Carol looked up from her computer as the phone rang, reaching over to it and retrieving the handset. "Carol Dallon," she said, saving the current work on the Lindt case with her other hand, just in case.

"Hello, Mrs Dallon, this is Roy Christner," a familiar but unexpected voice said, that of the Mayor.

"Mr Mayor," she replied, surprised. "What can I do for you?"

"I was hoping to get in touch with your daughters, actually," the man said in a friendly manner. "I wanted to invite both of them to a small dinner get together at my house on Wednesday evening. Danny Hebert and his daughter Taylor are coming and I thought it would be a good time to thank both your girls for the help they've provided to the recent redevelopment program. Just an informal thing, you understand, nothing major."

"I see," she said, thinking rapidly. "I can't see that being a problem. Amy is out with friends at the moment, probably at the DWU facility in fact, she seems to spend most of her spare time there these days with those… unusual… reptiles. Vicky is here, though. If you'll hold on, I'll get her."

"Thank you, Mrs Dallon." The man chuckled faintly. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about New Wave as a whole. We're very pleased and grateful for your group's involvement on a memorable Tuesday recently. Public recognition of that will be given shortly, never fear, but events have left us all somewhat busy until now."

"That's not necessary..." she started.

"Credit where credit's due," he interrupted her calmly. "Your people helped a lot. I know you were paid for the event, which I feel is well justified, but even so you put yourselves out there, potentially at risk, to help the city. We appreciate it and consider the money more than well spent. I fully expect that in future we will be interested in similar arrangements, if you so desire."

"Thank you, Mayor Christner," she said after a moment or two. "That's good of you to say."

"It's entirely true, Mrs Dallon."

"Please call me Carol."

"Of course, Carol. Call me Roy."

She smiled despite herself. He was a smooth talker, as befitted a successful politician, but unlike many, she felt he wasn't just doing it for personal gain. "Thank you, Roy. Please hold on, I'll fetch Victoria."

"Certainly," the man said. She put the handset down, then went upstairs to her daughter's room, tapping on the door, then opening it. The blonde girl was sitting in front of the mirror at her vanity, peering at her reflection with a thoughtful frown and fiddling with her eyebrows.

"You have a phone call, Vicky," she said.

"Who is it, Mom?" the teenager replied, still poking at her left eyebrow as if there was something wrong with it.

"The Mayor."

Vicky froze, then looked over her shoulder with wide eyes. "The… Mayor?" she asked in a slightly stunned voice.

Carol smiled a little. "Yes. He wants to invite you and Amy to a little dinner party at his house. Taylor and her father will be there, and I would imagine a few other people as well."

"Holy shit," the girl gasped faintly.

"Language, Vicky!" Carol snapped. "Talk to the man, politely and respectfully. I'd suggest you accept, it would be both helpful for our group, and possibly allow you to make useful connections."

"I'm not going to turn down a dinner at the Mayor's house, Mom!" Vicky said with a sudden bright grin, jumping to her feet and heading towards the door, six inches off the ground. "This could be fun."

Carol stepped out of the way as her daughter flew past. "Best behavior, remember," she called as the girl dived head-first down the stairs. Shaking her head at the impetuousness of youth, she was still amused, going back down more slowly and traditionally.

By the time she returned to her office, Vicky was nodding rapidly, listening to the phone. "Yes, of course, Mr Mayor, I'll tell her. Thank you so much."

She smiled at the response, then hung the phone up. Turning to Carol, she almost literally hopped up and down in excitement. "I need to go shopping," she squealed. "New clothes. Need them."

"You can do that tomorrow, Vicky," Carol said, both smiling and sighing. "Calm down. Go and find your sister. Her phone is probably off right now, she does that most of the time when she's with her scaly friends."

"OK, Mom," Vicky grinned. "Wow. Dinner at the Mayor's house… incredible."

"Remember that you'll be representing New Wave, both of you, as well as enjoying yourselves. Don't get carried away, be polite to everyone. You understand? This isn't like going to a restaurant."

"I'll be good," the girl laughed. Grabbing her mother she hugged her, then spun on the spot and shot out of the room. "Wow!" she yelled, the front door closing seconds later. Moments afterwards it opened again, just as Carol was going into the hallway.

"Um... forgot my coat," Vicky said in a calmer voice. "It's cold out there."

Sighing in a good-natured yet mildly exasperated manner, the elder Dallon watched her offspring pick one of her nicer jackets off the coat-rack in the corner of the hall, put it on, grin at her again, then vanish once more. "Girls," she muttered, heading to the kitchen to put some coffee on. "Was I ever that impetuous?"

Remembering some of the things she and Sarah had got up to in their teens, she had a sinking feeling that she might well have been.

"You're in a good mood," Dennis said as he watched Missy drawing on the pad she'd taken to carrying around everywhere, the girl humming under her breath, the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. "A couple of days off obviously cheered you up a lot."

She nodded, drawing the last few lines, tilting her head this way and that, then smiled in satisfaction before flipping the cover closed. He was curious to see what she'd drawn, but didn't ask. The girl could be a little protective of her work and had some unpleasant ways to make it stick.

"I had a really nice rest," she smiled. "I visited some friends, ate some doughnuts, wandered around… nothing too strenuous but it was nice to get away from 'Vista' for a little while.

"I can understand that," he replied, tipping his chair back and putting both feet on the table. Dean, who was poking around on his laptop, gave him a look. He smirked back, causing the other boy to sigh faintly then ignore him as much as he could. Carlos glanced over from where he was reading a manual on PRT procedure, rolled his eyes, then went back to reading.

"It's good to just relax sometimes," he went on.

"You do very little other than relax," Dean mumbled. "Aside from play online games in which you die a lot, troll PHO and annoy Miss Militia."

"And the Director, let's not forget that," Dennis said brightly. "And Armsmaster, and Battery, and Velocity sometimes, and if I'm really lucky, Assault, but he's difficult."

"Mostly because he's even better at doing the same thing than you are," Missy pointed out, grinning.

"He's my hero," Dennis snickered. "One day, maybe I can be as annoying as he is."

"Oh, god," Carlos sighed quietly, shaking his head. "That's all we need, two of them. Combined with the Family, this entire city will go mad."

"Next thing you know, Mouse Protector will join in, and we'll have to evacuate and nuke the place," Dean said, looking up from his laptop and smiling a little.

"Hey! Do you think we could get her to transfer here?" Dennis asked, looking interested. Both boys looked horrified, although Missy laughed.

"Don't even joke about that, Dennis," Carlos grumped, turning a page. "She's totally insane."

"So?"

"So, we already have some of those. They have tails and sprinkle Tabasco sauce on you. Not to mention their haunted laundry which wanders around freaking out the tourists."

He grinned at his friend. "I really want to meet Cloak. She sounds interesting."

"And spooky as fuck," Carlos said. "Believe me. There's something very wrong going on there."

Missy was now giggling quietly, her hands over her mouth. Dennis winked at her. "See all the things you missed taking a couple of days off? There's a possessed item of clothing running around catching criminals now, as well as lizards all over the place."

"I like the lizards," Missy smiled. "They sound interesting."

"Saurial at least has a very good sense of humor," he said, tipping his chair even further back. "Weird, but good."

"Where's Chris?" she asked, looking around. "I just realized I haven't seen him all day."

"Holed up in his lab, working like an idiot on something," Dennis told her. "He woke me up at about seven this morning, which is way too early to be that lively, yelling about something or other, then ran off. Haven't seen him since."

"Wonder what that's about?" Dean asked, glancing at him. He shrugged.

"No idea. He was in a good mood, though, especially considering that yesterday he was acting a bit strange."

"Huh." Dean looked mildly intrigued, then went back to his laptop. "Guess he'll tell us sooner or later."

"Probably." Dennis returned his attention to Missy, who'd gone back to sketching. "You ever going to show anyone what you're drawing?"

"Maybe," she muttered. "If you don't react like you did last time. I think I'm getting a lot better."

He stared at her, remembering the extremely disturbing picture that was the last thing he'd seen of her work. "By better, do you actually mean, weirder? Only that one you showed me nearly made me puke. I still can't figure out how you drew something like that on a sheet of paper."

The blonde girl shrugged slightly, still drawing. "Not hard if you know the trick," she said absently, rotating the pad and studying it. "And you don't have to be rude."

"I do, it's one of my talents," he chuckled. She looked up at him, frowning a little, then down at her pad. Her frown turned into an evil grin, making him just a touch worried.

"OK," she said in a sly voice. "Then be rude about this." She turned the pad towards him.

Dennis stared. His stomach roiled.

"Oh, god," he moaned, just before his balance went entirely screwy and his chair tipped over with a thud, depositing him on his back on the floor. Putting his hands over his mouth, he tried to keep his lunch where it was, rather than where it wanted to be.

Turning the pad back, the girl looked critically at the drawing. "Perhaps you're right," she smiled. "Not enough dimensions. I'll get back to you when it's done." Hopping off the sofa, she closed the pad, stepped over his supine body, and headed for the door. "Right now, I need a snack. Drawing makes me hungry."

They all watched as she left, putting her visor on in the process. Dean and Carlos looked at each other, then Dennis, who swallowed hard a couple of times. "You know," he said when he was sure that he wasn't going to spew, "sometimes I think there's something not entirely right with that girl."

The other two nodded wisely.

Girls could be strange.

"She was listening to you? And actually responded to you?" Amy asked in close to a whisper, when Lisa stopped talking.

"As far as I can tell, yes," the blonde said, looking entirely befuddled and extremely worried. "I'm about ninety percent certain that everything that we've been theorizing about is either entirely, or mostly, correct. My power won't come out and say it in so many words, but it… keeps winking at me knowingly?" She slapped the side of her head. "It's a fucking bastard, the damn thing. I'm totally sure it's real, and getting smarter all the time. It's like a faithful dog with a weird sense of humor combined with a really good customized computer, running a brain-dead version of an Eliza chatbot that's speaking a language slightly different than the one I am."

Taylor smiled a little, but was mostly concerned about what they'd learned from their friend. "All that network stuff… it really does suggest that you and Varga are right, that the powers all come from the same place."

"Not the same place, lots of different, connected places," Lisa corrected her. "I'm sure it's like that. Hence network. There are, as far as I can work out, lots of alien computer-things somewhere out there, each one linked to a Parahuman through that thing in our brains. Except for you, of course. How they do it, how they pick the people, how the powers manifest, all that sort of stuff, I haven't got a clue about yet, but Varga was definitely onto something when he came up with the idea."

"But where are they? What do they look like? Or want? And where did they come from?" Amy asked.

Lisa shrugged. "No idea. Not yet. We've only touched on the beginning of this whole thing, but we already probably know more about powers and what they are than practically anyone. I've searched everything I can find on the subject and there's nothing in the published literature that even begins to suggest this sort of thing."

They looked at each other for some time in silence. "OK. Let's assume that all this is right. Each Parahuman has a… a... processing unit… whatever the hell we call it, ultimately as the source of their power, which connects to their brain via the corona pollentia, somehow. And when they Trigger, this activates the power." Amy looked at her friends, Lisa nodding, while Taylor and the Varga listened intently. "Everyone gets a different power for some reason. Some are stupidly weak, some are ridiculously powerful, but they mostly fall into one or more categories that have been worked out by trial and error." Lisa nodded again.

"What determines who gets what power, and how strong it is?"

"No idea."

"Why does it happen when people are having a really shitty time? That's the common factor, serious stress, as far as I can see."

"Ah..." Lisa thought. "Perhaps it's intended to get you out of whatever situation you managed to get into? Sort of save you?" She shook her head after a moment. "No. Not quite that. My power is telling me we're on the right track, but it's not that simple." Rapping her head with her knuckles she frowned. "Talk sense, you damn thing. Just let me know the truth."

"I suspect that it cannot, Lisa," the Varga said slowly. "The indications are that whatever or whoever is behind this phenomenon doesn't want anyone to know the truth of it, for whatever reason they may have. I would suggest that this implies their motivations are more likely to be… possibly not hostile, but not necessarily beneficial for your species. My guess would be that whatever this 'processing unit' as you put it really is, it has been limited in what it can both do and reveal. In all probability you were never intended to discern even this much."

The girl looked at Taylor, who was listening to her companion speak through her with curiosity, then nodded. "It's sort of agreeing with you. I think you're right. This is a very inefficient way to get information but at least we're learning something. OK, so the mysterious power-creator is trying to be sneaky."

"Successfully, until something completely out of the entire universe turned up and tossed a wrench into the works," Amy put in, indicating Taylor and by extension the demon. "It never expected a Varga, the 'non-quantifiable subject,' as your power puts it."

"No one ever expects a Varga," the creature chuckled. "But we turn up even so."

"Damn good thing as far as I'm concerned," Taylor grinned. "Best thing that ever happened to me."

"I'm beginning to have a nasty little idea that it might be for all of us," Lisa muttered. "Some of the things my power said… The Endbringer mission, the 'initiator'… it sort of implies that there's a master plan behind this and I have the weirdest suspicion that we're not going to like it when we work it out."

"You may well be right." The demon sounded worried. "These Endbringers, used as weapons, are obviously capable of inflicting enormous damage. I think there is an extremely high likelihood that they are not operating at full capacity either. Having reviewed some of the previous attacks with Taylor, it seems to me that they are too easily defeated. Several of the attacks could have gone on for longer, but they appear to disengage after a certain amount of damage has been taken or inflicted. They don't press their advantage in the manner that an attacker normally would, although they are clearly intelligent and cunning. Nor do they hold the ground they have taken, they merely destroy things. It doesn't make sense from a military standpoint, and I can't see much other reason..." He broke off suddenly.

Both girls looked at Taylor curiously. She shrugged.

"Problem?" she asked.

"A thought struck me," he said after a moment. "I'm not sure how accurate it is, but it's one possible answer that fits the observed data. The Endbringers are not trying to defeat the defenders."

They all exchanged a glance. "Instead, they're…?"

"They're testing the defenders," the Varga completed the thought. "If I'm right, the mission isn't to simply cause as much damage as possible until they're stopped and beaten back. It may well be that they have never been, in fact, genuinely beaten back. I suspect, instead, that they cause very carefully targeted damage, specifically to elicit the response they do, in order to force the defenders to steadily up their game, possibly also to force a certain level of cooperation or innovation in the use of their powers, then deliberately disengage. Why, I don't know, but it does seem to fit some if not all of the observed behavior. The terminology you report, 'assured victory threshold,' would also tend to back this up."

"Holy shit," Lisa mumbled, staring wide-eyed at the demon's host. "That… that actually makes a weird kind of sense." She blinked a few times. "And my power is pretty much giving me a thumb's up. Fuck it, you idiot, we're not playing charades!"

"The thing behind all this is using the Endbringers to train Parahumans?" Amy exploded, outraged.

"That is one possible interpretation of the data, I believe," the Varga replied. "I confess to not knowing whether I'm completely, or even partially, correct, but it seems plausible. Why, on the other hand, I have no idea at the moment. But I think Lisa is correct, it's unlikely to be in the long term best interests for humanity. The level of disregard for life it would imply is shocking."

"It might not be training Parahumans," Taylor put in with a sinking feeling. They looked at her, even the Varga feeling curious. "It might be training Parahuman powers."

There was another silence. "Damn it. I think you're actually thinking along the right lines," Lisa finally said, leaning back and massaging her temples. "It's grinning at me again."

"Your power is a pain in the ass," Amy grumbled.

"Tell me about it," the blonde girl muttered with annoyance. "And smug with it."

"We know where you get it from, then," Taylor half-smiled.

"No, I was like that before. It probably gets it from me," her friend sighed. "God. I'm a bad influence on an alien power-granting computer-thing. Can life get weirder?"

"Probably," Taylor chuckled. "We're the Family. Life can always get weirder."

"So where do the Endbringers themselves fit into all this? If all Parahumans are… networked, linked, whatever, how are they connected to us? If we go along with that scenario, they have to be networked too, right?" Amy looked at her friends. "Is it possible that they really are just massively overpowered Parahumans, or are they something else?"

All four of them sat and looked at each other for a moment or two. "Something else, I think," Lisa finally said. "What, I don't know. When I try to work out if they were ever human, my power sort of looks blank, but it's still sort of rolling its eyes at me as if it's trying to say no but can't quite manage it." She grumbled under her breath, rubbing her forehead. "This in incredibly frustrating," she said more loudly. "It wants to help. But something is stopping it, sort of like it doesn't have the right authorization codes."

"That may indeed be an apt simile, Lisa," the Varga stated calmly. "Don't try to force it. We've learned more each time we look into this, and it seems to me that your ability is slowly working out methods to bypass whatever block is present. Given time it may well succeed. All we can do is continue to collect data and work on the problem."

She nodded, still frowning in annoyance. "Guess you're right. Damn it, though, this is pissing me off. And terrifying me at the same time. I was talking to the fucking Simurgh for fuck's sake!"

"The more worrying thing is that she was apparently communicating in the other direction, if only vaguely," he said, chuckling. "I find that very interesting. I agree it suggests they are intelligent enough to resent being used as weapons. I can, from my own past, sympathize with that attitude."

"The question, though, is whether they're more like you or the Dark Varga," Taylor said quietly.

He nodded her head. "That… is definitely something to consider," the demon agreed. "But, again, at the moment we don't know and can only guess based on insufficient information. Hopefully with time more of these questions will have answers."

"I want to know where they came from, what they really want if they're smart enough to have their own goals, and who or what is controlling them," Amy remarked. Both the other girls nodded. "And how she apparently managed to get around that control this last time."

"Maybe it's this network fragmentation thing your power was talking about," Taylor suggested, thinking over the story Lisa had relayed to them. "I wonder what that really means?"

"I'm not sure, but my guess is it's all tied into what we think we're seeing with our powers, and it's related to you and Varga," Lisa replied. "One implication is that our… damn, we need to come up with a good word, but let's call them processors… our 'processors' are starting to form their own network that isn't completely compatible with the original one. Maybe. It sort of fits what we were talking about the other day."

"Interesting..." Taylor thought about it, while Amy was looking very intrigued and chewing her lip. "Very interesting. I wonder what that will end up doing?"

Lisa shrugged. "I don't have a clue at the moment. And my power is sort of looking around innocently and pretending we're not talking about it now. It knows something but isn't saying." She looked and smelled very irritated indeed.

"It all fits what we've seen so far, though," Amy mused thoughtfully. "We need to see what Kevin and Randall have noticed, if anything, that should help with the entire..."

About to say more, Amy stopped and looked over at the phone when it suddenly rang. Taylor, casually changing to Saurial, reached out and picked it up. "Hi, Saurial speaking."

"Oh, hi, Zephron. Sure. Bring her over. Is Danny around yet?"

She listened for a moment. "OK. No problem. We'll keep her busy until he comes in. Of course. Yes, that's fine. See you soon." She tapped the disconnect button and dropped the device back into the charging dock. "Our new friend Linda has apparently woken up, spent a long time thinking hard, and apparently talking to Brian, and come to a decision. She'd like to talk to us," she said to her friends. "Dad will be here in about half an hour. Zephron is escorting her over right now. You guys better change. I'll cover your truck."

Amy nodded, while Lisa got up and headed for the storage room and her bioconstruct. "What do you think she chose?" the healer asked as she followed.

"If I had to guess, I'd say she's sticking around," Lisa replied, unlocking the door and going in. Taylor followed after she generated a quick box around the blue vehicle just inside the main entrance, leaning on the door-frame and watching them. "But I can tell you more when she gets here."

"OK. If she's going for the replacement body deal, we're going to have to work out the specifications." Amy looked very interested as she brought her Ianthe body to active status, the bioconstruct resting its head on hers for a moment as she stroked it. "I have all sorts of ideas I want to test."

"She'll probably want to be human," Lisa giggled. "Not to mention we're still being careful about who we tell. Let's see how it works out first before you give her a tail and claws."

"Fair enough," Amy grinned, while Taylor giggled. "I just have all these ideas!"

"See if you can talk Kevin or Randall into it," Taylor suggested. "Once we've finished running experiments on them. Don't forget, we have a control now. Sort of."

The healer slid into her secondary body, the large reptilian form stretching as the access port closed and vanished. "Good point," her deeper voice rumbled, sounding like she was trying not to laugh. "Very good point. I'll have to work out the best way to capitalize on that."

"Be nice, she's still a little fragile, poor woman," Lisa advised, her own black-scaled form rising behind Amy. "I just want her to feel at home, probably for the first time in a long time. I have a suspicion, though, that she's going to fit right in around here with a little work."

"We'll see soon enough," Taylor smiled. Glancing at the biogun on the bench, she added, "We should make some more of those, too, and see what Dad thinks of them. And Mark."

"When we've worked out exactly what we're doing with Linda, I'll get on it," Amy promised. "I've come up with some more modifications that might be useful as well."

There was a knock on the main door, all three of them looking over. "Here we go. Let's see what she's decided."

While Amy locked the workroom, Taylor went over and opened the door, waving the two people outside in with a smile. "Welcome to... The Zone Where Normal Things Don't Happen Very Often," she grinned, intoning the words in a mysterious voice.

Zephron looked like he was trying not to laugh, but Linda seemed slightly confused. Both of them came in as Taylor stepped aside, then closed the door. "Have a seat," she invited, accompanying them to the table. "Coffee? Tea? Soup?"

"I'm fine, Saurial," Zephron smiled. "I was just bringing Linda over to make sure she didn't get lost. Danny will be here soon, so I need to get back to work. Mark would like to talk to you guys later too, if you're free."

"Sure," she replied. "Anything urgent?"

"No, not massively so. Security stuff, mainly." The man watched as Linda sat in one of the chairs, watching them all. "I'll see you around, Linda," he said, nodding to her. "It was nice to meet you."

"Thanks for walking me over, Zephron," the woman replied quietly.

Going back to the door, Taylor opened it, allowing the big man to exit. As he was going out the door, he said in a very low voice, "Impressive. That idiot doesn't stand a chance with you guys on the case."

Taylor grinned at him a little bit.

"His money and his Tinker?" Zephron chuckled, shaking his head in amused disbelief. "Good work."

"Thanks," she whispered. He'd obviously worked it out, which didn't actually surprise her all that much. He was far too quick, and far too unsurprised with various things, to not have deduced most if not all of the truth, as she'd suspected for a while. This was his way of letting her know. "See you later."

"Have fun," he said more loudly, waving to her, then headed towards one of the back entrances to the main building complex. She watched him go, smiled again, and closed the door.

Linda watched Saurial come back to the table after a short quiet conversation with Zephron at the entrance, her expressive if alien face looking thoughtful. The lizard-girl paused for a moment to say something to Metis in their language, the black reptile nodding and replying with a glance at the sole human in the room, then came over to her and sat in another chair, arranging her tail over the side. "You've decided, then?" she asked in a voice that suggested she knew the answer.

"I have," Linda replied. She looked up as Ianthe put a cup of coffee next to her, then sat on her tail nearby, holding another one which she was sipping from, listening with interest. "Thanks." She picked the cup and tried a little, finding it very good, then put it down again. "I spent a long time thinking about everything we talked about yesterday, and all the things I've done and thought since I got to the city." She sighed. "What I can remember of that part, which isn't as much as it should be," she added.

"Narcotics do that," Ianthe commented.

"Considering how much shit I used, I should probably think of myself as lucky to only be missing a few days here and there," Linda agreed. "Anyway, running is out. I'd give myself away in weeks, I think. Can't help the Tinkering. People, gangs especially, look out for the signs, Tinkers are really valuable. I'd be going from one bad situation into what would probably be a worse one, then I'd be fucked."

"That certainly seems a strong possibility," the blue lizard replied. "What about the PRT option?"

Linda shrugged. "Better than the running one, but not ideal. Sure, they'd probably take me, like Mr Hebert suggested. I've heard that even in Brockton at least one member of the Protectorate used to be on the other side. No idea which one though. But..." She paused, searching for the words. "It just doesn't do it for me. If there was no other option, I'd take that one, but it's not my first choice. And I'm really not keen on simply throwing myself on the mercy of the courts by letting you guys officially arrest me, they don't have a lot where it comes to Parahumans, and considering who I ran with, I'm worried that they'd try to make an example of me. No offense to you, of course, I get that you'd try to do right by me."

"Which leaves staying here," Saurial said.

"Which leaves that. Can't run and hide, don't want to work for the PRT, but I do want to make things. As far as I can work out my best option is to join up with the DWU if they'll have me, and try to rehabilitate myself. Pay the community I helped hurt back, even if they never know it." She looked at the three reptilian faces watching her. "Does that make any sense outside my own head?"

"Yes, it does, in fact," Metis said after a moment, smiling at her. "There aren't really a vast number of Parahuman villains who actually want to hurt people. Sure, there are a few, some of them pretty damn bad, but a lot of them just end up in that position because of things that go wrong. Once they do, it's very hard to get out again. That seems to be the nature of powers, unfortunately. You do what you can to survive and powers tend to make that affect a lot of innocents."

Linda nodded glumly, holding her coffee mug with both hands. "All I wanted to do back when this started was make things and have fun. I thought the drugs were helping. They do, at first, but… it escalates, you know? You need more and more, and they do less and less. In the end..." She shivered. "It doesn't usually end well."

Looking up at them, she went on, "Poor Skids is a good example. He used to be this funny and smart guy I really liked. Not sure I ever actually loved him, but he was good to be around. But… he always had a dark side, believe me. That was part of the attraction, I think. Which is sort of embarrassing to admit." She was being far more open with these three than anyone she'd ever talked to, and wasn't sure why, but it was all true.

"He's always been stubborn, and quick to get angry. When he's mad, he takes it out on everyone around him. Like, if he's having a shit day, everyone is going to have a shit day. But even then, he never hurt me. Not until..." She trailed off, remembering. Ianthe put a hand on her arm, causing her to glance at the reptile.

"He can't get to you here, and no one is going to hurt you," Ianthe said softly.

"I sure hope not," she sighed. "Had way too much of that recently. The first time he smacked me around, I thought I'd deserved it somehow. But it didn't take long to work out that it was him. He'd lost it by then. Full on paranoia, megalomania, you name it. I don't know all the right words, but I know what I saw. The man I used to know… he basically killed himself a while back. The one that looks like him isn't anyone I want to be around. No common sense, none of the smarts he used to have..." Linda shook her head sadly. "Hell of an example of why drugs are a bad idea."

"I'm sorry that it turned out like that," Saurial said after a short silence filled the room. "It can't be easy to find that someone you thought you knew and trusted had turned on you."

Linda looked at her, seeing something in the reptilian gaze that spoke of far greater knowledge of the sort of situation than she'd expected, and real sympathy. "It sucks," she replied frankly. "Like nothing I've ever known. But I guess it is what it is. Nothing I can really do about it except accept it and move on. Even if you guys could somehow fix him, I couldn't forget."

"I understand," Saurial said in a quiet voice. "Fine. You stay. That won't be a problem, Danny's OK with it, we've already discussed it. He's not completely happy about the circumstances, but like he said it's not the first time something like this has happened around here, not even close, and as long as we make sure that nothing causes the rest of the DWU any trouble, it'll work out."

"I promise I'll do everything I can to fit in and not cause trouble," Linda told her.

"We believe you," Metis commented, looking at her cousin and sister, who both nodded. "I'm certain you can find something interesting to do, there's a lot of workshop space here that's going unused, and even leaving the Tinkering out of it, a skilled mechanic will be in demand instantly. Danny's assistant Lisa can work out where you'd be most effective."

"She's a bit full of herself, but she means well," Saurial added with a smirk, which made Metis give her cousin a look of amusement.

"I like her," the black lizard said calmly.

"So do I," Saurial grinned. "Interesting person." She cocked her head, then looked at the door, on which a faint knock sounded moments later. Linda was impressed, the lizard-girl clearly had remarkable hearing. "Danny's here. Let's see what he thinks, then work out what the next step is."