AN: Fun fact, Power Grid is in the Fanfic Recs section of Worm's Tv Tropes page. Who knows, maybe we'll get around to making a full on page just for it! But for now, we are happy to give one of our most interesting combo ideas its time in the limelight once again!

AtW: I'll let Wyvern do that. I still need to figure out A03 and that's… a struggle. Anyways, after this we'll be finishing up our next round of Sink or Swim and posting two chapters of that, then a new commission that's in the pipe, then probably another chapter of OWIM. Right now we have a chapter of Rigor Mortis that's about 90% done but after the snafu over OWIM and our (read: mine) edgy content in general, both Rigor Mortis and Nephilim are both rather risky to get into. Other ideas on the way include a one shot for a MHA idea, Wyvern's edgy take this time, and then a chapter of Flask (we were working on it till I got sick, it was rough as Hell, I still have a hacking cough, lol) we hope.

Depending on how everything goes, we may have this stuff out before the next round of commissions or not. We aren't sure yet since I have to play catch up in college!

Still, do enjoy and on with the show!

Power Grid - Chapter 6

Taylor Hebert

Palms sweaty, heart pounding, the scared, angry teen did her best to stay calm.

'Calm down.' Looking around, she licked her lips, wondering if you should - could - call for help. 'Calm down!' But her thoughts were racing as that living whip twitched. 'Calm the fuck down!'

Taylor needed to stay calm.

Taylor would stay calm.

Even as her heart hammered against her chest, the desperate teen kept her eyes on the two strangers, even as her fingers twitched towards her morpher. Turning her back on someone who could slash apart metal in the blink of an eye was suicidal.

"Frax, is this the one?"

The golden monstrosity standing to the woman's side let out a pneumatic hiss.

"This location is a match for the E-0's energy signature."

Knowing it was now or never, the youngest Hebert grit her teeth. Adrenaline dumped into her veins, washing away every trace of fear. The world entered a state of hyper focus, as the very motes in the air hung still, vibrating, shimmering. Hissing steam condensed around the golden machine, red and pink muscles twitched around the base of the bone-studded whip, and her own body acted.

"It's morphin time!"

Her fist snapped out, left hand coming to rest on top of her right wrist as she took a wide stance. With the limb extended, she brought it in, feeling the tell tale prick of a needle as her blood was sampled. An all consuming whir filled the world as the morpher began its start up procedure and an energy haze surrounded her for a moment. Then… nothing.

DEACTIVATION COMMAND ACKNOWLEDGED

"Hahahahahaha!" The woman laughed, almost bent double as she casually swung her weapon right at Taylor's head. "Do you really think we would've come here without a way to disable that little toy!"

Whimpering in pain, the teenager with major attitude didn't respond.

Partly because she'd gotten her arm up in time to partly take the blow. An arm that was now snapped in two, part of the bone visible as it not only poked through her skin, but her hoodie too.

Other than that, it was only the fact that she'd been slammed into a wall of junk hard enough to knock every bit of breath from her lungs. And possibly give her a concussion from the way her entire world was spinning.

"Oh. My. Omni. Is this really the brat that gave Ironspike so much trouble?"

Another blow lashed out at her, lazier and much slower than the first, and some lizard brain part of her forced Taylor to jerk out of the line of attack. The force from the whip, as it ripped apart a pile of debris, sent the kid tumbling - rolling on top of her arm. Screaming this time the pain actually brought her out of the shocked stupor she was in.

Perhaps it had been her ruined arm, but there had been a long moment where the world was just empty. Now it was full of pain and noise and, screaming, the high schooler dragged herself to her feet.

Stumbling forward, ignoring the laughter behind her, she made straight for the nearest line of cover, waiting for the obvious tentacle slash, and then jerked to the side as it tore up the ground right in front of her. Using the moment it took to retract the tentacle she dashed for the Zord head. Bringing her good hand up, she punched in a password. Very, very notably, the small light on the bottom of the keypad turned from yellow to red and it was all Taylor could do to hope her plan worked.

Dodging out of the way of another strike, this one slow enough that she heard it whistling as it split the air, she watched as it tore a small furrow in the armor of the great warmachine.

Whimpering, she sent a silent prayer to whoever was listening that her morpher had protected her from actually losing an arm, because there was no way a normal human would have gotten away with just a compound fracture. And a concussion. And a-

THIS UNIT SUGGESTS USER SHOULD RUN

Turning away from the door, Hebert moved to do just that. Only this time, when the tentacle slashed at her again, coming in low to crush her legs, she jumped. Just in time for a second weapon to smash her right in the chest and once more slam her into a pile of junk. This time she could hear bone grinding against bone doing anything more than taking short, gasping breaths caused an immense amount of pain.

Something quickly grew irrelevant when the mutant stalked over to Taylor.

"Heh. A shame to waste a cutey like you." Winking at her, the mutant woman let her writhing, shivering tendrils slowly began to crawl up the outside of the wounded girl's legs. Slowly, slowly growing tighter… and tighter… and tighter as they did so. "But you know, you really cut into my vacation. And a girl can't be having that!"

The tentacles pressed down on both the fracture and her broken ribs, drawing a breathless scream from the beaten girl. Raising her one good limb, her only mildly damaged brain lashed out, trying to drive the spike of white hot agony she was experiencing into her attacker's mind.

"Ooh! That tickles! Frax, scan her, I think we have a telepath for Daddy's experiments!"

Blood was dripping out of Taylor's nose, just as it was leaking out of the woman's, but her assailant was actually much worse off. Flinching when the telepathic blow struck her, her nose, eyes, and ears had started bleeding. For a moment she had even flinched, paling and turning green before letting out a loud, full body sigh and relaxing. There was even a full body shudder as small, red tentacles poked out of the parts of her body that had been damaged before withdrawing, the injuries seemingly gone.

"Indeed, Mistress Nadira." The robot's face was twisted in visible annoyance. "Oh my. She's actually a Class Two psychic. I do believe she's the most powerful one we've found from this time yet!"

And just like that, everything changed once more.

Her assailant's eyes lit up with joy and it was all the mutant could do not to prance forwards.

"Really? I can't believe how lucky you are." Squatting down in front of Taylor, who managed to dribble a bit of blood down her lips instead of spitting in her attacker's face, the woman gave her a massive beaming smile. "Hello, my name's Nadira and I'm gonna be your big sister." The words just didn't register, not through the massive, pounding headache she was grappling with. "I can't wait to show you to Riley, she's just gonna love being able to help Daddy fix you right up!"

Taylor's vision was growing blurry and the sharp, short gasps she was taking just weren't enough. Some small part of her still managed not to whimper when the psycho bitch stroked her cheek.

That only seemed to make her neck hurt worse and everything grow too bright.

Closing her eyes, she threw out a prayer to God - not for herself, but her mother.

'Please let Mom be able to bury me.'

Because in this world… there were things worse than death.

"Frax, call for a VTOL and a medical droid. We need to move her. Until then I want you to stabilize her. Now, robot."

Supplicating, the golden machine obeyed.

"As you say mistress."

One of the mechanical monster's fingers twisted, changing itself into a long syringe. Quickly pricking her arm, a violent, painful warmth rushed from the modified digit into Taylor's body. It was a sharp enough kind of pain, feeling like every single micrometer of her body was enjoying the most extreme cramp imaginable, to be felt over the general agony her injuries had faded into. And even worse, it was extreme enough to follow the substance's path too.

The teen even gasped when she felt it reach her heart. Even worse was then the surgeon servitor pulled back, adjusting its other fingers and seemingly considering which one to jab her with next.

Thankfully, it seemed like God still cared enough to answer the odd prayer now and then, because the sudden roar of an engine heralded the bark of an assault rifle as Colin Wallis came roaring in on the back of a blue and black monster of a motorcycle, one hand on the controls and the other unleashing a fusillade of armor piercing rounds straight into the center mass of the machine.

Somehow, he managed to jerk the bike between walls of debris with the lightest of touches, spun in a circle to bring the tire off of the ground, and slammed the wheel straight into the golden machine man.

Nadira took the opportunity to slash the bike in half with a double lash strike so violent it caused a loud, violent cracking noise.

"That cost the taxpayers one point eight six million! You'll pay for that!"

Rolling up and away from the ruin, he kept his weapon barking, each shot punching through flesh and bone or steel and chrome.

"Don't worry, after I scrap you I'll make a mint!"

With the robot falling back, quite badly sparking, the organic mutant monster charged in. Her hand whips were badly cracked and damaged by the bullets but that only meant the tiny red tendrils came out and started poking and prodding at her biological beatsticks.

Colin, however, didn't give her a chance to regenerate.

No, he pressed his advantage. Emptying his weapon, he threw it to the side and engaged his foe in close combat.

At first, it seemed foolish. Afterall, Nadira's blows could crumple steel and destroy people with ease. However, the cyborg was more than a man. He was a Ranger.

Fists moving so fast that Taylor's fading vision could barely follow, all she could tell was that the veteran warrior was walking into some kind of trap. As the mutant was slowly being pushed back, but each inch gained through blood and sweat and ground shaking violence brought him closer and closer to the source of these terrible tendrils.

In fact, despair gripped the teen's fading heart when an overextended punch put her hero in a bit of bind. Just as suddenly as the flurry of blows began, it just as suddenly ended - a dozen small tendrils ripping through flesh and bone to latch onto the man's arms.

"Poor little tinkertoy soldier, I'll end you qui-" With a sudden explosion, a shotgun blast erupted from the former blue ranger's open palm. Small balls of depleted uranium ripped through the skull of the flailing mutant and, before the hero could go for the kill, the golden machine unleashed a laser blast right at the fighter.

Grunting, the robot man was thrown back, retaliating with a small, whining rocket that blew off the machine's arm. Finishing the job would have to wait though as Nadira made a move towards Taylor… and it was a bit obvious she wouldn't be able to fight back at all.

Without a moment's hesitation he dashed forward, cybernetic limbs moving with a force and purpose that simply couldn't be matched by mortal flesh and bone. His fists lashed out, great electric bursts erupting from hidden capacitors while frying skin and seizing muscles when his strikes made contact. This, of course, annoyed Nadira. In fact, it annoyed her enough that she let out a massive screech as her clothes tore open - every trace of humanity consumed by a now pink and purple, eight foot tall, tentacled monster with glowing red eyes.

"I'm going to rip your heart out Tin Man!"

Ducking under one strike, the fighting man unleashed eleven more rockets - wounding the monster - and got to enjoy a moment of victory.

Only for Nadira to split into two.

One, a human woman, was scooped up by Frax as a trio of VTOLs came to a screaming stop, each one dropping off a dozen armed, if clearly not finished, cyclobots.

The second began to rapidly devolve into little more than a screaming mass of tentacles that made an absolute beeline for the teenager. And, in less time that it took for a heart to beat, he made his decision.

A whirring hiss and a flash of light announced the arrival of a large pole arm. Lacking a full head, instead having a long, thin, skeletal blade, it snapped to life with a whirring, screeching, grinding grey mist. Lashing out, he ripped through limb after limb, leaving nothing but a very clearly non regenerating grey stump and ash behind.

However, this sudden turn for the best was somewhat short lived.

As the screech grew louder and louder, he cut down the few remaining machines before plunging it into the monster's chest. A sudden burst of heat and a small wave of overpressure washed over the junkyard as the weapon exploded, that whirring grey cloud consuming every last bit of the regenerator and leaving Colin with nothing but a shattered tool of war. Once again he reacted immediately though, discarding his destroyed creation and rushing to the fallen girl's side with as much alacrity as he engaged the monsters.

"Got… away."

Taylor forced the words out.

"I know kid. Don't worry, Dragon is tracking them. Just… just stay with me. Help is on the way."

Giving the man who saved her - maybe, probably not, the teen could feel herself slipping away - a small smile, she closed her eyes.

"Thanks."

And with that, darkness filled her world.

Annette Hebert

It had taken Annette less than an hour before she decided to go look for Taylor.

After everything that happened - after having her life taken hostage by an illegal killing machine, getting into a fight with an armored murderer, nearly getting arrested by the authorities and blown up by the illegal trinket stuck to her wrist, could anyone have blamed a scared teenager for reacting as she did?

Admittedly, the elder Hebert knew she could have taken a little more time to confront her daughter about it. Not immediately after the fight, at the very least.

But ever since she'd been forced to run away, all Annette could think about was how scared she was for her girl. The little girl who grew up hearing about heroes in colorful suits fighting monsters on giant robots and saying cheesy catch phrases on live TV.

Her daughter just didn't know hard things were once upon a time.

How much Annette and others had suffered before the Rangers had become an everyday fixture in life.

Back then, there wasn't a certainty that your city would be defended if one of the giant freakshows decided to take a stroll through the neighborhood. Or anyone to help rebuild after a team of teenagers got done fighting with their monster of the week. Or if an alien god decided to squish your country like a pimple. The sheer number of things that could, and did, go wrong was immense.

Businesses suffered, people were afraid, families sat in silence, praying for a God to end the world's pain. But most importantly of all there was no trust towards the Rangers. No Morphing Response Squad to call if you saw a monster digging its way out of the ground. Most of the time that meant people fled in terror, saving themselves, their families, and their friends - usually in that order - and it was only a minority that genuinely tried to fight back. Then, of that small minority that did fight back, there were even fewer that could make a difference.

Those who had the ability to become Rangers, well, sometimes they were as hated as the monsters themselves

People around them would demand to know why they didn't help. Why they hadn't joined the fight to help since they were clearly born heroes who could fight - despite only having an arbitrary number marking them as such. There was this expectation that since they were born the way they were, that they should risk their lives, that they should be willing to throw themselves at any kind of trouble whether it was a monster or a purse snatcher without so much as hesitating.

Annette hated the pseudo caste system bullshit that the world was turning into. How the bystander effect was eating away at humanity's will to struggle, but most of all...

She hated that her daughter had inherited it from her.

Hated that for all of her warnings and loving care, the one lesson her daughter had taken to heart was the one that got her father killed. Reckless selflessness in the face of danger. To help people he had never seen before. People who once upon a time wouldn't have hesitated to abandon him if he were the one in danger.

Like they would do to her daughter now.

'Maybe Lustrum was right after all.' Annette half laughed, half cried, fingers scrabbling with her keys as she tried to open the door to her car. 'Falling in love with a man would just hurt me in the end.'

The M.R.S didn't always exist after all. And right now all she could see was the fucking doggy bag they'd filled with the parts of her Danny. After Leviathan was beaten, the government had figured out what parts of the crushed mass his form had been compounded into was him by the wedding bed they found. After all, when you get enough water, well, it could crush just about anything.

And a single man, staying behind to the last to make sure as many people made it out as possible, well, he wasn't going to hold back a tidal wave.

"Damn you, damn you, damn you." She cried now, angry tears ruining her makeup as the widow cursed. "Please, God, please don't let Taylor end up like Daniel." Wiping her eyes, she turned back to her house. Annette knew she couldn't drive like that and it was only when the sink was running, a towel slowly growing damp in her hands, that the fight went out of her. "Oh Danny, I'm sorry. What do I do?"

Her wedding band, a dull gold, still sat on her finger. And it was when the deep, abiding melancholy settled on her that the tears stopped. Instead, there was pain and fear in her heart.

For the husband she had lost and the daughter she couldn't bear to lose.

Thinking of Taylor and that device on her arm turned her thoughts to a youth some had considered misspent.

Back then, things had seemed a lot simpler. Morphers were random trinkets given to whoever had the right "aptitude" to use them. On the most basic of levels, people had viscerally rejected much of the propaganda related to these child soldiers.

A single organization trying to hoard all that power to itself?

That was using child soldiers to pilot weapons of mass destruction?

Using unknown, untested alien technology to wage a war that led to immense amounts of collateral damage, with no oversight, and no way to even see the faces of the men and women who fought across the width and breadth of the world?

That was the kinda activism that young Annette had gotten hooked on.

Who gave those people the right to arbitrarily infringe on their lives, recruiting teenagers, sometimes even kids, to become the next super soldier project? Who could tell them what and what not to do once they had all that power in their hands? Could the average person even have a say on whether they would join or not?

She remembered taking to the streets alongside her college friends back then.

Protesting against the standard aptitude exams was easy, personal even. After all, her scores had slated her for the first round of drafts back then and it had only been her ardent refusal to support a "government initiative that served as an extra legal arm of the United States military" that had kept her from ending up in Kosovo.

Back then, it seemed immoral to compel people to leave their lives behind to give up everything they could have been just to fight for, what seemed like, the men pulling Uncle Sam's strings. Let those who are willing become Rangers, but not children and not civilians.

In hindsight, following a woman who failed the initial batches and was kicked out of the Ranger program wasn't the brightest move she'd ever made. But Lustrum had information, she could work up a crowd like nobody else, and had a vision which many considered better than whatever the M.R.S. was turning out to be. After all, all of the villain's comrades had been adults - college students mainly.

Much to her shame, she had gladly supported the woman and her cause. Women's rights, the end of child soldiers, abolishment of the draft, and an end to American imperialism and foreign interventionism. Aliens were ripping the planet in half, humans really, really didn't need to throw more fuel on the fire. It was also very easy to hate people when you saw pictures of them burning down an orphanage, blowing up hospitals, and levelling schools. Admittedly because an alien parasite had infected a number of children and were using them to slowly take over whole villages, but that context never was included until much later.

Plus Annette had always been a bit of a lefty - she knew it then and she knew it was still a bit true now. Her parents were staunch Catholics, the traditional kind, not the New York kind, and she'd rebelled against them in her youth.

So she spent three years working her way up through Lustrum's organization. Back then they had just called it L'organisation, literally just "the Organization" in French.

But things never stay the same.

At first it was just small things, speech awareness they called it, then it was making sure you cut toxic people out of your life, and by the time it had reached full blown insularity most had given up all contact outside of the group. Annette was ashamed she hadn't realized that until just a bit later. Because, one day, a woman in a pantsuit had shown up, spoke with Lustrum, and then things changed again.

They started taking up "voluntary" self defense courses, buying up a few out of the way properties with group dues, and about six months later they were taking a particular test.

That was when she got out, when Lustrum started screening people for their aptitude.

All of it came to a head when their leader participated in an attack on one of the training facilities, leading to the deaths of three teenagers. It came out that Lustrum had allied them with the Elite, a now defunct organized crime syndicate looking to break into the East Coast, and that they were now a fully revolutionary movement. One dedicated to ending the tyranny of an unaccountable organization of superhumans, who were recklessly using their power to bully the world into submitting to America's corporate interests.

At that point Annette had run away. Unwilling to become someone else's puppet. Despite everything they had done and waved off as a necessary price to pay for freedom, it was only when Lustrum had demanded her and the others gave up theirs for the cause that she had wisened up and left.

Ironic, wasn't it?

When others' lives were at stake, she was brave.

When her own was being put in danger, she ran away.

In the end, Annette wasn't better than any other person looking out for themselves.

'If not for Daniel… what would have happened to me?' They had only been acquaintances at the time. The friend of a friend she had scarcely seen and never really paid any attention to.

And then he'd been there, had understood her, a shoulder to cry on. Except he'd dried her tears, stopped her from drinking herself to death, and then had gone on to help her hide from both L'organization and the police, covering for him even when threatened. Daniel Hebert had been a man of strong morals, at trade school in Boston on a scholarship.

Falling in love with him had been easy.

That first night… Annette was sure she'd loved him.

But it would take another two years, with her finishing her degree up once Lustrum had disappeared after a shootout with the police - one that ended up in a fiery explosion - before they had started dating. Then, nine months later, they were married and with their own baby girl.

The professor was back in her car, halfway down the main road by now.

Unfortunately, the route to the junkyard was circuitous. Long enough that her daughter, who had a head start and could move in a straight line, definitely would have beaten her. In some ways, that made her smile. Her baby was fast when she wanted to be. But right now all Annette wanted to do was hug her and apologize. Say she was sorry for picking at her and letting her fear dictate how she spoke.

She had spent years chafing under her own parent's overbearing attitudes and now it seemed like she was turning into her mother.

"Oh horror of horrors."

That was when her cellphone rang. Glancing up at the redlight and seeing it turn green, she reached down to pick up the mobile phone as she slowly began to roll forward.

And the last thing she felt was a sudden, all mighty slam that sent her head straight into the dash as a black four door truck T-boned her much, much smaller hatchback.

After that, everything was black.

Dragon

It was a bit strange being the last of her siblings - the last human born AI left on the planet in fact. There were a few other systems left on Earth but they were always alien made. And that meant she had certain priviliges and duties that were given to her out of pure pragmatism. 'Even if some would rather I not be given the lattitude I am.'

What was odd, however, was that Tess Theresa Wallis, formerly Richter, was facing a conundrum.

Well, technically she was facing multiple conundrums at any given time of the day. What with being unable to keep her hands off of work and not needing to sleep.

But this time it was different.

For once, she found herself having a lot to do and not enough time to do it.

Usually this wouldn't be a big problem - she had more time than a human could comprehend and the ability to direct herself towards what needed to be done on multiple fronts while tackling the most pressing issues. But the last few days had proven to be nothing but an unending workload which she couldn't put a dent in.

No matter how much time and energy she devoted to it the fires just kept burning. Marseille, Brockton Bay, Pasaden, and not enough time to put them out before some new crisis sparked to life.

It was maddening!

Between Mesogog's rampage, the complete chaos caused by it, and the multiple factions taking advantage of the MRS being forced to devote most of their active roster towards fighting the new threat there weren't enough Rangers to spare for anything short of the disastrous.

Which led her to the latest conundrum.

'Collin, are you sure it's her?'

She asked the question by reflex, it was a human thing to do. Dragon wasn't a human. The spy satellite she had monitoring the East Coast adjusted the angle on its lens, confirming who every person in that junkyard was. In less than a second she had everything from biometrics to aural readings and pseudo empathic profiles pulled up and it was the work of another microsecond to anticipate her husband's request.

'I'm sending you the footage from my helmet. Can you confirm their vulnerabilities are still the same?'

Indeed she could, even while she kept a mechanical eye on the fight she alerted every relevant authority in the state, alerted the national guard, and began looking for electromagnetic radiation she could use to triangulate their point of origin.

As for confirming that neither hostile had received any major upgrades, it was only a matter of cross referencing the images provided by her paramour's camera with the MRS central database and double checking that nothing in their biosignatures had changed. At least not in a way that mattered right now.

Lila Dolnero.

Codename, Nadira.

Time traveler.

Mutant rights activist turned armed terrorist alongside her father, the equally infamous and currently assumed missing in action Ransik. Not much was known of her outside of her having basic powers relating to extensive bodily modifications such as organic weapons and basic energy projection abilities.

Which did not account for what the footage showed.

Mutants had never shown the ability to fission and create fully organic minions. Rather, their modus operandi was to use modified humans with cybernetic implants as their foot soldiers.

'It is her, Collin. But something is wrong.' Half a dozen minor updates flashed through her system, electronic thoughts already adjusting to the new data and updating the woman's profile. More importantly, she also updated her husband's firmware to better handle the power strain of using his new halberd.

'I noticed. Do we have any data on the android?'

Dragon's automatic subroutines had actually been having a little trouble with the cyborg, but, eventually, it was finger needles that gave him away. Sending the information along she was gratified when her husband managed to tear a limb off, slash out his foe's leg, and then flash fry their spine… not that it seemed to slow them down.

Frax, a known collaborator of Ransik's.

Never imprisoned. True identity unknown. Current theories place him as some form of advanced AI. Not much was known outside of his durability and skill with further enhancing mutants into monstrous amalgamates - nothing which fit the ability displayed by the pink haired woman. Suffice to say, she was issuing an update to Ransik's profile and elevating to a class two threat.

Fortunately, when Nadira had created a copy of herself it had taken her out of the battle and forced Frax to carry her to a… decloaking VTOL And just like that, she updated his threat profile to a class three, tasking the spy satellite to do its best to track the vehicle while also checking in with her husband.

'I have sent a distress call to the Rig. Reinforcements should be on the way.'

'Call for an ambulance as well. The girl needs it. Tell them I gave her two booster shots and a stim. Make sure they know she's in a bad way.'

She had already done so, but it was cute that he asked nonetheless. If nothing else it gave Tess an excuse to spend a few extra seconds overseeing the battle. Partly to keep an eye on the progress of the fight and partly to build a profile of Taylor's injuries. The child was in a rough spot but the AI was relatively sure that her morpher was slowly fixing her.

Truly, Grid technology was a thing of beauty.

A mystery yet to be fully unveiled by even the greatest minds of the world. Tess herself wasn't sure if they would ever find out everything about it. Or why designs created through it usually took the form of animal themed androids and vehicles.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the only battle happening in real time either.

Mesogog's parting gifts had included small groups of highly mutated creatures scattered throughout the downtown of the French city he hit. She was trusted with running a heatmap and seismographic analysis to detect them before they could attack the search parties still coming the rubble. On top of that, she was also running a real time analysis of the helmet cam footage from the strike team sent to clear up a massacre in Pasadena.

'You are distracted.'

Tess sighed.

Trust the man she loved to notice when she left a conversation program to keep him company while her main body left to solve world issues.

'I'll tell you when you wrap this skirmish up. If you take much longer I'll let Hana know your old age is finally kicking in and your reactions have dulled by point oh four three seconds.'

His harrumph was so adorable the AI would have blushed if she'd been in her body. Instead, she pinged the strike team and asked them to get a sample of a strange yellow-green covering the walls of the bunker they were sweeping. It looked distressingly similar to one of the chemicals recovered from the destroyed cyclobots that had attacked Brockton Bay not too long ago. For some reason, her logic circuits were itching and she felt like there was something that wasn't quite right.

Thankfully her husband had ended the fight - blasting the monster apart by setting off his halberd's overcharge function - and was now checking on the civilian girl caught up in this mess.

Based on her scans at the moment, it seemed like the child would be ok. An alert pinged in Tess's processes related to the Hebert family, something unfortunate, however, before she could do more than acknowledge that fact, her systems also identified something far, far worse.

'Sergeant, wing your helmet back to the left!'

The half a second pause was half a second too long.

"Yes ma'am."

She cursed at the time it took for a meat-brain to hear, understand, and obey the instruction and when the strike team member's helmet cam ran back over a very particular piece of graffiti, the AI did the closest thing she could to scream in terror and in that nanosecond she sent out three different messages.

'This is Dragon-Actual to Blizzard-Actual, you are inside the Toybox Blue Site. Two meters to your left is an image of two blue seashells and the artist's tag FN-FAiL. The only recorded instances of this artist has been in Toybox's secure facilities. You are to withdraw to the entrance of the facility immediately and standby for decontamination.'

It was the first message that was the easy one. Soldiers listened when she spoke, mostly because she tended to get them out alive and somewhat because no one wanted to be the poor bastard that had to sweep and clear a super science bunker with God alone knows what kind of bullshit waiting to turn you to dust. The second call was much, much more difficult because the person on the other end was likely going to be stubborn about things.

"Go for Costa-Brown."

Dragon took a deep breath.

'Rebecca, we need to get in contact with toybox.'

"No."

'I know you don't like them, but-'

A strange cracking sound came from the other end of the phone before the line swapped over. It was telling that the woman on the other end was breathing heavily.

"I do not dislike them." The poor human's voice came out nearly strangled with seething rage. "I have been told I am legally not allowed to discuss them in the execution of my duties, for fear of allegations of bias."

'Please, listen to me, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.'

"Tess, they sent literally infinite pornography of myself drawn from dimensions where I indulged in the most depraved acts imaginable as punishment for shutting down their human cloning facility. I have a literally perfect memory. And this for, and I quote, 'being a stuck up bitch who ruins all their fun'. I had to ask the Briarwood branch to use magic to stop it from overloading every computer I so much as looked at. What in the world could possibly be worth me risking my post as Director-General of the MRS for?"

'I think Ransik breached their Blue Site. Either he or someone associated with him has managed to take the place out and no one heard a thing about it. The only reason we found out is because the neighbors reported a sudden burst of green lightning from a clear sky and we sent a team to check it out.'

"Oh. I see." There was the sound of a few keys being hit. "The orders are away, I'll let the president know and see about bringing us up to DEFCON 4. Should we expect further attacks?"

'Probably. I'm going to speak with my husband about that now.'

"Let me know if you need my help."

And that was that.

Her final call was difficult, but for an entirely different reason.

'Love?'

Colin subvocalized back at her, expressing a bit of soreness and exhaustion with the simple noise.

'I'm here Dragon.'

'You may want to catch up with the kid, I think the day's not over yet.'

Truly standing out from the rest of the humans out there, her one and only was up and moving before his cochlear implant finished vibrating his eardrum. Not needing any more information than what she began to steadily feed into his enhanced eyes, the mere fact she thought he might be needed meant he'd see it done.

'I could get used to being listened to.'

A chuckle from Colin ended their call, a promise to call later not needing to be articulated.