Acadian: January is nearly invulnerable physically. She shrugs off the hardest hits. But her nightmares and continued struggle with PTSD are a way I can still show that she is vulnerable, and that things still hurt her in other ways. It helps me keep her human, in spite of being a superhero.
I got the spaghetti reference from descriptions of falling down a smaller black hole. The gravitational forces are so wildly different just a few feet apart that it rips you apart like spaghetti as you go in. You get spaghettified.
Thankfully a calmer, wiser head was there to reel in January. She was ready to send some souls to Valhalla. She will have the opportunity to return the favor to Ryo in today's episode.
Now it is time for Cray to show why he is on the team.
Renee: Now that I think of it, I don't think I have ever seen the term "doxxing" with only a single "x". I had no idea it could be spelled that way.
The Witch House is set back from the road, but the other houses are otherwise the 'normal' width apart. So her neighbors are going to get an eyefull.
That is Frank Frazetta. He did all the Conan covers. He loved drawing scantily-clad barbarians bursting with muscle and swooning maidens at their feet.
It is a swat raid. They don't knock. They just burst in with no warning and point guns at people. No-knock raids like this are very common, and very dangerous for everyone involved, including the cops. It is a great way to start a gunfight.
WellTemperedClavier: That was probably January's worst nightmare, in the literal sense. She's a long way from being over Belle Isle and the hunt for the Hierophant.
I don't see there really being any sort of super therapy. If you were known as being the therapist for the supers, that would put a huge bullseye on you. Individuals might seek out help on their own, but how much they tell their therapists would obviously be a calculated decision. One January will be forced to make in the future.
It is an email, not a video.
macole: I worked on that dream for a bit, taking what really happened, and then subverting it to its worst possible conclusion. Ironically it is what would have happened if January had taken Blood Raven's advice and killed Gola. With the raven mocker out of the picture, she never would have survived the summoning.
Jeffrey Fagan is based on RL Geoffrey FiegerSabaton - Winged HussarsBook 12.18 - Broken Arrow"It's the only email that has ever been sent from the account," the hacker explained. "It's from a burner phone, paid for in cash from a gas station. It's the only time it was ever used. It's not active now. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably in pieces in the back of a garbage truck by now. But I do have its last location."
"The Neo York Inn?" January read from over his shoulder.
"It's just off Central Park, in New York City," Cray added. "Oh look, they charge both daily and hourly. Whoever sent the email used their Wi-Fi. But that's a good thing. Unless it is wide open, you probably have to rent a room to get on their network."
"Patricia Fine lives in New York." Ôkami pointed out.
"We don't know it's her yet," Cray argued. "I mean you're probably right. But we don't know yet."
"I know it," the samurai intoned. "She attacked January online yesterday. January spoke out against her last night. This is her response. We need to strike back and end this for once and all."
His right hand fell to the hilt of his sword. January could swear that she could hear his knuckles pop as they clenched about its cloth-wrapped grip. He looked like a coiled spring, ready to burst at a moment's notice.
"Whoa, slow down," Cray cautioned. "Don't go off half-cocked. It won't make things any better, just worse. We need to be strategic in our response."
The room remained silent for long moments. January of course, agreed with Ryo. In that moment her own dander was up. If Patricia wanted to throw down, she was here for it. If the other woman had been there in front of her, she could not say what she would have done. Well, yes she could. She would have killed her in a heartbeat.
This was different from her other battles. The djieien at Ferndale Pride had been trying to kill her, so too the Nazis at Motor City Pride. Even the Dogman would have pulverized her if given the chance. But none of them had attacked
her, specifically, personally. She had just happened to be there when they went their rampages. They had targeted her because she had been right in front of them.
But this
was personal, in a way it was almost intimate. Patricia Fine had gone out of her way to single her out of billions of people on the planet to attack. It was all about her and January. It was not just a fight that January happened to show up for, nor was going through January a means to an end. It was the end itself. This was a personal vendetta.
But a better valkyrie of her nature reminded January that while sometimes it was appropriate to meet force with opposing force; at other times it was better to subvert it, and use it against itself. January forced her fingers out of the fists that they had balled themselves into. She had not even realized that she had done that. She had been so ready for a fight.
"Remember ThunderRhino666," she reminded her friend, and herself. "Let's not make the same mistakes he did."
Ôkami finally relented, and eased his hand from the hilt of his weapon.
"You are correct," Ôkami finally said. He sounded as emotionless as a Vulcan science officer. He placed both of his palms upon the table computer, and leaned forward over its screen. "I will admit this has me very... upset."
It was easy to forget that her neurodiverse friend had feelings, given now stoic and guarded his exterior always was. But this was a clear reminder that he felt things just as deeply as everyone else, as passionately as January did herself. He just did not know how to express those feelings to others most of the time.
"So how do we fight back," January sighed. She really, really wanted to work some anger out on someone, like some cops or Patricia Fine. But as much as her blood thundered for vengeance, her head told her this was the time to calculate and strategize.
"We fight fire with fire," Cray declared. "In this case, we fight the law with a lawyer. Did I ever mention that we have one on retainer? Blood Raven saved his life once, when he got into a pretty sordid blood dance with one of our state's previous attorney generals. We still have all the dirt on him. He's been working for us ever since."
"That is 'attorneys general'," Ryo helpfully chimed in.
"You're blackmailing your lawyer?" January said incredulously.
"Well, he was blackmailing the attorney general." Cray said. "It's a whole slimy affair, with illicit sex, campaign funds being funneled into secret accounts, and a hit man... They were all dirty. Blood Raven prevented any deaths, and kept it out of the news. But she also kept all the evidence."
"So she had an attorney general and a lawyer in her pocket," Ôkami nodded. "She could have schooled Machiavelli..."
As Cray had said, it all seemed - well - sordid to January. She would just as soon have seen them all sent to prison. But then again, perhaps Blood Raven had put them to some actual positive use instead? It was not like January was a huge supporter of the prison-industrial complex herself. It just made the bad people worse. At the same time it provided corporations with ever cheaper slave labor, and deprived still others in the working class of a living wage.
Cray's fingers flew over a new screen, and a moment later a phone app appeared in the air above the table computer. She heard a ringtone buzz through the air, and a moment later it picked up. Finally a rough male voice came over the line.
"Yes," was all he said.
"Mr. Fagan, this is Cray," the hacker replied. "We have some work for you."
"I thought Blood Raven had retired," the other man said.
"Don't concern yourself with that," Cray insisted strongly. "Just remember who has the receipts."
With that the elder hacker filled him in on what was happening, and gave him the address of the Witch House. Cray's tones, while normally gruff, lost their normal softness while he spoke with the lawyer. Instead his voice was the harsh grind of a tank tread. January knew exactly what those sounded like now. When it was done, the hacker disconnected the line, and leaned back with a heavy sigh.
"I do not like that man very much," he said in tones that were once again soft and grandfatherly. "He's a bully. You can't let him push you around."
"Jeffrey Fagan is our attorney?" January said with amazement. "I mean, even I have heard about that guy. He's like, in every high profile case this city ever has."
"Yeah, he loves to see his name in the papers," Cray murmured. He went back to work and started in on the motel that the threatening email was sent from. More screens popped up, and code began to flow across them, like milk spilled across a tabletop. "He'll take any case that gets him publicity, or a big payout."
"Everyone deserves a defense," Ôkami shot back.
"Yes they do," Cray agreed. "But this guy's a parasite. He isn't burdened by ethics or a conscience. He's the reason why when people have a revolution, the first thing they do is kill all the lawyers."
Cray unearthed even more information as Fagan headed to the Witch House. The hacker cracked the network of the Neo York Inn with ease, and accessed both their booking database and security cameras. With it he was able to compile a list of guests who were there at the time that the false email was sent.
Among them was a familiar former journalist who had paid in cash for an hour-long stay under a false name: Janice Raymond. The name threw them off at first. Then January remembered it. She was a prominent transphobe from history. Raymond was one of the founders of what had grown to become modern TERF ideology.
The camera feeds at the front desk and in the hallways however clearly showed Patricia Fine checking in at the same time that particular name was rented a room. The middle-aged woman with straight blond hair was readily distinguishable, especially given all the pictures of her in the news of late. Being cancelled had put her all over every media outlet after all, as it always did with every conservative who claimed to have been so treated.
The security cameras showed her walk from the lobby, down a hallway, and vanish into a room. They did not extend inside. Five minutes later the email was sent. She left just a minute after. That gave her a total stay of just six minutes. Clearly she had just gone there to use their Wi-Fi.
"She thinks she's clever," Cray noted. "She probably saw something like this in a movie. But she could have saved her money and just gone to a library. A lot of other places have open Wi-Fi networks too."
Cray sent all of this off to Fagan. In the meantime January and Ôkami used the waypoint network to return to the Witch House. There they changed out of their armor and back into normal clothing. They left their uniforms in the sanctum. No cop was ever going to get into that room, much less find them there.
They also did a quick once-over of their rooms to make sure there was nothing else to link them to their super identities. There was not of course. Operational security was something that Cray and Blood Raven had always been stringent on. If for no other reason, they had ordinary people in the house on the regular after all. People like January's mother Barbara and the other Knights of Nerddom. It would be rather embarrassing to leave a cape just lying around for one of them to stumble upon.
Finally they strode to the second floor loft in the corner of the house, directly above the front door. From there they watched their new attorney speaking to the police in the driveway. They could not hear what was said. But his gesticulations made it plain that Fagan was impassioned. Given what January knew of the man's reputation, he was probably threatening to sue both the individual cops and the entire city out of a fortune. That would not have been an empty threat either, given Fagan's history.
January recognized the head cop out there now. It was none other than Dale Nowakowski, the chief of the Sterling Heights Police. Unlike most of the other officers on site, he was not decked out in full tacticool military gear. Instead he wore a plain cloth uniform. He looked practically antiquated that way, like cops from movies in the 70s or 80s.
January remembered him from the last swatting incident she had been involved in. That had once again been during their hunt for the maker of Crystal Death. His henchman ThunderRhino666 had called the cops on an innocent boy because of a video game. Only that time it had been the State Police's Emergency Response Team that had been doing the swatting. Nowakowski and his own people had shown up later, after Gadget had called them to act as some sort of balance to the state troopers.
Nowakowski had seemed like a pretty level-headed guy at the time. Granted, it had not been hard to tell that he had been more than a little miffed at the Staties conducting an operation in his city without his approval, let alone knowledge. In the very least he had been willing to work with January.
They had at least forged a strong enough relationship for Nowakowski to later call her in for a meta-human disturbance at the Lakeside Mall. That had resulted in January's first meeting with both Hannah and her father - Hungry Ghost. Granted, he had seemed a little exasperated when she had called him back afterward to tell him that she had not apprehended anyone, and that it had all been just a big misunderstanding.
But that had all been in January's identity as Stormcrow. He did not have any relationship at all with January Ward: student and writer. That left her with no leverage at all with him, except for hopeful goodwill. Well, goodwill and a good lawyer. January suspected the latter would get her a lot further than the former.
Trusting to that lawyer, she and Ryo finally came out when Fagan waved for them to do so. Up close, she saw that her attorney was a slender man with a mop of brown hair that had started to turn gray. He had a long face, with a prominent nose and narrow eyes that were practically slits. The latter gave January the impression that he was a snake, rather than an attorney. Then again, the Venn diagram between the two was a single circle.
Chief Nowakowski made a stark contrast to the lawyer. The police chief had short, jet black hair that was impeccably combed. It looked like it might have been molded to his head, like the hair of a plastic doll. No, action figure, January reminded herself. Boys had action figures, dolls were for girls.
In any case, Nowakowski was a veritable Polish prince, standing tall and straight, with chiseled features and a rock hard frame. January could easily imagine him as a Winged Hussar in another lifetime, riding to break the Siege of Vienna with a Sabaton song playing in the background.
January and Ryo instantly got everyone's attention the moment they stepped out of the front door. It was an unpleasant sensation, having dozens of guns pointed at your face. January knew that she was bullet-proof, and that Ryo could make himself intangible. So there was really nothing to be afraid of. But that rational part of your brain became very quiet when you were staring down the barrel of a gun being pointed at you with hostile intent. Well, with any intent really. It was not like guns were picky about whom they shot.
January also noticed several TV news vans parked on the shoulder of the street out front, with their antennas cranked up high into the sky. A cordon of police held back both cameras and reporters, and just random passersby. Given that her house was set back from the street, they were far enough in the distance that it was hard to recognize individual faces. But January imagined that most of her neighbors were there.
With a word from the police chief, the SWAT team and assembled patrol men and women lowered their weapons. January realized that they had both stopped in their tracks. Now she and Ryo stepped forward once more, and walked up to Nowakowski and Fagan.
"These are my clients, Ms. Ward, and Mr. Kuroda," Fagan said. "As you can see, they are surrendering themselves and cooperating in every way. Not that there is any good cause to suspect them of a crime, as the information I have provided you clearly shows that neither of them were responsible for the email that was sent earlier this morning."
"So you have continually - and strenuously - asserted Mr. Fagan," the police chief grumbled. He did not look happy with any of these events. He turned his head from the attorney to January and Ryo. "We have a warrant to search the premises and your persons. Your legal counsel has it in his possession at the moment. But it seems that you have very strong doors and windows."
"Good old Michigan oak," January murmured. "I guess they don't make it like they used to. The door's open now though."
She glanced back, and reached out through the astral to the witch bottles within the house. A moment later the front door creaked back opened, as if of its own accord.
"You are welcome to go inside and look of course," January said.
With that both of them were searched by police officers. It was quite an uncomfortable - and invasive - experience. January had to restrain herself from reacting when they grabbed at her nether regions. Her logical, rational mind told her that it was a place where people often hid weapons and other objects. But again, that part of your brain went out the window when someone was getting all up in your private parts.
"You know, the last time someone did that she kissed me first."
January did not know where that brazen, witty remark came from. Surely she could not have come up with something that snide and clever on her own. Usually she could only do that after thinking about it for a week after the fact. Then again, it was technically accurate. The last person to have touched her down there was of course Hannah, and she had indeed kissed her first, numerous times in fact.
The witch bottles around the Witch House's grounds told January that an old Ford Bronco had arrived. She turned her head to see her mother and her campaign manager, Frank Wigand, step out of it. Frank - actually Cray of course - looked calm and self-assured. Her mother was the opposite. Her eyes were as dark and ominous as the sky overhead, which was now blanketed with heavy thunderheads.
"Is this really necessary?" The anger was clear in her mother Barbara's voice when she finally stormed near. Her hands gesticulated wildly in the air to underscore her point. "Why is my daughter being treated like some... some... gangster? Is she under arrest?"
"Ah, Ms. Ryan, the candidate..." Chief Nowakowski turned to face Barbara. "We received an alarming threat of a terrorist attack this morning, under the name of your daughter. We are currently investigating the matter, and conducting a search of the premises."
"That's preposterous!" Barbara exclaimed. "My daughter is no terrorist! Besides, she's much too smart to just tell the police that she is going to commit a crime ahead of time. Who does that? This is clearly someone impersonating her. And I don't have to wonder too hard about who that could be, given that a lunatic doxxed her online yesterday."
"We are aware of the evidence that Mr. Fagan has presented to us," Chief Nowakowski explained patiently. "But it will have to be confirmed by our own investigation. Given that it involves another state, we will have to work with the New York City authorities. That could take some time."
"Am I under arrest?" January asked. She kept her chin up and put up a calm, assured front. In reality her heart raced as wildly as it had in any of her battles against supervillains. But she was not about to show her apprehension. She knew better than that.
"Never let the bullies see weakness or fear. Never let them know how much they really bother you." Her mother had told her when she was twelve.
"They are predators. When they smell blood they will just attack even more relentlessly.""No."
January let out an audible sigh of relief just the same when the police chief gave his answer.
"We will still need January to come in to the station to make a statement, and Mr. Kuroda as well." The police chief went on in a stiff, formal tone. "And we will need to complete the execution of the search warrant. Given the severity of the circumstances, I have to fully explore every avenue of investigation."
"I do agree that this all has a smell to it." Nowakowski's voice finally eased up. "It's very similar to another incident with an online streamer that happened in Ontario recently. In fact, the text of the email looks the same, word for word."
"She didn't even have the originality to make her own fake email," January said under her breath. "She had to copy someone else's"
January already knew that the police would do nothing about Patty Fine. They would drag their feet, claim interdepartmental delays, file the paperwork, and ultimately just ignore it. That was typical. On the other hand, at least it looked like she would not be spending the night in jail. Let alone the rest of her life.
Still, she wondered if she could bring a civil suit against Patricia Fine? January was not by nature a litigious person. The thought had literally never entered her mind before in her life. But now that she had an attack dog of a lawyer, it seemed a shame not to let him off his leash. Besides, Cray had a point. If Patricia Fine wanted to use the law to attack her, it was only appropriate to strike back in the very same manner.
* * *