15

Chapter Text

Taylor did look good in those outfits.

That was one thought that kept popping into Bayleaf's head over the next few weeks, every time he looked at her. Of course Glory Girl had chivvied him all the way to dropping on Parian's store while they were doing the fitting. And of course she'd shoved him through the front door just as Taylor was trying on her new swimsuit.

Man, there'd been a lot of… string…in that string bikini…

She'd nearly died of embarrassment on the spot, and he hadn't done much better. But there was absolutely no lying, she looked good in it. In both forms, too (surprise lesson: when she got flustered she'd swap forms once or twice.) After everyone had gotten over their mortification (or in Vicky's case stopped laughing), Parian and Vicky had dragged him back in and had him sit through a viewing of Taylor's new wardrobe. Everything from sports wear to casual to fancy evening wear. It had taken a couple of hours, and Taylor had looked absolutely stunning in everything.

Thank God they hadn't tried to show him the lingerie. It'd probably have killed him.

Then they'd surprised him with an armload or two of casual wear for himself. At which point he found himself parading up and down the nonexistent catwalk. Parian thankfully had the sense to acknowledge that men needed less in the way of plumage, and so had restrained herself to some dress shirts and slacks, some basic athletic wear and one very nice three piece suit. He paid her in full and threw in as big a bonus as he dared. He had been getting tired of wearing either jeans or baggy sweats everywhere when he wasn't "on the job." He'd thought he looked rather sharp in his new clothes.

To judge from the look in Taylor's eyes, she'd thought so as well.

At the moment she was in her worgen form, wearing a sport crop top and gym shorts. She was having a go at one of the training manikins, punching and kicking with startling speed and ferocity, popping in and out of existence to attack from behind or even overhead. She was as lithe as any wild predator and moved with vicious grace. He was VERY glad he'd gotten the manikins; just a few sparring bouts with her had made it quite clear that while he was a good bit stronger and bigger, she was wicked fast. He'd spent some time healing himself after the first few and decided to leave sparring her to the OTHER dummies in the Workshop, as he put it. Heck, he imagined he could still feel some of those bruises days later...

As he watched she finished with a pair of slashing claw attacks, then switched out to a pair of sai. They were something of a retrofit: Bayleaf had sawn open the handles, filled them with batteries (Actually gnomish shock capacitors), and rebuilt the martial arts weapons as tasers. Neither of them was completely pleased with the result; the Sai were still rather nasty weapons, designed for making deep, nasty puncture wounds in a person. It would be too easy to slip, stab when one should slash, and grievously injure or kill someone. They kept them though, along with the knives and other, nastier weapons. Neither of them was deceived about what might be required of them out there.

He'd made a pair of shock batons, each about two foot long and weighted for balance. They handled a bit better-- but not much. And they simply lacked the intimidation factor of the black sai blades. For safety's sake though, she'd wear the batons as her first weapons when they went out tonight, with the Sai as holdouts.

It was finally time. She'd demonstrated (often painfully) that her fighting instincts were fully uploaded and operational; her already buff form was sleek and whipcord deadly after weeks of exercise, and she had been going absolutely bugnuts waiting for Danny to give the go-ahead. Like any good father he'd been seriously reluctant to let his baby girl go out superheroing, fearful for her safety. But it was common knowledge that capes couldn't just sit on their powers and remain mentally healthy-- a fact that Agent had confirmed with Bayleaf was true whether you were Triggered, Cauldron-born or Agent-imbued.

After he'd seen her tossing Bayleaf around their makeshift gym like a sack of laundry, he was a little less worried.

He finished the final connection on the project in front of him and set his tools down. She gave the badly battered practice dummy a final swat and stepped away, throwing a towel around her neck. She stalked over to where he was working, panting and rubbing the nape of her neck with the towel to dry the sweat out. (Worgen sweated. Go figure.) "Whatcha working on?" she said, leaning over the worktable.

Bayleaf picked it up and held it out. It was a thick, wide belt with a large round buckle, almost looking like an old comic book utility belt. "Another upgrade for Glory Girl," he said. "Fixes that flaw in her forcefield, hopefully."

"Flaw?" Taylor asked.

Bayleaf nodded. "Most people don't know it, so don't go blabbing it around, but GG's got a vulnerability. If her forcefield takes a solid enough wallop, it shuts off for a second and has to reboot. Bigger the wallop, the longer it's out of commission-- and even one second is an eternity in combat. This hopefully fixes it."

"What's it do, generate another force field under her own?"

"That was my first idea," he admitted. "But there are problems with that. Like her forcefield not integrating well with another." He grabbed a marker and drew a human outline , then drew another outline around that. "In the original timeline, it's canonical that her forcefield can change shape... with a big enough traumatic shock to her body-image, anyway." He grimaced as he remembered Glory Girl's ghastly experience as "The Wretch." "I'm figuring on doing something with a little more finesse than body horror trauma, of course.

"Instead of adding another forcefield, I'm going to try and, er, fold hers." he erased the outer line and replaced it with a repeating line that doubled back at the top of the head and down at the feet, overlapping over itself. Once it overlaps itself enough the layers will "stick" to themselves, making individual bubbles. It takes advantage of how it melds with itself… that's how she's able to rest her own hands on her hips without a bubble-gap in between. Sorta like a soap-bubble blowing trick." he erased the overlaps with his thumbpad, so that what was left was concentric layers around the figure. "Basically 'teach' her forcefield to divide itself into several layers instead of just one, so that when the outer one pops--"

"The inner ones are still going strong!" Taylor said. "Clever."

"Exactly. The belt will automatically 'blow a bubble' or, well, FOLD one, every time the outer layer is burst, as well." Bayleaf laid the belt out on the worktable.

Taylor put her finger to her lip. "But won't that make each forcefield weaker, stretching them like that?"

"No, changing it's shape didn't diminish its strength in the main timeline, so it shouldn't here. And even if the individual layers are weaker, she's still going to be safer with multiple layers instead of one. Actually, it might even amplify her physical strength as well, as her forcefield is the source. Like adding extra layers of muscle tissue would strengthen the muscle." He tapped the dry board. "In time I'm pretty confident that she might not even need the belt; eventually her field will 'learn' the new shape and form it automatically. Who knows, with practice she might be able to control the shape herself. " He set the belt next to the matching tiara.

"Between this and the finished tiara, she's gonna be thrilled," Taylor said, looking over the costume pieces. Bayleaf watched her poking at the two items and how she smiled to herself as she thought of Vicky's reaction.

He got the very sudden urge to do something for her, something better than just a night out scaring muggers in back alleys. "Taylor," he said, trying to pick his words and struggling to get them out. "I was thinking… before we go on your first patrol tonight..."

She groaned a little, her shoulders drooping. "Don't tell me you have something else you want to nitpick over before you let me go out with you," she complained. "What? The costume? The armor? The commlink? The first aid supplies?"

"Um, actually I was thinking dinner?" he said.

She blinked, then coughed in embarrasment. "Oh, uh, sure. What, Pizza? Fugly Bobs?"

"How about Tony's? Little sit down restaurant that opened up on the Boardwalk?" he said meekly, his ears low but his eyes hopeful. "I know the owner..."

Her eyes went round. Tony's wasn't the ritziest place in Brockton Bay, but it was fairly classy. Well outside the typical dining of a Dockworker Union worker's daughter, for sure. "I..."

"Then maybe a movie? Or dancing..." he continued, hope growing.

"Are you asking me out on a date?" she said faintly.

"Yyyeess??"

Her eyes lit up like Christmas morning. "I.. yes! Yes, I'd love to! Omigosh—I gotta get cleaned up--" she bolted for the bathroom. Then bolted back out. "No wait I gotta call Dad first--"

Bayleaf held up his phone.

"Okay YOU call him I'll go get ready-- no I'll get a shower and then go HOME and get-- argh!" She dove into the bathroom again.

Even as giddy as he felt, Bayleaf couldn't help chuckling. "Dial Tony's Restorante'. … Hi, is Tony there? This is Adrian."

"Hey, Adrian! Where you been? What can I do you for?"

"I was just wondering, you still got that table you said was always reserved for me? And could you maybe scoot a second chair under it?"

"Oho, got a little someone you're trying to impress, eh? Hey, no problem. What time?"

"Got an opening for, oh, seven tonight?"

"Hey, what I tell you, kid? For you we got an opening 24-7. I'll be waiting with bells on."

"Great! Thanks, Tony." He hung up. " 'Dial Danny Hebert.' … Hello, Mr. Hebert? This is Adrian. I just wanted to clear some stuff with you for tonight."

He heard Mr. Hebert take a deep breath. "Adrian, I have full confidence in you, and in my daughter. She's a Cape, and she's going to be a hero. I trust you both, and I've made my peace with it. I'm not worried."

"It's not that. Um, I just...okay, before we go out on patrol, I was wanting to take Taylor out for um, dinneranddancing. Or a movie. Maybe….?"

There was a pause. "Okay," Danny said. Adrian wasn't sure if he was amused or aggrieved. "Now I'm worried."

Bayleaf set Aisha down in front of the console. "Okay, the middle row is the cable news channels and the weather channel. Uh, except the middle one, that's got the sci fi channel and cartoon network, just hit the channel selector. The lower and outside screens are tuned to webcams all over Brockton Bay. The PRT, Medhall, the Boardwalk, etc. just the major landmarks and intersections. The top four screens are to the mini quadcopters on the roof. Don't worry about them being spotted, I stealthed 'em up. You should be able to fly anywhere over the Bay clear out to Captain's hill-- they're locked below a certain altitude to avoid air traffic. They've got claw feet so they'll land on about any surface. Try not to lose 'em, okay? Replacing 'em's a drag.

"Okay, these dials are the radio, CB, Police Band, and this here is the link to our intercoms. You can patch just about anything through to us, audio or video. Use THIS screen and keyboard to access the internet, PHO, et cetera. Use these buttons to record anything off of any of the screens."

"Bathroom's through there-- watch out for the bidet-- and fridge is over there. If you need snacks or anything, just tell Obie there and he'll fetch it for you." The Alarm-o-bot saluted smartly.

"Oh, and your call sign is 'Crow's Nest.' Any questions?"

"It ain't like you've gone over this mess a hundred times this week already," Aisha groused.

The "comm center" was Bayleaf's latest accomplishment. It was basically a dozen or so computer and TV screens, laptops, shortwave radios and desktop towers plugged into each other, synchronized through some very creative software and bolted into a rack made out of modular steel shelving. It was also his best effort at giving Aisha a way to contribute to the team while putting her miles away from any actual danger. It was his hope that the thousand-and-one toys to play with would keep her notoriously short attention span sated. Regardless he was setting all the cameras to auto-record, just in case.

"It'll be about midnight when we actually hit the street," he said. "Do what you want until then. We'll beep you when we're suited up and on the rooftops."

"Got it." Already she was fiddling with the controls on quadcopter 1. It and its three siblings were perched on the roof, under the steel parking canopy he'd put up there. (It was pretty carefully camouflaged as part of the uneven rooftops all around it; quite a few people would probably have kittens over some of the things he had parked up there.)

"Great." He fidgeted a bit. "My tie straight?" He was in his human form, and fidgeting like a schoolboy getting ready for a class photo. She looked over, looked him up and down, then reached over and straightened the tie. "Be ready to lose the noose, though," she said. "You're gonna be dancing."

"Right, right. Wish me luck." He bounded for the door and out into the evening.

Five minutes later there was a knock at the skylight. Victoria Dallon stuck her head down through the open window. "Is he gone yet?" she stage whispered.

"If he wasn't you'd already know it," Aisha said sarcastically. "Get your butt in here, blondie, we got some spying to do."

Eagerly Vicky dove down into the Workshop and pulled up a chair next to Aisha. "He goes out on a date and leaves you with a fleet of invisible spy drones? The fool!" Vicky cackled. A moment later a pair of workerbots came trotting up with bowls of popcorn, pretzels and bottles of pop.

Aisha sat back and twisted the top off her soda as Quadcopter 1 spun up. "This is gonna be good."

Adrian's Uber pulled up at Taylor's door promptly at six thirty. She was waiting there on the front step in a knee-length, off-the-shoulder black dress and toeless sandals that laced up to mid calf. Her black hair tumbled down over her shoulders, and gold glinted at her neck, ears, fingers and wrists. She clutched her purse in nervous hands. Her glasses were gone-- they'd been fakes ever since her metamorphosis-- and her eyes shone.

Adrian's breath caught in his throat at the sight of her. He hopped out of the car and hastened to give her a hand down the steps, nearly tripping on that danged wobbly first step himself in the process. "You look amazing." he blurted out, blushing at the cliche'. Cliche' or not it was the right thing to say, apparently. She smiled and blushed like a rose. As she got in he took note that her jewelry was some of her own making. That he was pleased to see. Even with nothing else those trinkets at her ears, fingers and throat meant she was better armored than a police officer in full SWAT gear.

They arrived at Tony's just before seven. The maitre'd heard Adrian's name and promptly escorted them to a window seat, looking out on the bay. Moments later a robust fellow with a paunch and a curling handlebar mustache under a ripe tomato of a nose came out to greet them. "Hello, I am Tony, and I'll be serving you two tonight," he said, handing each of them a menu with a flourish. "Welcome back, Adrian m'boy!" He said, beaming. "And this lovely thing is…?"

"Hey, Tony," Adrian said, beaming back. "This is Taylor, Taylor Hebert." Tony greeted Taylor with a kiss to the knuckles, making her giggle. "How's business?" Adrian asked.

"Oh, going great guns since you dropped your little notebook with the chefs," Tony chuckled. "Speaking of which, I gotta go check on them. I'll let you two look over the menu..." he trundled off.

Taylor waited till he was out of earshot, then whispered, "Little notebook?"

Adrian grinned. "I wrote out a few recipes for his kitchen staff, even whipped up a few. They went nuts over them."

"You cook?"

"Yep. And so do you, remember?" he said. "Our Azeroth cooking skills are maxed out. We both know over three hundred different recipes, from a dozen different races and twice that many cultures. Meats, salads, soups, desserts, beverages... Not just the recipes, but the ingredients, scents, textures, flavors… so we can make substitutions on the fly. I bet you 'remember' what pickled Stormray or Suramar Surf and Turf taste like."

She paused and looked like she was trying to recall something. "You're right, I do!" she exclaimed. "How weird."

"But useful. A dozen recipes to spice up Tony's menu, and here we are."

She thought for a minute and her nose wrinkled. "I hope none of them were crispy bat wing or Kaldorei Spider Kabob," she said, amused.

"Actually you can substitute crabmeat for that second one-- oh, hi Tony," Adrian said.

"You kids had time to decide?" Tony asked cheerfully.

Taylor had only glanced at the menu. "Oh, um..." she skimmed down the rather sizeable selection, gave up and looked at Adrian. "I don't know. You decide."

To her confusion Tony and Adrian glanced sideways at each other. Tony's mouth and eyebrows twisted like putty into a droll, amused expression while Adrian started biting his lip, face turning red as he fought a smile. "You sure you can eat all that?" Tony quipped, confusing her further.

"Last page, bottom half," Adrian finally said, pointing at her menu. Puzzled, she opened her menu again and looked. Outlined in special trim was a boxed-in area:

LADY'S CHOICE MENU

I Don't Know…..Seafood sampler platter

I Don't Care….. T-bone and potato or fries

I'm Not Sure…. Chicken A la King w/ rice pilaf

Oh, You Decide…. Surf and Turf

DESSERT

Just a Salad….Cherry Pie

But I'm on a diet… Double Chocolate fudge cake

I'm Not Really Hungry…Strawberry torte

Served a'la mode on the Gentlemen's plate with an extra fork

Taylor screwed up her face at them. Tony and Adrian broke out laughing.

"Fine, fine," she growled. "Surf and Turf. And that fudge cake sounds really good."

"What I tell you, boy?" Tony chuckled, his gut bouncing. "They get mad, but they eat it all the same…"

"Make it two, Tony," Adrian said. "With… sparkling lemon to drink?"

Tony took their menus. "Good choice," he beamed at them. "It'll be out in no time." He trundled away again, to be briefly replaced by a young earnest waiter who set out their silverware, beverages and water. Taylor sipped at hers and raised her eyebrows. "This is good," she said.

"Not exactly your everyday soda pop," Adrian agreed. "Real lemon and citrus, sparkling water and cane sugar. Mixed up right here. Tony would die before serving anything made from a soft drink syrup."

The steak and shrimp were delicious, and almost too much to finish. For not the first time Taylor was thankful for her worgen metabolism… it would have broken her heart not to eat the decadent, gooey chocolate masterpiece they brought out for dessert.

They had just started on dessert when Adrian glanced out the window and froze. "Well well, small world," he muttered. Taylor glanced over her shoulder. Standing out on the boardwalk, gawking at them through the picture window like a pair of stunned herring, were Madison and Emma.

Taylor couldn't resist. She couldn't. Without breaking eye contact with either of them, she took an enormous forkful of her chocolate dessert, put it in her mouth and chewed slowly, half closing her eyes as she savored it. Then she gave them both a little fingertip wave.

Adrian joined in, waggling his fingers at the two bitch-queens of Winslow. "Hi girls. We're in here, you're not. Bye bye. Bye bye now," he whispered under his breath, smiling toothily. Madison did the classic Offended Teen Oh-Em-Gee Eyeroll while Emma swelled up as if she was going to explode. They turned and marched off down the boardwalk, noses in the air.

Taylor looked Adrian in mock sorrow. "We are bad, bad people," she said sadly. They both broke up giggling. When they both finally caught their breath, she looked at Adrian ruefully. "We've both got to stop living our lives by measuring them against theirs," she said a little wistfully.

Adrian sighed and nodded. Privately he was glad to hear it… one of his fears was that Taylor might never be able to move on. When she said it, though, he realized maybe he ought to worry a little about moving on himself. Taylor's bullies may have brought the two of them together but it was a lousy thing to build a future on.

The girl in front of him was smart, a lover of the classics but open to the new; she had a massively overdeveloped sense of responsibility that made Peter Parker look like a careless hedonist-- it would take careful watching to keep it from turning into undeserved guilt and self-loathing like it had in the baseline. He'd seen inklings of her cunning and tactical genius, and yes, even her ruthless streak, but it was well-placed and, in a dangerous world, well-needed. In the baseline, she yearned to do what was right, to be a hero, even when she'd been forced by cruel contrivance into the role of a villain; She was the same here. She was fiercely loyal to those she loved, right or wrong… which was part of why Emma had scarred her so deeply and cruelly.

She was worth knowing.

They finished their meal, thanked Tony profusely and left a hefty tip. It was a chilly February evening but they took a little walk anyway to settle their meal. She leaned on his arm and weather or no, they both felt warm. "So where to now?" Taylor said.

"Well, I was thinking..." Adrian said slowly. "Since tonight is supposed to be your big debut as a Cape… and we're still going out on patrol at midnight, but…"

"What?"

He morphed into Bayleaf. Thanks to the Quickchange spell his suit switched out for something more dance-floor worthy. "How about we have your debut in a different way?"

She grinned and skipped into the shadows of the alley between the shops (she was a touch more timid about trusting the Quickchange spell than he was.) "Give me a second to put my dancing shoes on..."

Gregor the Snail and Newter were idling about at the entryway of the Palanquin, watching people file in under the marquee and past the bouncer. Arbitrarily they were keeping their eye out for any trouble the mundane bouncers couldn't handle; more realistically they were simply whiling away some time people-watching. It was a slow night, even for that.

Of course in a moment things quickly picked up. Newter was the first to spot a familiar looking silhouette in the back of the crowd waiting to get in. He tapped Greg on the arm with a (gloved) hand. "Is that who I think…?" he pointed.

Greg looked and straightened up. "Well, well, it seems our wolfen friend is back," he said. His voice went up in surprise. "With.. a friend." He was right. Skinwalker indeed had a female of the species with him: a she-wolf with pale gray fur and tumbling locks of black hair pressed into his side.

Newter let out a low whistle. "And a hottie, no less." At Gregor's look he snorted. "Greg, my brotha, I look like a punk rock iguana. I'm gonna diss a cutie with a cute booty 'cause she's a little on the fuzzy side?"

Gregor shrugged. "Fair enough." He motioned for the bouncer to let the pair through the velvet rope. Both were certainly dressed well for the evening; Skinwalker was dressed in a white sleeveless shirt and loose black slacks; his date (mate?) was wearing an off the shoulder black silk crop top and mini skirt, grey leggings and strap sandals on her digitigrade feet. Gold gleamed at their necks, fingers, and at the lobes of the female's ears.

"Gregor, Newter," Skinwalker said, his mellow bass voice full of genuine pleasure. "Glad to see you're still in town. Surprised, actually." His voice had a lilt of curiosity on the last few words.

"We… consulted an expert or two," Gregor said. "It appears that, for whatever reason, Brockton Bay is the place to be if one wishes to avoid, ah, certain kinds of prying eyes." He nodded meaningfully. Skinwalker nodded in reply, "And so, Skinwalker-- would you care to introduce us to your lovely lady friend?"

"Skinwalker is more of a title," the wolfman said. "My name is actually Bayleaf. And this is Hemlokk."

"Hello," she said softly, obviously a touch shy. Her voice was a sweet contralto.

"Charmed," Gregor replied. Neither case 53 offered their hand; physical contact from either of them could be-- unpleasant.

"This is basically her debut night as a Cape," Skinwalker… Bayleaf… went on. He scratched the back of his head. "I figured this might be a little preferable to either a press release or getting photographed punching a mugger." The Faultline capes chuckled in understanding.

"Don't let us keep you then," Newter said with a grin, waving them towards the entrance. "Go on in and tear up the floor a little, have some fun." The worgen took the invitation; he put his arm around his girl and guided her in through the glass doors. The thumping music spilled out into the street briefly, then was cut off as the pneumatic doors swung closed.

Gregor gave Newter a chiding look. "You're going to go sneak off to the DJ's booth and start taking photos of them to post on PHO, aren't you," he said.

"Well he did say it was their debut," Newter said with a grin. He leaped off the parking pylon he was perched on and shot up the outside wall, slipping inside through a window on the second floor.

"Aha, they're in Tony's still. Looks like dessert..Man that looks good." Aisha twitched the controllers; the camera view zoomed in. "Ooh, she's all smilin' and laughin,' Wolfman Jack here is smoooooth, apparently," she chortled.

She and Vicky were spying on the two lovebirds, thanks to the stealthed quadcopters Bayleaf had provided. They were intended for surveillance over the city for villainous activity, but expecting either of the two hyperactive, attention-deficit girls to stick to that was a vain hope.

Vicky fished for more pretzels in the nearby bowl. "Bring the copter around, maybe we can read his lips-- wait, who are they?" They watched as two overly made up and blatantly underdressed high school girls stopped in front of the restaurant window and gawked at the couple like they were fish in an aquarium.

Aisha growled. "Oh, that's THEM," she said with a curl in her lip. "Two of 'em. Madison and Emma."

Vicky immediately knew who she was talking about. "Ugh, what are THOSE two doing THERE of all places? Don't they know there's a one-Skank limit in that part of the Boardwalk?"

"HAH! Oh no, wait…. Ohhh, Tay-tay givin' them the diss. HAHA! Look at that cow Emma's face!" Aisha slapped her hand on the control panel, laughing.

"And now they're waving bye bye… oooh, ice cold." Vicki held up one of the microphones on the comm and did her best golfing-sportcaster voice. "And it's a beautiful brushoff by the Bayleaf-Hemlokk team, I'd give it an easy 8 out of 10 for form…"

"Aaaand away they go, Resting Bitch Face Mode active."

"And the couple are back to their dinner like nothing happened." Vicki nodded. "Good for you, Taylor. You don't need to sink to their level." The girls swapped an evil grin.

"...We'll do it for you," Aisha cackled. She brought the quadcopter around and looked for a target.

It didn't take long. Someone had dumped a half-eaten calzone on top of one of the boardwalk trashcans. For a miracle the seagulls hadn't snagged it. The quadcopter didn't have any tools or weapons, but it did have specially made gripping-claw landing gear that let it perch just about anywhere. Aisha carefully brought the quadcopter down, claws extended, and just barely managed to snag the rotting sandwich's wrapper in the cam-copter's talons. The motors strained, but the quadcopter went aloft with its cargo.

The first clue either Emma or Madison had that their evening was about to go downhill was when something rancid and nasty dripped on Madison's head from a great height. About half the rotting calzone's fillings slopped out, landing square on Madison's cute little beribboned head. The squeal of shock and horror was epic.

Before Emma could do more than react in surprise, the quadcopter released the rest of its load. It landed with a splat, foursquare, right on her head, wrapper and all, covering her hundred-dollar salon job like the world's most horrible beret. Even over the microphones the shrieks and screams were bloodchilling.

"Crow's Nest to Glory Girl: target annihilated." Aisha smirked.

"Glory Girl to Mama Crow: Mission accomplished. well done, it's Miller Time!" Vicky shot back.

The two high fived each other.

Sparky...Shar'din Belore… woke up. He hit the can, showered, brushed his teeth, and groomed his blonde hair into the topknot-ponytail thing he'd found it in that first day. He took his red, blue and gold robes off their hanger and donned them. Then he wrapped his head in an ace bandage to hide his pointy ears and donned sunglasses to hide his glowing green eyes.

He walked out through the living room. His dad was there, still in his underpants, scratching his gut and watching the TV. "Hey Dad. I'm off to try and prevent the apocalypse, 'Kay?" Gildin said.

His father grunted and looked up, then quickly looked away. "Look, don't care about whatever weird cult you're in," he said. "Just leave me out of it."

"Okay, dad," Shar'Din said.

"And we're out of beer. Tell your Mom to put it on the grocery list."

"Right." He had no intention of doing any such thing. He picked up his winged staff and walked out the front door.

Once he'd been given his mission, Shar'Din found he had a little problem. He knew some of the most terrible secrets of the world, including how it was going to end if the people with all the money and power didn't get their heads out of their rear ends.

The problem was that this left noone for him to tell and ask for help. The PRT? Run by the bad guys. The Government? Again, run by the bad guys. And some of the bad guys were run by even bigger, badder bad guys, and even the ordinary bad guys could probably squish him like a grape.

But Zippy the Cosmic Glowing Light Thing had said there were people who could help him. People right in Brockton Bay. Zippy wasn't allowed to tell him who they were because of "The Rules." But Zippy swore that if he looked, he'd find them. So for lack of any better plan, Shar'Din had taken to spending all day walking up and down the streets of the city, searching with his new powers to try and find these people, whoever they were.

Of course he spent a good portion of that time running. Whether it was cops, security guards or angry guys pouring out of a biker bar, most people in Brockton Bay weren't too welcoming to skinny blonde weirdos in dresses who rambled on about the End of the World… half of it in some weird foreign language. His Blink and Invisibility powers had gotten a heck of a workout.

The thing that was making it worse was… he was jonesing. For something. He didn't know what. He didn't have to worry about getting hooked on dope anymore; he'd tried smoking some nug he had left, and he might as well have been smoking straw. He guessed Blood Elves didn't get high on grass. Beer just made him barf. And he wasn't about to go picking through his Mom's prescriptions, hell no. But the craving was getting worse every day, leaving him feeling weak and crappy.

He hoped he found these other people soon, and that they could tell him what was wrong. It'd better be today or he was going to be too sick to get out of bed by the morning…

Greg was still in the junkyard.

He'd spent day after day using raw Light to smelt, forge, and hammer the raw scrap around him into what he needed. He bathed in an open steel barrel full of rainwater. He slept inside one of the junked cars, wrapped in blankets he'd stolen from a clothing donation bin. He'd had a stroke of fortune and the same gift that let him pick out just the right scraps of metal from the yard led him to a small rotting box with a handful of old silver quarters in it. He'd pawned those, and used the money to buy food when he was hungry.

He learned about his powers. He practiced healing on his blistered hands and his bruised fingers. He cast auras and protections upon himself. Whenever he wasn't working on the tools of his trade, he practiced thrusts, strikes, parries and shieldcraft against his own shadow, and eventually against a crude sparring dummy made from an old store manikin…. All of it with the monomaniacal singlemindedness with which he'd once devoted himself to leveling characters in an RPG, or in arguing over inane things in PHO. All he'd lacked was something worthwhile to devote himself to. This was it.

He didn't know why he was left alone. He didn't know that the bums and streetwalkers and other detritus of the neighborhood had seen the ghostly lights and eerie glows cast by his powers and had begun whispering ghost stories to one another and to anyone who would listen. Those few who didn't believe in ghosts (at least in the daylight) steered clear of the junkyard anyway; it took few brains in this world to recognize the possible oddities of a Cape, and to know enough to stay far away for one's own health.

Greg, Vindicator Gregory, finished the last piece of equipment that morning. He spent the rest of the day resting, either sleeping or meditating and soaking his body in the rainbarrel and in the Light, purging the aches and pains from his body.

Tonight was the night.

Someone was knocking-- no, banging-- at the door. Kayden got to it first, with a piece of her mind to give to whoever was on the other side. She cracked the door open, keeping the chain hooked. "Whoever you are there is a baby sleeping in here and—oh. YOU." Her mood only grew icier when she recognized who was on the other side of the door.

Outside the door stood two men with severe haircuts, black business suits and dark glasses. They were ostensibly Max Anders' bodyguards, but Purity knew quite well they were footsoldiers from the E88. Max had promoted them to the job of posing as security from the more loyal ranks of the neonazi gang, rather than hiring real security who might get in his way as Kaiser. They were no less skilled, however, and no less dangerous.

They were also no less committed to obeying Max Anders' orders to the letter. "Ma'am, Max Anders has been made aware that his son has manifested as a Cape. He wishes for him to come home immediately. We're here to pick him up." It wasn't a request.

Kayden let a little of Purity's light seep from her eyes. The two men stiffened, but didn't back down. "Theo is going nowhere," she said flatly.

A third man appeared, this one a round-shouldered, balding man with a briefcase in his hand and a face like a rat. "Ma'am, I am Jason Sneed, an attorney representing your ex-husband," he said, raising his nasal voice loud enough to be heard inside the apartment. "I am to inform you that if you do not return Max Anders' son to him immediately, you will be served with court papers demanding custody of BOTH children--"

Inside a baby started crying. The glimmer of light in Kayden's eyes turned to roadside flares as Sneed proceeded to make possibly the last mistake of his life. "If you think you will intimidate me, you little---"

"Kayden, what's going on? The yelling woke Aster." Theo's voice came from behind her.

Sneed was busy demonstrating his complete lack of survival instinct. "Miz Anders," he said triumphantly, "Is about to learn the consequences of trying to cross Max Anders about his wishes for his own offspring. Now, we will either be leaving with Theo Anders, or we will be leaving with Theo AND Aster Anders--"

Kayden Anders was pulled back out of the way. The door chain snapped as the door was ripped open. Standing in the doorway was a six foot tall panda with a very upset expression on its face-- or in other words, a large, angry bear. Max Anders' men responded in the manner one might expect of armed guards confronted with a large, angry bear; one grabbed Sneed and pulled him to safety while the other whipped a rather large gun out of his jacket and aimed it at the bear's head.

In the blink of an eye, Theo's hand whipped out, blocked the hammer of the gun with one finger while twisting it down and to the side and out of the man's grip. Once the gun was free he then lashed out and struck the armed guard in the face.

Oh, about seven, maybe eight times.

The blows came so quickly it looked like the man was looking in multiple directions at the same time. When they finally stopped, Theo reached up, smoothed the man's hair, straightened his crooked sunglasses, and then poked him in the forehead with a single stubby panda finger. The man collapsed to the hallway floor like a loose sack of lincoln logs.

He looked over to the two men still standing and held out his hand. "Papers," he said. Sneed very carefully pulled the manila envelope out of his briefcase and put it in the panda's hand with his own trembling one.

Starting a campfire is a level-zero ability anyone in Azeroth can do. Theo merely focused his attention on the envelope and it went up like flash paper. The two men flinched as the flame flared then went out, but neither made a move for a weapon. "You," Theo said, his voice as calm as if he were on a walk in park, "Pick him up." The armed goon moved to obey, heaving his partner off the floor. "You're going to be driving me to the Ale Hall. My father and I are going to… talk."

"Theo… you don't have to--" Kayden started to say.

To her surprise he simply gave her a kiss on the cheek. "You didn't have to help me, either," he said. "I know you never could really make yourself be a Mother to me-- but you and Aster, you're still family. I'll be fine, I promise."

He pulled a staff from behind the door; it was a stout bamboo pole that Justin had picked up in Chinatown as a joke, at some junk "martial arts" shop. He put it over one shoulder and followed his father's properly chastened flunkies down the hall to the stairwell and descended out of sight.

The girl once known as the teenage villain Rune had learned some interesting and enlightening things during her days as a prisoner of the ABB.

The first thing she learned was that, regardless of their race or creed or color, racists were all exactly the same sort of A-holes.

Now this doesn't sound like much of a revelation, but for a girl like her who had spent her entire life being raised by Nazis… first by the Herron clan, then by the E88… it was something of an epiphany. When you're a member of a paranoid, insular, ideological group, it never occurs to you that other people who you think of as A-holes think exactly like you do until you have to listen to them. One of the fastest ways to get someone to question their beliefs is to confront them with someone else whom they vehemently disagree with, and point out that these people they so despise are using the exact same arguments as them.

Rune had just spent days on end surrounded by Asian racists who used the same rhetoric, the same arguments, the same emotional appeals to justify their bigotry that her white supremacist family and friends used to justify theirs. The only real difference she saw between white racism and yellow racism was that even under Lung's thumb the Asians were all harboring seething racial resentment against each other too. The Japanese hated the Chinese, who talked smack about the Koreans, who thought that the Vietnamese were apes and pigs, who swore that the Japanese were all warmongering barbarians… names and nationalities interchangeable at the drop of a hat. The observation amused her-- till she remembered how some of her relatives in the Herron clan had talked about the French, or the Italians, or the Irish. Cripes, the Irish. Freckled redheads who were so pale they practically burst into flame under open sunlight. How much whiter could you get? But not "white" enough for some of her clan, she realized…

Many of her precious, family indoctrinated beliefs were beginning to crumble.

She also came to the realization that outside of "Rune the Neonazi Villainess," she didn't have much of an identity of her own at all. Hell, she wasn't even quite sure what her own real name was, it'd been changed so many times. Various members of the Herron clan had to leave town and change their names at different times for different reasons, her own included. Then her parents had broken away from the Herron clan and changed their names. Then she, in a fit of teen rebellion, had run away back to the clan, changing her name yet again-- then she'd Triggered, and she'd fled to the E88 and been dubbed "Rune." It was kind of a laugh; her name at the time had been "Renee."

Then that kid, what's his name, Hawk, had died. Just-- blam. Dead. Shot by some junkie in a turf fight with the Merchants. She'd never known anybody who'd died before, not another kid her age anyway. It had hit her deep. It'd sunk in finally that she wasn't bulletproof either; she could end it just like this, and for just as stupid a reason-- fighting for the right to sell drugs on a couple of blocks of ratty tenement buildings. She'd wanted out. Out of the E88, out of the Herron clan, out of her ever-so-polite closeted racist family, out of the supervillain scene.

Then she'd Triggered a second time and lost everything. Her powers, her face, her body, even, apparently, a huge swathe of her memories. Leastways she had odd chunks of memories floating around loose… names, places, phrases, recipes for foods she'd never tasted, instructions in first aid-- a course she didn't remember taking… She wasn't even sure of her own name.

Now she was a prisoner of the ABB, and Lung's property. The fool didn't even really have a use for her. She had no powers. If he tried to flaunt her as an ABB cape he'd be a laughingstock. Yet like a child who refused to give up a toy he didn't even want, he kept her prisoner "till he decided what to do with her."

The possibilities made her shudder.

Her captors called her "MeiMei." Some sort of mocking diminutive in Chinese society, she suspected. (She knew the language, but not the culture.) Apparently finding out she used to be Rune was hilarious. They fed her canned la choy, made her dress in a cheongsam or kimono, poked her with bamboo and asked her if she wanted a snack… the last one to try that had dang near lost fingers.

Then they'd slipped up. Bored to tears, she'd pleaded for something, anything to alleviate the boredom. As a masterpiece of mockery, they'd given her an oriental brush and pen set, with bottles of ink, brushes and a little lap/floor table to work from. Even a mortar and pestle meant for grinding new ink.

Among all the muddled memories cluttering up her mind, she remembered that she knew the Azeroth trade skill Inscription.

Ever since they'd given it to her she'd spent every moment they were watching her practicing, painting cranes and herons and the Chinese astrology animals and naked geishas combing their hair and whatever oriental crap she could think of. When they weren't looking she was busy inscribing the most potent scrolls she could manage. She passed them off as practice sheets of her brush strokes, and hidden the most powerful ones away so they couldn't throw them out.

Her pretty paintings, at least, earned her some favor with Lung. They represented class and culture and traditional values of the East, things he could trade on. Simply having such pictures painted and framed in his office meant he gained respect from his underlings and potential allies. He allowed her a few more creature comforts for that; a proper bed. Better food.

More paints and pigments.

Paintings of naked geishas were apparently good as money among the ABB men; she traded several of them for more materials and substances to grind into ink. They thought she wanted the various plants and roots for color. She needed them in order to make her scrolls more potent.

By blind luck she had stumbled across a combination of herbs that, when milled, produced Cerulean Pigments. She slowly, painfully saved those up, and converted them into War Paints, which she saved up in turn. She pocketed every by product-- the sorcerous earths and the like-- and hid them in her haversack, which by miracle had gone undiscovered…

Then they had left a plain, ordinary wooden handled broom in her room, for her to clean with. She'd broken the handle off the brush, taken her precious war paints and crafted a Crystalfire Spellstaff.

She had a weapon.

Then a contact from somewhere in Asia heard the rumor that Lung was the owner of a real, live Tanuki. Her. They were sending a representative who was going to be offering payment-- not in Yen or dollars or in any paper currency, but in gems. Rubies. Several hundred carats worth. If she didn't escape that night, by next morning she'd be on a slow boat to China, for real, and God only knew what sort of fate.

But she had to wait. The trader's offer was part of her plan to survive.

The moment came. The representative, a tiny little wrinkled yellow man with white hair and an expensive business suit, came to her room and saw her. He exclaimed and rattled off-- something… in a dialect she didn't recognize. He saw the paintings and yammered some more. Apparently Lung was going to get a phat deal out of this.

She waited until they had retreated to his office, then quickly changed out of the oriental geisha-whatever-it-was they'd dolled her up in and into the kung fu pajamas she'd begged off of one naked geisha painting customer, slung her Haversack full of scrolls and inks and ingredients over her shoulder, and retrieved her Spellstaff and the one Scroll of Strength she had managed to inscribe from under her bed. It would last only thirty minutes. She would have to hustle.

She gripped her inscribed staff tightly and activated the scroll. It dissolved into glowing flakes of ash, as arcane energies infused her body. She felt a rush of incredible power; the energy infused set off a chain reaction and she activated the staff. It rebounded and redoubled. She felt her mind grow clearer, sharper, and her body a hundred fold more energetic. And her strength….

The Scroll of strength, in World of Warcraft terms, raised her physical strength by forty points. What did that mean in real world terms? The guards lazing about on either side of her prison door learned. They were caught quite by surprise when she kicked the heavy wooden door, its frame, and a good chunk of the wall on either side into the far wall, with them in between the wall and it. She ran out over top of them, only pausing to give the chunk of wall flattening them to the floor a couple of good stomps and a selection of swearing in Mandarin and Redneck before fleeing.

She raced through the halls and down the stairs. ABB members of all sizes and shapes heard the ruckus and poured out of side doors, filling the corridor. She didn't even slow down; she didn't dare. It was then that a good number of Lung's gang were introduced to the concept of the 'foe tossing charge.' she charged straight at them, never swerving, swatting each of them out of the way and into the walls or ceiling without breaking stride. Panic was on her side, as those with guns all shot wide of their mark even as she bore them down into the floor. She was no martial artist but she currently had the strength of ten men, the stamina of a dozen marathon runners and the 'intellect'-- that is to say the hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness and reflexes-- of a black belt in any martial art you care to name. Even a bumbling schoolyard brawler would be devastating with those, and Rune… MeiMei… had been in a scrap or two in the past, to say the least.

She'd found her way, somehow, to an open atrium in the middle of the building… was Lung's HQ some sort of office building?-- when Oni Lee made his appearance. This particular bastard's talent was the ability to teleport, only when he teleported he left behind a clone that kept on fighting for several seconds till it crumbled to dust, while the original appeared someone else. It made him a nightmare to fight, as he could leave behind "suicide bomber" copies of himself who would detonate their grenade bandoliers, taking out anything and anyone around him.

It was also turning him into a vegetable. Every time he 'hopped' like that it briefly stopped the neural signals in his brain, like a hard reboot--- which did a number on his short and long term memory, rendering him more and more incapable of anything but passive instruction while his mind tried to re-lay his neural pathways. He was Lung's number one lieutenant… probably because he had all the independent thought and initiative of a baked potato.

But fighting, that he was still good at. He teleported in and lashed out in a high kick, catching MeiMei in the face and knocking her back before she could parry. As he pressed the attack from the front he reappeared behind her, striking her in the back of the knee and dropping her crashing to the floor even as the one in front of her crumbled to dust. One or two more strikes and she would be out for the count.

Unfortunately for Oni Lee, MeiMei wasn't working on autopilot like he was. In fact the staff was overclocking her brain. That was how after just two strikes she was able to predict his next appearance and spin her staff around to strike where he was weakest.

Oni Lee reappeared on the rail to her left just in time for his crotch to intercept the end of her whirling staff. There was a wet, cartilaginous crunch and he doubled up, eyes all but bulging through his oriental demon mask. With only the faintest of groans he toppled backwards over the rail and fell to the atrium floor two levels below.

She didn't even wait for the whump as he hit the tiles. She was already on the move.

Lung and the intermediary were in Lung's preferred office for.. sensitive financial interactions. It was a corporate boardroom with a long table, some few chairs scattered around it and nothing else. He and the intermediary sat on opposite sides of the long table; Lung with his own men standing around him, the intermediary with his own escorts, stiff and unsmiling. Wordlessly the man opened the case, revealing a velvet bag the size of his fist. He opened it and poured the contents out into the case. Dozens of pigeon's blood rubies, some of the rarest gemstones in Asia, glittered under the unflattering office lights.

One of Lung's men took a jeweler's loupe and examined one of the stones. His eyebrows rose. He turned and nodded to Lung. As the intermediary carefully put the stones one by one back into the bag, one of Lung's rare smiles slowly spread across his face.

It was wiped off in the next instant when, just as the intermediary put the last stone back in the velvet bag, the very girl who was the object of the exchange exploded through the doors at the North end of the room. She leapt onto the table, ran its full length, and snagged the looped cord of the gem bag with the end of her staff. She vaulted over the heads of the men there, shattering the windowpane with the other end of her staff, and leaped out into the night.

The intermediary's cry of horror was drowned out by Lung's roar of rage.

MeiMei landed painfully in the decorative bushes below the window, barely missing the shattered glass, and rolled to her feet. "Never… doing that… again," she groaned. She started running, heedless of the gravel crunching under her feet. Leathered footpads were good for something it seemed. Behind her the "abandoned" office building was exploding into noise and activity. She ran on heedless, not looking back.

Anyone else might say that her behavior was lunacy. Why not just run straight out once she was free from her cell? Why double back and risk everything to steal a bag of gems?

Despite appearances there was a method to her madness. She did have a plan. She wasn't crazy or greedy or crazy with greed… though a bag of gems worth at least a cool million might drive a few people bonkers. She was alone. She was a Case 53, a mutated cape. She no longer had a family. She no longer had a gang. She couldn't go to the PRT because… her sputtering memory only provided "very very bad" as an explanation for that. But she chose to trust it. And even if she'd escaped empty handed she would still have had the ABB on her tail. Her million-dollar pricetag tail.

If she was going to stay free for longer than it took to do a hundred yard dash, she was going to need to hire or bribe or pay off some help-- and that bag of rubies was the ticket. She yanked the bag off the end of her staff and stuffed it down into the magic pouch she'd found on her belt, keeping one stone in her hand. Now who the hell could she hire to help her--

She turned a corner and nearly plowed headlong into a dog disguised as a rhinoceros.

She backed up a step and looked up. Way up. There were three huge mutated rhino-alligator-dog things blocking her way. Perched on their backs were four teenagers: a petite, freckled blonde girl in a domino mask and a black and purple spandex suit; a delicate, girly looking boy with curly black hair in a renfaire costume, with a jester's staff and mask; a tall, tough-looking guy in a leather jacket and skull-motif helmet who had boiling clouds of blackness seeping off him, and a rough, mannish looking brown haired girl in tank-top, cargo pants, combat boots and a cheap plastic bulldog mask.... The Undersiders; Tattletale, Regent, Grue and Hellhound aka Bitch.

They were obviously as surprised to see her as she was to see them.

"A Panda chick?" the guy in the renfaire costume blurted.

Okay, maybe a bit MORE surprised.

"You'll do," MeiMei said. Before anyone could ask what she meant by that, she took the ruby she'd picked and held it up between her thumb and forefinger. It was about the size of her thumb. The blonde girl's eyes bugged out behind her mask and she made a choking noise. MeiMei spoke up and tried to sound confident. "I'll pay you four of these to help me escape," she said loudly.

"From who?" the guy in the helmet said suspiciously.

There was a distant bellow of rage. Meimei looked back, then at her potential rescuers. "That."

The eyes of the Undersiders went round behind their masks as bellowing roars and flames gouted into the sky from that direction. "Hey whoa, let's reconsider—OW!" The guy in the helmet started to speak, only to get frog-punched by the blonde girl in purple. Purple girl never took her eyes off the gem. "Say YES, idiot," she said.

The other Undersiders looked at her. "You serious?" the helmet guy said.

"As a heart attack," the girl in purple said severely, glaring at him.

"Well, our specialty IS running away, so we can live to run away again tomorrow," the renfaire kid quipped. "Might as well live up to it and earn a shiny."

The helmet guy held out his hand. Meimei pointedly dropped the gem into her belt pouch and took his hand. The implication was clear; escape first, then payment. As he heaved her up onto the mutant dog's back she caught a glimpse of cocoa brown skin between his glove and his jacket sleeve. How about that, she thought. A Negro rescuing a Nazi Panda from a Chinese dragon. I don't know if it's irony or not but it couldn't get any weirder.

Then there was no time for anything but holding on; the dogs bounded up the sides of the buildings, their passengers clinging for dear life, and raced away acros the rooftops. "So where to?" the helmeted guy-- Grue, that was his name-- shouted.

There was a roar from the city behind them. "I'd say anywhere but back there sounds good," MeiMei yelled back.