"Are you sure this is a good idea, Amy?" Lisa looked dubiously at the sealed vial her friend was holding, then at the frankly disturbing grin above it. Even outside the 'Ianthe' construct, there were a lot of teeth and they looked much too sharp…

"Yes," the healer said firmly, with an undertone of suppressed glee. "I'll show her. Thinks she can prank us and not get some retaliation? That demonic lunatic is going down."

"The demonic lunatic who is your best friend?"

"That's the one."

"The one who you tried to prank with a yard full of fast-growing, carnivorous trees? The same trees that nearly ate Velocity, somehow evolved into mobile fast-growing carnivorous trees, and actually chased Armsmaster for nearly six miles?!"

"Indeed, it is she."

Lisa sighed. "You do remember what happened with the copy-fish, right? They were suppose to all look like Saurial and confuse her, but they mutated into sharks with legs and swarmed the Boardwalk. The Mayor was livid, Director Piggot nearly had an aneurysm, and Taylor mostly laughed her ass off. Then ate them all, her and the Varga. Same as she did with the trees."

Amy shrugged. "This will work." She frowned, glancing over at the door to the rear of the room, which was currently propped open because it was a nice day outside, and gave a view of the bay. "Although I'm pretty sure there are still some swimming around out there. She let them go to have something to chase, I think."

Turning back to her friend, she held up the vial again. "Anyway, this is much better. She always smells us coming, which is why it's so hard to sneak up on her and set anything up. This will fix that."

"By making everything smell the same?" Lisa looked even more doubtful.

"Exactly. It's brilliant! This is a short lived but fast growing synthetic bacteria. Once I release it outside, it will spread and grow like crazy, while giving off a very specific scent I designed specifically to overwhelm her demon senses. It was a huge amount of work, but I did it!"

Pinching the bridge of her nose, as Amy giggled with deranged glee, Lisa shook her head. "Either you need a holiday, or I need a holiday," she mumbled. More loudly, she said, "That sounds extremely unwise. A self-replicating synthetic organism? The PRT will go mental. And what if it mutates into something dangerous?"

"Firstly, it can't mutate, it uses a very carefully designed DNA-analog based on Taylor's, which is insanely error-correcting and self adjusting. Secondly, it can only self replicate for a small number of iterations, which is just enough combined with the lifespan of the individual bacterium to make it only able to spread approximately three miles from the release point before it starts to die off. It's completely safe, I promise." Amy looked pleased with herself.

"Hmm." There was a pause, then Lisa asked the obvious question. "So, after spending all that time and effort, what does it smell of? Something weird and alien, that's going to make everyone look worried?"

"Bacon."

Lisa stared at her. "Bacon?"

"Yep. Bacon. Perfectly cooked, nice, crisp bacon." Amy shrugged. "It turns out that's the smell demons love more than anything else."

"Oh, for god's..." The blonde girl slumped into a chair, scrubbing her face with her hands. "You are as bad as she is. No. You are worse than she is." Amy merely looked at her. "So when you've managed to make the entire city smell of bacon, what's the next part of your glorious prank?"

"I sneak up on her while she's asleep and draw a mustache on her face." Amy snickered. "She'll never notice until she's at school. Then everyone will laugh and point. Revenge will be mine!"

She cackled to herself, while Lisa head-desked for a while, wondering what she'd done to deserve friends like these.

Eventually, she just rested the side of her face on the cool tabletop. "This entire city is nuts. I need to go live somewhere else. So when are you going to release this..."

She sniffed.

Then turned to Amy, who was holding an empty vial, upside down, over a puddle just outside the door. The healer grinned at her.

"Whoops."

"Oh, shit."

Fourteen hours later…

"Well, you were right about it being an overwhelming scent," Lisa grumbled, sitting on the DWU dormitory block with a pair of binoculars to her eyes. "Pity you didn't think that hours of smelling bacon everywhere would make her a little… peckish."

"That's the bank on the corner of West and Main, isn't it?" Alec asked idly, next to her, as they watched a cloud of dust rise. "Kaiju just ate the front right off it."

Amy, on her other side, groaned. "Oh, god, mom is never going to let me hear the end of this."

"Raptaur is eating another telephone pole," Brian reported from where he was standing behind them, also with binoculars. "Like a fucking bread stick. Unbelievable."

"Shit, Kaiju just grabbed Armsmaster's bike and swallowed it like it was a grape," Alec said, snickering wildly. "He looks pissed."

"He shouldn't have slowed down, she's going after the slowest things first," Brian sighed. "Good job, Amy. Really, very impressive. Your best work yet."

They watched another building collapse as the facade was ingested by a hungry sea monster.

"How long until it starts to die off?" Lisa asked fatalistically.

"Another four hours," Amy admitted, looking embarrassed. She perked up a moment later. "But it worked! She was walking around with a big black ink mustache all day!" The healer looked around at the others, who were regarding her with various expressions. She slumped again. "I just need to work on the collateral damage."

Brian reached down and patted her shoulder. "No, no, I think you mastered that. Best collateral damage I've ever even heard of."

Resting her head on her knees, Lisa just tried to pretend that today hadn't happened. It was difficult with the sound of distant munching going on.

"On the bright side, it's lots of work for the DWU, I guess," Alec pointed out happily. "And no one is ever going to mess with you again, Amy."

Half a mile away, Taylor's Raptaur aspect ate a traffic light...