Form 8774-D, page 1
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
BUREAU OF METAHUMAN, MUTANT, AND OCCULT AFFAIRS
FORM 8774-D AFFIRMATION OF EMERGENT METAHUMAN, MUTANT, AND/OR OCCULT ABILITIES/POWERS
I. PERSONAL INFORMATION
a. Applicant
Answer each question as completely as possible. Incomplete fields will delay processing, verification, and certification of metahuman/mutant/occult practitioner status. Use only black or blue ink.
Name: __________ Alias(es): __________
Address: __________
Date of Birth: __________ This timeline? yes___ no___
If no, indicate date of birth in future: __________
alternate timeline: __________
Gender, if any: __________
Clone? yes___ no___
If yes, indicate time and place of creation, if known. __________
Cyborg? yes___ no___
If yes, indicate nature and function of cybernetic implants. __________
Citizenship: __________ Recognized terrestrial nation-state? yes__ no__
If no, planet of origin1: __________
Thursday, 8:47 a.m.
Leelee’s second cup of coffee hasn’t even worked its pitiful magic yet, she hasn’t finished deleting all her work emails or swiping down through the office Slack channel just so it’s resting on the current message if her supervisor happens to come by and notice. Eight friggin forty-seven, and the superwannabe comes through the door. No knock, no hesitation. Her first appointment isn’t until nine. “Excuse me. Miss Remsburg?”
Leelee nods. No point denying it.
“I’m Plumeria Reynolds. I believe I have an appointment. I know I’m a little early, but”—she looks slightly embarrassed but also weirdly proud of herself—“I just couldn’t wait!”
Leelee could send her back out into the waiting room to wait for thirteen minutes, but what the hell, nothing is happening in here and if she starts early maybe that means, by some law of conservation of impatient applicants, that a thirteen-minute break will appear later in the day.
Ha.
“Sure,” she says. “Have a seat.”
Leelee has her own office, with a door and everything, an unusual perk for someone at her service level but mandated because many of the discussions that happen in said office are of a deeply private nature. It isn’t easy to apply for recognition of metahuman or mutant abilities. There’s a stigma. There’s also an awesome factor, but Leelee knows that the supers who revel in the awesome without understanding the stigma and the burden are boarding the express train to Villain-Ville. She makes a note about them in her file.
Plumeria Reynolds, at first glance, does not appear to be such a person. She’s wearing a skirt and blouse from a mall store—perfectly fine but unremarkable, unlike many of Leelee’s clients who come in wearing costumes of their own design and brandishing various fake weapons and artifacts. The real ones don’t make it through security screening.
“You’ve filled out Form 8774-D?” Ms. Reynolds nods. “Let me just take a look.”
Form 8774-D, Affirmation of Emergent Metahuman, Mutant and/or Occult Abilities/Powers, is just the first step in the process of being vetted and certified—but it’s a critical step, and the hardest, because the temptation is to lie, to make yourself sound better, to be a Thanos in a world of Ant-Men. A big part of Leelee’s job is working through Form 8774-D with claimants to get their answers in order so they don’t get embarrassed later.
Plumeria Reynolds’s form indicates that she is neither a clone nor a cyborg, and that she was born on Planet Earth. She claims powers of flight and energy projection, manifesting after…Leelee squints but can’t quite make it out. “When did your powers first manifest?” she asks.
“Oh, my handwriting,” Plumeria says apologetically. “I can hardly read it myself. The whole thing started on a fishing boat, if you can believe that. I was thirteen. My uncle caught some strange creature, none of us knew what it was, and my father told me not to touch it.” She shrugs. “But I did. It was kind of slimy, and the slime got into me, I guess. Next thing I knew, I could do…well, all the things I wrote on the form there.” She ends with a self-effacing little laugh that Leelee finds painfully endearing.
Leelee makes a note on Plumeria’s form. “Okay,” she says.
“Weird, right?” Plumeria leans forward. “But you probably hear lots of weird stories in your job,” she adds, clearly hoping Leelee will repeat some of them.
“I sure do,” Leelee says. “But you know, privacy laws…” It’s her turn to shrug.
“Of course, sure.” Plumeria nods a bit too energetically.
Leelee finishes scanning the form. “Everything appears to be in order,” she says.
“Great!” Plumeria beams. “So when can I start?”
Inwardly Leelee cringes. How can so many people not read the basic instructions? When you download Form 8774-D from the department’s website it comes with instructions. When applying for certified metahuman status, an applicant literally cannot get the form without the instructions and an overview of the process. Yet several times a week she runs into this situation.
“This is not a recruiting office,” she says. The speech comes out on autopilot, she’s given it so many times. “The Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs does not put you in touch with any other superheroes. We do not send you out on missions. What we do in this office is decide whether your particular suite of powers and abilities qualifies you to be a Certified Superhuman Practitioner. What you do with that certification is up to you…although several superhero organizations do keep tabs on what we do here.” She leans closer to Plumeria, because she likes her and wants to give her a little inside info. “Plus I know for a fact that the Dimensional Defense Agency has someone psionically monitoring our clerical staff, so if you fit their profile, they’ll be reaching out to you toot sweet. Possibly via your dreams.” Leelee winks, and then she’s all business again. “Your next step will be a demonstration of your abilities. Our department scheduler will contact you about that. Expect it to take a week or so.”
“Oh.” Plumeria is disappointed but trying not to show it. This makes Leelee like her more. “How long before the demonstration, once it’s scheduled?”
“We’re typically scheduling six to eight weeks out,” Leelee says. “I know it’s a long time to wait after you’ve worked up your courage to take this big step, and I wish it could be sooner. But that’s the process, you know?”
She stands and so does Plumeria. “What do you think?” Plumeria asks. “About my chances, I mean?”
“It’s not up to me,” Leelee says. “I just make sure the forms are filled out right. It’s all about the demonstration, and if you can do what the form says you can do, I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t certify you.” She gives Plumeria a map to the demonstration site, way outside DC past Dulles Airport.
“Thank you for helping me,” Plumeria says. Then she leans in a little closer and asks, “Were you serious about the Dimensional Defense Agency?”
“Oh, yeah,” Leelee says, the yeah sounding more like yah because you can take the girl out of the Upper Peninsula but you can’t take the UP out of the girl. “They totally keep an eye on what we’re doing here. Drives our security guys crazy.”
They share a laugh and Leelee sees Plumeria out the door. That wasn’t so bad, she thinks. Her coffee isn’t even all the way cold.
* * *
At lunch she’s talking with Drogba, one of the security guys. Everyone in BMMOA security is a super, usually a disabled vet from the Armageddon Phalanx or the Thule Armada, cashiered out of active service but still potent enough to keep most baby would-bes in line. “Tell you what,” Drogba says around a mouthful of cafeteria lo mein, “no offense, but if I was just starting out now? No way I’d apply. Why do you think people do it?”
“A lot of them want to serve,” Leelee says. “But there’s also a lot who just want the validation. They want other people to know they’re special. Didn’t you?”
Back in the day, Drogba was known as The String, for his ability to manipulate matter at the subatomic level. The final battle of the Vortex Singularity left him a shadow of his former self, after he nearly tore himself apart creating a wormhole to drain the singularity out of space-time and into an interdimensional void. That kind of power, the kind of sacrifice, Leelee can barely imagine. Most people, even at BMMOA, don’t know Drogba’s story, but one of Leelee’s skills is that people tend to tell her things.
“Nah,” he says now, and she thinks he’s sincere. “I figured once they saw what I could do, I’d be all set. Ain’t no point in false modesty.”
“True enough,” she says. She’s still thinking about that later when she gets home and finds Samir on the couch watching baseball. He’s made dinner. They eat in front of the TV, half-heartedly arguing about what to watch. Leelee gets tired around ten. She takes her time getting ready for bed, and by the time she’s crawling in Samir comes into the bedroom yawning. Everything happens in its prescribed order. Phones on chargers, alarms set, blankets shuffled around, lights out.
Every day is pretty much the same. Leelee likes it that way.
b. Applicant’s Family
Name(s) of parent(s): __________
Address of parents if not same as above: __________
Planet of origin of parents if not Earth: __________ Alternate dimension? yes__ no__
If yes, name dimension and indicate means of access (portal, wormhole, etc.) __________
Race of parents if not Homo sapiens 2: __________
If different races:
Parent 1 __________ Gender, if known: __________
Parent 2 __________ Gender, if known: __________
Other __________ Gender, if known: __________
Wednesday, 10:05 a.m.
This is one of the sad cases. Well, lots of them are sad, because people are so often deluded about what kind of powers they really have. But to Leelee, the saddest ones are the kids. Specifically, the kids whose parents have decided to ride the child’s powers to the narcissistic Promised Land of Super Parenthood. The place where vicarious living, parasitic validation, and insincere performative patriotism mix. Leelee has spent way too much time observing the inhabitants of this terrible place, and it sure looks like she’s about to make a return visit. She calls them NVPs, Narcissistic Vicarious Parents. The usage has spread through the office, a phenomenon of which she is inordinately proud.
They’re five minutes late, just enough to let Leelee know they’re calling the shots. Mom’s all smiles, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. She strides in, reaching to shake Leelee’s hand and present herself as the one in charge. “Angie Brooks,” she says. Dad and the candidate slouch in behind her, two peas in a pod. “This is my husband, Derek, and daughter, Emmaline.”
Emmaline is thirteen, skinny, shoulders hunched, doesn’t make eye contact. Hair a patchwork of different dye jobs. She wears waffle-stitch long sleeves to hide the cutting scars under a My Chemical Romance shirt that to Leelee’s eye looks like it probably belonged to Dad first. He’s also skinny and ill at ease, his hair a black roostertail that looks natural now but probably lent itself to quite a Mohawk back in the day.
Angie hands Leelee the form. Emmaline sits in the chair farthest from Leelee’s desk and stares out the window. Her hand strays to her phone every five seconds, but she pulls it back, cutting glances at her mother. “She’s very powerful,” Angie says. “With the correct mentorship, absolutely Omega potential.”
“That’s not up to me to decide,” Leelee says. She starts working through the form.
“Mom,” the girl growls. “I want to go back to school.”
“This is your future, Em,” Angie says. “You can miss half a school day.”
“We’ll get you back before your art class,” Derek says, trying to mediate. “Then we’ll get to your lessons.”
Lessons. Some parents actually pay older heroes to cultivate kids’ powers. It’s one of the purest manifestations of NVP syndrome. Leelee hates these cases. She wishes she could tell Emmaline that she’ll survive and thrive, find her way despite her parents. But all Emmaline knows right now is she has some kind of power, but she doesn’t want it. Or of course she wants the power; she’s just terrified of everything that comes with it. Puberty is hard enough without mutant or metahuman latency starting to express itself. The halls of your average middle school, or high school, aren’t forgiving spaces when it comes to being different. Leelee thinks they’re better than they used to be, but still. Little Emmaline Brooks would just be Em the anime artist if she could. It’s the parents who seize on the possibility of powers, like showbiz parents, and the kids suffer. “One hundred percent Omega potential,” Angie says. “We have lots of people consulting who think she’s really destined for the top.”
“Ma’am, you don’t have to pitch me,” Leelee says. “Your daughter will be evaluated at her demonstration. I’m just making sure the paperwork is in order.”
She’s looking down at Form 8774-D as Angie keeps going. “She can teleport, you know. Actually teleport, not just move really fast.”
Leelee has already seen that in the III.d response field but she nods to be polite. “I see that, sure. Also the kinetic blasts, and the other…” Angie has checked a lot of boxes. “We’ll be vetting all of this in the demonstration,” Leelee says. “Is there anything you want to amend?” She looks up.
Derek is looking out the window just like his daughter. Angie meets Leelee’s gaze. “We’re confident Emmaline will exceed your expectations,” she says. “She’s always been a very gifted child. Her test scores are off the charts.”
“Good enough,” Leelee says.
Leelee directs her next question to Emmaline. “Is everything in the form, or is there anything else I need to know?”
Emmaline looks Leelee in the eye—the first time she’s made eye contact with anyone since they walked in the door. “I hate this,” she says. “I’ll do the stupid certification but I’m never going to be a superhero.”
“That’s your prerogative, Emmaline,” Leelee says. “Completing the certification process doesn’t obligate you to anything.”
“Although of course you’ll understand things differently when you get a little older and you aren’t quite so…contrary.” Angie’s grin is tight. There are going to be words in the Brooks household tonight.
“So, what’s our next step?” Derek asks, again trying to keep his wife and daughter from going after each other.
Leelee gives them the scheduling spiel, hands them the map, and watches them go. The girl looks over her shoulder at Leelee as she walks out the door, eyes deep and haunted, jaw tight. She’s on a thin edge. If her parents drive her too hard, she’s going to crack. Either go rogue or turn full villain. But if she can get through the next few years without her parents screwing her up too much, she’ll find her strength. Leelee’s rooting for her.
“What would you do if we had a kid and the kid had powers?” Leelee asks Samir that night. Kids have come up before. He’s got a good job as a freelance programmer, they have enough common interests to have fun but enough differences that they have independent lives. His parents like her. Her parents like him. She’s thirty-three, so if she’s going to have kids it ought to be fairly soon. All this stuff churns through her head every time she has a kid client. It’s one of the ways she brings work home, and she hates it.
“You ready to have a kid?” he asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. Are you?”
He thinks about it for a little while. “Yeah. I think I would be.”
She lies awake that night, listening to Samir’s occasional snores and wondering what their child would look like. The future starts to take shape. She thinks she likes it.
II. ORIGIN OF POWERS
When did you first notice the ability/power?
Birth __ Puberty __ Other (explain): __________
Indicate the source of the power or the event/cause that bestowed the power. Check as many as apply.
Latent yes__ no__ Unknown yes__ no__
Energy exposure yes__ no__ Magical artifact yes__ no__
Scientific experimentation yes__ no__ Technological artifact yes__ no__
