Krixwell Liveblogs

“The next patrol shift is in…”  She turned to find the clock, “Twenty minutes?”

“Twenty minutes, yeah.  Vista, with Clockblocker babysitting.  Weld and Flechette are out right now, patrolling separately.”

A little disrespectful to Vista there, but I get it. She is thirteen.

“Postpone the next patrol, and tell Weld and Flechette to take it easy, but to be ready to report at a moment’s notice.  With the consoles up, we’ll be ready to act.  Pass on word to Miss Militia as well.

Oh, neat! How fitting, then, if Skitter’s message comes in just about now.

I believe she’s taking the next patrol shift.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The laptop would do little to help in her war against the paperwork until she had access to a printer.

…fair enough.

PRT divisions and precincts in neighboring cities were all too willing to send along staff and officers to assist, but her firm requests for the fundamentals -for computers, printers, satellite hookups, electricians and IT teams- were ignored all too often.

Funny how that works, huh.

She cleared space on her desk and started up the laptop.  It would be good to have access to the files on the locals and ‘guests’ alike.  She would handle the paperwork better after a moment’s break, while she focused on other things that needed doing.  She was barely registering the words, at this point.

Yeah, you do deserve to focus on something else for a bit.

“They’re done.  Or almost done, for communications.  They expect to be up and running in two hours, but they have all the computers they need.”

Nice.

“Good.  Access to the central database is up?”

“Everything except the highest security feeds.”

That exception could come back to bite them in the ass before they get them up.

Disappointing.  “I’ll make do, I suppose.  Thank you.”

So what did you have in mind that you wanted highest security feeds for?

Kid Win seemed almost relieved to hand her the laptop.  It meant he could get out of her presence sooner.  He was turning to leave the instant the laptop was out of his hands.

I mean, we know she’s been strict with him specifically, but he seems more skittish around her than usual. Maybe he’s had or heard of a bad experience with distracting an overly stressed Jemily from her work?

So very few of them knew it, but they were counting on her.

Looks like someone has a high estimate of her own importance in events.

It might not be entirely wrong, but I don’t think it’s entirely correct either. The PRT, aside from arranging supplies, has been looking pretty useless for a while.

Though it’s understandable that some of that is because they’re swamped with work right as their infrastructure gets shattered.

She heaved herself out of her chair and made her way to the coffee machine to refill her mug.

“Director?”

Oh, hey, another person. What’s up…

…Weld? Clockblocker?

She turned to see Kid Win standing in the doorway.  He looked intimidated.

Dang it, he was my third guess.

The whole nation was watching.  People across America ate their TV dinners while they watched the news, seeing footage of the slaughters in downtown Brockton Bay, white sheets draped over piles of bodies.

She managed to go eight or so paragraphs before mentioning the media and public perception of the Brockton Bay cape scene.

I wonder if Skitter has made it to national news yet.

Oh man, I just realized, if Piggot gets the news of Burnscar’s death, will she be trying to twist it into being the PRT’s accomplishment, like what happened after the ABB’s defeat?

The before and after shots of areas devastated by Shatterbird.  Flooded streets.  Fundraising efforts were launched, many succeeding, while yet others leveraged the situation to cheat the sympathetic out of money.

Of course.

Honestly, I’m glad to get a look at what the outside world thinks of Brockton Bay’s situation.

The world waited to see if Brockton Bay would become another Switzerland, another Japan, another region that simply couldn’t recover.

Oh man, what happened to Switzerland? Behemoth, attracted to the slopes that would spread his lava widely? The Simurgh, appreciating the altitude?

Also I guess losing Kyushu threw Japan into chaos. Maybe there were more parahuman antics that doomed it, but I’m guessing that’s what really started it.

Ground lost to the Endbringers in their relentless campaign of attrition against humanity. 

Yeah.

I mean, at this rate it’s still going to take them a long time to bring an end to humanity – way longer than it’s going to take before the bigger threat is likely to show up even if Jack does get killed in time – but it’s a slow yet steady loss.

Insurmountable.  Too much work for one woman to handle.

Yeeeah, you may want to hire some assistance.

She delegated where she could, but too much of the responsibility was hers and hers alone.  The humans outnumbered parahumans by eight-thousand to one, give or take, in urban areas.

Describing the mundanes as “humans” in contrast to “parahumans” rubs me the wrong way. Is this subtly implying that Piggot views parahumans as inhuman?

Outside of the more densely populated areas, it dropped to a more manageable one to twenty-six-thousand ratio.

Interesting. So are parahumans more likely to move to cities, or to trigger in them? I’m thinking the latter.

But here in Brockton Bay, many had evacuated.  Few places in the world, if any, sported the imbalanced proportion that Brockton Bay now featured.  What was it now?  One parahuman to every two thousand people?  One parahuman to every five hundred people?

Damn. And on top of the evactuation, Brockton Bay has been an easy ground for trigger events recently. Hell, I suspect one happened off-screen just a few chapters ago.

Each parahuman represented their respective interests.  She represented everyone else’s.  The people without powers. 

Yeah, I feel like this is heading towards Piggot not having the highest opinion of parahumans.

The first real intrusion on the average citizen’s life had been the bombings instigated by the ABB.  Frightening, but it had been easy for the average person to believe they wouldn’t be one of the victims, to shrug it off as the same background noise of heroes and villains that they’d experienced for much of their lives.

Yeah, until they stepped around the wrong corner at the wrong time.

Now, between Leviathan, Shatterbird, the fighting and the formation of territories, everyone had reason to worry and give serious thought to who they needed to support and how they were going to protect themselves.

Especially when some of the people forming territories seem to be more hostile than others, and some of them do better jobs protecting them than the PRT.

Just as the parahumans had invaded the lives of those in the city, the paperwork seemed to dominate Emily’s life.  It crept onto the walls, onto bulletin boards and whiteboards.

This story is largely about things that creep, after all.

Notes on the local players, timelines, messages and maps.

The shift from uniform typed words to countless styles of handwriting, it said something about the innumerable voices, the break down of the cohesive, ordered whole.

Oh yeah, I suppose it wouldn’t be all her handwriting.

What resulted were hundreds, thousands of self-interested voices.  One in five condemned her, two in five pleaded with her for assistance in some form, and the remainder simply expected her to perform her duties as a cog in the machine.

Sounds about right.

She looked over the sheer volumes of paper around her office.  The PRT handled cases where parahumans were involved, and these days, it seemed like everything and everyone was touched in some way by the heroes, villains and monsters of Brockton Bay.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we don’t actually know any named characters who have nothing to do with capes, but that’s a result of the story being about the capes, so from our perspective, that’s all the people we’re going to hear about. (Unless Wildbow trolls us with an Interlude about someone entirely unrelated to the plot, but that’s not really his style.)

In-universe, though… yeah, Shatterbird (by Shattering the city), the other Nine (by attacking lots of civilians), and the Undertravelers (by taking over territories in most of the city) have really caused almost everyone to have some aspect of their lives be affected by parahumans.

…by the way, Piggot didn’t mention the rogues.

Every time the other precincts had the slightest excuse, they would claim that it was the PRT’s responsibility.

Oh jeez.

If they had no excuse at all, they would claim it a joint responsibility.  Until she read over the cases in question and either signed off on them or refused them, the job was in her hands.

Damn, that really does put a lot of work on her.

As far as the ones passing the buck were concerned, it was out of their hands.

Regular police: *passes the buck*

Director Jemily Piggot: “Dude, I’m already holding like a hundred of these! At least give me a bag to carry them in or something!”