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[b]Tandem 1 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | [@Mintz]
June 19, 2021[/b][hr]Huh. So apparently the birdman hadn’t even known he could change his size. Well, he was a fairly new cape, so that sorta made sense; as much as Tandem thought powers were awesome now, when she’d first gotten hers she’d been terrified of parahumans, it had probably taken her a year or so to finally realise how cool powers were and to start properly figuring out how to use her own. 

Tandem figured the size-changing ability must be the sort of power to do its own thing when the bird guy wasn’t focused on it, but she wondered whether it was something he could take conscious control of when he wanted, like breathing was, or if it was always out of his control, like a heartbeat. If it was the latter that’d be somewhat unfortunate, but there would probably still be rules behind when and how it did what it did that could be exploited once bird guy figured it out. 

As for the mothman thing, bird guy’s explanation sorta made sense - his feathers and fur were, as he’d pointed out, very dark - although Tandem still thought that people jumping to him being a moth was kinda weird. Even if moths only came out at night, Tandem was pretty sure they didn’t have white eyes, and for that matter, could moths even be black in the first place? Still, being hard to see in the dark was an interesting aspect of his power, especially since he’d already mentioned he could fly silently and see in the dark. 

Did Wards do night missions? She’d never seen Wards out after dark, but it wasn’t like cape encounters were all that common in the first place. Thus far it looked like the Wards followed normal people schedules, but it’d make sense if they sometimes had to operate after dark; Tandem knew from personal experience that some criminals were very much active at night. 

Before Tandem could continue her questioning of the nervous cape or share her speculations on how his power might work, she was interrupted by a man in a suit entering the room. The newcomer introduced himself as Vice Director Fukuda and addressed the Wards…

[b]Tandem 2 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | [@Duoya]
June 19, 2021[/b][hr] Tandem decided that other than being a bit of a grump, Keystone was actually pretty cool. He’d said that the only reason he didn’t have a gun was because he’d been denied a pistol, which checked out with all the stuff she’d been told she wasn’t allowed to carry. Well in her case her power let her ignore those particular rules, so if the situation called for it she’d be more than happy to hand Keystone a gun or two, though she wouldn’t say so right now - even if she whispered it, it’d be really silly to say she had firearms while standing so close to Axiom.

More importantly, Tandem had picked up some interesting bits and pieces about Keystone's power. For one, Keystone had pretty much confirmed his power could see into her inventory to some extent; if his comment about her having a first aid kit hadn’t been an admission, his request that she not to “set something off” certainly was. More interestingly, Keystone’s power seemed to have given him her name - or her cape name at least, though she reasoned it wasn’t all that unlikely that it had given him both and he just hadn’t used her real one because secret identities were meant to be secret, even when they absolutely weren’t. 

He’d said his power was about finding weaknesses; did that mean her name was somehow a weakness then? Or did his power give him extra information along with the weaknesses? A [i]‘that’s Tandem, you should blow her up’[/i] sort of thing. She’d ask him about that in a bit, but for now, she was interested in the other part of what he’d said, that he wanted to team up on patrol with her.

Of course Tandem really wanted to patrol with Keystone… well she really wanted to patrol with any of her new teammates, except for maybe Ethos, but Keystone’s power was the most interesting of the lot and she was itching to ask him all about her weaknesses and those of her teammates, and then trying to come up with workarounds. Very few powers had the intrinsic capacity to grow, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t improve their use, and thinking about how to do so was always lots and lots of fun. 

[color=938787]"Sure, sounds fun.”[/color] 

Before Tandem could say any more, Vice Director Fukuda entered the room.

[b]Tandem 3 | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room | [@King Cosmos]
June 19, 2021[/b][hr]Tandem had startled Hornet when she’d teleported in front of her. [i]Oops[/i]. In hindsight she probably should have seen that coming, it wasn’t like surprise was an unusual response to having someone teleport in front of you, actually, it was probably the normal response to that happening. Still, it was a lot more convenient than having to walk around everywhere and there were plenty of cases where she needed to dismiss and resummon her selves, so it wasn’t like she could just not do it…

[color=938787]“Um– sorry… would it be better if I appear behind you next time?”[/color] 

After a moment she had a better idea, or rather thought of a way to apply an idea she’d already had. [color=938787]“Ah! What if I gave you a signal first? Like with coloured paper or something.”[/color] Excited to show off her idea, Tandem didn’t bother waiting for an answer before demonstrating her idea by summoning a piece of yellow confetti in the air between the two of them. 

Moving on. The ability to sense where she could teleport was awesome, and frankly, it made Tandem a little jealous. There was so much she would be able to do with a power like that.

[color=938787]“You’d be awesome at search and rescue! I tried to go into a burning building once, but my power’s not really good for that so I had to run away… but you’d probably be able to find everyone really quickly and could jump right to them! That’s really, really cool!”[/color] Tandem paused for a fraction of a second, thinking, before having another thought. [color=938787]“Does your power only work on people? If it works on animals we could all carry around boxes of rats or bugs or something and then you could teleport all around us… well, I wouldn’t be able to, but the others might.”[/color] 

Tandem briefly considered pulling a dead mouse out of her inventory to illustrate her idea, but recalled how she'd gotten in trouble when she'd done something similar during official power testing, and decided against the idea. It'd be annoying to lose time getting told off right now.

It was kind of a shame that Hornet didn’t know how potent her invincibility was, though it did make sense as to why they couldn’t safely test that. Tandem supposed she was lucky in that sense - if she ever wanted to try something with her power that might be dangerous she only needed to make sure one of her bodies came out unscathed, which certainly made power testing a lot easier. Still, there had to be ways to safely test Hornet, right?

[color=938787]“Does your power strengthen other things you teleport with you? What if you teleported with a stick or piece of paper or something and then tried to break that?”[/color]

Tandem moved to touch the piece of confetti she’d dropped before with her shoe, shunting it back into her inventory. She was about to suggest the two of them try training together at some point, especially since their respective mover powers seemed like they’d synergise really, really, well with one another, but before she could get the words out, Vice Director Fukuda arrived.

[b]All Tandems | PRT Headquarters, Meeting Room
June 19, 2021 [/b][hr]Two of Tandem’s three heads whipped around to observe the vice director as he addressed the room, the third instead looked to Axiom and her new teammates to gauge their reactions to whatever was said. 

They’d be dealing with a bank robbery? Tandem had never really understood why someone would try to rob a bank or steal money at all for that matter. Wasn’t it easier to just take the thing you wanted the money to buy in the first place? Whatever, that detail wasn’t the important one, what mattered was that the robbers were mercenaries. Cape mercenaries.

A knot of anxiety bloomed in Tandem's chests. She’d gotten by all this time by avoiding any head-to-head conflict with other capes, generally satisfying herself with observing them and at most heckling them a little, but it looked like today she’d finally be getting into a proper fight. Tandem could feel her hearts pounding as her minds rushed with countless possibilities for ways this could go wrong, yet despite her anxiety, she couldn’t help but also start to grin beneath her masks. The option to avoid intergang conflicts had been lost the moment she’d decided to join the Wards, and scary as it was, getting to finally try out some of the ideas she’d been sitting on was really, really exciting. 

From the looks of things, bird guy was also excited, judging by how large he’d suddenly grown.