Missy watched Saurial bound across the roof like she was on springs and clear the distance to the next building easily, then run at what must have been close to forty miles an hour across it, before repeating the process to the next one along. If anything she was speeding up. The lizard-like cape made an impressive sight, leaping and bouncing with her tail out behind her, balancing her torso as she leaned over for speed.

She lost sight of the other female when she skittered up the side of a much taller building a couple of blocks away like a rat up a drainpipe, making it look easy, and vanished over the top. Shivering a little despite herself she turned to look up at Dean, who was also watching Saurial go.

"Well, that was… different."

He nodded without looking away for a moment, then turned to her. "She's dangerous," he said.

"I got that all by myself," she laughed. "Did you see those swords? And that huge hammer! That was amazing."

"If you knew how much it weighed you'd be even more amazed," he replied slowly. "It much have been a good two hundred and fifty pounds. I could barely lift it. But she was waving it around like it was made of styrofoam. She's probably at least as strong as Vicky if not stronger."

"She did say she could lift a couple of tons," Vista noted. He nodded, still looking a little disturbed, something Missy could easily pick up on having known him for so long, even under the helmet and visor.

"She was being completely honest about killing anyone who went after her family," he continued. "There's something… odd… about her emotional output, it's difficult to read for some reason and much fainter than normal, but the rage she felt when I mentioned it? It was kind of horrifying."

After a moment, he added, "The other weird thing is that about half way through our conversation she suddenly got very angry for some reason, although I didn't see any trace of it in her voice or expression. She's got very good control of her reactions."

"Why?" Missy asked curiously.

He shrugged helplessly. "I have no idea. Something we said? But she was furious, then calmed down, but even when she left she was still a little pissed for some reason. Nothing to do with you talking about the Rules, or even her family. Something else was bothering her."

"Very strange," his companion commented, making him nod.

They looked after Saurial, then at each other, before beginning to make their way back to base.

"Saurial seems nice though," Missy commented on the way back. "A little… toothy… but nice."

"I guess," Dean replied. He still couldn't get the image of the lizard girl waving an enormous war hammer like a plastic prop and grinning out of his head.

"It'll be nice to have another girl Cape around, even if she does have a tail and scales," the girl laughed, then went silent as she concentrated on doing something horrible to the fabric of space-time surrounding them.

"Describe her, please," Miss Militia requested, opening a notebook in front of her and pulling a pen from somewhere. The rest of the wards, except for Shadow Stalker who was currently sulking in her room, listened curiously to the pair of Vista and Gallant. These last exchanged a glance.

"Um, six and a half feet tall, slender, I'd guess maybe a hundred and sixty pounds or so?" Gallant began. Missy shook her head a little, an expression of thought on her face.

"Don't forget that tail. I think it's pretty heavy, it probably pushes her weight up compared to a normal human. Maybe a hundred and ninety? She was pretty skinny but not to an unhealthy level." Missy smiled slightly. "She actually looked very fit and toned and not at all bad, under the circumstances."

Gallant nodded while the military themed cape looked a little startled. "Tail?" she echoed curiously.

"She's a giant lizard," the petite space warper smiled, making the other Wards look at each other. "She's got sort of light blue scales, with darker stripes, and what looked like dark blue feathers on her head like hair."

Gallant nodded slowly. "Saurial is quite distinctive," he added, making Vista grin. "She was wearing armor, which looked like a cross between ancient Greek or Roman armor and some sort of fantasy warrior. Aside from not covering her completely, it looked very functional. And very professional, it was better made than some of our costumes. Dark blue with a gold emblem of a roaring lizard or dragon in profile on the breastplate."

"The armor was really cool," Vista said excitedly. "She had a… what do you call it, cuirass, is it?" She looked at Miss Militia who nodded, appearing very interested. "OK, cuirass, on her torso, with a roughly knee-length skirt of overlapping metal strips that came down to her knees. Or where her knees would be in a normal person, her legs worked differently. There were shoulder protectors as well, along with arm and shin guards, also metal. It looked amazing."

"Bare feet, though, no boots," Gallant put in. "Her feet were three toed, I think, a bit like a birds, with another short toe coming out the heel. Claws about two inches long on the toes which looked very sharp. Shorter ones on the fingers. She walked on her toes, not like a human. Plus a tail about five feet long which was obviously very strong, and from the way it was moving around, very flexible. She can probably use it in a fight as well as her arms and legs."

"Don't forget her teeth," Vista commented, making him nod soberly.

"Yes, you can't forget those. Even if you try." The short blonde girl giggled, but shivered at the same time.

"She looked like she could bite your arm off without much effort," she confirmed. "Her face was… not normal at all, it was like someone stretched a human face over a lizard's skull and covered it in scales, but it wasn't ugly. Sort of pretty when you got used to it and very expressive."

"Anything else?" Miss Militia asked when she'd finished making notes. "And any idea how old she is?"

"She was wearing a weird set of sunglasses," the girl added. "Obviously custom made, her head is a completely different shape and she doesn't have any ears. Although she said her senses are very good so I guess she's only missing the outer bits like a normal lizard does."

"And she had some sort of high-end lipstick camera mounted on the right side of her head with straps that were made to blend in with her scales," Gallant added. Vista nodded.

"She also said she was under eighteen, but I don't know, really," he went on, looking at Vista who shrugged. "I'd guess probably around sixteen or so but that is just a guess. There's no easy way to tell, looking at her."

"She mentioned she had a lot of education to deal with so I guess that means she's still in school as well," Vista put in. "Or maybe home-schooled."

"OK." Making more notes, the older woman tapped the pen on the paper as she thought, then turned a page. "Personality-wise, what were your impressions?"

Both teenagers were silent for a few seconds, looking at each other, finally, Missy said slowly, "Very smart. Definite Heroic tendencies. Good sense of humor, pretty funny, actually. She seemed… friendly. And not overawed by meeting us at all. I think she's studied up on the Capes around here, she didn't seem surprised by us and knew quite a bit about our powers."

"But you really wouldn't want to piss her off, I think," Gallant added with a small frown. "I suspect that she'd be completely ruthless if she had got backed into a corner. She basically told us straight out that anyone who threatened her family would die and trust me, she meant it."

Several more glances were exchanged amongst the listening teens.

"Interesting," was the only comment from Miss Militia as she continued writing for a moment.

"Powers?"

"That's where it gets strange," the young man replied. "She has some sort of ability to manifest weapons, like swords or giant hammers." The older cape looked up sharply from her papers, an expression of curiosity on her face as far as could be made out.

"Like my power?" she asked, a pistol appearing in her hand in a swirl of green energy. She put it on the table next to the notebook. Seconds later it vanished again.

"I… don't know," he finally replied. "We didn't see her make anything like a gun, so I can't say she can do that, but I can't say she can't either. She made a horrific looking sword, which was very obviously ridiculously sharp, a baseball bat, something a lot like a police baton, and that huge hammer, which was about four feet long with a head bigger than mine. And she's not limited to one weapon, she made two of them simultaneously at two different times."

Leaning back in her chair Miss Militia thought for a few seconds, her eyes narrowing in interest over her scarf. "Were they projections, perhaps?" she finally asked.

He shook his head. "I don't think so. She said they were some sort of metal, and it certainly sounded real when she tapped the hammer on the stonework. It clinked just like steel would. But the metal is a dull gray and incredibly heavy. That hammer must have weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. With the leverage of the long handle, even with my power armor, I could barely hold it, but she was waving it around one handed like it was a toy. It was kind of scary, actually. She spun the damn thing without even looking at it as if she was a band leader."

"So, a Brute, definitely."

"Ohhh, yes." He nodded vigorously. "She claimed to be able to lift over two tons, and from what I saw it was no idle boast. I'd guess she's at least on a par with Glory Girl in that respect."

The older Cape's eyes widened a little. "Really?" she queried, producing a confirming nod from the young man. She made some more notes, thoughtfully.

"She's tough, too," Missy commented. "She told us she was bullet-proof and the cops confirmed it. The armor is as well, apparently, but I don't think she really needs it. Her sword can apparently cut steel 'like butter' as she put it. However she makes the weapons, the same thing made her armor, and she said it was the same stuff whatever that is. She let me touch it and it was almost completely frictionless."

"Officer Greggs said he saw her get hit a number of times by 7.62mm rifle bullets and there were a lot of them lying around, but there wasn't a mark on either her or her armor," Gallant said.

"Really fast as well, to add to all that." Vista shook her head in impressed wonder. "You should have seen her climb, it was amazing. She shot up the side of that building nearly as fast as she could run along the top of it and I saw her clear a twenty foot gap without any problems. She was speeding up the whole time we were watching. I got the impression she'd never tried it before and was learning on the spot for some reason."

Finishing making notes, Miss Militia looked at what she'd written. "OK, we have high level brute for sure, at least 4. Mover as well, 1 or higher. Thinker 1 for enhanced senses, although we don't know how enhanced. And Breaker of some sort for the matter manipulation. Assuming that's what it really is."

"She hit the jackpot, didn't she?" Aegis remarked, speaking for the first time from where he was sitting on the sofa in the Ward's rec room, a few feet away. She looked over at him and nodded sightly. "All that in one cape is unusual."

"Mind you, she's sort of obvious," Vista noted. "I'm not sure I'd think having all those powers would be worth being covered in scales with a tail, looking like that."

"And you're sure she's not a Case 53?" the older woman asked.

Vista nodded, spreading her hands. "She said she could remember everything in her life no trouble and that she didn't have the tattoo. I don't think she was lying."

"The interesting thing is that she seemed completely comfortable with herself, completely at ease," Dean remarked after a moment. "Not embarrassed or self conscious about her appearance. She moved like she was totally used to it as well, which suggests to me she's been like that for a while, but that was the first time I've ever heard of her."

"I'm not aware of anyone meeting that description, no," Miss Militia mused, thinking. "So presumably either she's a new trigger, an older one that just decided to get into the Cape life right now, or… Or what?"

They exchanged a look. "Are you sure she wasn't some sort of projection herself?" Clockblocker suggested, a look of fascination on his face. Gallant turned to look over at his colleague who was leaning on the back of the sofa with his helmet off.

"I don't think so, no," he replied after some consideration. "She moved completely naturally, all the muscles under the scales appeared real, I saw her swallow a couple of times, she was definitely breathing. I couldn't see her eyes, but everything else looked very real."

"So we have a super-humanly strong lizard girl who can run at highway speeds and throw cars around barehanded, not to mention make swords that can probably cut one in half with one swing considering her strength, running around downtown on the roofs?" Dennis summarized a little sarcastically. "Wonderful. That sounds really safe."

Gallant nodded, smiling slightly, while Missy giggled.

"Maybe she's an alien," the time stopping cape suggested with a smirk. "Or some warrior demoness from hell here to find souls to snack on."

"She likes beef jerky, not souls, Dennis," Missy sighed. "She offered me some."

Gallant grinned. "She apparently wandered into a convenience store and bought it, which must have been hysterical to see," he chuckled. Clockblocker immediately laughed, shaking his head.

"I think I like her already."

"She has a weird sense of humor, like you," Vista noted, making him smile again.

"Hey, maybe this means that those strange stories on the internet about shape-shifting lizards running the world is real?" the red-head added, grinning. "You know, like that crazy British guy, what's his name, David Icke, has been claiming for years. Perhaps she's one of them who can't shape-shift and is just running around anyway."

Vista gave him a sad look and shook her head, making him smirk, while Dean and Miss Militia exchanged a look. Aegis appeared thoughtful.

"You know, if she actually was a Changer that would explain why no one has seen a lizard girl wandering around yet," he said slowly, making Clockblocker stare at him.

"I was joking!" the teen complained. "Now you think she really is a shape-shifting six and a half foot tall lizard? Next you'll be saying she's going to replace one of us for the New World Order." He narrowed his eyes, staring suspiciously at his colleague, then looked around at the others. "Or maybe... she already has." Walking over to his team-mate he stared hard at his mask from very close range, then reached out and prodded him in the forehead a couple of times, making Aegis bat his finger away. "Are you an alien lizard under there?" he asked in a deeply suspicious voice, although his mouth was twitching.

"Stop being an idiot, Dennis," he mumbled. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

The other teen grinned and stepped back, while Vista and Gallant collapsed laughing, even Miss Militia smiling under her mask. "I'm just being careful," he replied, "you can never be certain with these alien lizards." Peering around behind his friend he shook his head. "No tail. Hmm, I guess I can trust you. For now."

"Oh, just go away and sit down, will you?" Aegis grumbled, making Dennis laugh, high five Gallant who was creased up, then go and sit beside Kid Win, the Tinker listening quietly while he fiddled with one of his laser pistols. The latter was smiling but said nothing.

"Back to business, please," Miss Militia requested, sounding amused. Clockblocker immediately made his expression go completely blank, which set Missy off again. The older woman waited patiently for them to calm down. "Aegis' suggestion is certainly worth considering, I think. It would explain the lack of any reports of Saurial before last night, presuming she didn't trigger then immediately go out in costume, which I think is unlikely." She made some more notes. "So, it may well be Brute, Mover, Thinker, Breaker, and now Changer as well. That's… a very comprehensive and unusual power set even if most of them are low level."

"The Changer rating would have to be reasonably high to let her switch between that form and a normal human one," Gallant noted with interest, making her nod. "It looked like a complete transformation, bone, skin, everything, not a cosmetic one."

"That's true." She sighed. "I'd love to talk to her and get her in for power testing."

"She said she had no current interest in either joining the Wards or coming in," he replied, shrugging. "As far as I could tell she was sincere, although not hostile about it, just not interested."

"OK. Pity, though. I hope she realizes how dangerous it is for an independent Hero, especially in this city."

"She said she'd read the statistics and was fine with it," Missy remarked. "I told her about the Rules and offered to send her some more information on things Capes should know."

Everyone but Gallant looked surprised about this. "Why, at this point, would you get onto that subject?" Miss Militia asked curiously. "It seems sudden for a first meeting and I'm a little surprised that it would be you who'd bring it up."

"Partly it was her reaction when Dean mentioned someone hurting her family to get to her," the young girl replied slowly. "She got… very angry. Not for long, and not at us, but she was… kind of terrifying for a few seconds. I thought I should let her know, both so she wouldn't be so worried, which she obviously was, and also to let her know before she ran into a situation where it might come up."

Nodding, the military cape gave the impression of slight approval.

"Plus I like her, I think," Missy added with a smile. "We need more girl Capes around. Too many boys." She cast a disapproving glance around at her team-mates, making Dennis put an expression of hurt disappointment on his face and Kid Win snicker, still not saying anything but following the conversation although he was wrist deep in his weapon, concentrating on something fiddly.

With a slight snicker of her own, Miss Militia closed the notebook and rested her pen on top of it, leaning back in her chair folding her hands on the table.

"All right. Well done, both of you, both for handling a meeting with a new Cape and the report. You managed lots of useful detail and your suppositions seem sound. I'll write it up and pass it along. If you think of anything else, let me know." She stood to leave. Gallant cleared his throat, appearing somewhat troubled. "Is there something else to add?" she asked, stopping in the process of picking up her notebook and pen.

"There… might be," he slowly and a little reluctantly said. "Normally I wouldn't mention something private like this, but… I'm not sure if it means anything. Or at least anything bad."

She sat down again and re-opened the notebook, motioning to him to continue.

"There's something very weird about her emotional output," he went on after an obvious minor internal struggle. "It's difficult to describe. I can't read her nearly as well as I can most people, her emotions seemed… muted, or on the wrong frequency, somehow," He shrugged slightly helplessly. "I can't put it better than that, sorry."

"If she changes to that extent, possibly her brain is different enough to screw with your powers?" Kid Win said, speaking for the first time, looking up from his gun. They all turned to look at him, then back to Gallant, who seemed thoughtful.

"Maybe. I don't know. But I could get enough to recognize a couple of things. One was that at one point she suddenly got very angry, for no obvious reason, although as far as I could tell it wasn't directed at us. She didn't show a trace of it either in her voice or in her body language, though, which is impressive. She calmed down pretty fast but she was still annoyed when she left, in fact I think she left exactly because she was annoyed. Up to that point, except when I mentioned her family being at risk, which was horrifying to feel, she was calm and basically happy. It was a little bizarre."

"Maybe you said something to annoy her?" Aegis asked.

Gallant shook his head. "I don't think so. She was being all friendly and joking around then suddenly there was this faint wave of serious rage. I don't know if she noticed but I nearly stepped back, it was so surprising."

Making a few notes on a new page, Miss Militia nodded slowly. "That's slightly concerning. Hopefully she isn't emotionally unstable, that would be a very bad mix with those abilities."

"I don't know for sure but I don't think she is," Gallant replied with a shrug. "I think there was a real reason for it although I have no idea what."

"OK. What's the other thing?" She stopped writing once more and looked at him.

"The really strange thing was I think I detected two slightly different and distinct emotional outputs from her. At the same time. One was very faint, and gave me the impression for some reason of being very old and very calm, although when I mentioned that thing with her family it suddenly went… very worrying… for just a second." He shivered. "Maybe I'm imagining it, like I said she's really hard to read, and it might just be a result of that. But..." He spread his hands out helplessly.

"I don't know what it means, even if it's real, but I thought you should know."

"Thank you, Gallant," the woman replied, finishing her note-taking with a slightly troubled expression visible on the top half of her face. "I have to say I don't know what it might mean either, you may be right and it's just a side effect of whatever resistance she has to your power, but it's worth knowing."

Looking up at the pair, she asked, "Anything else?"

Both Dean and Missy shook their heads.

"OK." She closed the notebook for the last time.

"What do we do if we meet her again?" Vista asked.

The older Cape tapped her pen on the table, considering the question. "For now, just do what you did, although I'd suggest not mentioning her family again. Be friendly, don't start any confrontations. We have no idea what she's really capable of and that's the sort of thing that gets you killed. For now she's just an apparently non-hostile independent Hero and unless things change we'll just be civil to her and hope she reciprocates."

They nodded in unison. Turning her head to look at the other wards, she added, "That goes for the rest of you. Don't provoke Saurial if you meet her, be polite and friendly." Fixing Clockblocker with a stare, she carried on, "And no practical jokes with the meat-eating super-strong lizard girl, please."

Looking a little disappointed, he replied, "You mean alien lizard here to take over the world," causing her to sigh faintly. He smirked.

Deliberately ignoring him and making him turn a grin to Kid Win beside him, who shrugged, she looked to Vista. "If she does contact you, you may give her non-classified information as you suggested. It might be worth gently pushing the idea of the Wards if you think she's receptive to it, but don't overdo it." The blonde girl nodded, smiling a little.

"Good." Satisfied, she stood, looked at Clockblocker again, sighed sadly and theatrically, shook her head in despair, then left. He watched her go with a small grin.

"She actually really appreciates the work I do around here to lighten the mood and keep morale high, you know," he commented, making Aegis snort with disbelief and Missy giggle. "Honest!"

The ensuing argument went on for some time.

Prodding the button beside the armored door, Hannah waited until it beeped and unlocked. "Enter," the voice of Colin Wallis said from inside. She went in, to find the Tinker sitting at a workbench, more or less his default position when he wasn't out on the streets or sleeping, which he did as little as possible.

Unusually, he wasn't working on a half-disassembled widget, instead he was staring, deep in thought, at a large monitor on which were several pictures. She glanced at them curiously. They appeared to be of a pair of manacles of some sort on the wrists of what was presumably, due to the tattoo she could make out, a member of the E88.

"I've got the notes on the reported contact with a new cape called Saurial, Colin," she said. "You know, this really is something you should be doing, you're the one in command." This was said with a certain amount of asperity.

Not looking away from his screen he nodded absently. "You're much better with people than I am, Hannah, so I'm sure you do a good job. Thank you." He leaned forward, studying one image which he zoomed to fill the screen, then mumbled something to himself. She sighed a little, shaking her head in fond irritation. The man was brilliant, but gave the concept 'one track mind' a real workout. Not to mention that, as far as he was concerned, social skills were something that happened to other people.

"What are you looking at?" she asked, knowing that she wasn't going to get much more use out of him until he satisfied whatever itch he was currently scratching.

"Something impossible," he murmured, zooming another image, then rotating it, before selecting a third. This one was of a flat strip of the same gray metal, just over fourteen inches long and an inch wide based on the ruler next to it.

"That looks like a pair of manacles and a strip of metal to me," she commented, pulling a spare chair over and sitting on it, looking at the images. "They're not all that impossible, I've seen manacles before." She smiled under her scarf, knowing he'd miss the joke completely yet not minding. Glancing at her for a moment, he went back to inspecting the monitor, before leaning back with an exclamation of irritation.

"They are indeed manacles, and the strip of metal was used as a splint. Their function is not impossible, or even complex. What they're made of is."

"What are they made of?" she asked curiously.

"I have absolutely no idea," he replied sourly.

She inspected him, then the screen again. "Really?"

"Yes. I was called in an hour ago to the Downtown BBPD precinct to give technical advice. They had six prisoners apprehended in a robbery by a new Cape calling herself Saurial, who restrained them with those manacles, and also treated a broken arm and some broken fingers with basic first aid. That metal splint was used. They wanted help because they couldn't remove the restraints. A pair of bolt cutters did absolutely nothing, not even leaving a mark, neither did a diamond cutting wheel. They were on the verge of using an oxyacetylene torch but luckily I arrived before that happened and tested them. Whatever that material is, it's both a perfect electrical insulator and a thermal superconductor, at the same time. Using the torch would have been very dangerous, the prisoners would have been badly burned."

He sighed, while she waited patiently and with good humor, wondering when he'd work it out. "Not to mention it wouldn't work anyway. I tried it on the splint, which had no useful effect at all. It didn't even glow when the entire thing was hot enough to melt steel easily. I tried everything I could think of with the equipment I had with me to no effect. In addition to all of that, whatever this material is, it is very close to frictionless and its density is impossibly high. Approximately seventy one point six seven grams per cubic centimeter, over three times the density of the most dense element in the periodic table. No such element exists. If it did, it would be deep into the transuranic elements, and probably have a half-life measurable in attoseconds, not to mention you could only make it in a third generation supernova in the first place."

He threw his hands up, disgust on his face, almost knocking his helmet off the workbench next to the keyboard. "Like I said, impossible."

"Did you bring it back to test?" she asked. "For that matter, how did they remove the manacles, or are the prisoners still restrained?"

"Approximately eighteen minutes after I arrived, all the manacles, the splint, and the bandages used on the prisoners vanished," he frowned, making her eyes widen.

"A projection?" she asked incredulously. He shook his head.

"No, definitely not, or if it was it was totally unlike anything else on record. The damn things had real, measurable, consistent properties. Impossible ones for the most part, but real ones."

After a few more seconds of staring in frustration at the screen, his expression suddenly changed, both eyebrows going up slowly. He turned to her. She handed him the notebook, grinning.

"Took you long enough," she laughed, as he flipped through the pages of her notes, reading her elegant longhand with the ease of familiarity.

"This is very… interesting," he said slowly, reading the section of her notes about Saurial's weapons-creation power with extreme care. "And raises more questions than it answers."

After another couple of minutes, he handed the notes back and nodded his thanks. "It doesn't answer the question of what the material is but it explains where it comes from. Or at least who makes it. Fascinating." Looking back to the monitor he studied the images again. "Formed on the spot, specifically for the job," he mused out loud. "That is a very efficient power. I wonder what the limitations are?"

"I recognize that expression," she laughed. "You're thinking about what you could do with something like that if it was stable long enough, aren't you?" He nodded slowly, still with a look of thoughtful consideration.

"It would be a perfect material to make armor out of, with the sole exception of the thermal superconductivity," he replied in an absent manner. "Even that has its uses. I wonder how strong and hard it really is?"

Looking back at her for a second, he added, "Hard enough to make a weapon that would work on an Endbringer?"

She stared at him for several seconds, then joined him in inspecting the screen, wild speculation going through her head.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

"Holy shit." Danny's flat exclamation of shock made Taylor look up from the history textbook she was studying on the sofa, having just had a snack, to see her father staring at a letter he was holding. The post had come that morning and she'd quickly looked through it, seeing nothing for her which wasn't a shock at all, then put the rest on the kitchen table.

He was still half-way through taking his coat off but seemed to have completely forgotten this little fact, as engaged as he was at staring wide-eyed at the sheaf of papers in his hand. She watched, a little confused, as he flipped through them briefly, then read a page more carefully, before dropping into his chair and staring blankly at her.

"Um, Dad?" she asked carefully. "Are you all right?"

He nodded, his expression not changing, then blinked a few times. Lifting the hand with the letter in he looked at the top page again, then spend a few seconds swearing quite creatively under his breath. Taylor made mental notes of some of the more amusing comments, while the Varga laughed a little at them. Eventually Danny seemed to get it out of his system, dropping the letter to his lap and just shaking his head. After a second he finished taking his coat off and draped it over the arm of the chair with a vacant expression on his face.

"The school has made an offer in full and final settlement of any case we have against them," he told her, appearing to come back from somewhere far away. "I'll have to get this checked over by the DWU lawyer but on the face of it the terms seem reasonable." Looking at the letter again he swallowed, then smiled. "They must really want to make this go away. Us, too."

Putting the book down and sitting up, she looked curiously at him. "So they offered money to shut us up?"

"They did indeed."

"Is it a lot?"

He laughed a little wildly. "Not if you're Bill Gates, no. For us? Quite a good deal."

Getting up and walking over, she looked at the letter which he held up for her. Half-way down the page her eyes widened. "Sixty five thousand dollars!?"

"You missed a zero, dear," he chortled after a surprised moment.

Taylor fell over.

"Six… hundred..." she whispered.

"And fifty thousand, yes." He shook his head in shocked amazement. "That's more than twice what I thought was likely." While she lay on the floor, motionless, staring at him in disbelief, he thought for a moment, smiling oddly. "After various taxes and the like, which there's no getting around, that should be close to half a million in the bank."

She felt faint. "Half a million dollars?"

"That's nearly worth all the pain, isn't it," he commented. Taylor stared, shook her head, then jumped to her feet, pulling him to his and spinning him around, before hugging him.

"No, not really, considering I nearly either lost you or died, but it's worth getting punched in the mouth by Sophia," she grinned. "She can hit me again if people will pay that much." A thoughtful look crossed her face, just before a mischievous one. "Hey, maybe that's a job. Get punched in the mouth for money. I can take it."

Holding her, he looked down the few inches separate them and smiled, sighing a little. "No, dear, I don't think that would work. Or, if it did, there's probably a law against it anyway." Releasing her he retrieved the letter which had fallen to the floor, flipping through the pages once more. "It looks above board. I think Alan may have come through for us. Poor bastard. I'll take it in tomorrow to get the lawyer to go over it while you're at Arcadia doing the test, and pick you up after they're done. Assuming there's no loopholes I can sign it and get it to the Winslow School board on the way. The payment would be in the bank by Monday."

He looked up at her. "Unless you think I should hold out for more? If they're this desperate, they might be open to negotiation." His smile had more teeth than Saurial's.

Taylor laughed, smiling widely. "No, Dad, no need to be greedy. I think that will do." She looked around the room. "We can get this place fixed up, and everything."

"We could move easily with this much money," he pointed out. She stopped dead, then looked at him.

After a long moment, she shook her head. "I don't want to leave here, this is my home. This was Mom's home."

Putting the letter on his chair, he held her, smiling proudly. "That it is, dear. A very good point. All right, we'll fix everything wrong with it, that won't take very much of this, and I may treat us to a newer car. At least half of it is going into your college fund, though."

She looked startled for a moment. "It's your money, Taylor. It's a settlement for everything you went through. I won't turn down a contribution to the family funds, but it's yours." He smiled down at her as she stared, then nodded slowly.

"Now, I think you should go and do some final revising, while I call Antonia and make an appointment to see her first thing tomorrow to look at this, OK?"

Taylor nodded, still stunned, before slowly heading off to her computer and books, her head spinning. The smile on her face seemed etched there permanently.