn to run or anything, instead they start flailing their arms out and running towards them with renewed fervour.

With their approach, Emma ignites her arms, fully prepared to burn them if they get too close, while Mimic manifests half a dozen phantom men around them, ready for combat. 

Not that Circus seems to be readying herself for combat.

Instead, they just keep running, and the reason becomes apparent just a moment later when another Villain appears.

Dressed in a pair of loose dark blue running pants and a plain white jacket, with a button on his upper left chest alongside the off-centre seam that opens the jacket. He's not wearing a mask, but the collar of his jacket is tall enough to cover his mouth most of the time.

Clearly, he doesn't care much about secret identities, something that Emma finds herself believing even more when she sees his face. His eyes have deep dark bags under them and he generally just looks like he hasn't slept in weeks and is just tired of everything.

The only thing that really even points to him being a cape is the sword strapped to his waist. Oh, and the fact that he suddenly appeared standing on the edge of a building's roof.

Well, Emma thinks to herself as Circus gets closer, at least I'm not bored anymore.

---

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

I wanted to do slice of life when I started the chapter, but then I really wanted to do crime stuff. I blame the fic I started reading, "Flesh is Weak" by WelcomeToEstalia on FF.net. It's a fic where Taylor becomes an Adeptus Mechanicus, and not just the tech, she gets the Omnissiah worship too, it's pretty good. :)

Also, I think (hope) I'm gonna have fun with the fic now that things are gonna be kicking off (it's gonna be a pain in the ass to keep track of everything, I just know it)

Also, gimme reviews, I wanna see them golden stars :)

(4)Advanced chapters on pat.reon, link in description and profile. Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses