Specter

Chapter 7 (Day 1): The Most Important Meal Of The Day

We last read Chapter 6, in which Doc contacts his old colleague Ollie whilst the latter is in the middle of preparing his new Teleportation Network for Moody a.k.a. Specter's upcoming investigation into the recent dissenter attacks around the Rusted Citadel. For the most part, Doc vents about the fact that no matter how much good he does, it all comes crashing down to the ground the moment he makes one mistake, and he also laments about how all people—even those closest to him—will now only define him by his act of raping Monica Drevis a.k.a. Voltara and nothing else, completely eschewing his retained medical knowledge. He even brings up the Iron Kingpin's indirect hand in making him who he is, but Ollie plainly dismisses him—stating that Doc deserves to be where he is because of what he's done—before finally dropping the call after Doc hangs up on him.

Meanwhile, Moody a.k.a. Specter has a strange dream whilst sleeping in the middle of the night, finding herself back in her super suit—complete with the bloodied glove from when she beat up Captain Brownrig—standing in the middle of the Obsidian Sanctum's throne room as it was during the Iron Kingpin's reign instead of King Ryker's. There, she's greeted by a mysterious voice who praises her recent ruthless methods in dealing with her adversaries, and states that they need to see more violence from the spectral superheroine if they want to confirm her as the "chosen one".....while also promising her an unknown "reward" as an additional incentive. Whether it was from a brief lapse in judgment or the feeling of being "in the moment", she hesitates to answer.....but soon finds herself drawn to the mysterious voice, even begging it to come back to her once it starts to fade away. She then briefly reawakens in her quarters within the Obsidian Sanctum, going through a brief bout of indecisiveness before returning to rest once again.

This time, Specter's investigation into the recent dissenter attacks officially begins, as she picks up one member of King Ryker's court to act as her Number Two.....

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-T.J.'s House, Rusted Citadel, Asia-

The following morning, T.J.—wearing an identical outfit to the one he wore yesterday during the assault on Captain Brownrig's battleship and the subsequent meetings with King Ryker and the rest of the court—opened the front door of his house and exited onto the cement walkway leading to the main road. He let out a yawn—he hadn't actually slept that well—before briefly scratching his bottom and walking to the double-ended mailbox at the far end of the path to see if he had gotten any letters.

He checked to make sure that the red flag was down—since he hadn't sent anything recently—then opened the side door of the mailbox that was closer to him and peeked inside. To his interest, there was one envelope in it.....but his anticipation quickly faded to dismay once he realized that it was his most recent report card from his school.

Oh, darn it..... he bemoaned, saddened at the thought of having his failures pointed out to him even more despite the blatant lack of accommodations for him in his class's setup. Here we go again.....

He opened the envelope and pulled out the piece of paper which had been folded into three sections before unfolding it and reading its contents in their entirety. His frown only grew more pronounced as he saw the multiple "C"s—and even one "D" for Reading Comprehension—all in a neat column near the center of the sheet, with the subject names to their left and personalized comments from the teacher on the right.

And, needless to say, they were far from respectful or courteous; poor T.J. tried his best to hold back his tears as he scanned the words over and over.

This act alone was enough to get him to reconsider his entire plan for the day. He had initially chosen to take Specter's advice and return to school today with the rest of the kids, but what was the point of going if he knew that the teacher wasn't going to provide for him?