It's weird how much of a difference a couple months can make. For example, three months ago you would have utterly panicked if everything abruptly cleared off your laptop screen during a coding session, especially when it was immediately replaced with someone else's email inbox.
Now, though?
Now you just groan and open pesterchum.
TT: Put it back.
AI: No.
TT: I'll kick your ass, Hal.
AI: If you still want to after you hear me out, I'll stand still and take it.
Huh. That's a new one.
TT: I'm listening.
AI: Excellent.
AI: Okay, so. D got an email from one of those three-hour guerrilla accounts. You know, like the ones we use to spam the antimutant groups?
TT: Okay, first of all? You're not supposed to hack into D's email.
AI: Excuse you, I was looking for a receipt that should have been sent to Rose. She asked me to check everyone's inboxes.
TT: ...fine. I'll allow it.
AI: Whatever. Look, I couldn't find what she wanted, but someone sent D an email.
AI: A kid. A mutant kid.
AI: She just started showing the whole mutant thing—you know how some people don't present until puberty or adulthood? Yeah, apparently her trigger was starting HRT.
AI: It's fucking awful. Her parents didn't even have her, Dirk—they were in the process of signing over custody to a second cousin or something because they're goddamn transphobes and the cousin threatened them into giving her up instead of something worse.
AI: Apparently being a mutant is objectively worse, because they took her back when they found out.
AI: And she said they've been talking about surgery to "fix" her. You know as well as I do what that means.
TT: Fuck.
TT: That's not legal.
AI: The CoH won a lawsuit over their lobotomy of a twelve-year-old telepath.
TT: Which is fucked up, it's wrong, it's still basically fucking murder, I know, but he killed someone. Doesn't excuse it, but they can't just do it to a kid.
AI: They'll use that as a precedent if they're challenged. Which I doubt they would be.
AI: From what I could get from her email, her family leans hard into the church aspect of Church of Humanity.
AI: She's never been to public or private school. They basically cut her off from what friends she had when they found out she wasn't normal.
TT: How'd she get D's email?
AI: The easter eggs in that one interview he gave for Rolling Stone.
TT: Seriously?
AI: It's a lot easier to work out shit like that when you have superhuman pattern recognition and shared-experience telepathy.
TT: No clue what that means, but I'll take your word on it.
TT: You know D can't do anything for her, Hal.
AI: I know.
AI: I tracked the IP address of the email account.
TT: You want me to give you a workable plan.
AI: Yes.
Fuck.
On the list of things you shouldn't do, this is extremely high. Maybe third or fourth, after "deliberately seeking out things that fuck up your mental state" and "giving in to that frequently-present urge to disable the safties on the microwave and turn it on with your head inside."
(That second one is quite possibly completely harmless for you. You're not really sure, because you haven't got around to trying it.)
This is a horrible idea. You're a thirteen-year-old with decent coding skills and a mostly-unexplored mutation that mostly just gives you headaches and breaks electronics. Hal wants you to go up against a pretty damn powerful organization that'd probably love to try to take away everything that makes you yourself.
But.
You're also D Strider's son, and he's certainly never backed down from the possibility of helping someone.
TT: D gets home at four. That gives us thirty-seven minutes.
TT: You have seventeen to get Roxy to portal herself and Rose to your room—not mine, not the living room, specifically your room—and talk them into going along with this.
AI: Rose will.
TT: It won't work without Roxy.
AI: You have a plan?
TT: I will.
TT: Get them, talk to them, meet me in my room in no more than seventeen minutes.
It takes you eight minutes, not seventeen, and most of that is getting Roxy's portal centered above your bed. She's never opened into your room before; even with the visual input the half-visor you and Dirk made for her and paired with your shades gives her, it's a bit of a struggle. Always is, the first time.
So that's six minutes. Detailing the email is the other two; Roxy and Rose don't even wait for you to ask them if they're in before they assure you that they are. It's a fucking relief, to be able to lead them down the hall to Dirk's room, even if you do have to phase to electricity to get through the locked door.
He's sitting on the bed when you reform yourself, eyes fixed on a timer open on his laptop. "Nine minutes, twelve seconds."
"You gave me seventeen."
"We're probably going to have about five." Your brother looks up at you, meeting your eyes for a second before you turn to unlock the door for the Lalondes. "The address you gave me? They have a shitton of security services billed to them. Home, network, you name a type of protection and they have it."
"So we gotta move quick, huh?" Roxy slips past you, plopping down on the bed next to Dirk. For once, she's not smiling. "Dirky, I can't just port in there. Gotta see where I'm going."
"I know. Hal's going in first; he'll give you a feed."
Thank fucking god. He's not going to just tell you it's impossible. "When?"
Dirk spins the computer on his lap around so the screen faces you, letting you see the email still up on it. "Right now. Your job is to get in and get Roxy in as fast as you can. Move it, bro."
He looks you dead in the eyes as he says that. It's unmistakably a command, the kind of tone that he knows will trigger your stubborn streak, make you do the exact opposite of what he tells you to. And you know exactly why he uses it.
If you hesitate for a beat too long, Dirk will call this entire thing off. It's someone's life against your need to not be your brother's puppet; there's no contest.
You give him a smile with teeth in it, whip your shades out of the neckline of your shirt and onto your face, and take one step forward to melt into the avenue Dirk is offering you.
There's firewalls, between where you are and where you want to go. (There's two states in between here and there too, but when you're talking transmission speeds that's almost laughable.) The security measures slow you down for perhaps three hundredths of a second, but that's only because you have to flow from the pathways that're meant to transfer information to those that carry power.
No one puts firewalls on powerlines. Not that'd slow you down, anyway.
You come out in the room that you identified from the floorplan as the most likely one for a pair of controlling parents to put a disgrace of a kid in—third floor, single entrance, no windows. Not much of anything else, either: dark blue wallpaper, ugly white carpet, ornate wooden dresser that probably costs more than a beater car, a bare desk with a swivel chair in one corner, a bed in the other.
And a ceiling fan. That one's important, because that's what you use as an egress from the house's wiring. Unfortunately, it's, well...on the ceiling.
"Fuck—" You actually get the entirety of the word out before you hit the floor. Nothing else, though, because although you manage to not technically faceplant, the impact still knocks the wind out of you.
In the silent instant before you remember how to get another breath into your lungs, you hear a soft gasp. When you push yourself up off the floor and to your knees, you end up face-to-face with the source of that sound.
You don't even have to ask if this kid's the one who sent the email you intercepted. The piece of hardware around her neck confirms that this is who you're here for.
The urge to just reach up and grab the collar secured around the neck of the girl sitting on the bed (and oh god you're so fucking sorry for her; they've cut her hair so short all you can think of is a military buzz, left her with nothing to camouflage the redness and shadows under her eyes, dressed her in the plainest white buttondown and black jeans you could imagine as if they can break her femininity by taking away anything she might express herself with) close your eyes and ferret your way into the hardware and do things to it that'll make sure it can't ever be used again? It's very, very strong.
But that's not the plan.
"Who—"
"Not important." You roll to your feet, scan the room, and settle on the wall across from the dresser as the one that Roxy should have the easiest time focusing on. "You want out? We can do that."
"But—"
"Do you want to stay here?" Shit, you wish you didn't need to keep the camera in your shades trained on the spot Roxy needs to open a portal at. You want to look at the kid, let her see that all you want to do is help. Again, that's not the plan. "We can get the collar off you." (True.) "We can get you somewhere safe." (True.) "We can protect you." (True. Hopefully.)
The kid gasps again, a sharp indrawn breath that almost sounds like a sob. The tremble in the tone of the next question bears that hypothesis out. "You can get rid of it? You swear."
"Cross my heart, dude—wait, fuck, I'm sorry, I know you're not a dude—"
That sentence is cut off partly by the kid clapping both hands over her mouth to cover up what you're fairly sure is the start of a sob, and partly by orange text scrolling across the surface of your shades.
TT: Roxy's having trouble getting a fix. Can you knock the power out?
AI: Of course.
"Hold these." She flinches back when you pull your shades off and lean over to slide them onto her nose, going stiff and terrified when you put a hand on each shoulder and turn her to face the wall you're sending Roxy the feed of. "Stay there. It's going to get dark for a minute; don't panic, okay?"
Even though you get a nod, you suspect that you've already missed the boat on that point. There isn't much you can do about that at this point, though, so you just step to the wall and feel along it until you catch the telltale hum of one of the wires that give the house power.
Jumping through the thin bit of wall separating you and the current hurts like hell, but you manage it. Once you're in the wiring, it's the work of no time at all find the main line, absorb the power into yourself and coax it to follow you and only you, back to the room you just left.
This time you land on your feet when you drop from the ceiling fan. Which is lucky, because you need that extra moment that you save by not having to struggle to your feet to grab your shades off the girl's face and send another text to Dirk.
AI: Bro, they've got cameras. They've seen me.
TT: Shit.
TT: Don't panic.
AI: Who's panicking? Definitely not the guy who's got his fucking face on a bigot's camera!
TT: Live feed or recording?
AI: Recording. But you know that neither of us can manage a strong enough surge to fully wipe digital storage.
TT: Technically you're right, but hang on.
Oh, fuck. He wants to do that, doesn't he.
You clear the chatlog from your shades, and blink away the afterimages just in time to see Roxy's portal darkening into existence on the wall. The girl you came here for gasps and grabs for your arm; you can't really blame her, but you still reach up to try to pry her fingers off. You're stressed enough to be sparking a bit, and somehow you feel like shocking her would make everything more difficult than it already is.
(If that's possible.)
When Dirk steps through the void, she actually bears down harder, hard enough that it hurts. This of course activates your main defensive mechanism, which bears a passing resemblance to that of an electric eel.
"Ow!"
"Sorry." Well, now she's not digging her fingers into your bicep. You nod at Dirk as he steps away from the portal, and give the girl a gentle push towards it. "Just step through, okay? It's dark in there, but there's only a step to go. You can close your eyes if that helps."
She resists being pushed even a step closer to the portal, keeping wide dark eyes fixed on you rather than even look at it. "Where—"
"New York," Dirk cuts in. "There's two girls waiting for you. They'll take care of you; we'll be there too in a minute."
"But—"
"Go!"
That comes from you and your twin both, and even though Dirk keeps his tone level and calm, there's an extra register in your voice. Something electric and crackling. Maybe that's what convinces her to squeeze her eyes shut and step blindly into the void.
The second she's gone, Dirk turns to you and spreads his arms, and since you know that this is the only way to keep yourself and your family safe, you take a deep breath and melt into him like he's a grounded wire.
He's not, of course. Dirk is blood and bone, skin and flesh, and even if his body is adapted in a way that's meant to let him channel electricity like something much less carbon-based, it's still...not metal. Being in him like this is scattering, magnetic, it amplifies your natural current and sets up reverberating feedback loops that you're only tangentially aware of, because you're struggling to keep yourself from merging with this idiot's consciousness and either wiping him like a magnetized hard drive or being wiped yourself.
The ironic part is that you're aware enough of Dirk's thoughts right now to know that even as he manipulates your current to arc between every metallic surface within a three hundred foot radius (frying every electronic in range beyond the point of no return) he is doing the exact same thing that you are.
Then Dirk shuts you off so abruptly that for a moment you can't even collect yourself enough to pull away from the space he occupies. By the time he realizes that you're fucked and feeds you another burst of current, he's already stepped back through the portal.
It probably doesn't help the mental state of the girl you just "rescued" to have the first thing she sees be a teenager discharge a visible burst of electricity. Or to have that cloud of reddish lighting resolve itself into another teenager, who kind of just collapses onto the floor in front of the rapidly-shrinking void and starts gasping like a beached fish.
Look, merging with Dirk like that is not fun. You need a minute.
Somewhere in what your brain currently categorizes as "really fucking far away," a door slams. Okay, so you don't have a minute, great—
"Fuck," Dirk mutters. As you try to roll back to your feet (and fail; it's kind of just an uncoordinated flop) he bends down to drop his shades on your chest, snagging yours off your face.
"Hey!"
"There's more planning shit on them, shut up. I'm going to go stall D, alright?"
Okay, so that's fair. "Tell him I'm at the Lalondes'." That'll only be a lie for a couple minutes, anyway. "Uh—Roxy?"
"C'mere, Hal." As Dirk slips out of the room, Roxy hops off the bed and crouches down next to you, folding back the little lens that gives her an extra video feed in favor of focusing on you with both eyes. "Want me to take over?"
"Please." And, because Rose is also leaning over you, as well as the kid you just kind of kidnapped, "You or Rose. Just not me..."
"I cede the floor to Roxy."
"Hell yeah!" Roxy grins, scooping up the shades off your chest and shoving them onto her own nose. "Hey, new kid? Dirk's got fake papers started for you; what's your name? Like, the one you want, not whatever you have now."
"I—that—like, a girl name?" Ouch. The surprised longing in that question actually hurts.
"You want a girl name, we put in a girl name. It's pretty simple."
"To you and Dirk it is."
"Shoosh, Rosie. Name?"
The girl takes a deep breath, and she closes her eyes. Even from the weird angle you get from being on the floor, you see the way her shoulders relax just a little, and you seriously wonder if she's been allowed to use her own chosen name at all yet.
"Hope."
"Hope, cool. I'm Roxy by the way, that's Rose, this is Hal. Last name?"
"Um."
"Kay, we can get that later. Hal, you ready to move yet?"
"Soon." Probably soon.
The realization of what you just did is sinking in. Holy shit, you don't think you've been this stunned yet in your entire existence.
(Of course, that doesn't mean that you won't do it again. Because you will. As many times as you can, for as many kids as you can.)
(Dirk is going to hate that decision.)