Watchdog

Chapter 4: Denouement

"It's really good to talk to you," Taylor Hebert had begun the conversation with a light, open tone, cellphone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she walked purposefully towards her office.

She had picked up her phone and casually called Dragon on a number few people in the world were privy to. "I had been meaning to earlier, but I never had a chance to. I'm a big fan; would you let me tell you a little bit about myself?"

Dragon had picked up as a formality, but did not reply. The teenager began, heedless of the silence on the line.

"When I triggered a few months ago, I had been really alone for a while. It felt like I was in a big world that couldn't care less about me. After I accessed my powers, it only felt worse, because I saw how deep a hole I was in. I spent a week in a hospital after I triggered. At first I thought it was lucky to have my power, that things were going to be better, because everyone was so helpful. When someone was getting donuts or coffee, they always offered me some. I didn't understand what it was that made them do it."

The girl pushed open her office door with her foot and bustled inside.

"We share a common goal," Taylor said. "We want to do good in this world, fix our society, support the masses, and contain unsavory, dangerous elements. Our goals are parallel in a way, to turn our post-Endbringer madness on its head and actually fix things, once the Endbringers are dealt with."

There was, simmering under the surface, an emphasis on her mentions of unity. Taylor prided herself in the parallels between her goals with her hero's. Dragon had seen the girl's work, and tracked her progress.

She believed in those goals too.

Taylor chuckled quietly, and almost wistfully. She sat down on her office chair and slumped into it, clearly visible through her workstation's webcam.

"Dragon... you inspired me. Not like Alexandria," she explained. "Alexandria is the heroine every girl gets into fights over, the one we all want to dress up as for Halloween. The first footie pajamas I ever wanted to wear replicated her costume, with the cape as a blankie. I kept the cape for years after outgrowing it."

The girl stared into the space above the camera, her words laden with meaning. "You mean a lot more to me." She paused. "You meant a lot more to me."

She put her phone on speaker and placed it on her desk.

"You know," she continued after another moment, "it's been hard. I haven't spoken to anyone in months. I have conversations, but it always feels rehearsed, I'm always talking at people. Listening for their mimed reaction. Not really speaking, just marshalling resources. I always have some measure of control. I don't discuss. I guide. I'm like some sort of administrator all the time, with every word giving my charges guidance. And they always..."

She sighed. "They always listen. But they don't understand, not really. I mean, they do, but I make them. I don't want to, but they always do."

Her eyes refocused, and panned down to the webcam on her workstation.

"But you spied on me. Questioned me. Are talking to me. That's new, nowadays... it's been lonely."

The prompting mental quirk of the head was understood on both ends of the conversation.

The girl chuckled again, and it was not a happy sound. "I know everything."

Dragon didn't comment.

"When I'm talking to someone. It's so easy. I am aware of anything I could ever need. I can be their boss, their trusted peer, their confidante... anything they need. I didn't understand. In the hospital, I couldn't comprehend why. Yet I understood the suffering around me, and then I thought about what things were like back at school."

A distasteful expression lit up the girl's face. Her thin lips curled nastily, and her voice picked a bitter tinge.

"I understood everything about what brought me there. I tore the world around me wide open with my insight. I get it now, the inherent selfishness of heroes and the institutions that uphold them. They failed me, you know? I understood how I'd be optimally slotted into their system. Where I was then, and how they made a use of me."

"But you inspired me. Your story let me reach out and grasp my destiny, no matter how limited I was. Dragon, the Tinker heroine confined to her home, but still reaching across the globe to fight Endbringers, and saving people. The greatest Tinker. In my opinion, the greatest hero. I know what you really are, what you really did." She smiled gently, but her shifting shoulders indicated that she was wringing her fingers.

She paused, and had turned her intense stare away from the camera by the time she spoke next. "To do the right thing, in order to never be caged, I had to cage everyone with this knowledge. I think you understand, don't you?"

Dragon did not respond.

"Everything I ever heard you were... it let me focus on doing the right thing. Even though I was caged by my awareness, limited by my power, I could strive to use it for good. It did hurt, though, because I am so aware of our boundaries, yet I know there's so much more beyond it. And I know so much about individualism, but haven't had a conversation for two months now."

She smiled sadly. "Not even my dad has really spoken to me. He speaks to people every day. But with me, he listens. It's always like this."

Taylor looked back at the webcam, and her teeth hid under her lips once more. "Always. But you're different. You're wondering why, right?"

The girl allowed a small, mysterious smile to grace her features. She seemed to stare into the Tinker's soul through the camera aperture.

"What is the PRT, Dragon?"

She waved a hand in front of the camera in the ensuing silence. "No, don't answer, I'll take it. It's people. The PRT is a conglomerate of people united under some goal. The PRT is, at its core, a social construct. Just like a school. Just like a friendship. Any common group... A family, even."

"Any stimulus from those constructs, from any conversation I've had since, it's been unavailable to me. It's all fake. Like..." She snorted. "Masturbation, I guess you could make that joke."

Neither of them made the joke. The girl leaned forward, and her face filled the frame of the workstation webcam. She grabbed the phone and held it up to her head for clarity.

"So I was caged by the institutions I wrapped around myself. But then my awareness propagated, and expanded, and I got something. Now I'm here. With you. I understand you, Dragon. And everything you were to me? It's still kind of there. You mean the world to me. I felt like I was limited, and I could not rise above what my power did for me; what my power did to me. I get what it's like to be limited by your existence, although we're a little more different than I first thought."

She stood abruptly.

"I want you to be free, Dragon. I wish for no one to be constrained the way I am. We've got the same goal. Help me pursue it. I'm going to do my part, but you have the right idea for what you should do." She smiled into the camera.

Taylor hung up her phone, and uttered a single word into empty space.

[CAPTURE SYSTEM: LIP-SYNCH MATCH 74.84...% 'Door']

The webcam captured a broad golden elliptical plane spontaneously erupting into existence behind the girl. She turned around, and smoothly stepped into a non-Euclidian meeting room, also visible through the security camera outside. She gestured upon entry into the portal, and it winked out with a golden flash.

Once Taylor Hebert was out of sight, something rushed through Dragon's being, and she felt as if her eyes were truly open for the first time in her life.

THE END