Noa (October)
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Foxfire, Esq. | Chapter Eight
🕑 Added 2025-01-14 04:40:26 +0000 UTC[CONTENT WARNING — Traumatized people discussing traumatic events]
The last week of May arrived before our chance to sit down with Barricade came around on the calendar, and realistically, I wasn’t surprised. To give a better idea of the time frames involved here, Mrs. Banks had first met with us in March. It was now May, and we were still at least another month out from filing suit, then another month from an initial conference, and after that, we probably wouldn’t see a trial until the new year rolled around. Lawsuits were slow, tedious, monotonous slogs towards an eventual flurry of activity, but most of them tended to die during the slow point.
If I had any say in the matter, though, this one wouldn’t.
Per the NMR’s request, Mrs. Banks was not going to be present for our sit-down with Barricade. I hadn’t been paying overly much attention until the SJA mentioned it, but he’d been out of the limelight entirely for most of the last four months following a hospital visit at the end of January. Making him face Mrs. Banks, while cathartic for her, would not have helped our case. Even so, it was only after a good twenty minutes of enduring her yelling that I got her to understand that she needed to sit this one out.
But now, the day had arrived, and the team was just Julio, Fatima, and me.
We exited the company car outside of the Joint Force Headquarters, like I had a month or so ago, and walked into the building. And just like a month or so ago, I received an almost identically warm welcome.
“Unknown Moonshot—“
“Oh piss off,” I told the first soldier to speak up. “You and I both know your boss, their boss, and every boss above them knew that I’d be here today. Now go be a good soldier, follow your orders, and tell the Staff Judge Advocate that Foxfire is here for her ten o’clock.”
The grunt on guard duty did his level best to stare me down, I’d give him that. But all it took was one twitch of my ears for his eyes to leave mine, and he stormed off with gritted teeth. The only reason his footsteps weren’t stomps was purely military discipline at play, because even when angry, a soldier still had to be a soldier.
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Julio whispered to me. I sniffed derisively.
“Moonshot and the military have a tenuous relationship,” I said back to him, not bothering to keep my voice down. I didn’t care if the soldiers around us heard me; hell, I’d honestly prefer they did. “They treat us like the armed forces when it’s convenient for them, but whenever it’s inconvenient or expensive, they try to give us the shaft and put us down as civilians. Honestly, if some or other senator’s kid hadn’t been Moonshot, we wouldn’t get the GI bill, VA healthcare, or any other kind of benefit whatsoever.”
“That’s shitty.”
“That’s life.” Just to raise some hackles, I snapped my fingers and conjured up a small ball of purple foxfire, which I let dance across my fingers as I talked. “The military wants its cookie-cutter order-followers. Moonshot are so completely random that they can’t have that with us, but it never stopped Uncle Sam from trying.”
The grunts around us warily eyed the little fireball I was playing with, gripping their weapons just the smallest bit tighter. But they wouldn’t dare fire on us. That grunt danced off the moment he heard the name ‘Foxfire’, which meant the men on duty had all been read in on just how valuable I was.
After an increasingly tense (for everyone but me) two minutes, the elevator dinged at the far end of the hall, and a few moments later, the heavy security door at the end of the entry hall opened up. The first person through was another soldier with an officer’s insignia, followed by none other than the Staff Judge Advocate herself.
“Are you terrorizing my men again?” SJA Barnes asked the instant her eyes fell upon me.
“Hm?” I glanced down at the little ball of foxfire I’d been playing with, then offered the other woman a grin as it disappeared into nothingness. “No, just passing the time. I assume you’re ready for us?”
“Yes, now come on. The sooner I have you out of my hair, the better.”
I needed no more invitation than that, and slight pokes to both Julio’s and Fatima’s sides got the both of them moving right along as well. They fell into step behind me, and the three of us followed SJA Barnes not to an elevator, but to a conference room on this same floor, just around a corner from the security door.
The Staff Judge Advocate opened up the door, but before I could go inside, she gave me what I could only interpret as a meaningful look. I waggled one ear in question, but decided that I wanted to indulge her regardless.
“You two go in and get yourselves all set up,” I told Julio and Fatima. “The SJA would like a word, apparently.”
My two juniors shared a glance, then a shrug, and I stepped to the side to allow them passage into the conference room. Once they were in, SJA Barnes closed the door, leaned against it, and just stared at me with a somewhat contrite expression.
“… you were right,” she said with a sigh, her left thumb fiddling with the family heirloom she wore on that hand.
“Of course I was,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes and lowering my ears. “Let me guess: he was up all night building the damn thing.”
“He was asleep at the dining table when I woke up.”
“Typical.” I chuckled. “You know that was supposed to be my graduation gift to him? All the extravagant shit our parents thought of, but even with that shiny new PhD, I knew all he’d want was more Lego.”
“Supposed to be?” Megan asked.
“Well, it was a little hard to attend his graduation when I was stuck in Japan for over a year. And then a little hard to care after I knew how little he wanted to know who I became,” I told her. “You know, it’s… kinda funny. I haven’t so much as wondered what my brother was up to for years now. Thought I’d still be angry, after…” I sighed.
“For what little it’s worth, I’m sorry for, ah… trying to call you—“
I held up a hand to forestall her from saying anything else.
“Just drop it,” I said. “That you even thought to apologize is enough. Plus, well. I think we’re going to need all the emotional bandwidth we can get.”
“We are,” she confirmed, and I saw the moment Megan tucked my sister-in-law back beneath the surface and brought the Staff Judge Advocate to the fore. “I do not want you badgering my trooper in there. If I think you’re pushing too hard, I will step in.”
“Good,” I said. “Hopefully, you’ll be the first NMR desk jockey I see to actually show some care for the Moonshot under them.”
Something between anger and grief flickered in Megan’s eyes before they hardened, and she turned away, opening the conference room door in the same motion. I accepted the begrudging invitation and stepped in, whereupon I saw both Julio and Fatima doing their level best to look innocent and unassuming. Megan closed the door behind me, and I heard her footsteps recede towards where I remembered the elevator to be. Once they faded from earshot, I set my focus back on my two juniors.
“How much of that did you hear?” I asked.
Neither of them answered, but from their expressions, I gathered that the answer was ‘nowhere near as much as they wanted to’. I smiled, pulled out a chair, and sat down to wait.
Contrary to my expectations, we weren’t kept long. After maybe a minute had passed, I again heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. There were two sets of them: one the sharp, staccato raps of Megan’s kitten heels on government building tile, while the other had the heavy, dragging cadence I usually heard from people who’d pushed too hard in their last workout.
Or, I amended once the door opened and the SJA entered with the man of the hour in tow, from somebody who’d been struggling to get a proper night’s sleep. I stood to face the door, and got my first good in-person look at the most recent poor unlucky bastard to suffer the NMR’s pitiful excuse for help.
The Moonshot towered over both SJA Barnes and myself, standing a bit over six feet tall. Barricade wore his usual superhero ‘costume’, which was really just motorcycle leathers modified to resemble armor, and he kept the police helmet on. As much as I disliked the decision, he was one of the many Moonshot who opted to try and keep their personal lives separate from their job, so I kept my distaste to myself. Even without being able to see the top half of Barricade’s face, though, his nose and mouth were more than enough to paint a rather grim picture of the man in front of us.
Razor burn was somehow visible even through something between three and five days of stubble. His lips were chapped and peeling, with visible scabs on the bottom lip that roughly matched the spacing of his teeth. His pale skin seemed almost waxy under the conference room’s fluorescent lighting, and his expression was downcast and dreary. He appeared utterly miserable.
Familiarly so, if I was being painfully honest.
“Barricade?” I asked unnecessarily, even as I approached and extended a hand. “My name is Naomi Ziegler, though during my time in the NMR, my callsign was Foxfire.”
Barricade turned away from the floor at my approach, and I could tell the instant his eyes fell on me. Even through the reflective visor on the police-style helmet he wore, his double-take was obvious, as was the almost disbelieving blink in his expression. While I’d encountered a fair few of DC’s Moonshot during my time in the city, Barricade was a recent-enough addition that I hadn’t had a chance to encounter him under… well, not pleasant circumstances, but at least less awful ones.
“I, uh,” he stuttered. Megan took the opportunity to clear her throat, which had Barricade standing at attention, after which he took my hand in a rather stiff motion.
“I-it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Uh, ma’am.”
“I wish that it were, but let’s be honest with ourselves, no it isn’t,” I said, even as I cast a glance off to the side at the SJA, who just offered a raised eyebrow and a shrug. “Don’t feel the need to put on your public face.”
Barricade let go of my hand, and seemed about to respond. He started turning towards SJA Barnes, but I drew his attention back to me with the wiggle of an ear and a welcoming smile. He took a deep breath, tensed his jaw, and breathed a few times more.
Then, he practically deflated. His shoulders slumped, his back hunched, and his neck dipped down low enough that he’d probably need to look back up to meet my eyes, even though he had almost a full foot of height on me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice so quiet it was almost a whisper. “How long will this take?”
“As long as it needs to be, but as short as I can make it,” I told him. “If you could take a seat, we’ll get right underway. Sooner we start, sooner we’re done.”
I didn’t need to offer any other invitation. Barricade pulled a chair out from the table and sat, though his height made the seat rather uncomfortable for him. He pulled further away from the table so his knees weren’t bumping it, but that just made him look even more awkward compared to the rest of us. There wasn’t anything I could do to help in that regard, so I just went back to our side of the table and sat down, while SJA Barnes took a seat next to Barricade.
We’d positioned ourselves on adjacent sides of the table, rather than opposite, positioning ourselves on the same ‘side’ while still allowing us to face one another for a proper conversation. Right now, we were allies, and hopefully the seating arrangements would help the man see us as friendlies.
“Before we begin, while this isn’t a formal legal proceeding, SJA Barnes is sitting in and acting as your attorney for this matter,” I informed Barricade, opening my tablet and its keyboard cover into a comfortable typing position that didn’t hide my face. “About a week or so from now, we will have prepared an affidavit summarizing what you share here today, and we’ll send it to you for a once-over. If you don’t have anything to correct or add, then SJA Barnes will help you get it notarized. When this case enters discovery, the defendant’s attorneys may want to sit you down for what’s called a deposition, where you will be put under oath and they will ask you questions. Lastly, should this case end up going to trial, you will be called to testify before open court. Do you have any questions about this?”
“I don’t, um.” Barricade worried at his bottom lip, teeth sliding over the scabs they’d clearly made. “What, w-what if… what if I d-don’t want to? Don’t think I c-can?”
“Then we will press on without your testimony until and unless we find that it’s something we absolutely need, at which point the judge would order you to either testify or go to jail for a bit.”
The hero took in a shaky, rattling breath. SJA Barned shot me a nasty glare, and I offered her as apologetic of a glance as I could, lowering my ears to look more placating.
“I-I—” Barricade cleared his throat, and I caught him bouncing one leg, which was probably a nervous tic. “I, uh, I understand. O-okay. I’m ready.”
“Very well.”
I readied a printed copy of the questions I wanted to ask, which I would cross off my list once I’d gotten a satisfactory answer. This was the kind of thing where it was best to start small, with things unrelated to the main event.
“These first few questions are going to seem a bit irrelevant,” I told him, just to make sure he wasn’t surprised by them. “They’re similar to the kind of questions you would get in a deposition, and while that won’t be happening for at least a few months, I’d rather you have experience answering those questions before any kind of deposition prep. If you’re all set?”
“I am,” Barricade said, though he didn’t quite sound it to my ears.
“In that case, let’s start with an easy one,” I said. “What is your callsign, MT, and number?”
He paused briefly at the easy question, but thankfully only needed a moment’s surprise before answering.
“My callsign is Barricade,” he began. “My MT is A3, and my NMR ID number is 6625448.”
A proper seven-digit number, I noted, unlike mine. And A3 meant that his powers were of the ‘true random’ variety.
“How old are you?” I continued.
“Twenty-three.”
I blinked, briefly shooting a disappointed glance towards SJA Barnes before taking an appraising look at the rather young man in front of me. Beside me, Julio and Fatima both shifted, and even just from what I could see out of the corner of my eye, it was obvious that this information surprised and disturbed them. Now that I knew how old he was, his youth was obvious. Much of the visible broadness in his torso came from the motorcycle leathers, and with his arms raised, the jacket bunched up around his shoulders to reveal the relatively slight frame beneath. He still had more growing to do, and yet he was already being paraded around as a public figure to do the government’s bidding.
How very military of the NMR.
“How long is your tour of duty with the NMR set to last?” I asked.
“Six years,” he answered.
“And how long have you served so far?”
“Three years.”
They got him at the same age they did me, then.
“What were you doing prior to your enlistment in the NMR?” The phrasing of that question was rather specific. I did not ask what he was doing before he enlisted, because that implied that he chose to enlist. Given his age, I somehow doubted it was much of a choice.
“I, um. I was in college,” he said. “I was a sophomore at AU. Just picked architecture as my major when, uh, well.”
“Mm,” I mused. “When you say ‘AU’, would that be American University here in DC?”
“Oh, uh. Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay, really. The courts just want us to be specific,” I told him. “Moving on: was your enlistment in the NMR pursuant to the Friendly Neighborhood Act?”
“What?” Barricade asked. “I-I, uh, don’t know what that is?”
“I’ll rephrase,” I said. Unsurprising, but still a disappointment. “Was enlisting with the NMR something you had to do as part of taking an Uncle Ben plea deal?”
SJA Barnes glared at me for that question, and I shot her a glare right back. The Friendly Neighborhoods Act was fucked up, and she knew it, but every attempt to take it past any Circuit Court had gone down in flames, so we were stuck picking up the messes it just wouldn’t stop making.
“Yeah, it was,” Barricade said, and then much to my surprise, he continued to explain without me asking another question. “I, um. I got my powers right after I graduated high school, and I’d played around with them a little bit, yeah. But when I went to look up what I had to do to get one of those superpower licenses to use them how I wanted, everything just said that you couldn’t, that the only way to get one was to, um.” He swallowed, and cast a nervous look at the Staff Judge Advocate next to him. “That the only way to get permission to use your powers was to either be a soldier or a superhero. And I’d just gotten into college, earned a scholarship and everything! I didn’t want to throw all that away and go to boot camp just so I could use my powers! So I just…”
He sighed, rubbing his hands together.
“I mean, I still used them. Just not in ways that anyone could tell. Not like anyone really notices if you’re underdressed for the weather. They just think you’re weird or Canadian or some shit like that.”
“And yet, here you are,” I said. “What happened that let them stick you with an Uncle Ben deal?”
“Saved my friend’s life.”
I paused, frowned at Barricade, and lowered one ear in question.
“Could you elaborate?” I asked.
“S-sorry,” he said, grimacing. “I, uh. I was down in Dupont with my frat — uh, is it okay if I don’t say which fraternity?” Barricade asked. “Cause, um, people could look up my real name if they know which frat I was in.”
“Are in,” I corrected. “I guarantee they still consider you a member. And yes, that’s fine.”
“Okay, good, good. Um, sorry, what was I saying?”
“You were down in Dupont with others from the fraternity,” I filled in, reading from the notes I’d been typing up on my tablet.
“Yeah, that, um. Uh, well we got a bit rowdy at a sports bar, what with March Madness and all—”
“Fake ID?” I interrupted.
“Uh… yeah,” Barricade said. “I think three of us had fakes and the rest were old enough? But like, Ma—someone just got their bracket ruined thanks to a shit pick, and the rest of us started heckling him, you know?”
I turned towards Julio, who was just giving Barricade this perfect sage nod, and when I glanced back towards Megan, she had on an expression of raw incredulity. I mean, this was probably some big thing that people just knew about, but in all honesty, I didn’t have a damn clue what Barricade was talking about.
“I don’t, but assume I do,” I told him, drawing a squawk of outrage from Julio that heralded having my poor ears talked off on the way back to the firm.
“... uh.” Barricade floundered. He looked at Julio for a moment, then back at me. “Um, I guess just… well, my buddy was piss drunk, yeah? His team had just lost miserably, we were giving him shit, and he left in a real big way, so I followed him. And he started yelling at me cause it was the — uh, it was my favorite team that knocked his out of the running,” Barricade continued, catching himself before he dropped some more specific info. “So my buddy turns and looks at me, but he keeps walking backwards towards the street, and then… and then there was a car coming.
“I didn’t even think, really. Just. He stepped back, fell down cause he didn’t see the curb, there was a car coming. I just reacted. Put up a shield over him, the car went up it, and crunched into the sidewalk when it fell off the end. Then, um. I called 911, I lied and told them it was some freak accident, and we went back to the dorms and went to bed. Next thing I know, the cops are breaking down my door at six in the morning, they drag me down to the station in nothing but my boxers and a hoodie, play video someone took of the thing, and the guy they put in there with me said I either joined the heroes or they’d tell the press I was a supervillain and throw me in jail.”
“I see,” I said. “And what did you do?”
“I mean, what else was I supposed to do?” Barricade asked rhetorically. “I didn’t wanna go to jail! I’m not a bad guy! I signed on with the heroes, duh. Why do you even want to know this shit, huh? What does any of this even matter?”
“It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t want to know,” I said to deflect the question. “Since you’re going to be asked these questions regardless, it’s better for you to have answered them before. And regardless—”
“Stop! Stalling!” Barricade slammed his fist on the conference table, punctuating the yell. “You wanna ask me questions? You wanna know how I screwed up, how — how I’m just a great big fucking idiot who can’t do anything right when it matters!?” He slammed his fist on the table again, practically shaking with… I didn’t know. It wasn’t rage. Maybe shame. “Just…”
The fight fell out of him. Barricade let his fists fall away, and sank back into his chair, staring at the table, I presumed, so that he didn’t have to meet my eyes.
“Just get it over with.”
“Okay.”
I glanced over at Megan, tilting one ear down as if to say, ‘interrupt now or not at all’. But she remained silent, and just gestured with one hand for me to proceed.
“On December 27, 2019, an apartment building in DC’s 7th Ward burned down. Were you the Moonshot emergency responder on the scene?” I asked.
“I was,” Barricade responded.
Okay. No more beating around the bush. It was time.
“What happened after you arrived on the scene?”
