Chapter 3

A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter Three

Operation Lungfish

by Skysaber

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Story Day Two, April 7th 2011, Thursday - Mid Day

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Metamorphose Liquids, the ability to transform any nonmagical liquid into any other that you already had a sample of. So even a drop of liquid could become gallons and gallons, exactly how much was determined by your Caster Level.

It was a first level spell, but a good one.

Now Caster Level was a basic metric for how powerful your spells were. It had started out as "How many levels do you have in the class that allows you to cast this spell?", reflecting your mastery of the material and ability to use it effectively, and in his case that would be three. But so many things modified it that it was possible to get truly ridiculous caster levels if you were willing to put a little effort into it.

Which, of course, he had.

For instance there was this pool. It was hard to get to, but if you bathed in it, you got a permanent +3 to your arcane caster level. Then there was a book, that anyone reading it got a permanent +2 to their caster level for all purposes. Both were now on the Redhurst curriculum, one as a field trip, the other as a mandatory activity. So even at first level Redhurst students were now throwing around spells with the potency usually associated with sixth level wizards.

Since that was very often the difference between annoying an enemy, or blasting him into oblivion, that was doing quite a lot to increase the school's reputation. Headmaster Andarlin never stopping grinning about it.

Jared still felt those two secrets were worth more than one lousy favor repaid each.

But whatever.

Now boosts to caster level did not grant anyone access to higher level spells than they could already cast, or give them any more spells per day, like actual levels in your spellcasting class did. It just made the spells you already had hit harder and last longer. Or, in the case of spells like Create Water, Transmute Water to Wine, or in this case, Metamorphose Liquids, create more stuff with each casting.

He'd cast Metamorphose Liquids a lot that morning, storing away the excess in hidden space, as there was no room in the stockpots for the volume Lisa's demands required.

Jared, in his munchkining, had chased down every source of extra spells per day he could think of while at Redhurst, and had a lot more than a wizard his level was supposed to; but not as many as he would have if he still had the equipment being moved here had stripped from him. Pearls of Power were cheap at lower levels and were his usual go-to item for things like this. A thousand gold pieces for another first level spell per day? Yes, thank you! But he did still have his two best items for extra spells per day, a staff and one of the rings. Both custom, both irreplaceable, both munchkined to the nines.

Headmaster Andarlin already had a very-much-slimmed-down version of the prototype of this ring being made available to all students as their class ring. It helped so much with their survival that he was providing them at no extra charge, and letting the school soak the additional expense.

Of course, that did mean they were a slimmed-down, inexpensive version with vastly reduced capabilities. Students could pay for their own upgrades, of course, and one or two of the most popular ones were overpriced just enough for Redhurst to make its initial investment back.

Redhurst would not help any students if the school went bankrupt, after all.

The first level spells Jared had already cast that day represented a serious drain on his resources, but he was not out yet. The rest was just sand-shaping, which was a class ability, and not limited to a number of uses per day.

Tofu decoys were an alchemical creation. Alchemy was not magic. Nor was it chemistry, as most thought. Alchemy was the process of using magic as a tool to create mundane items that could not be created without magic.

Magic made for a great catalyst, easily causing reactions that could not happen without it. But once those reactions had occurred, most of them no longer needed magic to sustain them.

Basically the magic served as a shortcut around otherwise unsolvable problems. "This process will not happen on its own, so let's use slight amounts of magic to make it happen." Not enough for actual spells, but there was a reason you had to be an actual spellcaster to get full use of the Alchemy skill.

The process they had just used to create dummies to fake their deaths was actually first invented roughly a thousand years ago, on a different world entirely. On that world, there was a dragon holding a village hostage. It had happened many times. This dragon demanded they sacrifice a maiden to him every year, or he'd slaughter the entire village. Again, not too unusual. Dragons were very powerful, and barring a legendary hero stopping them, could generally get away with such things. Now, in that one case an alchemist thought he could deceive the dragon. Using alchemical processes, he'd transformed a mandrake root into what he felt was a perfect duplicate of the girl who was to have been that year's sacrifice. The decoy was so convincing it even cried when the villagers tied it to the stake. When the dragon came and ate it, the villagers were convinced they were saved... until the dragon came back and ate the alchemist too, for the insult.

Luckily, the alchemist had carefully documented his research, and from his notes, eventually the process got perfected. One of the final breakthroughs which had happened quite recently was the mating of previous work with the discovery of tofu, which could taste like anything, and had many textures, some of which closely approximated meat.

Headmaster Andarlin had rewarded him by declaring another favor repaid when Jared pointed out tofu would be ideal to fix the problems remaining in the decoys.

Lucky him.

So now the process mixed magic and alchemy to create a dummy so real it acted and smelled and even tasted like the original person. The whole point of their existence was to die convincingly, and that meant they had to accurately simulate life in every way possible. So toward that end they blended techniques from fields as varied and different as alchemy and herbs, to the creation of artificial homunculus, to animating the dead.

The end result was pretty [bleep] convincing, and quite a few vicious monsters in the couple of years since its completion had been held at bay by offerings of sacrifices they did not even notice were not the real thing.

That was the point, the whole aim of the exercise.

All begun by a long ago alchemist trying to spare his village suffering.

Creation of the body was pure alchemy, but animation of it was a magic spell closely related to the one necromancers used to raise the dead as zombies, but weaker, animating only a single decoy per casting instead of raising groups, and thus only second level - which was just at the tip of what Jared could cast as a third level wizard, and despite everything he did not have nearly as many of his higher level spells per day as he would have liked.

So only one copy of each girl was animated. He could get to the rest later.

The three animated tofu dummies, one for each girl, followed him out to the hedge that he bypassed via Woodland Stride, a useful druid ability he had exerted himself to find one of the few alternate ways to acquire, carrying the dummies through one at a time so they did not get scratched up. Then they got into the car with him, and he was driving back to town.

He had just enough time to make it for last period, if he hurried.

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One Drive Later

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Dropping the Dinah-decoy off near her school just before her last class of the day was easily accomplished. She would then take it and walk home, where she'd probably have to explain to her parents why she had just up and skipped out on most of school that day, but the worst that could probably happen was they would ground the decoy, and that might even be a good thing.

Dropping the Taylor-decoy off near Winslow was even easier, and went smoothly. She could probably attend the last class of the day, if barely, then go home to have that uncomfortable conversation her father had probably been all day planning.

It was when Jared pulled up to the curb where they'd found her to deploy the Lisa-decoy, and she got out (but not before kissing him on the lips, along with a playful wink and a declaration that 'he could not deny a girl's last request, could he?') that there came a sharp whistle, and suddenly the car was surrounded by giant dog monsters.

Jared was actually fluent in the language spoken by wolves, it had come along with some other ability he'd been pursuing, so he heard the growls, and while other canines spoke with different accents, the meanings were substantially the same. So he could recognize a 'move and we'll hurt you' growl better than just about anyone.

This placed him into a bit of a tactical situation. As a squishy wizard, his entire combat strategy revolved around NOT being chewed and shaken in the jaws of giant monsters of any sort. Avoiding that kind of situation was kind of central to his style, it might even be Rule One.

For one thing, being chewed in slobbering monster jaws made spellcasting more difficult.

The real Lisa would have taken action immediately. The decoys, while physically perfect, mentally were not, and having no instructions otherwise went walking away as though nothing had happened, just going by her current program of tasks.

So she left him, staring up at the jaws of three giant monsters. However, it was this exact situation that Jared had Still Spell and Silent Spell metamagic for. He began by casting Mage Armor, then Shield, followed by other invisible buffs, standing ready with a Spell-Shaped Grease to drop under the dogs to make them lose their footing so he would be free to begin his counter-ambush if he should be attacked by anyone thinking he was helpless.

About a minute later a young man with curly black hair came ambling up casually around the back of the car, outside of Jared's field of vision. Then, leaning against the automobile, as casually as commenting about the weather, he declared, "That's not Lisa."

The undertone of potential violence was subtle, but present.

"Agreed," Jared declared upon suddenly realizing what was going on, recognizing their concern, and finding it reasonable. "But it was done with her full knowledge and consent. In fact she insisted. Thinker support reports that Lung intends to go after the Undersiders tonight. The decoy is meant to die gloriously so she doesn't have to."

Alec, for it was the cape known as Regent, Lisa's teammate, whose power was to control nerves - and he would not have found any, as such, in the decoy (a flaw not many could detect, much less exploit) spent a moment in silence, contemplating the midday clouds. After a moment, Regent asked, "And you were going to offer this service to her teammates, when?"

Jared did not permit himself to sigh. "Get in the car."

Alec, Rachel, and three regular size dogs were inside of the automobile moments later, huge mounds of discarded dog flesh decomposing in a nearby alley. Rachel did not even notice when Jared telekinetically snipped the tails from those discarded casings, having figured out he would soon need them.

Still, the redhead found a gun pressed into his ribs."If this isn't genuine..." Regent's voice trailed off threateningly.

Rachel's dogs growled with her in the back seat.

Jared could not resist giving them a brief, and perfectly executed, "Back down, I'm the Alpha", growl in return, filled with enough self-assurance and certainty he left both Rachel and her dogs stunned, the former gaping at him.

For Alec's sake, he just turned off the ignition, then slowly raised his left fist to one ear, with the thumb extended towards his ear, and the pinky extended towards his mouth in a child's pantomime of holding a phone.

Then it started ringing.

A moment later, Lisa's voice came through the instrument. "Huh? Wha? Jared? Where are you? Why did you wake me?"

"Lisa," he spoke with forced calm. "I'm in town. I was just dropping off your decoy, and your teammates became concerned. Regent is one of the few whose powers could tell him your decoy was not the real thing, as they don't have any functional nerves. So I called you up that you might reassure them that I had only the best intentions and your welfare in mind. Hold on, let me put you on speaker."

He folded down his thumb, then held the 'phone' out so it pointed more generally into the center of the vehicle. Rachel started to say something, but Jared silenced her using a flick of one of his ears. Learning to twitch and flick humanoid body parts properly had been one of the hardest aspects to the wolf language training. But it had nothing on Treant. Learning to make a noise like wind swirling through your leaves, when you hadn't got any leaves, had been truly challenging.

But magic made all sorts of things possible.

"Alec?" spoke the 'phone' in Lisa's voice and questioning tone, while Rachel settled down quietly in the back seat, clutching her now-silent dogs close to her.

"Here, Lisa." Regent spoke from the passenger seat, his hold on the gun not wavering. It was a little impressive how the perennially laid back cape was behaving so seriously, honestly. "Is this guy on the level?"

"Well," they could all hear some smug creep into Lisa's drawl, which paradoxically relaxed both Undersiders present. "I don't know what all he's told you, so I'll spare you the details of our torrid romance... " she was sounding playful, but Jared winced. "... or the affair he's having with another girl, the two-timer..." he winced again. "But after he got me naked and had his way with me all morning..." she trailed off suggestively.

Jared wasn't about to take that lying down. "I asked for the first time. It was you who insisted on the next fifty."

"And with two other girls! You kept all three of us busy, all morning long, until we collapsed into an exhausted state..."

Alec's lips actually quirked at the innuendo, knowing that she was playing with them, and that she was alright or she would not be joking like this.

"... and that one was only twelve years old, you pedophile," she suggested.

"Now that is slander," Jared declared. "I never once even touched her. I never even looked at her when she was less than fully dressed! I have no attraction to pubescent kids. And the rest was only necessary for the process of creating the decoys, as you well know. Now can we stop trying to get me arrested as some kind of sex offender? Because I'm not looking to get elected to office as a high government official, so can we skip that job requirement, please?"

Alec was nodding. "That's Lisa." At Jared's disbelieving look, the cape elaborated, "If she's not annoying you, it's not Lisa. She's genuine, alright."

"Well, it's like this." Tattetale stopped teasing. "The guy dropping off the decoy found me this morning, then told me about Lung putting out the word to gather for a hit on us tonight - something I was able to confirm once I got to a computer. So I linked up with him to produce the double you saw. Lung is going to want to see bodies tonight. I can aid the team just as well by remote if we seed the likely fight zone with a few cameras and get some headset radios - all of which I've already ordered through our boss. So I figure if the fight goes poorly, my body double can 'accidentally' fall off the dog she is riding, leaving her to be killed by Lung. Once he's got blood on his hands he'll be more likely to let the rest of you escape, and the worst case for me is I'll have to rebrand."

"I'm in," Alec insisted suddenly, his face lazy but his eyes intense. "Two corpses are better than one, and I can rebrand. Give me a pair of binoculars and I can do my thing from a distance. Set me up sniper-style in a nest overlooking the battle zone and Regent can go down fighting."

"I'm not risking my dogs," Rachel declared flatly.

"They're not after your dogs, they want you," Lisa's voice came over the hand mysteriously acting like a phone. "If they think they see you die, your dogs can run away. They'll never chase them."

Rachel thought about it a moment, before nodding.

"If Lung 'kills' three-quarters of the Undersiders he'll never care when the last one gets away," Lisa declared confidently over the hand-phone. "We're relocating to a new base anyway. Did you guys never wonder who our boss is?" Lisa's tone turned teasing again, and Jared tensed up, knowing what was about to happen.

"Well, you're in the car with him right now."

He knew it! He KNEW it! Nobody on the Undersiders team knew they'd been working for Coil, except Lisa, who served as their contact. Now that she was breaking free of Coil, she would be determined to strip her old boss of assets, including capes like her old team. By her telling them he was the old boss, the Undersiders would not even know they had been stolen from Coil.

It was simple, ingenious, elegant, and madly frustrating that she'd pull this on him without any warning.

Yet absolutely something he should have expected from Lisa.

And he had to back her play regardless. That's part of what made it so frustrating. He forced himself calm. "Lisa, arrange for a moving truck and team to your Redmond Welding base in about an hour or so to strip the location. You've sunk a few grand into making the place livable, no need to let that go to waste. Alec's video game consoles alone represent a substantial investment on his part, and we'd all hate to hear him whine about losing his saved games. See if you can get the Redmond building filled with ABB gang tags afterwards, so Lung can wonder which of his underlings stripped the place and failed to share the booty with his boss. Then route the truck through some cutouts to the new location."

"Got it, boss," her voice sounded gleeful. "I know just the crew to contact too. They're real ABB, who'll think they are looting us on Lung's personal orders, so they'll be real careful not to break anything. Then I can have them stash the truck, where I'll have another party pick it up. They'll think it a simple carjacking."

"Good. If you can, have them believe Lung's orders were relayed to them through Oni Lee." Jared nodded, then glanced at the girl in the back seat and gave a few canine sounds of approval and comfort to her. "Also, evacuate Rachel's dogs from her various kennels. If we are going to the trouble of faking her death, it defeats the purpose to have her back in town the next day feeding her dogs. So they will need to go where she will be."

"I can arrange it." Lisa sounded cagey.

He did not press her on it. "Will you be able to contact Brian?"

"Difficult," Lisa declared. "He is at the day job you arranged for him, and as you know personal phones are banned on the work site. Since theft is not uncommon from those lockers, he tends to leave his phone at home, meaning the Redmond building, which will be stripped before he gets off work today." She paused. "He'll likely panic when he gets there and finds the place empty of our stuff, yet filled with tags from the gang that plans to kill us."

Jared thought for a moment. "Give me the address of the site he's working at today. We'll swing by after the decoys are made, and I'll have Alec walk a note and Brian's phone in to pass to him via the supervisor. It will be a generic note concerning discipline problems with his younger sister Aisha and calling him in to deal with them, with instructions to call the school councilor before he arrives in person, but the number on the note will be yours. Will he recognize it?"

"Sure, boss," came Lisa's happy, even perky reply. He could tell she was pleased that he was running so well with her plan of stealing the Undersiders. Also, he could tell she approved of how well he was pretending to be their boss. "But his super won't be happy."

She was sending a message with that last statement.

"I'll just have to reassign Brian to a different job. That way he won't catch any fallout." Yes, Jared acknowledged in their private duel of hints, I got your hint. Brian won't be able to stay on at a day job working for Coil when his cape ID changes bosses. So we'll just have to arrange for something different for him to do.

Easy enough to do.

He continued, "Then when he calls you, fill him in. Give him a spot to meet at, somewhere we can leave the decoys until the fight happens. Then make some orders. We'll need city maps and a bunch of materials to plan out when and where the fight should happen, so we'll know where to place the cameras, if nothing else. Then I'll also need to know where to pick up the cameras and headset radios you ordered."

"Got it boss." The impression he got was that if Lisa was a dog her tail would be wagging furiously.

"Alright, well unless there was something else, we've got a deadline to meet if we want to have the decoys done on time before the crew arrives to strip your base. Lisa, I don't spend much time in this part of town, where is the best spot to pick up the ingredients we need quickly? You know the recipe from when you helped make it."

She rattled off an address, quickly following that with a set of directions, while he memorized both, already turning the key and starting the ignition, pulling the car out from the curb soon after.

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Roughly One Hour Later

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The shopping trip was indeed done quickly. They'd parked out of sight of the store's security cameras and left Rachel with her dogs to guard the car (she'd pulled up her shirt, then lay down on her back, throat exposed, avoiding eye contact, which was a very doggy way of showing submission, and he took that to mean she'd agreed to follow his orders), then went back to the Undersider's base with the groceries.

Jared picked up enough to do Brian and Aisha as well, just in case.

They'd finished with the decoys for Alec and Rachel inside forty minutes, which was twice as long as Jared expected the process to take, but Alec had insisted on having four body doubles, while Rachel had not let him get away without also duplicating her dogs, just shoving them into the line ahead of her, with a 'Well? Get on with it!' expectant manner while lowering her head.

Communicating with Rachel was so easy he barely even noticed he was doing it anymore. He led, she followed, and yet when she made a reasonable request, it was only proper he act on that to fill it.

It was one of the responsibilities of leadership. Loyalty up, loyalty down. She'd bared her belly to him, figuratively as well as literally, submitting to his authority. Or at least he was pretty sure that's what she'd meant to convey. Strangely, he was better than her at both human to human and canine to canine communication, while Rachel had not figured out how to perfectly communicate as either a dog or a girl, and was stuck muddling through with some kind of mix. But he'd gotten the gist.

Still, Rachel had not complained in the least when Jared had added the slugs and snails and puppy dog tails (gathered from the discarded flesh when her monster dogs had resumed their normal size) that were required for Alec's mixture.

If she had not offered him command authority over her, he did not think Rachel would have been alright with that.

Another couple of Metamorphose Liquid spells to get the raw materials in the quantity they'd need, and he'd tried. Jared had not even known if the process worked on animals. It had never been tested. But on finding out that it worked, he insisted the decoy dogs be made at full, enlarged monster status. That was because decoys did not possess their original's powers, yet with the dogs fully enlarged already the real Rachel would not even need to be present for the battle.

That was for the best, actually, as he did not trust her to follow any sort of plan accurately - most especially not when something that looked like her dogs was dying.

Still, they got out of there with Brian's phone (and Lisa's laptop, along with a few other quickly-grabbed odds and ends that went into the car's trunk along with the backpack) a full fifteen minutes before the moving crew was due to arrive.

He considered that a success.

Regent had stolen a car, which he'd packed with those things he'd considered most precious to him (mostly his game setup), and he and three of his four body doubles drove along, following Jared and Rachel in his car. They had left the decoys of Rachel and her dogs, along with Lisa's and one of Regent's, all costumed up in a nearby warehouse, within walking distance of their old base.

Then they had swung around to the construction site where Brian was working that day, with Alec going in with a note and Brian's phone, as planned.

What was not planned (by Jared) was Brian coming out immediately, along with Alec.

They came up to Jared's car. Stopping by the rolled-down driver's side window, Brian said, "They told me you're our boss... sir," the last word was said a little uncertainly.

Well, Jared guessed he'd have to prove himself, again. Fortunately Lisa had loaded him with details for doing so during a surreptitious call, so he wasted no time in doing so. Soon enough, the nominal leader of the Undersiders was on board, and Jared was giving out orders.

Handing over the rest of his wad of cash, the elf told Brian, "Go and buy about two dozen bear traps. Lisa's been looking over maps she's downloaded, and picked out our likely battleground. Take Regent with you, and set those traps up according to the pattern she gives you, along with the cameras. Then, once it gets dark enough you consider it safe to do so, I want you practicing with your darkness. I want you to try generating a cloud just three inches or so above most horizontal surfaces, like a ground fog, then another blanket thirty or so feet above your heads, then some pillars and blotches in between."

"May I ask why, sir?" Brian was trying, and succeeding, to sound professional.

"We are setting a trap," Jared told him bluntly. "We are going to sucker in Oni Lee, and kill him."

Brian drew himself up. "The Undersiders don't kill, sir."

Jared softly shook his head, as if regretfully. "No, the Undersiders are a good little group who would never break the Unwritten Rules. I know that. That's one of the things I like about you and your team. But you must understand one of the delicacies is, the rules don't actually say 'don't kill'. A lot of people say that, but the correct phrasing is 'Don't escalate'. When someone comes after you with intent to kill, it's alright to defend yourself with deadly force, whether you are a cape or not."

Somehow Jared just knew he would be repeating this discussion with Lisa and Taylor later that night, so he made sure to commit these arguments to memory.

He'd need them.

Right now, he met Grue's eyes with a firm but steady gaze. "There is no room for doubt that Lung intends to kill you all tonight. He's said as much online, and to his people in person. Right now he'd lose face if he did not try - and he's mad enough he wants you all to suffer. He wants to set an example over the casino thing: Don't challenge him or he'll kill you. He wants to make people too afraid to even try. So there is no reasonable way to argue that this is all just a bluff. His men have been acquiring firearms all day, and a gun is deadly force no matter who uses it."

The elf continued seriously, "Also, there is Oni Lee to consider. Sudden, deadly force is the man's signature technique. All of his weapons, from the grenades to the guns to the knives he carries, are all meant to kill, and that's the way he uses them. The man has a body count in the hundreds. And he won't be going easy on you tonight."

"I'd still rather we just disable him, then leave him for the PRT, sir," Brian said stiffly.

Sighing, Jared shook his head, then got out of the car. This was a discussion to have standing face to face, not craning his neck to look up out of the window of the car. "Grue, I want you to imagine a situation where you walk into a kindergarten, to find that one of the five-year olds is using a pair of scissors to kill the rest of the kids. The rest of the kids are screaming. They don't know what to do. The teacher is already down and bleeding. You are the only adult in the room."

He took Brian's gaze and held it for a moment, leaning into him. "Then you learn that kid has done this five times before, and the authorities just keep moving him to a different kindergarten."

The elf seemed to swell, holding Grue's gaze, leaning in further, eyes sharp as ice. "If you turn around and walk out, telling yourself 'it's not your problem', you are a reprehensible coward! You are the one on hand who has the power and opportunity to deal with the problem. The kids can't. The authorities won't. If you do anything but deal with it, everyone that kid murders from then on is partly your responsibility, like it or not. Sure, it's not a fair fight, you against a five year old. Sure, it's not sporting. Who cares? What matters is stopping a monster before it commits any more murders."

The redhead leaned back against the car, out of the boy's personal space, releasing some of the pressure. "Oni Lee killed hundreds people before you ever put on a mask. Tonight he's trying to kill you. His entire fighting style is to drop bombs via teleport spam. There's nothing nonlethal about that, and he does not intend to hold back tonight. Left alone, he'll kill hundreds more people. Nobody has any reasonable doubt of that. Trying to play patti-cake with someone trying to kill you is not noble, it's stupid. And you know as well as anyone that if you do capture him and hand him over to the PRT, then Lung will break him out personally before the night is out! Then, ever after, when Oni Lee kills another person, you are partly responsible - because you had the chance to stop him, and did not."

Grue did not say anything.

Jared did.

"The ancient rule, as old as human existence, is: Nothing Can Shed Man's Blood And Live! The only exception to that are the ones who have to execute the ones being put down. Those civilizations that break that ancient law are invariably the ones that later historians call 'brutal' - and you can bet, for all our pretended pacifism, that our own culture is on that list. You don't kill sixty million of your own babies without getting enough blood on your hands to drench a sewer bright red; and our leaders, our rulers, will be held to account for that by those who look back and judge our day, just as we look back in disgust and horror and condemn those who allowed slavery. In both cases, human lives were destroyed by those who found it convenient to do so. In both cases, the excuses were largely financial, because trading human lives for money has always been profitable. And in both cases, they told anyone who would listen 'Oh, it's alright, they're not really people. They don't matter' - ironically the same excuses used by the Nazis when they were slaughtering Jews. Right now Hitler can look at us and laugh, then rightfully proclaim that we are worse than he is! After all, his death camps only killed twenty million innocent civilians, while our abortion mills have already tripled that number, and are still going strong! And DON'T think the future won't judge us by that standard!

"Because how could they judge us by any other? Just how many categories of government-sanctioned mass-murder do you want there to be? The taking of innocent lives has always been the only proper definition of murder - and you don't get more innocent than an unborn baby."

Feeling himself spinning off on a tangent, the redhead steeled himself and pulled himself back on task. "Oni Lee is a serial murderer, and Lung has plenty of innocent deaths of his own under his belt. Both deserve to be put down, but I'll do you one better. I'll give you an ever better reason why Oni Lee has to die tonight. Because Lung just recruited a third cape into his little gang, the Cornell bomber, a bomb Tinker."

When Grue did not reply, Jared pressed in on him again, drill sergeant style. "I see by the fact you did not turn absolutely pale, you do not properly understand or appreciate this situation! So let me explain it to you! Tinkers are limited by resources and time. Making things only goes so fast. But this Tinker makes one bomb, then hands it to Oni Lee. Oni Lee's power lets him teleport, leaving temporary clones behind that have copies of all of his equipment. So with that one bomb he then teleport spams anywhere he wants to, dropping that same bomb over and over again as often as he likes! But look! It gets even better than that! Because, as a Tinker, our bomb-maker is not limited to mere explosives! Oh, no! Nothing so tame as that. This chick has already learned how to make bombs that imitate Grey Boy bubbles. She'll just whip one up and you'll be frozen in time, dying in agony forever. And Oni Lee will drop that same bomb on a hundred other people, maybe more. But that's not all! Oh no, it isn't! The news gets even better from there! Because this bomb chick, they call her Bakuda, has been experimenting with all sorts of exotic effects! She has one that turns all flesh within a certain radius into glass. How'd you like to die, half you, half glass statue? She has other ones, turning everything organic into goo. Bet you don't want to find out if you can still feel pain and sorrow and all of that while nothing more than a puddle of slime-mold, do ya? Then another, a bomb that just deals pain - pain so frightening it'll burn out your nerves and kill you just to feel it. Bet all those bombs sound good, don't they? Bet you're just dying to see them spread all over this city, aren't you? Because you know that's what they'll do."

Jared relaxed a bit, and backing off he noticed that Grue had indeed gone pale, which was an achievement with his skin tone.

"The combination of Bakuda, the bomb Tinker, and Oni Lee, the teleport spammer and serial suicide bomber, gives Lung everything he needs for total domination of this entire city, if not all of New England. Capturing one of them won't stop anything. Lung would just break them out again. The authorities are mired in bureaucracy. They won't do anything until it's far too late. We are the only ones with both the ability, and the opportunity. Oni Lee dies tonight, or Lung rules uncontested by anybody. Not the Protectorate, nor anyone else, would want to fight him - and you know he won't be fond of the Undersiders, as one of the few groups to ever tweak his nose. Since none of us are Asian, joining up on the winning side is not an option, not that we'd want to anyway since Lung makes a terrible boss. Frankly, I find it safer to be his opponent than his underling. Mad rages do not make for a desirable quality in any superior. So, since he will never stop hating you, never stop trying to kill you so he can erase the stain on his reputation, seeing him rule this city uncontested does not fill you with warm, happy, joyful feelings, does it?"

Grue shook his head, tightly.

Jared folded his arms, then declared. "We have one chance to avoid Lung ruling over all he surveys. They'll be coming for us now, before their pet Tinker has her full arsenal assembled. We can kill Oni Lee tonight, and nobody can argue that it wasn't self-defense. Bakuda has already bombed one school. Do you want to bet that she won't rig another with explosives? What if that next school is the one your little sister attends? What if those bombs go off on a day Aisha is actually present? Do you want to give three proven murderers that kind of power, over yourself and over this city?"

He paused a moment.

"Well, do you?"

"Of course not, Sir!" Grue barked out, his back straight and arms down at his sides, fully at attention.

Jared sized him up, then nodded. "Then At Ease, son, and let's plan this little operation. Oh, one other thing before we start, I'm sorry to inform you, that a major complication has arisen with regard to you getting custody of your sister."

Brian's face turned dark with indignaton, certain he was about to be told of yet more in what had been a long series of infuriating delays.

Seeing that, Jared swiftly informed him, "The supervillain Coil is making a nuissance of himself again."

"What does have to do with..."

"You just hold your horses and I'll tell you," Jared overrode the objection before this could grow even more complicated. "Now Coil has plans to take over this entire city, and has been positioning himself toward that goal for a long time. One other thing you need to know about this villain is that he does not respect the Unwritten Rules, not at all. So as part of his buildup he has been employing private detectives, mercenaries, as well as his own cadre of Thinkers to discover the civilian identities of as many capes in this city as he can. He plans to reveal those to both cause confusion and eliminate his enemies. Sorry, son, but I have to tell you he'd already learned the secret identities of all of the Undersiders, and a good portion of the Empire and Merchant capes as well, before I even found out what he was up to. So we'll just have to arrange for new identities for all of you immediately. That means leaving your old lives behind, but so long as we're doing that, why don't you grab your sister and we'll take care of her along with the rest of you? And so long as we're setting you both up new, why don't we just arrange for her to already be in your custody from the start. Does that sound like a good idea to you, son?"

Brian drew himself up tall. It was a setback having their old lives gone like that, but it was also everything he'd wanted, and right away! "Yes, Sir!"

OoOoO

They very soon separated to their various tasks of preparation. Grue and Regent went to pick up the needed supplies, then prepare the battlefield. Lisa had already gone over her notes on ABB holdings, figured out Lung's probable location (it helped that Taylor's bugs had spotted him there earlier that day), and was now studying available aerial photography of the locations she was considering for the final battlefield.

Jared had parked the Camaro, as not having enough passenger space, and repaired another derelict vehicle, a big, vintage Dodge V8 van from the 70s, one that had a nice, windowless back so they could change into and out of costume in it as needed. But more importantly, it had the space to ferry both Rachel, her three dogs she kept with her almost constantly, and Alec's unused clones, up to where they would be hiding for the night.

An old safehouse on the outskirts of town set up a long time ago by the Marquis, that Lisa had been able to discover when they'd been going through city records earlier that day.

It defined what Jared considered the essence of a satellite lair: It made for a decent base, but was ultimately disposable.

He dropped them off, delivered certain items that Lisa had recommended for their comfort, including plenty of groceries, then went up to the Belmont estate to drop off some more things for Lisa, but also to fetch Taylor, as he would need her with him in town for the battle.

He found her in the library, mourning over the ruined books.

"It's a first folio," Taylor said, distraught and near tears as she fingered the water damaged and slightly moldy pages of a book she had pulled from among many others on a nearby shelf. "A collection of plays by William Shakespeare, and published in 1623, about seven years after his death. It is considered one of the most influential books ever published, and now it's ruined. I can't even make out what play is supposed to be on these pages."

She traced a finger mournfully down illegible text.

Standing behind her, Jared concentrated a moment, activating the Ring of Arming power of his favorite ring, whereupon he was suddenly draped in weapons once again, multiple swords hanging in sheaths, one at each hip and two across his back, a pair of staves, and other accouterments that he was glad not to have to explain most of the time.

Taking in hand the six foot shaft of golden wood that was his favorite staff, the wizard reached beyond her and touched the book with its tip, discharging a bit of its stored power; whereupon the book was completely restored in an instant, back to the pristine condition it had been in when it was first completed, before withdrawing the staff and storing away his weapons in the ring once again.

Taylor stared in disbelief for a moment as the text on pristine pages leaped out at her, each line reading clear and precise. Then she whirled around impulsively and would have attached her lips to his in a searing kiss, save that she lost her nerve at the last moment and engulfed him in a hug instead.

He returned it warmly, happy for her gratitude.

After they broke the hug by mutual consent, he said, touching Taylor's chin. "C'mon, we've got to get you into costume for the big fight. It won't be the same if we're not there."

She paled. "I left my costume at home!"

He was not worried, and his calm assurance reassured her. "You mean the bug-themed one? You wouldn't have been able to wear it anyway, too scary. We don't want anyone to think you are a villain, do we? Besides, having a skin-tight bodysuit is impractical. Too little identity protection, and where are you supposed to hide your bugs? As a bug controller, you are greatly advantaged by having a large amount of bugs on hand at all times. But wearing a skinsuit the only place you'd have to hide them would be your hair, and that is sub-optimal. No, I've got something much better in mind."

"Like what?" she asked curiously, while she followed along obediently.

"You know what?" He opened the door to a bedroom that had been restored to livable status, with intact furniture that gleamed it was so clean. And in there, mounted on a dressmaker's dummy, was a beautiful 17th century dress of royal blue. "Why don't you go and find out?"

Taylor did, eyes agape in wonder and astonishment, crossing over the threshold in wondering awe as she just absorbed the dress with all the focus of all of her senses.

It was unbelievable.

Now, in every style, in every fashion, there are some clothes that work, that minimize the current style's flaws and difficulties, and so are genuinely attractive, then there are those that don't.

This was definitely one of those that worked. The fabric was beautiful, the colors complimented her perfectly, the styling was magnificent. There was enough lace of such exquisite workmanship that if sold could have kept a castle provisioned for a year, and the embroidery likewise. The only reason it was not the dress of a Disney princess was the hands of their animators would have fallen off trying to capture all of that wealth of lace and embroidery before they'd done the first panel.

It was, in short, a royal gown of the type that every little girl dreams of.

The dress was, quite literally, worth more than its weight in gold - and it was a heavy gown, as such styles tended to be.

"...lor? Taylor? Are you even listening?"

Taylor came back to herself, out of her mesmerized absorption with the utterly magnificent fabric creation before her, to realize that she was standing in just her panties, even her bra had been removed while she was stargazing, the door to the room was shut, and Jared was gone, while Lisa and Dinah flitted about the dressing room. Lisa had been trying to draw her attention.

Lisa smiled in understanding. "C'mon, let's get you into this thing."

OoOoO

When Taylor emerged from her dressing room, Jared met her at the door wearing a new version of his musketeer outfit - one matching hers perfectly, the same colors, and every bit as magnificent.

Taylor had been stunned, halfway into the gown, to find both gold and silver wire spun fine and used like thread in the embroidery. Jewels gleamed like sequins over her chest and down the front panel, incorporated into the embroidery. Lisa had joked that it was like dressing someone in a Faberge egg...

... and she was not far wrong. If she was wrong at all.

And Jared met her wearing the male counterpart, his clothes forming a perfect matching set with hers.

The bug controller discretely pinched herself so hard it bruised. But no, she did not wake up. Somehow, inexplicably, this was actually happening, and not a dream after all.

She pinched herself again when, after taking her by the hand, Jared wordlessly led her to the newly restored ballroom. As they both entered, hand in hand, a portable CD player started playing tinny music over tiny speakers, but as the only people in that great, gold gilt and mirrored room, they could hear well enough.

Then they began to dance.

Taylor silently blessed all of her female ancestors they'd been smart enough to lay down the rules that males had to lead during the dancing, because she did not know what to do. But he did, and was kind enough to guide her through and make it all easy on her.

Two days ago Taylor had felt unloved, alone, worthless, and though she could never put it into words, unlovable.

There, on that dance floor, the only thing keeping her date's virtue intact was she could not bear to stop dancing, never ever bear to let go of this strange feeling... and did not know how to get out of the blasted dress without a crowbar, and perhaps a flamethrower!

Just as she was contemplating using garden sheers to cut her way to freedom, pounce on her date, and figure out from there how to properly show her appreciation, a loud snickering by the door finally caught her attention, and she glanced over to see Lisa staring at her through the lense of a camcorder, and who had probably been filming everything.

Suddenly mortified, now Taylor wanted to go hide under a rock, certain that Lisa could read on her face what she'd been thinking.

Then she noticed Dinah, who had brought a bowl of popcorn, but it lay by her seat uneaten, as the pre-teen had been entranced by watching them dance, and suddenly Taylor felt a lot better.

She had been admired, envied even. Suddenly all was right with the world again, and with a small touch of smug confidence, Taylor allowed herself to be led off the dance floor.

"It's just as well," Jared sighed as they stopped the dance. "There is much to be done, and small enough time to do it in. Both of us need to mask up and get into the rest of our costumes."

"The rest?" Taylor looked down at herself, then at her reflection in the mirrors all around. Everything was perfect. Why would she need more?

"Yes, sadly these are working outfits for our cape IDs," Jared sighed. "So their primary purpose is to conceal our identities. The ballgown does wonders for you. Once the matching jacket is on, there won't be an inch of skin showing below the chin. Then you get one of those frightfully elaborate, giant powdered wigs, and a very nice ball mask to fill out the new costume. Makeup will do the rest."

Feeling her questioning gaze upon him, Jared explained, "It's all very practical. The wig conceals your height, and the one we've picked should do a beautiful job of hiding your own natural hair underneath. Besides, a giant wig draws so much attention you almost do not need the mask to hide your face, while the ball mask has enough frills and feathers to nicely disguise details like eye color and even the shape of your head. Under that you will have makeup. I'm afraid you'll have to layer it on with a trowel - just as the 17th century noblewomen did."

He paused, trailing off, before taking her hand, gazing into her eyes, and apologizing, "I am afraid the whole outfit does leave one feeling a bit freakish. That is why I could not bear to ask you wear any of the ugly bits without feeling the beauty first. The idea of a costume is to be so far different from you as a regular person than no one could ever connect the two. But also the gown has a practical aspect, as common sense would dictate you would inevitably wind up carrying an arsenal of bugs with you whenever you went out as a cape, and a skin-tight bodysuit just offers them no place to hide..."

He paused, making a slight moue of distaste. "Well, except your hair. But let's not go there, shall we? The full skirts of a 17th century gown could hide four or five small children under there. In terms of bugs, you could hide a swarm larger than your body could carry. It is perfect, and with a little padding on the matching velvet jacket, no one will have any idea of your body type, exact height, or proportions, skin tone, hair color, or indeed anything about you."

He gave her an encouraging smile. "It will do what a proper costume is supposed to do - protect your secret identity!"

OoOoO

Jared drove back into town with Taylor. In the time he'd been gone, Brian and Alec had done a good job of preparing the battleground, including not just the bear traps he'd asked and paid for, but ankle-high tripwires, punji stakes, roughly fifty pounds of three-inch nails had been turned into caltrops and spread about over strategic places, and a couple hundred pounds of black powder sold as a stump remover had been split up and loaded with ball bearings then turned into improvised explosive devices, all at Lisa's direction, and following her instructions for placement.

None of this would truly stop Lung, but it would slow him down. The main point to it was it would keep his gang members honest, discouraging any from being too earnest in charging off into Grue's darkness in order to hem in the Undersiders' movements.

Jared surveyed their preparations, and found it adequate. Lisa did not know much about tactics, yet, and he made a note to teach her. But this would perform the job.

This was also Grue and Regent's first meeting with Taylor. Jared introduced her as Roxanne, and his personal assistant.

Taylor did not object in the least to being named after the female romantic lead in the Cyrano de Bergerac story, and behaved as though oddly pleased and flattered when he'd made the introduction, much like she'd had since he'd provided her matching outfit. From what Lisa had told him, once Taylor had come out of her shock, she'd squealed and wiggled into the ballgown like a proper classic literature nut getting to play dress up; but even he could tell there was more to it than that.

She'd kept sending him shy glances ever since.

The boys gave the proper, "Hi, how are yous?" and she'd favored them both in return with a little curtsy, fluttering a little fan included with her outfit in front of the lower parts of her face, just as ladies at balls used to do, and probably hiding her grin at being able to play-act like this behind it.

Hiding one's expression so you could grin and sneer and gloat in public was what fans like that were for, after all.

Then it was back to business.

Jared drew himself up and commanded, "Grue, I think it's time you go pick up your sister. I'll meet you and her at a location I'll ask Lisa to provide, where we'll do the first step on the switch to the new IDs: preparing decoys so we can fake the deaths of your old ones. Lisa and the others have already been through the process. Regent, you come with us. There is one more thing we can do to ensure this night is a success."

Regent had then followed the two of them to their van, while Grue went off to fetch his sister.

Taylor had discovered Lung's location earlier, on their raiding of ABB holdings. She'd mentioned her bugs finding a bare-shirted man with a metal plate covering part of his face, and Lisa had properly identified that as Lung. They had wisely decided against taking any of the cash from that place, as they did not want to set him off early.

They drove back there now.

It was an anonymous building with very few windows, and most of those boarded up. It could once have been almost anything, from a small office to a micro-brewery, to a clinic, or virtually anything in between, but now it was boarded up and seemingly abandoned.

The 'seemingly' part being an important qualifier.

Though gang-tagged, the outside doors were sturdy steel and locked, then barred from the inside, with small shuttered panels that could be pulled aside so those inside could see out, to see if they recognized anyone seeking entrance. No guards stood outside, that would have been too obvious, but the number of young Asian men in gang colors and with radios just loitering in the nearby neighborhood was suspiciously high, if one cared to notice such things. Then there was a room inside crammed with young Asians watching the security camera feeds from outside - the area was apparently quite peppered with them.

All of that, plus about twenty Asian men inside in a ready room, playing cards or watching TV with the volume down low so as not to disturb the mighty Lung, all of them with firearms on them or laying within arms reach.

Such a base could be considered quite secure against anything but a major raid, and considering they almost certainly had paid informants in both the PRT and police, such a raid would not come without warning, giving them time to pack up and escape. Scouts and spies along the borders of their territories would also warn against raids by the other major gangs.

So a 'too tough to break by anything minor, too mobile to catch by anything major' setup.

Not that they were worried about the latter. They did have Lung in residence, after all, considered by some the heaviest hitter in the entire city. The rest of this security was simply to stop any small-fry from disturbing him unnecessarily.

He was their big stick, after all. The cape they threatened other gangs with. A regenerating pyrokinetic who got bigger, tougher, stronger, and more dragonic-looking the longer a conflict progressed, Lung was not shy about combat. He'd once fought the Endbringer Leviathan to a stalemate. He just did not want to be brought out for anything he considered not worth his time.

Boy was he in for a surprise tonight.

They parked the van a safe distance away, and Jared presented to Taylor a small handful of about a dozen marble-sized waxy beads, explaining, "These are sleep gas pellets. They have to be set off very close to a person's head to be effective, within a couple of feet or so. And the people only stay out for about a minute. So I want you to take these, and give them to some bugs able to move them and chew through the covering when needed, that'll probably be beetles, and use those insects to get these within a foot or two of the heads of those scouts they have. But first..."

He took out a roll of butcher's paper, then pulled out and tore off about a two-foot square of the stuff. He laid that out on the small table in the back of the van, and handed Taylor a drafting pencil. "First I want you to sketch out the buildings about a block around our target. Use your bugs to do some measuring as you'll want everything to scale. Then, once you have put a rough map down, I want you to mark the locations of each watcher, and every security camera and where they are pointing on this map with your bugs. Then I'll want you to explain to both Regent and I what corridor you plan on opening up through those defenses, and why. Because when you're done, both Regent and I will be walking that path to get inside, and we'll have only a minute or so to do it - and it's important that we avoid getting caught."

Realizing this was another learning experience, Taylor bent to her assignment with a will. Regent, with all of his experience playing strategy games online, instead of being bored and laid back, leaned forward and became intensely interested, offering many useful insights and helpful suggestions... mingled in among all of his snarky comments, of course.

But she could tell he did not have any heat in it, so learned to ignore the quasi-insults when they came, instead focusing in on the assignment.

Drawing it all out so they could take it all in as if from above with their human eyes turned out to be surprisingly useful, not for Taylor personally, but because it allowed others to see what she was planning on doing, and make helpful observations.

Along with some more snarky comments from Regent, of course. But she was learning to ignore him when he did that - something she rather doubted she'd have been able to do before Jared had started teaching her and training her. But with some solid approval on her side, it was easier to ignore comments that weren't even intended to be mean, just snarky.

In moments, Jared and Regent were standing outside of one of the target building's steel doors. Jared spent about twelve seconds using Prestidigitation to first clean, then oil the door, so when he tapped it with his staff a moment later and the door unlocked and unbarred itself, there was next to no noise from it doing so.

The Knock spell. Who needs thieves to open things? Then the pair slipped through and were inside.

Jared had made Taylor draft a second map on another sheet of butcher's paper, detailing the inside of Lung's hideout. So once in they knew where to go. Taylor still guided them with fireflies, though, for added surety.

They reached a kitchen, first thing. It was empty, lunch having concluded hours before, and being many hours til dinner yet. The kitchen, Taylor had learned, had direct access to Lung's apartments, and they used it to get there quickly and unobserved.

Both young men passed into Lung's dining room, and stopped, stunned at the scene before them. Neither boy was any stranger to ostentatious displays of wealth. Jared had only just recently come from a world where gold and silver coins were the standard medium of exchange, and gems of such size and clarity as modern jewelers practically never see are shattered with frightening casualness to fuel various abilities, while Regent was Heartbreaker's son, a man whose power allowed him to have virtually anything he wanted, in virtually unlimited amounts. Of course Heartbreaker was a jaded hedonist who had tried everything by now, including accumulating vast luxuries and wealth.

But neither young man had seen such a tasteless display of gaudy tackiness before in their lives.

"Is that a Rembrandt?" Jared asked, stunned to see the painting not even hung on a wall, just discarded behind a velvet hanging as though it did not even matter. "That seems kind of an odd treasure to collect for a gang leader who routinely sets himself on fire. How many has he owned and burned to ash before this?"

"Five," answered a new voice, that of a girl coming out from behind a priceless Steinway antique grand piano piled so deeply under fur coats it was impossible to tell at first glance what it was. "He likes to 'prove himself' by confronting some wealthy individual in their home, then daring them to call the police. Since they know that a fight there, in their homes, with them and their families present would not only destroy all of their treasures, but likely kill them all, they generally agree to offer him some priceless artifact as tribute, rather than lose it all. He takes those here and displays them as trophies. His victims don't often report it because they don't like being humiliated, and when it does happen they prefer it to stay private, rather than call the police and let the media inevitably catch wind of it."

Regent had gotten tense, but Jared just drilled the girl with his gaze. "You said 'generally', what happens when they don't cough up some offer he likes?"

The woman gave a very strained smile, offering her hand to shake, "Then he takes some family member as his trophy. Hi, nice to meet you, Beverly Hughes, at your service. Tell me, are you here to kill Lung?"

"Don't sound so eager," Jared shook her hand, chiding in a friendly way, plainly amused.

"Why not?" The newly-named Beverly challenged, a little heat in it. "I've been his captive here for four years! A trophy, and his whore! And lately, as he's been getting tired of me, he's been allowing his men to use me. Why shouldn't I want him dead? I'm starting to think I'd rather die than go on like this!"

Regent made some calming gestures. "Easy, don't raise your voice. Should we even be talking about this right by what I assume to be his bedroom?"

The self-proclaimed trophy whore sniffed disdainfully and crossed her arms over her expensive dress. "You shouldn't worry. He is sleeping with Prince Valium right now, because he wants to be well rested when he kills the Undersiders tonight..."

Her eyes widened with startled understanding as she took in Regent's costume. "You are! You ARE here to kill him!" She declared in an excited whisper. Her eyes darted over to Jared in his upgraded Cyrano de Bergerac costume. "I don't recognize you. You're not one of the Undersiders. Are you an assassin they've hired?"

"Something like that," Jared answered easily, even flippantly, adding, "As a matter of fact, I am taking contracts, and I'm given to understand there's a gang leader near here that you'd like to be eliminated. Just what can you offer, miss Hughes?"

She glared at him in disbelief. "Are you serious? I'm a member of the Hughes family, we're worth billions, just name your price."

"To get you out of here? Or to get Lung dead, or both? Or do you prefer humiliated?" Was his dry answer.

"Either. Both!" She angrily shook her head. "Just get me out of here. My family mostly moved out of Brockton Bay decades ago. I was visiting my brother, the one family that were foolish enough to stay, when Lung arrived. I'm told my brother packed up the house and left the city the day after, and I don't blame him. Just get me out and give me your account number and I'll have my father wire you a million dollars. Surely that's got to be enough?"

"A pleasure doing business with you, miss Hughes, I am completely satisfied with your offer," Jared offered dryly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll just slip into Lung's bedroom and take care of something, for a moment. Then I'll be glad to escort you out."

Naturally, she followed them as Regent and Jared went into Lung's bedroom. They found him in a sumptuous bed surrounded by a whore of every color, and two of Japanese descent. Jared merely took a small vial of black substance from inside of his clothes and dipped a needle into it, using that needle to stab the nearest body first, then redipping and stabbing the next, until he had gotten Lung himself, then did not stop there and carefully finished them all.

"There," he declared, causing the needle and the vial of poison he'd dipped it in to vanish back into his clothes. "Now they'll all be asleep for eight hours, even with rough handling. That should run to about midnight. Regent, have you picked out your hiding spot yet?"

"Not yet," came back Regent's answer.

"What are you doing?" demanded the self-confessed whore. "Look, it doesn't matter, that girl," she pointed to one of the bodies in bed with Lung, "is Sally Morgan, her family controls the J.P. Morgan financial group. I'm pretty sure her family would pay as much as mine is for me to have her back. Some of these girls, ugh! I dunno, I think they're local money, strictly small time, like Stansfield there. But I'm pretty sure they'd all pay to have their daughters, their sisters rescued... Except for the Japanese pair. Every year Lung gets a new pair as tribute from the families in the territories he controls. I'm pretty sure they can't go back home without getting everyone they're related to killed. After a year he dumps them into his brothels and gets a new pair for himself. But the rest of us? Why don't you just rescue us all?"

"Happens to be what I'm working on, Lady," Jared drawled quietly. "Regent, you got anything?"

"Yeah, there."

Jared turned around, looking at where Regent was pointing. "Up there?"

It was a ventilation duct.

"Yeah, will you give me a hand?"

"Sure." Jared stood over by the wall and formed a cup with his hands for Regent to put his foot in. The other cape did so. Then, with the smoothness and skill of a trained acrobat, Jared lifted and transferred Regent's feet to where they were standing on his shoulders. Braced by leaning against the wall, it was a very stable arrangement.

Regent, having gotten more height by the assist than he'd been expecting, found the ventilation duct easily within reach rather than having to stretch like he'd been fearing, and quickly went to work on the cover, having it open in moments. "Oh, yeah. That'll do nicely. Lift me higher up."

Releasing one hand from its duty at stabilizing Regent's foot, Jared pointed to the hoping-to-be-former whore, then to a small but sturdy table, motioning that she should bring it near. When she did so, he positioned it so it was stable, then slipped on top of it, going from standing to sitting without disturbing Regent at all. Then he slowly stood up on it, raising Regent's height by another three feet.

"Perfect," Regent was unsympathetic and unimpressed by the amount of skill achieving this required, and simply raised himself up on some handholds, then slipped his feet inside of the open vent. In moments, he had slid completely inside.

"You ok in there?" Jared asked.

"I got what I need," Regent replied calmly. "My face is towards Lung, my feet towards freedom. It's only about eight feet in a straight shot to the outside wall. I can kick open that vent on my way out. Yeah, I got this."

"Here, take this," Jared passed him a short coil of rope. "That outside vent is about twelve feet off the ground. We don't want you to sprain anything when you drop down."

"What's going on?" the Hughes girl asked.

Jared had just replaced the ventilation vent cover, fully concealing Regent's presence. Hopping down from off the table, he wiped his boot prints from the surface and moved it back to where it had been. "Oh, nothing much. Regent here is a bit of a voyeur. He likes to watch..."

"F- you, [bleep]hole" came softly out of the vent.

Jared just shrugged, amused. His explanation for the soon-to-be-former prostitute was, of course, wrong. But then, he did not feel like explaining any of this group's secrets to strangers, even when they'd asked politely. Especially not since Regent had gone to some lengths to conceal the full extent of his powers. When he first met someone, he could get them to twitch. Once he'd had a few hours to work on mastering your nervous system? You were his puppet, plain and simple.

They had just arranged for him to have a safe and secure vantage point to start mastering Lung from, and hours to do it in. With his veins full of Drow knockout poison, Lung would not even be aware of it as his body began to twitch and spasm, jerk and twist around as Regent set about learning how to control it.

But the wizard wasn't just about to blurt that out to every random stranger that asked!

"You've got your cellphone?"

"Yeah," Regent confirmed.

"Then call us when you need extraction," Jared put his hand on the arm of the Hughes chick and began to lead her forcefully towards the door. "And don't run out of battery."

"But the other girls..." Hughes began.

"Fine." Jared stopped and lifted one up, fireman's carry. "None of them can walk right now, so one is my limit. Is this the one you want out, or another? We'll be coming back for the rest once I have more transport capacity."

She indicated that she would, indeed, prefer another. Jared made the switch as to which he was carrying, then they moved towards the dining room on their way to the outside door. Taylor was already armed for precision, simultaneous delivery of her sleep bomb munitions on his mark, which would be when he opened that door again.

They got out clean, any cameras having their lenses obscured by bugs at just the right moments, for just long enough.

OoOoO

Jared had to hand it to the Undersiders, when it came time to execute the plan, they did not disappoint.

Regent had done his job, and been safely extracted. Decoys had been provided for those that did not already have them. The two girls rescued from Lung were given a car and told to drive to New York before revealing themselves to the authorities.

The forces currently in charge of the USA did not permit anyone to do anything, until the system had thoroughly examined, understood, and allowed that action. So, wherever those now-former prostitutes went to try and reconnect with their families, they would be forced to deal with the system, and there would be delays. And doing that in Brockton Bay kept them in the danger zone and risked Lung coming after them again.

So, Boston was his first choice, but New York was safer, as Lung was very unlikely to go try his rage dragon trick in Legend's backyard - and Jared explained as much to the Hughes woman, before sending her off in a car with a full fuel tank.

Then all too soon it was H-hour.

As the battle was to begin, Jared had taken the driver's seat of the van and cruised carefully around the edges of ABB territory, gradually easing farther and farther in while Taylor was in the back, scouting with her bugs.

They had not been scouting long before Taylor had detected a crowd of ABB thugs all gathering in one place.

To no one's surprise, the primary meeting point seemed to be outside of Lung's current hideout.

It was a smoking ruin.

The reason for that was very simple. Once Regent had full control of Lung's body and called for extraction, Jared had made a suggestion that Regent found funny, and he'd used his new Lung-puppet to order the ABB members to pack up everything in that base and move it to a new location.

Believing they had been ordered to do so by Lung, the gang members had obeyed, packing things up, loading up moving trucks, and driving them away while Lung returned to his sleep, resting on an army surplus folding cot - alone, as his whores had been moved with the rest of the furniture.

The Lung-puppet did this while Lung's mind was still unconscious from the Drow knockout poison. And one last thing he did before Regent sent him back to bed was scratch "Ha Ha! Suckers!" and sign it "Shadow Stalker" on his own wall, right where he could not help but see it when he woke up.

A safe distance away the moving vans filled with Lung's treasures drove into Grue's darkness. Forced to stop or crash, they had stopped. The sound of Decoy Lisa's pistol rang out about a dozen times, and the guards and drivers were no more. Then the former whores got sent one way in their own car (with the same advice to go to New York, or at least Boston), while the moving vans disappeared in another.

Declaring war meant both sides got to fight, gang wars were no different from national ones in this aspect, and Lung had gone one step further and declared a 'Scorched Earth' policy, 'take no prisoners' approach against the Undersiders. It was only fair that he and those who followed his orders receive similar treatment in turn.

Lung set the rules. Jared and the Undersiders were just following them, dancing to the tune Lung chose. And robbing the other side of his treasures and killing his men was pretty standard fare once you were at war.

Of course, what Regent found most funny was when Lung woke up as himself, instead of the sleepwalking puppet that had given the orders, he awoke with no memory of what he'd done under Regent's control as his own mind had been unconscious. Thus, Lung found himself lying alone in a bare apartment on a mere cot, with all of his treasures missing, and one of his enemies claiming responsibility in the form of a note claiming to be from Shadow Stalker carved on his wall.

The gang leader predictably went nuts, and without asking anyone anything, or even listening to their shouted apologies or explanations, had then proceeded to violently punish his underlings for their perceived failure to protect him.

Hence the smoking ruin of his former base, and the charred bodies of his 'failed' servants within.

But deceiving your enemy was also an integral part of war, and if Lung did not like it, he should not have declared one. He had decreed 'no mercy' and now he was receiving none, and had no one to blame but himself if he did not like those rules.

Jared honestly felt Lung was kind of a wimp to be able to dish it out, but not take it, like that. Did Lung honestly assume that he was free to use his powers to their best effect in a conflict, but that other people weren't?

What kind of an idiot thinks that?

But while Lung was going on a mini-rampage, murdering his own men for their crime of obeying what they'd thought were his orders, the rest of the ABB functioned despite this, not uncommon, occurrence. Getting mad and killing people was Lung's stock-in-trade, and doing so over a misunderstanding? Sadly typical for those with that bent.

But Lung was still in that smoking ruin, and having discovered the location of their enemy, it was easy enough to provoke the inevitable fight on their timing and on their terms by having Lisa call in a tip that the Undersiders had been sighted, and where, to someone she knew was an ABB informant. The guy obviously passed that on, as moments later the crowd of thugs went into high activity.

Lung emerged from the smoking building moments later.

Since the plan called for the Undersiders' decoys to face Oni Lee alone for the beginning fight, Jared, who had parked the van and snuck up to within 200 feet of the crowd of thugs, quietly cast the second level spell Calm Emotions on Lung, who rather predictably failed his save.

Big, musclebound types are frequently weak on their Will saves. They don't take the time to develop their minds like they'd need to to have a good one. So it was a predictable weakness.

Lung, who'd left the building clearly agitated and spoiling for a fight, soon found himself feeling surprisingly mellow and laid back about things, unable to get upset even by the very same things that had had him enraged a minute ago.

He just couldn't bring himself to care enough, not even able to give a rousing speech to his mob of goons, who had all gathered and were waiting expectantly.

Over across to another end of ABB territory, Oni Lee responded quickly, going ahead to scout for the mighty Lung, and once their location was confirmed, to harass, annoy, and injure, to keep the Undersiders pinned in place for the mighty dragon to come and personally finish them off.

Easily spotting Grue's field of darkness, the teleporting ninja had sent the radio signal confirming the tip concerning their location was genuine. Then, because the cloud of darkness was spotty and incomplete, obviously not fully prepared, Oni Lee had made several teleports inside, scouting out the enemy for his first attack run.

He'd never even seen his prey before, on teleporting to a likely vantage point within the fog of inky smoke, the first bear trap took his right leg off above the ankle. It had been a narrow ledge with only one place to stand, and so an easy spot for the bear trap to get in a good hit, and it had done so as Lisa had predicted.

And there was no point in leaving their bear traps blunt, to try to trap him in place, when Oni Lee was a teleporter. So they had chosen to sharpen the jaws of their traps.

Oni Lee immediately made another teleport, trying to get to safety. But the spot he'd chosen for cover had been predicted and he immediately felt the shock of another trap, this time severing his remaining good leg.

Then Regent had closed his eyes for him.

Small twitches and muscle movements Regent could do on practically anyone. For Oni Lee, this was a deadly threat, as no vision meant no teleportation for the line-of-sight teleport spammer. Oni Lee instantly began to claw at his mask, desperate to force his eyelids open manually, when the clouds of darkness closed in like a bear trap themselves, leaving the line-of-sight teleporter no sight to teleport with, even if he could get his eyes open.

No chance to get clever. No chance to run away. This trap had been designed with Oni Lee's powers in mind, and was set up to execute him, not annoy him. The moment he'd realized he was in danger, he was already done for.

Just as planned.

Lisa's decoy strolled up moments later, following a corridor Grue had opened for her, and found Oni Lee with both legs amputated and the ninja bleeding out. The darkness covering him withdrew until it revealed the ninja's torso, but never left his head, whereupon she quietly drew her pistol, then shot him twice in the throat.

Then she shot him twice in the heart, followed by twice in the back of his head.

Then she emptied the clip into him, reloaded, and shot him again.

They were taking no chances on the ninja 'just faking it', having body armor, or being only critically injured and miraculously surviving to make a full recovery after a visit to Panacea.

No, when she was done shooting him, Lisa's decoy reloaded again, then drew a machete and cut off the ninja's head, putting it in a bag that she tied to her belt; then tying strings to the pins on several of his grenades, she backed up to a safe distance, yanked them out and took cover.

From the flames and spurts of goo behind her body double, Lisa figured that he'd been carrying exotic ordinance.

After the explosions settled, her decoy departed to go back to Grue, and the rest of the decoys. While she did, she made a few clicks on a certain channel on her radio.

Back with Lung, Jared received the signal, dropped the Calm Emotions spell, and quietly slipped away into the night to go link up with Taylor back at the van, then get both of them out of there.

The Last Stand of the Undersiders was going to be epic, but too dangerous to stay around and watch. They'd get the highlights from Lisa later on that night.

While Jared could have extended the duration of his Calm Emotions spell for days, if necessary, and the Undersiders, decoys or not, could easily have ripped Lung apart without his rage-induced growth and regeneration, that would have left Coil with the understanding that the Undersiders had survived, and frankly Jared preferred to fight Lung.

Dumb brutes were easy. Thinking opponents were dangerous. It would be better for everyone if Coil thought the Undersiders died this night.

OoOoO

Story Day Two, April 7th 2011, Thursday - End of the Day

OoOoO

It was around midnight when Taylor, driving the van, and Jared following her in the Camaro in case she had any trouble, pulled up outside of her house.

Out of their superhero costumes, they met up and mounted the steps, skipping the broken one, until they stood at her front door. There, Taylor stood with shining eyes to face him. "I had a great night."

Jared, in his Rick persona, smiled easily. "It was a good date, wasn't it?"

Reminded of their cover story, Taylor blushed and ducked her head, feeling uneasy.

"Should... should we kiss?"

'Rick' smiled and said, "A kiss, when all is said and done, what is it? An oath taken at close quarters, a more precise promise, a confession that wishes to be confirmed, a rosy circle around the 'o' of the verb 'to love'; It's a secret which takes the lips for the ear, a moment of infinity buzzing like a bee, a communion with a flowery taste, a way of breathing in a little of the heart and tasting a little of the soul along the edges of the lips."

Taylor's heart sped up to about a mile a minute and her eyes flew wide. He was doing it! He was quoting one of the love scenes from Cyrano de Bergerac to her!

Suddenly the door to the house flung open, and Lacey, one of Danny's friends, appeared, dragging both teens inside. There they found themselves walked into a room where Danny and a dozen big, burly men were all cleaning guns.

Rick reacted as if electrified, blurting out, "Is that a Remington 870? I like my Remingtons, but I prefer my Sig Sauer. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I just hit more accurately with my Sig. I just like the feel of it. Berettas are fine, Smith & Wesson is great, Taurus is surprisingly good for being inexpensive. But nothing works for me as well as my Sig. Forget Glock, the handgrips. The handgrips work fine for some people, but they'd don't work for me. They're just too big."

Rick was already across the room, canvassing the guns without getting in the way or touching anything, just leaning over the burly mens' shoulders to exclaim his delight over their choices in firearms.

All the while talking about a mile a minute.

"Oh, hey, we ought to go shooting sometime. Do some man-to-man bonding. Have you fired a flintlock? I have a collection of historical reproductions. You might want to try some. I've gotten some surprising accuracy out of them."

Taylor noted with some astonishment that Rick was practically in Kurt's lap, and would have been in contact had the big man not begun leaning away from him.

"On the subject of accuracy, I must note how surprised I was to discover how much more accurate I am with revolvers than with autoloaders in general. I note none of you are using any revolvers here. Have you tried them? Would you like to?"

Rick turned to face Danny, eyes wide like a child on his birthday. "Oh, and as far as the subject of black powder and revolvers, let me tell you about the LeMat..."

Taylor, in her astonishment, meekly permitted Lacey to lead her away upstairs for some frank girl talk, the boy's voice fading away in the background, "... would any of you like to borrow my reloading press? I see your Smith & Wesson is rated for +P ammunition. That means it can handle some of the hot loads I make..."

OoOoO

Lung stared down at the corpses burned to cinders before him, before stepping on one of their faces, causing the head to explode into a cloud of ashes that swirled around his ankles.

That was for Regent causing Lung's claws to strike his own crotch repeatedly all evening, doubling over the rage dragon with the pain of it, frequently allowing the Undersiders to make yet one more escape.

But in the end only delaying the inevitable.

Then, on thinking about it, Lung also kicked the girl Tattletale's corpse to ashes, scattering them wide, as a form of petty revenge for having led him into ambush after ambush.

Where they'd gotten that many bear traps he'd never know. Nor had she ever seemed to run out of ammo for that pistol, and she'd always managed to shoot him right in his left eye - usually when he was paralyzed with pain just after striking his own crotch with his claws, or from having stumbled into another bear trap.

Or both.

That one time she'd gotten him to slip on a pipe rolling out from under his foot and sit on a bear trap, it had torn his manhood clear away. That was definitely both.

Then, of course, she'd shot him in the eye again.

The pistol she'd used had enough power to get in through an eyesocket, but not enough to get back out again. Lung had had enough lead injected through that eye and into his brain that night that some of it had actually, literally been pushed out his ears as his body regenerated the damage. He'd also spit out used bullets, and sneezed them from his nose.

Once the bullets had come in that weak point, being unable to go out through the tougher portions of his skull, they'd had nothing to do with their remaining energy but rattle around inside for awhile, lightly pureeing his brain. The Undersiders would then escape again during the confusion that caused him. It had been humiliating in the extreme, not to mention painful.

Thinking of that, he scattered her ashes some more.

Finally, the chase had ended the only way it could have ended when a metal girder Lung had thrown as a spear got lucky (he'd insist it was skill) and hit one of Hellhound's giant dogs, wounding but not killing it. Hellhound had refused to leave the monster, and without their transport the rest of the group was finished. Only Grue had gotten away, and then only briefly, the coward fleeing on foot the moment their mobility was impaired, only to get shot by an ABB member as he tried to escape. If Lung heard correctly, they had even killed a fifth Undersider he had not heard of previously, but which had been fleeing with Grue.

All the better.

Lung had proven his mastery. Fear of the Dragon of Kyushu would spread wide after this.

Yet in a rage not satisfied by killing the Undersiders, and wishing only that he could kill them all over again, Lung seethed that even this triumph was not enough, that he still faced challengers to his authority. For in a brazen, mocking assault on his holdings earlier that same day, the ward Shadow Stalker had robbed him in a manner that was more than twenty times worse than the Undersiders' raid on his casino.

Lung still did not know how bad it had been. His underlings were still counting the losses. But it was at least that bad.

It was an insult that could not be allowed to stand!

The crowd of gang toughs Lung had used as wolfhounds to chase down and hem in the Undersiders so he could kill them, began milling around uncertainly, now that the chase was done and they had no clear instruction.

Clear instruction? He would give them clear instruction!

Lung brought himself to his full height and roared, "Now we will go to the PRT Headquarters and show them the error of their ways in permitting that thieving ward, Shadow Stalker, to steal from me, the Dragon of Kyushu!"

His underlings roared out their approval, just as they were supposed to.

The Undersiders had played Hide and Seek, striking and fading, never allowing him the sustained conflict he needed to truly ramp up. Their hit and run tactics had bedeviled him all evening, but always it was far more of a wait period between sharp moments of agony than anything like sustained fighting. So as a result, though he had been pushing his power for size and strength all evening, Lung was still barely any bigger than he was ordinarily.

He had been bigger during their final moments, the fight when they'd at last been cornered, but even that was fading now.

But the ABB leader was confident he had everything under control. When he had first moved to Brockton Bay, Lung had taken on the entire Protectorate ENE and won.

However, what he had not bothered to look into was, in the years since, they'd had opportunity to think over what had happened and plan out what they might do if he tried something like that again. Most of those contingencies were varying degrees of 'fall back and let him calm down', but they had also considered what to do if giving him space was not an option, like if he attacked the PRT Headquarters.

Now there were different plans laid down for if he was doing a prison break of one of his members, and thus expected to be gone right after his snatch-and-grab, versus what to do if he was there to destroy the building.

Lung in a revenge-fueled rage over the repeated insults of small fry stealing from him, showed up proclaiming that he was going to annihilate Shadow Stalker and the PRT just as he had the Undersiders.

They took that threat rather a bit more seriously than if he was just there to rescue an imprisoned underling, or was just burning down an abandoned warehouse district. Once they had a good recording of his shouted threat (they got three in short order, he was not being quiet), Director Piggot got on the phone.

The emergency line to the Triumvirate.

Within moments Strider, the famous teleporter, appeared, arriving with Alexandria, the world's most famous flying brick, who had a bored expression on her face as she flew over and picked Lung up by the back of his neck like an angry kitten, spitting and yowling, scratching and biting but unable to reach her. Nor did his flames affect her as she flew him a hundred miles out to sea, then dropped him, angry and spitting, into the water.

Alexandria had then calmly flown away, leaving him there.

Lung died about five minutes later, drowned, unable to rely on a power fueled by conflict when there was no one around to fight, and so left without superpowers. The human hadn't been born who could swim a hundred miles of the rough Atlantic waters, especially not the cold coasts off New England.

So he'd lost his rage, lost his muscles, lost his flames, and was gone in a couple minutes to drowning and hypothermia. In fairness, he made it about a minute longer than any normal person in his position would have.

Cauldron opened a portal once he was unconscious, recovered him, and he awoke on the cot in his private apartment at his ruined base, with Alexandria seated across from him, calmly cleaning her fingernails. Seeing him awake, she then calmly informed him that he owed three favors in return for his life - and that he could agree to that debt, or she could drop him right back out there in those frozen waters again.

Lung had agreed. Chagrined and humiliated, but he'd agreed.

Alexandria had then departed, flying away without another word.

Rational thinking has always been the most effective superpower - and one denied to Lung, because rage and reasoning are pretty much opposites. When someone is raging they are not reasoning, and that's pretty much a hard and fast rule. Human nature being what it is, Lung had so much power when he was raging that he did not see the need for any other approach, so did not bother to develop one.

Left with developing frostbite in all of his limbs and extremities, Lung had then proceeded to go find some of his underlings he could rage at, thus activating his superpower's regeneration aspect, and thus possibly recover his manhood, which had frozen and turned black in the cold, along with his fingers and toes, ears and nose, and patches along other places.

He knew enough to know that meant they were going to fall off if he did not do something, so he went to go rage against his incompetent underlings for their many failures to properly serve him.

It was not a nice day to belong to the ABB.

Of course, the rest of the city rested more easily that night, with fewer gang robberies and muggings, as a good portion of the muggers and gang toughs were having a rough night of their own.

OoOoO

One Hour Later

OoOoO

Later at the Hebert house, Lacey came downstairs to find Danny alone on the front step, drinking. She joined him at the rail. "Well, no hanky panky occurred."

"Whu?" Danny stirred from his angry drinking to grunt both confusion and disbelief.

Lacey rolled her eyes, then explained, "Danny, the outfits they were wearing take a lot of time and effort to get into, or out of, and messing them up by playing around would have been obvious. Rick just decided to go on the offensive, as if you already thought they were messing around and the worst had already occurred then you wouldn't be interfering in their relationship to try and keep her untouched. Taylor even admitted as much when I asked her. Poor girl has no defenses when another girl she trusts pries at her secrets. They haven't even kissed yet. She's still as innocent as the day she was born."

Danny made a surprised and pleased noise, looking down at his beer as though wondering why he really needed it.

Lacey lifted her own beer to her lips. "Lucky thing, too. As there is a good chance if you'd gone all 'angry father' over him, it would probably have made them rush into things they aren't ready for in response. At least that's what I'd guess from talking to Taylor. Girl's completely besotted with him, Danny. I'd say 'she's got it bad', but it's worse than that. I think she'd walk through fire for that boy. Some advice? Don't make her choose between you. 'Cause no one can guarantee she'd choose you."

He grunted in disbelief. Taylor was his, darn it! His daughter!

Lacey gave an exasperated sigh, rolling her eyes. "I'm serious, Danny! If this were a hundred years ago, with the way she feels, they'd already be married and out of the house starting a new life together. They can still get married at sixteen with parental consent in this state, and the way she feels, come her birthday in two months they'll be asking. So you just might have to get used to the idea of having a son-in-law, 'cause refuse her and you'll lose her, Danny. That I can guarantee."

Lacey went back inside to find her husband Kurt, leaving Danny standing at the rail, scowling, staring down at his bottle, wondering if beer was enough.

Later, while all of his dockworker friends were leaving, Kurt stopped to say, "I dunno, Danny. He seems like a solid kid to me. Do you know how hard it is to get +P ammo for this?"

"Certainly not one of those punks who think that punching when you pull the trigger improves things somehow," another dockworker nodded his approval on the way out.

Danny was left staring out into the night, seeing two classic cars that had not been there the night before parked outside, and feeling sorry for himself that even his friends seemed to like the kid.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

I think it should be explained that Lung's bad luck during that fight was not luck, but Regent being subtle about his control, causing Lung to step right on the traps, holding him still so Lisa's decoy could line up a shot on his eye - which did BAD things to Lung's short term memory, so he tended not to recall minor clues of his body not working right.

Regent was doing this from a hidden sniper nest, of course, while Lisa was coordinating them through radio and cameras, while Rachel's dogs were with Rachel in their new hideout on the edge of town. All of them were substituted out for decoys, which they had planned for Lung to destroy. The only real Undersider present in that fight had been Grue, who had to be present in order to generate his darkness, but who disengaged the moment it was believable.

Catching Grue in his darkness, when he can see and no one else can, would have been impossible for Lung's men. But the Undersiders staged it to where some ABB thugs got to shoot Grue's decoy, and a decoy of Aisha all costumed up as a new member, faking their deaths with the rest of the gang.

A clean sweep of the Undersiders, so Coil gets to think they are destroyed.

And, Taylor did manage to keep some secrets from Lacey, like all of the cape business. But her cover story got pretty thoroughly explored. Although I'm afraid Lacey did get a few things mixed up. She knows from Danny about Jared wearing that Cyrano de Bergerac costume when Danny first came downstairs and met the lad. That was pretty central to his angry rants once Danny got in to work. And she did manage to pry out of Taylor that she did wear a matching costume at some point. But she does not know when, or under what circumstances, so just assumed that it was that first time Danny met Jared, and Danny had just failed to mention it in his rants over the new boy in his daughter's life.

It is possible, that had Danny not been drunk, he might have caught that little detail and corrected her. But he was, and he didn't, and memory does bad things to alcohol (or is that the other way around?) and so he is not liable to remember the specifics of that conversation in the morning, just some broad strokes and his profound sense of relief, followed by an equally crushing knowledge that Taylor was planning to get married on her birthday in two months and leave him (broad strokes only, remember?) and well, there probably won't be a drop of alcohol left in the house by the time Danny gets to sleep.

Oh, and I pulled the story about the alchemist using a mandrake root to create a lifelike decoy of a girl to be fed to a dragon, then getting eaten himself, out of a D20 supplement. I did not make that up.