12

Chapter Text

Adrian and Danny stood there, staring at the Worgen girl in front of them. She hugged herself, looking scared and confused. "Daddy?" she said. "What's Skinwalker doing in my hospital room?"

Adrian shook his head, realizing. He shifted, shrinking down to his human height and form. "It's okay, Taylor," he said, smiling and holding out his hand. "It's me. I'm here. Everything's gonna be all right."

"Adrian?" Her amber eyes flew wide in astonishment and a smile spread across her face. Then the smile faded into hazy confusion. She took a step forward and stumbled.

Both men moved to catch her. There were no flies on Danny, but Adrian was just a touch faster. He caught her in the cradle of his arm before she hit the floor. He held up his hand in front of her face and began casting a Remove Corruption.

"Hey now--" Danny said warningly.

"It's a purifying effect," Adrian said. "I'm clearing the morphine out of her system." Her eyelids fluttered as she started to wake.

"But the doctors--"

"Does she look like she needs a morphine drip, or like she needs a sobering up?" Adrian said. "She's just transmogrified into a completely new body. She's probably the healthiest person in this room right now." Taylor came out of her swoon with startling swiftness. She sat up in Adrian's arm, her eyes wide.

"Woof," she said. "What the heck was in that IV?" She raised a hand to pull the hair away from her face, then froze. She spent a long second looking with wide eyes at her grey-furred, taloned hand. Then she started to shake.

"Taylor," Adrian said. "Taylor!" Her head whipped around to stare at him eye to eye. "Taylor, it's okay. It's okay Taylor. Taylor, look..." Adrian lifted his hand-- his human hand-- into her view. She stared at it uncomprehending. Then, slowly, it grew covered with black fur. The palms and fingertips turned into pads, and claws, semi-retractable talons, replaced the nails. The fur spread up his arm under his sleeve and up his neck, and suddenly his wolfen face was smiling into hers. "It's okay, see?" The fur retreated and he was human again. "You're still there, you're still you. Look, try. Like me." He took her hand in his and stroked her padded, clawed fingers. "Come on..."

Her ears flickered at the attention; noone needed to read lupine body language to see she was embarrassed. She looked at her hand and frowned; the pale gray fur retreated from her fingers, then her hand, then her forearm… then with a swift rush the transformation rolled over her and she was an ordinary human girl again. They shared a smile; his encouraging, hers relieved.

Danny cleared his throat. "Ahem." They both started and looked up at him. Taylor squeaked as she realized that yes, she was human again; she was a human girl, dressed in nothing but a seriously drafty hospital smock, sitting in a boy's lap-- face flaming, she leapt to her feet and dove behind the hospital modesty curtain. "Where are my clothes?" she called out.

"Um, ruined," Adrian said. "The locker..."

She stuck her head out through a gap in the curtain. "I need to change," she said. She was wolfen once again.

In spite of the deadly seriousness of the situation, Danny snickered. "It seems you did," he said.

Taylor's eyes crossed as she looked at her own muzzle. "What-- oh darn it!" she ducked behind the curtain again. "I didn't even realize it!" she said, upset.

Adrian got to his feet, shifting back to his worgen form himself. Largely to hide the blush on his face with a layer of fur. "It's because that's your natural form now," he explained cautiously. "You default to it."

"What? No! That.. but… oh no." Taylor's voice seemed very small.

"Baby, are you okay?" Danny said. He started to move towards the curtain, but Adrian's hand stopped him

"Yes, yes I'm FINE!" she said firmly, if with a slight quaver at the end. "Just… give me a minute okay?"

"All-- all right," Danny said. He looked over at Adrian, questions on his face.

Adrian leaned in and muttered in his ear. "Give her a minute," he said. "If she's anything like I was, a little self-examination is going on back there. It's kind of a shock getting a new body, after all." Danny gave a silent 'ahh' and nodded.

Behind the curtain, Taylor was giving herself the once-over. She looked at her hands, the palms and fingertips like footpads, the claws. She flexed her hands, extending and contracting them. The fur was light and soft; of course it was probably baby-new. She stroked her eartips, marveling at how they flicked and moved at the touch of her fingers; after a second she could move them about consciously. She wiggled them and giggled silently to herself.

The muzzle, that was a bit distracting. She kept seeing her own nose and crossing her eyes. She hoped she got used to it soon. Wet nose, long flat tongue, the fangs elicited a shudder. The face and mouth were more flexible and mobile than normal for a dog or wolf; it was probably how she was able to enunciate so clearly.

She ran her hands down her sides. Wow, slimmer waist, wider hips, holy cow she had abs! Bye bye poochy belly. She'd hated that thing; with her thin stick arms and wide mouth she'd looked like a frog standing on its hind legs. Come to mention it her arms were pretty well formed too, with some solid muscle on them. And her legs, dang. They were, what was the word, digitigrade? And again, she had paws rather than feet. That would take some getting used to. But she could feel muscles on them that would make an olympic sprinter green with envy. She looked down at herself--

"AGH!" She said, grabbing the twin mounds she found on her chest. "What the hell?"

"What, what is it?" Came alarmed voices from the other side of the room.

She realized what she was doing and let go of her boobs, face red hot. She stuck her head out and looked at Adrian, who was back in his wolf-man form and digging through his backpack without a care in the world. She squinted at him suspiciously. "Is there any particular reason," she hissed, "That I've suddenly gone up to a C-Cup?"

The expressions that Adrian's face went through were extraordinary to watch, especially on a wolfen head. "Why do you think I had anything to do with it?" he managed to splutter.

"...Yes," said her father, his brows furrowing suddenly in suspicion. "Why DO you think he had anything to do with it?"

Adrian gave them both appalled looks. "What--" his brows suddenly tabled and his ears laid flat. "All the changes to your body, and the one you're focusing on is your bra size," Adrian said in monotone disbelief. "And blaming it on me."

"I'm wanting to know why my daughter ended up as a suspiciously convenient female version of you," Danny said.

He took a deep breath. "Look, before this stupid train of conversation goes any further, the basics are this; she Triggered. It went wrong, completely wrong. Most people don't know it but when you Trigger, the Shard-- the source of a parahuman's power-- sort of..." he waved his hands. "Sort of templates off of any other parahumans in the immediate vicinity. When Taylor triggered, the source of her powers tried to template off me. But I'm not LIKE other parahumans, my powers are innate and I don't HAVE a real Shard. It was like, like plugging an X-box cartridge into a Sega system... it shorted out and was damaged beyond repair.

"The… entities I spoke to offered to help, but they did it their way, by their rules. I dunno if it was pure chance, or they just decided to roll with a theme. But they ended up giving her a power set… similar to mine. And a body from the same species template as mine.

"My best guess? They gave her a new body that is both fully developed and at the peak of its physical prime. Kinda like what they did with me. I mean look--" he flexed his ridiculously huge muscles, Charles Atlas style. "Think this is normal for a sixteen year old guy? What you got is what you'd be naturally."

"As a dog?"

"I betcha your human form is buffed up too," Adrian challenged.

She looked suddenly thoughtful and disappeared behind the curtain again. "Holy cow," her voice said almost reverently.

"So you've got a curvy, skinny, athletic body with big perky boobs, And this is a bad thing?" Adrian challenged her in exasperation.

"….No!" she admitted reluctantly. "Okay, fine. Good point. This is just… weird for me, okay?" she pleaded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"...It's gonna be hard to explain this… or these--" she jumped up and down a bit. (She noted to her amusement that Adrian's head, almost against his will, bobbed up and down as well)-- "next week in gym class," she pointed out.. "'What? These? Oh, It's a new protein drink from California, uses a lot of coconuts," she snarked.

Adrian shook his head (oh God please don't let her father have noticed my head bobbing up and down) and snorted. "New, from the Hentai labs in Tokyo Towers," he said in a radio announcer's cadence, "Gainaxium! Also available in America as Twin Peaks formula--" he saw Danny's warning stare. "Okay, shutting up now." He laid his ears back and meekly returned to digging through his pack.

…. Hey, why don't we have any tails?" Taylor pondered out loud.

"No idea," Adrian said. "But it's probably a good thing. Imagine trying to keep it clean. Or getting it slammed in doors all the time."

"Ugh."

Danny suddenly sat down, cradling his head in his hands. "This conversation has gotten too surreal. This conversation… this day… my life…!"

"Sir, I'd love to sit down with you and explain absolutely everything to you and Taylor both, and I will," Adrian said. "But that's going to be a two-hour lecture involving details on life, the universe, cosmic entities and alien races, the nature and origins of superpowers, and possibly every conspiracy and secret society on the planet, and I really don't think we have time for that." He pulled out a bundle of cloth and threw it to Taylor, who caught it one-armed. "Sorry, just a hoodie and some sweatshorts," he said. I don't think I got anything better in here."

"What's the rush?" Danny said cautiously.

"Sir, I think my secret identity is just about shot," Adrian said. "I was sloppy. I've already made far too many mistakes, even before I was seen rampaging through the halls of Winslow High with Taylor in my arms. Crap, I was out there selling tinker gadgets, tinker gadgets with MY personal style, out in the Market. You'd have to be a moron not to connect the dots.

"If you want your daughter to have any kind of a normal life we're going to have to move now. There's a whole daisy chain of clues now leading between Skinwalker, and Adrian Smith, and her. We need to break the chain now, and get out of here without leaving a paper trail for anyone to follow."

"This is a Cape ward, son," Danny said patiently. "They protect Capes' anonymity. They're overseen by the PRT--"

"And that's the problem," Adrian said, glaring. "They're going to be here any minute to try and strong-arm your daughter into joining the Wards."

"The WARDS?" Taylor had finished pulling on the old sweats Adrian had given her. She stormed out from behind the curtain snarling. She had rolled the hoodie sleeves up to her elbows, and the shorts were so long and baggy they hung down to her knees like culottes. "Like HELL! That bitch SOPHIA is one of them!"

Both Adrian and Danny gave her startled looks. "We knew that but how did you?" Adrian asked.

Taylor stood there with her shoulders hunched and her ears flat, arms crossed tight and looking both enraged and humiliated. "When they stuffed me in the locker, she reached through the door to steal my phone so I couldn't call for help," she spat. "Name three heroes in Brockton Bay who can turn into shadows and walk through walls, and the first two don't count."

"The sad thing is, that's the thing they're least to blame for," Adrian snorted as he strapped his backpack on. "Blackwell sat on her teachers so they wouldn't get "her" Ward in trouble, and the trained PRT monkey that was supposed to be holding Sophia's leash wasn't reporting anything to her superior officers like she was supposed to. I tried to drop dime on her but without material evidence they would have been climbing up my tailpipe instead of hers." He looked ashamed. " I should have ratted her out anyway. I'm sorry, Taylor, I--"

She surprised the fool out of him by wrapping her arms around his bull neck and hugging him. "Don't blame yourself," she said. "Sophia, Maddie and Emma decided to be bitches long before you showed up. It's not your fault."

Awkwardly, he returned her hug. The brief thought flashed through both their minds: He/She smells really nice…

Danny cleared his throat again. The two broke the clinch, both looking so much like guilty puppies caught sneaking a milk bone that he had to fight the urge to pull his smartphone and photograph it.

Adrian cleared his throat himself. "There are good people in the Protectorate and the PRT. But even without Sophia, the PRT's a mess. They're incompetent, inefficient, and right now they're rotten from top to bottom with spies… they've been infiltrated by at least one supervillain named Coil who thinks the Unwritten Rules are a cute fairy tale for little children. I did manage to drop dime on him, but God knows if they're even close to cornering and rooting him out. Joining the Wards wouldn't keep Taylor safe, it would endanger her life."

"Oh dear God," Danny said, covering his mouth and sinking into a chair. Finding out that the PRTs had a psychopath as a Ward was awful; finding out that the PRT itself had been infiltrated by a villain was like finding out that your city's police force was run by a white slave ring and the city hall by a drug cartel.

"But we've been here for hours," Taylor said. "They'll already have miles of paperwork and..."

"I've taken measures," Adrian said.

The paperwork, transaction records, even the security footage for the Cape Wing of First General was all stored in one location: a glassed-in island protected by a security guard and overseen by a single fifty year old secretary named Gladys. There wasn't need for much more; for all the capes that filled Brockton Bay, heroes, rogues and villains alike, the traffic in any particular Cape department was going to be fairly slow.

Gladys was proud of her security clearance, and rightly so. She did her job dutifully; Every file was properly annotated, Every record encrypted, every filing cabinet properly locked and unlocked only when she was adding or removing documents, every tape from the security cameras was sealed properly, every paper, CD, and DVD shredded on its expiration date and time right down to the minute. Noone, not even the guard, was allowed into her glassed-in little island with her, and the door was dutifully locked and unlocked by her own hand.

So perhaps she should be forgiven for her little slip up. It was a slow day, even for the Cape wing, with a grand total of one patient in the entire wing. So in a moment of idleness she had paused with the door to her island open--- just for a few moments--- while she chatted with the guard over something trivial. She had been so intrigued by the joke he'd been telling that she never noticed the three little jittery mechanical scorpions that scurried into her workspace right past her feet. They had climbed to the ceiling and waited.

The moment she had finished doing the data entry for one "T H" in room 219, and had opened the "H" drawer to drop in the paper copies, they made their move. One rappelled down on a silk line to drop into the filing cabinet. The second had gone for the day's security camera tapes, while the third had raced to hide behind the computer tower at her feet. On a silent synchronized signal, they revved up the buzz saw in their left claw, the drill in their right, and the taser in their tailtips, and struck.

Gladys had just turned back to her computer to tape a label to another folder when there was a shriek like an electric drill and the cabinet drawer she had open erupted. Shredded paper began fountaining in the air as the enthusiastic scorpion bot inside proceeded to turn everything from H to K into confetti. She gave a shriek of her own and whirled her office chair around to face the danger, only for loops of mangled security camera tape to begin unspooling into the air from under the counter. Then there was a loud ZAP, then a POP like a fuse blowing and her computer went black, wisps of smoke blowing out of the fan.

Then the drawer full of confetti caught fire.

Poor Gladys stood there with her chair tipped over, turning in a circle and screaming in shock. After a few seconds her decades-past safety training kicked in. She grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and opened up on the inferno boiling out of her precious filing cabinet. With a whoosh and a roar, her tiny enclosed office filled with clouds of fire suppressant fog. From the outside it looked as if the island had suddenly been filled with cotton.

When the smoke, literal and figurative, had cleared, it revealed Gladys standing in the middle of her lost little paradise, disheveled and undone, clutching her fire extinguisher and surrounded by shredded paper and plastic, extinguisher residue, smoke and soot.

The final cherry on top was that when the smog cleared away Gladys found herself face to face, on opposite sides of the glass, with Emily Piggot, Director of the ENE PRT. She was sharply dressed, for a surprise was using neither walker nor cane, had lost at least fifty pounds and was on the whole looking better and healthier than she had in nearly a decade.

Piggot raised one eyebrow and spoke into the intercom. "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you do not have the files on your most recent patient," she said.

Miles away, Coil cursed as his feed from the First General Cape wing office went dark. He'd planted cable taps and keystroke loggers there years ago; they'd often proved fruitful. When he'd received word that Skinwalker had been spotted at the First General he'd opened the connection and begun downloading the files and records for the day. Before he even got the first few megabites something had shut the connection down. A quick voicemail to the security guard he kept on the bribe payroll revealed that something had gotten into the records office and utterly destroyed everything: files, video, even paper copies.

And judging from the garbled last-second burst, the little black boxes he'd clipped to the computer and digital feeds had gotten crisped, too. Blast. Another resource up in a puff of smoke…

Danny considered some of the outrageous things the boy in front of him had done, and the dozens more that he was suspected of doing. "I'll take your word for it," he said seriously. "But how do we leave?"

Adrian suddenly grinned, his tongue lolling. "By the front door. Be right back." He shifted to human and trotted out of the hospital room. When he returned he was pushing a gurney with one hospital gown, and two set of scrubs... scrubs in the colors of the hospital staff, rather than the ones handed out to visitors. "Okay, Taylor, go human and suit up," he said, tossing her the scrubs. He tossed Danny the gown, and then began donning one of the sets of scrubs over his clothes. "Okay, Mr Hebert," he said, patting the gurney. "Hop on."

Right behind him was Panacea, who stared in confusion at him and gawked openly at Taylor. "What, you--!"

Adrian turned around and put a finger to her lip. "Here's the deal," he said. "You help us save her secret identity from the PRT and leave without being spotted, I give you the whole lowdown on everything later. I'll even let you use your biokinesis to scan me." For a brief moment, leaves sprouted in his hair. The girl's eyes went round, then to Danny's surprise she nodded in agreement.

"Okay, Amy? We're going to pull a little misdirection. So we need a little delaying tactic on your part..."

Moments later, Piggot came striding up the hospital corridor with Assault and Battery in tow. She had been torn on whom to bring with her on this, but reluctantly had to admit that for all that he photographed well, Armsmaster couldn't recruit a fat man to a pie eating contest. As aggravating as Assault could be, he and Battery were probably the most personable of the Protectorate and the best choice for meeting and recruiting new capes...or even balky rogues like Skinwalker.

They sidled past a pair of orderlies wheeling an older patient down the hallway and approached the room where Skinwalker was watching over the girl he'd rescued. Piggot cringed inside; a trigger event caused by a bullying incident. It was not common knowledge-- and the PRT tried, with varying levels of success, to keep it that way-- but a Cape's powers were heavily influenced by the nature of their Trigger. Bullying as a Trigger could produce powers that were pretty ugly... Take Aegis: the leader of the Wards had allegedly been triggered by bullying, and his power was essentially the ability to have his body brutally maimed and still survive. The boy spent the better part of any given week looking like a gruesome mutilation victim. It gave a certain unpleasant insight into the psychology of those who had suffered such abuse.

"Remember," Piggot said over her shoulder. "We're here to offer this girl a place on the Wards; to offer it as an option to get help for her… condition. Hopefully due to the apparent bond he has with the girl we can persuade Skinwalker to join as well, in order to provide her with emotional support."

"Got it," Assault said. "Exploit the little sick girl to blackmail the rogue into joining. Owgh." It wasn't hard to tell when Battery's elbow had given Assault's ribs a reminder.

"Not here," Battery hissed. To Piggot she spoke aloud. "Are they certain about the girl? Her power is..."broken" somehow?"

"That's the most detailed explanation they've come up with," Piggot confirmed. Good night, a 'broken' Trigger. Of all the horrors she'd imagined in her life… Powers were strange, powers were unpredictable, they were often counter intuitive, many of them were harmful or destructive or detrimental to use for various reasons, but they at least worked. Functioned in some internally consistent fashion. Even Case 53s had powers that gave them some sort of utility, to counterbalance their deformity. The idea of powers that did nothing but make the wielder suffer as they malfunctioned was terrifying. "Which is why the facilities of the PRT are probably her best bet, regardless."

"Selling point," Assault admitted. "Even if her powers are worse than useless, helping her will be good for the PRT's karma."

Piggot suddenly stopped. The door to the girl's room was standing open, and there was a darned cold breeze blowing through. Not bothering to knock she walked right in. Panacea was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the wide open window with a look of surprise on her face. "Director Piggot!" she said upon turning and seeing them. "I… good to see you again, I suppose. Despite the circumstances.."

"What's going on here?" she snapped. She could see the hospital bed was empty, a discarded IV stand next to it, the digital monitor on it beeping its complaint of neglect. "Where is the girl that was brought here?"

Panacea motioned to the window. "I'm afraid she and her friend… left," she said. "Just before you arrived." Piggot noticed a few downy feathers on the floor, drifting about in the breeze. Assault went to the window and looked out-- rather pointlessly, Piggot thought; the Skinwalker had a knack for disappearing into the sky in his owl form. Battery examined the bed and the IV. "She was on a morphine drip?" she exclaimed. "I'm amazed she could find her own feet, much less walk out of here. Or… fly. Or whatever she did..."

"She demonstrated a rather quick recovery, in case you didn't guess," Panacea said, a trifle sarcastically.

"With a power you described as 'malfunctioning?'" Piggot said pointedly. Panacea just shrugged and spread her hands.

"Do we try to find her?" Battery said uncertainly. The girl had fled. Skinwalker had sent some of his toys to destroy her paperwork before it could even be filed, much less read. It was clear that neither of them wanted her identity known. Trying to trace her identity down without her even having committed a crime could be seen as breaking the Unwritten Rules.

Piggot sighed. "We'll probably find out who she is anyway," she decided. "We still have to investigate the trigger event, and Skinwalker left a trail of big muddy pawprints leading from here all the way back to the school. A giant werewolf rescues a girl from a bunch of bullies? Hell, her name is probably gossip all over that school."

"They're probably miles away by now. We'll find them later."

Considerably less than a mile away, Adrian and Taylor trundled the gurney with Taylor's father out of the Emergency Room doors. Once they were all out of sight between two ambulances, Danny dismounted and they all shucked their scrubs. Taylor shifted to her worgen form, as did Adrian; the fewer people who saw their human identities the better. "Okay, that worked. Next step?" Danny would deny it to his dying day, but he was starting to enjoy this.

"You need to go back to work and pretend nothing happened," Adrian said. "If anyone asks, tell them Taylor got food poisoning or something and they sent her home. Taylor and I, we'll be going to my place to lay low-- don't worry, I got security out the wingwong, she'll be safe there.

"Leave work early, grab some tummy medicine-- just to leave a paper trail. Then go to this address..." Adrian wrote out the address of the warehouse that concealed his Lost Workshop. "Just ring the bell, I'll let you in.

"Then we'll all sit down, and I'll explain… well, everything. And a little bit more than everything. I promise."

Danny had started looking a little suspicious when Adrian started talking about 'back to his place,' but he suppressed his Protective Father genes and nodded. "It resembles something like a plan," he joked. "I'll see you soon. Be careful baby."

"You too Daddy," Taylor whispered giving him a hug.

Danny started to go, but then looked back at Adrian. "If you end up having to lose 'Adrian,' what should we call you?" he half-joked.

His response was a half-smile. "Call me Bayleaf."

Danny nodded, and trotted off to find his pickup in the parking lot. Taylor watched him go, then turned back to Adrian. "So how are we--" she yipped in surprise. Standing where Adrian had been was a snowy white reinder with an ornate harness and sparkling ornaments hanging from its antlers. "Adrian?" she said in disbelief. She shook her head and corrected herself. "Bayleaf?"

Bayleaf gave her a wink and knelt down. Cautiously she climbed onto his back. "Some of the weirder stories on PHO are starting to make sense," she said to him. He got to his hooves; she grabbed hold of the peytral around his neck and held on. "Well, Giddyaaaaaaaaaap---!!!" He reared up, then shot out onto the street in a thunder of hoofbeats.

There would be more than a few Brocktonians who would catch a glimpse of a werewolf woman on a white reindeer riding through the snowy streets, whooping and cheering and occasionally howling with glee as she raced on by.

The typical response in Brockton Bay was to shrug and suppose it meant it was a Tuesday.

"Welcome to the Lost Workshop."

Bayleaf had seen a lot of things that had warmed his heart. But nothing had ever made it melt quite like the expression of childlike wonder on Taylor's wolfen face when she saw his workshop for the first time. She stood in the center, turning in place, her eyes sparkling as she took it all in. "It's like a wizard's toy shop!" she said, laughing.

Bayleaf supposed it would look like that. To one side stood the furnaces, one glowing with orange flame, the other with blue. The anvils stood between them, surrounded by tools. On the other was his main worktable, where a cornucopia of trinkets, parts, tools and oddments were scattered. Toys and bots scurried around her feet, and what looked like a zeppelin made out of paper puttered past, just overhead. There were shelves where his finished products and projects were stacked, and a rack of mason jars glowed, gleamed and sparkled with dusts, shards, essences, and elemental materials from far outside the normal limits of baryonic matter.

Around the walls were potted plants, vines that climbed and twined up the walls, yet seemed to somehow fade out of existence as they grew, leaving behind a glowing silhouette of their tendrils and leaves. She stroked one leaf with a padded fingertip. "What on earth…?"

He shrugged. "Just some decorative plants I picked up at a flea market," he said. "I spilled some strange dust on the potting soil by accident and got, er, this. They're pretty and keep the air fresh, and they don't seem to need much sunlight so I kept 'em."

Off to the side, his (still singed, salt-stained and filthy) costume hung on an old store mannikin. Past it was another set of shelves and racks… of the various weapons he'd built, yet hadn't had the need or the nerve yet to bring out. A standing cabinet was dedicated to the healing and first aid items he had left. She looked at those with a peculiar expression on her face, one of half-remembered familiarity. "I would have expected more healing potions and the like," she said for no obvious reason.

"Not in my skillset, unfortunately." Bayleaf realized there was some important information that he hadn't been yet made privy to. He sat down on a nearby work stool; she saw his expression and did the same. "Taylor," he said, keeping his voice smooth and even. "What do you remember from your Trigger event?"

She looked wounded-- the memory of what had been done to her was little less than a day old, the psychic wound raw and bleeding. Anger and grief mingled on her face, and not a little fear. Then she looked puzzled, confused. "I remember the locker," she said slowly. "I remember Sophia reaching through the locker to steal my phone…" she half rose. "That cow still has my phone! She--"

"We'll get it back later," Bayleaf said with grim certainty. "Later. Right now, go on..."

"Raugh!" Taylor's snarl of frustration was impressive in her worgen form. She visibly reined in her temper and sat back down with a huff of air. "…I remember being so frightened, so angry, so horrified that a hero would do something like that to me-- to anyone--" Her throat worked and tears pooled in her wide amber eyes. Wordlessly Bayleaf pulled a bit of cloth.. a loose 'magic bandage,' actually… from a corner of the table and dabbed at her cheek. She smiled as she took it and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. "I.. it was all so monstrous I just blacked out."

"And then…?"

She creased her brows, trying to remember what came next, then looked surprised when she realized something DID come next. "I had a dream, or a hallucination or something-- this huge… thing was dropping down out of the sky, it was big and small at the same time and it was saying words that were hundreds of words at once, making offers, promises..." she suddenly shivered as she realized that she'd read stories about people making deals with the Devil that sounded awfully similar. "And I accepted, and it touched me and it reached out and touched others… I couldn't see them but I saw the lines, the bridges connecting them--

"And then something went wrong. It was like the huge floating thing grabbed a power line or something. Parts of it started exploding and it was screeching like, like ten thousand microphone feedbacks-- then I woke back up still in the locker, only now I was in pain, it was so much pain and I could feel my bones twisting and breaking inside me and I--"

She started shaking. She clasped her hands over her face and began to weep. Bayleaf tipped off his stool and stumbled to her, wrapping his arms carefully around her. She buried her face in his chest, snifflling and weeping.

After a few minutes she quieted. "And then you came," she said. She huddled up against him, her cheek lying against his breastbone. "Scared the life out of me when those claws punched through the door. But then you ripped the door away and light came in, and then you were carrying me in your arms… I was still in so much pain but you were so warm and strong and your… your fur was so soft and you smelled so nice and even though I was hurting I felt so safe--"

Her ears flicked back in that way he was beginning to associate with her blushing. She pulled away from him and he-- reluctantly-- let go. He still stayed close though; she made no effort to push him away further. "And then we were in the hospital everybody was running around, and they stuck that morphine drip in my arm, thank God for that, and then… and then…"

"And then…?" he led in, giving her an encouraging grin.

"And then I had the weirdest dream," she said. "It was a trial. Only it wasn't. It was a game show, and I was a contestant. There were three glowing things there, being the emcees or the judges or both-- and there was another person there, another glowing thing, and it kept whispering suggestions to me and doing things that made the judges angry for some reason—I think… I think he was supposed to be my Agent, or something. Like for an actor?" She didn't notice him twitch at her choice of words. "And they kept asking me to make choices: words, pictures, symbols, and none of it made any sense, but you were there and I was so relieved, I kept choosing you because I trusted you the most. I, I guess I won, or something… And the one tricky light who was my agent said something to me and I woke up."

"What did the Agent say?" he pressed.

At his words she suddenly sat up straight and began rattling off words like they were memorized. "Worgen Female, Subtlety Rogue level Max Level, Alchemy and Jewelcrafting Max Level. All talents, standard and gathering skills inclusive." She blinked and shook her head. "Why did I say that?"

"That clever sonuvagun," Bayleaf muttered. "A post hypnotic suggestion. He wanted to let me know your stats, so he gave you a little hypnotic message-in-a-bottle to go off when I used that phrase." He looked at her, musing. "A rogue, huh? Dang. That's going to make things interesting..."

"Hold on, Post hypnotic?" Taylor said, confused. "And "he" who?"

He sat back down on his workstool and took her hands. He took a deep breath. "Okay, this is going to be a lot to take in, but--" A buzzer went off and a nearby lamp blinked. "Ah crap. Looks like your Dad is here… probably better if I explain this all at once. Gimme a sec.." He left the room and returned with Taylor's father in tow. Taylor had to wonder if she had looked the way he did. He looked twenty years younger, like an awestruck fanboy and like a little boy who had just found the coolest tree fort in the world.

"...An old workshop from the railyard over a hundred years ago," Adrian… Bayleaf… was telling him, obviously reciting the history of the place. "It fell out of use, they built up around it until it was completely hidden from view and then forgot about it."

"You own it?" Danny asked.

"I will… I plan to set up a dummy corporation to buy it-- once I figure out how you make a dummy corporation." He motioned Danny to one of the more plush seats in the workshop. Danny sat down, still rubbernecking. "We were just getting to the nitty gritty of explaining, well, all this. So now that you're here I'll take it from the top."

Bayleaf sat down in another chair and turned it so it was facing between the two of them. He started to speak, then stopped. "You know what? Wait a minute." He got up and stalked up the stairs to the second floor. When he returned he had a laptop and a camcorder on a tripod in his hands. He plugged them in and set them up so the camera was standing between them, pointed at his chair. He clicked the "record" and sat down as the infamous little red light came on.

"I figure I'm going to be explaining all this a LOT in the near future," he said with a faintly dry hint of humor. "So a little one-time recording will make things easier. I'll edit it later, maybe do a PowerPoint Presentation..."

He sat back and coughed, and even looked a bit awkward at being in front of a lens. "Okay, to start with, you should know I'm not from around here. Really, really, REALLY not from around here..."

While the clock ticked by and the day waned, he explained everything to them. About Agent, and the others of his race. About the Game they played and some of the rules as he understood them. About Azeroth or at least a quick summation, and about how he'd been selected to go to Earth Bet.

Then he explained about the origin of superpowers on Earth Bet. He explained the Entities, about Scion, about Cauldron, about Coil and the PRT and their agendas how they all tied together. He explained, with a great deal of guilt, how Taylor's Triggering had gone so horribly wrong-- how Agent had finagled (and Bayleaf suspected, paid dearly) for a second-chance offer for Taylor, and now SHE was an Actor for the Game, and one of probably only two people on all of Earth Bet who didn't derive their powers from a Shard.

They sat in silence after he finished. He turned the camera off and saved the digital file to a thumb drive. "You're handling this better than Faultline's crew did," he said, trying feebly to joke. "At this point they'd already started on their second bottle of vodka."

Danny put his hand to his head and sat back. "Give us a minute," he said. "It kind of takes a minute to adjust to being told the secrets of the Universe."

"The secrets of the Universe, and how they suck," Taylor added, a little bitterly Bayleaf thought.

"Don't think like that," Bayleaf pleaded. "Please, just don't. If the Universe all really sucked, then what's the point of living?

"I don't know about you but I take great comfort from the fact that there are Beings out there OTHER than those Space Whale things, Beings like Agent that on our side and who want us to win, and who'll scrimp and cheat and undercut the rules just to stack the deck in our favor.

"You know what I see when I'm out there? I see a lot of evil and hurt and pain. I see people being as rotten and wicked as they possibly can to each other and to themselves and spitting in the face of God.

"But I also see a skinhead help a little kid over a pothole in the road. I see a hooker give her trashy fur coat to her skinnier, poorly dressed friend so she won't freeze. I see a hobo splitting his last sandwich with a stray dog, and an ABB kid walking his hundred year old granny to the store so she won't trip and fall. I see some hell's angel biker who hasn't darkened the door of a church in years going inside to pray for a dying friend. Every day I see people doing things for one another, some little spark of good, and sometimes I think: I think maybe I'm seeing just the tiniest little bit of what the good Lord saw when he looked down, saw how wicked and lost and sinful we are and still said "These people are worth dying for."

"And I'll be damned if I don't at least step up and say that this world and these people are worth FIGHTING for."

The Heberts were stunned speechless. But maybe he saw something in their eyes: a touch of respect.

"I'm sorry," Taylor said meekly. "It's just so big--! How are couple of, of dog people supposed to save the world from SCION?"

Bayleaf was about to protest that Scion had blind spots, weaknesses, limitations; that they could get help, the greatest minds--- that in other timelines he had been defeated by even less powerful heroes than themselves; that in one timeline even an unpowered, perfectly mundane school security guard had managed to save the world…

Instead he sighed and said: "That's what we have to figure out. Before I arrived, events were aligning that a young Cape would Trigger right about now who would eventually bring about Scion's death. But my presence has disrupted things so much that those events will never play out--"

Taylor's breath had caught in her throat as he said those words and she made the intuitive leap. "It was me, wasn't it," she said faintly. "I… I was supposed to Trigger with the power that would end Scion." She looked sick. "Instead I… Oh, God no." She looked at him, her eyes filled with horror and disbelief. "Why did you interfere?" She said, shaking her fists at him as her voice rose to a shriek. "WHY DID YOU INTERFERE??"

"I had to--!"

"You doomed our world! Why couldn't you have left it alone and let it happen--"

"BECAUSE NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN YOU LOSE!!!" Bayleaf roared, rising to his feet, his hackles bushed out. Danny and Taylor cringed back in their seats. "Because NINE TIMES out of TEN you LOSE," he repeated, ashamed at his outburst, exhausted from the emotional effort it took to expose this awful fact. "The way the original timeline unfolds, unfolded, will unfold in countless universes, the margin between victory and defeat is INCHES. And those inches are rarely on the right side of the line.

"The powers you manifest with, that you were supposed to manifest with, weren't enough. It takes a mile long chain of threadbare circumstances for your powers to become… upgraded into something that can let you fight Scion, much less defeat him. And every step of the way you and others and everyone you love suffers. Tragedy after tragedy, loss after loss, death after death by the thousands, till it culminates in the final battle, the Golden Morning, when you kill Scion-- and your victory celebration consists of being lobotomized with a BULLET."

"And worst of all? Even in the unaltered timelines where you win, trillions die. Yes I said TRILLIONS-- there are hundreds of Earth-alternates just in this one little dimensional pocket. Scion destroys God knows how many of them in the process of battling you. And half your own reality becomes uninhabitable.

"THAT'S why I interfered," he said. "That's why Agent's race sends out Actors. That's why Agent, my Agent, literally went into hock and bent every law his people know to the breaking point to put me here, and to buy you a second chance. To screw Fate over, and find a path to victory that beats the odds... and isn't powered by the soul of a tormented child to work."

He straightened. "But even if you threw all that out, I'd still be here. I'd still try to help you, Taylor, and I'd still have tried to save you from that Hell in the locker. Because there's one tenet Agent has that I definitely agree with: the fate of one is shared by all. You ever hear these idiots talking about "minority rights?" Well the smallest minority is ONE. And if you don't fight for the rights of the individual-- for the FATE of the individual-- against all comers, you're fighting for nothing." He drew a breath. "I may have agreed to come here to try and save a world, but in the end I would have come just to try to save you."

Tears were running down her face again. She came to him arms outstretched and crawled into his lap. "I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm sorry..."

"Don't be," he said, patting her back. "Don't be, okay?"

Danny watched with a terrible pang in his heart. She'd gone, not to Danny but to Bayleaf for comfort. He'd known this day was coming some day, but still, seeing his little girl turn to another… bittersweet at best. "So our next move?" he said.

"For now, the big stuff, we've got about five to ten years," Bayleaf said. "More, actually, thanks to some steps I've already taken. But for the immediate future? We try and find out how much of our 'secret identities'," Bayleaf snorted, "are still left, and if we can patch them up. We have a day or two if we all call in sick, Taylor and I can hide here, but we're going to have to move fast..." he brooded for a minute. Then he got a cunning, plotting look on his face. Danny suddenly felt worried. He hadn't seen an expression like that since his favorite cousin had come up with a plan for swiping his dad's car keys so they could drive into town for a couple of twelve-packs of beer… when they were fourteen.

"You got an idea, I'm guessing," Danny said warily.

"Yeah. But… I'm going to have to bring in a couple of friends on this." Bayleaf rubbed his chin and gave Danny a sidelong glance. "Tell me, Sir-- have you ever watched an old black and white movie called 'Gaslight?' "