Rebecca put the phone down slightly harder than it deserved. She turned to look at Emily Piggot, who was, she thought as she suspiciously looked closer, hiding just the tiniest smirk under an otherwise professionally neutral expression.

"That man is… irritating," she finally said. "I can't help but think he was somehow deriving more humor from the situation than I'm entirely comfortable with."

"He's hard to fool, Chief Director," Emily replied calmly. "I would suggest that it's best not to try, he stands a better than even chance of seeing through any attempt at deceiving him, if only from long experience of dealing with politicians. That would probably make him even less cooperative. So far he's been pretty open in our dealing with him, having him actively trying to fight us would be… unhelpful."

"We could put pressure on him easily enough," Rebecca mused.

Emily's eyes narrowed slightly. "For the record, I feel I must say that I think your suggestion is spectacularly unwise," she said after a moment. "He would push back, possibly very hard. We still don't know for sure whether he has a copy of that remarkably incriminating video he and his daughter engineered regarding Shadow Stalker, but I think it's near enough guaranteed that he does. Most likely more than one, and in places we'd never find them before it got released. It's certainly what I'd do in his position."

Rebecca nodded slowly. That could well be very awkward.

"Not to mention he is considered, from everything we know, a very close associate of the Family. Almost certainly close enough that they would take such an attempt to influence him as an attack on them, which in many ways it would be, and react in ways we would probably not enjoy." She shrugged a little. "It wouldn't even have to be violent. They have enough political capital right now to make things difficult for us, whether they know it or not, but I can assure you that Mr Hebert will be aware of this and would advise accordingly. As would Mayor Christner, who is the third party who would become involved as soon as we tried anything with the DWU. He also has a lot of friends, probably some in places we don't know. He's been in the political game for more than twenty years, after all."

"You're right, annoyingly enough," Rebecca sighed. She didn't like not being in control of a situation, and this one was so far from being controlled it was ludicrous.

"Aside from anything else, as you just told him we have no real justification for doing anything other than politely asking questions anyway," the blonde woman went on. "I'm uncomfortable myself with the manner in which things have spiraled so far out of the ordinary, I have to admit, but I also have to admit that I can't point to anything concrete as requiring PRT intervention. Yes, it would be nice to have a better grasp of exactly what the Family was and what they were capable of, but if the choice is between knowing that and having a stable city, I'll take the stable city any day."

Leaning forward and putting her arms on her desk, she fixed her superior with a look of slightly worried intensity. "As I said to Alexandria when she was sitting where you are just yesterday, please go carefully in your dealings with everyone involved. The wrong move could spark something no one in their right mind wants to see. Even Kaiser is being careful and that would only happen if he's not sure what's going on and wants to wait and see. If we manage to start something, though..." She sighed, making a gesture with one hand that implied something exploding.

"He might feel he had no choice but to get involved. The thing that really worries me is how he would do that. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that he might think that his best chance of survival was to throw his lot in with the Family, as crazy as that sounds. And he has the largest quantity of combat-ready Parahumans in the city, other than possibly them. It could get messy."

"You can't be serious," Rebecca protested, shocked.

Piggot shrugged again. "It's not a high probability, no, but the man is both ambitious and smart. He might well calculate that ingratiating himself to them was worth the effort, rather than losing his investment in the city. I'd prefer not to risk it. So I think it would be best overall not to put anyone in a position where something none of us really wants, happens, don't you?"

"You paint a very uncomfortable picture," Rebecca commented. She was unsure how likely the suggestion was, it seemed extremely implausible, but then, Brockton Bay tended to produce unusual situations at the best of times. Not to mention that they really didn't have any publicly usable legitimate reason to interfere in the first place. She and her colleagues were just both curious and concerned about these reptiles, for reasons that Piggot wasn't privy to and never would be.

"However, I happen to agree with the sentiment, even if not the conclusions," she added a moment later, Emily visibly relaxing at her words. "We'll just talk, ask polite questions, listen to the answers, and try to derive something useful from it all. Despite wanting very much to figure all this out I have no intention of triggering a war."

"Thank you, Chief Director. That makes me feel a lot better." The ENE director looked at the clock on the wall. "Two and a half hours to kill before we'll need to leave. Unless you have anything more you would like to discuss, I do have quite a lot of work that's built up since last night. Would you mind if I did some of it?"

It was as close as she could politely come to asking the other woman to get the hell out of her office. Smiling a little Rebecca stood. "Not at all. I have other people to talk to myself, and I need to check in with my own staff as well. I'll meet you here at half past three, then?"

"That's fine. Thank you."

Nodding to her subordinate, inwardly amused at how the woman clearly wanted her gone, she left the office, heading for the room in which Legend and Eidolon were probably still trying to figure out how to approach Kaiju tomorrow.

Brian looked up from his nail-gun to see Lisa grinning at him. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he grinned back, spun the tool in his hand like a gunslinger from a western, nearly dropped it, which made her laugh, then carefully put it down and stepped back. "I need to practice that," he chuckled. "But only when it's not loaded."

The blonde girl walked over, looking around. They were in one of the workshop blocks, a building that had obviously seen better days many years ago and had been left empty and unused for far too long. He had been working on the team that had been stripping out all the shoddy interior stud walls and replacing them with new ones, while a team of electricians followed them around wiring everything up.

He was on the wall-fixing group at the moment, as he'd been deemed strong enough to hold the prefab panels in place and nail them down, but not yet skilled enough for the fine detail work. Overall, he agreed with the assessment and was enjoying himself. It was somewhat dusty work, and fairly tiring, but it needed to be done and was something he could feel he was making a difference by doing.

Lisa handed him a bottle of water. "Thought you might want a brief break," she commented, unscrewing the lid of the other one she was holding, while peering around with interest. There were a dozen or so other workers in his section of the building, mostly men, and a fair number of these looked at her with appreciation, smiling politely. He was impressed with the way they didn't catcall or make inappropriate remarks, something he'd seen a lot of on previous building sites.

Jason was extremely against that sort of thing and made his displeasure apparent if it happened. Apparently having four daughters and no sons tended to make a father rather sensitive to it. He'd lectured Brian on suitable behavior that he expected to see in one of his workers when they'd first met and had looked approving when the young man had merely nodded and agreed with him. Brian had also formed the opinion that Mr Hebert would also look unfavorably on that type of activity and had no wish to annoy the man who was, aside from anything else, going out of his way to help him and the others.

It made for a much more pleasant working environment than some he'd been involved in. The concept that the DWU was a big family appeared to have more than a small amount of truth to it, something he was finding he appreciated more than he'd expected. There was the distinct impression that any of the people around him would go to bat for any other if they were in trouble, a sentiment he found himself fully in agreement with for a number of reasons.

"Thanks, Lisa," he smiled, removing the top of his bottle and drinking half of it, quenching his thirst. It was good timing, something she undoubtedly knew. Sipping more slowly on the remaining water, he also looked around, feeling somewhat proud over the amount of work he'd done in the last few hours. "It's going pretty well so far, I think. We'll have this entire building repaired in a week or so at most. There are several more like this as well, so I'm going to be busy for the next couple of months." He sipped again, smiling. "I have to admit it feels good to be working hard on something useful. I end the day tired but feeling that I made a difference."

She put her hand on his shoulder, grinning. "You always make a difference, Brian, but I'm glad you're happy. This should really help with your sister, when… a certain person… is out of the picture." Looking around quickly, she checked for anyone listening, then turned back to him. "I've been enjoying myself wrecking our previous employer. With any luck he's going to have a stroke when he checks his business dealings."

Brian laughed loudly, while she looked pleased with herself. "Oh, god, Lisa, I hate to think what you could do to someone you only merely disliked. What you could do to someone you really hated… Urgh." He shuddered, making her snicker. "I almost feel sorry for the bastard."

"Don't, some of the things he's done should get him a bullet in the back of the head," she grumbled. "I bet I could find someone here who would do that for me."

"Probably, but don't," he advised. "The man is going down, don't worry. With the Family on the case, never mind the PRT, he's fucked." He was speaking quietly, sure he wasn't being overheard past the sound of other nail-guns, hammers, saws, and the like, but not taking any chances. "You've had your fun, let the others have a chance."

The girl brightened up, smiling maliciously. "Oh, I expect to have more fun yet, but yes, it's only fair to let Saurial have a go at him." They shared a smirk, then he picked the nail-gun up again, fitting a new gas cartridge to it since the previous one was almost empty. She watched, then looked at the box of them at his feet, inspecting them curiously. "That one is half empty," she said, pointing to one in the middle. "The one next to it has a faulty valve."

Not surprised her power had told her, he nodded, bending down and removing the two faulty cartridges and dropping them into the box of used ones. "Thanks."

"I'm going to go and see how Rachel is getting on, I've barely spoken to her or even seen her since the day after we got here," she added.

"She looked fairly happy the last time I saw her," he replied, cocking the tool and applying it to the framing he'd tacked into place. A rapid series of bangs followed as he walked it up the two by four, letting the recoil bounce it off the wood and into the next position. She watched, nodding approvingly. "I helped fix up her building with the kennels. They're still installing some steel cages and runs for the bigger dogs, but she was pleased with what she has so far, she said it would do. Which is close to jumping up and down for joy from her, of course." He fitted another strip of framing nails to the now empty tool.

"Good. I'm glad about that. I think she'll have her hands full for months with all those dogs, there are a lot of them, but a happy Rachel is a Rachel that isn't beating people up."

"Beating people up also makes Rachel happy," he noted with a grin.

"Well, that's true enough, but only certain types of people," she laughed. "Hopefully there aren't any of those around here."

"What about you?" he asked, before nailing the other side of the panel in place. When the noise died down, he glanced at her. "Causing problems for our previous employer couldn't possibly have kept you occupied for all that long."

"It didn't," she smiled. "But Danny hired me as an R and D research assistant. I have an office and everything. Even a DWU ID card, look." She pulled out a card with her photo on it, like the one he had. "Should be fun. He's got me looking into what materials the Family could produce that would be most salable, and coming up with a list of tools that Saurial could make which we need. It's pretty interesting so far."

"Great," he smiled back. "Now all we need to do is find something for Alec to do."

"He got his big TV and consoles, so he's happy," she told him, looking amused. "Zephron and some of his friends were perfectly all right with being bribed to get them for him. He'll be holed up in his room for weeks now, trying to beat his old high scores."

Chuckling, Brian nodded. "That seems to be all of us with something to do, then. Not what I expected when we were running around out there, but I can live with it." Picking up the water bottle which he'd put down on a cardboard box next to him, he finished the contents then dropped it into the waste. "Thanks for the water. I'd better get back to work or Jason is going to look hard at me."

"Don't want that. See you later, Brian," she replied, turning around and heading off with a wave. He watched her go for a moment, then got back to driving nails with loud bangs.

Roy looked up from his paperwork as the intercom buzzed. Poking the relevant button, he said, "Yes, Maria?"

"Mayor, the Chief Director of the PRT is here to see you," his assistant's voice said, sounding slightly awed.

"Ah, thank you, I was expecting her," he replied. "Send her in, please."

"Certainly, Mayor," she replied, before the intercom went quiet. Shortly the door opened to admit the slender figure of Chief Director Costa-Brown, who strode across the carpet to meet him as he stood. Leaning over his desk he shook hands with her, then indicated his corner table.

"Please take a seat. Can I get you anything?"

"No, thank you, Mayor Christner," she said, looking around the office curiously, eyebrows raised in apparent appreciation. Her gaze fixed on his desk clock for a moment. Following her eyes, he smiled.

"A gift from an old friend, years ago. Keeps perfect time, even though it's completely mechanical. And beautiful."

"It is," she admitted with a tone of admiration. "Almost like something from a museum. Impressive." Sitting in the chair he waved her to, she put the file folder she was carrying on the table, as he took the other chair. "I was hoping to talk to you for a while about the recent events here in the city. I expect you know what I'm referring to."

Roy smiled. "Of course I do, and I thought someone would turn up to discuss it. I'm both impressed it's the top person at the PRT, and mildly surprised it took as long as it did. What would you like to know?"

Opening the folder she pulled out some paperwork, which she glanced at, then nodded. "How did you first encounter the Parahuman known as Kaiju?"

"I met her through Danny Hebert of the DWU, an old… acquaintance? Respected adversary? Irritation?" He smiled at her. "Friend, now, I think."

"I see," she replied, making a brief note on the paper. "Where was this? Presumably not in the city."

"No, we drove to the coast north of here," he replied, remembering the rather unforgettable evening. "He'd arranged to have her meet us on an uninhabited beach, since he didn't want to cause a panic. It was something of a surprise when she popped out of the water, but when my heart rate slowed to normal, we had a talk and I was favorably impressed. It became apparent at that point that the project could, and almost certainly would, succeed."

"Hmm." Another note was made. "And do you think that Mr Hebert knew her for some time at that point?"

Roy leaned back, inspecting the woman, who was looking at him expectantly. "I believe that he probably did, they seemed comfortable together, but he didn't volunteer that information and I didn't ask. It's none of my business. Or, if I may speak frankly but respectfully, that of the PRT."

She gazed at him, then nodded a little. "I understand. We're not after Mr Hebert, we just want to understand the situation a little more than we currently do."

"I have no objection to that, but I won't betray a confidence. I'm an honest politician." He grinned at her.

Costa-Brown looked evenly at him. "I was once told that the definition of an honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought."

That made him laugh. "I've heard much the same thing once or twice. I'd like to think I can't be bought, but we both know everyone has a price. Mine is simply higher than you can afford."

After a moment, she shook her head a little, smiling just a small amount. "Possibly, possibly not. It's irrelevant at the moment. Now, can I ask, do you know how many of the Family are in Brockton Bay?"

"As far as I know only the three of them, Saurial, Raptaur, and Kaiju."

"Have you met the other two?"

"Not yet for Saurial, I haven't had that pleasure. I expect I will sooner or later. I met Raptaur at the DWU when she was demolishing the warehouses that were in the way of the project. She seemed both friendly and competent."

The brunette woman made some more notes. "How would you describe her relationship with the DWU in general? Raptaur, I mean."

"Close and respectful, on both sides," he replied promptly. "She was polite to everyone, listened to those with more experience when she was working, followed all the safety procedures although she clearly didn't personally need to, things like that. In turn they were very friendly with her, seemed to genuinely like her, and as far as I could tell were more than happy to work with her. I was impressed."

"That's slightly unusual for a Parahuman of her level, wouldn't you say?" she asked curiously.

He shrugged. "I can't say I know all that many high-level Parahumans, but I've heard stories. Some of them can be… difficult to work with. Our own police force has had trouble in the past, although by and large they say since Director Piggot came on the scene the Parahumans are normally professional and mostly polite these days. When they actually turn up, of course." He couldn't resist the small dig, at least partly because it was true.

She said nothing, merely made another note in what looked like shorthand of some sort. "Do you know how many of the Family there are in total?"

"No." The Chief Director looked at him for a moment, so he expanded on that. "I believe there to be a number, larger than three at least, based on comments other people have made, but I have no proof of that and no knowledge of what that number is."

"Does it worry you that there are an unknown number of reptilian capes, some of absurd size, wandering around this city and the bay?"

"Not really," he replied, shaking his head. "Why would it? All the ones we've encountered so far have been friendly, on the side of law and order more than anything else, and overall good for the city. I have no problems with them at all. There's no reason to think that any other Family members wouldn't be similar in outlook, which is fine with me and pretty much everyone else I've talked to about it. Except possibly some of the villains. They're probably not too happy at the moment."

He smirked at her. "I can live with that as well."

She chuckled, making some more notations on her pad. "I can't say I disagree. Thank you."

Turning to the next page in her folder, she looked at it, then him. Mentally he sighed, seeing that she had a lot of questions. Keeping the smile on his face, he settled back to answer them all, in a way that was as helpful as possible while giving away as little information that she didn't already have as he could manage.

He was good at this, but it was still somewhat boring at times...

Colin read the email he'd just received and smiled, although he also felt slightly puzzled. "I've got an answer from Leet. He says he's happy to help as much as he is able with the weapon design, although he can't provide any inertial cancellation tech as he's got nothing currently that is better than anything we're likely to have. He suggests that if we wish to talk further, we could meet at the BBFO facility, tomorrow onward. He also says that we should check with Raptaur for her schedule, as it will depend on her being available."

"Interesting," Dragon noted, coming over to stand behind him and quickly read the email for herself. "Very interesting indeed. I thought that their little addition to Tuesday was an off the cuff thing, but it seems they may be now closer to the Family than we expected."

"So it would seem. I can't work out if I should be worried or not about that," he replied, shaking his head thoughtfully. "On the one hand, I suspect that Raptaur at least may be a good influence on them. On the other hand, it's Über and Leet! They may be a bad influence on the Family. Which terrifies me."

Dragon laughed, patting his arm comfortingly. "Don't worry too much, Colin, I'm sure that Raptaur is more sensible than that, although I can foresee some odd things happening as a result of this. Why don't you ask him about the wormhole generator, now that he's opened communication with you?"

"Good idea," Colin grunted, leaning forward and quickly typing a reply. He'd barely got his fingers off the keyboard when the email program notified him of a response. "He must have been waiting," he muttered, opening the email. They both read it.

To:Armsmaster at ProtectorateENE . gov
From: Leet at HyperCrypt . mail .com
Subject: Re: design consult

You have that thing? I wondered where it went. It's dangerous, I hope you realize, the gamma emission was a lot higher than I thought at the time. I'm pretty sure it was almost glowing in the dark by the time we stopped using it. Good thing our costumes made decent rad shields!

Sure, I'm open to discussing it. Anything to take out an Endbringer. I'm not sure exactly how easy it will be to fix it, and redesigning it is unfortunately not something I can do much about, but between you and Dragon, and maybe Kid Win if you trust him with it, you should be able to work something out.

I hope.

I've still got all the design notes and drawings, I'll bring them with me. Let me know when you're going to be around and I'll be there, under Endbringer Truce. Or perhaps Family Truce? Raptaur really doesn't like people fighting in her place and I'm not going to argue with her about that!

Hey, one thing suddenly struck me while I was typing this! If we can make that thing work again, it might be a fix for the recoil issue! From what I remember of it, it normally generates a wormhole between a point fixed in space at a certain distance from the generator, and an arbitrary point somewhere else. I never did bother to work out what the maximum range was but it's pretty huge. The key thing is that the amount of energy required is almost entirely dependent on the size of the wormhole, not how far apart the ends are. It almost all goes into opening the thing in the first place to the size you want. We only used it for pretty small ones, the drone was only about two feet across.

If it could be either duplicated and fitted to the weapon, or modified to allow both ends to be placed at arbitrary points, the weapon could be redesigned to fire a counter-mass through a wormhole entrance immediately behind it, the other end dumping the mass somewhere it wouldn't cause a problem. EDM powder would be a good counter-mass, it would be small enough not to increase the size much, and lose energy very efficiently. If it was made with a short lifetime… I'll have to think about it. But it seems possible, right?

Contact me when you know a time and date.

Leet

After a moment, they both slowly turned their heads to regard each other. Colin sighed heavily.

"Why the hell didn't we think of that?" he asked in an annoyed voice.

"I don't know," she replied, sounding irritated as well. "It's obvious when it's pointed out to you. He's right, it would at least in theory eliminate the problem entirely. Assuming that we can both repair it and work out how to arrange it to do as he suggests."

"We'll need to redesign the weapon breech as well, to allow the projectile to be loaded from the side," Colin commented, already opening the CAD file as a copy. He started making the changes as he spoke as rough starting points. "A rotating breech, perhaps? The round will require a redesign too. The shoulder stock will need to be changed to allow room for the wormhole. Do we try to fit it inside, or raise the barrel to over the shoulder and put it behind her?"

Soon they were deep in discussion of the latest modifications, complex designs glowing in 3D on the screens around them.

Colin was surprisingly happy at that precise moment in time.

Danny put his phone down and smiled, rubbing his hands together, which made Lisa smirk and Mark chuckle. "They're on the way up. Thanks, both of you, I'll talk after I've had this discussion. Lisa, this is really good work already, keep it up." He tapped the set of printouts she'd given him a moment earlier. "If you can do this in a few hours, we'll be running the place inside a year."

She laughed while Mark looked highly amused. "Whatever you say, Boss," she giggled.

"Oh, god, he got to you as well," Danny sighed, which made both the other people glance at each other then laugh like idiots. "Out, both of you. I have important people to talk to now."

Mark snapped to attention with military precision, producing a perfect salute. "Sir!" he barked, then relaxed with a grin when Danny sighed again. Making a go away gesture with his fingers, the older man watched as both of them left, Lisa still laughing. Smiling a little in a rather affectionate manner, he waited for the two women he was expecting to arrive.

A couple of minutes later, Zephron tapped on his door, then loomed in the doorway, blocking it nearly completely. "Your guests are here, Danny," he said in his deep voice, then stepped out of the way, to admit Director Piggot and a woman he'd never met before but that he recognized from news reports. Standing, he rounded the desk and shook both their hands.

"Director. Chief Director. An honor. Please, sit down." He waved them to the large table on the other side of the office, which still had several plans of the ongoing work spread out on it. "Do you want anything to drink?"

"Just water, please, Mr Hebert," Director Piggot said. He looked at Chief Director Costa-Brown, who raised a hand.

"Nothing for me, thank you."

"Sure." He glanced at Zephron who nodded silently and left, the door closing behind him. Sitting down as the two woman did the same, Both of them putting plastic folders on the table, he inspected them for a moment. They were looking around the office, then the plans on the table. Director Piggot half-stood to get a better view for a moment, then sat again.

"This is what's going on out there right now?" she asked, indicating the window through which floodlights could be seen staving off the early evening dimness.

He nodded. "Yes, that one there is the pre-demolition plan, all the buildings marked are the ones that came down. Next to it is the one showing the upgrades to the dock area, that part there is the actual scrappage area, with runoff channels between it and the bay to catch anything that leaks." He pointed out various parts of the work. "Rail lines here, extending to here. New storage buildings for equipment over here, fuel and oxygen storage at either end here, fixed cranes, and so on. It's quite a large project but so far everything is proceeding to plan. Everyone is very pleased."

"Mayor Christner certainly seemed to be in a good mood when I met him earlier," the Chief Director commented, looking up from the spread out papers. "He genuinely believes in the ability of this project to revitalize the city."

"So do I," Danny told her. "I wouldn't have suggested it in the first place if I didn't think it would work. All the planning and research, added to his own experts input, made it clear that we had no choice but to go ahead with it. The council agreed and here we are." He spread his hands, smiling.

"Indeed we are," Director Piggot replied with what was almost a smile. She looked up as Zephron came back in holding a tray with several bottles of chilled water and some glasses on the fingers of one hand like a waiter. The tray looked surprisingly small in the enormous man's hands. Putting it onto the table, he glanced at Danny.

"Will that be all, sir?" he asked in as cultured a voice as he could manage, which was surprisingly good.

"Thanks, Zephron," Danny grinned. "And knock it off. That's even worse than the Boss stuff."

The other man looked amused. "As you wish, Padrone."

Danny sighed heavily. "Please make sure we're not disturbed, OK? Now go away."

Flipping him a quick salute of his own which seemed to involve more wrist movement that necessary, Zephron looked pensive, shook his head decisively, bowed deeply, and disappeared back out the door, closing it softly behind him. Danny watched him go with a grin, then turned back to the two women, who were looking slightly confused.

"I'm sorry about Zephron, he sometimes seems to think he's in the Mafia, and he's got a weird sense of humor at the best of times on top of that. But he's an extremely hard worker and a good man."

"I would imagine he's fairly effective in a fight, as well," Director Piggot remarked.

"Black belt in Karate, aside from anything else," Danny replied. "Not that he needs it, he's big enough just to pick someone up by the head and shake them until they stop struggling. I mean it, I saw it happen when Hookwolf and his idiots paid us a visit a while ago."

The blonde woman nodded, looking slightly appalled. Chief Director Costa-Brown was wearing a completely blank impression.

"I get the impression you have some real characters working here," she said.

"You would be right to think that," he chuckled, opening one of the bottles and pouring some into a glass, which he offered to Emily Piggot, before filling one for himself. Sipping it, he put it back down, then looked at them. "So what can I help you with?"

They exchanged a glance.

"As I said on the phone, we at the PRT are somewhat… confused… by recent happenings here in Brockton Bay. Since you seem, one way or another, to be at the center of many of those happenings, I was hoping that you might be able to shed a certain amount of light on the more peculiar aspects of them."

The brunette woman opened her folder, then removed a stack of papers, plus a pad and pen. Director Piggot did much the same. "For instance, can I ask how you first came into contact with what has become known as the Family?"

"Hmm." He leaned back in his chair, tapping his chin in thought. "I suppose the first time that happened, aside from seeing Saurial around the place, would be when she called to ask permission to use the Yard for training purposes..."

He spent the next hour and a half answering questions without changing his small smile, using all his best poker-face experience, as he had a shrewd idea that both women were very good at reading people. Danny tried not to outright lie, explaining quite often that he was unable to answer their question, but stuck mostly to the truth. Just limiting it.

Eventually, after having succumbed to thirst and drinking one of the bottles of water, the Chief Director closed her pad and put it and the paperwork back into the folder. Director Piggot had done the same thing about twenty minutes earlier and had been simply listening to both people, an expression of cautious interest on her face.

"Thank you, Mr Hebert, that's been quite helpful. Not as helpful as I'd ideally like, but I understand the circumstances prevent total openness. That's not unusual in Parahuman cases, especially ones this complex."

"You're welcome, Chief Director," he replied politely, taking all the bottles and glasses and stacking them on the tray. "If there's anything else I can help you with, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Obviously I can't guarantee to be able to give you the information you want, but I'll do what I can. We always try to cooperate with the PRT."

"I have no doubt," she smiled. "I'm sorry to have taken up so much of your time."

"It's no trouble, really. Would you like to see some of what's going on? I can give you a quick tour of the facility."

She glanced at Director Piggot, then looked back to him. "I think I would like to see this tanker for myself, yes," she replied. "I suspect it's more impressive in size than was apparent from looking at it on the horizon."

"It's fairly large," he nodded. "Watching Kaiju tow it was pretty remarkable. But then, so is she."

"So I gather from the news." The woman stood as he did, her companion doing the same. "I would like to meet her myself at some point. For the moment, I'll have to do with sending Eidolon and Alexandria. And probably Legend as well, so you can say they all turned up."

Grinning, he led them to the door. "That would be nice. Come with me, please."

On the way through the office, he spotted Lisa watching them closely, wearing an expression he was growing to know meant her power was at work and telling her something interesting. Giving her a cautioning glance, he relaxed a little when she nodded very slightly. Neither of his two guests noticed, they were looking in the other direction, and when Costa-Brown looked around, Lisa had already sat down behind one of the partitions.

Wondering what that had been about, but knowing he'd find out sooner or later, Danny led them out of the outer admin area and downstairs.

Waiting until Danny and his guests were safely gone, thinking hard and more than a little shocked at what she'd learned, Lisa got up from the chair in the empty cubical and looked around. After a moment, she headed for Danny's office. Opening the door she slipped inside, inspecting everything closely.

When she left a few seconds later, she had all three water bottles in her pocket, in the plastic bag that had lined his waste bin, turned inside out.