Missy studied her latest drawing, smiling to herself. It still wasn't right, but it was pretty close in some ways, and more to the point had turned out to have some very interesting applications. Sophia was still in the bathroom, the sounds coming out of it awful and the smell worse.

'Serves her right, she was very rude to me,' the girl thought, wincing at a particularly loud sound from down the corridor. 'Saurial liked it, so it's all good.' The lizard girl had laughed when she'd bumped into her in the street, inspected her drawing, and told her it was coming along very well. Several pedestrians had rapidly left the area surrounding them, the blonde girl had absently noticed, but she hadn't paid much attention since she was engaged with talking with her reptilian friend.

Now, she put the finishing touches on it, based on some advice Saurial had given her. Tipping her head this way and that she nodded in pleased acceptance.

That was that part done. Now, where was that digital camera, the really high resolution one that Chris was playing with the other day…

A few minutes later she was carefully going over the image she'd transferred to one of the PRT computers in the Wards common room, touching it up and cleaning the edges. A little more work and it was ready for the next stage. The vector art program soon had it imported and converted, a little more touching up and a few tweaks followed, until she nodded. This was going to be great.

Turning to the inkjet printer she busied herself removing all the ink cartridges and putting the new ones she'd ordered off the internet into it, running several cleaning cycles until the new ink came through properly. Reading the instructions again she smiled, then filled the paper tray with the weird paper that had accompanied the ink. It took a few experiments to get the right results, during which she smacked herself in the forehead and flipped the image on screen left-right, so she got a mirrored print. By the time she was done, though, she was very pleased with the results.

Dropping the bad prints into the waste bin under the computer desk, she set the printer to make half a dozen copies. When they were finished she removed her special cartridges and paper, conscientiously reinstalling the originals and cleaning the printer again so the next user wouldn't have any trouble. Happily picking up the box with her ink, unused paper, and printouts in, which were now properly dry, she left the common room, whistling to herself.

All she needed now was an iron...

Emily Piggot looked at the report and sighed heavily, leaning her chin on her hands. Sometimes she really wished she could retire to some place saner, like hell. But for some reason the Chief Director had told her that she trusted no one else to keep a lid on Brockton Bay and that she was doubling her salary. The woman had looked worried and mildly unwell, rapidly leaving via helicopter. The machine had headed directly out to sea at high speed, completely avoiding going over the city or the docks area.

"Miss Biron," she finally said, pulling herself out of happy thoughts of just stealing Armsmaster's bike and aiming across the country with the throttle wide open, "Would you care to explain what happened in your own words?"

She looked at the blonde girl who was sitting on a chair next to Glenn Chambers, the obese man appearing on the verge of tears. "Mr Chambers, we'll get to you afterward." He nodded, patting his forehead with a folded handkerchief.

"I just wanted to liven up my costume," Missy said sullenly. "It's so boring. I've had the same thing since I joined the Wards and I'm tired of it."

"And the iron-on transfers you put on it? Where did you get those?"

"I drew them," the young girl said, looking more cheerful. "I've been doing a lot of drawing recently."

"I have the reports here from your school, as it happens," Emily noted, waving a hand at an inch-thick stack of paper. "On the face of it, it would seem that most if not all of your teachers and peers would quite like it if you did not do a lot of drawing. Preferably, any."

"Everyone's a critic," Missy sniffed. "They keep telling me that what I'm doing is wrong, but you don't see them drawing anything cool. I don't show them my work any more."

"For which I expect they're profoundly grateful," Glenn said with a slight hitch to his voice. Missy glared at him.

"The Family like my drawings."

Emily closed her eyes for a moment. "Of course they do," she sighed. "Why wouldn't they? It probably makes them think of home or something. Wherever that is."

She shook her head, then glanced at the report on her desk again. "So you made these iron on transfers and applied them to your costume. What happened next?"

Missy looked thoughtful. "Dennis screamed and ran away when I showed him. That was sort of rude, but he was probably trying to be funny. Chris went white and wouldn't look at me any more, he was muttering something about some special goggles. Sophia went to the bathroom again, I think she's still there. Dean went and hid in his room, and Carlos pretended he'd gone crazy, running around in circles. It was very annoying. In the end I gave up and went on patrol on my own. I know I'm not supposed to but it was only up and down the boardwalk, so there isn't much danger."

"The boardwalk," Emily echoed.

The girl nodded, then frowned slightly. "The funny thing is that I was expecting a lot of people there considering it's such a nice day, and with all the extra tourists we get these days. But about five minutes after I got there it was practically empty. It was sort of weird."

She grinned for a second or two. "But it did mean that those Merchants that were robbing the CD shop really stood out. I didn't have much trouble with them."

Emily checked the report to refresh her memory. "All eight of them."

"Yep."

"Which you captured single-handedly."

"Yep."

"Three of whom are still trying to escape that… thing… you turned the phone booth next to the shop into."

Missy grinned showing lots of brilliant white teeth. "Yeah, that was so cool. Saurial came by when I was chasing them and suggested some interesting uses of my powers I'd never thought of. She was right! It makes the effect last until I stop it. Those three were really unpleasant so I though it would teach them a lesson to sort of lock them up for a while."

"Oh, god," Emily muttered under her breath. "You realize that four of the five the police picked up are still throwing up, and the fifth one is unconscious?" she added more loudly.

"They're Merchants, I bet they took something nasty that did that," Missy remarked, frowning a little. "They were really smelly too."

"They're a lot more smelly now," Emily mumbled.

"Sorry?"

"Nothing."

Emily stared at the girl, then flipped the page in the report to the scientific analysis section. The words 'class three memetic hazard' jumped out at her, as did the phrase 'serious cognitive disrupter requiring further study.' The last three lines of the report were the words 'make it stop' repeated over and over again. She shuddered a little.

"I think it's best if we don't allow you to go out in that costume in future, Miss Biron," she finally said, the girl immediately pouting. "Unauthorized modifications and embellishments are forbidden, as you should be aware. Please turn it in to wardrobe. In this bag." She pushed the heavy black cloth bag with a bright yellow warning label on it across her desk. "In future, please refrain from such actions. Once you've changed, I would like you to accompany Sergeant Huang and his squad down to the boardwalk, where you will undo whatever it that you did and release those Merchants."

"Oh, all right," the girl sighed. "Jeeze. Some people have no sense of fun. Saurial thought it was hilarious."

"That does not actually surprise me at all," Emily sighed. "I won't take further action at this time as you did genuinely prevent a robbery and capture eight criminals. However, you are not to leave the building solo in future. Clear?"

The girl nodded, appearing slightly disgruntled. "Dismissed."

Standing, Missy nodded respectfully to her, glanced at Glenn with an expression of mild annoyance, then left the room. Emily watched her go before turning to the man who was staring at her sadly.

"I can't work like this, Emily," he said with wild gestures of his arms. "First Prospect. What a silly name! And she flat out refuses to wear the costume I designed. Oh, she's happy to wear the hat, I'm having trouble getting her not to wear it all the time, but have you seen what else she wears with it!?" He panted for breath for a few seconds. "Now this. That girl is… I don't know what she is. Weird. Terrifying." He stared searchingly at her. "Almost… Family." The last word was hissed, which she thought was oddly appropriate.

"Why is it always twelve year old girls?" Glenn nearly sobbed. "I can handle anyone else, but young girls are a pain in the ass."

Reaching into her desk drawer, Emily pulled out a bottle of brandy and two small glasses. This was going to take a while.

As the door to the Director's office closed, Missy sighed. No one ever let her have any fun. Luckily she'd had the foresight to iron some of the images onto some of her t-shirts, so she still had those. Heading back to her room to get her costume, she studied the weird label on the bag the Director had given her, wondering what it meant. It wasn't one she'd seen before.

"Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted," she mumbled under her breath. "And I learned a new trick."

Cheering up, she skipped down the corridor, wondering if she should have mentioned the stencils she'd made for covering those ugly gang markings with her nice picture. She'd get some spray paint on the way home tonight and swing through the Merchant's territory to see what happened.