"It wasn't us," Assault said. He held his hands up at my expression. "I swear. Official policy has been to leave you alone, give you a few days to cool off."

"I'm not sure what to believe anymore," I admitted.

Assault was pleasant and even a little funny, but part of me couldn't help but wonder if it was all an act. After all, the PRT likely wanted me to drop the lawsuit, and they wouldn't mind using a carrot along with whatever stick they had.

"We've been busy with this gang war thing anyway," Assault said.

"I wouldn't have thought that would be a problem with their Capes gone," I said.

"It's actually worse," he said. "The Empire had over a thousand members, and now they've exploded into dozens of small gangs. They scatter like roaches whenever we show up, and it's like playing whack-a-mole; as soon as you take one down others pop back up."

I stared down at my hands.

"Panacea seems to think this is all my fault," I said.

He shrugged. "It would have happened eventually. The city was a powderkeg waiting for something to set it off. You just brought a flamethrower instead of a match."

"So what do I do?" I asked. "I'm not leaving until my Dad is safe. They've apparently already burned my house down, so I don't trust a few security guards to keep the gang members from getting to him."

"You do what you have to," he said. "After what happened with Sophia, I'm not even going to try to talk you into joining the Wards."

"You aren't?" I asked. That seemed a little suspicious. I would have thought that the powers that be would do anything to get me under their control.

"Oh, if anyone asks just tell them that I worked really hard to get you in," he said, grinning. "Really convincing even."

"So why aren't you?"

"You wouldn't be a good fit," he admitted more soberly. "You scare too many people and you don't strike me as the type to follow the party line."

"I don't get why I scare people," I said. "Sure, I'm powerful, but..."

"Have you ever heard of threat displays?" he asked, interrupting me.

I shook my head.

"Animals don't usually kill members of their own species," he said. "They usually start by posturing. If they can intimidate the other animal, then they may not have to fight at all. If they do fight, it usually isn't to the death."

He stared out the window. "You know people aren't much different? We just point guns at each other instead of roaring. Someone shooting at you is pretty terrifying, and a lot of times that's all it takes to get people to break and run."

"I'm not sure I..." I began.

"In World War II only about fifteen to twenty percent of the soldiers actually fired at the enemy. One percent of pilots accounted for forty percent of enemy fighters downed, which means that a lot of pilots never actually shot a single person."

"I'm not sure what all that has to do with me."

"Cape combat is all about posturing," he said. "Who has more power, who can cow the enemy into doing what they want. Most Capes never kill anybody. The thing is, when the Empire faced you, they started posturing, expecting the same thing they'd always gotten, and you jumped straight to killing."

"This isn't a game," I snapped. "They had my Dad. They'd hurt him."

"Most of them don't consider norms to be as important as Capes," he admitted. "That's just the way it is. They were playing cops and robbers and you went straight to war. That worries people. It makes you like that one percent of pilots, except that nobody really knows what side you are on."

"I'm on the side of the city," I said. "And on the side of my Dad."

He stared at me for a moment then nodded. "I guess that's fair. The thing is, even though they want you to join the Wards, being an ally to the Protectorate isn't the worst idea in the world."

"Oh?" I asked.

I'd been waiting for this pitch since Assault and the silent Battery had entered the room. Battery leaned against the wall and hadn't been saying much. She didn't seem afraid, though, which was an improvement over some of my nurses.

"We've got resources that you don't," he said. "You say you want to help people, and you can do a little tinkering. We can set you up with labs. We've got legions of lawyers that can make something like clearing out the ship graveyard not only legal, but popular. You can even work with Dragon if you'd like."

"After the thing with Sophia, you think I'd trust any of you?" I asked. "You threw me under the bus because I was just some unpowered nobody, and she had powers that were useful to you. Why should I ever have anything to do with a group like that?"

"Sophia's not the only criminal that was given a second chance," Assault said soberly. "Most of them made good use of it. The fact is, mistakes were made. If we'd known what was going on we'd have put a stop to it."

"Because it wouldn't play well for the news?"

"For some of us, sure," he said. "But most of us are good people who are put in a hard situation. We're outnumbered three to one, and even if we went all out against the bad guys and won, we'd be left short during the Endbringer fights."

"So it's all a game?" I asked. "Just a show so everyone can think someone's doing something?"

"Pretty much," he said.

At my expression, he held up his hand. "The world is going to hell, and we're doing everything we can to keep it from getting worse. There's only so much we can do, though."

"I can't live like that," I said. "Watching the world circling the drain and doing nothing about it."

"You shouldn't have to," a scratchy voice said from the bed.

I whirled and saw my Dad was staring at me. He'd grown stubble, but seeing him awake made me rush forward to embrace him.

"Hey," he said. "I'm glad you're all right."

"They burned the house down," I said into his shoulder. "There's nothing left."

Assault and Battery had been kind enough to bring pictures. There wasn't anything left of the house; it had burned down to the basement. Once Dad was up and around I'd go back and take a look for myself, see if anything was salvageable.

"I kept copies of some of the pictures in a safe deposit box," he said. At my look he shrugged. "We live in Brockton Bay. It was only a matter of time before someone torched the place."

We didn't have money to replace the house though. I could probably get some fairly easily, but it would take time.

He felt for his stomach and frowned. He'd always been generally thin, but he'd been developing a small pot belly over the past few years, likely from the beer he drank when he thought I wasn't looking.

"Panacea," I said. "She had to have some mass to grow your finger back."

"Well, I'd have rather taken up running," he said. "And you know how much I hate running, but this'll do."

"Are you all right?" I asked, staring into his eyes. The trauma he'd been through, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't the same man at all.

He looked away for a moment, staring at Assault by the window. "Are you?"

"I did what I had to do," I said. Glancing back at Assault and Battery I said. "I'd do it again if I had to."

Both of them tensed, but neither of them said anything. They worked really well together; their body language was in sync.

"It was my job to make sure you didn't have to do... whatever you did," he said. "And I failed."

His face was expressionless as he turned back to look at me. I couldn't tell what he was feeling, and that frightened me a little.

"I should have given you some better options," I said. "Giving you the armor and nothing else was just asking for trouble."

I'd been thinking about the weapons I could have given him over the past two days. My grandfather hadn't been one for building hand weapons; he'd never needed them. However, there were weapons that I could buy, and if need be I could even make weapons with my grandfather's help.

As long as I had a power source that would support it, creating a miniature rail gun shouldn't be that hard. The power requirements had always been the sticking point anyway.

"I feel fine," he said. "We should probably get out of the hospital before they take my kidney in payment."

"Nobody's taking anything from you," I said. "Never again."

I turned to Assault and Battery.

"I appreciate what you've been trying to do, offering the olive branch and all. But I've got some things to take care of before I can do anything."

Assault shrugged and handed me a business card. "Call us when you're ready."

Both of them left the room.

When they were gone, I turned to Dad.

"I didn't want to say anything while they were here, but I know you're a parahuman," I said.

I waited for him to deny it, but he simply sat looking at me without saying anything. In a better world I could have approached this with tact and understanding, but that wasn't the world we lived in.

Understanding his capabilities would let me know what I needed to do to protect him. If he was bulletproof then I didn't need to do much of anything. If he was just a Thinker I'd need to do a lot more. If he was a Tinker I'd have to provide him a lab.

"What can you do?"

After more than two days I figured he had a good idea of his own capabilities. Unlike my own experimentation with mutant powers, parahumans seemed to get a little more guidance with their powers.

"Right to it," he said. He looked away again.

"I need to know so that I can protect you," I said. "It'd be nice if you were bulletproof, but Panacea seemed to think you're some kind of Thinker."

"I can see through the eyes of animals," he admitted. "And control the animals I can see through."

"What kind of animals?"

"Birds, insects, rats, cats, dogs... pretty much anything really."

"And how many of them can you control?" I asked. "At once?"

"All of them," he said "Everything in maybe a three block radius. Every cockroach, fly, pigeon, termite...hundreds of thousands of them all at the same time."

I leaned back. No wonder his mind had struggled to deal with all that information at the same time.

"And it's on all the time?"

He nodded. "Assault and Battery are apparently in a relationship. I just saw her kiss him when they were outside of the range of the cameras. This hospital is a lot less clean than I would have liked; there are bugs everywhere."

With a power like that I could have done a lot. It wasn't the bulletproofing I'd hoped for, but there was a lot of intimidation value in swarms of insects.

"It's not going to be like it was before," I warned him. "There are people after us both, and I'm a lot better able to deal with them than you are."

"I heard," he said. "I've seen a lot more over the last couple of days than you have. There are people getting hurt close enough to the hospital that I could see them. I tried to help, but getting control wasn't easy."

"You'll have to practice," I said. "I can't lose you again."

He was silent for a long moment. "What are we going to do about the house?"

I grinned, but it didn't reach my eyes. "I've been thinking about that for a while now. I'm assuming you don't want to leave the city?"

He shook his head.

It would have been easier to stash him somewhere. I had little doubt that I could have made enough money to support him until he got his feet back from under him.

"Then we have have two choices," I said. "We can either hide, or we can double down and give the bastards who did this the finger."

I thought about what I'd just said, then winced. Dad had already given them a finger.

He didn't seem to mind. "What did you have in mind?"

I told him.

Thousands of pieces were floating in the air as the boat separated into its component parts. I was building something completely knew on the corpse of my old home, something that would be both a show of my power and a defensible structure should we need it.

I was building a fortress. The metal in ships was by necessity very thin, but it wasn't really what was providing the protection. I was using my control of electomagnetism to produce plates of graphene that were ten times as strong as steel. I didn't completely understand what I was doing, but the voice was helping me transform the sheets of carbon into something far more.

All of it was being done at three in the morning. Most people, even the criminals were asleep, and I wanted this done in the course of a single night, a demonstration of my power that no one in the city could ignore.

It would be an Iron Fortress, and while I had no intention of spreading out into the neighbors yards, at least not until I got the money to buy them out, the one direction I could build was up. When I was done it would be a structure visible all over town, much like the Rig.

Also like the rig, I'd have a force field to protect the place, although that wouldn't be done tonight. Instead I'd focus on the iron plating, and on digging earth and stone from the basement to add mass to the structure on the bottom side. With a little work I'd have three feet of solid earth between two metal walls, with the graphene plates as added protection.

This place wasn't going to simply be a statement, it was going to have to be our home. I regretted losing the back yard, but we needed the extra space.

When I was done, the structure would be self sustaining. Granddad knew how to make solar cells that were better than anything we had, except possibly for some Tinkers who had chosen not to care.

The windows would be made of graphene, bulletproof and transparent. There wouldn't be that many of them anyway; mostly I'd use solar tubes to provide natural lighting. The exterior was the most important thing for the moment; I could always work on the inside as we went along.

As long as I had a shell to present the city by the morning, the message would be sent.

Doing it silently so that no one except the occasional insomniac out for a ride noticed what was happening would be an added bonus.

"Perhaps a skull motif," the voice whispered in my mind. An image of what it was talking about appeared.

"And you wonder why everyone thought you were a villain," I muttered. "No, I'm not going to put a giant skull on the from of the fortress."

The fact that I thought it would be kind of cool looking was something that I didn't express. The last thing I needed to do was encourage him.

"Then a throne room," he said. "You need a place to address callers from a place of power."

Blackwell had always used her enormous desk and her office to intimidate the students. She'd used it against me often enough that I could see the value in it. If the Protectorate wanted to talk to me they could come to my place instead of forcing me to go to theirs. If villains tried to talk to me, I'd need the intimidation factor even more.

A throne room it was.

"Perhaps a throne like this," it said.

An image appeared in my mind of a throne made of hundreds of blades. It looked uncomfortable to sit on.

"You think I don't know where that comes from," I said. "But I actually read."

The voice gave a mental shrug. "It hasn't been turned into a television show on this earth yet, has it?"

"It's a television show in your world?" I asked. "That's... kind of amazing."

"You are perhaps not old enough to fully appreciate the show," the voice said. An image of bare skin flashed through so quickly I wasn't even sure I'd seen it.

"Right," I said. "I guess it would be like that. Wait...does that mean you've read the books that haven't been written here yet?"

"I have been warned in the past that giving spoilers is considered the act of a rude, inconsiderate fool," the voice said. "Although considering that it was Toad telling me this, perhaps I should get a second opinion."

"Never mind," I said. "Can you help me with the electrical connections?"

"Certainly," it said. Images began flashing through my mind, and as they did, my mind began to turn them into reality.

D

ad was staying with Kurt and Lacey until this was finished; they lived close enough that he could use his bugs to warn me if anything bad happened to him.

By the morning, Brockton Bay would wake to find my Iron Fortress overlooking the city. It would send a message of overwhelming power, at least hopefully.

They'd burned my house down after I'd defeated their Capes, which meant they needed a lesson in power. Fortunately I had enough power to teach them a lesson they wouldn't ever forget.