5

The first week eased on by. Adrian got used to the drag of the daily grind of high school. Each day he went in, put in his six hours, then booked his way down to the Boardwalk, his little vending license in his hot sweaty hand, and set up his little push cart, selling trinkets and toys cribbed from Azeroth… paper zeppelins, little clockwork bugs, comical toy tanks that shot ping pong balls, Creeepy Crates, widgets that sparkled and spun and went PING and did absolutely nothing… the Sunshine Butterflies sold quite well. When night fell and the streets rolled up, he closed up his cart and trundled it on home-- then beelined to his workshop, where he put in an hour or two assembling gadgets of more serious use. Then to bed, up at six, lather, rinse, repeat.

Things were going well with Taylor as well. Considering all the hurt she'd been put through and the betrayal she'd suffered, he'd feared he would have to spend far too much time earning her trust. Apparently fleeing the authorities after triggering a building wide panic with the strobing, klaxon-voiced evidence in tow was a bonding moment, because she warmed to him rapidly. Already they were, if not fast friends, then at least kindred spirits and fellows-in-arms.

And according to Taylor, she hadn't been bothered by anything more than a few hostile glares since then. The Threesome were currently laying low, it seemed. He would wager a guess that he was an unknown commodity. The usual routine with anyone attempting to befriend Taylor in the past was that they quickly knuckled under, or were such social dregs (like Greg Veder) that chasing them off wasn't worth the bother.

Greg Veder. That was someone else he'd like to help, if he could. He'd have to think about that.

Either way, Adrian was outside their usual paradigm. Taylor figured they were regrouping, deciding how to attack next. Adrian figured they might be waiting until their hearing came back. Sophia was still sort of twitchy, days later…

Friday afternoon came and went. The tools were tucked away, the various trinkets and gadgets he was working on shut down and tucked away on their shelves. He lay back in his bed in the rafters of his Lost Workshop and snoozed away the waning day. At midnight though his alarm went off, a gentle chime from a domed clock he'd found during his yard sale frenzy. He woke up, stared at the roof a few inches from his nose, and smiled. His fangs gleamed in the dark. "Time to start cleaning up the neighborhood," he said to himself, and chuckled.

Bayleaf's lair wasn't just in a poor and crime ridden neighborhood. It was located in the heart of the territory of the Archer's Bridge Merchants. To anyone else with any mind for real estate, this would have been a calamity. To Bayleaf, it was a bonus.

The Archer's Bridge Merchants were dealers and junkies. Their rank and file were junkies. Their capes were junkies. Their leader and his woman were both junkies. They dealt… and used… every known substance, licit and illicit, known to man, and quite a few more known only to metahumans. Oh, they dipped their rancid toes in everything else too: prostitution, protection, armed robbery, and the like. But it always came back to drugs. Most of them spent the majority of their day wasted, and what little was left either jonesing for their next hit or robbing someone to pay for it.

The utter bafflement was how in the name of all things holy that they functioned at all. Before coming to Brockton Bay, Bayleaf would have sworn that a group-- noone could call it an "organization"-- like the Merchants was simply functionally impossible. Back on the old home Earth, there were drug lords and barons and gangs of dealers of course, but one of the cardinal rules of those organizations was that if you were in charge, you didn't sample the merchandise. Pickling your own brain on a regular basis was a shortcut to your empire crumbling around you, that or one of your more temperate lieutenants putting a bullet in the back of your head and taking over the show. These guys on the other hand were running the candy store with both hands in the bins; they should have imploded long before now if for no other reason than that they swallowed, smoked, snorted or injected all the stock.

And yet, despite all this, they not only managed to stay in business, they managed to hold territory against three other gangs, and thwart the Protectorate as well, and still make enough money to keep Skidmark, Squealer and their lieutenants bombed out of their freaking minds.

Which led Bayleaf to one conclusion: Despite all appearances, Skidmark and Squealer were not the ones calling the shots. Someone-- someone with a still-functioning brain with all its original chemicals intact-- was running things, and they were just along for the ride. It would be interesting finding out who.

For now though, he was going to spend a few nights going after the low-hanging fruit. It was time to establish a presence.

Of all the skills downloaded to him, armor crafting had not been included. He could of course take hammer, tongs and anvil (or leather punch and knife, or cloth and thread) and handicraft something, but the Azerothian art of not only creating armor of cloth, leather, and metal but of infusing it on the anvil (or the rack, or the loom) with enhancing attributes was a complete enigma.

But he did have the skill of enchantment. And he could improvise.

The cloth given to Parian had yielded fruit. She had quickly figured out how to incorporate the arcane enhancements into other types of cloth-- (or rather, Bayleaf suspected, her SHARD had….) She had not only figured out how to make clothing that was self-resizing, but also how to make it stronger, tougher, more durable…

Bayleaf had been busy the past couple of weeks as well. His efforts at disenchantment had yielded a considerable amount of dusts, essences, and shards-- primarily from items of particular age or sentimental value, he noticed, though he suspected some few were the idle trinkets of tinkers; his own scrapped projects had ended up recycled in the same fashion. As an experiment he had crafted several low level enchantments-- plus-ones to armor and the like-- and given them to Parian to experiment with. Within a matter of hours she had begun producing clothing with armor ratings and attribute enhancements he could feel for himself.

It was something of an open secret between them that he was a cape, but she never spoke of it. To be a rogue in Brockton Bay was to have a code of customer confidentiality to rival that of a parish priest. She kept her customers' secrets, and they kept hers... adamantly. She was sitting on her clothier discoveries for now, but already she was grateful enough to offer him commissioned work for free. He asked, and discovered to his gratification that she actually DID work with leather from time to time…

He, ahem. didn't ask.

Then he'd dug out the Enchanted Leather recipe, and things had really gotten interesting.

He hadn't gone with any Azeroth designs for his costume. They looked, quite frankly, ridiculous, and the pauldrons would have broken his neck the first time he raised his hands over his head. (he suspected the real Azerothians used shoulder pads a bit more subtle.) Instead he and she (very well, MOSTLY she) had crouched over a drawing board and worked out something original.

A hooded leather jerkin, so dark brown as to be almost black. Bracers of the same material, thick as bootleather. Fingerless gloves. Breeches with kneepads to match the ones at his elbows. A wide belt, with stout buckles. A long hooded cloak. And footwear that, to Parian's consternation, were somewhere between boots and sandals, with bared toes. It was stitched with a repeating pattern, a Celtic knotwork. Parian had thought it fitting.

Everything was lined inside with soft, sheer cloth for comfort… a futuristic fabric invented by a tinker that fit like silk yet breathed and wicked away moisture like Gore Tex. It had integrated with the "new weaving technique" so perfectly it was alarming, Parian had told him.

The final addition sort of scared the heck out of him. It was a belt pouch of thick cloth, not much larger than a fanny pack, designed to hang at his hip. Yet it held something like ten times its volume.., there was only one compartment, and it only held so much before "burping" and spilling out whatever you put in it, but there it was.

A first generation handy haversack. In just a week's time. What would she be crafting in two?

He had thanked her profusely, taken the costume home, and set to adding his own improvements.

The cloak had been quickly upgraded into a Parachute Cloak. The design was improved, though; closer to a modern parasail than the crude four-corner thing the design normally had. Enchantments for added armor, fireproofing (he KNEW about Lung), and boosts to his "arcane" powers went everywhere he could fit them.

The haversack got loaded out with a variety of explosives (gnomes and goblins, whaddya gonna do?)-- flash bombs, fireworks, and the like; several automated decoys; a pile of high-level first aid bandages (he had BEGGED Parian for the scraps), and his favorite invention thus far-- a Gnomish Universal Remote.

One last item was added. He had been working on it from the moment he'd found his workshop: his staff. He he'd bought it at the flea market from a woodcrafter, a bit of extra scrap he'd had no use for. Bayleaf had taken it, whittled it down and smoothed it, carved maze-like grooves into its entire length, hardened it in the fire, then hammered silver melted with moonfire into the grooves. A gem, fused together from the odd crystals and metals he'd collected and probably unidentifiable by any earth-born gemologist, had been put into the fitting carved at one end. Then he'd slathered it with every bottled enchantment he'd had left on his shelves, whether they were intended for a weapon or not.

To his astonishment, they'd stuck. The moonsilver had glowed, then sunk into the wood and vanished. The gemstone had been covered, engulfed in a knot of wood. To all outward appearance it was now just a plain, slightly crooked, gnarled piece of fire hardened driftwood. Yet he could feel the countless enhancements in it whenever he picked it up.

He didn't know what had driven him to do something so recklessly wasteful, or even just plain reckless. But he had been driven, motivated by some muse. He'd taken notes, or at least tried to, as he proceeded… perhaps someday he'd make sense of them. All he knew now was that it was stout, it fit in his hands perfectly whether human or worgen, it also fit neatly in his haversack without trying, and he could whack it with all his strength across one of his anvils and it didn't even crack.

He donned his costume piece by piece, almost reverently. When he'd dropped the last item-- his staff-- into his haversack and buckled it shut, he looked in the cracked mirror leaning against the wall. Man. He looked good.

"Showtime," he said, his teeth gleaming.

There was a whirr-whirr-whirr, and Obie came trotting across the workfloor, his rotating strobe faintly glowing. Bayleaf patted him on the bubblegum machine. "Keep an eye on the place while I'm gone, Obie," he said. Obie saluted.

A moment later a trapdoor opened on the rooftop of his workshop, and he leapt out. He raced out across the rooftop on all fours and disappeared into the night, looking for the one thing that Brockton Bay provided in surfeit:

Trouble.

"So," Emily Piggot said, her hands folded across her desk, her expression (as always) sour. "Do you have ANYTHING to report on the unidentified cape that literally dropped out of the sky on us a little over a month ago?" She turned the screen on her desk around so that Armsmaster could see it. "Besides this, I mean."

Onscreen was a photograph, one that had become famous online and notorious around the Protectorate and PRT offices. It showed a rather interesting double selfie. On one side, his nose almost to the lens, was an enormous wolf-man, his eyes bugged out mouth hanging open and his tongue dangling out of the side of his mouth in a goofy canine grin. Next to him in a near headlock was Armsmaster. What wasn't half-wrapped in the werewolf's arm was half-wrapped in woody vines. Armsmaster himself was looking as utterly displeased with the situation as a human being possibly could. His goatee practically radiated anger. "I like the caption on this one," Piggot said idly. "Hello. I M WulfMan. I hav just met yu and I luv yu."

Assault let out a muffled snort, then a grunt as his wife Battery elbowed him. "Nothing to report on our side," she said matter-of-factly. "Of course most of our patrols have been out near Captain's Hill. Most of the sightings have been in the Docks or the Trainyard."

"Any eyewitnesses?" Piggot said, not turning a single hair.

"A few," Miss Militia said. "Most of the sources, though, are rather..."

"Pickled?" Assault ventured. "Ow!" He rubbed the back of his head where Battery had cuffed him.

Piggot refrained from rolling her eyes at Assault and Battery's antics. Anyone who hadn't guessed those two were married in their secret identities would figure it out after watching them interact for five minutes. "I assume you mean drugged," she said.

"I would have gone with 'embalmed,'"Miss Militia said dryly. She was idly flipping a glowing green butterfly knife in one hand while she talked. "This wolf-man seems to be concentrating his vigilante efforts in Merchant territory, picking off the drug dealers, pimps and other charming underlings Skidmark attracts. He's also stopped a number of small time robberies and several assaults… but consequently the eyewitnesses are… less than reliable."

"Need I point out that we have a speedster in the room?" Piggot said, annoyed. "You may not be able to affect him while at full speed, Velocity, but you could still cover the entirety of the Docks in a handful of minutes. Surely you could have spotted him."

"Not necessarily," Armsmaster said. "As I said in my report, the cape in question assumed a secondary form that promptly turned invisible-- or so close that I couldn't tell the difference."

"Couldn't you spot him on infrared?" Velocity said, surprised.

"Infrared is still LIGHT, Velocity," Armsmaster said, his lips pressed thin. "Whatever cloaking method or device he's using is very effective." He hesitated. "Either that or he is able to cool himself down to ambient temperature at will… hm." His eyes unfocused and flickered in the manner that indicated he was taking down notes on his HUD.

"Still.." Piggot said.

"It doesn't seem to matter," Miss Militia said. "Somehow, when we're still blocks away he knows we're coming. According to the few… ah… chemically non-enhanced eyewitnesses we've found, he'll suddenly bolt for the rooftops or the shadows without warning, just a minute or so before we or the police arrive on the scene."

"So he somehow knows when we're coming?"

"That would be indicated, yes."

"Lovely." Piggot's expression was anything but.

"The longest he's spoken to anyone was one incident last night..."

Clara sprawled on the ground in the trash-strewn alley where the mugger had thrown her. She scrambled backward on her hands and heels, trying to keep her distance from him and from the knife gleaming in his hand. He was raggedy, dressed in clothes that reeked in only the way that could come from someone who never bothered or cared to clean themselves, and his eyes were glazed. "C'mon," he said, all too confident of how this would go. "There's nothing in that purse worth dying for."

A shadow-- an enormous one-- seemed to detach itself from the wall behind him. Glowing red eyes looked down on him. "Funny," it growled in a voice as deep as a well. "That's what she ought to be saying to you."

The mugger whipped around, knife out. Before he could even move a clawed hand the size of a small shovel whipped out and wrapped around his head. He was lifted off the ground, his screaming muffled by the palm covering his face. He kicked helplessly at the air and lashed out, stabbing blindly one, two, three times-- the other hand appeared and grabbed the mugger's knife hand. There was a crack. The muffled screaming went up an octave, and the monster threw the broken knife away---

"So, some level of invulnerability?"

"Or just body armor."

"True. Continue."

The mugger-turned-prey clawed at the monster's arm with his good hand, to no avail. "All the suffering in this world," the monster said, his voice as much sorrowful as it was angry, "And you have to add to it. For what? For nothing but a few minute's poison." He turned and marched further up the alley. There was a muffled THUMP, and the mugger's screams ceased. This was followed by a loud squelching crunch-- and the monster returned; behind him the unlucky mugger was crammed, headfirst, into a can full of trash. He was alive, or at least still moving feebly.

"Head first in the trash, huh?" Assault was clearly amused.

"It… seems to be his trademark," Armsmaster admitted reluctantly. "He doesn't just beat up and secure his prisoners; it seems he has to humiliate them in some fashion as well."

"I could like this guy," Assault said.

Clara was scared stiff; to scared to move or even breathe too loud. The monster came closer; in the dim light she saw that he was an enormous wolf-man, dressed in a leather cloak and wielding a wooden staff. He was seven, eight feet tall if he was an inch, and his eyes glowed in the moonlight.

He knelt down and reached for her. She shrieked and cringed. He pulled back. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise," he said. "You're hurt. Let me help." He reached out again. This time she held still. He pulled out a patch of cloth and wiped at the cut and bruise on her face. It was cool and tingled as he wiped it across her skin. It stuck in place, covering the wound. "There, that should help." He took her hands, carefully brushing the gravel out of the cuts, and wrapped them in more soothing cloth. "Do you have a phone?"

"I-I yes, I do."

"Call the police," he said. His eyes seemed to squint in amusement. "And next time you go out, carry something a little higher caliber than speed dial."

"So now he's encouraging people to arm themselves," Armsmaster said, in obvious disapproval. "Just what this city needs. A bunch of frightened women running around with firearms."

There was a loud SCHICK-CHACK. Miss Militia's infinite weapon had changed from a butterfly knife to a pump action shotgun. "Gun control," she said sourly, "is the proposition that a 98 pound woman should have to fight off a 200 pound rapist with her bare hands."

Assault leaned over to Battery. "Awk-warrrrrd," he sing-songed sotto voce.

Piggot growled. "Table that. Back to the point."

"Thank.. thank y--" But before Clara could finish saying it, the wolfman's ears pricked up. Without a word he leapt… clear to the rooftop… and vanished.

Mere seconds later, the familiar thrumm of Miss Militia's motorcycle echoed down the alleyway. She stopped with with a jerk at the mouth of the alley and shone a spotlight down on Clara, making her squint. "What happened here, Ma'am?" She said over the engine roar.

"That incident is typical of all verified encounters with him," Armsmaster concluded. "He drops out of nowhere, stops the perpetrator cold-- generally leaving him in a humiliating position-- dresses the wounds of the victim, and then vanishes moments before the authorities arrive. Sometimes he strikes so quickly that the eyewitness never actually sees him. There's just a blur and suddenly the perp is down." His beard bristled in irritation. "At least those are the cases we know he was involved in..."

Piggot raised an eyebrow. It was the most she'd moved since the start of the meeting. "Pardon?"

"There have been other incidents," Velocity said. "Odd enough that we think he may be involved. Such as a pack of drug dealers we found, tied to a lamp post, surrounded by ruined baggies of their "product" and in hysterics. They were all high as kites, but they gave the arresting officers what the officers THOUGHT was a cock-and-bull story about being attacked by an invisible tiger."

"An invisible tiger..." Piggot said.

"Yes, they said they couldn't see it, but they could hear it, and see its paw prints on the ground… they were apparently doing some buying and selling out of an old storage facility when this thing attacked them. Smacked them around, scattered their product all over the place, shredded the tires on their car so they couldn't get away-- Any of them pulled a gun or knife, a huge invisible paw would slap it out of their hands.

"It played cat and mouse with them for about an hour, chasing them up and down that old storage yard. Every now and then they'd think they lost it, then it would roar right in their ear… it finally threw a phone at their feet and said one word: "Call." They couldn't dial 911 fast enough. Then they say there was this gigantic flash of blue-white light, and when they woke up they were all tied to the lamppost with their merchandise spread out all over the place around them."

"Vicious sense of humor, too," Assault noted.

"Well that matches Armsmaster's report of him turning into some sort of invisible creature," Battery said. "This guy's an interesting grab bag."

"His avian form is accounted for too," Velocity said. "Some perv tried to kidnap a little girl over on the boardwalk. He didn't make fifty feet with her tucked under his arm before a giant owl dropped out of the sky--"

"A giant OWL?" Piggot's eyebrows both raised at that one.

"A giant bleepin' owl," Velocity said. "It falcon punched the guy and knocked him out."

"I feel like an excuse for plot exposition, but… "falcon punched?" Battery asked.

"Some birds kill their prey by literally punching them," Assault told his wife. "They dive down at a hundred miles per, with their feet clenched up in fists like this--" he held his fists out in front of him. "When they hit, WHAM." Everyone paused. "Hey, I watch Animal Planet, okay?"

"Eyewitnesses say the guy flipped completely over in the air before hitting the ground," Velocity said. "He's in the hospital with some nasty skull fractures and one hell of a case of whiplash."

Assault started chuckling. "I really hope this is all one guy, because he gets better with every story," he said.

"Please don't tell me there's more," Piggot said.

"Please tell me there is!" Assault said.

It was another street, another mouth of another alley, and another mugging. This time it was a young couple on their way home from a movie. This time the mugger had a gun. "Wallet, watch, jewelry, phone. Come on!"

Bayleaf was on the rooftop. He had accidentally stumbled into a clothesline someone had stretched there, and was untangling himself from a beach blanket they had forgotten to take in. He looked over the edge of the roof, saw the mugging taking place, and had a terrible, awful, wonderful idea…

The young man hastily removed his watch and dug out his wallet. The guy snatched them from his hands with nervous fingers. "Now you too, sister--"

It was then the alley rang with a mighty battle cry.

"BJORRRRRRK!!!"

The mugger spun about, gun at the ready, but he wasn't fast enough. He was flattened to the pavement by an enormous wall of blubber as a walrus, wearing a beach towel tied around its neck like a cape, lunged out of the alley and bore him to the ground.

The two lovebirds could only gawk in astonishment the one ton aquatic mammal reared up and "orrrrked" in triumph. They could see the mugger's head,arms, and feet sticking out from underneath their bizarre rescuer.

The mugger arggghled and tried to reach for his gun where it had fallen to the sidewalk. Bad mistake. The walrus saw him trying to reach the weapon and proceeded to bounce up and down on top of him.

"HuaghHuaghHuaghHuagh!"

The walrus barked, gave one last bounce, and slapped the gun away from the mugger's limp hand with a flipper.

The couple stared.

The walrus stared back. It nudged one of the cellphones lying on the sidewalk in their direction. "Wha, what, who do we call??" The young man stammered, his common sense derailed.

"Call nine-one-one," the mugger groaned flatly.

"Right right, we need the police," the young man said, jabbing at the buttons.

"We need an ambulance," the mugger moaned.

"Are you… some sort of hero?" The girl asked the walrus. By way of reply the walrus reared up, showing the "W" smeared on its chest in white paint.

Sirens started to draw close. The walrus turned and began belly-walking back into the alley. "Thank you..." the girl called out. It looked back, gave her a salute with one flipper, and belly-walked out of sight.

Moments later a squad car, lights going, pulled up to the alley. Back up on the rooftop, Bayleaf lay on his back, rocking back and forth and biting his own arm to keep from howling with laughter.

 The footage on Piggot's computer monitor, taken from the security cameras of the corner convenience store across the street, reached its end. Everyone in the meeting room watched Assault warily. He was rocking back and forth, face red as his costume. There was, everyone privately calculated, a good chance he would explode.

"There were further sightings," Armsmaster went on, as if in pain. "A walrus saved a drowning man out in the bay. And a couple of smugglers in a fishing smack were boarded and routed by an angry walrus in a cape." He grimaced; the next words came out like he was passing a kidney stone. "He's already become something of a local meme in the neighborhood; people in the Docks have begun referring to him-- it-- as Wonder Walrus--"

"WONDER WALRUS!!!!" Assault shrieked, toppling over backwards out of his chair. He rolled on the floor, howling and clutching his ribs.

Battery watched him and sighed. "He'll need a minute," she said.

Piggot slowly massaged her temples. "Good, because I'LL need a minute," she said.

Later… MUCH later… after Assault had calmed down enough, they resumed. "So we've determined he's a shapeshifter with at least four forms," Piggot said. "A wolf-man or beast-man form, an aerial form, that of an owl, a stealth form, of an invisible great cat of some sort, and…. An aquatic form… of a walrus. Shut up, Assault."

Assault let out a smothered giggle.

"We have one other possible," Triumph said, speaking up for the first time. "Though… well, I'd include it only because it's so strange." His mouth curled up at the corner. "And strange seems to be this guy's thing."

Piggot sighed. "Continue."

"It came in from Panacea, of all people..."

Amy Dallon, the legendary Panacea, slumped and groaned in relief as the door closed behind her. A moment's privacy, finally. Some days it was just more than she could take, working hour after hour in the hospital, healing the same blasted problems over and over…

Thank whoever was responsible for this space. It was an enclosed courtyard in the middle of the building. Few people used it, especially this late in the fall, and there were few windows looking down on it. She'd taken to sneaking out here to sneak a smoke where nobody would bother, or worse, lecture her about it.

It was a shame noone else came out here though. It was a pretty little garden courtyard. Especially now with the flowers blooming and the green in the trees…

She stopped with the cigarette in her lips, lighter halfway to the tip, and reviewed that thought. Flowers. And green leaves. In early fall.

She looked around carefully. What was going on? For one thing, she did NOT remember that tree standing over there. And this pale, foxfire-green glow over everything. At first she thought it was just the light filtering down through the branches of the tree. Then she realized the light was coming FROM the branches of the tree.

Curiosity overcame common sense. She approached, stealthy as a cat, to see what was going on. Just as she was within arm's reach, the "tree" lowered its head, looked at her and slowly smiled…

Piggot facepalmed. "A TREE?"

"A tree."

She realized what she was seeing now. The part she had mistaken for a stump of a bough was actually a long-jawed head, with a craggy face like an old man and glowing green eyes. The two largest boughs were upraised arms. It lowered them. Then it reached out with one leafy hand and plucked the cigarette from where it dangled, forgotten and unlit, from her lower lip. The treant-- there was no other word for it-- flicked the cigarette over its shoulder and slowly shook a finger at her. "Baaaaad…. Forrrr …. Youuuuu." It said, smiling at her gently.

Flummoxed beyond words, she fell back on her old standby: snark. "Oh fine, great," she said, "now the trees are lecturing me on my personal habits. Look, whatever you are, that's my business and not-- ugh. Huuk. HACCK!" While she had been speaking the Treant had laid one hand on her back. There was a strange second glow. The next thing she knew, a violent coughing fit hit her. She doubled over and a wad of phlegm and tar the size of the palm of her hand hit the path between her feet.

She breathed. She breathed again, deeper. Oh wow, that felt so much better."Oh, yuck. That was in my lungs?" No wonder she'd felt so out of breath. She blinked. "Did you do that?"

The Treant winked at her.

Amy bridled. "All right, buster. What are you doing here??" She demanded.

"Giiiift… of… Eluuuune." The Treant raised its arms and looked at the sky. The foxfire glow grew brighter. And brighter.

Panacea suddenly realized something: she felt good. No, really good. Better than she had in days. Her exhaustion was gone, dozens of little aches and pains she'd had in her back, her feet, her legs, all became apparent by their absence. She checked her hand; the scratches she'd gotten from her neighbor's pet cat the other day were gone completely. Was this what it felt like to be healed? No wonder so many people wanted a touch from her power so badly. She found herself doing something she rarely did; she smiled.

There was a commotion at one of the windows. A little girl was there, in a hospital gown, bouncing up and down waving excitedly.

Amy gawked like a fool. Wasn't that the little girl on the third floor? The one who had an aneurysm and was in a coma??

"Holy crap," Velocity said.

"Got that right." Assault agreed.

"They did a quick survey and eval of everyone at the hospital," Triumph went on. "There were no real "miracle cures--" noone grew back a lost limb, and most cancers were only diminished, not cured. But scars, burns and other wounds were healed, broken bones mended, infections vanished, poisoning cases cleared up instantly… everyone, staff included, experienced at least some uptick on their physical health.

"But an aneurysm?"

"Just a broken vein or artery in the brain," Assault said. "A tiny little wound. Which is what makes them so tragic."

"Did anyone attempt to capture, or at least speak to him?" Armsmaster asked.

Triumph shook his head. "After all the staff, and Panacea, were through running around figuring out what was up with their patients, they found out the Treant had disappeared. The closest thing we have to an eyewitness is a little girl who said 'the Magic Tree turned into a big bird and flew away.'"

"Which ties him back to our strange visitor from the sky," Piggot concluded. "Okay, this cape has become priority one. He's a brute, a changer with who knows how many forms, a stranger with invisibility that fools even infrared cameras, – his healing abilities alone make him absolutely priceless to the Protectorate. We can't have him getting snatched up by some gang or supervillain team or worse. Recruit him. Offer him whatever it takes. Find him and get him on the team!"

Amy sat up in bed, staring at what lay in her palm by the light of her alarm clock face. She hadn't told anyone about it; it seemed too important. Shortly before the Treant had flown off, while everyone in the hospital was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, she had gone back out to the little enclosed park to confront him, to try to speak to him.

Before she could say a word, he had taken her hands in his and pressed something into her palm. "Do… Sooomething…Newwww," he'd said. Then he winked again, and vanished in a flash of blue white light. The last she'd seen of him-- though she didn't know it till later-- was an enormous owl, flying up into the sky.

She had sat up, examining the acorn with her power. To her relief, as well as her disappointment, it was just what it appeared: an ordinary acorn from an ordinary oak tree somewhere. For a while there she'd thought she'd been asked to raise the Treant's offspring.

But that wasn't what the treant had said. It had said for her to do something she had been terrified to do since she was a little girl.. to use her powers to do more than just heal. To try something new.

Wouldn't that be something. She had so many ideas. So many she'd been so afraid to even THINK of. Her power seemed to leap about like a puppy at the very idea. Eager to try.

She looked at the acorn.

Could she? Did she dare?

Carefully, slowly, she opened her power into the acorn. It began to glow…