"Vicky!"

Dean watched with irritation and resignation as his girlfriend flew off in the direction of the center of the city, grumbling under her breath. Yet again, they'd had an argument over what to him in hindsight seemed silly, but she had, yet again, taken offense then stormed off. Since they'd been sitting in his car outside her house, the storming had been straight through the front door, up to her room, then out the back window and away via a quick costume change. He'd followed until the point she'd slammed the door in his face.

'Damn it,' he thought with frustration. 'Now she's going to go find someone to hit or something. Again. Sooner or later she's going to meet someone who hits back, harder.' Sighing he shook his head. He knew the girl, and her moods, far too well sometimes. She worried him, the level of impulsiveness was matched only by the short temper she sometimes had. Her black and white view of the world didn't help, but then her entire family was like that in some ways. Especially her mother.

He respected Brandish, but he didn't like her. The emotions he felt sometimes also worried him, but he kept that worry strictly to himself.

"Screwed up again, Dean?" The familiar voice from behind him was accompanied by a familiar, hard to parse mix of emotions, as Amy opened the front door and stepped out onto the path, her costume on, apparently heading towards the hospital. "And there goes my ride." She sounded mildly annoyed and somewhat sarcastic, again not unusual for her. This sister was almost too controlled compared to the other one, he thought.

"What did you say this time?"

"I have no idea," he admitted, a little exasperated. "We were just talking about a party I was invited to with some friends, she got all snappy for some reason, then stomped off calling me names."

Amy smiled oddly, shaking her head a little. He could only make out a little of her face under her hood but she seemed blackly amused for some reason best know to herself.

"I can give you a ride if you want," he offered suddenly, not sure why. "There's no telling when she's going to come back when she's in a mood like that. I just hope she doesn't wreck something expensive this time. Or someone."

Considering him closely for a few seconds, Amy finally nodded, pulling the door shut behind her. "Thank you, Dean, that would be a big help." Turning her face towards where Glory Girl was a distant barely glowing speck in the darkening sky, she sighed, then followed him to his car. Opening the door for her he waited until she was in, then closed it and went around to the driver's side.

"Brockton General?" he asked as he started the engine. She nodded without saying anything, so he looked over his shoulder then did a U turn and headed in the right direction. They rode in silence for a while.

Glancing at her every now and then, he debated with himself. He knew he shouldn't say anything at all but it was driving him nuts. Luckily he'd managed to not say anything to Vicky, since she could normally take any opening he gave her and wedge it wide open with a few choice words, which in this case would probably be catastrophic.

Eventually he couldn't not say anything. Concentrating on the road, he asked, not putting any particular emphasis on it, "Have you ever found out the identity of a cape by accident?"

He could feel the shock in the girl sitting next to him although she controlled any outward reaction well. There was a sudden wave of hidden guilt as well, weirdly enough. After nearly a minute, she asked quietly, "Why do you ask?" without looking at him.

After more consideration, he shrugged. "I did. It was an accident, the result of my powers, not something I could stop. I'm very worried about what could happen if anyone finds out what I know. Or that I know."

Turning to look at him for a moment she went back to watching the world go past. Again she was quiet for a while. "Why tell me then?"

"I have to tell someone, it's driving me nuts. And I can't mention it to the guys, it would sooner or later get to Piggot and I don't know what would happen then. What do I do?"

"Don't tell anyone anything, don't even hint at it. How hard is that?"

"The cape knows I know," he replied.

This time she stared at him. "How the hell did that happen?"

"I don't know. But we looked at each other, and I know the… other person… is somehow aware of what I figured out."

"Could you be wrong about that?"

"No."

"OK." She fell silent again for a while.

Eventually she asked, "Is this cape dangerous? More so than normal, I mean?"

"Oh, yes, believe me."

"Violent?"

He thought for a moment. "Probably not unless really pushed, but ruthless if that happens. Not aggressive."

"Same advice as before, then. Keep your mouth shut, especially around Vicky. You know you leak information like a sieve to my sister." There was wry amusement in her voice now, making him produce a small, twisted grin. "And don't push the cape. Stay away, don't be a threat."

Pulling up outside the hospital a couple of minutes later, he turned to her. "You won't say anything?"

"I don't know anything other than you think you know something the cape knows about you knowing they know," Amy said, then looked mildly confused at her own words. "I think. Something like that anyway. And I don't want to know either."

She opened the door in preparation to getting out. "Thanks for the ride, Dean."

"Thanks for the advice, Amy."

They shared a look, then she got out and trudged towards the hospital, not looking particularly happy, as he could tell she wasn't. Again, pretty normal for her. Watching her go he thought for a while until she disappeared into the building, nodding to the security guard at the door, then put the car into drive and headed home, still wondering where his girlfriend was and what silly fight she'd managed to find this time.

And what the hell it was he'd said that had set her off.

Women were very strange, sometimes, in his view.

The beeping of the fish finder sonar in the cabin of his small fishing boat made Erwin look over at the machine, taking his hand off the wheel to tap it couple of times. It kept beeping, which made him sigh, then throttle back. The chugging of the old twin-cylinder diesel engine slowed to a regular rumble below his feet as he moved over to see what was wrong with the thing this time. He'd been out half the day trundling slowly around the bay looking for fish, with no luck beyond a half dozen small flounders which were lying on the bottom of the keeper tank behind him, their eyes looking skyward as they waited to be turned into his dinner.

It was hardly worth the cost of the fuel, these days, he mused. No real fishing left, no boats worth speaking of visiting the port. Not like in his day, fifty years earlier when he first set to sea, when the bay was alive with shipping.

Fiddling with the instrument, he adjusted the gain control, then slapped the thing on the side hard. It beeped again and the screen showed what was obviously a false image approaching from starboard, probably some sort of reflection from something on the bottom. It was vastly too large to be real, nothing that big lived anywhere around these parts, and almost nothing moved that quickly under water.

The image faded, breaking up, and the beeping stopped. Satisfied, he moved back to the controls, peering out into the darkness lit only by the waning moon in an otherwise clear night. Two or three miles away the nearest lights of Brockton Bay could be seen, and off to the side some considerable distance further away was the glittering force field surrounding the Rig, the iconic headquarters of the ENE Protectorate. He looked at it for a moment or two, thinking it looked surprisingly pretty at night, then turned his head the other way, to the wreck of the old supertanker that two thirds blocked the entrance to the bay from the open Atlantic.

It was barely visible in the dark, a huge mass showing just above the water for an impressive distance, waves breaking on its side and across the bows which were barely under the surface at this tide state. The superstructure at the rear rose a considerable distance above that, the rust color that had broken through the formerly white and blue painted finish making it blend into the dark in most places. He wanted to stay well clear of the wreck, as there were other, smaller ships littering the bottom of the bay near it, none of which were visible except at extreme low tide. They came close enough to the water surface in a few places to make ideal things to punch a hole in the hull of a small boat like his twenty foot dory, though.

About to throttle up, he instead grabbed for a hand hold as the boat unexpectedly rose, then slowly rolled, before sinking again. Shocked he looked wildly around for a reason. Nothing was immediately visible but as he rushed to the side and looked into the depths, he fancied he could just make out the glint of something moving deep under the surface.

Something alive.

Something… very very big.

He swallowed, then peered carefully in the direction it seemed to be heading, which was directly towards the cargo vessel. Squinting he could, he thought, make out a swell in the water heading rapidly away, the waves moving oddly in that area, but he wouldn't have wanted to swear to it.

After a minute more had passed and the boat had long since settled down, he shook his head.

"Getting old and daft," he mumbled. "Seeing things. Next there'll be a pretty mermaid offering me pearls, no doubt."

Going back into the cabin, shivering even under his thick woolen coat in the damp chill of a late January night, he throttled up and headed for the dock, thinking he needed a large cup of coffee with a small shot of brandy in it.

Ten minutes later, a weird, deep rumble that he felt through his feet more than heard came from somewhere not that far away. He cocked his head, listening, but it didn't recur. After a moment he sighed, cranked the throttle back to idle yet again, then went out to the rear of the boat and looked around carefully.

Nothing.

"Definitely getting old," he grumbled. Turning, his eyes caught sight of the supertanker wreck, now a couple of miles further away.

He squinted. Something about it had changed. Which seemed unlikely. Perhaps it was slowly rotting away and something fell apart? It might explain the sound.

He retrieved his ancient, WWII vintage U-boat binoculars, which were so heavy he could hardly lift them, a souvenir brought back from Europe by his father who had got his knees shot off in the war but still looted everything he could carry, then pointed them at the ship. The huge objective lenses gathered enough light he had a vaguely useable image, enough to let him see it fairly clearly.

As he was watching, the shadow of an impossibly large taloned scaly hand, big enough to crush his boat like a beer can, lifted out of the water, the sea running off it, at the stern of the ship and braced itself against the hull. The ship visibly moved a few degrees, the same rumbling sound coming once more a few seconds later. He watched, completely frozen with shock, until the thing disappeared again.

Nothing else happened for the next five minutes. When he finally lowered the glasses his arms were shaking with effort and he was freezing.

"A small cup of coffee with a large shot of brandy," he decided out loud.

Shivering with more than cold, he put the glasses away, then rammed the throttle as hard over as it would go, intent on getting off the water as soon as possible. It was probably his old eyes playing tricks, but if it wasn't…?

He had no wish to see what was attached to a hand that big.

Slipping through the depths of the bay, propelled with slow sweeps of her tail, her hind legs held together for minimum drag, Taylor was thoroughly enjoying herself. She'd made it to a deserted section of the docks without incident, only spotting a few Merchants and their customers wandering around, who were easily avoided. They lit up like christmas trees in her heat vision against the still cold January night. As the sun had set the temperature had dropped significantly, due to the clear skies.

Finding a suitable niche in an old wharf, inaccessible to anyone who couldn't hold onto the bottom of a horizontal, very slimy surface, or fly, she'd had the Varga make her a small container for the various things she was carrying in her belt pouches, attaching it to the half rotten wood with a spike she pushed firmly into it. The box was completely sealed and set to last for twelve hours by which time she'd certainly be back to collect it.

At that point she'd simply let go, falling into the water below even as she took on her combat form. Sinking to the bottom, twenty feet down, she found it no more uncomfortable than the swimming pool, although much harder to see anything in. They had fiddled with the form for a little while, lengthening the tail and flattening it side to side, while streamlining the entire body, until they were both satisfied it was suitably optimized for aquatic operations. Clear scales matched her vision to the water allowing her to see surprisingly well. She could also hear and even feel through the water things moving around her, a sort of passive sonar that gave her a fairly good image in her head of what was there.

It was surprisingly noisy at the bottom of the bay. Creaks, groans, clicks, long drawn out rumbles she worked out after a moment were breaking waves somewhere in the distance, all made the background noise level as high as that of a normal street, much to her surprise. She'd always pictured being underwater as being quiet and peaceful but it was nothing like that.

She knew her hearing range went a long way above and below the normal human one, but only underwater did it really come into its own. Heading out towards deeper water she swam along twenty feet down, following the bottom as it started to drop away. As the water got deeper she increased her size until she was by her estimation more than a hundred and fifty feet from nose to tail, the largest size she'd attempted so far. Even so, it was only about a third the total Varga size, if that.

Soon she was moving fast enough that she could feel the pressure of the water on her scales, a steady flow from front to back. It was peculiarly relaxing. The pressure of the depths itself was barely apparent, but then the water was only about two hundred feet deep at this point. The bay was pretty shallow for the most part, only one section near the entrance being over two hundred and twenty feet deep from what she could remember from school. Most of it was no more than half that depth.

Slowing, she examined the wreck of an old trawler that was sitting surprisingly intact on the bottom. It was tipped onto its side, but seemed more or less in one piece except for a hole in the hull near the front, which looked like it had been made by hitting something. Sinking to the bottom next to it she reached out, wrapping a hand around it like a toy boat in a bathtub. She experimentally lifted, finding that it resisted for a moment then came free of the suction of the mud, a large cloud of it rising around her and reducing visibility to almost nothing until it washed away in the current.

'Doesn't feel too heavy,' she commented to the Varga.

"Don't forget about the buoyancy of the water helping you," he remarked.

'Oh, right, good point. But I think I could just carry this to the shore no problem. It's a lot lighter than the last block we tried in that warehouse and I'm much bigger now.' The ship in fact felt like a toy in her grip, not needing any real effort to hold. Gently squeezing she watched as it distorted, the metal crumpling like tinfoil in her grip. 'I guess if I wanted to salvage the metal I could just wad them up and carry them like that?' She thought for a moment, then shrugged, dropping it to the bottom again and launching herself into the water once more.

'Anyway, the little ones down here don't really matter. It's the big ones in the shallow water that are the problem. I want to have a look at that huge tanker.'

She passed under a small boat, the throbbing of its engine tickling her skin, making sure to be deep enough not to cause any damage. Soon she spotted the hull of the tanker in the distance through the cloudy water. 'Shit. That thing is even bigger than it looks from the shore! It must be hundreds of feet long.'

"It's a very large ship," the Varga agreed. "But it looks like it's sitting on rock more than mud. It should move fairly easily. Do you intend to move it tonight?"

'Not really, I just want to see if I can,' she replied. 'I'll have to talk to Dad about what would be the best thing to actually do with it. I guess it could be pushed out into deeper water, the bottom drops off pretty quickly outside the bay, which would get it out of the way. Pulling it onto shore would be a lot more work but there might be something worth salvaging on it.'

Arriving at the ship, she once more let herself sink to the bottom, moving over to it and inspecting the thing. It had a more or less flat bottom and was sitting upright, although the sea bed sloped down towards the front of the ship, so the pointy end was deeper under water than the blunt end.

She felt certain those were not the correct nautical terms, deciding she should ask her father what the right ones were.

Moving to the back she looked at where the hull met the rock. There was a lot of debris scattered around, along with quite a lot of mud. She thought, based on the scrape marks, that it had slid when it sank, ending up in the current position. From what she remembered about the history of the riots that culminated in the scuttling of the ship it had gone down slowly and evenly, taking over a day to entirely sink.

'Hmm. How about if I grab it at the back here and push? Maybe it will move a little and give us an idea of how large we'd need to be to move it easily. The water is too shallow here to get any bigger without sticking out like a sore thumb'

Her head was only barely under the surface, in fact. Growing a small amount, she lifted just her eyes above the water like a floating alligator and carefully checked around the area. That little boat was moving slowly away and she thought it was distant enough not to be an issue. She couldn't see or hear anything else in the area. Satisfied, she submerged again, then braced her shoulder and palms against the hull, digging her foot talons into the sea bed under her and bracing her tail on the rocks around her.

With a mental grunt she pushed hard. There was a loud rumbling groan and nearly thirty thousand tons of scrap supertanker shifted six feet to the right, tilting slightly, more easily than she expected. 'Whoops,' she snickered. 'I don't want to tip it over.' She backed off then studied the situation carefully. Eventually she repositioned herself, reaching up with one hand to hold the back of the ship just above the water, then put her other hand on the shaft to one of the two propellers. Rearranging her tail to hold her in that position she carefully heaved again. Once more it rumbled, and moved back more or less to where it had been, the shaft bending like a coat hanger in the process, obviously not intended as a grip point.

'Great. I could probably move it even at this size,' she said with a smile, exposing six foot long fangs to the water. 'That makes things easier. Dad will know the best way to deal with it.'

"It made quite a lot of noise, though, Brain," the Varga noted. "Moving it any distance will hardly be subtle, if you want to do it without notice."

'That's true.' She rubbed a finger along her muzzle while she thought. Eventually she shrugged. 'I'm not going to do it tomorrow, so we can probably work out a solution. I just wanted to see if I could.'

Pleased with the results of her experimentation, she swam away from the tanker, going around it into deeper water outside the bay. Following the bottom about a hundred feet above it she explored for an hour or two, finding all sorts of things lying around, but nothing particularly interesting. A sound in the distance made her listen carefully, moving her head around to localize it, finally deciding it must be a whale or something a long way out to sea. Half tempted to see how fast she could really swim and going to look for it, she decided in the end to go back instead. It was getting quite late.

Shrinking as she swam back, by the time she'd followed her nose back to the wharf she'd started from, Taylor was her normal combat form size although still in the aquatic variant. As she neared the wharf, she heard something odd which she finally realized was gunfire filtered through water. Nearing the surface she peeked out, seeing flashes coming from two different places, near a half-wrecked warehouse on the one hand, and from a parked truck with several flat tires on the other, several figures hiding behind it and shooting over the top.

The sound of the guns echoed around the entire area, making her head ring. 'That's really annoying,' she commented with mild irritation. 'Not to mention stupid. There are bullets bouncing around all over the place.' She watched for a moment, then sighed. 'Guess I'll have to stop them before someone gets killed.'

Climbing out of the water she shook herself hard, then shrank into the form of Saurial, her armor forming in the process. She was half-tempted to use the combat form instead but was holding that back for a good occasion. This one didn't seem to need it, it was only half a dozen merchants shooting at a slightly smaller number of ABB members from what she could see and smell.

Actually, she was rather wishing she couldn't smell the former, they were rank. Really horrible, in fact.

Sighing a little, her good mood meeting reality and getting kicked somewhere sensitive in the process, she wandered over. "Hey, could you guys stop shooting the place up like that, please?" she called loudly.

"Cape!" one of the ABB members yelled, pointing, after all the participants of the fight turned to stare at her in shock.

"ABB," she yelled, pointing right back at him. He looked confused.

"Hey, if you're going to point, I will too." She grinned.

He swiveled his gun to aim at her and opened fire. She waited for him to run out of ammunition, then looked down at all the squashed bullets lying around her feet, before raising her eyes to him. "I think you're going to need a bigger gun," she snickered.

The Japanese youth paled. His friends opened up on her as well, as did a couple of the merchants. Forming a sword, she ran at the ABB truck, slashing horizontally when she reached it and cleanly separating the cab from the chassis. Vanishing the sword she grabbed the cab and heaved, throwing it to the side to reveal five worried faces looking at her as their cover vanished. "Hi," she smiled, showing her teeth. "Would you like to give up now or do I have to chase you around for a while?"

A bullet hit her in the back of the head. She looked over her shoulder. "I'll be with you guys in a minute," she called, before turning back to the ABB side, who were exchanging glances. One after another they dropped their weapons and held their hands up.

"Good decision," she smiled. "Put your hands behind your backs." Moving into range, she watched as they did as requested, the Varga forming manacles around each pair of wrists. He linked them together and to the truck with a cable. "OK. Stay there and I'll go and have a word with your friends."

She was enjoying herself. This time no real violence was needed, just a little psychological warfare. It seemed quite effective, which was interesting.

Walking towards the merchant contingent she was irritated to find out the limits of that technique, which is that it requires the opponent to be at least a little rational. In this case, that seemed not to be a good description. Based on the harsh chemical overtones she could smell none of the six merchants, four men and two women, were exactly firing on all cylinders. They had stopped shooting while she was dealing with the ABB gangers, apparently wondering what to do from what she'd heard, but 'giving up' wasn't one of the options they considered.

Half way to them they frantically began shooting again, not very accurately but with great enthusiasm. Worried that her prisoners at the truck would be hit by a stray bullet, or a not so stray one, she had the Varga make her a baton, then waded in. None of them took more than a couple of careful whacks to disable, although one man seemed practically immune to pain, presumably because of whatever drugs he was currently enjoying.

Unwilling to keep hitting him until he fell over, which seemed unnecessarily dangerous for a normal person, she dropped the baton which vanished in the process and pounced, clearing the pile of old oil drums he was currently hiding behind having crawled there while she was dealing with his friends. He screamed in shock when suddenly finding himself staring into her face from a foot away, which she capitalized on by grabbing him, spinning him around, and using the sleeper hold. Shortly he was lying on the ground, bound and disarmed.

Taylor looked around, satisfied. After a moment she frowned. Now what the hell did she do with them?

Eventually she retrieved her storage box from under the wharf, getting her equipment and supplies back and allowing the Varga to dissipate the thing. Putting everything back in her belt pouches she dug out Officer Michelson's business card and her burner phone, looking at the number for a moment then dialing it.

"Michelson," his voice answered after four rings.

"Hello, Officer," she said. "This is Saurial. We met on Tuesday night."

"I remember it vividly," he noted in a dead-pan voice, making her smile.

"Great. Look, I've caught six merchants and five ABB members who were having an enormous gun battle at Wharf Six in the south docks area. They're restrained right now and more or less uninjured although one of the merchants seems to have a broken leg. I didn't do it, he was like that when I found him. What do I do with them?"

Sounding distinctly amused, Michelson sighed faintly. "You have a style all your own, don't you, Saurial. OK, I'll get a wagon out to your location. Wharf Six, you said?"

"Yep. I'll wait here for them. These guys aren't going anywhere but I don't want to leave them alone in case some of their friends turn up, on either side."

"All right. Thanks for letting me know. Good work, by the way. Oh, I got your video recording. It was terrifying, thanks very much for that. Now I'm going to have nightmares going into dark places."

Taylor grinned, not sure how serious he was. "Great. I don't have a recording of this one, I didn't have my camera on. I took it off then this all happened, I didn't have time to put it back on."

"Don't worry, just tell the officers who attend the scene what happened. There's a form for independent Heroes and arrests made by them. Have you registered with the PRT yet?"

"No. Should I?"

"It's not actually mandatory but they tend to get pushy about it sooner or later. It's up to you, though."

She considered the suggestion, but couldn't decide whether it was a good idea or not. Thinking she should ask her father about it, she said her goodbyes to the officer, then snapped the phone shut and put it away, sitting on one of the oil drums to wait. She could already hear sirens approaching in the distance.

Half an hour later she was finished with the police, who had quite efficiently loaded the captured shooters into two different vans, then taken her verbal report. Thanking her, apparently sincerely, they'd driven off more slowly than they'd appeared. Deciding she was done with the docks for the night she looked around carefully, cloaked, switched to the combat form, enlarged it a little, and started running, this time on four legs and pushing herself hard for the practice and to see how fast she could go.

As she ran it began snowing lightly again, the clouds having arrived overhead quite suddenly as a cold front rolled in from the Atlantic, the falling flakes muffling sounds around her and making the grime of the docks briefly pristine, before it would inevitably melt.

Grue looked down. So did his team mates.

"What the hell made those?" he asked, pointing at the ground. Bending over the large, clawed, three toed footprints, where the snow hadn't quite melted, Tattletale frowned.

"Big, eight feet tall or better. Quadrupedal. Long stride. Moving at… maybe sixty miles an hour?" She looked at the three footprints visible. "Some sort of reptile, that's all I can tell you. Not enough data."

"You're telling me that there's an eight foot tall dinosaur running around the docks?" Regent asked in a nervous voice. He looked over his shoulder. "That's not exactly comforting, Tats."

She shrugged. "It's all I have. Find me some more evidence and I can do better, but three half-melted footprints in the snow aren't a lot to go on even for me."

"There's that new cape, Saurial, who's been seen twice downtown. She's a reptile of some sort."

"Not this big, though, and she walks on two legs, this was on four," Tattletale responded, turning to look at Grue. "This thing was enormous. And very definitely a carnivore based on those claw marks."

"You mean there's two of them?" Regent squeaked.

"Maybe it's her pet." They all looked at Bitch, who looked back. "Like a dog."

"I don't know," Tattletale said when the two boys returned their attention to her. "But I don't want to stumble into it, so I think we should get out of here in case it comes back."

The comment made them all stare about carefully in the early dawn light, then quickly head away from the area, almost running. Bitch's three dogs sniffed the footprint the humans had been inspecting, whined, then followed.