Their name is Missy Biron, and their life sucks.
The good news was that they managed to integrate their soul’s vast memories unobtrusively, manifesting as exceptionally vivid dreams that were the subjects of many artistic endeavors. Fingerpaints showing a clumsy Shenron, crayons on the walls detailing a medical sealing array, a Mass relay made of clay, an attachment to a vividly purple geode that closely resembled psitanium. Naming the stuffed dog ‘Visha’ as she did so long ago.
At around age five, the upload between body and spirit was fully completed, and Missy ‘woke up’ to the truth of their existence. Namely, that their parents were very close to divorce, and the only thing holding it back was their respective efforts to set up a ‘win’ in the proceedings, using Missy as their primary weapon against the other.
The good news was that they didn’t have to suffer alone: there was a presence in the back of her mind, a telepathic link between her and what felt to be some kind of massive presence. She assumed this had something to do with the local magic system, which resembled some kind of comic book superhero setting.
Was it one she recognized? Absolutely not. Back when they still had manual control over their memories, they selectively deleted old memories of fictional universes, so she didn’t get bored with new media. So even if, as some people have asked, she did find herself in a place that resembled a fictional universe she’s seen before, she wouldn’t remember it, as her soul appeared to have followed suit with that selective forgetting and made her forget most details.
She kept enough memories to be able to recognize rough genre conventions, but that’s only helpful in the sense that she understood the concept of a Superhero and the rough cultural context of why they dress in brightly colored, individualized outfits rather than anything uniform.
Still, she didn’t have access to any of these ‘superpowers’, so Missy did the one thing that could be done.
‘Greetings’
[SURPRISE]
It was a flood of telepathic information. She had thought that the Prothean method of communication was needlessly thorough and information dense, but this… It was on another level.
But… she could withstand it. She was sure that she, much like Shepard was when he had to clumsily interpret the Prothean Beacon’s visions, had missed most of the information, but she had caught the essentials: It was alarmed at receiving a packet of information from her, designated as ‘host’, it worried that this deviation from standard procedure would lead to unpleasant outcomes, including but not limited to termination of itself, Missy, and possibly this entire iteration of ‘the experiment’. That was… about all she was able to gather before she had to discard the information packet, her brain aching at holding it for even that long.
It took a day in the hospital on top of days of muddling through elementary school and her parent’s manipulations and arguments before she had recovered from the headache and was able to compose something a bit more… complex than her initial one-word handshake. She also made sure she was prepared this time for the consequences of speaking to a telepathic alien whose “voice” was to her efforts as a megaphone was to a whisper.
[Contact]
As this information packet included instructions on how to better communicate, it took a few seconds for the massive being to dumb down the packet size into something she could understand.
[Greeting] Folder sent. The information packet included their designation, which Missy pared down to the one nickname. It still took about three minutes for Missy to fully understand the novella-length response.
[Query] Missy sent. She wanted to know how the whole ‘superpower’ thing worked, and if Folder was involved in that whole thing. She also added a request to trim down the information density further.
There was a whole five minutes of radio silence.
[Trigger]
Ah, so that’s how it works. Select for unstable individuals who won’t be inclined to stay quiet about getting superpowers, use the mental instability caused by a high stress situation to insert a control schema for operations that the alien being actually executes, and then watch the fireworks.
From a human perspective, it’s horrible, of course. But from something so grand in scale that humans looked more like eusocial insects than anything deserving ethical standing, it made perfect sense.
The problem, of course, was that she wanted some of those superpowers. The necessary mental stress was something she probably wasn’t even capable of anymore, not after so many lives. She hadn’t actually looked at the research on parahumans, not to any serious extent, but she would not be surprised to find that triggers skewed towards the young, if she looked into it.
[Proposal]
…
…
[Agreement]
---------------------------------
Naturally, Folder’s agreement came with numerous caveats and conditions. They were getting better at talking slower, allowing Missy to better integrate the information without packet loss.
She still needed to dedicate dozens of minutes of concentration to do that, but even with the slow speed, Missy was able to create a plan of action within a few exchanges, a lazy Saturday well spent.
Each of the innumerable fragments of the greater being has a purpose in the greater scheme of things, even if a lot of those things are redundant, experimental, or obsolete. Apparently, because of the grand experimental cycle, the entities that are organizing them didn’t like throwing away anything, as even proven failures could potentially be useful in the grand experiment.
Folder’s primary function was spatial and dimensional manipulation; it could warp space directly, of course, but it could also compress objects, increasing their density in ways beyond normal physics.
Most of the exchanges, beyond the dozens of sidebar conversations clarifying matters and communicating about things irrelevant to the subject at hand, were about Tanya creating a fake ‘trigger event’ based on the kind of pressures she was under as a six year old in a broken home, and Folder explaining what kind of powerset was appropriate for those stresses.
By and large, it tended towards environmental manipulation of space; which made sense: after all, the stresses were about the environment. However, with some adjustments, emphasizing certain psychological triggers and responses from her extensive knowledge on insanity from her time among the psychonauts, she managed to finally get a powerset she was happy with.
Her powers depended on her withdrawing her organic body into Folder’s dimension, converted into a high-fidelity data file in it’s crystalline memory, and extruding a form of high-durability crystal that she operated remotely, allowing her access to some of Folder’s toolkit: Specifically, the warping of space, with safety limits in-built that prevented her from actively warping anything that had the stiff molecular bonds that designated something as ‘solid’ to human understanding. Turning back recreated the organic body, in a way that also allowed her to heal from any wounds suffered from.
Because the specific habits that the hypothetical Missy included things that Tanya actually did when she was a psychologically screwed up little girl, such as retreating into tight spaces combined with some regressive tendencies, the dash of what humans would think of as irony and the entities thought of as a way to keep the cape in a productive mindset in her powerset was the fact that the crystalline state was precisely one meter tall; although it did share the shape of her actual body. Further, the process of switching between the two states took long enough that it was impractical to do so on the fly, forcing her to actually deal with being extra small, and her organic body didn’t age, starve, etc. while she was transformed, so long deployments could mean a noticeable slowing of her growth.
That wasn’t to say that the crystalline body was fragile; it was obscenely durable, with a mohs hardness of 13 and weighed… well, the weight was adjustable, sort of: the mass was a set amount of about 150 kilograms; 10 times as heavy as a human of the same size would be. But she could adjust the effect of gravity and inertia so she only weighed one tenth of that; she never actually lost the durability, but could mitigate the downsides. Even if she did get injured, she simply needed to turn back and re-assume the form to be completely whole once more.
So with that impressive power on hand… Missy decided that the thing to do was to go punch out some neonazis until the government got its shit together and stopped the superpowered six year old from risking their life on the regular.
Sounds like fun!
---------------------------------
Armsmaster sighed as he saw the smiling little girl sitting in the interrogation room. The true form of the Breaker 6 vigilante, codenamed ‘Fairy Dancer’ by PRT’s internal files. When children triggered that young, they tended to go off the deep end, psychologically. Which tracked with her actions, to be blunt.
The little girl’s eyes widened in wonder as she saw him sit down. “Wow, Armsmaster!” She exclaimed excitedly. It was rather endearing, and it caused a tension in his back to relax. “I have your panties!” Armsmaster winced. Only a child could say such a thing without shame. “Can you sign my butt?”
“No.” Armsmaster said firmly. He really wished that was the first time he was asked that question, but it was more like the thirtieth. He didn’t actually count them. He turned to the social service worker that was tapped until the girl’s parents could be contacted. “How are we on her parents?” He asked.
Mrs. Heywood prevented the water cup from spilling from the girl’s careless movements and said: “Preliminary searches have failed to identify her.” One of the things that the PRT used to track and identify underage capes was to pay attention to a pattern of missing child reports that ended up being false alarms. This is the second thing they try, right after searching the child’s pockets for anything identifying. A preliminary search constitutes those two plus an additional search on police database for priors, so it was a little unusual that they couldn’t identify her on that basis: it meant she was not once reported missing in the duration of her cape career. “As she still refused to give us her name-”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The girl piped up: “I’m Fairy Dancer!”
Mr. Lopez, the PRT administrator that was seated across from the girl, made an annoyed grunt. “You didn’t even know that name before Peerless told you.”
“It’s so much better than what I came up with, though!” Fairy Dancer argued, “I was going around calling myself Princess Jewel.” That did explain the tiara she wore along with the toddler overalls that was her costume. Why she wore clothes over her breaker state was made clear when she turned back… wearing both sets of clothes. She then took off the costume, which was now folded up and used as a cushion on her chair.
“That’s not bad.” Mrs. Heywood commented.
“I know, it’s genius.” Fairy Dancer said without a hint of irony. “But I like Fairy Dancer better.”
Armsmaster grunted. “What is your non-cape name?” He asked patiently. Plenty of children would do something for a hero that they wouldn’t for a civilian authority, even a police officer. It was the whole reason he was here.
Fairy Dancer gasped. “But that’s against da rulez!” She said dramatically. Armsmaster narrowed his eyes.
“We can’t get your parents to take you home until we know where they are.” Armsmaster said evenly. “I’m sure they’re worried sick.”
Fairy Dancer burst out laughing. …Armsmaster had the distinct impression that he was unqualified to deal with a child this dysfunctional. At least, without tranquilizing her.
“Are you okay?” Mrs. Heywood asked.
Giggling, Fairy Dancer waved her off. “I’m peachy keen!” She said exuberantly. “But I do need food. I usually get myself some special pancakes whenever I defeat a villain. You wanna come? My treat!” She asked, turning to Armsmaster.
Okay, Piggot hates doing this, as it involves treating children as adults just because they’re capes, but he gets the impression that they’re not going to get anywhere otherwise. “You know…” He said, “You can join the Wards without telling your parents.”
Fairy Dancer’s mask of cheer shattered. She stared at him, utterly baffled with an undertone of horror. Exactly the same expression that Mrs. Heywood had. “...You’re joking.” She insisted.
“It’s not often used.” Armsmaster clarified, “Basically, we tell them it’s a free after school program, like the Girl Guides,” At least, that’s pretty much the only example they can give that accepts six year olds. They’ll probably literally tell them she’s joining a Girl Guides troop. “-where you learn useful skills with other children and otherwise stay out of their hair.” Given how she’s managed to avoid getting missing persons calls for her previous cape activities, that should be an easy sell if it’s noted as ‘paid for’. “It would limit your ability to participate in Wards activities, of course, to maintain that illusion, but it would give you the protection you’ll need from the Empire 88, as Mr. Lopez has explained, without them knowing that you’re a parahuman.“
Slowly, Fairy Dancer nodded. “That… makes some sense.” She said softly, thinking hard on it. She muttered something to herself, but his data analysis program, typically tuned to help his battlefield awareness and investigations, picked up on it: “Historically, it probably was meant to help children of villains, given how buds work…:” …What the hell? Was this really a six year old? What does she mean by bud?
As if a switch was flipped, Fairy Dancer’s previous excitable persona returned. “Do the Wards get pancakes when we bag a villain?”
He really shouldn’t, but… “We usually give them a pizza party.” Armsmaster said faux-seriously.
“Can we have a pancake party if I bag one?” Fairy Dancer asked, matching his energy.
“I don’t see why not.” Armsmaster said after a moment of stroking his beard.
“Yay!”
---------------------------------
One of the drawbacks of being caught by the long arm of the law, of course, was that instead of doing an incredibly fun version of parkour to get around the city after school, Missy instead had to go to the PRT building, to meet with the other Wards before doing anything fun.
Worse, there was this whole cloak-and-dagger bullshit involving black vans and discreet entrances in the FroYo shop down the block from the PRT building. “Yo.” She said, saying it as deeply as she could manage, which is to say: still high enough that it took training for most men to be able to match, with a sizable segment being physically unable to. She also held up her badge to the scanner. As it turned out, you can get custom, simplified Master/Stranger codes if you complained enough and were also a small child. She was eight now, so while she wasn’t looking forward to when they would force her to use the normal ones, she had a few years yet.
“Welcome back, Dancer.” Said the PRT soldier that was guarding the checkpoint. He buzzed her through.
Once inside, she went into the close-to-the-entrance locker room, put away the fake Girl Guide (which was what they called the Rainbow Squirts/Girl Scouts/etc. In this universe) outfit except for her underthings, and activated her breaker state, curling into a ball and activating the switch that Folder had implanted in her brain, known to the PRT eggheads as the Corona Gemma. After about five seconds, the dimensional exchange activated with a small popping sound, and she stood back up. She was now much shorter and made of crystal, but also naked. That done, she took her costume out and put it on.
Her official outfit as Fairy Dancer was… pretty much what you’d expect. At its base, it was a ballet tutu, with gossamer fairy wings and an elaborate mask. It very much obscured the fact that she was made of nigh-invulnerable crystal in her breaker state, as that was something the PRT really didn’t want to flaunt. It could stretch enough and had enough filler material in the skirt to still be usable and modest when she was at her full size, but this was more of an emergency measure, as she’d need to either take it off or use a second copy of the costume if she wanted to turn back into her breaker state.
Did she enjoy beating up bigots instead of getting a normal childhood? Absolutely. Would she have preferred a normal childhood? Probably, but it wasn’t really an option in that dumpster fire of a household. At least things improved when the divorce actually happened; yeah she had to go back and forth due to the 50/50 custody agreement, and admittedly she was far more prepared for neglectful parents than a real child, so it wasn’t too bad… except that was the kind of logic that got her into being a child soldier, and she really shouldn’t be defending her circumstances with it.
Once in the Wards room, she waved at the only other one here. “Hey Gearbox.” She said, accessing the computer to find out the patrol schedule.
“Hey Fairy Dancer.” Gearbox was the current leader of the Wards. Soon to leave, as most Wards leaders were: they gave it to the oldest in a strictly-underage squad, ostensibly to give everyone the opportunity, but more realistically so there were fewer complaints about the chain of command: by not making it merit-based, there was no grounds to petition for a change in leadership without demonstrated incompetence. After all, it’s not like the Wards actually matter; on paper it was just a way to keep children with superpowers out of trouble, not to actually utilize them as law enforcement.
But in Brockton Bay, one quickly learns the difference between de facto and de jure. By the book, no Wards patrol is supposed to be without at least one member of the Protecterate available, along with at least one PRT truck with a squad similarly available for response, if not escorting them, with a trained PRT operator on hand to call for reinforcements. In Brockton Bay, Wards are sent out pretty much alone, with only one of their number operating the coordination equipment. Now, giving the kids, particularly the ones who can’t patrol for whatever reason, bureaucratic or otherwise, a chance to see how crime fighting is done behind the scenes by observing the operator, and possibly using the equipment when the operator needs to take a leak or something, that’s all well and good. It helps them understand the larger picture, and given how Capes are essentially officers in the pseudo-military organization of the PRT, understanding the larger picture is important.
Still, it looks like she wasn’t stuck with console duty today. Pisces has that honor instead. This… is not a good thing. He was also a probationary member brought in for vigilantism, but he had a murder charge swept under the rug instead of just assault with parahuman abilities. He hated every moment of being a Ward, and tended to make that everyone else’s problem.
She sympathized with his position, as he was basically conscripted into a penal legion, but that didn’t make it easier to bear when his odiousness interfered with her good times. Kiddy jail was still an option, after all.
Incompetent and corrupt administration aside, most of the Wards were pleasant enough company, and her patrol partner for this day was no exception: The newest Ward and the second youngest at 13, Aegis. “You’re with me today, rookie.” She said in a faux-drill sergeant voice. “Atten-hut!”
Aegis looked at her strangely. “Are you serious?”
Missy stared at him back. “...When am I ever serious?” She asked rhetorically. “Our profession is a very silly one, after all.”
“We’re fighting villains, though. Criminals.” Aegis said, “That seems pretty serious to me.”
“It isn’t, though.” Missy insisted. “Yeah, sometimes the crimes we stop are serious issues, like the hate crimes, but for the most part?” She shook her head ruefully as they walked towards the motor pool where they will be driven to the deployment point. “We’re performing clowns for this circus of a city. That goes double for the Wards.” The villains were also clowns in this metaphor, of course.
“Why do you do it, then?” Aegis asked, clearly frustrated with her worldview. He clenched and unclenched his fists to resist emphasizing his point with gestures.
“I like being a clown.” Missy said offhandedly as she hopped into the PRT van, strapping herself into the brightly colored car seat that was a necessity at her breaker state’s height. Fairy Dancer had cornered the market on hero-branded childcare (for girls, at least) items, and the merchandising sales were certainly a fine financial benefit for the long run. “It’s fun.”
Well, assuming this world had a long run. Folder’s impression on the Endbringers is that they weren’t supposed to be involved in the experiment so early on, and had worries about the integrity of the whole thing. Missy wasn’t allowed at Endbringer battles, of course, so Folder couldn’t attempt to communicate with them to get more information. Not that Folder did much of that even with other shards that were within range to do so, as communicating was expensive for a shard not built for it, and only part of that was because of the massively elaborate transmissions they preferred to use. It was, in fact, the whole reason they used them; as it meant that the vast majority of exchanges would only require one transmission each.
Still, Aegis grunted at the answer, not able to find a way to dispute it, as was normal for a statement of personal preference. After he was also buckled up and the van started to move, he muttered: “Let’s see how you think about that after growing up some.”
Missy chuckled. “Oh, little boy…” She said in Spanish. He wasn’t born in Puerto Rico, but he still spoke the language. “I’m a grandma where it counts.” One didn’t grow up in Texas without plenty of opportunities to learn the language, even if most preferred to pass it up.
Aegis grumbled, but didn’t try to argue the point. Once they arrived at the patrol start point, which was naturally the Boardwalk, where the greatest threat they were expected to face would be people asking them deliberately inflammatory questions, like just how many of Fairy Dancer’s sponsored products were used personally.
She still did what she was nominally there to do, of course, which was to keep a weather eye out for crime. It’s just… that phrase was a bit more literal for her than most. Above her, she twisted space into a complex mirrored tunnel that fed her visual information from many perspectives that were all sky high. Because of branding, she referred to the technique as ‘Kaleidoscope’, which was also a pretty good metaphor for how difficult it would be to make sense of it… for people who were not her. She’s done this kind of thing before, back when she stole Madara’s eyes for herself. They made clone techniques even more useful than normal!
As it turned out, surprisingly complex maneuvers can be ‘saved’ and referred to later as a shortcut, essentially by just issuing the commands and instructing Folder to save the data. Even normal parahumans did this, although it wasn’t as easy for them to communicate this intent. It took her twenty minutes to create the first Kaleidoscope overwatch maneuver, but now she could do it on the fly just by looking up and mentally pressing the ‘hotkey’ that she saved it to.
This was also, as it turned out, a shard’s favorite thing, so Missy made sure to invent as many specialized techniques as possible and find as many uses for each one as possible. Folder very much appreciated the effort.
“...Nothing I can see.” Missy said, ending that spatial warp and starting the actual patrol. True to her persona, she hopped and skipped along, her tireless (sort of) crystal legs allowing her to emulate a much more hyperactive child than she actually was. “Come on, Aegis! Tourists await!”
A typical Wards patrol along the Boardwalk, as in one that wasn’t a ride-along with a Protecterate hero to provide them a little extra parahuman muscle, lasted about three hours. In that time, they traveled around three miles, and interacted with one hundred fans and, if they’re lucky, one criminal.
Which is why Missy did her best to skew each and every one of those numbers. Every five minutes, she activated the Kaleidoscope technique and picked up enough visuals of the surrounding area to catch any criminal within one kilometer that wasn’t doing a good enough job with subtlety.
If she found something… “Aegis! There’s crime afoot!” She announced, pointing dramatically. The tourists looked around in a small panic. “Follow me!” She said, jumping into a spatial tunnel and exiting onto a roof. Aegis flew upward and went through a similar tunnel, which he stumbled out of, right in front of her.
“Hey!” Aegis said as Missy scrambled up his back.
“Onward!” She commanded, legs wrapped around his neck. “Just fly straight and I’ll direct you.”
In two more tunnels and twice that many seconds, Aegis was now flying straight over an alley where four ne'er do wells were… probably just mugging the pair of terrified women. She slipped off the older boy’s back and let her full weight crash onto the ground, cracking the concrete and bringing all the attention on her. “It’s the kiddy capes!” One of them said.
“Drop your weapons and surrender!” Aegis ordered.
One of them, after a beat, lunged towards one of the victims, intent on taking a hostage. He instead moved along the wall and right towards Missy, arm extended. “Ha! Ya! Hiyah!” Missy yelled as she promptly showed the man how terrible of an idea it was to attempt to move while Fairy Dancer was on the stage. With his knife now in her hand, his ankle sprained, and his wrist broken, the forward-thinking thug was down. “Yeah, the only way out from your positions is through me.” Missy announced, “Surrender or my next ballet performance will be the Nutcracker.” She gave a quick twirl for effect. This particular technique, where she redirected every direction into one direction, was what she called the ‘Kalika-scope’, after the Hindu goddess of time, death, and destruction. She did kind of have a theme going, and fully intended to change her name to Kalaidescope when she got a little older and being Fairy Dancer stopped being funny. She could make that singular direction ‘down’, if she wanted to fully trap someone who couldn’t burrow through a solid surface, but as a Brute, she had standards.
The three goons, disappointingly, took the threat seriously and meekly set the two knives and one gun down on the ground before walking with their hands on their heads toward her.
Another crime stopped. Once the police arrived to take custody of the criminals (surprisingly, Pisces actually did his job for once), another Kaleidoscope check and… “Aegis! I found more crime!”
Did the Director like it when Missy went on a crime-catching spree when that was not what she was supposed to do? Yes, actually. But she wasn’t supposed to like it, so they got reprimanded anyway for going too far from their designated route, and while Missy’s argument of both of them being Brutes sufficient to not care about pistols was sufficient to satisfy regulations on engaging perps with lethal weapons, they were still punished with… mandatory PR events.
Emily knew her so well. If she actually wanted to punish Missy, she’d send her home.