Hearing a knock on the rear door, Amy quickly left her workroom, locking the door on the way, and headed across the floor to the back of the building. Opening the door a crack she looked out, one hand on her baton in her pocket. Taylor in her Raptaur aspect met her gaze and smiled.

"It's just me, Amy, and a friend."

Standing aside, Amy opened the door, admitting her friend, who had sitting on her back a girl dressed in military-style black overalls with a webbing vest over it. This new arrival had a large black backpack on her own back and a high-tech gas-mask on her face and was cradling her right arm in a way that showed the healer that it was almost certainly broken. Her blonde hair was coming loose from the bun it had been put into, under a woolen cap, also in black.

Overall she looked like a mercenary who had had a bad day.

Taylor was carrying a medium sized dog, covered in some sort of slime, with a missing eye which looked like an old injury. The dog seemed very tired but fairly happy, looking around the place with interest as it lay in her arms.

"What the hell?" Amy looked at her friend and her passengers, confused. "Who are these guys? Where did you find them?"

"The girl is Tattletale of the Undersiders, and this is her team-mate Bitch's dog Angelica," Taylor said, pushing the door closed with her tail and putting the dog down at the same time. The animal looked around, then moved a few feet away and lay down with a sigh, before slowly starting to clean its fur. "Lung was having an argument with them. I stopped it."

"Lung!?" Amy's voice was a quiet shriek. "What the fuck is going on?"

"I'm still not entirely sure," Taylor replied, heading towards the table. When she reached them she lowered herself to the floor, allowing the girl on her back to get off, which she did, then slumped into one of the chairs with a grunt of pain, the backpack she was wearing stopping her leaning back. "He was in a very bad mood indeed. I had to introduce him to Kaiju."

Amy stared, then burst out laughing for several seconds. "Oh, my god. How did he take it?"

"He seemed fairly impressed," Taylor replied dryly. "We came to an arrangement. He left and won't come back, and I didn't eat him."

"You threatened to eat Lung?" Amy gasped, laughing harder. "I wish I'd seen that."

"I recorded it, I'll show you later," her friend said in a low voice, leaning towards her and putting a finger to her lips, nodding towards Tattletale who was staring at the floor and seemed on the verge of passing out. She clearly wasn't listening to them. Changing back to Saurial, Taylor indicated the blonde girl. "Can you fix her up before she passes out?"

Nodding, Amy moved over to stand beside the girl, who looked up after a minute, her gas mask obscuring her features but letting Amy see her eyes looked dazed. "I'm Panacea. Do you mind if I heal you?" she asked. It took several seconds for the girl to shake her head. Shock was clearly setting in. Wondering what had happened, Amy put her hand on the girl's exposed neck and concentrated.

While she worked on the broken arm, and what turned out to be a severely bruised kidney and spleen, she asked absently, "Is that what all the noise outside was? I could barely hear it, it sounded like fireworks."

"It was pretty fucking loud outside," Taylor remarked, watching with interest. "Grenades, automatic gunfire, all sorts of things. There must have been half the ABB running around in the north end of the Docks shooting the fuck out of the place."

"If Lung was out there, Oni Lee probably was as well."

"I didn't see him, only Lung," Taylor shrugged. "He set fire to some of the really old falling down wooden warehouses. They'll probably burn themselves out without spreading, it's pretty damp out, but I'll go and make sure it's safe in a minute. How is she?"

"Exhausted, in shock, and she had several internal injuries as well as the arm," Amy replied. "Did she get thrown through a wall or something?"

"Yes," the blonde replied with a deep sigh. She reached up and peeled her gas-mask off, dropping it on the table. Under it she was wearing a domino mask which still obscured her face reasonably well. There were bags under her eyes and her skin was pale and clammy. "Exactly that. Then nearly set on fire."

"How the hell did you get Lung after you?" Amy asked curiously, putting her hand on the girl again and fiddling with her a little to reduce the shock symptoms and give her a general tune-up. Tattletale seemed a little perkier afterwards. "Can you get me a few onions?" she asked over her shoulder. Taylor nodded, unlocking the workroom and disappearing inside for a moment, then coming back with several vegetables in her hands. She handed one to Amy. "I need some biomass, she's undernourished now since I burned up a lot of her fat reserves," she explained, the onion quickly disappearing in her grasp. She repeated the feat with three more, until she was satisfied.

Tattletale had more color in her cheeks and looked a lot better, although still very tired. "I don't want to interfere any more with your body," Amy told her. "You need a lot of sleep and a couple of good meals, and at least a pint of water pretty soon. But other than that you're fine now."

"Thank you very much," the girl replied, looking at her and smiling a little.

"You're welcome," she said, sitting in the next chair along. "Take that backpack off and relax, you'll get a cramp sitting like that."

Tattletale looked surprised, as if she'd forgotten she had the pack on, then stood up and started taking it off. Taylor helped her, putting it on the floor when it was removed, the girl slumping back into the chair and leaning back with a sigh, closing her eyes.

"What's in it?" Amy asked, "It looks pretty heavy."

"Money," Tattletale and Taylor said at the same time. The blonde looked at her savior, who smiled.

"I can smell it," she explained. "Plus you already said."

"Did I?" the girl asked absently. "I can't really remember."

"Money?" Amy stared at the fairly large pack. "How much?"

"Probably about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or so," Tattletale said. "I should have known it was too much. We fucked up. Badly."

"Holy shit."

Amy looked at Taylor, who looked back, appearing impressed, then both of them turned to the girl. "You stole a quarter of a million dollars from Lung?" she asked incredulously. "No wonder he was pissed."

"No, we stole at least three quarters of a million dollars from Lung," the girl corrected her, a ghost of a smile on her face. The healer paled a little.

"Oh, my god, he's going to hunt you down and kill you," she muttered.

"No, he won't," Taylor smiled. Amy looked at her. "We came to an arrangement, as I said. I claimed the money and the Undersiders as mine. He won't touch them."

Staring at her friend, Amy tried to process that, which was a little difficult even knowing what she did about her friend and her friend's live-in companion. "You claimed them?" she asked slowly.

"Family territory, Family business," the other girl smirked. "I'm not letting Lung stomp around in the Docks as if it was his. This area is off limits to him now. It seemed the sort of thing he'd understand and accept if I could persuade him to believe it. I doubt he'll be back."

"And if he ignores you?" Tattletale asked, her eyes still closed. "Will you really eat him?"

"If I have to," Taylor shrugged. "I'd prefer not to but it's a good way to solve a problem like him permanently. I think he believed me."

The girl smiled a little again. "So do I. It was very… convincing."

Amy, puzzled, looked at Taylor, who winked. She tapped her head, then indicated something very large. After a moment the brunette got the idea. The Varga had come out to play.

She grinned. That was something she wanted to hear later.

The sound of claws on the floor heralded the arrival of Angelica, who looked less disgusting although still pretty slimy, the dog looking at both Taylor and Amy before going to sit beside Tattletale, who opened her eyes and smiled vacantly at it for a moment, putting her hand on the dog's head. "Can you do anything about her eye?" she asked after a moment.

Amy inspected the dog, then knelt down and held out her hand. The animal sniffed it curiously, seeming to accept her without too much trouble. It was clearly just as tired and out of things as Tattletale was. Picking up a couple of onions from the collection on the table, Amy put her hand on the creature's head.

"Never done a dog before," she said, as she explored the animal from inside. "Not that different to a human really. OK, this is easy enough." A moment's concentration and Angelica made a weird little yipping sound, then blinked two healthy eyes. She tweaked it as much as she could to make sure the thing was healthy then removed her hand, the dog looking around with what she'd swear was a puzzled expression.

"Thank you," Tattletale said in a tired voice, before her head dropped to her chest. Moments later she was snoring.

Taylor and Amy exchanged a glance, then moved to the other side of the room. "She's absolutely on her last legs," Amy whispered. "I could give her a jump-start but unless there's a good reason it would be better to let her sleep for a couple of hours at least. She'll need something to eat when she wakes up."

"Make sure she doesn't wake, then, and I'll go and put those fires out, and also see if I can find her friends. There was one hell of a lot of shooting. Hopefully they made it but one way or the other I need to check."

"What do we do with her?" she asked, jerking a thumb at the snoozing girl. "We can't keep her, there's no beds in here." She smiled a little as Taylor smirked.

"For the moment, just make sure she gets some sleep. When I get back we need to talk to her. I'm pretty sure that Lung isn't an issue any more but I don't want to provoke him any more than I have to. I'm not sure the trick we used would work again and in that case I'd have to take more drastic action. I want to find out what on earth happened." Taylor looked over at the blonde for a moment. "I'm worried about her friends. I'll be back in a while."

"Bring some food with you when you come back," Amy requested. "Something other than onions."

Grinning, Taylor nodded, then headed for the back door again.

When it had closed behind her, a faint splash coming just before, Amy studied the girl and the dog, which had curled up next to the chair Tattletale was in and gone to sleep, shook her head a little, then went to ensure their guest wouldn't wake for a while.

"It all seems to have stopped now," Zephron said. Danny nodded, looking out the window into the dimness.

"Damn fog, can't see a thing," he muttered.

"Should be gone tomorrow. It's that time of year, but I haven't seen it like this for a while," the other man noted. "But we couldn't see anything when we looked around. Mark sent a couple of groups out to check that nothing is missing or damaged, but it looks like whoever it was went north."

"It sounded like a war."

"More or less was, I think. Definitely grenades, flashbangs, I'm pretty sure from the smell out there that someone was throwing smoke grenades around as well. Lots of gunfire of different calibers, most of it the good old AK-47. Pretty distinctive noise."

Sighing, Danny went to his desk and sat, swiveling his chair back and forth slowly. "No reports of injuries?"

"We have one man who got an unlucky ricochet in the calf, I have no idea how. 7.62mm rounds go a long way but it was a fluke even so. He's pretty much fine."

"Panacea is on site, I'll go and ask her if she can help him," Danny replied. "Any idea who it was?"

"Pretty sure it was ABB. I think I could hear Lung going off on one, he was screaming and shouting somewhere out in the wasteland near the Ships Graveyard. There's a smell of wood smoke blowing this way as well so some of the buildings are probably on fire again. A lot of the grenades were probably Oni Lee's work, you know how that lunatic likes spamming suicide bombers all over the scenery." Zephron said down, shaking his head. "He's nuts. Lung isn't much saner, but he's a hell of a lot more restrained most of the time."

"Except when he gets worked up and trashes half a square mile of city," Danny muttered, scowling.

"Yep. It's all gone quiet now so whatever it was is over. Unless you want to do anything else we'll get back to work."

"Wait until Mark comes back and gives the all clear, I don't want anyone hurt if it starts up again, but get them ready."

"Got it, Boss." The large man got to his feet, grinning a little at the sigh, nodded, and left.

Pulling out his cell-phone Danny dialed Amy's number. There was no answer, most likely because she was in the BBFO offices with the door shut, which seemed to completely block radio signals. Trying his daughter's Saurial phone number was more successful. Her voice, distinctive due to the odd faint accent it had, answered after a couple of rings. "Hi, Danny," it said, letting him know she was in public. "What's up?"

"I was wondering if you knew what all the noise was about, and also if Amy is with you?"

"Amy's in the office, you'll have to go and knock if you need her. And yes, I know what it was. Lung was rampaging around the place chasing the Undersiders, who stole a lot of money from him. He wasn't pleased about that." Her voice sounded both amused and mildly annoyed. "He was setting things on fire and threatening a friend of mine, so I had to persuade him to leave."

Danny's heart had jumped at the confirmation it was indeed Lung, one of the most dangerous capes in the country, if not the world.

"How did you do that?" he asked, calming down. She was clearly not hurt.

"I asked a friend to intervene. He was happy to help." She chuckled for a second as he grinned, knowing who she meant. "Lung seemed to listen. With any luck it will stick and he'll steer clear of the Docks from now on. Plus the Undersiders are now sort of my problem."

"How on earth..." He trailed off, then shook his head. "Forget it. I'm sure you'll explain that sooner or later. Where are you now?"

"North of the DWU, looking for the rest of them. I found one of Bitch's dogs, dead unfortunately. Looks like Oni Lee got it. I've also found two dead ABB with rifle bullet holes in them, which I think was friendly fire. All the live ones seem to have cleared out. Do you want any automatic weapons? There are quite a lot of them lying around out here."

"Not really," he sighed, tipping his chair back. "Damn it. I don't like the ABB but that's no way to die."

"Didn't stop it, I'm afraid." His daughter sounded somber. "Ah. Just found another body. In pieces. Seems to be a grenade, Oni Lee's work, I think..." She paused, then swore under her breath. "It's Oni Lee."

Danny sat up abruptly. "Really?"

"Pretty sure. I found his mask under him, what's left of it. I think he messed up that thing he does with grenades. His hands and arms are completely gone and his torso is shredded. He must have been holding them when they went off. It's a mess." She sounded clinical and fairly unaffected, although he could tell she wasn't happy.

"I'd better call the PRT," he said after a moment.

"OK." She paused again, then added, "I'm about half-way between the junction on access road 12 with the main road to wharf nineteen and the shore. There's an alleyway on the east side of the access road leading to some sort of loading area, it's just down there."

He'd gotten up and walked over to the large map that covered most of one wall, showing the entire docks area with all the original signage, much of which was now out of date due to rebuilding work over the years, but it still had accurate information on the oldest parts which hadn't changed. Running his finger along the relevant road until it intersected access road 12, he inspected the map, then tapped a spot on it.

"Next to the old Atlantic Fabrics depot?"

"Hold on a second," she said, then came back a moment later. "Yes, that's what what's left of the sign says."

"All right. I'll pass it on. Will you be there?"

"Probably not, I'm still looking, but tell them I'll contact them to let them know what I find."

"Got it. Be careful."

She chuckled again. "I try to be. I'll let you know when I'm back. Oh, while I think about it, two warehouses are half-burnt down and another one was smoldering. I sorted that out, there's no danger now."

"OK. Thank you."

"See you in a while," she said, then the line went dead. Putting the phone back in his pocket he studied the map for a moment before going to his desk, leafing through his address book, and dialing the main PRT switchboard.

"Hi," he said when the operator answered. "This is Danny Hebert at the DWU. Can you put me through to someone who would need to know about an ABB operation in the north dockland area, please? We've found a number of bodies, including Oni Lee."

He listened to the shocked query, almost amused. "Yes, that's right. Oni Lee. We're pretty sure. Saurial found him."

Remarkably quickly, he found himself talking to Miss Militia, who sounded stunned. When he'd explained what had happened and passed on directions to the location of the dead cape, he said his goodbyes and put the phone down. Walking over to the window he watched as the machines began operating again, before leaving the room to track Amy down.

Taylor looked down at the remains of what was mostly likely Oni Lee. Never having encountered him before, his scent wasn't familiar, but it was mixed with that of Lung, so this guy had obviously spent some time with the other cape. He fitted the physical description as much as could be determined from what was left, he had the remains of a black body-suit costume on, and was wearing a bandoleer and belt which still had a number of knives stuck in it, along with a couple of grenades. It looked to her like he'd probably been holding a couple of them when they went off, possibly setting off one or more on his bandoleer based on the way there was a massive hole in his chest. He must have died instantly.

'I wonder what happened?' she thought.

"I have no idea. From what we've read about him, one of his favored tactics is pulling the pins on grenades then teleporting away to let the clone explode next to the target. Presumably he misjudged it this time, somehow," the Varga responded thoughtfully. She nodded, looking around the rubble-strewn area. There were bullet casings all over the place, showing that there had been a serious fight here, and piles of ash that suggested the remains of at least a dozen of his clones visible just from where she was standing. Moving around she spotted several more.

'He must have been bouncing around like mad,' she commented. 'And there were obviously a number of people here aside from him.' She found several blood puddles which belonged to different individuals from the scent. Sniffing carefully, she nodded. 'All three of the other Undersiders were here as well. They came in from different directions, Grue and Regent from that way, Bitch from over there to the south. She was on foot, the boys were riding one of those dogs of hers. I guess she was on the one that got killed. Must have hurt her, there's blood in her footprints. Quite a lot of it.'

"I would suspect that Oni Lee was chasing her and she met up with the others to deal with him. Around the same time that Lung found Lisa," her companion noted, as she inspected the scene some more. "Then more ABB were attracted by the noise. Looking at the footprints there were at least a dozen of them in the area. They seem to have taken the wounded away but left the dead, possibly because they didn't have enough people left to carry them. The number of weapons we found suggests that they dropped everything they couldn't carry when the ammunition ran out."

'They probably have enough guns that it's not a problem getting more,' she agreed. 'From what I've learned they don't cost very much, and these guys don't pay for them anyway.'

Hands on hips, she turned in a circle looking at the carnage, the end of her tail twitching in irritation. 'What a mess. Lisa's right, they fucked up. But even so this seems like an over-reaction. It was pretty close to all out war.'

"Lung is not one to let an insult go, and the amount of money that was stolen would infuriate him," her friend noted. "I think that the Undersiders were unlucky and lucky in equal quantities, they successfully pulled off a major coup, but bit off more than they could chew in the process. I would assume that Lisa had a plan that nearly worked. The getaway would seem to have left something to desire though."

Snorting with mild amusement, Taylor nodded. 'That's one way to put it. Lung could be a problem. I doubt he'll come back, from what we know of him he's a man of his word assuming you can get it, and I think you put it in terms he can accept, even if he didn't want to. But I don't think that the Undersiders should assume they're safe even so. Presuming that any of them other than Lisa are still alive.'

"Coil is a more immediate problem, in all probability," the Varga said. "Lisa seems sure he set them up somehow. If so, he must suspect something. We still don't know what his power is, aside from it somehow allows him to succeed in most of what he does. Add that to his resources and the mercenaries he employs and he's a dangerous opponent. We need to deal with him as fast as possible, one way or the other."

'The scent sample should let us find him. Once we do, we can work out how to deal with the guy. But right now we need to find out what happened to Lisa's friends.' Taylor bent down, spotting something on the ground, and delicately picked up a dull metal cylinder with the tips of her talons. One end had some sort of mechanism on it while the other had a number of holes with a crystalline residue around them. 'What the hell is this?' Looking around, she spotted two more. Sniffing the thing she identified it as the source of the chemical smell that had pervaded the entire area. It was an unfamiliar scent, harsh and acrid.

"Some form of chemical grenade I think," the Varga replied slowly. "Smoke, perhaps?"

'Maybe.' Putting it back where it had come from, she straightened up and looked around once more. 'I'll leave this to the PRT, they know what they're doing with parahuman crime scenes.' She could hear the distant sound of the distinctive PRT sirens a few miles away, somewhere in the commercial district, coming closer. 'They'll be here in ten minutes or so, I think.'

Determining through scent and footprints the direction the rest of the Undersiders had gone, which was north towards the edge of the Ship's Graveyard, she headed that way at a steady jog, keeping all her senses alert for trouble. There was a blood trail from two different people mixed with the prints, which made them easy to track without any effort. The people who had left them had apparently been concentrating more on running than hiding, although there were a few attempts at covering the trail.

A couple of hundred yards further, the three sets of human footprints turned into two sets. Apparently one of them was now carrying another. A quick check showed it was Grue carrying Bitch, his footprints were now considerably deeper in the mud when they crossed it. The massive paws of a dog, which seemed to be limping, were following them.

Weaving through the abandoned and crumbling buildings, which by now were like something from an end of the world movie, she kept going.

A few minutes later, the sirens from the PRT behind her stopped, as they arrived at the site of the large fight. Hopefully they'd be involved with that for a while and not start coming after her. She wanted to find the Undersiders and get them to somewhere safe without the involvement of the authorities, at least long enough to find out what the hell had actually happened to cause all this trouble.

A familiar engine sound some way behind the PRT vehicles made her pause, listening. 'Armsmaster's bike,' she said.

"Yes. I'm not surprised he came, this is a big thing from their point of view. Oni Lee was one of the most dangerous and lethal capes in the country, his body count is enormous."

She resumed tracking the fleeing group. After another couple of minutes, she stopped again, sniffing the air, then climbed rapidly up the side of a two story wooden building and peered over the roof. There was a light showing a hundred feet ahead on the other side of it, in a smaller building, four heat sources inside. She could smell all three of the Undersiders and a dog in there, and hear low voices. 'Got you,' she thought in satisfaction. Thinking about it for a moment she switched to Raptaur, then dropped back to the ground and headed over to have a look at the damage.