The Time And Space Annihilation Bureau

Summary: In which Vista and Clockblocker realize that together they might be the most overpowered duo the world has ever known.

"Okay, so, you know how the stuff I touch is inviolable, right?" Clock explained.

Vista wasn't really paying that much attention, much more focused on her game of Snake. It was surprising that the PRT issue phone even had Snake to begin with, and while she was tempted to ask someone if it was meant to, that meant it would probably be taken away, and honestly, she needed some way to occupy her time mid-patrol.

"I've been trying to think of ways to make my stuff into a weapon," he continued. "But so far, the best I've got is trying to make people run into things that I've frozen. And that's just not a very good idea."

Vista nodded. She had misjudged the length of her snake's tail so she had to wait a few seconds while the game went back to the title screen so she could try again. "Well obviously," she said.

"So I've been thinking... you can't affect the space a living being occupies, right?"

"Right."

Clock hummed. "But you could, hypothetically speaking, twist the space in front of them so they go somewhere they didn't expect to and would have no time to react to."

Vista hummed, as the game started again. She remembered doing that to Glory Girl, to make her walk into a wall, at least once.

"Since convincing people to walk into stuff I set up before-hand is hard, maybe we could actually use your power to effectively 'move' the stuff I've frozen in front of people."

Vista paused the game.

"Huh. That... sounds actually kind of smart. We should try it out."

Leviathan leaped into the air, after running so fast as to be little more than a massive blur of motion.

Its top half fell about a hundred meters in front of the bottom half. The legs seemed to realize what sort of trouble they were in, and they turned tail and ran back into the water.

"Ho~leee shiet!" someone screamed.

Vista blew on her nails and polished them on her chestpiece. Clockblocker, she knew, was grinning like a loon beneath his mask.

Vista grinned as she felt the 'field' created by her power break under the strain of holding Crawler's massive form. Fortunately, she didn't have to hold him for long and she knew sweet, sweet unconsciousness would take the edge of the pain away in a minute.

She looked to where she had made Crawler move, to the Clockblocker-reinforced cage. Making Crawlery slip through the keyhole had been fantastic.

Clock gave her a thumbs up and she collapsed to la-la-land.

The Undersiders were a very dangerous group... with relatively lame-sounding powers.

They had been the bane of the Protectorate for a while now. Like, a year or so.

Vista's ever increasing grasp on the bullshit of her powers, Clockblocker mused, was a godsend to dealing with them. Up to and including the moment of their capture.

Better still? Tattletale had been put in stocks. Made indestructible by his power, of course. While Dennis would always know that Sophia's ass was nicer, he could very well appreciate Tattletale's ass in spandex.

Also good?

Skitter was knocked out cold, so no bugs!

Whodda thunk it, the Undersiders were telling the truth for once. Thomas Calvert was exposed as Coil and arrested. Too bad he was liberated mid transport to the Birdcage.

Still, the Undersiders, unfortunately for the Wards, were not convicted murderers and, in light of the fact that they all had tragic backstories and, Dennis thought this was bullshit, the 'willingness' to cooperate and play ball, they were not all sent to prison.

Admittedly, Sophia WAS actually guilty of manslaughter and she had been made a provisional ward. Also Sophia was an actual psychopath, unlike the Undersiders minus Regent. He still liked hanging out with Sophia more than he liked knowing that Skitter was now a Ward in Los Angeles, under Alexandria herself. That sounded like a reward to Dennis, more than a punishment.

Sue him, the bug powers still freaked him out, he didn't want to think of her as a 'misunderstood teenage girl' when she had tried to put bugs in his everything.

Fortunately, Missy shared his opinion on the presence of Bug Girl and they'd blocked any possibility of her getting transferred to Brockton Bay.

Armsmaster was now even more of a workaholic, but he had apparently taken that stick out of his ass and fashioned a new halberd with it, because he was far less interested in his own glory and much more interested in more important stuff. Like the pursuit of Jack Slash, whom the cute prophet girl had said would bring the end of the world as we know it.

"And I feel fine~" Dennis chorused as he played the song in his head.

Okay, so if you heard her talk about Skitter, Dinah would tell you all about the brave girl who worked for a monster just to free her, in order to make up for the mistake that resulted in her kidnapping in the first place. While Dennis would like to insist that fixing her own damn mess didn't make her a hero, Dinah had insisted that Skitter had no knowledge of what would happen.

She was fixing an error in judgment because she trusted the wrong person.

Apparently, Alexandria agreed, because she actually promoted Skitter, now Weaver, as a young heroine forced to do bad things for the sake of someone she cared about, and actually promoted her acts of good will when her boss would have had her be cruel instead.

Dennis was forced to admit that Skitter's 'territory' had unarguably been the best place to live in after the coming of the Nine. She had been seen fighting Mannequin twice, after all, nearly dying both times, to protect her people. Also she was distributing supplies and giving shelter to those who needed it.

Okay so maybe Bug Girl wasn't the image of evil that Dennis thought her as when he thought of that time he was covered in bugs.

But she still creeped him the fug out.

Much as bug girl creeped her out, the spider silk costume?

That was pretty sweet.

Even Clock had admitted as much, and he disliked Skitter just as much, if not more, than Vista did.

Missy was hardly one to 'hold grudges', so to speak. If she did she would've made Sophia walk off a pier she thought much longer than it was a long, long time ago, but the humiliation the team had suffered at the bank was enough to give her plenty of reasons not to want the former Undersiders anywhere near her.

Okay, so, Imp and Regent were pretty okay. They even got to keep their old names since they were pretty PC, all things considered. Yeah, Regent had confirmed that he was a recovering Sociopath, and Imp was... well, Imp, but they were close to her in age, they were competent and their sense of humor was almost as dark as her own.

Admittedly, they got all sorts of weird looks when they all laughed at, of all things, a rape joke, but hey, Brockton Bay was a shithole and you either learned how to laugh or you went insane.

Also they thought her scars were pretty cool. That helped.

Anyway, their presence expanded Clock and Vista's ability to make people trip into situations that made Clockblocking them much more optimal. Imp's effective invisibility and Regent's ability to make people trip were both extremely useful when it came to sticky situations that before had no real solutions.

Such as the Butcher. With Imp using a camera to transmit the layout and placement of all the Butcher's minions and Regent to get them to stumble at just the right time, it was easy for Vista to alter space into a tunnel that deposited each of them into a cage.

Admittedly, containing the Butcher was a bit of a problem, but Armsmaster and Dragon had a solution for that anyway.

"I won't lie, this... is fucking hilarious," Clockblocker admitted as he watched Zion repeatedly smack himself against inviolable barriers. Oh, he could destroy them - he could counter any and all parahuman powers. Thing is, he needed to make a conscious effort to do so, and whereas once he was spreading unstoppable destruction, now he was constantly stopping to destroy paper that got in the way of his stupidly powerful blasts.

And they'd even tossed toilets at him. He didn't understand the significance - nobody was sure Zion was even actually intelligent instead of being just borderline sapient - but it was still funny.

Ultimately, distracting him with Paper was enough that when he was too busy destroying an entire printer (They ran out of paper), he did not notice that Flechette had thrown a pebble at him.

Well, mostly, she had thrown it at the space Vista was crunching, which Flechette's power went through like it wasn't even there.

Zion died screaming.

"And that," Missy finished, "is how we saved ALL earths!"

"So what did happen to Browbeat?"

Missy blinked. Then she turned to Clockblocker. He shrugged, and Vista once more face the class.

"Who?"