Chapter 2

A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter Two

Genesis of the Belmonts

by Skysaber

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Story Day Two, April 7th 2011, Thursday - Early Morning

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"Now mosquitos, in addition to being everywhere, have other advantages as flying sensors. If you look up how they hunt, you'll find they home in on two things: heat and carbon dioxide. They are looking for warm-blooded animals to drink blood from, and they follow our breath to find us. Very ingenious, really. But now you are aware of that you can use those senses to find other things. Like checking a car's engine for heat will tell you whether it has been driven recently, for one example. Guns also heat up when they have been fired, and gas of the burning gunpowder will carry lots of carbon dioxide. So mosquitos can be used to home in on gunshots just like they do breath. It's little tricks like that that can be used to make you a fantastic scout, as you will not only know where people are, but which ones have fired guns recently."

Taylor had given up on pretending she did not want to, and was taking notes.

The two had gone downstairs, and were sitting at the table. She was not hungry, having eaten half of six or so danishes, and had some fruit. He'd even shown her the trick of pouring one purchased drink into two at-home glasses, so they both drank the same thing. Another way to avoid being poisoned.

Some part of her mind had been aware of the shower running. But she had been so focused in on the instruction she was receiving, and getting some flies to determine what Windex tasted like, that she'd allowed herself to be surprised when her dad came downstairs and caught them talking.

Danny froze, walking in on his daughter and some boy talking in his kitchen.

Taylor froze, not having any idea what to say.

The cape stood up, a wide smile in place as he offered his hand to her father. "Hi! Danny, right? I'm Rick, from the drama club. Your daughter and I have just been screwing like bunnies, all night long. It turns out she has a classical literature fetish. It really turned her on for me to dress up like Cyrano de Bergerac and quote the seduction scene to her. Who knew, eh? Anyway, we've decided to go steady, maybe even marry. Is that ok with you, sir?"

Aside from the crudity, he sounded so sincere that Taylor almost believed him, and she knew better.

Danny went from frozen to nearly purple with rage, then very visibly calmed himself. Ignoring the boy's offered hand, he turned to address his daughter. In very deliberate tones, he said, "I am going in to work now."

The man then turned and left, forgetting all about breakfast.

Once the front door was shut behind him, and the sound of their truck had driven off, the cape turned to Taylor, instructing, "When caught in something big, admit to something small. You don't want him to know about your powers, or you would have already told him. So when he discovered you doing cape things, it was easy to divert that into you doing teenage things. By bringing up uncomfortable subjects he did not want to face, your dad immediately focused in on the discomfort he was feeling, and not the holes in our story, like what doing those things would have done to my makeup. He will have a talk with you, and be upset, but if you maintain the illusion we are dating, you will have all the excuse you'll ever need to go out at all hours, spending time with me. And while he might not like it, he'll take it as normal and won't be able to do anything about it."

Taylor felt suffused with awe over his ability to turn a disaster like that into an advantage for her cape career.

After a moment, she asked, "Are you really named Rick?"

Did this new cape just out himself to her father to avoid revealing her secret?

He gave a slight shake of his head. "No, Rick is a nice, generic name. It could be a name by itself, or it could be short for Richard, or Frederick, or even Eric. As a nickname, it is even more anonymous than John, and sounds less suspicious. By volunteering it like that I sounded like I was being open, but he won't have a last name, so it doesn't help anyone identify me out of a crowd very much. However, I'll have to train myself to respond to it, if we are going to keep up the charade."

The cape thought for a moment, before pulling out a chair and returning to their discussion, "Actually, now that I think about it, who is this Rick person? Where did you meet him? Does he go to your school? He should probably already have a good job, as that will help calm your father down a bit, considering you are dating him."

Taylor was puzzled. "But, didn't you just make him up? Rick doesn't exist."

Again the cape nodded. "So we'll have to create him, as your father is going to want to know all of that data about him, and more. So those are all things you ought to know about your boyfriend, before that father-daughter discussion you are going to be having tonight. And by deciding on the details of Rick's life together, we'll both know the same answers to any questions your father will be asking, so won't get tripped up as easily when he questions us - which he will be doing. So, not many girls get to design their own boyfriend from the ground up, tell me about this Rick person. What drew your attention? How did you meet? What are the qualities you admire about him?"

Taylor just sat there, slightly panicky. "I don't know what to say."

Seeing her discomfort, the cape slowed down, offering more gently. "You've never done this before. It's alright. Everything is hard when you are just starting out. Let's start with Rick's family. If he has a mother and father, siblings or anything like that, your father is going to want to meet them at some point. Since we do not have any such people to introduce him to, it is easier to say he is living alone for some reason. What reason we are going to have to figure out, but we don't need details yet, just broad strokes will do for now. Ok, your turn. Pick a last name. Make sure it's not something too horrible, as according to the story we are telling your dad, this is a last name you might be considering marrying into."

She drew a blank. "Jones!" She blurted out.

He savored the idea, as if tasting it. "It's not a terrible choice. Generally, it's easier to sell people on the non-generic names just because people, when they are trying to hide their identity, always go for the generic ones like Smith or Jones or Brown. If you say your name is John Smith, anymore you are just going to attract attention. They are going to wonder what you are trying to hide. If you've seen the movie Men In Black, Agent K is always introducing himself as something difficult and hard to remember when he uses fake names, all the while saddling his junior partner-in-training with the generic ones. He does that, because the difficult names are more believable. People expect to have to struggle with names, and because they are difficult to remember they end up being more anonymous. People remember Doctor White, but don't like to admit they did not catch Doctor Fitz-something's last name. Still, while we are trying to sell it to your father perhaps it's better to go with easy to remember, as you are new to this and it would be bad for you to forget something like your boyfriend's name. Usually, it's better for a long term scam to go for middle-of-the-road names like Belmont, something people have heard of and can pronounce and remember, but not something that draws suspicion like the generics."

"Belmont, then," she agreed happily.

He appraised her with a glance. "Alright, Belmont it is then. Now, first name. Have you ever heard Rick's first name? And if so, what is it?"

"Uh, Richard?" She felt like she was more asking than telling.

"Richard Belmont." He nodded. "Already this person is taking shape. That's the sort of 'could have been a noble' name that the rich and the near-wealthy like to give their children. So we are looking at the boy of either a wealthy family, or a wannabe. So, he's from a good neighborhood, which means you did not meet him at school. Since we don't want to go to all of the trouble and inconvenience of faking him, or actually putting him, in another high school, that says to me he is home-schooled. That's easy to set up, but actually makes it harder to sell to your father, since home-schoolers are at a disadvantage finding work as office drones. And with the boy dating his daughter, Danny is going to be very interested in Rick's career. Luckily, I have an in on a very good one: classic car restoration. I can bring by a car today that I can ask for him to sell for me. He probably already knows people who have been, or are, used car salesmen. I'll just have to avoid meeting him in person again until I can rattle off a significant amount of car trivia, like you'd expect from an enthusiast, or someone actually able to support himself doing it as a career."

He paused for a moment in contemplation. "I'll have to get in touch with Uber. It's risky, dealing with villains, but those two have proven they can be hired for jobs, and it would really be a very simple one, if it works."

He took out his scroll and added another note in Aquan. Then, placing it aside, he continued on, "Right! So young Richard makes his money repairing and restoring old cars, mostly under the table at this point but he is hoping to go legitimate soon. Responsible parents of kids who are homeschooled often try to see to their social needs by enrolling them in community groups, so they can meet and interact with kids their own age. So that's where drama club comes from. You have just started attending recently, and aren't an official member since you have not paid the fees. But like to hang out all the same. You were working on making new friends, Lisa and Sarah, and that's how you and Rick met. You hit it off, and started dating, just simple things like going out for a burger or something together. It only just now turned serious. Does that all fit with your view of Rick?"

She nodded, stunned and amazed at how he was just pulling all of this out of the air like that.

He nodded. "Ok, we'll have to know where this drama club meets, and what it is called. We could make that up, but it would put us in danger of being outed and our story exposed. Easier and safer to look up actual clubs, find out the details, visit the locations they use, find one we like and actually attend a few meetings. People are generally terrible about recalling dates. If we go to a few sessions and tell Danny that's how we met, he could actually go there and ask around, and most people would not be able to tell him we started after we told him we'd already been there. And if we go to a few clubs, it becomes even harder to nail down which one we actually 'met' at.

"Now your turn again. Tell me what Rick's hair color is."

"But..." she pointed.

"I'm wearing a wig and false beard." He corrected. "My hair could be anything under this mass of black curls."

"Uh, blond?" she ventured, timidly getting her toe wet, figuratively speaking.

"Blond and blue-eyed it is," he agreed. "Your dad will never have noticed in that brief a contact what color my eyes were, and that will get at least one gang in this city off our backs. Always remember: never have too many enemies. Always do what you can to keep it down to a manageable number you are dealing with at any one time."

"Ok?" she ventured, not sure what he talking about.

He explained. "I know people who have grown up on video games who imagine they can have all of the bad guys, but never meet them in more numbers than they can handle. But the point of video games is entertainment. Real life doesn't work like that. If you went to a high school sports team's victory party, got up on their table and peed in their punch, you'd get beat up. Even if there was not one person on that team you couldn't beat in hand-to-hand combat, even if you are so awesome that you could defeat any three of the team at once, you're still getting beat up, because they won't face you in small packets of easy to face numbers. They'll come at you all at once. Similarly, gangs don't fight fair. Expect to have to face them in numbers you can't handle, and that means one of the most important skills any cape could master is how to run away, and actually escape from large numbers determined to chase you and beat you down. Expecting to face a mini-boss right when you are ready to handle him is video-game thinking, and will get you killed.

"The gang members know capes are tougher than them. They also know the only chance they have to beat them is to swarm them with more numbers than they could handle."

He paused for a moment. "And by the same token, a video game addict will expect his enemy to just stand there and be beaten upon until they go down. See my previous point: Skilled capes know how to run away. Getting out of fights you are losing is an irreplaceable skill, and you should expect anyone who has been on the cape scene long enough to have an established reputation to have a solid proficiency, if not mastered it. So you should expect to have to face capes you've already fought before - and if they have been around long enough for you to know their names, they will have the habit of replaying things after each fight, going over each detail to see how they could have done better. So even if you got an easy win against a cape in one fight, they might surprise you in the next. They don't stay around long enough to get reputations otherwise. 'Oh, I have defeated him. I have proven dominance. He will never be a threat to me' is movie thinking. That's part of why it's so drastically important to limit the number of enemies you have to fight, because they will overwhelm you if you give them half a chance. Even enemies who hate each other will gang up against you, often enough. Life is not a video game with fights carefully calculated so you can win all of the time. New capes often think they can take on anything, and those are the types that get killed.

"Another starting mistake is thinking that you don't have to be too careful about your secret identity, that a hoodie and jeans is plenty. But if you just grab clothes out of your own closet as your cape costume, you're never going to look that much different than the way you normally do, are you? No, once again, that's the sort of thinking that gets most new capes killed. Guard your secret identity like you would your life, because it's easy to lose, and it's a secret that once out can never be gotten back."

On the other end of the table, Taylor kept adding to her notes.

He measured her up appraisingly. "Speaking of, we have to do something about your hair."

Taylor's head shot up. "But I like my hair! It's just like my mother's."

"Yes," he replied nodding. "Your mother. Specifically, Taylor Hebert's mother. But if Taylor Hebert and a cape have the same mother, then Taylor Hebert is going to have problems keeping her secret identity, isn't she? No, we'll have to do something about that, and other aspects of your appearance, for you to be truly safe out in costume."

Seeing she was upset, he was quick to reassure, "Oh, don't worry. It's all strictly temporary. It wouldn't do to do anything permanent, then have to explain away the changes to your civilian identity. That would just draw attention. No, whatever we do has to be like a costume piece, something you can put on and take off again as needed, with no trace the rest of the time."

"Well, okay..." she grudgingly allowed herself to be reassured on this important issue. It was her one good feature, after all!

He caught the hint.

"Oh, don't be too concerned about your appearance," he chided gently. "Give it a few weeks, and it would be as simple as anything to get you looking like Raquel Welch during her earliest pin-up days."

"Really?" She almost flew excitedly out of her seat. Forget cape business, this was important!

"Yup! Identical down to the generic level, if you want to go that far with it," was his tolerant answer.

"How soon?" Taylor was all over this idea like... well, like a girl who'd given up on ever being attractive offered legendary good looks from a world-famous sex symbol.

A girl's appearance was important! Emma had good looks and it gave her power, powers over people that even as a cape Taylor had been subject to, as those that revered Emma for those looks made Taylor's life miserable.

The idea she might have some of those powers of her own? That people might want to please her and do things for her, just as they did for Emma? That some of those people might stand up for her when she needed help?

The abused teenager was all over that idea like white on rice.

He smiled, amused. "Not right now. Give it a few weeks."

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"Pull over there, next to that girl."

Taylor, who was receiving her first driving lesson, obeyed without question. After they had lost track of time hashing out what and who Rick was, along with ongoing cape instructions, her guest had gone, and when she'd come down from her shower there had been a knock on her door.

You could have knocked her over with a feather when she'd opened it and found Rick standing there!

He'd been everything they'd discussed, blond hair, blue eyes, easy smile, confident walk, even down to the leather jacket and classic sports car waiting in the driveway.

Taylor's knees had grown weak, and frankly she'd started gathering a swarm.

Thankfully, his first words had proven to her that this was the cape from that morning, minus the musketeer costume. Then he had coaxed her out of her home, into the car, driven over to some less trafficked streets, then announced that Taylor was about to receive her first driving lesson!

One, that was something Rick would do, since cars were so important to him. But two, what he said was something she would have expected that cape from this morning to tell her, namely, "We'll tell the world that your costumed ID is eighteen, so naturally she'll already know how to drive."

What with the Unwritten Rules working as they did, no one could question anything to do with her civilian ID, like how old she was. So if they could not question it, they'd be forced to accept her as eighteen, and she'd get to drive!

As a cape, that is.

Frankly, if she hadn't been so excited over learning to drive, Taylor would have gotten annoyed with him. Did he just spend all that morning trolling her? She would not put it past him spending all of that time 'making up' an identity that was really just who he was without the mask on. He had been in charge of that conversation. He could have done it if he'd wanted.

But midway through the lesson, a girl had walked out from between buildings and started down the street they were using, and now Taylor was pulling up next to her.

Oh, well. She'd agreed before the lesson to do what her instructor told her. She parked the car. Almost instantly as she did so, Rick was out of the automobile and confronting the blonde girl...

WTF? "Come with me if you want to live?" In a thick Austrian accent? What's with the Terminator quote?

But the blonde girl got into the car, sliding uncomplaining into the back seat, while Rick took the front, opening the driver's door and causing Taylor to scoot over into the passenger's seat, ending the driving lesson for now. As he adjusted the mirrors, Rick spoke, "Taylor, I'd like you to meet Lisa Belmont, Rick's sister. She got kidnapped by Coil's mercenaries a while back, who put a gun to her head and told her she worked for their boss, who caused her to do some pretty crummy things under threat of death if she didn't. She's tried to escape a few times, but it never worked. But that's alright. We've found her, and she can come home now."

Taylor's brain was all awhirl.

Thankfully, the blonde in the back seemed to find all of this amusing. She leaned forward and reassured the bug controller, "Don't worry. No, he's not trolling you. Yes, he really is making most of this up. Ok, some. Alright, the parts about me are all mostly the case, I did get captured by Coil's men, who did force me at gunpoint to work for him, and he did make me do some crummy stuff, like robbing Lung's casino. Ok, huh. Yeah, the Belmont stuff is all made up. You did that together. He really is trying to help you, and now me. Introducing me as a Belmont and his sister was all done to reassure me, and... huh. Wow. Okay, he knew what my power is, and that I could figure it all out. Now he intends to fake my death so Lung and my old boss would stop looking for me. Then the Belmont thing also served as an invite onto the team you two are building. And I'm alright with that, gets me out of... having to fight Lung tonight? Ok, yeah, we are totally faking my death. But I'm not really his sister any more than the two of you were screwing like bunnies last night... I introduced you? At a dance? No, drama club. Really? Rick, you cad you. How dare you say that to her father? Did you at least get a photograph of his face? His expression was probably priceless."

Taylor's mind was now spinning in what felt like the opposite direction.

Rick had started to drive, putting some distance between them and that area. "My dearly beloved sister is something of an acquired taste, I'll admit. But I have no doubt you'll soon come to love her, just as I do. Besides, her specialty is information, a Thinker power that basically makes her Sherlock Holmes on steroids. Now between your information gathering and her information analysis, I'm sure you'll make a very effective team together. So though she does require some getting used to, she is a taste that is very much worth acquiring."

A second later, he added, "Taylor, meet Lisa. Lisa, Taylor. Girlfriend meet sister, sister, girlfriend."

A hand snaked up from the back and they shook, both echoing, "Nice to meet you."

And then Lisa began to giggle for some reason.

Jared promptly provided the reason. "So, who wants to go lair shopping?"

"Oh! Me! Me me!" Lisa cheered from the back seat.

"Well," Jared replied with a broad smile. "Someone is eager. Now, basic question: What purpose does a lair serve?"

Taylor had been expecting to listen to Lisa's answer, but instead found all attention focused on her. That felt odd, as she was the least... Oh! Right, Rick was big on training. The two people that knew better were waiting on her because she was the rookie, not despite that. This was to be her learning experience.

Being a Cape 101, and she was the Freshman, while they both had their degrees. But that actually encouraged Taylor, as she knew that she did not know enough about cape life, and now she had two experienced mentors to show her the ropes. It was refreshing over trying to figure out everything herself. Besides, she actually *liked* school, so long as it wasn't Winslow.

And this was not Winslow. Nobody had teased her yet.

Taylor spun her academically-inclined brain up into gear to consider the problem. Why did capes need lairs? What purpose did they serve?

"Is it because you need a place to keep cape stuff? Costumes and things?"

"That's the start," Lisa provided. "We do keep stuff in our lairs. But if that's all you use it for, you might as well make caches. Stash a spare costume, a bit of cash, and a couple useful odds and ends in out of the way places where no one will find them, then visit them as needed."

"Which is a viable strategy," Jared interjected. "But hardly worth calling a lair."

Seeing Taylor had exhausted her meager experience on the subject, Lisa gave her the answer. "A cape's existence is an odd one. We basically lead two lives, our masked one, then our civilian identity, and it's best to keep those as separate as possible. A cape's lair is basically her home for her masked life, just as she has one for the civilian side. And like the rest of her masked life, it's best to keep it as secret as possible. So we tend to hide them in out of the way places, or disguised as something else."

Taylor opened her school bag, whipped out a notebook, and began writing this down.

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"So, an ideal lair..." Taylor read from her notes, "Has all of the comforts of home, can support any amount of medical care you or your team know how to provide, or more, with the proviso that it never have less than a fully stocked medical kit, even if you don't know how to use it yet. Next it needs to have storage you've stocked with containers of water, non-perishable food, and other essentials in case you need to make an extended stay without leaving - for in cases where you are laying low, or have to undergo an extended recovery from an injury. It needs to have multiple access points that can be used in total secrecy..."

They waited for her to finish her summary.

"Good. It also needs to have privacy, which is different from secrecy," Lisa continued the instruction. "You don't want to change clothes in front of your teammates, for example. So multiple, internally divided spaces like bedrooms and such, instead of an open warehouse floor. You'll also want good soundproofing, so a teammate doesn't give away your secret base's location by playing loud music the homeless outside can hear."

Taylor dutifully added those points to her notes.

"One thing often overlooked is production," Jared mentioned while driving. They were going through a fairly nice part of town at the moment. "Masked identities need lots of things you can't exactly buy online with a credit card, costumes for example. Buying anything that can be identified as used by you risks having your suppliers traced to you, even if you are careful and use only cash. Modern detectives, both government and private, are very good at tracing things like that. Nearly everything has serial numbers, and they've got databases showing where those things were made, who bought them, who shipped them, and they will know that Joe's Hardware on 37th street was the last spot on the supply chain to hold that particular item, and they sold it on the 20th of January, at 9:14 PM, to a woman who paid cash and also bought these other three items. Then they will likely go through the security camera records from that time and have your photograph, all from something as simple as a can of pepper spray you used up and left behind on the scene of a cape fight. All through the magic of serial numbers.

"Ironically, it is far more anonymous to buy an entire shop's worth of sewing supplies and machinery than it is to purchase a single costume, or to buy an entire machine shop than one signature belt buckle with your logo on it. And buying machinery, while it sounds more expensive, is actually quite competitive once you consider the cape markup, necessary bribes, and 'look the other way' charges an ordinary supplier will charge you for things your cape ID needs. Plus the machinery can be used to turn out multiple copies, and adapt their product to future needs. And the things you can't build yourself you can modify. Using acid to remove serial numbers is perhaps the only way to do so that modern forensics can't see through, for example, but it would make it safe to carry that can of pepper spray. So having space for some production machinery in your lair is one of the little-known but powerful advantages for keeping your masked ID secret."

Lisa was doing some figures in her head. "I'm sure you could get by with a decent used mill 16" x 20" and lathe 8" chuck for around $30-$35K. Add in electrical, tooling, air, saw, and a handful of deburring equipment for another $8-10K and you'd be on your way. You can add more tooling as needed. On the high end, you could go about half a million setting up shop, but that's really at the limits of what one person could manage to operate by herself, as you'd have to in a secret lair."

Jared made a turn onto a residential street. "And while that may sound like a lot of money, gangs operate on a cash economy and even a simple gang like the Archer's Bridge Merchants will have about two million cash on hand, for expenses like paying their dealers, bribing crooked cops, buying more drugs from their suppliers, and so on, with another twenty million stashed in overseas numbered accounts. So if you aren't one of those stupid capes that think gang cash is dirty, a couple of major busts will buy you that half million shop, easy, if not two or even four - not counting the value from drug or weapon turn-in programs, that's just the cash. And you, as a reconnaisance cape, have it easier than anybody, as you can find their stash houses from blocks away, and have got millions of little pickpockets at your command. Even if it takes a dozen roaches to carry each bill, you could still ferry out thousands of bills per minute through the walls and under the floorboards or above the ceiling tiles without even alerting the gang you were robbing them, and do it all from safe anonymity while staying blocks away."

Lisa had turned wide eyes on Taylor, considering the possibilities as he described them. Then she grinned, reaching forward to hug the bug controller around her seat, "Oh, Taylor honey! You and I are going to be such Great friends!"

Jared smiled, looking at that, and Taylor's shocked expression. "If you wanted to, you could shut down an entire gang without throwing a single punch, or anyone even seeing your costume, just by repeatedly stealing the money they need to operate. Better still, there are basically only two ways you can get caught doing it, and both require your enemies to be smart or lucky, and for you to be dumb. The first is for you not to order your bugs to take the cash far enough away from where you stole it, then walk up to collect it personally. Then, when they boil out of their stash house looking for who robbed them, there you are holding their cash. Like I said, it requires you to be an idiot, and the second is just as bad. That's where you have bugs carry the money to you personally, and leave an obvious enough trail of ants carrying cash the gang follows it direct to you. No, the only way you can fail at this is by being a moron, which you aren't. Taylor, you actually have a very fine mind. What you lack is confidence in yourself, and that will come. All you need is a small taste of success, and you will find it suits you."

Taylor beamed inside of Lisa's continuing hug.

Jared made another turn, having to wait for pedestrians to pass first, mostly younger kids walking to school. "The strategy you will be employing is to have your bugs carry the money a few hundred feet away in every direction, stash it in places that only bugs could go, then you walk away and leave it for a week or so. That's long enough the gang won't be looking for it anymore. They'll figure whoever robbed them is long gone, and if you took enough they will probably have relocated the entire stash house by then. At most they'll have a few pickets keeping an eye on the place to see if anyone shows up. But you are a reconnaisance cape, if you can't find them or any security cameras or similar things before they find you, you aren't even trying. Besides, you aren't going to do anything as obvious as going from stash to stash personally collecting the cash. No, you are going to have your bugs move it again, collect it into fewer stashes of more bills, each a couple of blocks from where you first took it, then if you are really cautious walk away from it again for another few days. No cape in town has your tracking abilities. So there is basically no chance, barring a mistake on your part, for them to find the money or you, if you are using this method. Sure, it's boring, and there is a little delay in gratification, but there is basically no chance of you becoming dead doing it - unlike if you had to fight for it. And with a few minutes work each day you can make more in a month than most doctors or lawyers do in a good year. No, you are *never* going to lack for cash again."

Lisa gave Taylor another squeeze, then released the hug.

"So, returning to our original subject," the redhead offered, "Now that you have the basics for a lair down, what can you derive from the name: satellite lair. What do you think they are, and why would you need them? ... Hold on just a second."

They had just driven into a residential neighborhood, past some kids that were walking to school, when Rick pulled up the car next to one, leaned out the window and called out, "Hey! I don't have any immediate plans, but if you'd like we could kidnap you, just to keep that other creep from doing so. I promise we'll return you to your family whenever you'd like."

That girl came running, her school bag slapping repeatedly against her back with the energy of her motion.

Jared had pulled over, gotten out, and pulled forward the front seat for her by the time she'd arrived, so she slid right into the back with Lisa. Rejoining them in the car, Jared closed the door and pulled away again, saying, "Dinah, I was hoping to run across you, but could not be sure I would. Allow me to introduce you to Lisa and Taylor. Everyone, this is Dinah, one of the most powerful precognitive capes to ever trigger."

As Taylor and Lisa both were goggling over this, he further explained, "She makes predictions expressed as percentages, and cannot refuse to answer or lie about the results to any question phrased as roughly 'what are the odds of..?' So we ought not to do that to her, as it gives her Thinker headaches. Naturally, math class has been hell for her these past couple of weeks since her trigger."

He drove away, going much faster than the slow cruising approach he had taken. "Dinah joined us because she can read the probabilities and this lets her avoid a horrible fate. She'll most probably be staying with us quite a while, and posing as a Belmont in order to throw Coil off her tail, as that supervillain has been working tirelessly to kidnap her and enslave her to drugs so he can abuse her talents for the advantage they'd give his plans to take over the city."

Having blown them all out of the water by telling the group in general that, he then proceeded to share with their new hire, "Dinah, Lisa has the Sherlock Holmes power, and most likely joined us because she can read my intentions, and knows that I am her best bet to avoid being roasted by Lung tonight. Taylor is a bug controller who joined up because... well, how could I not recruit her? She's adorable."

Taylor blushed all of the way to their next destination.

But she did twist around in her seat and meet Lisa's eyes in amazement, admitting in a whisper, "As far as I can tell, his only power is to tell what other peoples' powers are."

Lisa grew contemplative, then replied, "You're not wrong. That fits, but it's not everything. I mean, I know we'd never seen each other before he had you pulling over and yet he was already fully aware of my power. Now he just rattled off more about Dinah's power than even she knew about it. And you... standing in your bedroom window armed with breakfast in bed, really?"

Lisa then gave Taylor a wicked grin that had still not completely faded hours later.

Embarrassed, Taylor twisted back around to face front.

Dinah giggled, very much of an age where she found other people's relationships both fascinating and amusing.

"Back on the topic of, the 'Basics of Being a Cape 101'," Jared announced in general, to head off any more drama. "We have just been discussing lairs, what they are and why capes need them, along with their ideal properties. Taylor has been taking notes, and since one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it, she will catch you up on what she knows at our next stop. We can review with you both later, in case she missed something.

"Now, since we are going shopping for a lair for our little group today, let's move forward to the subject of how that is done. The most common approach is just to find an empty building and move in. That is the cheapest approach, and in some ways the easiest, but tends to require a lot of time searching, and despite that not to give a high quality lair, as whatever place you stumble upon, the homeless will have found first. So graffiti, human waste, drug needles, all of that are probably present in any place you could gain access to. Making the place fit for use will generally require far more work than finding it did, and then you've got the problem of how to keep the homeless out once you've filled your base with all sorts of things they would like very much to steal, like your food and medicine. But they do have another advantage in that it's easy to lose such a base without compromising your secret identity, as if you've done it properly it has no direct links back to you.

"The second most common approach, is to add a secret lair to some property you already own, either directly or through some cutouts or dummy corporation. This has the advantage of giving you a high degree of control over what the final lair will be, so you can optimize the space and do things right, giving you the highest quality of lair. But it has the disadvantage of being the most expensive option by far. It also has some of the worst consequences, as if your secret lair is discovered it has all sorts of ties back to your civilian identity. So keeping your lair secret is now doubly important for maintaining your secret identity. Nevertheless, the most powerful capes, both heroes and villains, favor this approach. I mean, what do you think that oil rig out in the bay is but an expensive, custom-modified lair?

"The last approach, and what we will be doing, is some combination of the other two. Right now we are heading to the County Clerk's office, where the government keeps all of its property records. Lisa and I will go in to search those records for places that might fit our requirements. That should save us weeks of just wandering around town, searching for someplace suitable. Then we will be looking at ways to legally acquire one or more of those properties. I know some places can be had just for payment of their back taxes. Squatter's rights are another possibility. Once we own it, we can then work on modifying it into a more ideal fit for our needs. Now, any questions?"

He got a chorus of 'no's' in reply.

"Then back to the lesson. Taylor: satellite lairs. What do you think they are, and why would you need them?"

OoOoO

The stop at the city offices went quickly. There were a number of government buildings close together in the same area, and Rick and Lisa flit between them purposefully for a short while. Something about research and records. Lisa's power was practically purpose-built for analyzing large amounts of data like that, while Rick knew what they were looking for. They'd spent about half an hour at it, before emerging, celebrating whatever their finds were.

She had not been needed inside, so Taylor had been left to play babysitter. The time would not have been wasted either way, as her bugs had learned the scents and flavors of tires, motor oil, over two dozen kinds of candy from leftover wrappers, and of course paper and office supplies from the nearby government buildings.

But to her surprise, Taylor actually found herself growing fond of Dinah.

Taylor did not know if he had planned it, but being left outside to teach the new girl about lairs had been good for both of them, as it had been a long time since Taylor had anyone listen to her, and teaching someone else did help sink what she'd learned into her mind better, while Dinah needed the information as well as she did.

In the end, they'd had a nice little discussion, and bonded a little while talking about it.

It had been... nice.

A little positive interaction had been something both of them needed, and it had started Taylor wondering if this was what having a little sister felt like.

If so, she could get used to it.

Then Rick and Lisa had come out. If anything, Lisa was even more smug after their stop at the clerk's office, as whatever she'd learned had caused her to giggle uncontrollably for, like, half the drive that came after.

Done with the offices for the day, they all piled back into the Camaro, and made a quick stop for grocery shopping before taking a back road up into the foothills.

When asked why, Rick had replied. "Well, supplies for lunch of course. But also I promised Lisa that I'd help fake her death so Lung does not kill her when he comes after her and her teammates tonight. And I can make a pretty convincing corpse with things you can buy from the store."

Naturally, this got the girls talking about his possible powers and arguing about them. So far they'd had him pegged pretty solidly as a pure Thinker, something that Lisa was adamant he must be because of powers he'd shared with her during the search through government records.

Dinah made a vote for Trump, but got a splitting headache before she could narrow in on any details and had to be gotten ice cream (mint chocolate chip, waffle cone) to soothe it; while Taylor (cherry sunday - when one got ice cream, he got it for all) gave her shaky opinion that he was one of the rare Thinker/Tinker hybrids, although what his Tinker specialty could be she could not imagine.

They were all done moving bags from the shopping cart into the trunk of the car, having moved aside a ratty, old backpack to make room for them, and just finished getting in themselves when Taylor timidly asked, "Um, could you drive that way a bit first? Just about half a block? Then park for a few minutes?"

"Sure, why?" Rick asked, putting the car in gear and already complying.

"Well, the ABB have a major brothel that way, and I want to finish emptying out all of the cash." Taylor said, a little embarrassed. "They made the mistake of storing it all in a back room. They have a couple of armed guards on the door, and locks, and there aren't any windows to the outside. But I've nearly got it all, and I want to get it stashed a safe distance away like you taught me to do."

Lisa (double chocolate fudge on a brownie - it had been delicious) laughed, giving Taylor an affectionate squeeze. "You go girl! Get all of that lovely money!"

Rick (banana split, that he'd ended up sharing half of with them as each wanted their own tastes of it) smiled, then when he'd parked after going the requested distance, leaned over and gave Taylor his own hug. "Well done! If you rob enough of Lung's brothels, they won't make money anymore, and the gang might even stop doing them, saving who knows how many girls. Well done indeed."

He squeezed her, then squeezed again, saying in her ear. "You know, I have a wonderful, wicked, and terrible idea."

"Oooh!" Lisa murmured appreciatively, wiggling her fingers together. "Let's hear it!"

Seeing he had even Dinah's interest, Rick told Taylor, "What I want you to do, is use bugs to cut a few marks in the room's drywall, making them look like the slashes of a knife, and spell out 'Gotcha Suckers!' then sign it SS."

"SS? Shadow Stalker? The cape who goes insubstantial and can walk through walls? They'll blame her for it," Lisa interjected, about to caution against involving heroes lightly, as the PRT guarded their reputations quite well, and poking at that could get messy, to say nothing of pointing an angry Lung at them.

"Any why not? Shadow Stalker, in her civilian identity, caused Taylor's trigger." Rick informed them.

The occupants of that car went still.

"Objection withdrawn," Lisa waved her hand airily. Then, after a moment's thought, reached into her purse, "In fact, I have here a list of all major and minor ABB assets inside the city. At a few minutes each, it should not take more than a couple hours to hit them all today."

"Why not right now?" Dinah asked.

They all grinned wickedly.

OoOoO

A Couple Hours Later

OoOoO

"Oh yes, this place will do nicely."

The car pulled up in front of an ancient wall so overgrown with brush and ivy that, even knowing it was there, Taylor had difficulty seeing it as something man-made. Rick parked the car, then got out, prompting the others to do the same. Taylor had the passenger side, so she got out and put the seat forward, letting the other girls out.

The area they were in was overgrown with woods.

She'd seen trees growing up through the road surface as they'd driven here. And they'd driven with headlights on despite there being full sun outside, because the trees grew so close to each other and the road as to nearly block out daylight, forming a darkened tunnel through the greenery. They'd even had to stop a few times so Rick could get out and drag fallen branches or logs clear of the road, so they could drive by.

Wherever here was, it was abandoned in ways that made most of Brockton Bay look well-kept by comparison.

Now if only Taylor could figure out where here was.

Rick stepped toward the wall of greenery that was the decades-overgrown hedges and disappeared inside, Taylor did not know how, or where he went, and it took her a moment to realize that the bugs she'd had on him had flown off again the last time her attention had wandered. She did not know what stuff he'd been using as insect repellent, but it was remarkably effective. If she did not devote a portion of her attention towards actively keeping some bugs on him, they left almost immediately. That made him a blind spot in her network, detectable only by looking for the big bubble where her bugs weren't.

When she was paying attention, that blank spot was easy enough to find. But if she wasn't, it slipped her mind every time.

Although she was getting better about checking and looking, by practice if nothing else.

Taylor quickly found him again, already forty feet away on the other side of this massively overgrown security hedge, prickly and forming a near impassible mass of interwoven thorns. How he'd gotten through it she had no idea, unless it was a power. Perhaps his Thinker power allowed him to plot a course between the thorn branches no one else could tell was there? If so, he was not the only one able to do it. There were plenty of bugs inside this tangled mass of plant matter, putting her mind and attention to it, she had three courses plotted out in moments.

"C'mon," she motioned to the other two girls, leading them towards the easiest, located along the former driveway where the paving had prevented too many plants from taking root. A couple of minutes later they emerged, only a couple of scratches between them and a minimal amount of fallen leaf mass deposited on their bodies and hair, all in all having gotten through alright, if not exactly happy with the trip.

When Taylor looked up in the direction Rick was looking, it took her breath away.

"Magnificent, isn't it?" he asked politely, still gazing fondly on the structure himself.

"What is it?" Dinah asked, still cleaning leaf detritus out of her hair.

He stood to the side and raised an arm, indicating the building, like a game show host presenting a prize. "Allow me to introduce you to one of the first buildings in Fairhaven, a small little subdivision for the ultra-rich, made up of multi-million dollar mansions well separated from each other on large plots of land. Even back in its heyday not a lot of people knew about this place. The rich do like their privacy, after all. Anyway, the land this area is built on is at a higher elevation than the rest of Brockton Bay, enough to make pumping water up here both impractical and expensive. But that's alright, they put in a dam and made their own little reservoir even higher upslope - and that turned out to be a problem."

Turning to face his students, and away from the three or four story tall mansion done in classic New England style, overgrown with countless plants, magnificent in its decay behind him, the apparent youth said, "You see, not long after the introduction of capes to the world, there was a pitched battle up there. It destroyed the dam, and the resulting flood washed away some buildings - but it also took out the bridge that was the primary way in and out of this little community. We took the alternate route, which takes about twice as long. Now, generally speaking, most people do not like to endure discomfort. The thing about the rich is they generally have options most other people don't. So most of them just moved away to properties they owned in different states or countries. They did not even really move out, just put these estates in mothballs, expecting at any time the dam to be repaired and they could come back soon to resume their lives here."

Rick shrugged. "Well, that dam was expected to be a four or five year project. Then there were cost overruns, and delays, and not too many years after the dam went out and Fairhaven went into hibernation mode waiting for the owners to return, the big shipping crisis hit, and riots happened down in Brockton Bay, then the tanker got sunk across the mouth of the bay, and the boat graveyard got created and the economy tanked hard and the city has been swirling down the toilet ever since - without any room in the budget for repairs to a dam servicing a community that never had more than a few hundred people living here at its height. And wouldn't you know it? During the riots fires happened, and one of the utility poles in the line of wires bringing electricity up here burned down, and has never been replaced. At that point, even the last of the caretakers moved out, and this place has been more or less forgotten ever since, left on its own to be reclaimed by nature."

Then he smiled. "Until now."

Taylor blinked in confusion. Alright, it was pretty in a ruinous sort of way, but so what? She had control over all of the bugs in a wide area. She could feel the rot and decay inside. Her family had been daunted by one rotten step for years. She could not imagine trying to fix a place like this.

And if they could not fix it, what use was it as a base?

Thankfully, Lisa had pity on her. "Part of what Jared had me studying..." she paused as two teenagers jerked; Taylor as the girl just realized she had been thinking of the cape she'd met that morning as Rick, even though she *knew* that was not his name! He'd been playing the part they'd contrived so expertly even she had fallen for it; then also Jared, because he knew his real name had never been spoken, or even hinted at in Lisa's presence, and yet she had sussed it out anyway.

Whereupon he recalled, back at the city offices, while going over the records to find suitable lairs Lisa had been muttering a number of names quietly under her breath just loud enough for him to hear. He'd dismissed it at the time as a nervous habit, as lots of people track details verbally while reading through them, but now he realized she'd been doing it all the time with the intent to gauge his reactions to figure out his name.

Clever girl.

Not that he wasn't annoyed by her doing it, of course. But judging by her smug reaction, she already knew that.

Enjoying both of their momentary discomfort more than a bit, Lisa posed in the meadow, waist-high new green grass lifting high above the equally long blond strands of last year that'd been beaten down into a spongy mat by the snows of last winter, of what had once been a broad and immaculately groomed lawn. Even so the decades of neglect showed, in that over half the lawn had trees poking through it, some twenty years old or older, as the forest worked at reclaiming its lost territory.

"Now that I have your attention," she preened openly. "Jared had me studying up on squatter's rights. You see his Thinker ability has this lovely sub-power that he can lend to others which enables him to read a whole written work every few seconds, and he has another that lets him parse through any language without difficulty - even legalese. He lent both to me, and..." here she gave off such a sound of satisfaction as had both Taylor and Dinah lifting their eyebrows in astonishment at the girl.

"Anyway," Lisa continued, having collected herself after her moment of recalled pleasure. "He wanted a hotel, or a mall, or something along those lines that we could claim under squatter's rights, and while we found both of those, this is better."

Jared had moved through the sea of waist-deep grass to stand before them, highlighted by the building behind. Spreading his arms, he declared, "Behold, the Belmont Estate!"

After a moment of the girls' non-reaction, he dropped his arms. "No, I am not making that up. That is this place's name. I picked it out of nearly a hundred of these properties up here. The people who owned this were Belmonts. Who knows who or where they are now, the property taxes haven't been paid on this place for a long while, so it reverted to the city's control, and as you can see they aren't doing anything but letting it rot into nothingness. So, I figured, why not use it as a secret base? And besides, it will give Taylor's made-up boyfriend and his two sisters," he gave Lisa and Dinah a nod each, "a place to live."

But Taylor had been doing some more exploring with her bugs. "It's a dump," she declared flatly.

"Well, yeah," he agreed undiplomatically. "That's the whole point. A place has to have been abandoned for a long time before squatter's rights could ever apply. A little deterioration is to be expected."

"Squatter's rights?" Taylor asked, never having heard of those before today.

Lisa fielded the question. "Squatter's rights is a set of laws that mean you can declare you own a property if you have lived there long enough, which is twenty years in this state by the way, but by itself that's not enough. You also have to have been improving the place, giving it some much-needed maintenance and all that. Basically, if you have been living on an abandoned property and acting like a responsible owner for a long time, long enough for anyone to have driven you off if they wanted to, and nobody did, then you get to declare you own that property no matter who formerly did. All it costs the squatter is time and effort. No money changes hands when he declares he owns the place."

Jared added, "the evidence of having lived here for twenty years we can fake. The repairs, however? Those will be genuine."

Taylor gave him a look. "How are you going to provide evidence of having lived here for twenty years when none of us are older than fifteen?"

His smile grew blinding. "I'm glad you asked! Unfortunately, it will take two days to get the materials I need to answer you. There are some people I have to contact. I'll show you once the tools arrive."

It was Dinah who asked, "then what are we doing here?"

"Preparing to fake some deaths," he told her bluntly. "C'mon, there ought to still be pots in the kitchen. We needed some real privacy for what we are about to be doing."

And with that, he started for the front doors hanging open on their hinges. Then he stopped, and looked backwards over his shoulder. "Taylor? You probably already know where everything is. Do you mind guiding us?"

"Sure."

OoOoO

The kitchens were located in the basement, down with the servants' quarters and laundry room, because apparently cooking and laundry duties were servants' work. That was actually good, because down there they had sturdy, concrete flooring that was still sound, and the wood floors in the rest of the mansion were a little iffy.

Also good was that it had a restaurant style kitchen. You could get forty people working in there at once and still have plenty of room, which apparently the former owners had done more than once when they'd been hosting parties. That was also good, as it gave them the room to spread out.

What was not good was the lack of water and electricity, as down in the basement they had only narrow windows for lights, and the vast majority of the tools in the kitchen would not work without one or the other.

The outside entrance to the kitchens was also locked up tighter than a drum, with heavy security doors that were not just locked, they were chained shut, and unlike the wooden doors in front of the house those locks and chains still held strong.

Luckily, parked outside the back entrance for servants was a 2,000 gallon water tank trailer, left over from where a caretaker had still been stationed to watch the house. Unluckily, it was bone dry, and had suffered from being left out in the elements for over two decades. There was also the location where a large generator had been, but wasn't anymore.

Apparently the Belmonts had been one of the few to make the attempt to keep a caretaker on after the electricity had gone out. Just as obviously, it had not lasted long, and they'd taken the generator with them when they'd left.

In some ways, the house reminded Taylor of an Egyptian mummy. It had all of the parts of a living home; furniture, bedding, bathrooms and books, just none of the actual functions of a living thing. No water for the pipes and plumbing, electricity did not work, and at some point in the far distant past they had turned off the gas.

So close to alive, yet not.

Of course there was damage. The brickwork had survived just fine... mostly. Where wood was exposed to the elements it had warped and rotted. They had a three story library whose walls were lined with bookcases whose shelves were still filled with books, like something out of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. However, part of the roof of the library had fallen in, leaving a big hole, under which a tree grew that was thin and most of three stories tall, reaching for the light of that hole above.

Her classic literature background gave her a sense of shame that all of those glorious books had probably not survived being indirectly exposed to the weather.

The floors were still mostly good, but there were places she would not dare to walk, and enough moisture had seeped in the various holes and broken windows over the years that most of the furnishings probably had mold and would have to be thrown out, which was a shame in a way as they were very pretty and, she suspected, probably museum quality, if they could be saved, which she did not think was likely.

It was lovely, stately and elegant, yet dead. Lifeless, yet retaining some of the glory of when it had once been a living home.

Which was more than could be said for most of Brockton Bay, which while dying was going down slow, getting ugly and mean as it fought each step along the way.

While she could appreciate the fading beauty of this once stately and glorious house, Taylor empathized strongly with the way the rest of the bay was going, clinging to every thread of survival for as long as possible, hanging on in the face of bullies and an uncaring administration, and... yeah, that was kind of a metaphor for her life, wasn't it?

Jared was doing a slow tour of the place, exploring, as they all did, the girls going along with him for company, as the place seemed a little spooky to them. But doing so they started to notice something odd. He seemed to be going slowly, taking it all in, yet was either doing a great job of choosing which parts of the floor were more solid to walk on...

...or perhaps the parts where he walked were becoming more solid.

Once Lisa subtly pointed that out to the rest of them while his attention was elsewhere, they noticed wherever he paused and stood for a moment, the floor did not appear as weak or warped anymore. In fact, now they were watching for it, far from choosing the best parts of each floor to walk on, he appeared to deliberately select the worst, which were the best once he'd moved on from them.

It was weird. When he reached for a door that Taylor had tried and found too warped to move, it opened easily in his hand, and did so for her when she tried it next.

Dinah swore that she'd peeked into a room to see windows whose glass had all broken out in some storm long ago, yet when he slipped away for a moment and they found him there, the windows were all intact.

They could only conclude that the rot and deterioration of ages was reversing itself around him, and that must somehow be connected to his as-yet-mysterious power.

Lisa changed her vote to Trump.

Taylor, and all of them really, began to feel a whole lot better and more optimistic about reclaiming this old house.

Down in the basement, Lisa poked her nose through a very locked door that she'd somehow picked the many locks on, then vanished inside to reappear moments later with a very smug grin on her face. "Well, I've found out why they locked the basement access door so thoroughly. The Belmonts laid in a magnificent wine cellar, and it's only gotten more valuable with age. At a guess, we are looking at a couple million dollars of wine in there."

"Wine?" Jared paused what he was doing and thought. "That gives me an idea on how to make money and mess with the gangs at the same time. Lisa, do any of the gangs run bars?"

She gave him a penetrating stare, obviously seeking to discern his thoughts. "Only the Empire, really. The ABB does mostly gambling and prostitution, and pushing street drugs, although they do own a few restaurants where liquor is served. The Merchants are too disorganized to own an actual business. Why? What are you thinking? You're not going to sell our wine cellar, are you?"

"You don't drink," he told her bluntly. "And even if you did once, you don't anymore. I've got several powers that I can only use to benefit allies of my own religion, that could be the difference between life and death. So I would invite you all to at least try it out and see if you like it, because otherwise it would be hard to be teammates. And one of the tenets is no alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea or drugs. Got it?"

Lisa scowled, yet nodded, disappointed in her momentary dreams of dissolute luxury vanishing as quickly as they'd arrived, but acknowledging that survival came first, and power restrictions could be odd like that.

Things next became odd when they'd begun searching the grounds, and found a construction shed filled with supplies used for routine repairs. Jared became positively gleeful when he discovered a large supply of sand for mixing concrete, and he loaded quite a lot into a wheelbarrow which he then took to the basement entrance to the kitchen, which Lisa helpfully unlocked.

Once inside, he dashed upstairs and came back moments later with an old fashioned changing screen from one of the bedrooms, which he set up, blocking off the wheelbarrow full of sand into its own private corner. He then dashed out to the car, bringing in several loads of groceries.

The girls did not even try to pass through the security hedge as fast as he was making trips. They just stood on the inward side and accepted bags as he returned with them, then started back towards the kitchen.

Once back in the kitchen, he took three of the largest fifteen gallon stockpots with him and went outside. Following him to the empty water trailer, they saw the weatherbeaten thing visibly age backwards before their very eyes, until the entire trailer was pristine and new. Then it went even further, cleaned and polished until it almost shone in the late morning sunlight.

Climbing up the ladder on the side, he popped the lid and looked in. Moments later they heard gurgling, and the girls all shared looks of disbelief together.

In five minutes or less, the two-thousand gallon tank was full to the brim. They all silently agreed there was no way that was not power related, but even Lisa was getting a headache trying to figure out how that tied in with his obvious Thinker powers.

Unless they didn't and he was just a grab bag cape. But the general consensus was that most powers had a sort of theme.

They were beginning to wonder with him.

Dinah changed her vote to grab-bag, while Taylor was staying with some sort of Thinker/Tinker hybrid, one who was good at concealing his devices.

After all, everyone knew Tinkers were BS, even more so than other capes.

In short order, the pots were full of water without seeming to touch the level in the tank. Too heavy for them, the girls watched as he carried pot after pot back inside, then followed after him. There they found another wonder, in that the box of soy milk they'd purchased had been opened, and now instead of being completely filled with water, all of the big stockpots he'd taken inside were merely two-thirds filled with soy milk.

Three five gallon buckets mostly filled with water stood nearby.

Lisa even checked the level of the soy milk in the box they'd purchased, then tasted with her finger the liquid in all of the big stockpots. It was pure soy milk, not diluted by water.

Weird.

What was weirder still was when Jared brought out a stool and placed it near the plastic buckets, seating himself down upon it and taking out a small knife, while indicating they should all form a line before him. "Alright ladies," he announced. "The way this is going to work is as follows. You will each, in turn, let me draw one drop of blood from somewhere safe, like the back of your hand. A moment later all the water in one bucket will become an exact duplicate of your blood. This is important, recall that we are faking your deaths, having an exact match for your blood down to the DNA is crucial, and this gives us that."

Taylor nodded, while Lisa grabbed her head in a sudden headache. Dinah, nearby simply quietly ran numbers and assumed her place in line behind them.

Figuring if one of the world's greatest precogs thought it was ok, Taylor felt safer.

Jared continued, waving towards the pots on the stove. "I will then add a mandrake root to each bucket," he pointed to some whole roots they had purchased at their stop in town. "Then each bucket will be added to one stockpot, along with a bunch of other things. One of the things added will be lemon juice," he pointed to a bottle they had purchased, already on the stove between the stockpots. "That will be the catalyst transforming the soy milk into tofu. Blood flavored tofu, in this case. There will be a few other reactions going on as well. A bag of bone meal, and so on. While that is cooking, you will each, one at a time, step behind that screen and remove all of your clothes. I'll be on this side with two other girls watching to make sure I behave."

The girls traded glances, assessing one another's willingness to keep him in check, and felt satisfied.

He continued. "Once you are fully nude, you will then sit on the sand in the wheelbarrow, then call out you are ready. That handle of the wheelbarrow just barely pokes past this edge of that curtain. I will put my hand on that, then follow it in by touch until I reach the sand. Please make sure you are a sufficient distance away from that corner that I don't touch any part of you. I don't want to invade your privacy. I would not reach in at all, but I must touch the sand for this part to work. When that happens, the sand will surge up around you and cover you completely. That will take about six seconds, once it starts. Then in another six seconds the sand will part, opening in the front to allow you to stand. What will be left behind once you do so is a perfect mold of your body. We will use that to pour the tofu mixture into, to form the copy."

He looked around and saw figurative lightbulbs go on all around as they got it. Tofu into mold = body double. That went a long way towards demystifying a process that had until then confused them.

Jared hurried on to demystify the rest. "When you stand up, leave the clothes you wore until now behind the curtain. You will be supplied with whatever new clothes you want before going behind the screen. Don't reuse anything, leave every stitch of the old clothes behind. They'll be used to make the double more convincing. All of the body oils and stains and smells, minor as they are, will contribute to selling the illusion. So don't spare anything. If you have favorite jewelry or a sentimental watch that you always wear, a wallet or a purse filled with your living essentials, leave it behind. We'll get you replacements. The more important it is to you, the more important it is that you leave it behind for the body double, so it can successfully pass as you. We don't want anyone who knows you to cry out 'But it doesn't have her phone! She never leaves her phone behind! That can't be her!' And if you cannot face that, tell me. After the double has died, those things will be stored somewhere, we can recover it then. Faking your death is something you either do perfectly, or you fail at. And we cannot afford to fail against Lung or Coil. You will dress each other's duplicates, to make sure no one tries to hold back anything."

Taylor felt a tiny pinprick on the back of her hand, then with a start realized that she was first in line, but the process was already over. She looked down in amazement at the bucket full of bright red blood, her blood, and felt with wondering awe the wound on the back of her hand, which he had smeared with a dab of something, and was already healed over. She rubbed her skin back and forth, checking everywhere, and could not find the cut he must have used. Her skin was intact everywhere.

While she was doing her checking, Lisa had her hand done, obviously less than excited about the cut, but determined already that it was better than facing Lung and dying herself. In comparison, Dinah was pathetically eager, and took the cut without the slightest hesitation at all.

What fate was the precog so happy about avoiding by doing this? Taylor wondered. Wasn't she just escaping getting kidnapped by Coil? Hadn't Coil already kidnapped Lisa and forced her to work for him? Lisa did not seem to have suffered too badly. Why should Dinah be so scared?

While she was pondering, the mandrakes had been added to the blood. Then the blood poured into the larger containers. Honestly, Taylor was not paying particular attention, lost in her own thoughts, when she was brought out by Lisa's scathing comment of, "Really?"

"What? What's going on?" Taylor brought herself back to reality. Jared was adding handfuls of dried flower petals to the mixtures. There were a few empty sugar bags nearby, and some allspice. Bottles of perfume stood in formation as if next to be added. She could not see what Lisa could be so scornful of.

The blonde girl (Taylor's was black, Dinah's was dark brown) saw fit to inform her. With rolled eyes, and the driest possible tones, Lisa told them all, "In addition to blood, mandrake, and the bag of bone meal, our illustrious leader here just saw fit to add to the mixture: sugar, and spice, and everything nice..."

She stood there, waiting for Taylor to get it.

She did. The old rhyme "What are little girls made of?" Taylor started to feel herself growing angry. Was that it? Was this all just some elaborate prank? Had the cape woken her up that morning just in buildup to some elaborate teasing?

Yet unlike her tormentors at school, Jared was not paying one iota of attention to her reaction. All her other bullies would be gleeful over her outrage, as her reaction was the whole point, the payout for their pranks. Instead, he was still seriously devoting his attention to the project, just like it was a chemistry exam and this project was half of the final grade.

Then he took hold of her arm, directing her towards the changing screen, and when she resisted, confused and upset, his gaze met her eyes, and she melted.

He cared. He genuinely cared. She could see it in his eyes. Whatever he was doing, he was deadly serious. When was the last time Taylor had MATTERED to anyone like that? Not since her mother died and Emma turned on her, for sure. Limply, she allowed herself to be shoved behind the changing screen. She could not even recall undressing, just that she had never done so faster in her life. Her head was still awhirl with how much she could see Jared CARED about her when she called out she was ready, and his hand did snake around the edge of the screen, and touch the sand, and...

"Ahh!"

She leapt in the air with a squall of fright.

The sand, which had leap up like a living thing to engulf her, relaxed back into the wheelbarrow.

"Let's try that again," Jared's voice called out. "Arms down at your sides, but not touching. Try to relax when the sand does what I told you it would do. The liquid we pour has got to flow down from the head into every part of the mold. That means every part of the body points down. So, pose like a Barbie doll in her packaging."

Belatedly, the daughter of Danny realized that she'd clasped her hands to her face in shock and hurried to straighten them. She did not want a body double whose arms ended at the elbows because she'd stupidly held her forearms straight up!

Then she blinked. Why were they preparing her a body double anyway? They did not need to fake her death!

But the sand was already overtaking her, going more slowly this time, and she was determined not to embarrass herself by reacting that way again. In moments it had covered her completely, including her head. Then just as quickly it was over, the front opening like a pair of double doors, and she was standing and was out.

Looking down, she saw the sand casing that had once covered her was now as smooth and solid as marble, as the twin doors closed behind her.

Lisa met her with some clothes, which Taylor only then realized that she had failed to collect before going in there, and she got dressed, Lisa helping her so the bug controller was already fully clothed before realizing the outfit was... not her choice.

Meaning it was not baggy, grey and concealing, her usual priorities. No, it looked nice, just like Taylor would have worn if she was wealthy, and popular, and sure of her appearance, not like... well, her. The opposite of all of that.

But Lisa had led her around to the front, then gone around behind herself, clutching a new outfit to her chest. Taylor blinked and saw mounds of pretty clothes about, draped over counters and every flat surface, dozens of outfits each in three separate piles, and Dinah was clutching new clothes to her chest as she waited her turn as well.

Where had all of this come from? Those clothes were new, not thirty years out of fashion. The colors were bright, not faded, and she recognized some as being like things she'd seen other girls wear out on dates on the boardwalk.

She was still wondering about that when Dinah emerged, dressed in all new clothes, and Jared began to move the screen away from the wheelbarrow and three molds in preparation for pouring.

Wait! When had Lisa gotten out? Taylor startled again when she saw the older girl in a very expensive outfit and realized she'd been so lost in her own head she'd missed it, almost missed everything, and focused, resolved to get her head in the game. Jared was already carrying the first stockpot over to the molds, hers, and she went to help him so he could pour. There was a funnel posed over the top of her mold's head, and she went to steady that while he lifted the hundred and twenty something pound pot up over her mold's head. Luckily, he had this platform with stairs to climb up on, so they did not have to lift the pot above waist-height.

Then she realized that it was not lucky at all, that he'd formed the platform out of sand, just like he had the molds, in order to make pouring easier.

He seemed to know exactly when the mold was full, backing off when there were still several gallons of pale pink brew in the stockpot. And it was pink, her own skin-color, she realized belatedly, even as she helped him move the pot back to the stove.

Lisa's was poured next, the mixture once again a perfect match for her skin tone. It even had her freckles dappled across the surface, even as they poured.

By the time they poured Dinah's, Taylor was expecting a perfect match between liquid and skin, and it did.

Placing the last of the stockpots back on the range, Jared was about to turn the burners off, when Lisa butted in, that "I'm so clever," grin on her face that Taylor was learning to recognize, as the older girl asked, "Is there enough for a second pour?"

Jared stopped what he was doing to stare at her.

"What can I say? I'm narcissistic," Lisa boasted with a playful shrug, before leaning forward into his personal space and placing a hand on Jared's chest. "So do it, for me? Please?"

He folded, as she knew he would, as Lisa played the 'playful girlfriend' trick, even though she was not his girlfriend.

Taylor felt irrationally jealous when he asked, "How many do you want?"

"Around a dozen!" The blonde answered quickly. "No! More than that! I want enough to fully staff this mansion, so I can be waiting on myself hand and foot! So, around fifty, including the tennis pros and pool staff."

He gave her a serious look. "You know, the whole point of doing this is to convince your old boss you are dead. What is he going to think when you've got fifty identical sisters that you keep sending into town on errands?"

"Most of them will stay at home running our secret base underground, or wherever," she told him, hands on hips as she declared how things were going to be, just playful enough to be charmingly manipulative. "But seriously, I'll always want an alibi when I go out on cape business. I don't ever want to be identified and captured in my civilian ID again."

Jared sighed, then went over and with a touch opened each mold, not looking inside as the doors opened, and commanding, "Dress them. Nobody dress their own. If one of you is going to always have an alibi, then its a good tactic for all of us. So go ahead, I'll get ready for another pour."

The girls all started to obey his order, going behind the screen unthinking, only to stop in stunned amazement as they saw their clones sitting still in the open molds. Each girl had seen her own face in the mirror plenty of times before. This was nothing like that. In fact this was so far from that their own doubles were almost unrecognizable to themselves. A reflection or a recording makes you think they are three-dimensional, but they are not. Seeing the real thing in full 3D was so different they were unprepared for it.

Not to mention your reflection in the mirror is reversed left-to-right, only you don't notice that because you have nothing better to compare it to.

A person is generally very unprepared to view themselves from the outside perspective. It's unfamiliar, and can be disturbing and even upsetting, and suddenly Taylor was very glad for the instruction that no one dress their own copy. She was afraid she might freak out if she had to do that. Parts of herself that she was used to only seeing from one angle, looking down, seemed totally different when viewed from the front, as though looking at another person.

What's worse was the doubles were completely and totally still. Unnaturally so, and it was disturbing to see your own face and find no signs of life whatsoever.

Jared's voice came from beyond the screen, where he was cooking up the next batch. "They will start breathing and moving in the next step, after you dress them. They would not make very good decoys if they could not mimic life accurately enough to fool anybody. They might not be perfect, but it's more a close friend recognizing 'You know, I think there's something wrong with Johnny.' Not a stranger in the audience crying out, 'OMG, the mayor has been replaced by a pod person!' "

There came a moment of silence. "Not that I would replace the mayor, you understand. Taking over populations by replacing their leaders has always been unethical."

Lisa instantly had to close her eyes to help force down the plans that began to form.

Taylor's mind had seized up once he'd mentioned the clones were still naked. Ok, that's what they were there to fix, by dressing them, but until then her mind had been gladly glossing over the details. Looking at her double, especially from this angle where everything looked unfamiliar, forced her to reevaluate herself.

She did not actually look that bad.

Ok, her breasts were still small, but on her tall, willowy frame they actually fit the look. She'd gone over countless modelling magazines with Emma, back when they were friends and Emma was just starting that career, and Taylor actually fit that look better than Emma did. Granted, the boys appreciated Emma's rounded curves more, but still. Her body type fit her. She was not ugly. Ok, her mouth was still too wide, and she carried a bit of a paunch from sitting too much, but those were small enough flaws considered from this perspective.

She certainly did not have the terrible acne of so many girls her age. Her skin was actually pretty good, smooth and... skin-like, she did not have the words to describe it exactly. But she'd seen worse all around her in the locker room every day. In fact, considered from this fresh perspective, Taylor would judge herself better looking than half of the girls who bullied her and called her ugly. It would be more, but Taylor did not use makeup like they did.

Was that where their animosity was coming from, jealousy?

It was a stunning thought.

Taylor went and dressed Lisa's double, while Lisa did Dinah's. Then they both went and helped Dinah dress Taylor's, Taylor noting as they did so the doubles even copied their tan lines and scars. By the time they were done, the pots were simmering, at full capacity again somehow, and Jared came over to close the molds. "Just warn me when you start to get tired," he told everybody, with a glance to Lisa. "Somehow I think somebody might work us to the bone if we let her."

Lisa was the picture of innocence, if you forgot her foxy, self-congratulatory grin.

More than two dozen pours later, and Taylor learned where all the clothes came from. Jared just waved a hand and a closet rod appeared, filled with hangers holding every conceivable outfit. Lisa was there in an instant, dragging out clothes, and Taylor was just tired enough to let her handle it.

Hours later, Taylor was bone weary and just found a couch to lie down on, falling asleep immediately despite it only being the middle of the day. Dinah had already crashed out on another couch, and Lisa soon followed. They did not even question it as the first doubles, the ones wearing their original clothes, stood up and followed Jared out to the car, whereupon he drove back into town while they rested.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Yes, my SI character made a mistake. The time is April 7th, a Thursday. He is thinking this is the day the Worm story starts, so is acting like Lung's attack on the Undersiders is going to be that night.

He is off by one day. That event was on the 8th, a Friday. But then, payphones were not the only thing to practically disappear with the advent of the smartphone. Paper calendars are also virtually absent from stores and things, and my SI was not careful about checking the date.

However it is just possible, that by his pushing to prepare for it, he butterflies Lung's attack forward by one day.

Now before anyone gets too upset over those girls falling in with him so quickly and so willingly, this character build includes the feat Aristocratic Birth-Sign, from the D20 supplement Pantheons and Pagan Faiths, which grants him a charisma check against anyone he meets who has a Cha of 9 or lower, and if he wins they join him as followers for up to four weeks, just as if he had taken the Leadership feat and selected them, but temporary.

As for low charisma scores? That's the ability score that measures strength of personality, and Taylor is so beaten down by this point in canon that Tattletale recognizes her as subconsciously seeking suicide by cape. She is broken inside by all of the abuse, worn down by loneliness and neglect from her father, and not in a healthy state of mind. And Lisa? Charisma also measures one's ability to charm and get along with other people, and Lisa offends virtually everyone she meets. Even if her shard is to blame for some of it, she has not dealt well with her brother's death, and is a little broken inside herself.

As for Dinah, charisma also measures one's ability to be convincing, and here is a little girl who is in very real danger of her life, and KNOWS this, and has been consistently unable to get anyone to take her seriously when she tells them. That shows virtually no charisma, as she cannot even convince her own parents when she is in mortal danger - usually a trivial task.

So, a healthy, normal, well-adjusted person will have about a ten charisma. I judge them all to be lower than that, for those reasons stated above, and my DM agrees.

Since the SI has very high bonuses, and they all have their own reasons for penalties, it ought to be no surprise to anyone he beat them all in the opposed charisma checks.

Despite his own failures, Danny did not fail that check. So it's not a perfect ability, just useful.

As for spells, the ones used at the city buildings were Comprehend Languages and Scholar's Touch, the latter Jared has at will from another Visionary feat, with Transfer Spell metamagic so he can share the ability with others. As he did with Lisa.

Comprehend Languages is in practically every wizard's spellbook, it is a 1st level spell from the Player's Handbook that allows you to understand otherwise incomprehensible written messages, granting you its literal meaning. So it would absolutely help translate legalese into something easily understood. Next is Scholar's Touch, a 1st level spell from Races of Destiny, that allows you to touch a written work and absorb the knowledge contained within as though you had just read it. This is equivalent to a solid reading, but not a deep study. Both spells come from Wizards of the Coast official D&D products. And used together, they absolutely would allow anyone to devour a law library or something similarly incomprehensible at a rate of ten books per minute, or six hundred books per hour, and come away from it with a better understanding of the material contained within than most lawyers probably have.

Feed that kind of data into Lisa's power, and remarkable things can happen.

The SI character was casting discrete Mendings all over that ruined house, which was the cause of the repairs. He also filled up the water trailer with Create Water cantrips. Both spells you know from earlier use. New outfits for the girls all came from Clothier's Closet, also previously introduced. Look it up if you are interested.

Changing one liquid into another, like water to soy milk or water to blood, as he did in the kitchen, is the job of the first level spell Metamorphose Liquids, which is actually the first thing explained in the next chapter.

Sandshaping is a class ability of the prestige class Sand Shaper, in the Sandstorm supplement by WotC. However, it is also available to a limited extent via the cleric Sand domain, which any good powergamer could tell you about half a dozen ways for someone who is not a cleric to get hold of one of their domains.

Hint: he did not need a domain to access that power. More on that later.

The process for creating body doubles out of tofu described here is very similar to the process of creating a Homunculus, a construct that possesses all of your skills and will obey your commands. A homunculus is small, winged, and ugly. These have person-size and appearance, and are wingless. Otherwise they can be assumed to be fairly similar. Not exactly, but close enough. Again, more will be explained in the next chapter.

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