Monday, February 7, 2011

Danny put his fork down, leaning back with a contented sigh. "Thank you, Taylor, that was very good."

"You're welcome, Dad," she smiled, finishing the last of her orange juice. Looking at the clock on the microwave, she added, "I'll have to go in a minute or I'll be late for school. I slept in a little."

"I'm not surprised, you got in very late last night. It must have been about four in the morning."

She yawned a little. "About that, yes. It was a long weekend but I got a lot done. I'm pretty happy about it."

"How did the channel clearing go?" he asked curiously.

His daughter smiled widely. "Really well, in fact. We spent about three and a half, maybe four hours working on it, until the currents dropped too much to be useful. It worked pretty effectively using Varga's idea. We ended up with a blade with a lot of holes in it, which seemed to stir things up a lot and make it more effective. There's a little left to finish at the tanker end but I'll do that when we move the thing. The rest of the channel is clear all the way to the docks. They could do with being dug out as well, I can do that later."

"Amazing. And very good work. How deep is the channel?" he asked, smiling.

"Maybe… two hundred feet at high tide? Something like that. We got it down to the rock in a couple of places. It's not actually very level, some bits are a good three hundred feet deep, while others are only a little more than half that. You can tell where someone blasted it deeper in the shallow parts but they didn't do a very good job."

"It was done a long time ago, sometime around the late eighteen hundreds, or very early nineteen hundreds," he replied, remembering the history of the bay. "Before the first world war. They didn't have very good diving capabilities then and I think they mainly dropped explosives over the side then backed off and set them off. I can well believe they'd miss places."

"I can clear it up easily but it's going to make a lot of noise," she told him, rising and picking up their plates. "Probably best to wait until Kaiju is known to everyone. I can spend some time finding all the wrecks and clearing them away as well if the Mayor wants. That's easy enough."

"We'll have the neatest sea floor in the US at this rate," he chuckled, making her giggle.

"If it's worth doing it's worth overdoing, I think," she laughed.

"An interesting motto that would explain a lot." Danny grinned at the girl as she snickered. "I've nearly finished the proposal, I'll call the Mayor's office later today and make an appointment. What do you want me to tell him about introducing Kaiju to him?"

"Anything that you need to, Dad," she told him. "I can make time for this, it's important to you and everyone else."

"Thank you," he smiled.

Finishing with clearing the dishes away, she turned to him and leaned on the sink. "Dad? You remember I told you about Amy Dallon? How she worked out I was Saurial?" She sounded slightly worried.

"Yes, I do," he replied. "I thought you had a… calm talk… with her about that." He was somewhat amused, the description his daughter had given him complete with demonstration was the sort of thing that would stick with you.

"I met her last night, or rather, Saurial did." She explained briefly what she'd been up to with the healer. Danny shook his head in wonder when she finished.

"That girl sounds both interesting and worrying. And by the sound of it needs a friend."

"That's what I thought. Would you mind if I invited her here for a meal sometime soon? Later in the week, probably. She'd figured out a lot of it already and is amazingly curious about me. I thought I'd answer some of the questions she has and find out more about her as well. I'm a little worried about her. She could be… well, if she goes off the rails, she's dangerous. I don't want to see that happen, both because I like her, and because of the trouble it would cause."

Thinking about it for a moment, Danny nodded. "I don't mind. I'd like to meet her myself. I think you should be a little careful about how much you open up at first, sound her out a bit, but I can't see a massive problem with it."

"Thanks. I'll let you know when after I've asked her. I'll probably make that stir fry thing Varga taught me for it."

"Great, I like that one." He smiled as she pushed off from the sink, standing erect. Another glance at the microwave and she looked annoyed.

"I really have to run now, Dad. See you later." She left the kitchen at high speed.

"Bye, Taylor," he smiled to an empty room, hearing the back door close moments later. Shaking his head a little he went to the sink to wash the dishes, before going to work.

Dennis poked Chris. "Here she comes," he hissed, making his friend turn and look to see Amy Dallon and her sister Vicky walking towards the school doors. Carlos turned as well, while Dean was already approaching his girlfriend.

All three of them studied the brunette, who had a rather different expression than the usual, somewhat blank and slightly annoyed one she wore most of the time. Right now she looked like she was remembering something interesting and finding the way quite a lot of people were staring at her somewhat amusing, a small slightly evil smile on her lips. Vicky, on the other hand, was looking bemused, glancing at the shorter girl every now and then as if she was trying to work something out, something that caused her a lot of problems.

"Hello, guys," Amy said as she and Vicky arrived. They all exchanged glances, then looked back at her. She smirked. It was a real smirk, not the somewhat sarcastic look she so often gave people, especially ones she seemed to think were idiots. Which was most of them.

"Hi, Amy," Dennis began, a smile forming on his lips. "I read something really interesting on PHO." Amy's smirk widened but she waited for him to continue, while Vicky looked worried. Dean covered his eyes.

"Do tell," she replied, when he didn't say anything more. "What was it?"

"Well, there's a rumor going around that you shared a nice intimate dinner with… another girl." He thought for a moment, then added with a smirk of his own, "Female, anyway."

"Hmm. People talk a lot, don't they?" she replied evenly.

"They do," he nodded, while the others listened. "And afterwards, they say, her sister gave you a ride. So to speak."

"Ah."

"Yep. A long, hard ride that must have left you panting for breath." Dennis' grin widened. "Rumor has it that you reached heights unlike anything you've encountered before. Someone even said you were screaming with ecstasy."

Carlos sighed, while Chris was biting his lip. Vicky's eyes widened. Dean shook his head in despair.

Amy snickered.

"Oh, you have no idea, Dennis," she replied softly. "Feeling that power between your legs… Up and down, up and down, over and over and over again, until you can hardly breathe because you're so excited..." She leaned a little closer and lowered her voice. "So fast, and it went on for so long… But it was all worth it. I'm looking forward to the next time. It was all a blur, but the first time is always a shock, I've always heard. The second time you can relax and enjoy yourself, you're not so tense because you know what's coming and you're looking forward to it with anticipation..."

Dennis stared, while Chris had bitten his lip hard enough to draw blood. Dean was holding Vicky, the blonde's shoulders shaking now and her head buried in his chest, while Carlos gaped.

Amy's evil smirk held for a moment, until Dennis broke down, roaring with laughter, at which point she did the same, both of them almost collapsing on each other. All around them, the various other students who had fallen silent to listen with wide eyes just stared with differing looks ranging from amusement to shock.

"Oh, God, never change, Amy," Dennis chortled, hugging the healer, who grinned at him. "Never change."

"Not planning on it," she giggled, pushing herself upright again as he released her.

"How the hell did you manage to persuade Raptaur to give you a ride like that?" Chris asked when he recovered from nearly choking with laughter. She looked at him, before reaching out and touching his face, the cut lip disappearing without a trace in a second or two. "Thanks," he added.

"It was her idea, actually. Saurial and I met at that gun battle on Addison Street last night, I was just walking along minding my own business when the ABB and E88 kicked off for whatever stupid reason they had," she explained, still looking amused and pleased. "She shut it down, I healed a few relatively minor injuries, then she came over and introduced herself. We got to talking and in the end because I'd been heading for the Thai restaurant a couple of blocks from there I invited her along with me. She said yes, we had a good meal and spent a couple of hours talking about things."

She smiled less evilly, now looking like she was remembering something amusing. "She's a really funny person and both very smart and very interesting. We had a lot of fun. The restaurant seemed a bit shocked but managed to deal with it pretty well. Afterward, when I said I needed to get home, she suggested her sister could help." Amy shrugged. "I was a little surprised at first but they talked me into it. It was a hell of a trip, Raptaur can run about eighty miles an hour, and buildings and things don't seem to be much of an obstruction."

"Mom nearly had an aneurysm when Ames turned up at the door with Raptaur," Vicky remarked, recovering from a mostly silent giggle-fit. "So did I. She's terrifying. But Ames says she's cool and won't eat us and if I can't believe my sister, who can I believe?"

"Even so, respect, Amy," Dennis said, holding up his fist, which the brunette bumped with her own, a smile on her face that he found a very pleasant change from her normal expression. "I don't know if you could persuade me to do that."

"It was amazing, like the best roller coaster you've ever heard of," she laughed. "Honestly, it was scary as shit for the first minute or so but she made a saddle that I couldn't have fallen out of if I wanted to. When I knew I wasn't going to get hurt, it was just a hell of a lot of fun. She can go straight up the side of a building faster than most people can drive in the city. I swear we went right past Max Anders gaping out the window in his office at Medhall." She chuckled at the memory. "And passing cars on the freeway… That was amazing. Some of the expressions we got! Especially when Raptaur stopped at a traffic light that was red and just politely waited."

Dennis howled with laughter again. "That would explain some of the photos on PHO," he gasped. "And the videos. The thread with you two and Saurial in is already over fifteen hundred pages long and some of the comments are hysterical. More conspiracy theories than you could shake a stick at. One guy is convinced that the end times are coming if not already here and Saurial is a demon from hell."

"I wonder what the PRT thinks about it?" Chris mused. Amy shrugged with a grin.

"No idea, and I don't care, it's nothing to do with them."

"So you actually met both Saurial and Raptaur at once?" Carlos asked with a curious expression.

Amy looked at him, thought for a second, then nodded, smiling. "I did, actually."

"Did you meet anyone else from… The Family?" Dennis lowered the pitch of his voice on the last couple of words and made little finger quotes. "As they're becoming known on PHO. People are acting like we have a reptilian mafia living in the bay."

Staring at him for a moment, Amy giggled. "Oh, that's wonderful. I wonder if Saurial knows? She'd laugh like an idiot." Shaking her head, she said, "No, only those two. I don't know if there actually are any more."

The first bell rang, prompting a drift of students towards the door, several dozen of them who had been listening to them talk with various expressions of interest, quite a number making notes on their phones and probably already posting to PHO. Dennis was pretty sure that the theories there were going to get even weirder. Laughing to himself he followed the other inside, noticing as he went that the new girl, the brunette with the long curly hair, Hebert or something, was nearby wearing a smile of her own. He nodded to her with a grin, getting one back, before she headed off in a different direction.

Colin watched the image build up on the monitor as the high-resolution sidescan sonar drone that was criss-crossing the bay in the area the passive microphones had detected something odd happening at the previous night transmitted data to the computer. Each swath added another hundred foot wide strip of the sea floor to the picture, the quality good enough that it looked like a photo.

Dragon had brought the drone down in a remotely-piloted aircraft overnight without mentioning it to him, then told him when it arrived. While he still wished that they could just forget about the whole sea-monster thing, especially the part where it started humming sea shanties in deep resonant notes, he reluctantly admitted that they had to investigate.

He was glad she'd waited until it had gone, though.

Standing beside him, Dragon watched the monitor as well. They'd initially tried the camera on the probe but the water was, for some reason, much more than normally full of fine particles of mud and silt, which rendered the visual inspection nearly useless. All they could see was a milky soup in the lights until the machine was only a couple of feet from the sea bed, which wasn't enough to be at all useful.

Now, in the sonar data, they could see the cause of this.

"Good grief," Dragon said quietly. "It dredged the shipping canal. This depth profile is completely different to the existing one in the charts. Look, the channel is clear all the way to the dock area from nearly at the wrecked tanker."

"Why on earth would a sea serpent clear out a silted up channel?" he asked, totally confused. "And for that matter, how?"

"I don't know, and I don't know." She shook her armored head slowly. "This doesn't make any sense."

"What's that?" he asked suddenly, pointing to a series of marks in the silt to one side of the channel, which disappeared off the side of the scanned image. They were much too regular to be natural, especially since they were in silt that seemed to have been redistributed from the cleared-out channel in the bay.

Leaning closer she inspected the screen, then replied, "I don't know. I'll send the probe to do another sweep there."

They waited as the machine swung around and headed back, building up the rest of the image over the marks. When it was done, they stared at the result, then looked at each other.

"Why," Armsmaster asked very carefully, "is there a hundred foot tall neatly calligraphed letter K written into the mud on the bottom of the bay?"

Dragon looked at him then the monitor again in silence for several seconds. "It signed its work?" she finally asked helplessly, shrugging a little. "I have no fucking idea, Colin. This is just getting surreal."

Putting his head in his hands he sighed heavily. "I have enough trouble with people without adding sea monsters with a peculiar sense of humor to it," he moaned. "Why can't life be more rational?"

Dragon hesitantly patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, both of them looking back to the monitor in silence.

"I swear things used to make more sense," he finally said, saving the image then turning the system off. "I have work to do. We're ready for the first weapon simulation."

"OK, Colin," his best friend replied, apparently as happy as he was to forget about whatever the hell was going on out there. As long as it wasn't a threat, he just didn't care anymore. "Let's run it and see what happens."

Grateful for the change in subject he started typing on his keyboard, setting up the first run.

"Certainly, Mayor," Danny said, reaching out and adjusting the position of the small piece of polished teak sitting on his desk next to his clock, the brass plaque on it catching the light coming in through the window behind him. "Tomorrow at one. I can make that. I think you'll be very pleased with the results. It's looking very plausible indeed." He listened for a moment, then smiled.

"Of course. I was expecting that. I'll make the arrangements. Thank you, Mayor."

Putting the phone down a moment later he got up and walked to the window, looking down at the DWU yard where quite a few people were in the process of using Taylor's replacement fencing material to repair a hundred yard stretch of the main fence. They'd fixed some smaller damaged areas that had worn out and were now working on the main part of the job.

Smiling to himself, contented with the way things were proceeding, he wished for a moment that his wife was still around to see how well their daughter had grown up, before sighing slightly sadly and going back to work.

Picking her moment carefully, Taylor got up from the lunch table she was sharing with Lucy and Mandy as usual, the two talking to Eric who was sitting at the next one along, and headed to intercept Amy who was apparently getting another helping of the admittedly pretty good chili. She picked up a bowl and stepped up behind the healer, who looked at her for a moment with a small smile.

"Hello, Taylor," Amy said calmly.

"Hello, Amy," she replied likewise.

Both of them could see the other one was suppressing a grin.

"I wanted to invite you to dinner at my house later in the week," Taylor said in a low voice, as Amy scooped more chili out of the large bowl of it sitting on the hotplate. She put some rice in her own bowl, then took the large spoon the other brunette handed her. "Wednesday or Thursday would probably be best. I thought we could talk."

Glancing at her for a moment, Amy thought, then nodded. "Sure, I'd like that." She looked at her sister for a second or two, the blonde currently involved with chattering to Dean, Carlos, and two of her friends simultaneously. "I'll have to come up with a reason we know each other, though."

"I helped you with that nose thing and we got to talking," Taylor suggested, filling her bowl. "You've decided you need more friends. Seems simple enough."

"That should work," Amy agreed as she smiled slightly. "Hey, you're good with math, right? I've heard people saying something about you already being top of your class."

"I'm pretty good with it, yes," Taylor admitted.

"Great. I'm not as good as I should be. If anyone pushes, you're helping me with it, OK?"

"A cunning plan," Taylor smirked. "Sure. I'll even help you for real if you want."

"That would actually be helpful," Amy chuckled. "See you later."

"Later, Amy." The Dallon girl headed back to her table, picking up a couple of bread rolls on the way, leaving Taylor to do the same then go back to her friends, who were still talking.

Emily sighed happily, leaning back in her chair and stretching without pain, finding it remarkably pleasing after all these years. She'd never admit it even at gunpoint, but she was actually sort of grateful to Doctor Torres for forcing this on her.

Glancing to the side, she smiled a little, then picked up the very small glass of gin that was sitting there, taking a tiny appreciative sip. "Oh, hell, I've missed this," she mumbled, sipping again. "Fucking doctors."

Turning on the TV with the remote she watched the national news for a while, seeing nothing much that was particularly different from yesterday. Changing channel to the local news she listened for a moment, sitting up and paying more attention when she saw a story on a gang-related shooting incident late the previous night. This wasn't, unfortunately, a very uncommon thing in this city.

There were several short video clips, apparently shot by passers-by, which she watched with interest.

The appearance of Saurial wasn't too much of a shock, the lizard-girl did seem to specialize in appearing out of nowhere and dealing with gang members in a horrifyingly direct and efficient manner. She seemed to be expanding her weapon repertoire as time went on as well. The net was new.

So was the knife in the gun barrel, which was also an appallingly good shot. Emily flinched a little at the way the metallic blade sank into the steel barrel to the hilt like it was going into a stick of butter. If that had actually hit the gang member holding the weapon it would have gone all the way through him without any effort at all.

'I hope she was actually aiming at the gun,' she thought grimly. It seemed likely, the girl seemed to dislike causing injury to a level she'd seldom seen in a cape. Although her patience seemed to have a limit as shown by the kick that took the gunman down with one shot. She winced in reluctant sympathy.

Another clip showed Saurial talking to Panacea, who for some reason was only wearing the hood of her costume, then both girls walking off together. Emily frowned, taking another sip of gin. 'I didn't know they knew each other,' she mused thoughtfully. 'That's… interesting.' The healer didn't seem perturbed by the presence of the reptilian girl which was a little unusual, suggesting previous contact.

When the news ended, going to local sport, she turned the TV off again and picked up her tablet from the table next to the now empty glass of gin, settling back to catch up on the various idiots on PHO. She didn't read it all that often but sometimes indulged just so she was abreast of the various cape rumors, some of which turned out in the end to be true.

A few minutes later, she gaped at a video showing Panacea in full costume sitting on top of Raptaur, the huge reptilian woman waiting patiently at a red light, obviously videoed from a nearby car. When the light changed the lizard-like creature accelerated away with a speed that was breathtaking, the girl sitting on her back in an odd sort of saddle yelping in surprise and excitement while holding on, lowering her body to reduce air resistance.

Going back through the thread that this video was in, which had been linked from a different one, Emily found the beginning and started reading, wondering what the hell was going on out there.

Colin winced a little, watching the simulated weapon animation as it fired, the recoil throwing the entire multi-ton device into the air and over a mile away from where it had been stationed. The level of destruction in front of it was unbelievable, far exceeding his expectations, but the way the device itself left the scene in the other direction with alacrity posed a significant problem.

"Ouch." Dragon shook her head. "That would be difficult."

"Yes," he sighed. "Perhaps some form of inertial canceler?"

"We could leave the barrel open at both ends and put the charge in the middle," she suggested with a wry tone. "Fire identical projectiles out both ends. That would cancel the recoil nicely."

"At the cost of even more destruction," he pointed out seriously. She sighed a little.

"Joke, Colin."

"Oh." He made a note. "Even so, it's not practical."

"Not really, no." They thought for a while. "An extremely heavy gun carriage, perhaps?"

"It would need to be so massive that it would make rapidly aiming the device impossible," he replied immediately. "In which case Clockblocker's power would be more useful."

"An inertial cancellation effect large enough to damp out that much recoil is difficult," she said with a nod. "Not impossible, I suppose. I'll bring up some of the designs I have on file and we can see if any of them look promising. Reset the sim and run it again, let's see how we can affect it."

"All right," he agreed, pulling the keyboard closer.

"Holy shit."

Randall turned to look at Kevin, who was staring at his computer with both eyebrows as high as they'd go.

"What?" he asked curiously. His friend waved him over, so he put his controller down and got up, moving to where he could see the screen. Leet replayed the video.

"Holy shit."

"I know, right? That's amazing." Kevin grinned as they watched Panacea and Raptaur zoom away out of camera range at what must have been over seventy miles an hour. "I wonder how the hell Panacea of all people ended up riding Raptaur? That's just nuts."

"She seems to be having fun as far as I can see, based on that insane grin," Randall chuckled, reaching over his friend's shoulder and replaying the video with a click of the mouse.

"Wouldn't you? I'm incredibly jealous." Kevin laughed, shaking his head in wonder. "I really want to get her involved in one of our things somehow."

"That… might not be quite as impossible as I thought the first time you said it," Randall replied thoughtfully, stepping back and leaning on one of the various machines lying around the room, some sort of power generation thing Leet had never got around to finishing. His friend turned his chair around and studied him curiously.

"Meaning?"

"Well, I think we're both pretty sure that Raptaur and Saurial are the same person, right?"

Kevin nodded.

"And we're also pretty sure that they're both Danny Hebert's daughter."

Another nod.

"OK. Based on that, and what we saw a couple of days ago, that means she's one hell of a Changer, a Brute like I've never even heard of before, some weird sort of Shaker, and probably a Thinker as well, using PRT ratings. Really impressive. Looking at the forums, people are convinced that there is at least one more, much bigger, reptilian thing out there in the bay. If they're actually right that's also probably this Hebert girl. Which means she's capable of..." He stopped and shrugged a little.

"I'm not sure what her limits would be. An eighty-foot tall thing that can pick up ships and can casually push that fucking huge tanker around sounds ridiculous, but weird things happen around here. Maybe she really can."

"OK." Leet thought for a while, then nodded slowly. "It all sounds like it fits what we know or suspect. So what?"

"So, personally I think that means she's got an… interesting… sense of humor. She's carefully making people believe that there are several reptilian capes wandering around, or even aliens, based on what I've seen on PHO. No way that's an accident. She's doing it on purpose, probably partly to protect her father, which is a very neat solution, but at least partly for shits and giggles."

Kevin snickered. "That, I like. A girl after my own heart."

Grinning, Randall nodded. "Anyway, it seems likely to me that she's got some interesting abilities as a Changer which I suspect we've only seen the tip of so far. And a strange sense of humor which likes trolling people. So, just maybe, if we ask nicely and don't actually do anything too illegal, she'd be up for a new identity which would help us with something… amusing. It wouldn't be linked back to either Saurial or Raptaur except as part of this mythical lizard family, and no one expect you to answer for what your other family members do, if they're being reasonable."

He grinned again. "You know, the black lizard of the family. Likes breaking rules, a bit of a tearaway."

Staring at him for some seconds, Leet broke down in laughter.

"Oh, god, that's brilliant," he snickered after some time, wiping his eyes. "You really thinks she'd be up for it?"

"Probably, yes," Randall replied. "We'd have to think it through extremely carefully first, then ask very politely. I seriously wouldn't want to imply in any way at all that we were a threat to her, or more likely to her father. If she's anything like him, that would end very quickly and very badly. The Heberts look after their own."

Kevin paled a little. "Ah. Yes, good point. What we saw the other day… I wouldn't want that looking for us with blood in her eye."

"Neither would I. So approaching her would have to be extremely delicate. I mean, we're pretty sure who it is, but it's breaking the Rules kind of badly. I'm going to have to think about it to work out how to bring it up without getting a javelin up the ass in response."

Kevin laughed and winced at the same time, shifting on his chair. "No, that would be bad."

"Fairly," his friend chuckled. "Luckily, I got the impression that she actually sort of likes us, and isn't actually too worried about us being 'villains', which is kind of odd but something I can respect. She seems to make up her own mind, not believe the stereotypes."

"Smart, you mean."

"Yes, most likely very. I think if we approach it right, she'd at least listen."

"It's worth a try." Kevin grinned at his friend. "Can you imagine Armsmasters' face?"

"I can. That's why I really want to do this," Randall chortled. "Let's come up with a good plan, then see if we can persuade her to help."

They smirked at each other before starting a brainstorming session that would go on until the wee hours.

Colin shivered, making Dragon who was watching as he ran the simulation yet again ask, "Are you cold?"

"No," he replied, looking around. "I just got a sudden sense of foreboding." He inspected the lab carefully, looking for something amiss, but finally shrugged. "Must be my imagination. I've been having trouble with it since the Atlantic encounter."

"It's almost certainly miles away by now, Colin," his friend chuckled. "Don't worry."

Nodding, he reset the simulation once more, changing some of the parameters.

Dragon was probably right after all. She normally was.