Disclaimer: I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me.

A/N: Yes, it's two chapters at once! Be impressed. Be very impressed. ;P

Chapter 4: Collateral Damage

As it happened, Layla's meeting was not boring at all. In fact there was a very interesting and important debate going on when Warren tried to phone her. Blushing and mumbling an apology, she cut off the call and, feeling she owed him an explanation for refusing to take an emergency call, sent a quick text that she was in a meeting.

When a reply came a minute later, she was grateful that she'd thought to switch her phone to silent. Holding her phone on her lap under the boardroom table, she surreptitiously looked at the photo he had sent.

She knew who it was straight away. When she had first learned about Phyto, she'd secretly felt he was just a misunderstood hero and she'd really admired him for his dedication to the environment. Then she found out the things he had done in the name of that cause, and she'd come to realize that he unfortunately deserved to be considered a super villain.

It didn't take her long to think of something from her knowledge of the tree-monster that might help. She quickly texted, 'Burn sap'.

But when the answer came, it turned out that he'd already thought of that. 'Bn there dn that. Phyto itself? fireprf & deneut.'

That would make things a lot more tricky. She frowned in concentration, trying to remember anything else that could be useful.

"Is everything alright, Layla?" asked one of her colleagues, who had evidently noticed her expression.

She looked up and realized that the meeting seemed to have come to a halt, and she had a horrible feeling that she'd just been asked a question which she'd apparently ignored.

"Uh, not to worry," she replied, a bit flustered, and gave the first excuse that came to mind, "Just a little domestic hassle."

When three of the other women at the meeting started giving her pitying looks, she realized she'd probably said the wrong thing. Two of them were divorcees, one of them having caught her husband with another woman, and the third was equally anti-men for some reason. As it was they'd taken one look at the photo she had of Warren on her desk and decided he was trouble. Honestly, if she had a quarter for every time somebody made that sort of snap judgment…

So, the last thing she needed was to give them more ammunition. The sympathy they smothered her with already was more than she could stand.

"Oh, don't worry, nothing like that," she reassured them, "Just the gardener having trouble with pruning a tree that's out of control." She shrugged the whole affair off and hoped that everyone's attention would go back to the meeting.

But now the rest of them were getting interested in her problem, and began to offer all sorts of pruning tips, none of which would help much against Phyto, until–

"Of course it's the right time of year for pruning," put in Layla's boss. "You can prune any time from late fall when the sap retreats, until the very end of winter."

Layla stared at her for a second. That was it.

They were about to give up hope of Layla replying when she sent another text. It simply said 'Deciduous'.

Kate read it, looking confused. "Deciduous? As in, not evergreen?" That made very little sense to her. Despite Layla's many attempts over the years to get her interested in gardening, it had never really caught on.

Warren wasn't much for gardening either, but he'd spent long enough with his wife to understand what she was getting at. "When it gets too cold, deciduous plants go dormant and lose their leaves. I think she's suggesting we make Phyto too cold to power up."

"So why didn't she just say that?"

He shrugged. "She's in a meeting, remember."

Will, who had overheard most of that conversation on the comm, soon found what they needed to put Phyto into winter storage. A few blocks away, he commandeered a frozen goods van, dumped both the driver and his merchandise on the sidewalk with a sincere apology (Will was so good at that sort of thing) and returned to the scene with his prize.

Hoping that it was true that the sap was not dangerous to human flesh, he gritted his teeth and manhandled the slimy tree-monster into the back of the van. By the time he was finished, his gloves had partially dissolved, but thankfully his fingers were fine, which proved Magenta had been right.

Meanwhile, Warren asked Kate, "So, uh, what happened to the tree?"

She knew exactly which one he meant. He would have noticed it while he was burning up the river of slime. "Well, I found out that the sap is flammable by mistake. We needed to put it out in a hurry, and that was the closest thing Will could find to smother the flames." She looked uneasy. "Um, maybe you shouldn't tell Layla about this."

"It's on her bus route. Even if the road's still closed this evening, she's going to find out in the end."

"Okay, well, can you at least not tell her that it was Will who uprooted it?"

"She'll probably figure that out too. Trust me, she always knows when I've caused collateral damage to plants of any kind."

"So basically we're in trouble?"

He was about to explain that while Layla would be extremely upset about the tree's demise, she wouldn't hold it against them for too long, but then he was interrupted by Magenta suddenly joining them.

"Not as much trouble as you're going to be in if you get spotted here, Warren," she remarked.

"Speak for yourself."

"I'm on my lunch break."

Kate rolled her eyes at their banter. "So, why are you spending it here?" she asked Maj.

"I thought I'd hitch a ride to the Ultra-Max in that frozen goods van Will found," she replied lightly, and then explained her reason in a more serious tone, "I want to see if I can find out who's been handing out so many Get Out Of Jail Free cards."

It wasn't every day that a frozen goods van arrived at the front gate of the prison for super-powered offenders, driven by a superhero who could have flown straight in. However, the security guards had seen a lot of strange things in their time – after all, some of the inmates got very weird visitors – so they weren't quite as keen as Will had expected to come out of their little office and look at his prisoner.

Still, he got out of the van, leaving his door open, and after a bit of false enthusiasm he managed to encourage both of the guards to come around the back and take a peek while he gave them some tips on keeping it contained until the de-neutralizer corroded. A few moments later, a small furry shape slipped out of the open door of the van and pattered into the guards' office.

Magenta shifted into human form briefly to locate the visitor's book on the desk. Each person who came to visit a prisoner was required to sign in, and it was done on paper so this was one record that couldn't be erased from a database. Leaning hard on the table where the book was, she shifted back into guinea-pig form, throwing herself forward a bit as she did so that she ended up safely on the desk instead of hanging over the edge from her front paws. She paged though the visitor's book as fast as she could, but her small paws slowed her down a bit. That was what she got for not practicing in her alternate form very much, she admitted. But she had to do it now, because she was afraid of getting recognized if she was spotted in human form.

"Hey! What's that hairy rat doing in here?" came a voice from the door suddenly.

She turned and took a flying leap for the floor. Landing hard, it took her a moment to recover, but as soon as she could, she wove between the guards' legs to the door. When she was outside, she was grabbed by the scruff of the neck as Will flew off with her at high speed. He held her carefully in his arms as he headed for the Guardians' headquarters, which they'd managed to keep despite the reassignments issue.

Will flew in the window and put her down carefully. She shifted into human form and Zach, who had been waiting for them, gave her a big hug.

"Okay, okay," she wriggled a bit to get free. "Down, boy. I'm fine."

"So did you find anything?" asked Will.

She nodded grimly, having finally extracted herself from Zach's enthusiastic embrace. "The handwriting was difficult to decipher in places, especially for guinea pig eyes, but there's one name that kept coming up. He visited Royal Pain, Eye-Slice and a couple of other villains who've reared their ugly heads lately, along with some names I couldn't read. Any guesses who he is?"

"Grey Arnolde!" Zach piped up instantly.

"You have a new high score," she quipped, and then she sighed. "Looks like Brett was right."

Around one o'clock that night, a car pulled up as close to the scene of the crime as it could. A number of blocks were still barricaded off to the traffic until the road could be re-surfaced properly.

Layla noticed that there was a tree missing from the sidewalk immediately.

"So this is why you wanted to give me a lift home from work today rather than have me go on the bus," she said, staring forlornly in the direction of where the tree used to be.

"Yeah," Warren replied quietly.

"But why did you want to show it to me now?" she asked as tears started to gather in her eyes. She couldn't understand why he was doing this to her considering he knew how much it would hurt her to see this, just as it always did when trees had to be uprooted. That old oak must have been almost 100 years old, and now she wasn't even allowed to replace it. She wiped the tears that were running down her cheeks now.

"Is this supposed to be breaking it to me gently or something?" She supposed this was marginally better than finding out on the bus the next day, which would have caused her to cry the rest of the way to work and be very unhappy all day.

He shook his head and, without a word, pressed something small into her hand.

It was an acorn.

"I'm not supposed to use my powers, Warren! You know that."

"It's the middle of the night, Lay," he whispered, gently stroking her tear-damp cheek. "Who's gonna know?"

"It'll be a little obvious in the morning when there's suddenly a tree there. Of course they'll suspect it was me."

He didn't need to ask who she meant by 'they'. "They can suspect all they like," he replied with a slight smirk. "Without any evidence, they can't prove a thing. You're not the only chlorokinetic in the world, you know."

At last she broke into a smile and hugged him hard, burying her face in his neck. After a few moments, he decided it was probably time to get going.

"So, if you're done wiping your face on my collar…?"

They got out of the car and made their way across the uneven road surface. Warren held back a few paces as Layla approached the gaping hole that had been left behind on the sidewalk and threw the acorn lightly into it. In moments a sapling shot up, its trunk widening and growing taller with every passing second. Shoots sprouted, branches spread out and leaves unfurled, and a minute later a beautiful full-grown tree stood on the sidewalk, looking for all the world like it had been there for nearly a century.

She placed a hand on the trunk and looked up at it in serene happiness, and then turned to face Warren with a very similar expression.

"Thank you," she said simply. She wanted to tell him how sweet she thought it was, but that might embarrass him more than anything else.

Layla had to admit, this wasn't the most romantic gesture in the classic sense of the word – not many people express their love with an acorn – but it was just the perfect thing for her. Warren Peace wasn't really one for romance in the classic flowers-chocolates-candlelight sense of the word, but she'd learnt long ago that it didn't really matter. After all, she wasn't at all keen on getting flowers, considering she viewed the florist trade as unintentional cruelty to plants and she didn't really like chocolate much.

Just then there was a shout from the next block, and they turned to see a patrolling night guard who knew no one was supposed to be there. Layla grabbed Warren's hand and they ran back to the car laughing, feeling like a pair of giddy teenagers caught kissing by the neighbor.

Grey Arnolde looked through the newspaper headlines from around the country with a thoroughly self-satisfied air. The Daily Trumpet read 'Super Disaster!' while The Daily Earth's front page led with 'Too Many Mistakes From Our Protectors Will Cost Lives'. His favorite was on the cover of Once Upon A Time Magazine, 'Have Our Superheroes Outlived Their Usefulness?'.

So far, his plan was working very well. Relocating each hero to a totally new beat had led to a lot of teething problems, quite understandably of course, but with so much failure all at the same time – well, the critics of superheroes were having a field day. To up the ante, he sporadically threw in some super villains they were completely unable to defeat, thanks to the talents of Royal Pain.

Except in one or two areas. One of them was Hawaii, where he had sent the Commander and Jetstream in the hope that they would be too busy having a holiday to get involved in hero work. Instead they were saving the day there on a regular basis, and elsewhere around the world, just as they always did.

But his biggest source of irritation was their son and his friends in Maxville. They had been a spanner in the works that time when they had exposed Dr. Shelley's groundbreaking research, and since then they had only got worse.

They had overcome Eye-Slice, ruining an incident he had planned to be humiliating public defeat and then traced the de-neutralization technology to Royal Pain. They had partially thwarted his efforts to separate them and he strongly suspected that they had all been involved in bringing down Phyto, some more covertly than others. In addition, the gate guard at the Ultra-Max had reported to him that he'd spotted a rodent in his office, reading the visitor's log. Apparently spiking that girl's computer hadn't taught her a lesson about not sticking her nose where it didn't belong.

That whole group needed to learn that lesson. He was going to have to deal with them more harshly, or they would think they could stand in the way of his grand design. If he could only prove that they were moonlighting as heroes, he could get rid of them quite easily. But it seemed they were being extremely sneaky about it.

Either way, he was going to have to keep a closer eye on them.