One Bad Day (Worm AU fic) [COMPLETE]

[Kitty S. Lillian]

Hmm. Things seem to be going unusually smoothly for this fic for now, though I see dominoes lined up to fall over.
A typo in an earlier chapter:

Lisa had a firm grim on its collar.

Click to shrink...

grip

 

[Ack]

One Bad Day
Part Eight: Taking Out the Trash

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Taylor

"And … done." Amy put the staghorn beetle down on the bench.

I exerted my power on it as it sat there, delving into its inner secrets. There was a certain amount of what I was learning to recognise as explosive within it, but it was shaped weirdly. "Okay, what's this one supposed to do? Take off for the moon?"

Amy looked at me oddly. "No. Why would you think that?" Her eyes went distant for a moment. "Though a rocket booster and some reinforcement could turn a bug into an instant bullet … huh." She picked up a notepad and scribbled in it. "Something for later. This here is what I call a lock-buster, for if Vicky's occupied elsewhere."

Both of us glanced over our shoulders at where Vicky floated gently in the middle of the room, humming to herself. She saw us looking at her and smiled, then went back to humming.

I turned back to the bug. "Lock-buster?" I asked, as much to draw Amy's attention away from her sister as to find out what that meant.

"Oh, uh, it's got a shaped charge in its thorax. Make it crawl over a lock, then set it off. Given the performance of the previous tests, and the stuff I've been able to look up in the encyclopedias, it should blast a quarter-inch hole clear through any normal lock, and maybe even a hardened steel one."

I didn't want to ask the next question, but I knew I had to. "And if I set it off while it was sitting on a person?"

She gave me a well, duh look. "A jet of molten metal will punch a quarter-inch hole into their soft, squishy flesh, spreading out as it goes, with a jet of live steam blowing back out the hole," she informed me blandly. "Followed shortly thereafter by death. Or screaming, bleeding and then death, depending on where exactly the bug was sitting. Molten metal rarely does the human body any favours, and high-velocity molten metal is downright malevolent. The steam generated by the body fluids boiling would be equally unpleasant to biological systems."

I shuddered. "You have a way with words. Also, never tell Aisha that one. You know she'll beg for us to demonstrate it on someone."

"Wasn't planning on it," she agreed. "Lisa's going to figure it out immediately, of course."

There wasn't much Lisa wasn't going to figure out more or less immediately, so I let that one pass. Besides, something she'd said puzzled me. "Molten metal?"

"I introduced some copper into the bug as a liner to the shaped charge." She tapped the encyclopedia. "This says that sort of thing increases the effectiveness immensely."

"Oh. Right." That gave me an idea, and I held up a finger to pause the conversation while I went halfway up the stairs. "Dad, could you come down here a moment?"

"Coming!" He appeared at the top of the steps and descended into the basement to join me and Amy. "What mad science are you two cooking up now, and how can I help?"

"You know a lot more about material sciences than I do." I brought a housefly to land on my fingertip. "What would happen if Amy built a shaped charge into this guy's butt so when he crawled down a gunbarrel, he could put his butt up against the bullet and I could set it off?"

Dad's eyes opened wide. "Shaped charges in bugs?"

Amy nodded, indicating the staghorn beetle. "That's what this guy's got in his thorax. Enough to blow out a door lock, if I've got my calculations right."

"Son of a … uh, gun." Dad shook his head. "Okay, if you wanted to mess up a gun … well, you'd probably need something larger than an ordinary fly. But once you've got that, you set off the charge, which spears right through the slug in the chamber, spreading it out to seal the barrel off, then the round itself tries to go off in the breech. The barrel's sealed, so the breech blows out backward." He raised an eyebrow. "Depending on the make of the weapon, someone loses an eye or maybe a thumb. At the very least, that weapon is not in any kind of condition to be used again without being totally stripped down and remachined."

"I like it." Amy nodded to me. "I'll make some of those, too. And I'll look into the idea of bullet bugs as well."

"Bullet bugs?" Dad looked at her queryingly. "And those are …?"

"An idea Taylor gave me to fit bugs with a high-burst single-use rocket engine. Basically, turn them into unguided kinetic missiles." Amy shrugged. "Bullet bugs."

"I … see." Dad began to theatrically edge toward the stairs. "I think I'll … go upstairs now. Where sanity still prevails."

Aisha's raucous cackling echoed down into the basement. I raised my eyebrows and smirked at him.

"Well, mostly still prevails," he allowed, and made his escape.

<><>​

Coil
Two Days Later
Saturday, Christmas Day, 2010

Thomas Calvert was both intrigued and frustrated.

Intrigued because there appeared to be yet another new cape wandering around his city, just waiting for him to snap them up and explain why working for him was the deal of a lifetime. Though given that this cape seemed to specialise in explosives and (if the PRT files were accurate) training animals to carry them, the softly-softly approach had a great deal going for it. Threatening his Tattletale merely led to ever-increasing levels of snark, but antagonising someone whose retaliation could involve the phrase 'blast radius' didn't strike him as a smart way to play his cards.

He was also frustrated because Tattletale had yet to resurface, with or without the bug controlling Aisha Laborn and the mysterious Brute and Master in tow. He'd had all his feelers out for days now, and there were no reports of anomalous bug swarms, snarky teenage blonde girls, or anyone being made to do things or being punched through walls. The only strange events were the explosions at the Trainyards, performed by the aforementioned bomb Tinker. Who had also managed to drop out of sight.

Maybe they left town. It was a possibility, especially given that the PRT had been investigating bus schedules a day or two previously, but he didn't have the manpower to send people to other cities to look around for his missing Thinker. If she'd left town, he reluctantly had to accept, she was out of his reach.

But if she hadn't, sooner or later she'd pop up again. And this time, she'd never get the chance to leave. With the right drugs to inflict a serious dependence in her, she would beg to be allowed to use her power for him, just so she could get her regular fix.

He leaned back in his chair, pondering. Just as threats would be entirely the wrong tack for the bomb Tinker, so would drugs. If he had someone building bombs for him, he would vastly prefer that they keep their head clear at all times. It was years since he'd been in the military, but the horror stories of people playing with explosives while drunk, high or both tended to stick in the memory.

If you see a bomb tech running, don't ask questions. Just try to keep up.

But that was all right; the money he'd spend on the bomb Tinker could be taken from what he'd save on Tattletale's share. And of course the bomb Tinker would need a dedicated bodyguard …

… one who could be depended on to put a bullet in their head the moment Calvert decided they were surplus to requirements. Because the very last thing he wanted was a dangerous cape like that getting an attack of scruples and deciding he was the enemy.

Thomas Calvert was a man who believed very firmly in pre-emptive retaliation.

He sat forward again and began to go over the latest reports from his various contacts, looking for the slightest trace of his Tattletale. He knew her personality type well; she would eventually convince herself that she could come out into public safely, because she knew beyond a doubt that she was the smartest person in the room.

Well, you're not. I am. And you will learn that eventually. It's just that you'll be too drug-addled to truly appreciate the fact. He was looking forward to the dawning realisation in her eyes when it hit her just how badly she'd been outmanoeuvred. Maybe he'd even pull her dosage down once a month or so, just far enough that she had the ability to recognise once more how screwed she was before he submerged her in chemical bliss once more.

Thomas Calvert firmly believed that he was not a vindictive man. He merely had a strong appreciation for schadenfreude, in all its many forms.

And then an image popped up in his inbox. A fuzzy picture, but not quite fuzzy enough. Taken from a security camera in the bus depot, it showed a teenage girl in profile. She was wearing a baseball cap and an old army surplus jacket and had her head ducked down, but a single lock of blonde hair was hanging down behind her ear. It looked shorter than normal and a little ragged, as though she'd cut it off herself. The face was unmistakeable. Tattletale.

"Gotcha," he breathed. Then he snatched up his phone. Sending a mass text to all his team leaders, as he wasn't quite sure where they were in the city at that second, seemed to be the best idea.

Target T sighted bus depot. Attend immediately. Covert action. Nil public attention. Report soonest. He finished by sending along the image he'd been sent.

By the time he got the message out, three more pictures had dropped into his inbox. One had the telltale lock tucked away, while in the next two she'd put on sunglasses and raised her collar. It made her look a little suspicious, but it also anonymised her look to a point that he wouldn't have known it was her.

Carefully, he scrutinised the pictures for any sign of the Laborn girl, or anyone else who appeared to be sitting near or talking to Tattletale. No one person, let alone three, stayed consistent for all three images, and there were no black people near her at all that she could see.

He did have a second instance sitting at home, who did nothing at all, just in case this was some kind of elaborate trap or sting. After all, he didn't think she'd go to the cops and set up a bust, but teenagers were universally known to do remarkably stupid things to get what they thought they wanted. In that situation, it would be easiest to hold the men back and let the police take her into custody when the expected bust failed to eventuate. Lifting her out of her cell later on would be the easiest thing in the world, for someone with his resources.

A short while later, he got a single message. On site. T located. Moving in.

Now it was up to the fickle gods of chance that oversaw such operations. He knew, intimately, how badly such things could go, from the most trivial of overlooked details all the way to the most horrific of previously-unsuspected data. It was only by the sheerest of flukes, and the fact that he was able to fire his pistol accurately while on a swaying ladder, that he'd survived Nilbog and Ellisburg at all.

Regaining his Tattletale threatened nowhere near that level of insane clusterfuck, for which he was pleased. Either he'd get her back or he wouldn't. Not getting her back would be annoying, but ultimately he could deal with her absence. Just so long as nobody else was able to use her against him. They'd had their difficulties, but she had to know he would react harshly to such a show of disloyalty. Just as she had to have known that running off like she did, after killing Hardcase, would also result in inevitable punishment. He couldn't trust her out in the world anymore. She'd brought the drugs on herself.

He visualised the way the operation would go down. His men would be dressed as US Marshals. They would walk straight in, some fanning out to cover the exits, three closing in on the Wilborn girl. Anyone who tried to question their presence would be shown a very realistic-looking badge. The three men would surround her and give her no chance to escape. She would be cuffed and marched out of the bus depot and loaded into one of the vans, which had had the appropriate insignia applied ahead of time.

To forestall the inevitable attempt to claim that they weren't real US Marshals, one of the men would 'frisk' her and produce a small pistol that she had been 'carrying', if she wasn't already holding one. He estimated the chances of this at seventy-five to eighty percent. Add to that a planted drug stash, and she'd get no sympathy from the crowd. And even if some of them had second thoughts after the fact, once she was in the van she would be in his reach and out of theirs. They'd never see her again. Nobody but he and his men would ever see her again.

There were contingencies to the plan, of course. If she saw them coming and started shooting, one of the men was armed with a shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds. Technically non-lethal, likely to cause broken bones and internal injuries, but survivable. Mr Pitter would be able to nurse her through whatever was done to her. All he really needed was her alive and able to talk, after all.

His musings were broken by a ping from his phone. Target T in custody. No casualties. En route back.

His mouth broadened into a smile under his mask. So far, so good. Now to see if this is a police sting or not. If it was, he would track her to wherever she was going, and pluck her from whatever place she thought was safest. If not, she was already in his grasp.

From here on in, it was just a waiting game.

Twenty-two minutes later, the fake US Marshals van pulled into the undercover carpark. The insignia, applied magnetically, peeled off just as easily. He watched on the security cameras as a Tinker-enhanced security wand was run over every part of her body. They would've done this as well at the outset, but it never hurt to make sure.

The wand never so much as crackled, even on a second pass. One of the men, now divested of his US Marshals jacket, gave the camera a thumb's up. He moved his mouse and clicked the button to open the hidden door. It slid aside, and the men hustled her into the corridor thus revealed. The door slid shut again. He checked all external cameras for police presence. There was nothing.

There was a slim, outside chance that she may have contacted the PRT or even the Protectorate for assistance. An Armsmaster-designed tracker had the chance of getting past his security checks, or a high-flying hero could have been keeping a visual check on the van. He didn't drop the other timeline just yet. But this didn't mean he couldn't go and greet his new pet.

He clicked the button that would send an alert to his phone if police band activity began ramping up near the base, then stood up from his desk. Strapping on his pistol, he exited his office and strode along the walkway toward the entrance where they would be bringing her in. On the other timeline, he sat at home and idly browsed the net, looking at pictures of cats in Santa hats. They would go well as wallpapers until he tired of them.

The door ahead slid open and there she was. They'd divested her of the jacket, the cap and the sunglasses, and added a heavy bag over the head to her ensemble. This had been specifically so that she couldn't talk to them on the way back. The chances of her actually convincing them to let her go were slim at best, but Calvert was a man who didn't believe in taking a chance he didn't have to.

"Uncover her mouth," he ordered. There was the faintest of chances they'd snagged another teenage girl with the same build and similar features, and now was as good a time as any.

Obediently, the man holding her right arm folded the bag upward to just under her nose. She coughed and spat out a stray bit of lint. "Hey, boss," she rasped. "Think you could get these assholes to wash this bag once in awhile? I'm pretty sure I've inhaled dandruff in here from the nineties, and let me tell you, it hasn't aged well."

That was a point in her favour, but he needed to be sure. "How many fingers am I holding up?" A fly buzzed around his head, making him wonder if she didn't have a point about the bag.

She coughed again and cleared her throat. "Three on your right hand," she said in a sing-song Are we really doing this? tone. "And two on your left hand, behind your back."

He brought his hand out from behind his back. That was definitely Tattletale, all right. Only a Thinker could have pulled that last bit of information out of thin air. And the chances against having two blonde Thinkers of identical looks in the same city were nigh-infinite.

Even if it's not Tattletale, I still have a Thinker in my hands.

Leaning forward, he pulled the bag all the way off her head, leaving her hair to dangle down over her face. She shook it back out of the way, showing that she really had used scissors or some other sharp implement to roughly trim it, probably so it would fit under the baseball cap. "Hi," she snarked. "Miss me?"

"Not this time, we didn't," he replied, amused at the death-glare he got in return from those bottle-green eyes. "Come along, pet. We have some talking to do."

"Oh, god," she groaned, rolling her eyes theatrically. "Just shoot me now and get it over with."

"As tempting as that might normally be," he said, "I have other plans for you." Turning on his heel, he strode away. "Bring her."

<><>​

Elsewhere

The rat, festooned with black and red beetles, scurried along an air shaft. Behind it, more rats followed, each one with either a bird or more bugs clinging to its back. Behind them was a screen designed to keep creatures like that out. It wasn't going to work so well with a large hole melted in the centre of it.

The leading rat came to a second screen. It stopped, and a third of the bugs decamped from its back. They lined up, aiming their abdomens at the screen. At an unheard signal, they all let loose at once, spraying an acrid-smelling liquid over the thin metal. White smoke began to coil up from the mesh, then was drawn away down the shaft in the ongoing air current. Silently, a hole opened up in the mesh, the edges sizzling away.

The bugs climbed back on to the rat and it nimbly jumped through the hole, to be faced with a large spinning blade. To a human, this would've been a problematic obstacle. Rats, on the other hand, had thousands of years of avoiding angry humans to draw on, and millions beyond that of keeping out of the way of hungry predators. Choosing its moment carefully, it leaped across the gap.

One by one, the creatures following along also passed through the spinning fan-blade. Now they were in the ventilation piping that drew air from all over the base. Beetles climbed off the first rat, spreading out to attach themselves to others, until each had one. Then the rats split up, scuttling throughout the base.

Awaiting the signal.

<><>​

Brooks

The teenage girl sat in the chair opposite the crime lord. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt featuring Mouse Protector. Even her sneakers had been removed. A single set of handcuffs anchored her to the chair arm. Her hair was messy, as though she'd used her free hand to rake the blonde locks out of the way, which was exactly what she'd done. She'd requested a brush to tidy her hair. The request had been declined.

Brooks, the guard who stood just inside the door, was uneasy, but he couldn't put his finger on why. They'd tracked Tattletale down using a security camera image pinged by one of their guys whose job was to do precisely that. She hadn't tried to run, but that was probably because her Thinker power had advised her that running was pointless. Every step of the way, any potential escape plan had been thought of ahead of time and blocked. Coil was very good at that. So now she sat in the bare room, with just a table between her and the man who paid Brooks his salary.

Again, Brooks tried to analyse why he wasn't totally at ease with the situation. He'd put the cuff on the girl himself. She'd been wanded over several times, and frisked twice. There were no metal items on her, save for the button and zipper on the jeans; the security wand had been calibrated to take that into account. He'd seen people commit mayhem before with ceramic blades and the like, so he'd been sure to check for that too. She had nothing on her that he could find without actually performing a physical strip-search, but unless she'd swallowed something or inserted it into a body cavity (and the wand would detect metal there too) she was all out of options.

So why wasn't she more worried?

He'd seen bravado many times. People went to their deaths without cracking, without showing an ounce of fear. This was not an uncommon thing, in his line of work. But to do that, people had to act differently. Either they shut themselves off from all emotion, or they overlaid the fear with anger or humour. Tattletale was a Thinker. She had to know she wasn't getting out of this of her own accord. The boss was pissed with her and when Coil got pissed with people, nobody mistook it for anything else. But there she was, sitting in that chair, looking around with interest. The very faintest hint of a grin, lurking at the corner of her mouth.

Almost as though she knew something that nobody else knew.

Well, of course she knew things nobody else knew. It was literally her power. But she also had to know what was actually there. What everyone else knew. Her eventual fate. Coil hadn't made much of a secret of it. If it was Brooks being faced with something like that, he would've run. Tried to escape. Maybe even put that little dinky pistol she'd been carrying in his mouth. Because there was no way in hell he'd want to live through something like that.

She wasn't worried. Why wasn't she worried?

<><>​

Coil

"Pet." Calvert spoke for the first time since he'd sat down.

"Woof," Tattletale replied impudently.

That caught him by surprise, and he took a moment to get his equilibrium back. "Excuse me? You're not Bitch."

"You called me 'pet'. Pets don't speak." The girl snickered. "Unless you want me to be a cat. Meow."

She's trying to get under my skin. Calvert felt his hands curling into fists, and knew she was succeeding. Taking a deep breath to relax his muscles, he spread his hands flat on the table. He suspected he knew her strategy now; she couldn't escape, so she intended to force him to murder her so she wouldn't have to live through whatever he had planned for her.

Well, it's not going to work.

"Tattletale," he ground out. She didn't respond to that, except for a slow blink. "You have disappointed me greatly."

"If I was that much of a disappointment, you'd cut your losses and walk away," she pointed out helpfully. "I would've thought you'd be too smart to fall for the sunk cost fallacy."

"But it's not a sunk cost if I have you in my possession," he reminded her. "You will do what I want. There will be no choice in the matter."

"Really." She gave him a look of scepticism. "And what if I decide I have a choice after all?"

Was she really this dense, or was she still trying to make him angry? The latter, he decided. "Every account you own, I own. Your ex-teammates are working for me, under Circus. You're out of options."

She went blank for a moment and he thought he'd broken through her reserve. But then she snorted. "Poor Circus. Hope you're paying extra."

This was wasting time. He cut to the chase. "But I'm willing to extend an olive branch, if you do something for me."

She shifted her weight, pulling one leg up to put the foot on the chair, and wrapped her free arm around it. The arm with the cuff dangled over the side of the chair, out of sight. This was new behaviour for her, and inwardly he smiled. She was becoming rattled, even if she didn't show it overtly. "I'm listening."

"The people you were staying with before you made your run to leave town." He leaned forward slightly. "The bug controller. The Brute. The Master. Get me in touch with them, and I might just be willing to go a little easier on you." She'd still get the drug treatment, but he'd give her a day of lucidity every now and again. If he felt like it.

She chuckled. It was actually a little creepy, not the way she usually laughed. "You want to know where my friends are? Where they are right now?"

Well, he wasn't playing her game. "Yes," he said firmly. "I want to know where they are, right now."

"Right behind you," she said with a straight face. There was so much conviction in her voice that he almost turned around to look. A fly buzzed past his face.

"There's nobody behind me." He glared at her. "If you can't be serious …"

"I'm absolutely serious." She leaned forward and looked him in the eye; or rather, she stared at where she had to know his eyes were. "My friends are in your base. You gave me an ultimatum, now I'm giving one to you. You surrender to me right now, walk out of the base, and surrender yourself to the PRT, and I'll let you live." Turning her head, she addressed Brooks. "That goes for you, too. In fact, if you take him prisoner now, I'll put in a good word for you. Just saying." Raising her hand, she buffed her nails against her jeans leg and then inspected them.

Up until now, Calvert had been running both timelines side by side. He'd waited long enough to know for a fact that there was no police or PRT presence near his base, so he'd dropped the other timeline and let this one run. Now, in one, he pulled his pistol from its holster. In the other, he didn't bother. Leaning forward across the table, he summoned his best command voice. "You have no friends."

<><>​

In the other timeline, he levelled his pistol at her and squeezed the trigger.

Just before it would've gone off, it exploded. Shards of metal blasted into his face and hand, and he fell back with a scream of pain. Brooks' rifle, half-raised, exploded as well. The return air vent dropped to the floor and something small and furry leaped out, scuttled across the room and scrambled up his body, ending up on his head. He grabbed for it with his good hand, but as he tried to pull it free from his costume, something inside it popped, and a horrific burning deluge poured over his face and head.

There was a series of tiny cracks from the far side of the table, and Tattletale stood up, picked up the chair—it was supposed to be bolted to the floor!—and smashed Brooks in the face with it. Then she dropped the chair and pulled the door open. Calvert heard more explosions echoing through the base, just before a bird launched itself from the vent and flew up to land on the table.

The door shut behind her.

The bird exploded.

<><>​

Very carefully, Calvert put the pistol down on the table. "Brooks, put your rifle down," he ordered, enunciating his words clearly. "It's rigged to blow." And there are acid rats and exploding birds in my air vents. What the hell is going on here?

Tattletale raised her other foot onto the chair. Four precise cracks sounded on her side of the table, then a fifth. "Yes, it is," she agreed, getting up from the chair. "My friends have explosives and other nasties seeded all the way through this base." The return air vent popped open and lowered itself to the floor, thin cords stopping it from clattering on the concrete. A veritable swarm of bugs poured out, along with a couple of rats. Most of them landed on Tattletale or swirled around her. Several landed on Calvert and Brooks. Leaning across the table, she picked up the pistol. "Don't move. I've got you covered."

Moving with more exaggerated care than Calvert had, Brooks leaned the rifle against the wall. Next, he lifted his pistol from his holster and placed it on the floor. He still had his fighting knife, Calvert knew.

"Hm," murmured Tattletale, tapping the barrel on the palm of her hand. Calvert couldn't tell how it had been rigged, but whatever it was, she could no more use it than him. "Okay, I hadn't intended to go this early. Brooks, you've got zip cuffs, yeah?"

"Yes," agreed Brooks.

"Good. I don't feel like trying to beat someone like you up, so Coil, go ahead and cuff him. Hands behind the back."

"Of course." Calvert stood up carefully and turned to Brooks. They had to kill Tattletale quickly, so that she couldn't set off any more explosives. "Give me the cuffs, Brooks." He held out his hand.

Brooks was quick off the mark, thank goodness. He pulled one of the plasticuffs from his belt, and at the same time managed to palm the fighting knife. In a totally natural movement, he passed both over to Calvert. Tattletale was still on the far side of the table, so it couldn't be a step-and-stab. Calvert was going to have to throw it. Fortunately, he was good at that.

Tattletale was still fiddling with the pistol, only paying half the attention she needed to. It was pointed in entirely the wrong direction. Moving as fast as he ever had, Calvert transferred the knife to a throwing grip and went to bring it up in an underhand flick—

The loud CRACK echoed through the cell. The last thing that went through Calvert's mind was a .44 calibre Hercules beetle.

<><>​

Brooks

Brooks stared as his boss went down, his masked face a red mess. The blonde girl still stood there, the pistol still aimed at nothing in particular. "What … the fuck?" he mumbled, his ears ringing. "How … how did you do that?"

"I said, I had you covered." Now the girl looked upset. "I didn't want to have to do that, but he forced my hand. And so did you." The pistol turned to point at him. "Now do you believe I have you covered?"

"Jesus Christ, yes." The only thing scarier than facing a professional with a firearm was facing an amateur with a firearm. The former could kill you any time he intended, but the latter might kill you by accident. And 'sorry' was never an adequate response to putting a nine-mil round through someone's breastbone. "I give, I give."

"Your boss pretended to surrender, too." She gestured with the pistol. "Go out there. Tell everyone to put their weapons down in one place and step away from them. I'll know if anyone tries to fuck me around."

He went to the door and opened it. "Okay, you got it." Maybe she couldn't pull that 'phantom gun' shit when she wasn't in line of sight, but he wasn't going to risk it.

A line from The Gambler passed through his mind. "Gotta know when to fold 'em."

Besides, the boss was dead. That paycheck was officially gone.

He just had to do whatever the scary girl said, and maybe he'd be alive to look for work tomorrow.

<><>​

Director Piggot
PRT ENE

"Armsmaster here."

Emily tapped the radio icon. "Talk to me."

"The tip was on the level. We found sixty men, disarmed, kneeling with their hands behind their heads. We also found Coil, deceased. One bullet wound, front to back, through the head."

"Any report of who killed him?"

"Nothing coherent. One of the men claimed it was a girl with a phantom gun. Said it was Tattletale, and that she did it with her mind."

Her response was immediate. "Tattletale's a Thinker, not a Blaster."

"That's my understanding as well, but he was adamant. He also said she had a friend who could do explosives. No other description."

Sitting back in her chair, she ran her palms over her face. "The Tinker in the Trainyards. They've joined forces."

"That's a very strong potential aspect, yes."

"Wasn't Tattletale a member of the Undersiders?" She was sure she'd read something about that.

"Perhaps the gang fragmented after Grue was murdered. It wouldn't be the first time something like that's happened."

Her mind filled in what he'd left out. Murdered by Shadow Stalker. Because of course things couldn't be simple. Stalker had been murdered in turn, apparently by one Taylor Hebert, bug controller. Was there a connection? Probably only incidentally, knowing her luck.

The Hebert girl had gotten the better of three agents who had been sent to escort her father home. She'd then gone to ground after having her father beaten up by whoever she'd joined forces with; by his account, a dark-haired girl had done the deed. Two blondes, two brunettes. None of them people he'd met before. Which ruled out any of her previous acquaintances.

Just for a moment, Emily toyed with the fact that Tattletale was a blonde. Wouldn't it be convenient if she was one of the Hebert girl's new allies? We could fold both cases into one.

Out loud, she answered Armsmaster's observation. "True. Well, keep looking. Once you get Coil's body back to base, give it a thorough autopsy. I want to know everything there is to know about his death, and how a teenage girl got the drop on him."

"Copy that." Armsmaster cut the call, and Emily went back to her musings.

Let's see. If Tattletale was one of the blondes … New Wave says Glory Girl and Panacea haven't surfaced yet, so what if they were the other two? One blonde, one brunette. And Tattletale's working with the Trainyard bomber, so that's the other brunette. By all accounts, Panacea can't fight her way out of a paper bag, so the bomber would have to be the Brute who beat up Danny Hebert.

She snorted, discarding the whole notion. Too many things just didn't fit together. As much as she wished it could be all one case, life just wasn't that simple and neat.

<><>​

Taylor

"Woooooo! Echo! Echo … echo … echo … echo!"

Aisha stood in the centre of the lowest section of the base and spun around on her heels, arms stretched out and yelling at the top of her lungs. Her shout, directed at the concrete ceiling two floors up from her, did echo to a certain extent.

Standing on the walkway above, I sighed and ran my hands through my hair, glad to have it back to its full length. It had been weird to be a blonde, having tips passed to me by Lisa talking to a rat from outside. But we'd pulled it off, and now we were the proud owners of a genuine Bond villain base, slightly used, one previous tenant.

"Everything alright?" asked Amy. "I've never done a full-body job like that before. I was terrified I'd get it wrong." Her look went somewhat further. Why are you still trusting me? she asked silently.

"Everything's just fine," I assured her. "Coil never suspected a thing. And your bullet bug worked perfectly. Even though I wish I'd never had to use it."

"He was a bad guy and he'd killed people," Amy said firmly, as though she was trying to convince herself as much as me. "And we needed a secure place to work from to help Vicky."

"Plus," Lisa reminded us as she emerged from Coil's office, "we needed the money to pay Cranial for the assistance she's going to be giving us. Which we now have. His accounts are open to be plundered, as soon as we're ready to commence."

Amy hugged herself and shivered. "I really don't know if I like this bit. I know it's for Vicky's own good, but …"

Dad, who'd been standing back watching us, came forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "… but you said it yourself, Amy. It's for Vicky's own good. Once it's over and done, I'm sure your relatives will understand why you had to do it."

"Understand, maybe." Amy shook her head. "Forgive me, never. What I did to Vicky was … monstrous. And they'll be correct. I don't deserve to be forgiven. Not by them, and not by Vicky."

"Hey. Hey, hey, hey." I stepped up past Dad and put my hands on her shoulders. She looked at me, her eyes blank, and I put my arms around her. "We're here. We accept you. We forgive you. And we're gonna help make it better."

Amy began to shudder, then she put her face into my shoulder and started to cry. I held her close, rubbing her back with my thumbs, as my own ghosts washed past me. Sophia's face as I plunged the knife into her chest. Madison, screaming and suffocating in the middle of a cloud of bugs. The way Coil went down like a broken doll when the bullet bug punched into his forehead and out the back of his skull. Everyone else who had been hurt by me, or by the consequences of my actions.

Amy's mistake had been tiny, a single fracture in the stone façade she'd built for herself around her feelings. Her power had taken her over and pushed further and harder than she ever would've done willingly. Afterward, she'd repented of the action over and over, but it was too late.

My own sin had been just as hard to step back from and forgive myself for. Had I wanted to defend myself? Sure. But had I intended to kill Shadow Stalker and Madison? Not in a million years. My power may have pushed a little harder than it should have when it came to killing Madison, but it wasn't my power that had stabbed Sophia. It had been me.

Aisha's interference complicated matters to such a degree that I couldn't untangle my actions from hers, but the fact remained that I was at least partially responsible for the death of one human being, and wholly responsible for the deaths of two others. That was a fact I was going to have to accept for the rest of my life. I didn't like it, but that was just too bad.

I couldn't erase my crimes, and by the time I was ready to face up to them, there would be a good chance that Director Piggot would be ready to issue an arrest warrant for me. But there was no way I could give myself up right now. Not when Amy and Vicky still needed help to fix their unique problem.

There was much to do, and little time to do it in. We'd get through it somehow, though. We had to.

Together.


End of Part Eight

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

Taylor swapped with Lisa? That was sneaky AF

 

[Akuma-Heika]

The loud CRACK echoed through the cell. The last thing that went through Calvert's mind was a .44 calibre Hercules beetle.

Click to shrink...

Why didn't he split timelines before doing that.

 

[Ack]

Why didn't he split timelines before doing that.

Click to shrink...

He knew she had the critters ready to attack. He didn't know about the bullet bugs. Eliminating her as fast as possible was his only visible option.

 

[RoninSword]

I don't remember how she is controlling rats.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

He knew she had the critters ready to attack. He didn't know about the bullet bugs. Eliminating her as fast as possible was his only visible option.

Click to shrink...

Does your Coil need more than a moment to split timelines? He couldn't do it as he was walking over to tie up his merc? That was what was confusing me.

 

[Irked]

He knew she had the critters ready to attack. He didn't know about the bullet bugs. Eliminating her as fast as possible was his only visible option.

Click to shrink...

The issue is that Coil splits the timelines for damn near anything that could potentially have a bad outcome and it takes him a second or less to trigger his power. Him not doing it doesn't really make much sense when he's so obsessed with covering his own ass.

 

[Ack]

Does your Coil need more than a moment to split timelines? He couldn't do it as he was walking over to tie up his merc? That was what was confusing me.

Click to shrink...

The issue is that Coil splits the timelines for damn near anything that could potentially have a bad outcome and it takes him a second or less to trigger his power. Him not doing it doesn't really make much sense when he's so obsessed with covering his own ass.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, but splitting timelines only helps if you're trying to pick the best of two different courses of action.

He'd decided that she needed to die, and the only non-compromised weapon in sight was a knife, so he went for it. The explosives were in place; he couldn't drop back to a timeline where they weren't. And he'd already experienced letting her get off an attack.

There wasn't a safe timeline for him to keep.

I don't remember how she is controlling rats.

Click to shrink...

This version of Taylor has a slightly different powerset. She's a Master with the ability to detect and control lots of different things, not just bugs, but the numbers she can control drop away fast, the more complex the brains get. She can even detect and minorly influence humans, but only one at a time.

 

[Mr. Tebbs]

I'd forgotten that... but still holy sith. So if I'm reading this right she controls mostly bugs b/c Amy made them lethal AF, with a few rats/birds whatever to ferry her payloads?

 

[Irked]

Yeah, but splitting timelines only helps if you're trying to pick the best of two different courses of action.

He'd decided that she needed to die, and the only non-compromised weapon in sight was a knife, so he went for it. The explosives were in place; he couldn't drop back to a timeline where they weren't. And he'd already experienced letting her get off an attack.

There wasn't a safe timeline for him to keep.

Click to shrink...

Well no but thats not the only way he uses the timelines, he could split the timelines, ask for the knife and attack in one and not do anything in the other. Then try in different ways multiple times while talking/acting normally in the safe timeline until he eventually gives up or decides to wait for a better opportunity.

Coil really isn't a person who'd risk it all like that, at the end of the day his number one priority is to keep on living no matter the cost (as seen by him shooting that guy in the Nilbog incident) so him grabbing a knife and just going for it feels incredibly off.

At the end of the day Coil isn't the kind of person who'd rather die than submit.

 

[Ack]

Well no but thats not the only way he uses the timelines, he could split the timelines, ask for the knife and attack in one and not do anything in the other. Then try in different ways multiple times while talking/acting normally in the safe timeline until he eventually gives up or decides to wait for a better opportunity.

Coil really isn't a person who'd risk it all like that, at the end of the day his number one priority is to keep on living no matter the cost (as seen by him shooting that guy in the Nilbog incident) so him grabbing a knife and just going for it feels incredibly off.

At the end of the day Coil isn't the kind of person who'd rather die than submit.

Click to shrink...

He considered himself under immediate and direct threat. As far as he knew, the more time he gave her, the more she would tighten her hold on the base, and the more chance she'd attack him out of the blue (because that's what he'd do).
Now, I could've had him not assume that and spent the next three chapters in him pulling ever more elaborate timeline shifts, looking for the exact right time to try to attack her, but nobody likes Coil shenanigans.
So he assumed something, miscalculated that she wouldn't be able to attack him right at that second, and died.

I'd forgotten that... but still holy sith. So if I'm reading this right she controls mostly bugs b/c Amy made them lethal AF, with a few rats/birds whatever to ferry her payloads?

Click to shrink...

Rats and birds are also lethal af.

She mentioned a little while ago that she used acid as a triggering substance for a rat bomb, and someone asked, why not just have a rat full of acid. So hello, fluoroantimonic acid.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

He'd decided that she needed to die, and the only non-compromised weapon in sight was a knife, so he went for it. The explosives were in place; he couldn't drop back to a timeline where they weren't. And he'd already experienced letting her get off an attack.

Click to shrink...

It just seemed too temperamental to me. I read Coil, and I expect him to have a fallback in case his attack fails (since no one, but him, Ziz, and maybe Contessa would know he tried), as a habit if nothing else (and paranoia would likely qualify as the something else ). I think that was how you wrote him in other fics, but Coil is usually a background character for you IIRC.

 

[Ack]

It just seemed too temperamental to me. I read Coil, and I expect him to have a fallback in case his attack fails (since no one, but him, Ziz, and maybe Contessa would know he tried), as a habit if nothing else (and paranoia would likely qualify as the something else ). I think that was how you wrote him in other fics, but Coil is usually a background character for you IIRC.

Click to shrink...

His 'fallback' is "get secured, walk outside, get picked up by PRT, get unmasked".

Right now, he's being pushed into a corner.

He only sees one way of getting out of that corner.

 

[Akuma-Heika]

His 'fallback' is "get secured, walk outside, get picked up by PRT, get unmasked".

Right now, he's being pushed into a corner.

He only sees one way of getting out of that corner.

Click to shrink...

Fair. I was meaning more as a "if this somehow backfires on me, I will still learn information and be able to still launch a surprise attack latter" rather than do nothing. When he 'dies' he can split timelines again after all. Keep trying shit and gathering info. His ability thrives in such a scenario afterall.

I'll just take it as Coil panicking while being pissed off. Sorry for all of the trouble

 

[Ack]

One Bad Day

Part Nine: Gotta Catch 'Em All

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Taylor

"All right, people. We are officially in possession of our own secret underground base, and Lisa assures me we have ample funds to pay for Cranial's services. This puts us in position to launch stage two of this operation." I stepped back from the table with the map of Brockton Bay laminated into the top (Coil had left some pretty cool things around his base, not gonna lie) and looked around the room at the others. "So, how are we going to do this?"

The question was partly rhetorical and partly serious. We'd already hashed out the 'ask first, but be prepared to grab' broad-strokes aspect of the plan—Amy reluctantly, Aisha enthusiastically—but now it was time to get into the nitty-gritty. Who to approach first, what approach to use and what form Plan B would take if Plan A went sideways.

The people we needed to gather together consisted of a bunch of non-powered civilians (mainly people from Arcadia High who knew Vicky best, as well as Gallant's family), Gallant himself (because boyfriend, duh), all of New Wave and (of course) Amy. Of all of these, Amy was an automatic volunteer; the next least problematic group were going to be Vicky's friends and acquaintances from Arcadia. It was a blessing and a mercy that Vicky was still able to rattle off names of people she was particularly close to, as well as a couple of her teachers. The idea was that we'd scoop up as many of these as we could reasonably handle, so as to provide as seamless a set of memories of Vicky's actions at school as possible.

I figured we'd also get relatively few hassles from Gallant and his family, for various reasons. For instance, once his emotion reading capability scanned Amy as being utterly serious, he would hopefully fall into line. Unless he decided to be a dick (because teenage boys with authority are always level-headed and smart about it), in which case we'd pivot seamlessly to Plan B. That would make life a whole lot harder all around but if there was anything I'd learned recently, it was that life positively enjoyed taking every opportunity to shit on me as hard as it could.

Once we had the Stansfields in the base (and boy, was that a surprise when Vicky casually revealed who her boyfriend was under the mask, or rather the helmet) we'd have to move faster, because 'a Ward went dark' could easily be seen as 'a Ward was kidnapped', and then we'd have the PRT after us in every way that counted.

And no, there was no way in hell I was going to provide the authorities with anything resembling the real story. That would cause the involvement of the police, the FBI, the PRT, possibly the Protectorate and almost certainly (as Amy had pointed out) Youth Guard, all of which would have their own agendas, and every single one of whom would be convinced they knew better than us how to handle the situation.

There wasn't any kind of best-case situation in that scenario; we all knew that Toybox in general and Cranial in particular would take one look at the shitshow that would then develop, and refuse to even come close to Brockton Bay. It would be bad case and worst case; Vicky being removed from our care by well-meaning idiots would be problematic enough if Amy could keep it together, but what we were all terrified of was the spectre of Amy going off the rails because Vicky had been taken away from her, leaving her unable to fix what she'd done. I suspected everything that had happened to this point would end up being a mere footnote to the apocalyptic chaos that would ensue if she ever truly broke loose with her full power, uncaring of the consequences.

For a very faint leavening of the utter crap that had been dumped on us so far, I was kind of thankful that the PRT had chosen to believe I hadn't specifically targeted Sophia because she was a Ward (as opposed to targeting her because she was trying to kill me while I had a knife in my hand). But we all knew there was only so far that Director Piggot's forbearance was going to hold out before she called in the big guns. And if it came out that we were kidnapping people (especially heroic capes) for any reason, that might be her trigger point.

We just had to hope and pray that we could get all our ducks in a row and delivered to Cranial before that happened. And of course, if the PRT and Protectorate went on high alert, so would New Wave. While there were no other Thinkers in Brockton Bay as good at digging deep and finding facts as Lisa was, we couldn't bet against there being someone out there that we didn't know about.

Lisa cleared her throat. "It all boils down to three options. 'Operation Squishies First' targets all the civilians on the list to begin with, so we don't have to worry about them ducking and covering when we start to go after the harder targets."

Aisha nodded at that one. She'd named the plan and it was dear to her heart. When nobody else showed much in the way of approval, she stuck out her tongue at us.

"Next up," Lisa intoned, ignoring the byplay, "is 'Crack the Walnut', whereby we go for the hardest targets first on the principle that once we've got those in hand, the rest are much easier to deal with."

I was kind of partial to that one, but I wasn't really sold on it. Amy liked it too, mainly because it promised immediate action.

"And last of all." Lisa stopped and looked meaningfully at us all. "We have 'Ask Nicely', where we approach the people who are most likely to say yes first. Once they're on board, they can assist us in convincing the others."

This was the other one I was in favour of. Dad was wholeheartedly behind it, which wasn't much of a surprise, given his union background. Lisa also liked it, which just left Amy and Aisha opposed. There wasn't much point in asking Vicky, because she would favour whatever Amy liked and we all knew it.

Lisa cleared her throat, just a little dramatically. "All in favour of Squishies First?"

"Wait a minute," I said. "Can we vote for more than one?"

"Sure, if nobody has a problem with it," Lisa said with a shrug. She looked at everyone else. "Anyone? No? Okay, then. Squishies First?"

Aisha raised her hand. "Yeah, this is the plan … oh, come on. Nobody? Not even Vicky? C'mon, Vickster, don't leave a sister hangin' here."

"All right, Most Esteemed Aisha," Vicky agreed, and also raised her hand.

Lisa shot Aisha a mild glare, which was matched by one from Amy. The disapproval rolled off the younger girl's impervious ego like a summer shower from a well-waxed car. With a snort of amusement, Lisa kept talking. "Okay, that's two votes for that plan. Votes for Crack the Walnut?"

I put my hand up then, as did Amy. After a moment of hesitation, Vicky joined her sister in approving of the plan.

With a sigh, Lisa facepalmed. "Because of course …" she muttered. "Okay, that's three votes for that one. Last but definitely not least, who's in favour of Ask Nicely?"

Dad and Lisa put their hands up, and I left mine in the air. Finally, smiling happily, Vicky put hers up as well. "Did we win?" she asked. I wasn't quite sure what she thought we'd won, and neither was anyone else.

"Yes, Vicky, we won," Lisa said kindly. "You can put your hand down now."

"Yay!"

Seeing the look of anguish on Amy's face, I went and put my arm around her shoulders. She leaned into me, and I felt the deep shudders that wracked her body. We were doing this as much for her as for Vicky, and I had no idea what her endgame was, once her sister was whole again. But we had to keep it together, and help each other do the same, or all this would've been for nothing.

"So, the end result," Lisa declared. "With two votes for Squishies First, three for Crack the Walnut and four for Ask Nicely, we have our game plan."

"I still think nobody should've been able to vote twice," Aisha grumbled, giving me the stink-eye.

"You should've said something when Lisa asked," Amy reminded her. "The vote stands, and I'll support the result."

"Well, bully for you," Aisha snarked, rolling her eyes.

"Well spoken," Dad said to Amy, causing Aisha to flip them both the bird. "So, who do you think would be the easiest to talk around? Your cousins, or Gallant?"

"Like Eve said to Adam back in the day, that's a hard one." Aisha cackled at her own joke, then pouted when nobody else laughed. "Wow, really? Is it shit-on-Aisha day again already? I thought we had that just the other day."

Lisa sighed and facepalmed again. "Aisha …" she began.

"What?" demanded Aisha. "That was funny!"

Dad nodded. "Sure, for a given definition of 'funny'."

"Bite me," she retorted. "I bet Taylor laughs at your jokes."

"Occasionally," I said. "Or I groan. Just because he's my dad doesn't mean I'm gonna let him off the hook for stupid jokes."

"Getting off-topic here, folks," Lisa said briskly. "Amy, who should we approach first, and how do we break it to them?"

Privately, I flipped a coin in my head. On the one hand, it would be Laserdream and Shielder. On the other, Gallant. There would be benefits and problems either way. For me, I figured she'd favour Vicky's boyfriend.

"… Crystal and Eric, I think," she said after a few moments of intense thought. "We've known each other nearly our whole lives."

Okay, then. I nodded, assimilating her decision. "And how are you going to actually do it? Catch up to them at school or on patrol or what?"

"They don't do patrols without an adult along," she said. "I think I'll wait 'til they're home, then I'll call one of them and get both to meet with me. There's a park not far from their house."

"Good," Lisa decided. "We can set up Plan B there. What's the best way to immobilise them without doing any kind of lasting harm?"

Amy shrugged. "Well, they're not bulletproof, so anything that can deliver a knockout dose of some kind should do it. If they're meeting me, their shields will be down."

"Or I could inject 'em with something," Aisha said boldly. "We get a syringe and get a bug to make lots of knockout stuff. They start getting antsy, I'm standing right behind them. Jab, motherfucker."

"Are you trained to perform injections?" asked Amy.

"Jab, plunge, done," Aisha declared airily, miming the action, then dusted her hands off. "Home and hosed."

Amy sighed. "If you put the needle in at the wrong place, all you'll hit is bone. Or fat deposits, which will slow down the dispersal of a knockout drug. Even epi-pens take time to dispense. Doing it manually takes even longer."

"Chloroform," Aisha tried next. "C'mon. I've seen it a hundred times. You put it on a cloth and hold it over their face, they go crosseyed an' fall over. Can we get that?"

Dad cleared his throat. "Chloroform doesn't work that fast. It takes more than five minutes to totally knock someone out."

"Bugs would take pretty long to knock someone out," argued Aisha.

"Quicker than chloroform. And my knockout touch is instant, which is why we'll be going with that first, and bugs as a backup plan." Amy breathed deeply, crossing her arms so that she was hugging herself. "Trust me, I don't want to do this. But for her sake, we've got to."

We all knew who 'she' was. One look at Vicky's horrifyingly vacant expression as she hovered near her sister, humming to herself, was enough of a reminder of what we were trying to achieve here.

"So when are we going to do this?" I asked.

Amy bit her lip, as though steeling herself for an unpleasant task. "As soon as possible. Tonight."

Lisa nodded in agreement. "Tonight."

<><>​

Later That Night

I lurked in the shadow of a bush, all my senses alert. My other senses were also highly-strung, with every bug in three blocks all looking around for weird stuff happening. Half a dozen night birds and two bats cruised the night sky, watching for people flying stealthily. Another bird and about a thousand bugs stood guard on Dad as he waited a block away in the car with Lisa and Vicky. From what I could tell, Dad was keeping a close eye on his surroundings while Lisa kept Vicky occupied with a silly word game.

"Anything?" asked Lisa in an undertone to the rat currently perched on her shoulder.

I made the rat shake its head; the only people in the park that my critters could detect were me and Amy. I knew Aisha was somewhere nearby, but I couldn't pinpoint her; it was her job to grab Amy and get her clear if things went sideways.

Amy had made the call five minutes previously, and we were still waiting to see how that would turn out. There were enough Amy-upgraded bugs (and other critters) in the immediate vicinity that we'd be able to grab Lady Photon as well if she showed up with them, but anyone beyond that meant we'd have to make a strategic retreat.

Everything hinged on what Shielder and Laserdream did next.

<><>​

Five Minutes Ago

Pelham Household

Eric Pelham (AKA 'Shielder')

"So, have you seen the new fighter mods in Space Opera?" Eric didn't pause as he typed a snarky comment into the PHO boards and hit Enter. "I'm thinking the switchable shields are pretty sick."

"Dude, you're Shielder. Of course you'd think that." Zack, his best friend from Arcadia, let out one of his annoying nasal laughs.

"Hey, not everything's about me and my powers, you know?" Eric tilted his head as his Bluetooth earpiece pinged in his ear. "Shit, can you hang on a second? Got another call."

"Yeah, yeah, go be the important superhero. I see how it is." Zack laughed again, his tone belying his words.

Eric rolled his eyes. "Asshole." He pressed the button to accept the new call. "You've got Shielder."

"Eric, it's me." The voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but he recognised it instantly.

"Amy?" Sitting up from where he'd been lounging in his chair, he pressed the earpiece harder into his ear, to make sure he was hearing correctly. "Amy, is that you? Where have you been? Your folks have been worried sick! Where are you? Are you all right? Is Vicky with you?"

"Keep it down!" Now he could hear the desperation in her voice. "Eric, this is really, really important. You can't tell anyone except Crystal that I called."

"Why? What's going on?" He tried to listen to the background noise, to see if there was the echo of a phone on speaker. It didn't sound like it. Vaguely, he tried to recall the lessons that his parents had tried to drill into him about how to deal with a kidnapping scenario, but could only grasp fragments of what he'd been told. "If you're under threat, say 'Everything's okay'."

"Everything is absolutely not okay, but I'm not under threat," she retorted. "It's Vicky. She's … she's hurt. Not dying, not dying. But she needs … I need you to come meet me. At the park. Right now. Bring Crystal. Don't tell Aunt Sarah or Uncle Neil. Please."

"But why not? Why don't you want them to come with us?" Eric couldn't understand. As a superhero, he was fully aware of his parents' limitations, but anything that needed him and Crystal to deal with would be a lot more easily handled with all of the Pelhams there. "Amy, what's going on? Who hurt Vicky? Has this got anything to do with those rumours—"

"Eric, please!" Her voice broke off into a sob, then she got control of herself again. "I'll tell you everything. Just get Crystal and don't tell Aunt Sarah or Uncle Neil. I just need to talk to you two at first. Come to the park, please."

"Okay, okay," he said. "You want me and Crystal to come to the park?"

"No adults," she pleaded. "Promise me, or I'm walking away from the park right now."

He took a deep breath. "I … I promise?"

"Th … thanks, Eric." She sniffled, but she sounded marginally happier than before. "I appreciate it." Then she ended the call.

For a good ten seconds, Eric sat looking at the phone sitting on his desk. "What the hell?" he asked out loud.

"What the hell what, man?" It was Zack's voice. "You okay?"

Eric blinked. He'd totally forgotten about Zack, waiting on the other line. "Yeah, yeah, it's all copacetic," he said absently, still thinking about the bizarre call. "Listen, I gotta bounce. New Wave business and all that stuff. See you at school tomorrow, yeah?"

"You got it, my dude. Full deets then, mmkay?"

"Absolutely." Eric ended that call then sat with the phone in his hand, running his free hand through his blue-dyed hair.

He knew Amy almost as well as he knew Crystal, from years of being her cousin, and also being her superheroic partner when New Wave went out in force. Where Vicky was flamboyant and adventurous, Amy was stolid and serious. Where the rest of the team's powers lent themselves toward dramatic heroics, hers were as non-flashy as they got. She didn't do over the top shit. If anything, she was a bit too blunt to be totally likeable. Not that Eric would ever say so to her face; he liked her just fine as his cousin.

Which was how he knew a desperate, emotional phone call like that was totally out of character for her. Either she was under threat (though he tended to believe her emphatic denial) or something else really weird was going on. If Vicky was hurt, why didn't Amy want any adults in on this?

Slowly, he got up from his chair. He didn't want to let Amy down, and he'd promised not to involve his parents. Do I tell them anyway? What do I do? Leaving his room, phone still in his hand, he headed down the hall to Crystal's room and knocked on the door. "Hey, sis? You decent?"

Enough time passed that he began to wonder if she had headphones on or something, then she opened the door. "Eric, seriously, I was in the middle of—" Then she saw his expression. "Shit, are you okay? What happened?"

He held up his phone, fully aware that the gesture would be absolutely meaningless to her. "Can I come in for a second? There's something really important I need to talk to you about."

She huffed a sigh and rolled her eyes. "Can it wait? I've got a high-value assignment I've got to get back to."

Glancing up and down the hall—no parents to overhear, thank God—he leaned in and lowered his voice. "Amy called. She needs our help, and she sounded really upset." He waggled his phone for emphasis.

"Amy called?" Her voice rose. "And you haven't told Mom or Dad yet why?"

"Keep it down," he hissed, patting at the air with his other hand. "She made me promise not to bring them in on it yet. Just you."

Her eyes narrowed and she grabbed his arm with both hands. Flying backward, she dragged him into her room, then kicked the door so it swung shut. "Okay," she said, her voice intense. "Tell me everything."

<><>​

Taylor

The Park

Ten Minutes After the Phone Call

One of the night birds spotted them first. Carefully, trying not to move too much, I got up onto my knees. A bat swooped closer, getting a good read on their size and shape, and I nodded to myself. It was Shielder and Laserdream, and their force fields were up.

A firefly alighted on Amy's hand and blinked twice, to signify that it was her cousins, and that they seemed to have come alone. To signify that everything seemed okay, I left its bioluminescent patch green and didn't trigger the biological switch that would've turned it red. I did the same with Lisa, and heard her relaying the information to Dad. I wasn't quite sure where Aisha was, so all I could do was hope she saw the blinking light from the firefly I'd also placed on the back of Amy's hair.

Still, I wasn't going to automatically trust everything I saw. While two birds and a bat trailed the pair of teens in toward the park, I sent the other flying animals spiralling outward, looking for more fliers. Insects rose in a swarm to ensure nobody was sneaking up on us at ground level. And several very special bugs took to the air and went to meet the incoming visitors. As Lisa and I had told Amy, we might not have to go to plan B, but it was a good idea to have my finger on the trigger just in case.

As Shielder and Laserdream came to a hover over the park, it was clear that they were suspicious. I stayed crouched in next to my bush, which turned out to be a good move. Laserdream pointed her finger and a beam of light splashed over the ground below, impressively bright. After a moment, I realised it was one of her laser beams, but spread out into a flashlight effect. I'd never even heard she could do that.

The beam crossed over the bush I was hiding behind, and I didn't move a muscle. Bugs hovered near the New Wave kids, but couldn't get close due to the faintly glowing force fields they were currently generating. The spotlight beam moved on, and I breathed a little easier.

"Amy?" It was Shielder, trying to shout and whisper at the same time. "Are you alright? Where's Vicky?"

"Get down here, you idiots, and turn that stupid light off," Amy hissed in return, gesturing urgently. "Do you want everyone to see what's going on?"

"No, but what is going on?" demanded Laserdream. Thankfully, she ceased to scan the park with her finger-beam, and they both descended toward Amy. My bugs pursued, seeking a chance to settle on them.

Amy had, of her own accord, selected a spot between a slide and a jungle gym that would make it difficult for bulky force fields to reach ground level without bumping into each other. Shielder, reaching the ground first, looked around warily as he deactivated his eponymous shield, then hurried over to Amy. "Say the word," he whispered, "and we'll get you out of here."

As I settled bugs onto him, Amy shook her head at his words. "No!" she insisted in a sharp undertone. "We're not in danger. But I do need to talk to you, right here and right now. And I want you to listen."

Laserdream lowered herself to the ground, but didn't deactivate her field. Clearly more suspicious than her brother, she continued to look around at the edge of the park, a glow lighting the tip of her finger. "So, talk," she said. "Where's Vicky? Where's your sister? You said she's hurt. I thought you could fix anything."

I tensed, wondering if she was suspicious of Amy's motives or still had the idea that this was some kind of hostage scenario. My Amy-bugs continued to spiral around her field, trying to find a way in. This could still be salvaged, so long as Amy managed to stall long enough to get her to drop her field. At least, I hoped so.

Amy dropped to her knees, her head lowered. "I can't fix her, because I don't do brains. I called you here because I need your help." The emotion in her voice was either genuine, or she was an amazing actor.

Whichever it was, her move was an inspired one. "Brains?" exclaimed Shielder, stepping forward to stand next to her. "What happened to her?"

"And what do you mean, you need our help with this?" demanded Laserdream. Finally, she dropped her shield, moving closer to Amy. "What can we do to help?"

That would have been the ideal time to strike, hitting them both with highly potent sedatives produced by Amy's bugs. Dad would be there in about three minutes, and we could have them back to the base in less than fifteen. But Amy didn't give the signal, so I held back, though I did make sure that Laserdream was also tagged with bugs.

"I need your help, because I fucked up," Amy confessed. "Vicky's brain's been screwed up because of something I did. Her personality's been fragmented. I can't put her back together on my own."

Shielder's jaw dropped. "What the hell?"

Laserdream's reaction was more extreme; her shield snapped into being as she shot ten feet straight up. "What do you mean, 'fragmented'? What the fuck did you do to Vicky?" I noted with more than a little alarm that her fingertip had begun to glow again. Every bug that I'd snuck onto Laserdream and Shielder went to high alert. Stingers quivered, almost touching skin.

To give Amy her due, she wasn't giving me the signal to go to plan B quite yet. "It was an accident," she insisted. "I fucked up and I know it, but I've got a plan to fix it. If we tell the adults, they'll just put her in therapy which will do exactly fuck-all to fix her. Fuck, I can't fix her, not on my own." Tears streaming down her face, she raised her hands in entreaty to her cousins. "Please. I can't fix her without you guys. I need all the help I can get with this."

"I'll do it," Shielder said firmly. "I'll help." He knelt beside Amy and put his arm around her. "We're New Wave. We got this."

"Eric, what the fuck?" Laserdream shook her head. "We've gotta tell Mom and Dad and Aunt Carol about this. You've heard all the horror stories about cape kids trying to do stuff they aren't ready for yet. If Amy can't fix whatever she did to Vicky, we need to bring the adults in on this."

"No." Eric shook his head stubbornly. "Crys, look at her! Amy's about as boring as it gets when it comes to stuff like this! If she says the adults can't fix Vicky, then they can't fix her!"

"Sorry, Eric, but this is a terrible idea." Laserdream began to drift higher. "I'm gonna go fetch Mom. She'll know what to do."

"So that's it?" Amy asked her older cousin, her voice still broken from crying. "You're not even going to give me a chance?"

"I gave you a chance when I came out here," Laserdream replied sadly. "But this isn't a Saturday morning cartoon, and you aren't Li'l Militia. Mistakes have consequences and whatever you've done to Vicky, I'm not going to risk her life just to protect you from getting in trouble."

Amy squeezed her eyes shut, but I knew there were tears still leaking out. "I'm sorry," she whispered. It wasn't for Laserdream; it was for me.

"Yeah, I am too—ow! What the—? Ow! Hey!" Laserdream suddenly began flailing inside her force-field bubble as the bugs stung, delivering carefully calculated dosages of knockout venom into her bloodstream. She swiped and slapped at them, but they evaded her hands and swarmed around her face, preventing her from seeing where she was going. "What the hell is this?"

Still, she would've flown away if she could. The knockout dose was very effective, but it would take more than a few seconds to kick in. Which was why I wanted her distracted. Reaching out to the ghostly form I could see with my power, I took control of her body.

Bugs, I could control endless numbers of. Birds and bats, somewhat fewer. People … well, their brains were infinitely larger and more convoluted than bug brains. I could detect them, barely, and if I picked the right moment I could influence their actions. One person at a time, and it wasn't exactly precise.

Between the bugs buzzing in her face and the sedative now flowing through her veins, Laserdream was in no way concentrating on anything. Controlling her was like manipulating a marionette with mislabelled strings in a high wind, but I managed to get her back down to ground level before her shield blinked out and she collapsed in an untidy heap. I felt my control slip away along with her consciousness, and I blinked hard, sweat covering my face. The beginnings of a very nasty headache began to threaten, but I ignored it. I could have a headache later.

"Holy fucking shit!" Shielder stared at where his sister lay sprawled on the soft grass. "That was cool as fuck! How did you do that, Amy?"

I set a firefly blinking repeatedly in front of Dad's face while flying in a circle; bring the car now. The rumble of the engine starting echoed oddly in the bug's hearing as I stood up. "She didn't. I did. Big fan, by the way. Can I get your autograph?" The main thing I was a big fan about was his willingness to help Amy, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Keeping my hands in plain view and doing my best to appear non-threatening, I strolled across the park toward where Amy was checking on Laserdream.

Shielder stared at me. "Uh, Amy, who's that?" Clearing his throat, he tried again. "Who are you? What's going on around here?"

I shrugged. "Basically, what she told you. I'm a friend she met on the way, and we're all working to help her fix Vicky. This is part one of stage two of the plan." I gave him my most disarming smile. "Hi, I'm Taylor."

"Yeah, hi." He didn't look pleased at the new development. "How did you meet Amy, and what did you do to my sister? Is she going to be okay?"

I ticked off points on my fingers, trying to keep the conversation light and unthreatening. If he tried to flee, I could bring him down … at least, I figured it would go that way. But I really, really hoped it wouldn't become necessary. "We were hiding in the same abandoned building. I dosed Laserdream up with a proprietary mix of ketamine and several other chemicals, with the faintest touch of batrachotoxin. And sure, she'll be okay; it'll wear off in a couple of hours." I'd checked with Amy before I ever agreed to zap someone with her bugs. The potential for danger inherent in the bullet bugs had already made me wary of going overboard with them, and I wanted to make sure nobody was going to get hurt.

"So what happens now?" A moment later, Shielder yelped and jumped as Aisha faded into our awareness and slapped him on the ass. "Yow! Hey, where'd you come from?"

"Well, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much …" began Aisha in a sing-song tone, accompanied by her wickedest grin.

I facepalmed.

<><>​

Eric still hadn't tried to bolt by the time Dad pulled up in the car. I put this down to being partially due to loyalty to his cousins, and partially due to curiosity as to what Amy had planned. Neither Amy nor Aisha was as tall as Shielder, and I was taller than them all, so it was up to him and me to get the unconscious Laserdream to the side of the road. We managed it, not without a struggle, just about by the time the car came to a halt.

"Vicky," Amy called. "Can you give us a hand with Crystal, please?"

"Of course, Amy," said Vicky, opening the back door and getting out.

"Hey, Vicky," Shielder greeted her. "You're looking a lot better than I was expec—"

Vicky gave him a wide and vacant smile. "Hello, Eric. You're my cousin."

"Yes, he is." Amy pointed at the back seat of the car. "Can you help us get Crystal in there? She's very tired so she needs to be comfortable."

"Okay, Amy." Still smiling, Vicky gathered up Laserdream with almost insulting ease and put her in the back of the car.

Looking at Shielder's face as Amy was speaking to Vicky, I could tell from the growing horror on his face that he was finally getting the point of what Amy had told him. "Fuuuccck," he mumbled.

"Mm-hmm," I said sympathetically, putting my hand on his shoulder. "Now imagine what it's been like for the last couple of days with her, and why it's so important we fix her before it's too late."

"You said you're going to fix her," Shielder said. "But you haven't said how. Or what me and Crystal can do to help."

"I've been holding off on that until we can get back to base," Amy said. I could tell from the set of her shoulders and the whiteness around her lips that this was getting harder and harder for her all the time, but she was determined to push through until the bitter end.

"One question," said Dad, who hadn't gotten out of the car yet. "This is something that we should've thought about first, but where's everyone going to sit? We've got four passenger seats and six passengers, assuming Aisha's going to be riding her motorbike."

"Hey, I can take a passenger," Aisha offered. "Just sayin'. Dunno how I'd go with two, though."

I knew I was going to make the offer, and tried to stop myself. But my mouth opened and "I'll go with Aisha" came tumbling out. Everyone looked around at me and I grimaced. I mean, how bad can it be? I thought but did not say out loud.

"All-righty!" crowed the young parahuman. "All aboard the Aisha Express!"

"Still got five passengers for four seats," Dad reminded the others.

This posed a real dilemma, which we really should've thought about earlier. The car only had so many seats, and it wasn't as though we had fliers who we trusted both not to turn on us and not get lost. And seating people within the car sounded like the old puzzle with the fox, the goose and the grain.

Lisa climbed out of the back seat to make room for the zonked-out Laserdream. "I'll go in the front seat," she said. "Amy can go in between Vicky and Shielder, and Laserdream can lie across their legs."

"Holy shit, there's more of you?" Shielder looked at the group of us standing around the car, and shook his head. "Geez, Amy, did you go ahead and recruit a team just to deal with this crap?"

Amy shrugged. "I, uh, maybe?"

Shielder looked from her to the rest of us. "Forget it. Let's get back to this 'base' of yours. I wanna see what you can manage to put together in a day or so on your own."

Lisa smirked, a fox-like expression. "Oh, this is so gonna be fun."

<><>​

By the time Aisha and I got back to the base, I was ready to strangle Lisa for her offhand comment. Riding pillion with an unlicensed teenage maniac was about as close as I could get to the official definition of attempted suicide. She rode the wrong way down one-way streets, dodged through the mid-evening traffic with the aplomb of a motorbike racing expert, and managed to get us back to base in less than ten minutes. And somehow with all that, she never so much as scratched the paint on the motorbike.

After the first three corners, I'd bent almost double to push my face into the back of her neck, so I didn't have to see where we were going. It nearly helped.

I wobbled off the bike, trying not to throw up. Next time, I decided, I would walk.

"So hey, we've got two of them," Aisha announced, following me through the passageway into the base proper. "You think that went pretty good? I reckon it did."

"Yeah, well," I mumbled as I tottered into the break room we'd colonised. "Only because we were prepped and ready to roll. If Laserdream had gotten away, New Wave would already be scouring every street lowlife for our names."

I got a bottle of cold water out of the fridge and poured a little of it over my head, the shock of the chilly liquid running down the back of my neck drawing my complete attention. Then I drank from the neck of the bottle; after that stakeout and the motorbike ride, rehydration was important and I couldn't be bothered finding a glass.

Collapsing into a chair, I found the remote and pointed it at the TV in the corner. I was still pretty impressed that Coil had somehow managed to run an antenna to the surface to get a signal, but that didn't stop me from paying attention to the news. Item after item went by, but not one of them was about the confrontation in the park. It appeared, I concluded after some minutes, that we'd gotten away with it.

The car came in a little after that, and everyone climbed out. Even Laserdream was awake now, though somewhat groggy. She and Shielder stared around at the raw concrete interior of the base, eyes wide.

"Holy fuck, you weren't kidding," Shielder said in a hushed tone to Amy. "You really do have a base."

"Okay, I suppose it's kinda impressive," Laserdream said in a tone that fooled nobody at all. "But an underground base doesn't actually help deal with what's happened to Vicky. And I'm still waiting for an explanation for how we can help her but Mom and Dad can't."

"Oh, they'll be helping," Amy said, leaning against a catwalk rail and crossing her arms. "But on our terms, not theirs. We're going to be rebuilding who she used to be, memory by memory."

"But you can't do brains," Laserdream insisted. "At least not without screwing them up, if I'm not much goddamn mistaken." She took a moment, clearly trying to get her brain in gear. "Okay, so how are you going to unfuck this mess?"

Amy took a deep breath and glanced at Dad, then at Lisa. Dad nodded encouragingly. Lisa's response was less enthusiastic, but she also gave Amy a nod. "May as well tell her," she said.

"Right. Yeah." Amy stepped forward and shook her hands out. "Well, the thing is, we took this base from a supervillain, and one of the things he left lying around was lots and lots of money. So Tattletale there—"

"I knew it!" shouted Shielder suddenly. "I've seen you around before. Weren't you with a gang? The Under-something or others? What happened there?"

Lisa grimaced. "You aren't cleared to know that. Amy?"

Amy glared at Shielder, who even had the good grace to blush a little. "Okay, I'll shut up now," he said placatingly. "How are you gonna do it?"

Her voice was firm. "As I was saying, lots and lots of money. Remember Toybox? Tattletale knows how to contact them. They've got a cape called Cranial. Once we contact Toybox and pay Cranial a lot of money, she's going to be using her tech to read off our memories, then create a personality overlay based on those memories. And then that's going to be implanted in Vicky's head. With any kind of luck at all, it'll merge with the remnants of her old personality and bring her all the way back."

Laserdream nodded slowly. "I can actually see that. Bringing in Toybox, holy fucking hell, but yeah, it's a solid plan. So, how many of Vicky's friends and family do you intend to rope in to have their memories read?"

Amy took a deep breath. "Basically all of them. Every single one."

"Well, that definitely explains why you're keeping this on the down-low," observed Laserdream, sounding far less hostile than before. "Because Aunt Carol is going to absolutely flip her shit when she finds out about this."

"Yeah," Amy said hollowly. "I know."



End of Part Nine

 

[Corpsie]

Shielder is best-bro? Yes, Shielder is best-bro.

And if this is Crystal's reaction to what Amy did, then imagine how Carol would react. Damn, this is really a tough situation.

 

[Zackarix]

To give Amy her due, she wasn't giving me the signal to go to plan B quite yet. "It was an accident," she insisted. "I fucked up and I know it, but I've got a plan to fix it. If we tell the adults, they'll just put her in therapy which will do exactly fuck-all to fix her. Fuck, I can't fix her, not on my own." Tears streaming down her face, she raised her hands in entreaty to her cousins. "Please. I can't fix her without you guys. I need all the help I can get with this."

Click to shrink...

Vicky should be put in therapy regardless if parahuman powers can fix her or not.

 

[Ack]

Vicky should be put in therapy regardless if parahuman powers can fix her or not.

Click to shrink...

After her personality's been reassembled, sure.

Not before.

 

[Prince Charon]

After her personality's been reassembled, sure.

Not before.

Click to shrink...

The sad thing is, Worm is a setting where 'adults are useless/will make things worse instead of better' actually makes sense.

 

[Ack]

One Bad Day

Part Ten: That Escalated Quickly

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

"Okay, enough with the doom and gloom," I announced before Amy could hit the downward spiral again. I was actually getting pretty good at spotting the signs. "We have momentum right now, so we need to keep it going. The next person on our list is Gallant."

Neither of the Pelham kids showed any surprise at that revelation, though Laserdream put her hand up. "Not Mom or Dad? They'd both be chill with this, once they knew what was really going on."

"I did think of that," Amy said. "But Dean knows Vicky a lot better, and he can also tell if I'm lying to him. With him on the inside rather than the outside, it becomes a lot easier to convince everyone else to at least give us a hearing."

"By which she means," snarked Aisha, "get them to stand still long enough that we can take them down anyway if they decide to fuck us around." She looked around as Amy and I glared at her. "What? You were all thinking it."

"That's as may be," Dad remarked, keeping his tone free of accusation. "But sometimes diplomacy involves not actually saying out loud what everyone's thinking."

Aisha let out a derisive raspberry. "Do I look like I do diplomacy?"

"No, you don't." Lisa's tone was deadly serious. "And before you start, I know what you're thinking. Danny's being all adult and boring. But he's really not. The rest of us can't turn on a don't-notice-me field and just walk away when things don't go our way. We've got to wear our mistakes."

"Says miss 'I can talk anyone around'," jeered Aisha. "I've seen the shit you can pull."

I saw Lisa visibly choose not to sigh, or do anything else that might cause Aisha to think she was being talked down to. "Yeah, I can pull serious shit. That's totally true. But I need two things for that to work." She tapped her temple. "First, I need some kind of exposure to their life, so I can put together the hints and build a picture to work from. And second, I need them to be listening. I can't reason with someone if they're just intent on punching me in the face."

"Never let the Thinker talk," said Amy unexpectedly. "Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil drilled that into us over and over again. If we let someone start talking, there was a chance they'd be able to make anything sound reasonable, turn us against the rest of the team. That's why so few heroes do the hero-villain banter like you see on the kids' shows."

"I always wondered about that." I shook my head. "I just put it down to reality not being the same as Saturday morning cartoons. Never realised there was an actual reason behind it."

Shielder lifted his chin. "Mouse Protector does the banter. And cheese puns. So some heroes do it."

Jabbing him gently in the ribs with her elbow, Laserdream rolled her eyes. "Mouse Protector knows what she's doing. Also, you'll note she spends more time talking than listening. Nothing throws a Thinker off more than having to think up a different killer argument because someone made a terrible cheese pun based on the last one."

Lisa nodded. "Can confirm. Anyway, back to the original topic." She returned her attention to Aisha. "You're a valuable member of the team, and we couldn't do what we're doing without you," she said, sincerely enough that I believed her. "But everyone's got their part to play, and every step we take from here on in gets more and more dangerous. I mean, I can see how tempting it is to just grab them without giving them a choice in the matter. And with your power, it would totally be easy."

Aisha wrinkled her nose and gave Lisa a suspicious look. "Yeah, it would be. So why can't I?"

I shared a glance with Amy. Lisa was good at this. Amy had just flat-out said 'never let the Thinker talk', and yet there was Aisha doing exactly that.

"Because every time we go to pick up someone else, the more chance we've got that they'll have a problem with it." Lisa waved at us all. "We're good, and getting better all the time, but if just one person gets away because they were spooked by something going wrong with a grab, Vicky might never get all of herself back … and that's even if everything else goes perfectly."

"Which it won't." Amy and I spoke at the same time. We'd spent enough time around Lisa to spot a cue when we saw one.

Dad cleared his throat in a 'Dad pronouncement' kind of way. "If everything's going better than expected, you're not in possession of all the facts." From the way he said it, it sounded like a quote from somewhere.

Aisha gave us a sour look. "You're all killjoys and I don't like you anymore."

"Do you like me, Most Esteemed Aisha?" asked Vicky plaintively.

Almost immediately, the scowl melted off Aisha's face. "'Course I do, Vicky." She took the blonde's hand in hers. "C'mon, I'll brush your hair for you. It'll look wicked awesome."

Vicky smiled, her mood brightening immediately. "Yay! I like it when my hair is brushed."

As they headed to the area we'd set aside for sleeping arrangements (we were kind of spoiled for choice, given the size of Coil's base) I glanced at Lisa and saw her let out a tiny sigh of relief. "Like herding cats," she muttered under her breath.

"You're doing fine," Dad assured her. "Better than I would, anyway. Union meetings I can handle, but teenagers speak a whole different language."

"… said every adult ever, forgetting that they also used to be teenagers," Amy snarked. Laserdream giggled and Shielder chuckled.

Dad raised a finger. "Ah, but in my day, we were polite and respectful to our elders."

I snorted with amusement. "That's not what Gram told me that one time."

Dramatically, he clutched his hand to his chest. "Curses! Undone!"

Amy rolled her eyes, but cracked a smile. Laserdream and Shielder laughed out loud, while Lisa just shook her head and smirked.

"Okay, then," she said once we'd gotten over Dad's attempt at humour. "Do we go after Gallant in his civilian identity—that is, at home, or out and about with friends—or while he's in costume?"

"And how do we draw him in?" I asked. "We can't use Vicky as bait. No matter how we coached her, there's no telling how she'd act once she doesn't have one of us there. Also, the moment he looks at her, his powers will tell him there's something badly wrong with her, and he'll be on guard."

"Let's look at the pros and cons," Dad decided. "What are the benefits and problems of going after him when he's in costume?"

Amy took that one up. "It would have to be while he was on patrol as a Ward. Two cons I can think of, off the top of my head. First, he's got that armour, so it's a lot harder to hit him with something to disable him if necessary. Second, he'll have a partner with him."

"Pro," Laserdream said. "They aren't on the comms one hundred percent of the time. If they go radio silent for a few minutes, nobody panics."

Lisa nodded, looking serious. I didn't know what she was thinking, but I was most concerned about the potential partner. If it was someone like Clockblocker, also in a full-body costume, it would be almost impossible to disable them both at the same time without actually initiating full-on combat. And asking Vicky to lightly tap them in her current state of mind was just asking for a tragedy.

"Okay, then." Dad had acquired a notepad from somewhere and was writing in it. "So, pros and cons of grabbing him out of costume?"

"Once school starts up again, me or Eric could just walk up to him and say we wanted to talk to him," Laserdream offered. "That's a lot easier than doing it in costume while we're on patrol. That's a pro. Also, the Wards are under orders not to congregate at school too much, so he's unlikely to have anyone else seeing something suspicious."

"His power's on more or less all the time, or so Vicky told me once." Amy's tone was heavy. "You're gonna need to be upbeat. No tension, no readiness to fight. Any of that, and shit will go sideways faster than an outhouse in a tornado."

Shielder—Eric—let out a bark of laughter. "Holy shit, Amy. I love it. Where'd you get that one from?"

"Aisha," Lisa explained briefly. "Okay, cons for grabbing him out of costume." She ticked off her fingers. "There's the unwritten rules about going after capes in their civilian identities …"

Amy rolled her eyes. "As opposed to the actual laws about kidnapping teens, capes or otherwise. But yeah, if we make it loud, we'll have the Protectorate and PRT coming after us with everything. Not to mention everyone the Stansfields can whip into action against us, with their money." She raised her eyebrows in a query. "I'm guessing me and Vicky are kinda the centre of the news, right now?"

Laserdream—Crystal—nodded. "You guess right. Nobody's quite sure where you've gotten to, and the rumours are spreading thick and fast. Someone actually saw you kissing Vicky, so that's out there spawning its own stories as well. Fortunately, not many people believe them."

"They don't need to." Lisa shook her head. "Scandal sells. People will push it onward because they want it to be true. But I think I see what you're getting at. Grabbing Gallant will draw a direct line back to Vicky and make people think that her friends are being targeted."

"Which they are," I chimed in. "Only not in the way they think."

"Won't matter that it's for Vicky's benefit." Amy didn't look or sound happy. "People will react stupidly, because people. We don't just need to get Dean, but we need to get him on side." She nodded to Eric and Crystal. "The more people we can convince that what we need to do is the right thing to do, the better."

Crystal pursed her lips. "Well … I'm personally still not convinced that going to Toybox is the best idea. I mean, they sell to criminals all the time, which makes them criminals. But I do understand that it's a huge problem and that Vicky needs help, and I can't think of a better plan right at this second. I mean, one that doesn't involve dealing with supervillains."

"You need to get rid of those preconceptions," Lisa advised her briskly. "I'm a supervillain. Aisha's not officially one or the other, but she's more likely to shape up as a villain than a hero. Taylor's killed people, stabbed someone who was trying to kill her, and attacked law enforcement with her powers. There's none of us here, except for maybe Taylor's dad, who's actually innocent in all this."

"Aiding and abetting," Dad said promptly.

"And there you go." Lisa gave Crystal a hard stare. "The heroes would likely take her away for therapy, ignoring the fact that she's missing bits they could never recover. Because they automatically think that they know better. Right now, us villains and criminal lowlife types are her best chance at ever getting back to a normal life again."

I carefully didn't look at her or Amy. What she wasn't saying was that if outside interference made it impossible to fix Vicky, Amy's reaction would be … unpredictable. Terrifyingly so. It might range all the way from turning herself in to face the music, to committing suicide, to lashing out at the world around her. Or more than one of the above.

I really, really didn't want to have to gamble on her state of mind if it all went wrong.

"Okay," I said. "So, do we really want to wait until the third? That's over a week away. Or do we do it as soon as possible?"

"I'm not waiting," Amy said immediately. "Vicky can't afford to wait. Every day she's like this, her brain's likely to get more used to being like this, and it'll be harder to fix the damage."

"Well, school would be easier," Lisa said slowly. "But it won't make it impossible. The upsides still outweigh the downsides. Here's how we'll do it …"

I'd once heard a quote about no plan surviving contact with the enemy. Hopefully, this wasn't one of those times.

<><>​

Stansfield Household
Monday, December 27
Gallant

Dean waved his hand at a fly, then went back to reading. Since getting his powers, he'd taken to enjoying a good mystery novel more than he liked watching movies. Looking at people on the screen and not being able to discern their motives tended to be a little disorienting, especially with the wash of emotions from the other moviegoers. But words on paper were sufficiently disconnected from reality that he could build the scene in his head without much problem.

The doorbell went off and he waved at the fly again, more or less at the same moment. How were they getting in, he wondered. Also, why was he the focus of their attention?

"Dean, can you get the door?" his mother called out from the kitchen.

Already distracted from the novel, he slid a bookmark into place and put it down. "Okay, Mom," he called back. Climbing to his feet, he headed through the living room to the entrance hall. Just as he got there, the doorbell rang again. "Coming!" he called out.

He wasn't sure who would be calling unannounced like this. His friends all had cellphones, and would text ahead before showing up on his doorstep. Likewise, his parents hadn't mentioned anyone coming over.

Maybe it's Vicky? She's back from wherever she went, and she wants to surprise me? That would certainly fit with Vicky's impetuous nature, though he'd want to know chapter and verse about where she'd been and why.

With that in mind, already half-convincing himself he was right, he unlocked the door and opened it. His eager gaze found … not Vicky. In fact, two people who weren't Vicky. One was a girl of slightly above average height with rich auburn hair and a knowing smirk; her friend was a couple of years younger, darker skinned, with a purple streak through her hair. Both wore Girl Scout uniforms, and the redhead carried a clipboard. Behind them, a car with a garish iridescent purple paint-job idled at the curb.

That was his first impression. The second impression was that the younger girl was bubbling over with ill-concealed mischief, while her older compatriot had a feeling of purpose about her. Also smugness. Lots of smugness.

Dean had been a member of the Scouts before he got his powers and went into the Wards, and so he'd associated with the distaff side of the organisation from time to time. As such, he had a lot of respect for them, and had no problem assisting them with their fundraising efforts. Though he wasn't precisely sure why the older girl would be feeling so smug, unless it was because they were hitting the jackpot with selling cookies, two days after Christmas.

In any case, it wasn't his business. "Oh, hey," he greeted them. "That time of year again, huh? How's it going?"

"Oh, we're batting a thousand so far." The redhead's smugness actually increased slightly, while her partner's sense of mischief almost went off the charts. "So, did you want to buy anything today?" She tapped the clipboard with her pen.

Dean frowned. His fellow-feeling toward the Girl Scouts notwithstanding, he wasn't really in the mood for thin mints right at that moment. Plus, they'd been doing well before they got to his house, so they didn't need his assistance. "Um, maybe later?"

Something weird happened then. As he turned around to go back into the house, he found himself turning again to look at the redhead. A vague question floated through his head—wasn't there two of them?—before the girl stepped forward. "Are you certain, sir?" Her tone was anything but deferential, and her emotions matched it. "We have an extremely special offer on today."

What is this? he wondered, even as he found his hand reaching out to accept the clipboard that she handed him. He'd been trained in basic self-defence for the Wards, and he was pretty sure he could handle one teenage Girl Scout. If that's what she is. Still, there was no ill intent in her emotional mix, just rock-solid purpose. And if need be, he could smack her down with a sense of crippling insecurity while he called the cops.

Turning the clipboard to look at what was written on it, Dean froze.

Vicky needs your help.

Before he could speak, the redhead began to talk again, her voice pitched low. "This is not a hostage situation. Vicky's hurt, but not in a way the PRT or Protectorate can do anything about. You are one of the few people who can help her. We need your assistance. Will you give it?"

His mind racing, Dean tried to get his thoughts in order. "Who are you?" he managed. "What's going on here? Where's Vicky? What happened to her?"

In response, she leaned forward and used the pen to tap a section of the clipboard a little farther down. He blinked and read what was written there.

• Not important right this second. Call me Lisa.
• Vicky's hurt. We're trying to fix this. Try to keep up.
• In a safe place. Amy's taking care of her.
• Long story.

"I could give you chapter and verse, but your mom will soon be wondering why you haven't come back inside already," 'Lisa' said, her whole manner brimming with certitude. "Everything that's written down there is true."

And his power told him that whatever else she was up to, she wasn't lying about that. It was either all true, or else she was someone else's patsy in some grand scheme or another … and she didn't strike him as being anyone's patsy.

Of course, that was secondary to what she'd just done. "How did you know—"

"Really?" She raised her eyebrows and gave him a level stare. "Are we seriously going to go through this? Figure it out … Gallant."

"You're a Thinker." It was glaringly obvious, once he stopped and thought about it. His secret identity she could probably have learned elsewhere, but there was no way she could've anticipated what he was about to say without using powers.

"Correct." Her bottle-green eyes bored into him. "Now. Glory Girl needs your help. Not right this very instant, but she will need it soon. Or rather, we'll need you to help us help her. Is any of this sinking in, or do I need to go over it again from the top?"

"I want to help, of course, but how—"

"Mistakes were made." She cut his question off before it was properly started. "Shit happened. Me and some friends of mine are working to unfuck the situation, but we're going to need the cooperation of basically everyone who knows her well."

"Why can't the PRT or Protectorate—"

"Because they'll screw it up royally. There's exactly one way to fix this. And no, Panacea can't do it. She's part of the problem."

"Part of the problem? How? She can fix anything." Even as he said it, Dean knew that wasn't exactly true. Brains had always been Panacea's one loophole. Anything else, she could fix. Brains, not so much.

'Lisa' was staring perceptively at him. "More than you think, less than you know. So, we good?"

He stared at her, his Wards training coming to the fore. "You've given me almost nothing and fobbed me off with a bunch of generalisations, and you want me to be satisfied with that? What do you think?"

"I haven't lied to you once," she replied steadily. "Now, you can take it on faith that what I'm saying is all up-front and honest, or—"

"That's the problem," he said, interrupting her. "You're a Thinker. The 'truth' you've told me is so ambiguous that I can't use it to base anything on. Hell, you fooled me into thinking you were a Girl Scout. I can't believe anything you say without independent verification."

She huffed a sigh. "Okay, fine. Tell your mom you're going out. We'll take you to where Vicky is and give you the full story. But don't say I didn't warn you."

Dean paused. Just for a moment, he heard Rory say in the back of his mind, Wait, you got in a car with a bunch of strangers without telling anyone?

"I, uh, I can do that," he said. As soon as he was inside, he'd send a text to Rory and have the Wards home in on his phone signal.

"No." 'Lisa' shook her head. "Weren't you listening? This is not a situation that will be improved by getting more heroes involved. Who were you going to alert? Armsmaster or Triumph? Right, Triumph. Bad idea. He'll get the PRT involved, and that will only have a—" She turned her head to look toward the street. "Oh, shit. You didn't call them? No, you didn't have the time."

"Call who?" Dean followed her line of sight. He didn't immediately recognise the car that pulled up, but the people who got out were another matter altogether, despite the fact that they were in civilian clothing. Sarah Pelham and Carol Dallon; Lady Photon and Brandish. "No, I didn't call them. What are they doing here?"

"Same as me, but from the other side of things." 'Lisa' kept her voice down. "They think you might have an insight for where Vicky is. This was Brandish's idea."

Dean's mind moved quickly. He did have an insight toward Vicky's location; the faux Girl Scout right in front of him. Specifically, she knew where Vicky was. She was definitely a Thinker, but there were no Wards or Protectorate Thinkers in the city, redheaded ones or otherwise. Which made her a villain or a rogue, and he was in no way comfortable knowing that the girl he loved was in the hands of people without heroic intentions in mind. And she still hadn't come clean with him about what had happened to Vicky.

We need more answers than she's willing to give.

'Lisa' dodged backward, even before he reached for her. "Shit—no—don't—you idiot—" Her emotions were swirling into anger and frustration, but he didn't have time to analyse the reasons for this. Vicky's well-being, maybe even her life, was at stake.

He lunged forward and grabbed her arm, trying not to hurt her. 'Gallant' wasn't just his cape name, after all. "Villain alert!" he yelled at the same time, pitching his voice so that the two members of New Wave heard him. "Secure that car!"

Lady Photon, he was pleased to see, was on the ball. Turning to see where he was pointing, she immediately enclosed the car in a glowing force field. Brandish looked from her to the car, then from him to 'Lisa'. Clearly deciding that Lady Photon had matters under control with the car, Brandish approached where he was struggling with the redheaded girl.

'Lisa' was slippery and tenacious, but she was no combat Thinker. It took a little effort, but he finally managed to get her into a compliance hold. Unlike some people, who would keep fighting and hurt themselves, she relaxed and let him maintain the hold with little difficulty.

"You know, this is entirely the wrong way to go about this," she remarked, sounding altogether too calm for someone in her position.

Dean was still working out his answer when Brandish got to them. Close up, it was clear she still wasn't over Flashbang's death. Her makeup went some way toward dispelling the bags under her eyes, but she looked like death warmed over anyway. If he were to make a guess, he figured she'd been having a few bad days of it.

"What's this about?" she asked, and the razor edge in her voice was a match with her roiling emotions. There was not a single hint of lightness in the cloud that metaphorically hung over her head. "Who is this girl?"

"She's a Thinker," panted Dean. "She knows where Vicky is. She says I'm needed to help fix whatever happened to her, but she won't tell me what."

Brandish's eyes, somewhat more bloodshot than the last time Dean had seen them, fixed on Lisa. A glowing blade extended from her hand, as if summoned by magic. The smile on her face was creepy; her voice, even more so. "Oh, I think she will."

'Lisa' twitched, as if trying to pull away from Dean's hold, but reminding herself not to at the last moment. "She's been drinking," she said clearly. "You need to let me go right now, before she decides to torture me in front of you, or even maim or murder me. Because she's totally capable of it."

Dean could see her aura clearly, and each of those statements had the appearance of veracity to it. Of course, she'd managed to misapprehend the truth to his face once already, but it was hard to apply any sort of ambiguity to such definitive statements.

The energy blade drifted close to 'Lisa's face, and she flinched away from it. A couple of strands of red hair drifted to the ground; smoke wafted upward and Dean smelled an acrid odour. "Hey, careful," he said, recalling the girl's words. "All we need to do is ask her questions, then hand her over to the PRT."

"Villains never just answer questions." Brandish's voice was without inflection, but Dean knew that was a lie; her aura was a maelstrom of emotion at that moment. "You have to make them fully aware of what'll happen if they don't answer."

"Touch me again with that blade, and I will make certain that New Wave is ended as a team," 'Lisa' said, her voice almost as steady as Brandish's. Unlike the older woman's aura, hers was saturated with fear. She truly believed that something bad was likely to happen. "I know exactly what to say to get an audience with Director Piggot, and I'll tell her that you convinced Lady Photon to come out here while you're still legally drunk, to Gallant's house, to see if he had any idea where Glory Girl was. All this, flashing your powers around? How soon before the news crews get here, do you think?"

"Won't matter." Brandish looked at 'Lisa' with her head tilted to one side, as if examining a particularly repulsive slime mold. "Sarah and me are already public capes."

"Gallant isn't," 'Lisa' said. "How long before someone puts two and two together, and comes up with 'oh wait, Dean Stansfield is Gallant'? Because why else would the mother and aunt of Glory Girl be visiting his house? And if the Stansfields have to go into protective custody because you can't get through the day without a drink or ten, I'd be most surprised if that doesn't motivate the good Director to re-examine the PRT affiliation with New Wave."

"Shut up," gritted Brandish. "Just shut up, and tell me where the fuck my daughter is." The blade edged closer to 'Lisa's face again.

"Okay, fine," 'Lisa' muttered. "You win. Now."

Now? wondered Dean.

"Now?" asked Brandish. Then the energy blade flickered out and she fell over, convulsing. For an instant, Dean thought he heard a crackling sound.

"What did you do to Carol?" shouted Lady Photon, looking around with concern, even as she maintained the force field around the car. "What's going on?"

"You can let me go, Dean, or you can be tased," 'Lisa' murmured. "Your choice." She raised her voice. "There's one problem with your power, Photon Mom. It doesn't stop other powers from working through it."

"What do you—" Abruptly, Sarah was cut off when a swarm of bugs seemingly coalesced from nowhere and folded around her. Shouting incoherently, trying to brush them off her, she rose into the air. The field she'd had around the car popped out of existence, then she started trying to scrape the blanket of bugs off herself with a multitude of tiny shaped force field projections.

"Are you doing this? How are you doing this?" Dean looked around nervously. On the girl he was still holding captive, the fear was almost all gone, and the smugness was back.

He could hear the smirk in her voice. "Wouldn't you like to know." She paused expectantly. "No? Okay, fine. Do it."

<><>​

Taylor

From the safety of the car, I watched as Dean let Lisa go and stumbled back several paces. "She didn't give him as big a jolt as she gave Brandish," I observed, while I vectored several Amy specials—knockout bugs—toward the semi-conscious cape. Even with her system depressed by alcohol, Carol Dallon wouldn't stay down long from Aisha's taser shot. Or maybe she'd stay down because of the alcohol; I really didn't know how that stuff worked.

"That's good," Dad said from the driver's seat. "It's really good, in fact. She's showing restraint."

"So I should hold off from knocking him out?" I asked.

"Hell no," he said at once. "I've seen his type before. There's no way we can count on him staying quiet once we leave, if we don't take him with us. And from the way Lisa was arguing with him, he's just refusing to accept what she's saying."

"What about the other two?" More knockout bugs had been wriggling their way through the swarming mass around Lady Photon, twenty feet in the air. They began to deliver their toxin in measured doses, seeking drowsiness before unconsciousness. We didn't want her to fall to her death, after all.

"What are you doing?" shouted Dean. "What are you doing to them?" His head jerked around as the bugs stung him, and he slapped at them. Amy had planned for this, and they survived the blow easily.

Carol Dallon started to get up but her bugs were already delivering their soporific payload, and she slumped down again. Lisa had mentioned that she might be a bit irrational with the disappearance of Vicky; I mentally upgraded that to 'fucking nuts'.

"I tried to be reasonable," Lisa told him. "I really did." She stepped back out of the way as he reached for her, then grunted as he unloaded an emotion blast into her from close range. Moving away from him, she leaned against the side of the house as he slumped to the ground. Lady Photon landed in a heap beside her sister, the bugs dispersing from her once they were no longer required.

"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered, trying not to panic. "What do we do now?"

"Focus," Dad said sharply. "Who's seen this, and what are they doing?"

Focus. Right. I breathed deeply. That bought me some clarity, and I was able to tap into the bugs, dogs, birds and (very vaguely) the people around us. For some reason, I could sense people farther away, and with more clarity than normal. I didn't question it.

"Uhhh … Dean's mom heard something but she's not coming to the door just yet," I reported. "Two other people saw it. One's just watching, but the other one's got a phone."

"Okay, we're on the clock." He scanned the back seat, then reached into the glove compartment and pulled out two ski masks. One of these, he handed to me. "We need to get Lady Photon and Gallant into the car as soon as possible."

"Not Brandish?" I was already pulling my ski mask on as I got out of the car.

"Not Brandish," confirmed Lisa as she started to drag Dean toward the vehicle. I went over to give her a hand, while Dad handled Lady Photon.

"Not arguing," I grunted as I took his weight. "But why?" Dean, I decided, could do with losing a few pounds, even if it was all muscle. There was indeed such a thing as too much of a good thing.

"These two are the most likely to come around once we fill them all the way in," Lisa panted. "God, what do they feed this guy? Bricks?"

"What I was thinking." I wriggled one hand free and opened the back door. We'd had enough trouble moving Coil's body, and he'd been a skinny guy. Someone with Gallant's heft was a whole lot harder to deal with. "Okay, so they'll come around." I managed to get his head and shoulders into the car, and we skated him along the seat. "Not her?"

"Not her," Dad agreed, coming up behind us with Lady Photon slung over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. "No matter what we tell her, she won't agree to a damn thing. And once she's awake, she'll attack us. If she sees Amy, she'll try to kill her."

I could unfortunately see that, all too easily. "Can't Amy … you know, tweak her so she won't?"

Lisa and I got Gallant all the way into the car, then stood back so Dad could manhandle (womanhandle?) Lady Photon in beside him. She shook her head. "You know why it's a bad idea to even suggest it to her, right now."

"But she's going to want to kill Amy! Even when we're done and Vicky's back!" It made no sense to me. "Are we just going to let that time bomb keep ticking?"

"Taylor." Lisa put her hands on my shoulders. "We'll talk about that in the car."

"Okay, gotcha." I took a deep breath. "What about you? What did he hit you with?"

"Oh, you saw that." Lisa shook her head. "Crippling doubt and insecurity. Threw me for a loop. I felt like I was back home again, with Dad gaslighting me into making predictions that would raise the company's profit line. But I'm over it now, I think. Mostly, anyway. Hard to judge."

"Good." Dad finally got Lady Photon into the car, and I closed the door for him. "We still need Brandish for the final plan, right?"

"Absolutely," Lisa said. "She might be bugnuts crazy right now, but she still knows Vicky as well as anyone in the family. We'll just have to deal with that when we come to it." I wasn't great at subtext, but I was pretty sure she was talking about kidnapping. She rounded the car to the other side. "We've gotta go. Cops aren't far away."

"Aisha?" I asked.

"Already gone." Lisa opened the rear passenger door. "Joy. I get to ride with Gallant drooling all over me."

"You could've gone with Aisha," I said as I got in on my side.

Lisa shook her head as she shoved Dean into a more or less seated position, and yanked the door shut. "Yeah, no, fuck that. I'd rather walk."

I didn't blame her. After riding pillion with Aisha just once, I felt the same way.

Dad started the car, and we drove off sedately. As soon as we were around the corner and halfway down the street, the bugs I'd had covering the license plates flew in through the open rear window, as did the multitude of tiny iridescent purple bugs that had been covering every inch of the mundane green paint job. I pretended to be reading a map as three cop cars blazed past in the opposite direction.

The PRT would be close behind, almost certainly with the Protectorate in attendance. We really had to be off the street before they came through; the last thing I wanted was to draw Armsmaster's attention for any reason at all. For all I knew, his bike recorded everything. Fortunately, I had the range to see them coming, the iconic motorcycle leading the way. A word to Dad, and we turned down a side street just moments before the cavalcade swept past.

"Okay," I said. "What was that about Amy?"

Lisa sighed. "Right now, Amy's still convinced that adjusting brains is a bad idea. This is a good thing. She needs to keep thinking it's a last-minute emergency measure, not something that can be done at a whim. Because if we bring in her mom to be adjusted, and she starts getting the idea that it's not a bad thing, who knows where she's going to stop? Bad guys? Good guys who think it's a bad idea to brainfuck bad guys? Us, so we're never going to turn against her like her mom did? Yes, Carol Dallon needs to be dealt with. But not that way."

I nodded. "Got it." She was right; I just hadn't thought it all the way through.

We were free and clear for now, but I couldn't guarantee that would last.

<><>​

Director Piggot's Office
PRT ENE

Emily's phone chimed. The caller ID verified that it was Armsmaster calling, so she swiped to answer it.

"Talk to me," she ordered.

"It's as the report stated." The local leader of the Protectorate didn't mince his words. "Cape battle involving Lady Photon, Brandish, at least one unknown cape, and Gallant. They knocked all three out, and took Gallant and Lady Photon."

Emily gritted her teeth. That was about as bad as it could get, short of having Gallant murdered, or outed, on site. "Details on the hostile?"

"Brandish describes her as a teenage girl, average height, red hair. She was described as a Thinker by Gallant when they first arrived, but she reportedly performed a ranged taser effect as well as some sort of chemical knockout, both on Brandish."

Closing her eyes for a moment, Emily pinched the bridge of her nose. I fucking hate grab-bag capes. "Is Brandish showing any ill effects?"

"She's a little groggy, but it's wearing off." Armsmaster paused. "There were witnesses to the fight. None of them seem to have made the conceptual leap that Gallant is a cape, but one reports seeing Lady Photon covered in darkness or maybe bugs. And Brandish has presented with what look like bug bites, possibly where the knockout dose was injected."

"No rats or birds, or explosions?" Part of her wanted the cape from the Trainyards to be involved in this, so she could merge the cases, while the rest of her desperately hoped that she'd never hear about that cape again. Someone who could train a bird or a rat to carry an explosive package … that was the next level of scary.

At that moment, a pigeon alighted on the window ledge outside her office. She eyed it with extreme suspicion, even though it only seemed to be doing pigeon things. A moment later, it crapped on the ledge and flew off again. Nothing exploded. She breathed a little easier.

"… Director?" Armsmaster sounded concerned. "Are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm here. Sorry, I was distracted for a moment. So, that was a no?"

"Correct. None of the witnesses saw anything like that." Like her, Armsmaster seemed to be edging between disappointment and relief.

"Understood. So, walk me through it. What happened, and why were Lady Photon and Brandish there in the first place?"

Armsmaster hesitated. "It turns out that the rumours we've been hearing of Glory Girl's disappearance are actually true. Lady Photon and Brandish were visiting Gallant in their civilian identities to see if he could suggest anywhere she might have gotten to. When they got there, Gallant was outside, struggling with the hostile. Current temporary designation: Redflag. He directed them to secure a car that was sitting at the curb."

"Wait, go back. Glory Girl's actually missing? How about Panacea?" Emily was actually shocked a wild rumour like that had actually turned out to be true. She'd assumed that Glory Girl had broken something more expensive than normal, and been grounded by Brandish. The death of Flashbang had hit the family pretty hard, and it was normal for teens to act out in times of stress … wasn't it? She was no expert, and her own teen years were too far behind her to work as a metric.

"She's gone, too. I'm going to assume the disappearances are linked until I get evidence to the contrary. And then there's the story that they were seen kissing."

Emily frowned. She'd also discounted that angle, for the very good reason that people loved to push such stories for the scandal value. "If they've gone and shacked up somewhere … why would Brandish and Lady Photon come out and see Gallant about where they might be? Unless they were hiding their relationship from literally everyone? In my experience, that sort of thing is almost impossible to hide from family."

There was a note of irritation in Armsmaster's voice, apparently directed at himself. "That's something I hadn't considered. I'll make sure to ask Brandish that when I get the chance."

"Also, one other thing." Now that Emily had had time to think, other connections were making themselves known in her mind. "Two, in fact. Wasn't one of your witnesses to the Shadow Stalker thing a redhead as well? And wasn't the cape involved a bug controller?"

"I'll have someone check on the Barnes girl's movements immediately, ma'am. Though, as I recall, she was distinctly hostile toward the Hebert girl. Much of her phrasing was emotionally charged, in a negative fashion. Of course, that could have been a ruse. As for the bug control … that's a good point. It could be that she was Redflag, wearing a wig. Or maybe she was in the car."

"Controlling the bugs, while Redflag used her own powers. That fits." Emily nodded. "Though I'm still dubious about bugs biting people and knocking them out. Did you get a blood sample?"

"Brandish refused, and said she was feeling better." Armsmaster didn't sound pleased. "She's a lawyer. Without one of my own, I doubt I could have legally forced the issue."

"No, your point is valid. Carry on."

It would've been good to find out just how bugs could render a human being unconscious with just a bite or two, but legal rights were legal rights. Armsmaster would've required a court order (at the very least) to ensure compliance in the matter. Hopefully, the next victim (she'd have to be delusional to believe that there wasn't going to be one) would be more cooperative.

"Yes, ma'am."

The call ended, leaving Emily wondering exactly what Taylor Hebert had to do with the abduction of a Ward, especially one with whom she'd had zero recorded contact.

And who the hell is Redflag?

Too many questions, not enough answers.

<><>​

Amy

Waiting was the worst part.

She was able to keep Vicky happy by playing silly little games, though every time she looked into her sister's vacant expression, the tiny knot inside her chest tightened a little more. But they had no reliable way of communicating that they could risk being intercepted, especially by the PRT. So she had to wait, and hope they didn't run into something they couldn't handle.

All they had to do was go to Dean's place, talk to him and maybe bring him back to the base. Bringing him back was the nuclear option, of course. It was basically shoving what she'd done in his face, and forcing him to understand exactly what was at stake.

But even though she hated … not Dean exactly, but the idea of Vicky being with Dean … she paradoxically trusted him. His cape name was no accident. He was a gentleman; he was gallant. Faced with the true state of affairs, he would do the right thing. He would do whatever it took to make Vicky whole again. And that put them firmly on the same side.

The buzzer sounded through the base, making Vicky look around before she went back to the simple tune she was humming. It was the alert for the parking garage entrance. Danny would've dropped the others off before returning home in time for the next PRT drive-by.

And then the buzzer sounded twice more. That was different. Had someone followed them? Amy took a deep breath. Was it even them? Was someone else sneaking into the base?

"Vicky, come with me," she said, hating the fact that she had to give her sister orders now. "Protect me if we see bad men."

"Yes, Amy," Vicky said happily. She followed Amy as they passed through solid armoured doors—Coil had been nothing if not paranoid as fuck—into the entry area for the parking garage.

There, Amy stopped short. Taylor, Lisa and Aisha were back, but they hadn't come back alone. On the floor, Dean lay unconscious beside … "Aunt Sarah?" Amy looked at the other three. "What the fuck?"

Lisa grinned, Aisha smirked, and Taylor shrugged awkwardly. "Uh, we can explain?"

Amy could feel a headache coming on. I wonder if Aunt Sarah has days like this.



End of Part Ten

 

[Simonbob]

I see the wheels are slowly staring to come off.

Good. This is the kind of situation where, sooner or later, there'll be wheels hitting the Moon.

 

[Ack]

One Bad Day

Part Eleven: Regathering

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Gallant

Dean groaned as he woke up. He had a mild headache and there was an unpleasant taste in his mouth; in addition, the muscles all the way down the left side of his body were stiff and sore. The last time he'd felt this horrible was the day after his first cape fight in the Wards, but he had trouble remembering who he'd fought this time.

He was just levering his eyelids apart when the memory returned. Girl Scouts? I was fighting Girl Scouts? There'd been two, and then there'd been one, and Brandish and Lady Photon had shown up, and there'd been a bunch of bugs, and Brandish had gotten all creepy at the red-haired Girl Scout, and …

What happened next? It was like he'd been KO'd, but he didn't have any bruises or dizziness to indicate a concussion. A vague memory suggested he might've been tasered, but those things didn't actually knock someone out, especially not for hours.

That was when he realized he wasn't lying in his own bed, at home. Neither, for that matter, was he in the PRT infirmary. The sheet under him was clean, but the mattress was thin and the wall opposite was blank grey concrete. Oh, shit. I've been captured.

"Oh, hey. You're awake."

The familiar voice—Laserdream's here too?—brought his head spinning around to focus on the folding chair at the end of the bed. Vicky's cousin sat there with a paperback in her hand, a smirk on her face as she observed his obvious confusion.

"Wakey wakey, sleepyhead," she said with a smile in her voice to match her expression. "Have you been getting enough rest recently? Amy said you needed to wake up normally, but even after she cleared the knockout stuff from your system, you didn't come to for another half hour."

"Laserdream!" he said in a hushed voice, coming to his feet. Looking up at the ceiling, he scanned for cameras and microphones. A tiny caged dome in one corner confirmed his worst fears. "When did they capture you? What's going on? We've got to get—"

"Jeez. Chill." She rolled her eyes. "We're not prisoners. I'm here to explain what's going on."

"We're not?" For the first time since he'd woken up, he paid attention to his power. She was calm, a little amused, and not at all angry or afraid. "Wait … we're actually not prisoners? What's going on, then? Where are we? Who attacked us … were you attacked?"

She huffed and rolled her eyes again. "Take a breath. Gimme a chance to answer even one question before we move onto the next, okay?" She waited until he nodded before continuing. "So, first things first. We might've been kind of … enthusiastically collected. Kidnapped, even. But it's for a good cause. And no, we're not prisoners." To demonstrate, she got up and pulled on the cell door. It swung open, barely even creaking. "We put you in here in case you came out of it attacking everyone in sight. Mom's in the next cell over."

This was too much for him to take in all at once. "Kidnapped for a good cause?" How's that supposed to work? She's too calm. Has she been Mastered? Is this even Crystal? Does New Wave have Master/Stranger protocols? It might've been nice if Vicky had ever shared them with me. "Uh, you are Laserdream, right? Crystal Pelham?"

"Yes," she replied, putting a certain amount of irritated emphasis on the word. His power registered the answer as truthful. "Now, I know this is a lot to take in, but I'm going to need you to listen to me, because apparently you wouldn't listen to Lisa."

"Lisa …" He frowned. "The redheaded Girl Scout? Did they … did she … come to my house to abduct me?" When he thought back, he had trouble recalling if there were one or two girls involved. "There was a purple car?"

"Well, no, they came to your front door to ask you to come quietly with them," Crystal explained. "It's only when Mom and Aunt Carol barged in that it escalated to abduction. Also, it didn't help that Mom left Aunt Carol to try and force answers out of Lisa. I'm thinking we might need to do an intervention before Carol goes totally off the rails and kills someone. On purpose or by accident. Lisa says she was drunk and waving her energy blades around."

The honest concern in her aura went a long way toward settling Dean's worries. Also, her commentary dovetailed neatly with what he did recall of the confrontation. "The girl, Lisa, said Vicky was hurt but Amy couldn't help her. Something about her being part of the problem."

Crystal sighed. "That's the basic thing, yes. Before we go any further, I'm going to tell you the rest, but I think you need to be sitting down for it."

"Okay, back up a bit," he said, though he did sit down on the bed again. "Didn't you say your mother was in the next cell over? Why isn't she in the cell here, explaining everything to me?"

"Because she's still out to it," Crystal said pragmatically. "We didn't want to be splitting our attention between two upset capes at the same time, so we figured we'd wake you up first, get you up to speed, and then we could all talk Mom down when she loses her shit at us over this."

"I'm not sure that'll be much of a problem," he said. "Lady Photon's always been level-headed and approachable."

"Oh, I have no doubt we'll be able to talk her around." Crystal's voice was gloomy. "But I'm equally certain I'm gonna get grounded so hard I'll need a walking cane by the time she lets me out to go to my senior prom. Just for waking her up second."

"Ooh, ouch." Dean grimaced. "Yeah, I can totally see that." He took a deep breath. "So, can I see Vicky now? What's wrong with her?" It crossed his mind just to get up and try to push his way past her, but he didn't want to hurt her. Not to mention, her force fields were easily strong enough to contain him, even if they were weaker than the ones her mother and brother could generate.

"Okay." Crystal didn't look or sound as though she was looking forward to this next bit. "You know how Amy loved Vicky?"

An alarm bell rang in the back of his head as he took note of the past tense of the word. "I knew they were very close," he said cautiously.

She gave him a disgusted look; her aura mirrored it. "Stop pussyfooting around," she snapped. "Did you know Amy was in love with Vicky? Not sister love. Love love." Because even as dim as boys are, she didn't have to say, I'd be surprised if you didn't.

He hesitated too long before answering, and saw the change in her aura. She knew he'd known. "… yes," he admitted. "And she hated me for being with Vicky." Why he put that bit in he wasn't sure. Perhaps to show Crystal he was actually on the ball?

"Fucking knew it," she muttered. Taking a deep breath, she skewered him with a look that should by rights have been registered as a Blaster power. "And you told nobody about this?"

"Who could I have told?" he asked helplessly. "Amy knew. I knew Vicky didn't love Amy like that, but she still loved her like a sister. Telling her would've maybe pushed her away, and it wasn't my place to do that." He raised his eyebrows. "And I'm pretty sure your aunt wouldn't have been thrilled about it, either."

"Well, no, true," admitted Crystal. "But you could've told Mom or Dad. Mainly Mom. Or you could've spoken to Amy about it. Talked about getting therapy, because repressing that sort of thing is in no way healthy, even when powers aren't involved."

The lurch her aura gave into darkness at the end gave him the clue he needed. "Amy … she did something to Vicky, didn't she? With her powers?"

"Wow, you finally got a clue," she asked bitterly. "Yes, Amy did something to Vicky. Oh, did you know Vicky was going out on her own and beating up gangers, then calling Amy to come fix her messes when she hit them too hard?"

He blinked. This was both a segue he hadn't been expecting and news he wasn't ready for. "No. Um, what's this got to do with Amy hurting Vicky with her powers?"

Crystal sighed. "Because Vicky hit this guy way too hard and fractured his skull, then called Amy. This wasn't the first time, or the second, or even the third. Amy was sick of it, and told Vicky she could wear the consequences if this guy died. Vicky tried to guilt her into it, and said she'd do anything for Amy if she'd just fix the mess."

Dean blinked, a lot of puzzle pieces dropping into place at once. "And this is after she caught me and Vicky together in bed."

Crystal stared at him. "I didn't know that. But it makes a little more sense now, yeah. So, she's got all that, she's still carrying the torch for Vicky, and Vicky makes an open-ended promise like that."

"Oh, shit," whispered Dean. He didn't know exactly how bad it was going to be, but he knew it was going to be bad.

"Yeah, no shit." Crystal's tone was harsh. "So yeah, thanks to that, you get to wear a little bit of this too. Amy did the thing, unfucked the guy's brain—"

"Wait." Dean's brain finally caught up with the conversation. "Amy can't do brains."

Crystal laughed mirthlessly. "Nope. Turns out our little Amy's full of surprises. She can absolutely do brains. She just chooses not to. Because, and get this, it's too easy to go too far. Direct quote from the girl herself."

Dean slumped back on the bed until his back hit the cold concrete wall behind him. "Well, fuck," he said blankly. "I always thought—"

"The same as the rest of us," agreed Crystal. "Boy, were we wrong. Anyway, she did the thing. Then she went to Vicky and basically wanted to steal a kiss. She hasn't actually told us in detail what happened next, but I'm thinking she was kissing Vicky, Vicky got weirded out and tried to stop, but Amy was finally getting what she's wanted all this time. So, when Vicky tried to push her away, Amy reacted instinctively and wiped away everything in Vicky's brain that wanted her to stop." She paused for a beat. "Permanently."

Horror flooded through Dean's brain as he stared at Crystal. Whatever he'd been expecting, this was worse. Ten times worse. A thousand times worse. Vicky being physically injured, he could handle. She was tough; injuries could be overcome. But to have everything that was her just … erased? "Jesus fucking Christ on a Tinkertech pogo stick," he said slowly. "She fucking did that?"

"She did." Crystal got up from the chair and dropped the paperback onto it. "Come on. Now that I've filled you in, I'll take you to see her."

Dean stood as well, with considerable alacrity. "Her? Which 'her'? And what's being done with Amy?"

"Vicky." Crystal glanced back over her shoulder. "And nothing's being done with Amy. She's the one organizing this whole thing. Gathering everyone together."

"What?" Dean felt vaguely outraged. "She basically killed Vicky! Why isn't she being … well, punished?"

"Trust me, nothing we could do to her would match what she's doing to herself." Crystal led the way out of the cell and down a corridor composed of the same blank concrete. Cell doors were visible to the left and right as they passed by. "Besides, they've figured out a plan. It's why we're getting everyone in the same place. Everyone who knows Vicky well."

Dean frowned as he tried to figure out where she was going with that. "So they can … describe her personality to Amy and she can rebuild Vicky from scratch?" That didn't sound like it could go wrong at all.

"Not quite, but very close." Crystal glanced back at him again; this time, her aura showed a strong tinge of respect. "You're just missing the final bit of information. Specifically, the people Amy's working with to fix Vicky." They passed through the final doorway and up a set of stairs.

A bunch of people were gathered in what looked like a common room, or a prison cafeteria; all that was missing were the armed guards on the catwalks overhead. There were still no windows that Dean could see, which made him wonder exactly where they were. "Wait … are we in an Endbringer shelter?"

"Again, very close to the truth," Crystal said. "Tell you later; it's not important right now." She raised her voice. "Guys, he's up and he's been filled in."

"Woo! Sleeping beauty is awake!" A dark-skinned girl with a purple streak through her hair popped up from where she'd apparently been having an animated discussion with Eric Pelham—oh good, he's okay too—and waved. "Come on over, G-man!"

Dean frowned slightly, but his secret identity was less important to him right now than the welfare of one other person. He let his aura sight guide him; most of the people around the table were registering as various shades of determined, but there were two that were far different from the rest. One was a boiling, bubbling black hole of self-loathing and laser-guided purpose, and the other … a pure soul. No hate, resentment or anything other than happiness.

His attention fixated on the last one, and he looked with his eyes to see Vicky's blonde curls as she sat at the table, gazing vacantly into space. He couldn't be sure, but he thought she was humming to herself. Her hand was intertwined with Amy's, and her other hand stroked it gently.

"Vicky." The word was torn out of his throat.

Slowly, the girl wearing Vicky's face turned to look at him. "Yes?" she asked. "Oh, hello, Dean." Then her eyes drifted away from him and she went back to humming softly.

He wasn't sure what hurt more; the fact that she simply dismissed him from consideration, or the sheer blankness in her eyes and face. There was barely anything there that could be called a person anymore.

Guided by Crystal, he reluctantly approached the table and sat down. The movement attracted Vicky's attention for a second, but her aura didn't so much as flare when she noticed him. It was as though he were a mobile piece of wallpaper; to be reacted to when he did something, but thoroughly unimportant otherwise.

By contrast, Amy's aura became even darker and grimmer when her eyes briefly met his. She went to glance away, but stopped. He could tell she was forcing herself to meet his gaze, and that she hated it, but she would not let herself stop. An immense well of anguish and regret overflowed as he watched her aura.

"You did this?" He wasn't sure how he managed to say it without sounding accusatory. Most every part of him wanted to shout and scream at her, to take her throat in his hands and squeeze. But that wasn't who or what he was, so he sat opposite her and spoke civilly, no matter what it cost him inside.

An extra level of pain shot through her aura, showing him that his act wasn't perfect. "Yes," she whispered. "But I'm going to fix it. I have to fix it." Her eyes squeezed shut, so tightly it looked painful, but tears leaked out anyway.

"How?" he asked. "How do you fix something like this?"

"Cranial," said the redhead sitting on the other side of Amy. "She's a rogue working with Toybox." Reaching over the table, she offered her hand, then gave him a smirk. "Hi, we met before, but the introductions were cut short. I'm Lisa, and we're gonna help Amy fix Vicky."

He shook her hand, suddenly matching up the aura of smugness with the encounter on the front doorstep. "You're one of the Girl Scouts!" Then he glanced at the black girl, who was cheerfully listening in on the conversation with zero apparent shame. "You … were there too?"

"That's us!" The black girl gave him a finger-wave. "Figment, but you can call me Aisha." She rolled her eyes. "Boy, were you a hard sell."

"Um." The reality of the situation was starting to come home to Dean. "How long's it been? Since you snatched me and Lady Photon, I mean."

"About two hours." This was the other girl at the table, a tall brunette with curly hair and glasses. "Why?"

"Why?" He stared at her, unsure why she was being so blasé about the whole thing. "Because you kidnapped a Ward! Also, a member of New Wave!" His brain kicked in around then, and he corrected himself. "Another member of New Wave!"

"Chill." Lisa waved away his concern. "They'll never find us here. This place literally doesn't exist on any official plan of the city. My former boss made sure of that. They can look all they like, but all they'll get is pictures of a purple car that doesn't even exist anymore." She gestured to the brunette. "And Taylor here'll be able to give us warning if they do start sniffing around any of the entrances."

Taylor frowned, her aura shifting hues toward 'concern'. "Uh … about that?"

Lisa slowly turned toward her, a frown creeping across her face. "Don't you fucking dare."

"Sorry." Taylor grimaced. "But three people and a few dogs just came into the parking garage. Did you ever get around to changing the codes? Because one of the people has opened the switch box and is punching in a code, right now."

Clenching her eyes together, Lisa ran her hands up into her hair and clenched tight with both hands. "Motherfucker! It's Circus, with Regent and Bitch!"

Dean knew the first name, but not the other two. This did not stop him from figuring out that this was a bad thing. "Uh … they're not on your side?"

"They used to work for my former boss." Lisa gave him a tight smile, but her aura had nothing but aggravation in it. "My dead former boss. I'm guessing Circus is back to get new orders."

"So … tell them he said to go away, and keep doing what they were doing before?" suggested Dean.

"Hah. I'd love to." Lisa rolled her eyes. "The last job they were sent on was to hunt me down."

That … was a problem. A big problem. "Well, fuck. So, what are we gonna do?" He barely noticed the fact that he'd just included himself with everyone else there.

Taylor cracked her knuckles. "Whatever we have to."

<><>​

Regent

"Dunno why we couldn't have come back yesterday," Alec grumbled as they waited for Circus to punch in the last of the code. "And why couldn't I get the code as well?"

Rachel didn't answer, but Circus did. "Because you would've come back yesterday. Your boss didn't see fit to contact me with the news that he had Tattletale. I had to find out the hard way. So he gets to pay me an extra day for babysitting you two."

That actually sounded like a pretty good idea to Alec. "Hey, do we get paid extra for putting up with you?"

Circus chuckled as the door clicked and slid aside. "That's something you should've arranged with him before you came out with me. Personally, I'm getting four times my usual rate. And now that the job I was hired for is done, I'm taking my money and heading for the tall timber." She glanced over at Alec, then at Rachel. "And just between you and me, if I were you, I'd do the same."

"Why?" asked Rachel bluntly. Well, she said everything bluntly. "He pays us on time."

"Because you're just tools to him." Circus started into the corridor thus revealed. "To be thrown away when you've outlived your usefulness. I mean, you two don't make a team. If I wasn't there to ride herd on you, you'd kill each other or walk away inside of six hours."

"Three," corrected Alec.

"One," Rachel put in.

Circus spread her hands. "And thus, my point is made. Unless he can bring in new capes who can keep you under control—and that's not me, just saying—you're basically useless to him. Worse, you know about this base now. That makes you both potential liabilities. If I were you? I wouldn't turn your backs on him. Like, ever."

The colourful cape had a point, Alec conceded. It wasn't like Coil was the first authority figure he'd ever had who was creepy as fuck. The trouble was, cutting loose from Coil would leave him out in the cold again, vulnerable to being grabbed up by whoever his father sent to collect him. "Eh," he said. "Better the asshole I know."

"I can work with people," insisted Bitch. "So long as they don't disrespect me or my dogs."

Circus sighed. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you." She approached a second door; this one was made of steel rather than concrete. The keypad wasn't concealed in a switch box this time, but Circus interposed her body when putting in this code as well. Alec couldn't quite tell what the code was—he didn't have a good enough read on Circus' body yet, especially with all the different tells the grab-bag cape assumed and discarded more or less at will—but he knew it was different to the first one.

The door hissed aside, and Circus stepped through, Alec and Rachel trailing behind. The three dogs, at Rachel's heel, followed along obediently. Alec vaguely wondered who was watching the security panel—in a place like this, there would absolutely have to be a security panel—and why they'd let Rachel bring her dogs inside. He knew he wouldn't have let them in if he was in charge. Oh, well. Sucks to be whoever's gonna get smacked in the head for that oversight. It really, really wasn't his problem.

The corridor beyond was a shorter one, and the keypad on the other end was glowing green rather than red, like the last one had been. "Uh, what's that mean?" he asked.

"Means it's unlocked," Circus said. She glanced back at Alec and Rachel. "Now, stick close to me and let me do the talking, and we might all walk away with the cash we're owed. Got it?"

"Yeah, got it." Alec ran his hand down to his sceptre, ready to pull it out at a moment's notice. Rachel nodded and mumbled something that might've been an affirmative, but her attention was on her dogs. Which were, Alec noticed, a little larger than they'd been before. "We're not here to start a fight. Are we, Rachel?"

She shot him a poisonous look. "I won't start one. But I'll finish it."

"Guess that's the best I'm gonna get," muttered Circus. She pressed the button to open the door; obediently, it hissed aside.

On the other side, as they stepped through, was a bunch of catwalks surrounding a drop to some kind of common area below, with tables and chairs and everything. Overhead, the ceiling was composed of more of the raw concrete that the rest of the base was built out of. But he wasn't paying attention to the architecture. Because there was Tattletale, right there, in front of them. She might've dyed her hair red sometime in the last few days, but that was definitely her. He would've known her nervous system anywhere.

The thing was, she wasn't alone. Across the far side of the huge room, lounging against a doorframe, was a tall brunette with glasses. From where he was, all Alec could tell was that she was kinda skinny and a bit dorkish, but that was about it.

The last person facing them was a black girl wearing what Alec considered the proper style for a girl, along with a purple streak through her hair. Like Lisa, she was standing about ten yards away, but along a different catwalk. She had a secretive grin about her mouth, and her hands were behind her back.

"Oh, hey," said Circus, clearly doing her best to sound unconcerned; Alec could feel the increase in tension from where he was. "Fancy meeting you here, Tattletale. Coil around? We just dropped in to get our payment."

"For trying to hunt me down?" There was an edge to Lisa's voice that made Alec want to roll his eyes. What part of 'just business' did she not understand? "Anyway, Coil's not here. He's been made surplus to requirements."

The implications of that statement made Alec blink twice in quick succession. "Wait, you killed him?" he blurted, in a moment of rare surprise.

"Not me, but yes. He's dead." Her voice was flat and hard. "I'm not inclined to honour any deals he had going on before I took over. You can take Regent and Bitch and leave now. That's the best deal you're going to get."

"No." Circus shook her head, anger leaking through into her voice. "I made a deal in good faith. I tolerated these two, kept them pointing in the right direction. I am owed that money."

"Then feel free to grab a shovel and start digging," called out the black girl impudently. "The bugs might not have eaten all of him yet."

Alec had to admit, she had a sense of humour that ran right alongside his, as muted as it might be. As for the rest of it, this was looking problematic. Lisa didn't look as though she were willing to disburse funds to any of them. His bank account was pretty healthy; but upping stakes and moving to a new town, then dealing with all the expenses of setting up anew, would pretty well drain it.

"Fuck," he muttered, then raised his voice. "Hey, Lise! You hiring? Experienced minion, right here!"

"What the fuck?" Circus stared at him. "What are you even trying to do?"

He shrugged. "Hey, it's one way to get paid."

"Alec," Lisa said politely. "I say this with all due respect and consideration for your difficult position, but you can just fuck off, right now."

Eh. That's fair, I guess.

"Screw this," said Rachel. "We're not getting paid, I'm out of here." She whistled briefly and tapped her leg to get her dogs' attention.

"No!" shouted Circus, her voice echoing from the concrete walls and ceiling. "God fucking damn it, no! I was hired to do a job that I didn't even want to do, and I was promised four times my standard pay for it, and I'm getting that fucking money if I have to hold you by the back of the neck and type in the passcodes with your fucking nose! I've earned that shit!"

"Four times?" Lisa tilted her head to one side. "Damn. That much? He really wanted me back, didn't he?"

"And I've earned every fucking cent of it!" Circus' voice was ragged with anger.

Alec didn't think he'd been that much of a pain to work with … well, maybe he had. A little bit, here and there. If anyone had been a real pain in the ass, it had been Rachel and her dogs.

"Not from me, you haven't." Lisa's tone was final.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Circus was well and truly pissed off now. "You've got access to Coil's funds! Just pay me what I'm owed, and I'll never come near you again!"

Alec had to admit, she'd held it together every time he'd pushed and prodded and tried to find her buttons. Meanwhile, Lisa had located them without even trying. He was honestly kind of jealous.

"Sorry." Lisa wasn't sorry; even Alec could tell that much. "We need that cash. All of it. Paying you would take just too big a bite out of it. Not worth the risk."

"Some of that money is mine!"

"Nope. It was Coil's, and now it's mine." Lisa smiled, showing her teeth and hooding her eyes. "Consider it a fucking-with-me tax."

"I'll show you a fucking-with-me tax!" Abruptly, Circus held a huge sledgehammer, decorated with streamers.

Oh, so we're fighting now? Okay, we're fighting. To be honest, Alec had gotten a little bored with the back-and-forth banter. He'd figured Circus and Lisa were either going to come to blows or make out, though Lisa didn't usually do the 'make out' thing. Still, there was always a first time.

Pulling his sceptre, he looked around for … there was someone he'd been going to tase with it. But the only one he could see who wasn't Lisa was all the way across the room. She hadn't moved, and didn't look like she was going to.

And then, as Circus launched herself forward … she didn't. Her leading leg flexed, pushing her upward and onward, and then basically failed to leave the catwalk in its turn. Losing her grip unceremoniously on the hammer, she performed a glorious pratfall. With a scream of rage she curled around; where the hammer had been, she suddenly held a road flare, which she ignited, then blew a huge burst of flame over the off-yellow cords holding her to the metal grating. They shrivelled and curled away, but before she could regain her feet, there was a crackling sound and a smell like ozone. She convulsed and dropped the road flare as she crumpled to the grating again.

Wait, was that me? I don't think it was me. Alec looked down at the sceptre he still held. No, it hadn't gone anywhere near Circus. Something distinctly weird was going on, and it wasn't his doing.

There was a creak from the catwalk and he looked around, to see that Rachel was growing her dogs after all. He wanted to roll his eyes, but there wasn't time. So much for wanting to get out of here.

While he was still trying to figure out what to do—Lisa and the tall brunette were still just standing there, not doing anything he could disrupt—Rachel shoved past him, the dogs following on. Each of them was just starting to get to the skin-splitting stage and were about chest-high. Not quite big enough to ride, but definitely big enough to fuck someone's day up.

Giving an ear-splitting whistle, Rachel pointed at Lisa. "Brutus! Fetch!" she commanded.

The dogs … did nothing. One sat down and began to lick its butt.

Rachel glared at them, whistled a second time, and pointed. "Angelina! Fetch!" she yelled.

One of the other dogs trotted up to Lisa, licked her hand, then lay down at her feet.

Alec stared in admiration. He'd thought Circus was pissed off, but Rachel's expression was downright apocalyptic. She drew in a deep breath, then subsided to her knees. Slowly, as though she really didn't want to do it but knew she had no choice, she slumped onto her side. Raucous snores arose.

Something twitched at Alec's hand, and he looked down. His sceptre, as yet unused, was no longer in his possession. It wasn't on his belt, and it wasn't in his hand. Neither had it fallen to the ground.

"Well, shit," he said. He raised his hands. "I'd, uh, I'd like to go now, please."

Lisa strolled forward, hands clasped behind her back. The dog trotted past her, already shrinking in size, and sniffed at Rachel. It lay down with its head over her shoulder as Lisa stepped past Circus' somnolent form.

"Yes," she said. "You will."

Alec didn't scare easily, but something in her eyes frightened the hell out of him.

<><>​

Taylor

Half an Hour Later

"Okay," said Lisa briskly. "Circus is in a cell until we can figure out what to do with her …"

"Amy could make her forget where this base is," Aisha suggested brightly.

"No." Amy and Lisa spoke at the same time.

I cleared my throat briefly. "Once we're finished and Vicky's back to normal, we could let Circus have the base. It's gotta be worth more than the pay that Coil owed her, right?"

Aisha made a rude noise with her lips. "Yeah, like a hundred times over. But what's she gonna do with a base? Anyway, I thought this was our base. We took it away from Coil fair and square."

"Taylor's the one who did the hard work," Lisa reminded her. "If anyone's got the most claim over it, it's her."

That was the signal for Aisha to turn to me, puppy-dog eyes at the ready. "Please please can we keep the base? I've never had a genuine supervillain base before. It's even got minion barracks!"

"And no minions to go in them," I reminded her. "We kicked Regent and Bitch out, remember?"

"Right before I changed the codes." Lisa was still grumpy about having forgotten to do that.

Still, even though Circus and the others had gotten in, Lisa had managed to keep them talking while I used spiders to web Circus' foot to the floor. Controlling Bitch's dogs had been a bit harder, but I'd managed that too. Bugs with knockout doses had done the rest after Aisha tased Circus and Bitch. Fortunately, Regent hadn't done much, and any time he'd been about to change that, I'd been able to nudge him back toward what seemed to be his natural state of apathy.

"This is the sort of base a megalomaniac goes with," Lisa said. "Not a normal person."

"Who says I'm normal?" Aisha crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out.

"Well, not any of us, that's for certain." Eric strolled out of the corridor leading to the stairs going down to the cellblock.

"Says the guy who dyes his hair blue," Aisha retorted. "How'd it go with Photon Mom?"

"Lady Photon, please." The hero herself followed her son out. "Or, as I'm out of costume, Sarah will do." She took a deep breath. "They've told me what happened. Amelia, how are you holding up?"

Amy's head jerked around at the sound of her name. "Uh … what?"

"Crystal and Eric explained what's been going on and Dean verified it, dear." Lady Photon's voice was warm and forgiving. "I can't exactly say you're without blame in the matter, but there's a lot of it to go around. Myself included, for not seeing this earlier." She went to where Amy was sitting and helped her up out of her chair. When her arms went around Amy to give her a proper hug, there might have been a tear in my eye.

"And that's why me and your dad decided to bring her along," Lisa said quietly to me. "Amy absolutely needs this."

"You know what sucks?" I asked, keeping my voice low enough that Amy couldn't hear me. "If her own mom was as much of a mother as Mrs. Pelham, maybe we wouldn't be in this at all."

"No maybe about it," Lisa confirmed. She took a deep breath as Lady Photon—I just couldn't bring myself to call her 'Sarah'—let Amy out of the hug. I thought I spotted tears in Amy's eyes too, but I wasn't about to say anything about it.

Next, Mrs. Pelham moved to where Vicky sat, lowering herself to one knee to bring herself down to her niece's level. "Hello, Vicky," she said softly. "How are you today?"

"Hello, Aunt Sarah." Vicky smiled happily. "It's good to see you. Is Uncle Neil here, too?"

"He'll be visiting soon," Mrs. Pelham assured her. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Yes, Aunt Sarah." Vicky pointed at Aisha. "This is Most Esteemed Aisha. She braids my hair for me. I like having my hair braided."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Mrs. Pelham gave Aisha a warm smile with just the slightest hint of an edge to it. I suspected that was because of the 'Most Esteemed' part. "That's very nice of you. Thank you for taking care of my niece."

"Oh, sure." Aisha gave her a guileless smile, the type she used when she was doing her best to con someone into thinking she was cute and harmless. I could've told her it was never going to work against Mrs. Pelham's mom senses, not after the woman had raised two teenagers. "Vicky's real nice. I'm hoping we get to hang out once this is all done and dusted."

That was also probably going to be a no-show, given the blood on everyone's hands. I'd murdered Madison and Coil, Aisha had killed Shadow Stalker, and even Lisa had ended the guy Coil had put in as her new team leader. But I didn't want to rain on Aisha's parade, so I said nothing. Mrs. Pelham nodded and smiled and made a non-committal noise.

"Okay," declared Lisa as the newest recruit in our little cabal took a seat next to Vicky. "Sarah, do you think you'll have any trouble bringing your husband along?"

"A lot less than we'll have with Carol," Mrs. Pelham said candidly. "Neil's smart. He'll listen to me, and he'll look at the situation, and he'll do the right thing. I'm not entirely sure Carol's listening to anything other than the voices in her head right now. I am worried that once she gets the full facts in hand, she's likely to become homicidal toward Amelia, even if we do save Vicky's personality."

I grimaced. "And we can't just leave her out of the mix, because she's one of the central people in Vicky's life. Like it or not, she's one of the people who knows Vicky the best."

"That information might be skewed though," Dean said, concern colouring his voice. "I mean, if she sees everything Vicky does through rose-tinted glasses, wouldn't that affect the memory recording?"

"I did think of that," Lisa assured him. "When I contacted Cranial, she informed me that every memory someone has of someone else has an emotional component. She's able to strip that out, or add more, as necessary. All we have to do is get a person with memories to her, and she'll do the rest."

"Wait, Cranial?" Dean frowned. "You guys mentioned that name earlier. You said she's a Toybox rogue. How can we even trust her?"

Lisa rolled her eyes. "See, this is why I think the PRT dropped the ball when they named rogues. There's criminal connotations built right into the name. Cranial works for money. Cold, hard, cash. We get everyone lined up and sitting in her chair, or however she copies the memories, and she'll do the rest." She shrugged. "Also, half up front and half when the job's done. So, there's the incentive right there."

Eric leaned forward. "So how do you know it'll really be Vicky again; after we're done, I mean?"

"It will and it won't," Lisa said. "But that's okay, because you aren't the you who walked into this base. You've had experiences that have subtly changed your view of the world. Vicky won't suddenly be a villain, or decide to go Goth, or whatever. She'll be the sum total of all the memories that everyone who goes through the process has of her. And who knows; there might be orphan fragments of personality in her brain right now that will weave right in and make the whole mix stronger. All I can say is, she'll be a whole lot closer to the Vicky you know than any amount of therapy by the PRT would manage."

"And she'll have the full memory of what I did to her," Amy's voice was steady and unwavering. "She's the one who gets to judge me on that. Not you, Aunt Sarah. Not Carol. Not Uncle Neil. And not the goddamn PRT. Vicky herself, once she is herself, is the only one I'm gonna allow to stand in judgement of me on that. And what she says, goes."

"But … won't she still love you?" asked Crystal.

"No." Amy shook her head. "If that's still in there, I'm going to ask Cranial to take it out before Vicky wakes up. She gets to know that she loved me, but not feel it. Feelings are what led to this whole fucked-up mess in the first place. It'll be impartial or not at all."

I glanced at Lisa. Vicky's going to kill her.

She looked back and me and nodded ever so slightly, then shrugged. It's probably what she wants.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't argue with that. It was fucked up, but what in this whole situation wasn't?

As the discussion roved around the table for how we were going to contact Manpower and bring him into the fold, I let my awareness spread out through the bugs and rats and birds around the facility and outside. It might seem as though we were in the home stretch now, with the finish line almost in sight, but I wasn't going to let myself relax and take my eye off the ball (to mix a metaphor or two).

Now more than ever, Vicky's life and Amy's soul depended on the rest of us.

And I, for one, didn't intend to let either one of them down.


End of Part Eleven

 

[karay]

So amy is trying to suicide by victim. Nice to see this updated.

 

[Oddboy]

I can sympathize with Circus about being massively pissed off she's not getting paid, but trying to force a villain to cough up another villain's payment for her, while in enemy territory, probably wasn't the most rational decision she could have made.

Also, being Lisa has to be such a joy right now, given her issues with people having suicidal tendencies...

 

[Ack]

I can sympathize with Circus about being massively pissed off she's not getting paid, but trying to force a villain to cough up another villain's payment for her, while in enemy territory, probably wasn't the most rational decision she could have made.

Also, being Lisa has to be such a joy right now, given her issues with people having suicidal tendencies...

Click to shrink...

She knows she can take down Lisa. Aisha and Taylor are unknown quantities, but she also had Rachel and Alec with her.

And of course, the more she argued the more she had to be right.

Yeah, Lisa's gonna be hitting the antidepressants pretty hard.

 

[GNB]

What happened with Alec? I really feel bad for him. New boss comes and Alec loses his job without any payments or even reasons why - just "you are fired, fuck off". Btw, it's kinda stupid from Lisa side-Alec might be not the best teammate, but it's still better to have him on your side rather than not having him. ;/

 

[Ack]

What happened with Alec? I really feel bad for him. New boss comes and Alec loses his job without any payments or even reasons why - just "you are fired, fuck off". Btw, it's kinda stupid from Lisa side-Alec might be not the best teammate, but it's still better to have him on your side rather than not having him. ;/

Click to shrink...

Alec agreed to help hunt her. Lisa can tell he'd be just as much of a liability as an assistance.

Besides, she doesn't want Heartbreaker knocking on her door.

 

[Oddboy]

Yeah, I'm not at all surprised that Lisa decided that Alec just wasn't worth it. She isn't exactly happy with him at the moment and has no compelling reason to risk even the possibility of Heartbreaker coming along and raping her (and the others) into brainwashed enslavement.

Lisa is young, pretty and has an excellent power; a prime target and I'm sure she knows it.

 

[Ack]

One Bad Day

Part Twelve: Finalising the Collection

[A/N: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Dallon Household
Manpower

"Carol," Neil Pelham tried yet again. "Seriously. Why aren't we out there, looking for Sarah and the kids?" He glanced at the head of the PRT security detail. "No offence, but what can these guys do that you and I can't, if someone kicks in the door to try to abduct us?"

The agent lifted his chin. "Be awake. Call for backup and hold the line."

"Hold the line." Neil snorted. "You're almost adorable."

"Which is part of the plan," Carol snapped from across the room. Her eyes were still red-rimmed, and Neil wasn't sure she was hitting on all cylinders yet. "We have to stay here, in the house. That way, we're in one place and they can protect us. And in the case of an abduction attempt, they can call in backup and capture the kidnappers."

Neil looked over at Carol, who had a female agent sitting by her. There were three women in the detail, along with the three men assigned to watch over himself. Two of the agents were in the living room, two were upstairs asleep, and the last two were patrolling the house. He still felt he was missing something.

"I get it that you're protecting us," he said to the guy. "But if the PRT's willing to send six people to help us out because we're affiliated with the Protectorate, why haven't you insisted that we come back to the PRT building with you?"

The agent frowned slightly. "They didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?" The feeling of having come in halfway through the movie intensified.

There was the hint of an eye-roll, though the guy was clearly too disciplined to let it go all the way. "You're a hard target for abduction, for several reasons. Brandish must have been seen too problematic to take at the time, possibly for the same reason. Whoever it is that's after you doesn't want to murder you, or Brandish might not have survived her run-in with Redflag. So, you're being dangled out here to tempt the kidnappers to try again. We're here to make sure they don't succeed."

Goddamn Piggot! Playing games with our lives like this! "What!?" he demanded, not bothering to keep his voice down. "The Director's using us as bait? Carol, did you know about this?"

"It was my idea," she retorted. "I floated it to Director Piggot and got the okay. If we make ourselves too difficult to get to, they might give up. But if we're here …"

It all made sense now. Piggot had been under intense pressure to keep the Wards safe after the Shadow Stalker debacle—of which Neil was convinced he hadn't heard all the details of either—so she was clearly willing to bend all the rules to get Gallant back any way she had to. But while it made sense, it didn't mean he liked it. Not in the slightest.

"Seriously, what the fuck?" He stood up from the armchair, towering over everyone else there. Normally, he felt slightly embarrassed doing that, but right now he couldn't give a shit. "Carol, we could be out there right now kicking heads and finding out where our kids are, where your sister is, and you're staking everything on a play like this? You realise Director Piggot doesn't give a damn about us, or the rest of New Wave, right? She's just going along with it to use us as the damn sacrificial goat!"

"I went out there!" she shrieked, jumping to her feet and facing him. "I went to the only damn place I could think of to get more information! And I got Sarah abducted!"

He stared at the red around her eyes and bellowed right back at her. "And how sober were you at the time?"

The fury in his voice hung in the air between them, but he recovered first. "Now that you're sober, we'll have each other's backs if we go out there again. Plus, when you went to Gallant's house, you weren't expecting trouble. It'll be a whole different ballgame, this time around."

"No." She shook her head. "We're not doing that. We're sticking to the plan."

He set his jaw stubbornly. "Your plan. Not my plan."

"That's right. My plan. In Sarah's absence, I'm team leader. And if you go out there alone, you're asking to be scooped up, just like Sarah and Gallant were. Yes, I want to be out there looking. But what are two more sets of eyes going to do?"

"Trust me, we have agents sweeping the city as we speak."

The PRT guy couldn't have interjected at a worse time. Neil swung around toward him. "Butt out! I've seen how efficient your sweeps are, and every villain in Brockton Bay's still out there!"

"Neil!" Carol's voice cut across his. "Gallant's disappearance has hit the PRT right where it hurts at the worst possible time. They're doing everything they can to find everyone. Trust me, whoever it turns out to be is looking at Birdcage time."

Neil found it no problem at all to feel zero sympathy for whoever it was that had taken his wife and kids. "I don't care what they do with them, so long as they get our family back safe." Even now, after he'd gone over it so many times in his head, mentioning their absence out loud made a lump grow in his throat.

Carol stepped closer. "And they're doing that. In the meantime, why don't you go and have a shower or something? You know, cool off."

Neil felt the quiet desperation of a strong man made powerless by events outside his control. He wanted to scream at them, but knew it would be both pointless and counterproductive. Instead, he moved restlessly on his feet, not wanting to sit down again. Furniture in the Pelham household was just a little larger, to accommodate his outsized frame, and he was just now beginning to notice the difference.

The agent gave him a querying glance. "Sir?"

"Fine. I'm going to the bathroom. Anyone want to check it for booby-traps first?"

"No, sir." The agent's tone was dry.

He stomped away from them, knowing they'd be nearby, but he wasn't sure if this was to keep him safe or make certain he didn't sneak out anyway. He didn't want to ask; some answers were best left unspoken. Besides, if he did end up leaving to look for Sarah and the kids, he didn't want to give the PRT—or Carol—advance warning.

He headed through the house to the downstairs bathroom and locked himself in. Leaning back against the door, he closed his eyes and let out a gusty sigh. It wasn't that he even needed to use the facilities; he just wanted a moment alone so he could gather his thoughts and plan his way forward.

And then he heard something splashing in the toilet bowl.

Frowning, he took a step forward and looked down to see a rat, paddling around and around in a circle. But that wasn't even the weirdest part. That would be the fact of the tiny harness it was wearing, which allowed it to tow behind it a cell-phone sealed in a plastic bag.

"What the hell?" He hadn't meant to say that out loud, but the words came out anyway.

"Is everything okay in there, sir?" It was one of the PRT agents, right outside the bathroom door.

Immediately, the rat shook its head vigorously, and looked like it was preparing to dive for the drain-hole. Worried it might leave and pissed off that the agents were shadowing him so closely, Neil gave vent to his frustration. "Fuck off! I'm busy!"

"Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to bother you."

But Neil wasn't listening. Leaning down, he reached into the toilet bowl; the rat, apparently divining his purpose, did something that cut the phone free of the harness and dived for the drain-hole. He scooped the sealed bag—it seemed to be just barely buoyant—from the water and stood there, staring at it. Inside the clear plastic was a note, wrapped around the phone.

He glanced once at the door, considering whether or not to let the PRT agents in on this latest development, then shook his head. They've been slightly less use than tits on a bull so far. Let's see what this is all about, first.

Opening the bag, he pulled out the note and unfolded it. The handwriting was Sarah's, he saw immediately.

Hi, huggy-bear …

Tears sprang to his eyes. That was the nickname she only used with him, and only when they were alone. It made her presence almost palpable, and he re-read the three words several times before going to the rest of the note.

First off: I am not a prisoner. I'm not a hostage, either. The kids are here, and we're all safe. Nobody's in danger. We are not being kept against our will.

He stopped, and stared at the wall. After the emotional roller-coaster of the last day, it was hard to take in. Not in danger? Not prisoners? Why haven't they just contacted us, then? Why all the rigmarole with a rat and a phone? And who trains a rat to deliver a phone, anyway?

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he looked down at the note again. Maybe there were answers to his questions there.

Do NOT tell Carol or the PRT about this note or this phone. There is something going on that we're trying to sort out, but it's nothing that the authorities can do anything about and involving them will make it actively worse. Carol can't know either, not until we're ready to bring her in on it. She will absolutely make it worse if she's told at the wrong time.

Honey, I know this all sounds very mysterious, and there's a certain lack of important details. That's deliberate, in case Carol or the PRT find this note. We're giving you twenty minutes from getting this phone to get somewhere you can talk without being overheard, then I'll be calling you to fill you in on the rest of the situation.

If you can't talk, decline the call and we can send texts instead.

Love you, huggy-bear.

Sarah.

PS: Carol, if you find this note, I'm sorry that we couldn't bring you in straight away but you're not exactly rational these days. It's all for a really good cause.

PPS: If it's Director Piggot reading this note: Emily, we both know that you'd do your best to take control of the situation, and that's exactly why I'm not contacting you. Gallant is safe and healthy, and is assisting us of his own free will, and that's all I can tell you.

He re-read the note three times, even turning it over to see if there was anything more, but that was it. Holding it up to the light didn't reveal any pin-holes over significant letters or other secret messages within the message.

His choice now was to either do what the note said or to hand both note and phone over to the PRT immediately. He knew what Carol and the agent in charge would want … but that wasn't what Sarah needed him to do.

If Sarah even wrote the note.

The handwriting, the phrasing, even the pet name … it all shouted Sarah! to him. And he could always go to them after the phone call, if he didn't like what he heard. Taking a deep breath, he nodded to himself.

Yeah. Trust, but verify.

Refolding the note, he slid it into his pocket along with the phone, still in its plastic bag. Then he flushed the toilet noisily and made a show of washing his hands and splashing water on his face. The latter he'd actually needed, though he hadn't realised it until now.

Emerging from the bathroom, Neil gave the agent a sour look. He hadn't forgotten the way he'd been right outside the door before. "I'm going upstairs to lie down," he said bluntly. "Seeing as how there's nothing else constructive I can do around here right now."

"Understood, sir." The agent stood back out of the way as Neil headed for the stairs. Faintly, he heard the guy telling everyone on the radio net what was going on, but he didn't care at the moment.

Nobody followed him upstairs, and the spare bedroom had been checked over several times since he'd more or less moved into the house, so he expected no issues when he closed the door behind him. Still, he didn't want to be disturbed, so he picked up the chest of drawers and placed it up against the door, careful to make no noise.

Satisfied nobody was going to barge in, he kicked off his loafers and lay down on the bed. After a moment, he got up on one elbow and examined the clock/radio until he'd figured out how to turn the radio part on just enough to provide background noise. Then he rolled over to face the wall.

Carefully, he took the phone and note from his pocket again. The bedroom light was off, but there was enough light coming in through the window for him to read it. It was a tangible link to Sarah, and he lost himself in the handwriting while he waited for the twenty minutes to be up.

Please be true.

Please don't be a trick.

<><>​

Taylor
One Block Away

"Ugh." I rubbed my temples. "That took forever."

"We can go now?" asked Aisha, clipping the side engine cover back on the motorbike and picking up the tools she'd strewn artistically around.

"Yeah." I took out my phone. "Just as soon as I make this call. But can we go slower this time?"

Aisha grinned. "No promises."

<><>​

Coil's Old Base
Lady Photon

Lisa's phone rang and she answered it promptly. "Yeah. Okay, he has? He did? He is? Excellent. I'll let her know."

She ended the call and turned to Sarah, her usual secretive smirk now a beaming smile. "You'll be pleased to know that your husband is on the ball. He finally went into the bathroom, about five minutes ago. Taylor says it only took half an hour of nudging. If she gets headaches like I do, we might have to break out the extra-strength Tylenol."

"Well?" asked Sarah, as Lisa paused teasingly. "What did he do? Has he got the phone? Did he read the note?"

Lisa grinned, her snark back in full force. "Yeah, he's got it, and he's read the note. Taylor's power just registered him going upstairs. So, Operation Manpower Ahoy is a go."

Sarah checked the time on the phone she was holding. Fifteen minutes to go.

I hope he paid attention to the instructions. Carol means well, but she'd be like a wrecking ball to our plans right now.

<><>​

Manpower

There wasn't any more than thirty seconds to go by Neil's estimation when he heard a light tap on the bedroom door. "Neil?" It was Carol's voice.

Shit. He debated inwardly what to do. If he didn't say anything or pretended to be asleep, she'd try to open the door anyway. "What?" Reaching over, he turned the radio down.

The latch clicked and he heard the door handle scraping against the back of the chest of drawers as it turned. "I just wanted to say I'm sorr—why isn't the door opening?"

"Because I put a chest of drawers in front of it. What do you want?"

"Why did you do that?"

"Because I didn't want to be disturbed. What do you want?"

He heard her take a breath to compose herself. "I came up here to apologise for yelling at you. Can you let me in so we can talk about it?"

"No." He felt that was a little curt, so he kept talking. "I'm trying to have a nap. Maybe when I wake up, I might feel like it."

"You're still mad at me, aren't you?"

Fuck, I do not need this conversation right now.

"You unilaterally floated this plan with the Director—involving my family—without consulting me. What do you think?"

There was a pause. "Okay, I'll leave you to it. I'm still sorry, and we'll talk later when you're feeling better."

"Yeah, you do that." He turned back to face the wall as her footsteps retreated down the corridor.

The phone in his hand buzzed just as he turned the radio back up again.

He froze, just long enough for it to buzz twice more, then he swiped the green icon and held it to his ear. "Hello?" he whispered. "Sarah?"

"Geez, I thought you were never going to pick up," she answered teasingly. Tears of relief sprang to his eyes as she continued. "Yes, it's me. I'm fine, just like the note said. The kids are fine too. Here, Eric. Say hi to your dad."

The phone was passed to someone else, then he heard his son's voice, cheerful and upbeat. "Hey, Dad. I'm good. Crystal's still Crystal, so that's a problem." There was a distant hey! and Eric blew a raspberry. "Uh, gotta go. Here's Mom. Bye!"

Sarah's voice came back on the line, laughter in her voice. "Me again. So yeah, the kids are all physically healthy, Amy and Vicky included. But Vicky's not actually okay, which is why all the secrecy and running around kidnapping people."

Neil could literally feel the tension leaching out of his body at the sound of his wife's voice. She was alive and well, and clearly in good spirits, and so were the kids. Thank God. Except Vicky, which didn't sound good. He'd never seen anything get through Vicky's shield.

"Gallant?" he asked quietly, having to swallow a couple of times to clear his throat. "Is he part of this, too? Because of Vicky?"

"Very much so," Sarah confirmed. "He's here and he's fine as well. So, here's the thing. Due to a series of catastrophic misjudgements that we don't need to go into right now, Vicky is now partially amnesiac. Basically, she's forgotten most of who she is. Fingers can be pointed and blame apportioned later, but to make a long story extremely short, we're gathering together everyone who knows her, so we can use our accumulated memories of her to rebuild her memories of herself, and bring her back."

Neil blinked, working through a series of deep breaths. Okay. That was … considerably different to what he'd thought was going on. "Who's the red-headed girl?" he asked. "Carol says she had some sort of sneaky Blaster or Shaker attack. And why can't we just put this in the hands of the PRT so they can make it happen without all the under-the-table stuff?"

"Because like I said in the note, they'll take charge and utterly screw up the whole plan that we've put together." Sarah drew in a deep breath. "Carol's not in possession of all the facts; neither do I believe that she's in her right mind at the moment. I love her dearly, but right now I wouldn't put her in charge of a lemonade stand. And as for the girl, she's an accidental ally, one who's as dedicated to fixing Vicky's problem as I am."

As much as Neil hated to say it, Sarah's summation of Carol's mental state was probably closer to reality than he wanted to admit. "What about Amy? I know she says she can't do brains, but maybe if she really tried …"

"She has, and she can't." Sarah paused for a long moment. "If we're going to do this properly, we're going to need you and your memories of Vicky. So, can you break away from your minders and come meet us?"

"Well, yeah …." Then he paused as inspiration struck. "No, no, wait a minute. I just had a better idea."

"What? What better idea? What do you mean?" Sarah sounded uncertain.

"You're gonna need Carol, right?" Of course they were going to need Carol. She would have the most memories of Vicky out of everyone. "And she's gonna be the hardest sell of them all. She'll argue until the sun goes down and still be defending her point when it comes up again. So, I'm gonna stay right where I am. When you come to get her, I'll be your guy on the inside."

There was a long pause on Sarah's end. "That's brilliant. I love it. I love you. Okay, yes, we can definitely do it that way."

He grinned crookedly at the happiness in her tone. "You realise, I'm still going to have to put you over my knee for scaring the crap out of me like that."

Her tone was pure sultry siren. "If we pull this off, you can do whatever you want to me … stud." Then she burst out laughing.

"What?" he demanded, working to keep his voice down. "What's so funny?"

She was still giggling when she answered. "There are six teenagers here, who all just mimed gagging at the same time. I've still got it."

Despite himself, a smirk crossed his lips. "You never lost it, babe."

"Nor did you, huggy-bear. Gonna hang up now. Take care, okay?"

"Always. Love you."

"Love you, too."

The call ended, and he shoved the phone deep into his pocket again and relaxed into the mattress. It was amazing what a difference a five-minute phone call could make in his life. Gone were the anger and fear occasioned by his wife and kids being abducted. There was still the worry about Vicky's well-being, but there was a plan that Sarah was involved with, so it had to be a good one.

He had no idea how they were going to access everyone's memories, but Sarah had sounded confident that they were and he trusted his wife implicitly, so there was clearly some way it was possible. All he had to do was keep his eyes open and make his move at the right time, and hopefully everything would turn out okay.

The trick, he decided, was figuring out how to get Carol away from everyone else.

That was going to be a problem, but he figured he had time to find a solution.

<><>​

Taylor

"Okay, he's in." Sarah smiled broadly as she put the phone down. "And by that, I mean he's on board with what we're doing, but he's going to stay with Carol until the time comes to grab her up. The phrase he used was 'our man on the inside'."

"That's amazing," I said, and meant it. Everyone else had taken a certain amount of talking to before they came around to the idea. Mrs. Pelham had just … told her husband what was going on, and he'd gone right along with it. "How did you convince him so quickly?"

"Thank you, Taylor dear," she said with a beaming smile. "But there's no real secret to it. Neil and I have been married for twenty years. He knows when I'm being serious about something."

"Trust me when I say that's not always the case." Lisa raised her eyebrows briefly. "But I have to say, from what I've seen of your marriage, you've got the real deal there."

"Okay, yeah, great." Amy dropped into the seat next to mine. "Aunt Sarah's great, Uncle Neil's on board, literally nobody in the room is surprised. News at eleven."

"Whoa, whoa, Amy girl. A-game. Amester. Chillax, seriously." Aisha made time-out gestures. "I'm the one whose job it is to make with the dark snark. Don't go trompin' on my deal there. Okay?"

Amy blinked as though trying to decipher Aisha's rapid-fire delivery, then slumped with a defeated sigh. "Right. Sorry. It's just …"

She didn't need to finish what she was saying. I put my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder with something approaching a sob. "Hey, it's okay," I said quietly. "We've got this. Did you have that list of Vicky's friends we need to pick up?"

"Mm-hmm." She pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to me. "I was getting Vicky to tell me their names and addresses, and just listening to her …" Her voice broke again. There were definitely tears in her eyes by now.

"Well, we're going to get this sorted, and then she can yell at you all she wants," Lisa declared. "How many names on that list?"

Awkwardly, using one hand—my other arm was still occupied with comforting Amy—I opened the sheet and looked at it. "Seven. Doable tonight?"

"Definitely doable tonight," Lisa agreed. She shuffled through several sheets of paper in front of her, then tapped one with her fingernail. "Okay, so let's change things up. Manpower's resourceful, able to adapt to new circumstances, right?"

"He ought to be," Lady Photon said with a slight smile, buffing her nails on her blouse. "He married me, after all."

"Good." Lisa's tone indicated that she'd expected nothing less. "Message him. Let him know we're coming over now to pick him and Brandish up. Best case, he gets out of there without letting the agents call for help. The more hang time we have before they lock down the area—and once they find out we've grabbed the last two members of New Wave, they will have roadblocks from Downtown clear out to Captain's Hill—the better. We do not want Velocity peering in through the car window before we're halfway back here. Can do?"

Lady Photon nodded, her expression serious now. "Can do."

Lisa looked at me. "Taylor, how's your head?"

"It's fine," I said warily. "Why?" The headache that had closed down after I pushed myself to influence Manpower had eased off, thankfully. I no longer felt like a gorilla was clamping a vise down over my temples. This, I suspected, was not going to be the case for much longer.

She gave me a sympathetic look. "I'm going to need you to be riding in the vehicle that picks up Manpower." There were several such vehicles parked in an underground parking garage. "Anything you can do to dissuade pursuit would be useful."

"I can supply you with birds and rats to disable vehicles and distract them at the right time," Amy said quietly. "You can do birds and rats all day, right?"

"I can, yeah." Birds and rats were a much easier proposition than people.

Lisa nodded. "Okay, so that's the Manpower pickup sorted. Now, once we've got the kids secured, I'll contact Cranial. If her reputation's anything to go by, we'll be set up and ready to roll by four hours after that."

"The sooner the better," Amy warned her, straightening up from my shoulder. "Carol's going to need to be sedated just so she doesn't try to kill me once she finds out what's going on. I don't want to have to keep her under any longer than absolutely necessary." She looked around at the rest of us, then over at Gallant. "Also, the longer we take to finish this off, the higher the chance Director Piggot will decide to bring in the big guns to look for you."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it." Gallant—Dean—was actually a pretty nice guy, once I got to know him. He was friendly and self-effacing, and came the closest I'd seen yet to matching his personality to his cape persona. "I still think I could've dropped her a message on the quiet to let her know I hadn't been kidnapped for real."

"Wouldn't have worked," Lisa advised him, then looked over at where Lady Photon and Aisha had each said exactly the same thing. "Okay, you two. I know how I came to that conclusion. How did you guys figure it out?"

"Emily Piggot's an ex-assault trooper," Mrs. Pelham said bluntly. "She's been in the hot seat in the PRT ENE for ten years now, but when push comes to shove, she's military to the core. She doesn't do 'look the other way'. If you contacted her, she would flat-out refuse to take your word that everything's okay, until you came clean to her with everything. Then, because you're a Ward and you're involved, she'd do her best to leverage herself into the control seat, take over, and do what she figures is the right course of action. Which would be first to make sure there's zero backlash to the PRT. Secondly, to ensure that New Wave is beholden to the PRT. And Vicky's welfare would come last in line. Probably therapy to rebuild some kind of personality from what's been left behind. What she wouldn't do is go to a rogue who also deals with villains, especially if it would cost the PRT significant money in the process."

"Wow, huh," Aisha remarked. "I was just gonna say she's a bureaucrat, and they fuck everything up."

Lisa shrugged. "Well, you're not wrong," she conceded, then turned to Lady Photon. "Not a bad analysis. You just left out the bit where the Director hates capes, probably because a cape did her dirty back in the day. So, while she won't deliberately screw Vicky over with cheap therapy, she certainly won't go out of her way to make sure Vicky gets the best of the best, either."

Dean grimaced. "Are you sure you aren't being a bit unfair on her? I mean, sure she's a hardass but she needs to be, with her job."

"I admire your loyalty," Lisa said, sincerely as far as I could tell. "But there comes a time when you need to look at things realistically. And realistically speaking? Vicky's well-being is nowhere near as important to your boss as the PRT's image is. She'll do what looks good, not what's best for Vicky. Look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong."

"I can't." Dean shook his head. "But what if I contacted my family to let them know I'm okay? They could pass it on to the Director."

"Even I can tell that one wouldn't work," I said. "She wouldn't take it seriously unless she was speaking to you directly, and then she'd work at pressuring you to tell her exactly what's going on, or just extracting you from the situation. Because no adult likes to think they couldn't do a better job at being in charge than some kid." I glanced at Mrs. Pelham. "No offence."

"None taken," she said serenely. "I'm not sure what sort of arrangements I could've made if I'd come into this blind, and I still have reservations about dealing with rogue capes, but I can't think of a better way to bring Vicky back to us. You and your friends have done an impressive job so far of arranging matters, so I'm willing to pitch in and make sure your plan works."

I felt Amy relax against me, very slightly. "And that's why I love her," she murmured in my ear.

For my part, I could definitely see why she had the nickname 'Photon Mom'. If anyone possessed the suitable temperament to be the mother of teenagers, it was Mrs. Pelham. "Yeah," I agreed.

"Okay," declared Lisa. "If you want to send that message now, Mrs. Pelham, Taylor can go out with Crystal to pick up your husband. They can take the silver SUV. It's the one that's least like Danny's car. Crystal?"

"Sure," said Laserdream from where she was sitting with Vicky. "Can someone come relieve me here? We're in the middle of a game of pattycake, then I think she'll want her hair braided."

"I can do that," Aisha offered with a grin. "Nobody braids her hair like I do. Do they, Vicky?"

"No, Most Esteemed Aisha," Vicky agreed. "I like how you braid my hair."

Eric, sitting near me, shook his head slightly. "That will never not be weird," he murmured.

It seemed Laserdream was of the same mind. "We'll be done by this time tomorrow, right? We'll have her back?"

"That's the plan." Lisa's voice was confident, but I could see the way she had her fists clenched, the knuckles showing white. The tension was getting to her as well. "We'd better get what sleep we can, and once you two get back, you'd better do the same. We'll be heading out after sundown to do the collections, and then we've got to make sure nothing gets in the way of what Cranial is doing. It's going to be a very long night."

I wished Dad was there for extra support, but we couldn't risk him not being contactable even once if the PRT turned up for a random sweep, so he was at home for the duration. Hopefully, once we had Vicky's situation sorted out, we could then get to work on mine.

Just so long as nothing else goes wrong.

<><>​

Circus

The torsion bar lost its purchase inside the lock, and Circus cursed luridly under her breath as the mechanism snapped back into place. The lock was just a little bigger than she was used to, with extra security mechanisms that made it harder to seat the torsion bar just right and to move the rake properly. She almost suspected Coil of having had the cells designed to make it harder for people who might smuggle in lockpicks and the like.

Did he specifically plan to have me locked in here at some point, or was he just preparing for the possibility?

Sending the picks back to her personal hammerspace, she considered the other items within it. Road flares, not so useful right now; a spare set of clothing, which would come in handy if she could ever get out of here but not until then; a set of throwing knives, which she could absolutely carom through the feeding slot to nail whoever brought her food, though that wouldn't be totally wise if she then couldn't get the keys ...

I've got no real choice.

Taking out the picks again, she inserted them into the lock. If she kept trying, sooner or later she'd get the damn lock open. And then, Tattletale was going to find out why nobody stiffed Circus.

Nobody.

<><>​

The Dallon Household
Ten Minutes Later
Manpower

Careful not to scrape the wall or damage the chest of drawers, Neil picked the heavy piece of furniture up and moved it back to its original position. The phone was back in his pocket, and he'd figured out what he had to do. Carol was going to be utterly pissed with him after the fact; but as the saying went, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Ironically, the solution to his problem had been supplied all unaware by Carol herself. Sarah had given her sister a bunch of sleeping pills a few years ago when she was having issues with pushing herself too hard day after day, but to Neil's understanding Carol hadn't been taking them. According to Sarah, they were still sitting in the master bedroom ensuite medicine cabinet, in the original packaging.

Edging the door open, he peeked around the jamb, finding to his relief that nobody was in the corridor. This could change at any moment, so he stepped out and pulled the door closed quietly behind him. As a large man in the superhero game, he'd long since learned how to move quietly; the last thing he wanted was for the bad guys to hear him coming before he could get his hands on them. The floorboards creaked under his weight, but not unreasonably so. Still, by the time he got to the main bedroom door, he was imagining Carol and the PRT agents peering at the ceiling and wondering what he was doing up there.

As he laid his hand on her door handle, he worried for a moment that she might've locked it. This wouldn't stop him for more than a second or so, but breaking the lock would make noise that he couldn't afford. Holding his breath, he turned the handle. It moved smoothly and the door clicked open.

He breathed again.

Pushing the door open, he ducked inside and pulled it shut behind him. Now he was on the clock, in more ways than one. His pickup was on the way; but he also didn't dare get caught in Carol's bedroom. In order for the plan to work, he needed to be in and out before anyone saw him.

Moving through to the ensuite, he flicked the light on and opened the wall cabinet. Minor household medications met his gaze, but no sleeping pills showed themselves. "Come on, come on …" he murmured to himself. "Where are you?"

Shoving a bottle of aspirin and a tube of antiseptic cream aside, he reached deeper into the cabinet. A jar full of Q-tips was in the way, so he nudged that to one side as well. For a moment, he thought his search was in vain, then he spotted the corner of a box that had been pushed all the way to the back.

Stretching his hand over the intervening obstacles, he snagged the lurking box with two fingers and lifted it out. The logo of a popular brand of sleeping pill met his eyes, and he heaved a sigh of relief. Shoving the box into his pocket alongside the phone, he closed the cabinet again and crept back to Carol's bedroom door. Though to him it felt like he'd been in there searching for hours, it could only have been a matter of minutes.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and he jolted into action. Stepping smoothly out through the door, he closed it as quickly as he dared, letting the lock tongue slide back into the slot without a sound. As the noise reached the top of the staircase, he took three long strides to the door of the spare room. Grabbing the door handle, he opened it quickly, then pulled it shut with a distinct c-click.

The PRT team leader came around the corner and nodded to him. "Feeling better, sir?"

"Much," he acknowledged. "Sorry for that display, earlier. That wasn't exactly a good look for the team."

The PRT guy shrugged sympathetically. "We're all under a certain amount of stress, sir. It happens."

"Well, I'm going down to make myself a cup of coffee." Neil tried to make his tone casual. "Would you and your people like some, too?"

"I wouldn't say no to a cup of joe, sir." The agent nodded in appreciation. "We need to be as alert as we can."

"That's true. We do." Firmly quashing any and all qualms of guilt—according to Sarah, the PRT did not have the full story and would absolutely screw things up if they did—he headed downstairs.

Making the coffee was a calming ritual for him. Halfway through, Carol wandered in to see what was happening. "Hey," she said quietly. "I just want to say sorry for … well, you know."

He shrugged, much as the PRT agent had. "Stress happens. Want one? I can bring it out to you."

She paused for a moment, looking at him, and he feared she had seen something in his expression or heard it in his voice. But she tilted her head slightly and smiled. "I'd like that, thanks, Neil. That would be very nice."

After she wandered out again, he took out the packet of sleeping pills. It was still sealed, never opened despite how long ago Sarah had given them to Carol. Opening it quietly was easy; popping the pills out of their plastic-and-aluminum prisons took a little more care.

He didn't bother crushing them with a spoon; squeezing them between finger and thumb did the trick. Stirring the powder into each of the five cups out of the six he was making was easy. One pill went into each, then he frowned and went around the cups putting a second one in. Then a third. Finally, recalling how fit and healthy the PRT agents were, he crushed a fourth one into each cup, hoping the extra sugar he was adding would mask the taste. He couldn't put any more in, as that was the end of the packet and he wasn't about to head upstairs and look for more.

"Coffee's up," he announced, heading out into the living room with a tray holding five in one hand, and his un-dosed cup in the other.

The PRT agents converged on him, each taking a cup. Carol favoured him with a smile as she took the last one, then sipped it and rolled her eyes. "Wow, do you always prefer it this strong? Do you sleep at night ever?"

"I want to be on the ball if they come for us," he said seriously.

After a moment, she nodded in agreement and took another sip. "Well, you're not wrong. And this does have a definite kick to it."

Neil took the tray back to the kitchen, then forced himself to sit in the living room and pretend to watch TV while surreptitiously keeping tabs on his sister-in-law and the PRT agents in the room. It seemed to take forever before Carol started to yawn and stretch, but soon after the agents began to droop a little as well. When the first snore arose, Neil slid the phone from his pocket and sent a single text. Now.

Standing up, he moved over to where Carol was slumped on the sofa beside the female agent. Picking her up, he headed toward the front door. Without pausing in his stride, he opened the door and stepped outside, just as the silver SUV pulled up at the curb.

Crystal leaned across from the driver's side seat and waved through the window, and he smiled.

<><>​

Later That Night
Holland Household

Stella Holland was upstairs doing her homework and wondering where Vicky Dallon was—she was usually the life of the party when they gathered in the cafeteria at lunch, and she hadn't shown up for days—when her mother called from downstairs.

"Stella! There's someone here to see you!"

There was a note of excitement in her mother's voice that she'd rarely heard before, so she closed her books and trotted down the stairs to see what was going on. In the living room, she was surprised to see not Vicky or even Amy, but the other New Wave kids and their mom. She didn't know Crystal or Eric anywhere near as well as she knew Vicky, but she'd met them a couple of times. And of course everyone in Brockton Bay knew Lady Photon.

"Oh, wow, hi," she said, trying to be chill but fully aware she was anything but. "What's up? Is this about Vicky?"

Lady Photon smiled, as though Stella had just passed a test she hadn't known she was taking. "As a matter of fact, it is," she said. "You might have noticed she hasn't been around the last few days?" Pausing, she gave Stella an expectant look.

"Well, yeah." Stella paused, not sure what else to say. "What's going on? Where is she?"

"I'm glad you asked." Lady Photon lowered her voice conspiratorially. "She's been getting ready for an upcoming event, one that she's specifically invited you to attend. It's a cape thing, which is why we couldn't spread it around that it was happening."

"Is it a birthday party? I bet it's a birthday party." Stella had heard chapter and verse about how capes tried to hide their ages, especially among the Wards. She'd never been invited to one of these before. Shit, what am I going to wear?

"Good guess." Lady Photon beamed at her. "Now, I'm really sorry at the short notice, but it's actually tonight." She rolled her eyes almost theatrically. "Blame the organisers for moving up the schedule without telling anyone."

"T-tonight?" Stella stared at her, then turned to her mother. "Mom, can I still go? Please? This is the first cape birthday party I've ever been invited to."

"Hmm ... I don't know." Her mother looked dubious. "Have you finished your homework?"

"Totally," Stella replied, lying through her teeth. She could always do it on the bus into school, in the morning.

Still, her mother didn't look convinced. "When does the party finish? And how many people are coming? Are there going to be chaperones?"

Lady Photon fielded the questions with grace and aplomb. "We'll be done by ten at the latest. And no more than twenty people, all told. Most of these will be capes, showing up for the event. As for chaperones, if you wanted to come along yourself, you're welcome to do so."

"I ... suppose." Suddenly flustered, Stella's mother looked down at herself. "I'm hardly dressed to attend a party."

"It's due to start when everyone is there," Lady Photon explained. "If you wanted to take a little time to get ready, I still need to speak to everyone else on the invitation list, then we can come back and pick you up. Would that be more acceptable?"

Stella didn't dare speak, but she stared at her mother, willing her to say yes. Please, please, please, please ...

Eventually, her mother nodded. "I don't suppose it will do any harm, just this once." She smiled. "It's been awhile since I've been to a birthday party. Are we expected to bring presents?"

"Oh, no, no." Lady Photon shook her head with an answering smile. "Just being there is all the present they'll need. It's a very private affair."

"Oh. That's nice. So, you'll be back to pick us up in ..." Her mother's eyes went introspective for a moment. "... An hour?"

Lady Photon nodded. "An hour would be just fine." She beamed at Stella. "We'll see you then."

Stella watched as they went out through the front door, then took off into the night sky. She turned to her mother. "Thank you thank you thank you!" she enthused. "You're the best mom ever!"

"Well, it's not every day we get invited to a cape birthday party, dear." Her mother raised her eyebrows. "We've got an hour."

"Crap!" Stella turned and dashed up the stairs. Time to see just how fast she could get ready for a party.

<><>​

Laserdream

As they flew away from the house, Crystal turned to her mother. "No offence, Mom, but I am never going to trust another word out of your mouth again."

"Speak for yourself." Eric laughed out loud. "That was the coolest thing I ever saw. You just lied your head off without saying a thing that wasn't true."

Sarah chuckled a little as well. "Children, take a lesson. The best way to get away with lying is to cultivate a reputation for being up-front and straightforward. So, who's next on the list?"

Crystal pulled the folded paper from her pocket and played light from her fingertip over it. "Britney Matheson. I know where she lives."

"Excellent. Take us there."

And away they soared, into the night.

Down below, a block away from the Holland house, Aisha's motorcycle pulled away from the curb and followed along behind.



End of Part Twelve