[color=fff200][h2][center]Hornet[/center][/h2][/color]

[i]You’ll adjust to arriving on time soon enough.[/i]

Coming from someone with Grandmaster’s reputation, that didn’t sound like a reassurance or a prediction; it sounded like an order. The guy had that kind of intensity to him; the kind of rigid professionalism that made her unconsciously straighten up her posture a bit more and left her feeling like she was about to be scolded for not polishing her costume more before she came here.

Maybe she was overthinking things, first day jitters and all that, or maybe the armour and all the guys with guns she passed on the way here and the fact that she was technically a government employee now put her in the mind set of thinking this was closer to the first day or boot camp than the first day of school. I mean, the Protectorate was an offshoot of the PRT right? They were kind of like a militarised police division or something; kind of like SWAT, but more specialised towards dealing with cape stuff? Yeah, that sounded about right. So the PRT and therefore the Protectorate and therefore the Wards, were all in the same vein as the police and the military.

Okay, yeah. Shit.

Probably best to think of anything Grandmaster said to her as an order and not a suggestion then.

Just in case.

Jessica wasn’t the last to arrive, but that wasn’t comforting information at the moment; if anything it just meant that she had the embarrassment of being late and still had to wait around for someone else before they could get started. The worst of both worlds. It sounded like whoever it was that had yet to show up was someone the heroes knew as well; one of the former Wards maybe, or an out-of-towner they were bringing in? They had expectations placed on them from the sounds of it, which probably meant they were different from the new recruits like herself.

She would find out soon enough. In the meantime, Jessica stepped forward to get a closer look at whatever glowing tinkertech thing Axiom had just placed on the table. Special earpieces that blocked out Master powers were cool and it was good to know that they were protected from some of the scarier Parahuman abilities out there, assuming they worked as well as the pitch made it sound, but at the same time looking at the innocuous devices gave her a sense of dread. It was the same as her armour; reassuring in their presence and at the same time deeply concerning that she needed them at all. Reaching out to pick one up, Jessica cracked it open to look at the small earpieces inside. She was wondering whether or not she could pass them off as off-brand AirPods or something when she felt someone new appear on the periphery of her power.

Well, truth be told, with her range there were more than a few people walking in and out of her new sense in a building this busy; learning out to tune it out and not get distracted was something she had been working on. But this particular person was walking down the corridor that led straight to this room and was moving with the brisk pace of someone in a hurry to get somewhere.

Guess this was the person they were waiting on.

Even that forewarning didn’t prepare her for the girl’s entrance though. Not the door flying open, nor the brightly coloured combat gear, nor the… everything else that came with the girl’s appearance, attitude and general demeanour.

As the newcomer stomped into the room, snapped at a member of the Protectorate and put her feet up on the table like she own the place, it wasn’t hard to get the impression that this girl was kind of full of herself; loud, obnoxious, a disregard for everyone else in the room and a clear disrespect for the supposed authorities in the room. Hell, Jessica couldn’t imagine being bold enough to act like that towards a seasoned cape, let alone with someone like [i]Grandmaster[/i] in the room who, as she had previously noted, kind of scared her. But this girl was acting like [i]she[/i] was the one in charge here, or at least acting like no one was in charge of [i]her[/i].

If Jessica didn’t already know exactly who this was, this first impression alone would have given her plenty of reasons to dislike this girl; she wasn’t looking to deal with someone’s overinflated ego with everything else that was going on. As it was, it was still a bad impression and she still didn’t like this girl, but that was slightly overshadowed by the fact that this was Shattercrash she was dealing with. The vigilante had a bit of a reputation in this city, to say the least and even someone who didn’t follow capes religiously like Jessica knew about the girl who was both a huge help to the PRT and an embarrassing thorn in their side at the same time. Any annoyance Jessica might have felt at the girl’s attitude problem was tempered by the fact that said girl could fold her up like a newspaper if she so felt like it.

So she wisely bit her tongue, folded her arms under her chest and didn’t say anything.