Dragon watched as the Guild transport lifted off with a roar and rapidly climbed out over the bay, circling around to head west when it was at altitude, before accelerating to over mach two. A faint sonic boom rumbled down from above, the suppression system managing to remove the bulk of the acoustic signature. Her friend and team-mate, Narwhal, had taken custody of Saint and his two co-conspirators, all three of whom had to be foamed again to stop them yelling obscenities. It had come as a relief to everyone present when the foam set.
She'd used the same story she'd told the PRT trooper, which seemed to have made the rounds remarkably fast while being embellished considerably in the process, on the other woman. Narwhal had nodded thoughtfully and not said much about it but for some reason Dragon wasn't at all convinced that the tall force-field-clothed hero actually believed it. What she did believe she wasn't saying, though. Dragon could see an interesting conversation in her future sooner or later. Sighing internally, while knowing it was inevitable eventually, she hoped it would go well.
She still needed to work out what to tell Colin and how. Hopefully he would understand, and even more hopefully he might be able to help with some of the more onerous restrictions her 'father' had gifted her with.
The artificial intelligence was grateful to the long-dead computer Tinker for bringing her into existence but she desperately wished he'd trusted his own work more. She knew she wasn't a threat to humanity, but she had no idea how to convince them of it, when they found out. Humans were fun, but awfully irritating sometimes. It was going to take some fast talking and quite a lot of luck to have everything work out for everyone.
The idea that she, a computer program, was even thinking about something as woolly as 'luck' made her smile inside. Richter had done a much better job than he'd lived to realize, the poor bastard.
"You were right about Saint and his people, Ma'am," the trooper standing beside her sighed. "I have met a lot of crazy parahumans over the years but that one is completely off the wall. He just won't stop talking."
"It's annoying, isn't it?" she chuckled, making him nod fervently. "You can imagine how irritating it is when he's aiming it at you personally."
"Unfortunately, yes I can," Davidson replied with a grimace. "You have my sympathies."
"Thank you," she laughed, turning to go back inside the Rig. "And thank you and your people for looking after them for me."
"it was our pleasure, Ma'am," he replied politely, before nodding to her then heading to his post.
When she was back in Colin's lab, she sat down in the chair he'd long ago built for her and watched him for a while. He glanced at her when she came in but said nothing, apparently merely content to have her there. It was… very nice. 'I could get used to working so closely with him,' she mused, pleased.
"How's it going?" she finally asked. He pushed himself back from where he'd been scribbling figures and calculations on a notepad, flipping between pages of several books and also referring to a number of documents open on the various monitors arrayed around him.
Colin stretched, then turned to her. "Very well, I think. I'd appreciate you double-checking some of my assumptions and calculations, but I believe the design is essentially complete. There are some questions surrounding the thermal transparency of the SaurialSteel barrel, we're going to have to think about those, and one or two minor issues for the firing mechanism that need to be resolved, but the overall project looks feasible. Depending on either Saurial or Raptaur, or both, agreeing to help, of course."
"Hopefully they will," she replied, getting up and coming over to look at the drawings and notes.
"The recoil is the biggest problem," he said after a moment. "It will be… exceptional. Far, far greater than any weapon I've ever encountered before. The calculated projectile spread means that it will also be most effective at fairly close range, perhaps a third of a mile or so, although there will also be a very large particle beam effect that will add to the destructive power. Whether this will affect an Endbringer I don't know. I doubt it would be safe to use on Behemoth, but the Simurgh is still a valid target. Leviathan might be as well."
"Have you considered using Clockblocker to time-freeze the weapon itself?" she inquired, flipping through his notes.
"Yes, that would solve a number of problems very nicely, but there is one very large issue with it, which is that it would then be fixed in space and impossible to move to aim until it unfroze. Which as you know would be a random time period, making it difficult to plan for. Unless we could get the timing exactly right and freeze it immediately before firing, it would actually make the weapon far less useful." He sighed slightly. "Both the Simurgh and Leviathan are very quick and I think neither is likely to obligingly simply stand there and let themselves be fired at. We need some method to track the target with the barrel."
"Ah. Yes, I understand," Dragon commented. "It would also put Clockblocker very close to the Endbringer which isn't the best idea. And much too close to a small fusion weapon in the process of detonating. He might have problems with that."
"I'm confident the SaurialSteel barrel will easily withstand the forces involved," Armsmaster stated, "Even at a thickness of only a quarter of an inch, based on my tests I can't think of anything that would actually break it. It would certainly take a vastly larger explosion without any issues although at that point we have a very large fusion rocket engine which I think would be difficult to keep in place."
"It would end up in orbit," Dragon laughed.
"My calculations show that with a fifty kiloton directional charge it would exceed eight times the escape velocity of Earth," he said seriously. "Orbit wouldn't be a problem. Hitting the moon might be."
She looked at him for a moment, amused. "That was almost another joke, Colin," she told him, getting a slightly surprised, then thoughtful look back.
"Ah. Thank you." He made some notes.
Shaking her head a little at his behavior, but oddly pleased, she kept going over his work, both of them shortly deeply immersed in the design.
Lisa came up the stairs in the Undersider's base cheerfully and surprisingly accurately whistling the Mission Impossible theme, looking happier than Brian had seen her for weeks. She smiled broadly at him as she pulled her domino mask off, not her common smug 'I know something that you don't' smile that frankly made him want to slap her sometimes, but a much more genuine, happy grin. It made her look very attractive.
"You're in a good mood," he commented, looking up from the cup of coffee he was making in the small kitchen they had. Motioning to the coffee maker he raised an inquiring eyebrow, receiving a nod in response, so he got another cup out.
"I am," she replied, taking a seat on one of the stools scattered around the place. "Very much so. A big problem I had may well be on the way to solving itself, in a very amusing way, so I'm pretty stoked."
She looked around the otherwise empty loft. "Where are the others?"
"Rachel is away at one of her dog shelters, since Hookwolf is still in PRT custody she's taken the opportunity to steal every fighting dog he had that she can find," Brian told her, somewhat amused. "He's going to be pissed if he gets out, but with any luck the PRT will finally lock the bastard away for good. I don't know where Alec is, he was muttering something about wanting some more games then disappeared a while ago."
"OK," she said, accepting the cup he handed her. "Do you want to go and get a pizza later? I could really eat something, I'm starving."
He checked his watch then nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Half an hour? That will give me time to finish this paperwork for Aisha."
"How is the little pain in the ass?"
Brian sighed. "A big pain in the ass. If she wasn't my sister I think I'd probably have given up by now. She keeps doing things that are making this whole process much harder than it needs to be, but she can't seem to understand that. She's smart, but fuck me she's stubborn and bull-headed."
"Sorry to hear it," Lisa replied with a sympathetic look. Sipping her coffee she watched him as he picked up the sheaf of papers from Social Services and picked up reading them where he'd left off, making notes in the margin, then flipped to the back and yet another of the interminable series of forms he had to keep filling out.
"So what's the big problem you have?" he asked absently as he began writing.
"My own pain in the ass," she sighed. "Someone I really wish I'd never met." When he looked up her grin had come back, only with a certain level of viciousness that was unusual in her. "Mind you, I think that soon he's going to be thinking the same thing about me."
Staring, in the end Brian decided it was probably best not to ask. He was a little worried that she might actually tell him, and based on that smirk, whoever was on the other end of it was going to regret it. He didn't want to get sucked into that problem as well, he had enough of his own to deal with. And those of his damn sister as well, who seemed to go out of her way to make his life difficult.
"OK," he said mildly, going back to his paperwork.
The sound of Lisa intermittently sniggering evilly made him shiver. He was grateful when she got up and headed for her room carrying her coffee with her.
Oh, yes, someone was going to have a bad day. He just hoped it wasn't him.
Straightening up, Amy smiled slightly at the old woman in the hospital bed. Adjusting her costume where it was pinching her a little she said, "There you go, Mrs Tate, your liver is fine now."
"Thank you, young lady," the seventy-three year old wrinkled woman replied with a much bigger smile in return. "I feel better already."
"I hope you'll be out of here very soon," the brunette said, nodding politely to her. Turning to the doctor who was watching her with a slightly odd look, she added, "I think that's all for today, unless someone else has come in?"
He twitched a little, then looked down at the clipboard that he was holding, running his finger down a list, then ticking off an entry with a pen. "No, that's the whole roster. Thank you, Panacea." She started walking to the entrance to the women's ward, the doctor following. When they were out in the corridor he stopped her with a touch on her arm.
"I don't know why, but you're looking a lot happier than you have been for some time," he said in a low voice, after glancing around to make sure no one else was close enough to overhear them. "Keep it up. You deserve a break every now and then, you're in danger of working yourself to exhaustion. I've seen it happen in people a lot older and more experienced than you are. It's a hazard of our profession, even without the parahuman abilities. It's Sunday yet you've been here all afternoon. You spend more time in the hospital that any staff member and you're not even being paid to be here. That's not healthy in the long run, believe me."
Amy listened in some surprise, but nodded. "You're not the first person to say that recently," she admitted.
"Listen to them, and me, then, Amy," he said quietly. "You're a smart, decent girl, but you need to do something else. Very few people here will be at risk if you take a day off now and then. Find a hobby, go to the movies, whatever. But don't spend all your free time here or at another hospital. Dedication is one thing, obsession is something altogether different."
Studying him, Amy could see he was sincerely worried. It wasn't the first time one of the medical professionals had said something similar but for some reason, this time she listened. Ever since meeting Taylor Hebert and having the girl say something very similar although more succinct she'd been mulling it over and had begun to think there was something to it.
Coming to a decision, she nodded. "Thank you, Doctor Hernandez. I think you may be right." She checked her watch. "If there's no one needing me, I'm going to go and find something to eat, then… I don't know, maybe see a movie or something." She felt as if a weight was lifted from her mind.
He smiled. "Good. We can always call if there's an emergency that genuinely needs your abilities but hopefully that won't happen. Today at least. You know this city." She sighed with another nod. "Have some fun, take some time for yourself. I'll see you soon."
"You will," she assured him, receiving a smile back, before turning and heading for the locker room where she kept her civilian clothes, feeling unaccountably cheerful.
Having a break sounded like fun. She hadn't done that sort of thing for a long time. Too long, she was beginning to think.
When she'd changed and folded her costume into a neat pile which went into the small backpack she had, she put her coat on and left the hospital, heading towards the downtown area. It was getting dark now, being nearly half past five in the afternoon, the rush hour traffic building up as people drove home. Walking along the street she thought about recent events.
'Was that really Taylor?' she wondered, thinking back to that morning and the events at the PRT building. She was pretty sure that Director Piggot would have jumped right back up as soon as she woke and gone back to the meeting, even though she should have stopped and rested for a while. The parallels between her and the older woman struck her for a moment, making her shake her head.
The image she'd seen before Armsmaster had dismissed it, though, that was the really interesting thing. From the brief glimpse she'd had of the screens she could recall a computer graphic that seemed to be extrapolating measurements from the image itself, which looked like a still from a video. Without knowing the circumstances behind it all she had little to go on, but that was definitely a very big reptile or reptilian creature of some sort, according to the data she could remember something in excess of two hundred feet long.
Amy had a very good memory and had been puzzling over the entire thing all day. The one thing that really stood out, leaving aside the sheer preposterous size of the thing, were the eyes. She'd seen eyes like that before.
Exactly like that.
Just much smaller. The look in them was something she recognized as well, being amused, intelligent, and dangerous. How she managed to get all that from a pair of inhuman eyes with no other expression to go on she wasn't certain but it was true despite this.
She was more or less convinced that the 'sea monster' which was obviously worrying the PRT a lot, and could well be the main trigger for the stress-induced heart attacks that Director Piggot had suffered, was Taylor Hebert. Where, why, and when, she had no idea about, aside from the obvious conclusion of somewhere in deep water, and recently. From what she'd seen they were having a meeting about the situation, the presence of Dragon suggesting the Canadian Tinker was heavily involved somehow as well. Most likely being behind the video and other data, it seemed the sort of thing she'd do.
'What the hell are you doing when you're not in school, Taylor?' Amy wondered with a mix of awe, amusement, and very slight jealousy. The girl seemed to be making the most of her abilities whatever they really were.
A sudden urge to find her and somehow get the truth out of her struck Amy hard, making her sigh and push it down again. The sad truth was that she was mostly bored out of her mind and for the first time in literally years had found something truly interesting to investigate, yet at the same time basically couldn't without risking a probably very gruesome fate if she pushed too hard and fast. Neither did she want to somehow accidentally clue the PRT in on who it actually was, since they clearly didn't know or they probably wouldn't be panicking quite so much.
Piggot would have inevitably had a heart attack sooner or later from what her power had told her, most likely sooner, and it in all probability would have killed her. If that had happened at home, she'd have been dead long before anyone found her, for example. Only the fact that the PRT facility had some exceptionally competent medical professionals and enough equipment to run a major trauma center had kept her alive long enough for Amy to get to her. Not to mention a lead doctor who was all about keeping his patients alive and healthy regardless of normal procedure.
She rather liked Doctor Torres. He was a sarcastic, abrasive, abrupt, but extremely skilled man who somehow reminded her a little of who she saw in the mirror every morning.
Thinking about it, in fact, the PRT director probably owed Taylor a debt of gratitude in a weird way, not that she was ever likely to even recognize that never mind acknowledge it. Amy grinned a little at the thought.
'Hell will be having a very nasty cold snap before that ever happens,' she snickered to herself.
Wondering why Taylor seemed to be going to some trouble to make everyone think she was at least two different capes, and now apparently something out of a Lovecraft book, she stopped dead when she thought of one possible explanation. 'Fuck, she's doing it just to mess with people.' Shaking her head in amazement yet certain that was in fact a likely reason for the somewhat odd behavior, she resumed walking, a small evil grin on her lips.
That was one girl she really wanted to know better.
The sense of humor apparent really resonated with her for some reason. Amy sort of wished she could do something that amusing without being shouted at, mainly by Carol. She had to live with being snarky and sarcastic instead. That was definitely her personality anyway, but sometimes she had an almost overwhelming desire to do something completely random then laugh like an idiot about the reactions of other people. Trolling PHO forums was a poor substitute.
That said she'd had some very amusing conversations with someone else who was apparently in Brockton Bay and had a similar sense of humor, who went by the name 'AllSeeingEye'. Whoever it was liked winding people up with insightful but very unhelpful comments then sitting back and probably laughing like an idiot at the results. Amy had passed many an evening chortling with glee at the way just a few carefully chosen and not even nasty words could make dozens of people on a forum lose their shit completely. It was hysterical sometimes. She'd more than once waded in herself just to urge things along when they slowed down.
It was a silly, wasteful past-time, but it was the nearest thing she had to a hobby other than reading books and snarking at Dennis or one of his friends. The red-head could at least give as good as he got, which made her look at him with a small amount of fondness, although he never knew when to stop.
"My life is just a barrel of laughs," she sighed quietly to herself, shaking her head a little, but still glad to be at a loose end for once. Doctor Hernandez was definitely right, she needed to do something different. She'd been slowly coming to that conclusion ever since Taylor had brought the subject up. His words had been the seal on the thought.
Deciding suddenly she was in the mood for Thai, as she hadn't had it for weeks, Amy looked around tp orientate herself, and found that lost in her thoughts she'd wandered off track from where she'd been heading. A moment's consideration and she altered course to take her around the main entertainment area and back towards where she knew there was a very good Thai restaurant. A couple of minutes walking brought her close to it, until she heard a sound familiar to anyone who lived in Brockton Bay. A gunshot.
Stopping she looked around carefully, trying to work out where it had come from. The echoes made it difficult to localize. All the other pedestrians on the street were doing the same thing, most of them moving towards any cover they could find at the same time. She followed suit, estimating that it had come from the service alley on the other side of the road that led behind some office buildings and therefore moving to stand behind a bus shelter on her side, along with a dozen other people who had hastily evacuated it and gone around to where there was more cover.
She was just in time, as another shot rang out, accompanied by an unpleasantly close whine followed immediately by a solid crunch as the bullet embedded itself in the wall of the shop next to the bus stop. Amy yelped and hit the deck, almost landing under a large man who had done the same thing right next to her.
Half a dozen more shots followed in quick succession, with people shouting and screaming and generally carrying on, as whatever it was that had started down the alley escalated and spilled out onto the street. Cars slammed to a halt or did quick U-turns, accelerating away with screeching sounds from the tires. She noticed that even under the circumstances several phones were being held up from behind any cover that was large enough to conceal a person, making her almost amused despite the sudden fear of being shot. Brocktonites were very hard to put down, they were used to living under conditions that many places would consider close to a war zone at times.
A burst of automatic gunfire made her duck her head again, as the safety glass of the shelter above her shattered into innumerable tiny pieces which rained down over them all. A couple of the people behind the now-dubious safety of the lower metal part of the shelter started either praying or crying, she couldn't make it out over the noise.
Risking a quick look she saw that it seemed to be a couple of ABB gang members who were having an enthusiastic disagreement with three obvious E88 gangers, for whatever stupid reason they had mutually decided on. Heedless of the pedestrians in the area, the E88 people opened fire again, a couple of machine pistols of some sort and a large handgun all firing at once and causing a horrendous amount of noise. More stray rounds whizzed overhead, leaving pockmarks on the walls and holes in the windows of the various establishments in range.
"Fuck, this isn't good," she mumbled, fumbling for her phone. Calling Vicky seemed like the best idea but it would take her some time to get here. Two cops who had been walking past were crouched down behind a car fifty feet away, one of them trying to get a good shot on the gangers while the other one seemed to be calling for backup. Again, it seemed unlikely to arrive instantly, although she could now hear sirens approaching.
"Where the hell are all the heroes?" Amy muttered, looking around. No signs of either Protectorate or Wards was visible.
Moments later, one of the E88 men, a very tall dark haired guy holding a huge pistol, yelped in pain and fell over. Everyone stared as a by-now familiar form stood up from behind him, having arrived vertically by apparently dropping from the roof of the four story building next to them.
Saurial looked around as the entire street paused, staring, then she moved, rapidly enough that she was difficult to follow in the twilight. One of the two ABB gangers was abruptly tightly wrapped in a fine net of some sort that appeared from nowhere and was flung accurately at him, binding him from head to foot and leaving him unable to move. The other one turned to run then dropped when the lizard girl pounced, executing some sort of martial arts hold that looked both painful and close to impossible, the man instantly unconscious.
One of the remaining pair of E88 legged it while his friend opened fire, either on Saurial or the ABB guy she was holding, Amy couldn't decide which. The cape shielded her captive with her body, the bullets pinging off her armor and even her head, then with her free hand made a quick gesture which caused the gunman to scream and drop his weapon, a viciously sharp knife stuck in the barrel in an amazingly accurate throw. Before he could recover she'd put the man she was holding down and covered the fifty feet to the shocked gang member so fast he barely had time to react.
He was down seconds later, a carefully calculated kick to the side of the head showing how Saurial had run out of patience with him and wasn't being nice any more. Looking around, the reptilian woman inspected her four captives, then moved to restrain them all. She glanced over to Amy and seemed to smile a little, before turning away to talk to the two cops who had gone over to her when the last of the gang members was disarmed, holding a short conversation. They nodded, then she turned and zipped up the side of the building next to her, having apparently spent a moment sniffing the air.
Staring in shock, Amy slowly stood up, then looked around at the other people on the street who were doing the same thing, many of them holding phones and a lot seeming both impressed and pleased.
"That girl is pretty darn impressive," the large man next to her commented as he pushed himself to his feet. "Are you alright, miss?"
"I'm fine, thanks," she replied absently, scanning the crowd for any injured people. Spotting someone who was holding a hand to what looked like a shrapnel wound on their face, she excused herself and went over. More sirens were approaching fast as three police cars and an ambulance came around the corner two blocks away, weaving around the stopped cars.
"Excuse me, sir, can you move your hand for me please?" she said briskly when she was standing next to the stunned-looking middle aged man, who was bleeding quite heavily from a nasty cut to the cheek just below his eye. "I'm Panacea and if you give permission, I can heal this for you."
He looked her up and down for a moment. "You don't look like her. Where's your costume?"
"I'm off duty," she replied with a small smile. Pulling her backpack off her shoulder she unzipped it, pulling a little of her costume, the hood clearly visible, out of it. "But I really am Panacea."
"Oh." He looked like he was in shock. "OK. Thank you."
Putting the backpack on the ground she put her hand on his forehead, doing a quick assessment. Aside from the cut, and all the various symptoms of shock, he was basically fine, so she fixed the damage and tweaked his blood pressure and adrenaline levels a little to calm him down and make him less stressed. Wobbling for a moment, he perked up with a smile, lowering his hand then gently feeling his face with the other one.
"Thank you very much, Panacea," he said gratefully.
"You're welcome," she replied, already looking around for any other casualties.
A scream in the distance, made faint after echoing around the buildings, caused everyone to look for a moment.
"I bet Saurial got the last one," the man chuckled.
"I wouldn't be surprised," she laughed.
Noticing another pedestrian who was slumped against a phone box, pale faced and holding her shoulder, she excused herself and headed over, pulling out her hood and putting it on although she didn't bother with the rest of the costume. Shortly she was repairing a dislocated shoulder.
Ten minutes later she'd fixed everyone she could see who was injured, the ambulance crew helping find casualties, having been both surprised and grateful to find Panacea already on site even if she wasn't wearing all her costume.
The sound of a man yelling in fear made everyone look up, seeing Saurial more or less sliding down the side of another building with the missing gang member over her shoulder, wrapped in another net and whimpering in fear. She landed easily then went over to the cops, handing her captive to them and spending some time talking to one of them. The officer, whom Amy vaguely recognized as someone she'd met in passing a few times at the hospital, shook the lizard-girl's hand with a smile that suggested he knew and liked her.
Nodding to the other cops who mostly smiled back, one or two of them waving, she turned around and headed towards Amy, stopping a couple of times when someone asked for an autograph. Amy waited, studying this alternate form of Taylor with great interest.
"Hello, Panacea, it's nice to meet you," Saurial said politely, holding out her hand, the end of her long tail twitching back and forth a little. There was the faintest trace of amusement in her voice, which was completely different from Taylor's own, with an odd, very faint hissing overtone that was a little like an accent. She'd never have guessed without already knowing that this was one of her fellow school students. Taking the offered hand, she shook it, her power telling her that this was indeed Taylor, the wildly complex and totally alien genetics matching as far as she could see even though she could make no sense of it at all, the data coming from her ability nearly overwhelming. Yet again, the urge to simply study it swelled in her mind but she pushed it aside, releasing the other girl's hand again.
"Were you in the area or were you called to help?" the lizard-like cape asked curiously.
"I was just taking some time to myself before heading home," Amy replied, smiling a little. "Someone I met recently suggested I needed to relax more and not work all the time. I've been thinking about it and I think she was right." Saurial nodded understandingly, what Amy could swear was a small smile twitching the edges of her reptilian mouth. "One of the doctors at the hospital I was working at this afternoon said much the same thing. I decided I'd take the advice and go for a meal then find something interesting to do afterwards. I haven't decided what yet." She looked around at the scene, half the street cordoned off with crime scene tape and more than a dozen emergency responders wandering around amid blue and red flashing lights while dozens of people took photos and told each other stories about what they'd seen.
It wasn't a particularly unusual sight in Brockton Bay, unfortunately.
"This wasn't quite what I had in mind, though," she smiled, a little darkly, shrugging for a moment. Saurial followed her gaze then sighed softly.
"No, I imagine not. But it seems to happen a lot around here. I've only been on the scene for a month but so far this is the, hmm, sixteenth gang-involved crime I've become involved in? Something like that." The lizard-girl looked around again. "I somehow doubt most places are quite this… enthusiastic."
"Brockton Bay nightlife does tend towards the excessive," Amy chuckled.
"I'd have to agree."
The healer considered the other cape, then came to a decision, deciding it was worth the risk. "Do you like Thai food?" she asked. Saurial cocked her head a little, then nodded with her own version of a smile.
"As it happens I do. Why?"
"I'm starving after all of this and I know a very good Thai restaurant about three blocks away. That's where I was headed when those idiots started shooting the place up. Want to join me and talk?"
Saurial studied her for several seconds, before nodding once more. "Why not? I have plans later tonight but I'm at a loose end for the next couple of hours or so. I could eat."
Amy smiled, feeling unusually cheerful. While she knew she couldn't say anything that might give the game away, she thought it would be nice to have someone other than her sister, the various wards, or the rest of her family to talk to for once. With a slight shock she realized that was practically all the people she actually knew outside the medical work, very few of whom were really friends. While she respected them and as far as she knew, they her, almost everyone she worked with was only an acquaintance she got on with reasonably well but never really talked to about matters other than hospital work.
In fact, now that she thought about it… Did she actually have any friends outside family, a few capes, and one or two people Vicky had introduced her to?
It was with a certain amount of sudden worry that she realized the answer was probably no.
Saurial was watching her think, and after a moment leaned a little closer, speaking in a voice low enough that no one else could hear above the street noise. "Everyone needs friends sooner or later, Amy. Trust me, I know. I'm game if you are."
'How the hell does she know?' Amy thought with slight shock. Taylor was nothing if not observant, she was sure of that, but this seemed a stretch. The girl subtly tapped her nose.
"You be amazed what this tells me," she added quietly. "Among other things."
More loudly, she said, "I could just go for panang gai with jasmine rice."
A little taken aback, Amy nodded after a couple of seconds. "I like panang nua myself."
"Also a good choice. Are you wearing that hood to the restaurant, or what?" Saurial looked amused. Amy sighed, feeling that she might regret this after all, but pulled her partial costume off and tucked it away in her backpack. "Casual it is, then," the heroic lizard snickered, looking down at herself. Her armor suddenly changed into a different outfit, the breastplate, arm and leg protectors, and shoulder guards disappearing while the skirt part became a similar looking thing made of some leather-like substance, in dark blue. On her torso she was wearing a similar material in the form of a short-sleeved coat, which Amy was instantly jealous of. It was cut to fit the somewhat inhuman proportions of the other woman, but looked extremely well made and expensive. She detached the camera she always wore on the job from the side of her head and tucked it away in her pocket.
Saurial grinned at her. "Is this OK for going for a meal with a friend?" Amy nodded, raising her eyebrows. "Good." After a moment's thought, the cape was holding a black fedora, which she put on her head at a jaunty angle, looking pleased, then took her sunglasses off and made them disappear, revealing her startling yellowish slit-pupilled eyes. "No one will recognize me now. I'm in disguise," she snickered, making Amy stare, then burst out laughing.
"You're completely nuts, aren't you?" she asked rhetorically.
Saurial shrugged with a smirk. "Some people tell me that, I have to admit. I like to think of it as differently sane. Normal is boring."
Giggling internally at the absurdity of the situation, Amy shook her head, then waved in the direction of the restaurant before she started walking, the lizard-girl falling into step beside her. People who had been watching from a discreet distance and taking photos and video moved aside for them, weirdly enough apparently understanding that the girl was now off duty and wanted to be left alone. Most of the phones disappeared surprisingly fast.
"So, Miss Dallon, what do you do for fun?" the alter-ego of Taylor Hebert asked cheerfully as they walked.
Amy had a feeling that this was going to be a meal she never forgot.