Opening the door, Taylor inspected Vicky, who seemed thoughtful. "Everything all right, Vicky?" she asked as she let the blonde girl in.

"Yeah, no real problems," her friend smiled. "Just thinking about someone I bumped into on the way here."

"Anyone interesting?" she asked.

"Cloak," the other girl replied as they went into the living room where everyone else was.

"You met Cloak?" Lucy asked eagerly, staring at the Dallon sister. "What was she like? Did you talk to her? Did you ask where she comes from? What are her powers? Does she really not have a head? How tall is she?"

"Breathe, Lucy," Mandy giggled as Vicky stared at the babbling girl in some surprise. "One question at a time."

"Sorry, I got a little carried away," Lucy said with a faint pink color in her cheeks. Sitting down next to Eric, Vicky grinned at her as she reached for some cookies.

"Just a little. OK, let's see. She was… very weird." She put a cookie in her mouth and nibbled on it, apparently going over the encounter in her mind. "Short, very short, but very mysterious. And the weirdest voice you've ever heard, all hissing and croaky, it's kind of scary. But I think she's a good person, she seemed friendly enough. As far as powers go… I'm not sure. Some sort of space warping is what it looked like, I think, but it's really hard to be certain."

"Like Vista does?" Rich asked curiously. Taylor and Amy exchanged a quick glance.

"Umm… Kind of, but not, if that makes any sense. Vista's powers always produce this weird visual effect, and she uses her hands in some way to control them. Cloak didn't produce anything I could see at all or even move, she just did whatever it was she was doing. And I've never seen Vista do anything even close to what she did." Vicky told them all the entire story, making Taylor smile inside. It sounded like Vista was having a hell of a lot of fun and succeeding in leveraging her abilities with her new knowledge in a very satisfying manner.

"Wow. That's so cool," Lucy smiled. "Sort of teleportation, then."

"Again, kind of, but not. I've been teleported, it looks totally different to what she did." Vicky thought for a moment, then shrugged. "It was like that fifty feet or so was actually a loop that only affected the thief, like the space at the end was exactly the same as the space at the beginning, so he was just running down an infinitely long sidewalk even though it was only between two lamp posts. He obviously didn't feel anything, he ran past the same shops about half a dozen times before he noticed. The whole thing looked like something out of a cartoon, actually. Funny as hell for everyone else. When she trapped him in an invisible box and he went all mime, it was hilarious."

"Probably not so much for him," Mandy pointed out with a grin.

"No, he didn't seem to enjoy it as much as everyone else did." Vicky grinned back. "The crowd was laughing like crazy. I bet it's already up on PHO."

"Let's see," Lucy said, pulling her phone out and quickly flipping through the website. "Yep. Here it is. Hey, they got a good video of you talking to her."

"Hold on, let me find it on the laptop," Amy, who was holding Taylor's computer on her lap, said. It was plugged into the TV as they had been about to watch some other amusing videos before they got to work. Very quickly the group was reviewing the action from a number of different viewpoints and laughing.

"Really impressive," Rich noted with a nod of approval. "Looks like she shares the sense of humor of the Family even if she isn't related to them."

"I wonder if she really is a little lizard under there," Lucy mused.

"A tiny little giant lizard?" Mandy asked, snickering. "Can you have a dwarf giant thing?"

"Well, I've seen a bonsai giant sequoia, so I'd have to say yes," Eric replied.

"Are you claiming that Cloak is a bonsai giant lizard?" Lucy giggled.

They all looked at each other, then began laughing again. "Quick, post that on PHO," Mandy chuckled. Lucy was already tapping on her phone, racked with giggles. They watched the comment come up on the TV, then replies to it start appearing seconds later.

"That's Dennis," Vicky snickered, pointing to one reply. "One of his alternate personas. The boy has lots of them. There's another one."

"Is he... arguing with himself?" Mandy asked incredulously as the two posters began hurling insults at each other.

"He has a very weird sense of humor," Amy smiled. "Odd boy."

"Clearly."

"You know, people on internet forums are a bit strange at the best of times," Rich said after a little while, "but even in those terms there are some very weird people posting on the local Brockton Bay threads."

"The Family attracts the crazies," Vicky shrugged. "The whole damn city does, actually, but they've sure added to it."

The group watched the TV for another few minutes, amused at the reactions to the latest Cloak sighting, then Taylor picked up the remote and turned it off. "Enough for now. Let's do something more productive for a while. Some nice easy quadratic equations to warm up the old mathematical brain cells, then onto the good stuff."

"Freak of nature," Mandy hissed. "Math Girl strikes again."

"Hey, that was pretty good," Vicky said admiringly. "Nearly as unnerving as Cloak. More in the back of the throat, though."

Grinning, Taylor got up and went over to the whiteboard she'd propped on the end of the sofa, picking up a marker and uncapping it. "Pay attention, students," she said calmly as she jotted down some equations. "These three questions are for ten percent of the marks."

"What happens if we fail?" Amy asked.

"You don't get any more snacks."

Everyone looked at the board, then the coffee table which was piled with goodies on the general theme of junk food, then each other. Shortly a number of pencils were scratching on pads of paper, while Taylor watched in satisfied amusement, wondering what Vista, or Cloak, was up to at the moment.

Derek watched the small figure as it browsed the shelves in his electronics shop, apparently interested in the cheap cell-phones. He, along with pretty much the entire set of staff and customers present, had stopped dead when the… creature… had calmly walked in off the street. The thing that had immediately caught everyone's attention was the way it was walking along about eighteen inches off the floor. The totally enveloping nearly-black cloak covering every inch of the body inside it was almost prosaic by comparison.

Even in Brockton Bay, that particular trick was a bit weird.

Since the Family member Saurial had come in and bought some cameras the other day, they'd had pretty good business, even a few capes stopping by. The large poster in the window with a picture of the lizard girl on it seemed to attract a fair amount of attention. He'd thought at the time it was a good trade, to give her a discount in exchange for her name being used, and so it had proven to be.

Now, watching the small figure of the latest Parahuman in the bay, Cloak, browse his wares, he was frantically trying to work out the best way to profit from her presence.

A clawed hand reached out and picked up a box, lifting it to hood level. Cloak apparently read the side, turning it over in her hand, then put it back. Everyone watched as this process repeated itself a few times, until a particular phone apparently met the requirements of whatever was actually in there. She turned around and headed towards the counter, carrying the one she'd picked.

"I'd like to buy this, please," she said in a whispery voice that sent chills down his back.

"Certainly, miss," he said as calmly as he could. "I believe you are in some way connected to the Family?"

"They're good friends," the creature said, sounding pleased. "Saurial knows many things I find fascinating."

He wondered a little uneasily what something like this would find 'fascinating', deciding after a second or two that there were probably questions it was best not to find the answer to. His imagination was running a little wild about what was actually inside the cloak. Looking around, he could see similar thoughts on the faces of everyone who was watching intently, listening carefully to the conversation.

"I had Saurial in here the other day," he began carefully, "and we came to an arrangement. In exchange for allowing us to tell people that she shopped here I offered her the purchases she made at cost. Are you open to a similar deal?"

The tiny creature seemed to study him. As she moved her head to look at the sales assistant who was at the other end of the counter, light shone into the hood, revealing… nothing. Derek stared discreetly, a little less shocked than he'd have expected. There was definitely nothing inside that hood.

He wondered if there was actually anything inside the rest of the cloak… Aside from the hand coming out of it holding the phone in its box, there was no trace of a body visible. Wild thoughts of Cloak actually being a cloak, possibly animated and given intelligence by some weird Family art, crossed his mind.

Well, regardless, business was business. In this city, you didn't survive long if you didn't adapt. If an animated ancient item of clothing wanted to buy a phone from him, he'd sell it one.

"I can't see why not," Cloak finally hissed, making what might have been a shrug. "If Saurial considered it a good deal, it probably is. Thank you." She, or it, or whatever the hell it was, looked around again. "Do you sell that camera model she uses?"

"We do," he replied, indicating the relevant display cabinet. "Are you interested in one?"

"Yes, please," she said, sounding pleased. Retrieving one of the devices he handed her the box. She put the phone down then took it from him, reading the back of the box carefully. "Excellent," the thing hissed in a manner that would have made Mr Burns look worried. "I will take this as well."

"Of course, Miss Cloak," he said politely. Moving his sales associate, who was staring motionlessly, gently to the side, he rang up the purchases. Cloak looked at the total on the register then put a hand into her hood, rummaging around at far greater depth than seemed possible, to pull out a handful of cash. Quickly counting out the correct amount, she handed it over.

"Thank you," she said, her eerie voice sounding like the non-existent face was smiling. "I will recommend this shop to my friends."

"Please do," he said, wondering what sort of friends a cloak had. Perhaps some form of coat? Picking up the two boxes she pushed them into the empty hood where they vanished, then nodded to him, based on the motion of the clothing. Turning around she strolled out, still over a foot and a half clear of the ground, although the body language was definitely that of someone standing on a solid surface. He watched through the window as she kept walking outside the shop, each step taking her higher, until she disappeared over the roof of the buildings on the other side of the street. Traffic passing by had stopped to watch.

After a long pause, the people in the shop started moving again, talking excitedly to each other. Looking at the bills in his hand, he shrugged, counted them again, then put them in the till, absently deciding on the wording of the new poster in his head.

Stopping in her tracks, Hannah looked up at the cloaked figure that was crossing the street, although this description, while accurate, failed to convey exactly how it was crossing the street.

Using invisible steps to climb from surface level to some sixty feet was definitely out of the ordinary.

Watching with worried intrigue, she glanced at Robin who was accompanying her on patrol, seeing he was also staring after the small person. Assuming it actually was a person…

"What do you want to do about that?" he asked after several seconds of silence. Dozens of people were standing on the street looking in the same direction they were, cell-phones out and recording. Even some of the cars passing had stopped.

"I..." She stopped after the first word, then closed her mouth. Trying again, she sighed heavily. "This is getting ridiculous. It's too short for Saurial in a cloak, but it's exactly the sort of thing that crazy lizard would do just to freak me out. I mean, people out." Hannah hastily corrected herself as her companion gave her a look.

"I don't think it's Saurial," he said doubtfully. "If nothing else, we haven't heard she can fly. Or walk on air. Or whatever the fuck that was."

"I wouldn't put it past her," Hannah muttered, feeling the now-normal sense of confusion. "Oh, hell, let's go after her and at least see if we can figure out what she is even if not who."

"I'm curious too," he admitted with a weird smile. They headed down the street, turning right to follow the path the aerial form of Cloak had taken.

A few minutes later, Robin pointed up. "There she is," he said unnecessarily. Hannah inspected the small creature, which was standing in mid-air looking around, hands apparently on hips, giving an impression of interested observation. Looking down she spotted them in the throng of people also gaping upwards.

"Hi, local heroic humans!" she called in a voice like an overheated boiler being friendly. "Isn't it an interesting day?"

"That's putting it… oddly," Hannah mumbled under her breath. They watched as Cloak quickly descended a non-existent spiral staircase, apparently even running her hand down a railing that also wasn't there. The illusion was like that of the world's greatest and most convincing mime, her eyes practically insisting that an actual physical object was present even though they were also certain it wasn't.

Hannah was beginning to get an all-too-familiar headache. The pressure behind her forehead was an almost infallible indicator of Family influence on reality. They were that weird. Whatever else Cloak was, she was definitely associated with the crazy lizards somehow.

Stopping a couple of feet off the ground, Cloak walked over to them, her altitude leaving her hood at about a normal person's head height. From here, Hannah could clearly see it was empty, the sun shining directly into it. "How are you two today?" Cloak asked cheerily. "I met some of your colleagues last night. They looked a little confused."

The invisible head apparently tilted to the side in a horribly familiar gesture. "So do you, actually. How strange. Is there something wrong?"

"No..." Robin said slowly after a glance at Hannah, who was wishing she'd thought to take a couple of ibuprofen before she came out, just on general principles. "We were just interested in meeting you. A new Parahuman is always something that attracts our attention."

"Oh, I'm not new," she chuckled. "Not really. I've been around for a while. Just… not where you'd notice me."

"Ah." He looked mildly worried now. Hannah knew the feeling. "So why become apparent now?"

"It seemed like the right time," Cloak replied in a carefree manner. "I was bored and Saurial helped me decide on the right method to introduce myself to this fascinating city. The Family are so helpful, you see. And they know so much." She sounded very pleased. "So very much. The math is totally fascinating."

"Math?" he echoed.

"Math," she confirmed, nodding firmly. "Everything is math. Math is important. Saurial is… incredibly good at math. I don't think there are many, if any, of your species who could follow it. Even I have trouble, but I'm learning." She looked around at the people staring at the three of them from a safe distance. "And everyone here is so interested and friendly. Except for the criminals, of course, but..." She shrugged. "Nothing's perfect."

"No, I suppose not," Robin agreed, sounding nearly as puzzled as Hannah was.

"I don't suppose you would be interested in coming in for power testing?" the woman asked, knowing the likely answer.

"Thank you, but no, it's not necessary," Cloak replied with amusement in her voice. "I am aware of my own abilities and see no good reason to let everyone else know."

Hannah nodded glumly. That was what she'd expected. There were far too many new, or apparently old, Parahumans around these days who seemed to be more aware of their own security than was common. It left her and the PRT wondering exactly what they were capable of.

They still didn't have a good, definitive, list of Saurial's powers, never mind the others. Writing a threat assessment on Cloak was going to be a pain in the ass.

"You are, I guess, a Hero?" Robin tried.

"You can put it like that if you want," Cloak agreed happily. "I'll intervene in crimes when I come across them. So far I haven't been looking for them very hard, but that doesn't seem to matter much. There are quite a few criminals around."

"All too many," he grumbled.

Proving the point nicely, there was a shout down the street and two young and tattered men ran out of a shop, each of them holding a pile of expensive clothes. Everyone, including Cloak, turned to look. She sighed, sounding like a kettle on the boil. "Silly humans," the creature said, turning back to Robin and Hannah. "I'll just wait for the law enforcement. Then I need some more donuts."

"Are you going to…?" Hannah started to ask, wondering what the last part meant.

"I already did," Cloak replied, sounding pleased. Looking past her, Hannah gaped, watching both men run in circles, although it was apparent from their expressions that this wasn't at all what they intended to do. The crowd standing and staring started to clap.

Both thieves dropped their loot, then turned around, looking scared, and ran the other way. This only resulted in them circling in the other direction. "What the fuck is going on?!" one of them screamed in horror. He changed his path abruptly, heading at right angles to his previous direction, making the crowd fall about laughing when he and his friends started moving in figure-eight patterns, somehow crossing in the middle without colliding.

"Some of these drug addicts do seem to take a remarkably long time to realize they're trapped," Cloak commented idly, turning back to watch the performance. "How many times do you have to try the same thing with the same result before you work out it's not going to help?"

"How..." Hannah stared. "What did you do?"

"Oh, just manipulated their local spacial coordinate system to make it a closed one," Cloak replied, sounding like it was nothing. "There's no exit from that zone until I want to let them out. It seemed the easiest method."

Hannah looked at the small figure, then back at the now hysterical thieves, who seemed to be low level Merchants. That sounded like a wildly more advanced version of some of the things Vista could do, only there were no apparent visual distortions and Cloak had pulled the trick off without any obvious effort or motions. Considering how high Vista's rating was, it made her shudder a little internally to think what Cloak's would be, assuming she was actually using something similar.

Her powers were clearly different from the Ward's, though, since Vista couldn't stand on nothing, or turn invisible, or whatever it was Cloak did. But the overlap was worthy of note.

She briefly wondered if Vista would benefit from meeting the small creature, then felt suddenly worried as she pictured the results. Two of them was at least one too many. One was a little much.

"Impressive," was all she said. This was true, in fairness. It was a remarkably effective method to restrain the suspects without damage or risk to bystanders.

"Thank you."

A BBPD squad car pulled out of traffic and stopped beside the thieves, who had given up and were sitting on the sidewalk crying. The pair of cops looked at them, then each other, shrugged, and proceeded to arrest them. Hannah and Robin watched as Cloak walked over, not bothering to descend to ground level, talked quietly to them for a moment, then turned around and came back. "Such polite men," she said with a smile in her voice. "Anyway, it was nice to meet you both. I must be on my way, I have many things to do this evening. Until we meet again, human heroes."

She made a small gesture of apparent respect, then started climbing away from them. As she passed thirty feet or so she faded from view. Robin and Hannah exchanged a glance, then the woman walked forward, feeling around where the start of the apparent stairs had been. Nothing at all seemed to be left.

"Is it me, or was that fucking weird?" Robin asked.

"It's not you," she sighed. "This city is becoming both safer and stranger by the day. I keep going to work wondering if this is the day it becomes normal."

"Is it?"

"Not yet, no," she grumbled. "Not even close."

They turned to look at the police car, which was having both thieves inserted into the back seat, exchanged another glance, shrugged with helpless confusion, and went back to patrolling.

"What the hell do you think is in that cloak?" Robin asked a minute or so later.

"Best not to think about that," she advised. "Every time I do, my head starts aching again."

He nodded silently, walking along beside her, both of them going back to their own thoughts.

Some distance away and up, Missy was rolling around on her virtual surface laughing her ass off. The expressions on the faces of the older capes was absolutely hilarious. She definitely had a very good idea now why Saurial and the others did everything they did in the way they did it. Why not get as much fun out of doing good as possible? It certainly livened up the day.

Sitting up and wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, secure inside her invisibility and inaudibility shield, she sat cross-legged a hundred feet above the roof of one of the buildings lining the road and opened the box for the phone, pulling it out and inspecting it. It was a basic smartphone, with usable internet and a wifi hotspot, so she could link other devices to it if needed. With the rather generous discount the store manager had given her it was well within her means. She was paid fairly well as a Ward, even though a lot of the money went into a trust fund, and since she didn't actually spend all that much on herself, she'd built up quite a reasonable amount of spending cash.

Turning the phone on she found the battery was about half-charged, enough for now, and spent a few minutes going through the setup procedure. Satisfied, she put it away, leaving the charger in the box which she put back into storage. The phone was in her bracelet, under her glove, where she could get at it more easily.

Moving on to the camera, she read the instructions, then looked at the device. She was going to need a head harness for it for best results. It came with a simple strap that mounted it over either ear but she didn't much like the feel of it. Even so, she put it on and fiddled with the disguise field until she could make a discreet opening right over the lens. Might as well see how well it worked.

Stashing all the packaging for that as well, she stood up, then looked around. Some distance away she knew of another doughnut store which sold a competing brand to the one she'd already eaten a boxful of. Deciding that she should, in the spirit of experimentation, do a back to back taste test, she headed in that direction, whistling quietly under her breath. The sound was extremely odd with her 'Cloak' voice active, but something she found amusing even so.

"What is it?"

"I have no idea. It doesn't have a head, though."

"How does it eat, then?"

"Fucked if I know, man. It does, though, that's the third custard doughnut in a row."

"How many did it buy?"

"A dozen mixed, and another half dozen of those ones, it seems to like them."

"Weird."

"Hey, it had perfectly good cash. I don't care what it is if it pays."

"Good point."

"These are nice."

"Thanks. Do you need anything else… Miss?"

"No, this is fine for now. See you guys around."

The two clerks watched as the small cloaked thing with the weird voice walked out of the shop a foot off the floor, somehow pushing another doughnut into a space that didn't have anything to receive it, in several bites. The way the pastry vanished in sections was… very unnerving. They exchanged a glance.

"Beats drunks and gangers."

"True. It was polite and friendly."

"Unlike half our customers on a Friday."

"Early yet, the drunks turn up later."

"Don't remind me. Oh, well, better make some more. The last of the custard ones just left."

"Hey, think I should put this on PHO?"

"That place? It's full of crazies, I stay away from it. Last time I looked there was some guy claiming the Family are demons. Or aliens. Or alien demons. I got confused after a while and played Counterstrike instead."

"Is that King Zap guy still trash-talking you?"

"He won't shut up. It's really annoying. The most annoying part of it is he's fucking good."

"Probably living in his mom's basement doing nothing but playing online games all day. Like that other one you keep yelling about."

"Protomancer? He's a pain in the ass too. But at least he's not as mouthy."

"You need to find a better hobby. One that teaches you something useful."

"Maybe. Hello, Sir, what can I get you?"

"There's something very wrong with you, Taylor," Mandy sighed, looking at the whiteboard, then her pad. "No normal person can look at that problem and solve it in their head, in five seconds! Do you have a computer in there as well as your brain? Or, possibly, in place of it?"

"Just me in here," Taylor smiled.

The Varga started snickering, making her smile a little more widely. Amy was giving her a humorous look as well.

"Yeah, still say there's something wrong," Mandy mumbled, scratching out her answer and starting over again. "Where the hell did I go wrong?" She puzzled over the math problem, then brightened. "Ah. I think I see where, I need to do this… and this… and the answer is..." She looked up at the board, her face falling. "Entirely wrong. Again."

Taylor sat beside her friend and walked her through the problem in stages, rewarded in the end with a correct answer and a brilliant smile. "Thank you. I'll try to remember that technique."

"It's not too hard if you follow the rules," Taylor said, leaning forward and grabbing a bag of chips, then popping it open with a flick of her fingers. Offering them around, she took some for herself. "The more you do it the more sense it makes like with most things. Practice, then practice some more."

"How did you get so good at this sort of thing?" Rich asked curiously, opening another can of soda. "I'd have thought that with a mother who was an English professor, your thing would have been languages or something."

"I'm not bad in those subjects, although not as good as mom was," Taylor replied. "But math has always been something I was good at. Even when I was in kindergarten I was better than most kids my age."

"I bet you were probably better than most adults as well," Lucy said wisely. Taylor just shrugged.

"I couldn't say in all honesty. I just seem to have a mind that works with math. I like language and word games as well, but the math is the really fascinating thing to learn about. So many other subjects become open to you when you understand it. Chemistry, physics, electronics, that sort of thing."

"Considering how many different subjects I've seen you studying just for fun, I can't help think that if you don't become a teacher when you pick a job, you'll be an engineer instead. Or something like that," Eric commented, smiling. "Can't say I disagree. I'm definitely heading towards mechanical engineering, or some sort of automotive field, maybe. I love cars and fixing them."

"Haven't really decided yet," Taylor mused, looking around at her friends. "I do like teaching, though. It's nice to be able to help someone with something you're good at. But I like learning as well. More or less everything. Information is fun." She glanced at Amy, who was also smiling faintly. "Even biology, which is more Amy's field."

"No surprise there," Mandy giggled, Amy grinning at her. "How could a healer not be interested in biology?"

"Oddly enough, I like mechanical engineering as well, I've discovered," Amy said in a reflective tone of voice. "Taylor has shown me all sorts of things and it looks cool. A lot of it is relevant to biological organisms as well, like in bones and muscles. But she's a lot better at the math than me."

"The girl is a lot better at the math than anyone," Vicky sighed, finishing her own assignment, then handing Taylor the pad. She smiled a little when the brunette checked it at a glance and nodded. "I can barely scrape through my classes although I have to admit with this sort of studying I expect I'll improve. Thanks, Taylor, it helps a lot."

"You're more than welcome, Vicky," Taylor said. "This is really good fun and interesting as well."

"I guess you didn't do anything like this at Winslow?" Rich asked.

She shook her head, her smile failing her. "No," she replied after a few seconds. "All I really did there was try to work out what I'd done wrong to end up in such a shithole. It wasn't nice."

Mandy put her arm around her and her head on her shoulder. "Poor Taylor. I wish we'd met years ago and you hadn't gone to that horrible place. I've heard some revolting things about it."

"Whatever you heard it's worse," she said quietly. "I can almost guarantee it."

"It's also in the past and will remain there," Amy said firmly. "You're with friends, your family is doing well these days, you and your dad are happy, and we are as well. Forget Winslow. You're over it."

"Over Winslow?" Taylor looked outraged. "I'll never be over Winslow."

"Do you have a drinking problem because of it?" Rich asked.

"Yes, I keep missing my mouth," she said morosely.

"Roger."

They exchanged a glance and cracked up.

"We need to watch 'Airplane!' next, surely," Amy giggled.

"We've got it on DVD. And don't call me Shirley," Taylor replied, heaving with laughter.

By the time her father arrived half an hour later, they were all laughing themselves sick at the constant jokes in the classic movie. All in all, it had been a good afternoon and evening.