Plea

Chapter 2

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Disclaimer: This story is based off of "Worm", an original web serial by Wildbow, all intellectual rights to and characters belong to Wildbow.

Special Thanks to Dakaath for his constructive criticism on this story.

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As I walked back to my office I reviewed the available options. The first one and the one I would have used if the girl came here with the intention of blackmailing us would be to just twist her arm with the wide array of legal options in my hands and shut her mouth for the foreseeable future. That would be my own superiors first choice too, no matter how distasteful is Shadow Stalker she's still one more body to throw to the front lines so many of her little sins are usually forgiven, far more than I admitted to Miss Herbert.

For once I'm glad that the other part is a parahuman too, that gives me far more options and I can justify them as getting into her good graces. I could just pull some strings and quietly get her into Arcadia High, if what she said about the number and range of bugs she could control is true then she has a high level Master classification and just as important she has shadowed Hess and documented her secret identity without being noticed.

To get her into Arcadia would allow us to properly train her before her debut on the Wards bypassing the usual game of guess the superhero. Even if she decided to stay rogue there are many uses for a surveillance specialist who owed us a favor.

Regardless of what I do with Herbert I'm investigating the chronic bullying, because once I take her favorite victim she might feel compelled to direct her attention against Vista or some other Ward, and in the field those kinds of actions can easily translate into friendly fire.

I hate those capes that believe humans are toys for their personal amusement. Like Nilbog.

I took my phone and started making calls. "Green, put your ADA hat on and call Winslow High, get me the full records of Taylor Herbert and Sophia Hess. Don't bother with being polite, rattle their cages and throw the word bully, see what else you get." To his credit the questions he asked were relevant and to the point so I gave him a slightly more elaborate explanation and sent him on his way.

My next call was to the IT people, I told them to vacuum Shadow Stalker's computer and cell phone and to correlate them with the e-mail addresses that Hebert gave me. Finally a third call to Legal to prepare the warrants as needed, something far easier with Sophia Hess than with any other Ward due to the specifics of her deal with the prosecution that forced her into my lap in the first place.

After that I throw myself back to the latest reports of Kaiser's most recent recruiting efforts.

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It took less than two hours for the first results to be in my computer's desktop alongside a note from the IT Department.

'As instructed all computing devices registered to Sophia Hess/Shadow Stalker have been checked. No unusual activity in Ward's Computer network, no unauthorized uses on PRT issue phone, home computer offline and currently inaccessible.' I didn't have time to be disappointed before I read the next part of the mail. 'However the lack of use of company phone for personal matters let us to track SS social media activity to a phone registered to Alan Barnes, father to an Emma Barnes who incidentally we independently connected to the one of the flagged E-Mail addresses (see Annexed files). A comparison of the activity of the cell phone in question put it at least in 6 occasions in near proximity to Shadow Stalker´s patrol route; waiting Legal to expand warrant to cover this device before taking any more measures.'

I allowed myself a smile, my men weren't tinkers or thinkers, they had earned their knowledge and skills the hard way through years of study and experience, and even if this was small and almost inconsequential compared to the trouble that the different gangs were causing on my city, the initiative shown was something to be proud of. I opened the files recovered from Barnes. Hurtful vicious and childish, and some of the details implied that she had feinted friendship with Taylor. I dragged the files to the paper bin, a shame that for her I lack both a warrant and jurisdiction to do something about it.

Two hours later I had the full unabridged mails in my desk. "I want Aegis and Armsmaster in my office in the next hour. Tell them to switch patrols if necessary."

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"Director Piggot. Ma'am." Aegis arrived a little earlier than strictly necessary, probably curious about the reasons why I summoned him in so abruptly.

I only nodded with my head before getting back to work, as far as I'm concerned getting early to a meeting is almost as wasteful as getting late, it means that my time must be subordinate to the time of others, and that won't do. That's a problem that I've never had with Armsmaster who once more arrives just in time.

"Good afternoon, earlier this day I was made aware of a discipline problem with Shadow Stalker's civilian identity, this are selected extracts of some of her mail that surfaced during the investigation. The names of third parties are blacked out." I passed two identical stacks of paper with the relevant papers.

"Christ." And Aegis wasn't over the first page yet. The boy with his power set couldn't help but to be a borderline masochist, using his own injuries as the punchline of poorly thought jokes during debrief sessions and allowing his teammates to use full contact to practice lethal maneuvers and in some cases, such as Shadow Stalker, to relief stress; but the sadism inherent on the pages he is reading is probably beyond he can stomach.

"I don't see the problem, as far as I have seen, with the exception of the locker incident, she is breaking no laws nor misusing her powers, and it seems that there weren't any official reports from the school." No matter how good a tinker and fighter Armsmaster is, he will always be a poor leader if he can't understand what is wrong with giving that kind of answer in front of Aegis.

"What? No, I want her out of my team." Just the reaction I was expecting. Usually I force people to follow my lead during this kind of meetings, but from time to time it is better to let the subordinates to vent without me taking one side or another, as long as the discussion is taking the direction I want of course.

"If the discipline issue is so bad we can get the school to segregate her from the problematic elements of her grade and quietly get her some counseling. No need to waste her combat abilities."

"That's easy for you to say, you don't have to fight alongside her and hope she covers your back instead of shooting at it. I don't see how we can trust her, not if she's willing to side with people that betray their friends for entertainment."

"She is a valuable asset and the good she has done in the streets compensates her unfortunate behavior." I mentally translated, 'In other words you don't want the stigma of failing to rehabilitate her.' For me politics is an unfortunate side effect of my job, a job that was given to me when my team fell prey to the same politics. For Armsmaster on the other hand politics is the only path to greater power in the Protectorate so he searches it with barely concealed desperation. And for that despite his exemplary record he has never earned my respect and he never will.

"Before you take a decision Armsmaster there is one more E-mail we intercepted between her and a friend, and I believe you're not going to be as accepting of her behavior." I passed him one last sheet of paper and waited to see him react.

"Yes, it seems that Shadow Stalker has been doing a little hunting on her own. For some reason three days ago she seems to have fought Grue, who she has been explicitly ordered not to engage unless necessary and to ask for backup as soon as possible. So you understand how confused am I to find out about it in a mail to the same friend she has been pairing to bully people at her school instead of raising her scores high enough to get into Arcadia so we can coordinate her schedule with the rest of the team."

"Yes Director I do." I could almost hear the grinding of his teeth at the whole issue, he was a bad leader, but as a commander he was one of the bests, and he knew the risks of insubordination in the field.

"I'm afraid I'm a believer in punishment, when punishment is due, but other than this mail I have no hard evidence of this last infraction, yet. So I'm going to order a disciplinary review for Sophia Hess and the PRT is issuing warrants for both her house and the house of her accomplice."

Depending of what we find we either handle the discipline issue locally, get her out of school and give her online courses to fill the education requirements and put her into close surveillance in the field by a local Protectorate volunteer as long as one steps forward," 'And I'm going to make sure is not Dauntless' I thought, it was something of an open secret that the newest star of the Brockton Bay Protectorate was getting some of the worst details a cape could get with them being considered punishment and babysitting Shadow Stalker might become a career killer if she messed up again, "remit her to the Protectorate HQ for reassignment to a team with harsher standards of discipline, or simply declare the plea null and void and ship her to Juvenile Hall."

I let them contemplate those options for a moment before continuing. "Aegis, does she has patrol tonight?"

"No Ma'am, tonight she got monitor duty." I could almost feel his anger. A leader cannot always let his emotions show so openly especially in delicate issues like this one that might take weeks or even months to come to a head. Luckily for him the nature of the infractions meant that, one way or another, the resolution of this issue will be swift, but he shouldn't expect this to always be the case.

"Replace her; I want to have a talk with her in two hours, which is incidentally when my men are executing the search warrants. Armsmaster I want her to be reassuringly solid when we have our little chat."

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Upon a quite reasonable complain from skywiseskychan that the chapter was a little too low I added a bit of the next part to give it a little more substance.