By CmptrWz

Sophia took another bite of her pizza as she headed for one of her hidden equipment stashes, one without any of her Wards TinkerTech equipment but with plenty of sharp-tipped arrows and some poison she had never actually got around to using before she was press-ganged into the Wards. She was still amazed that the damned cuff had shorted out when she rested it against Chris's stupid pizza maker. Didn't stop her from waiting for the pizza, though that was at least in part due to the shock of the thing sparking once and falling off.

Little did she know that under normal circumstances she probably had a good three hours before Armsmaster noticed that he wasn't getting updates due to a code bug introduced when he hadn't gotten enough sleep, coupled with being slightly out of it due to not getting enough sleep. Kids, let that be a lesson: If you don't get enough sleep you make mistakes. When you make mistakes your stuff shorts out without anyone noticing. And when your stuff shorts out without anyone noticing psychopaths escape and start putting their murder plots in motion. So get your sleep!

Half an hour later Sophia had her equipment, had pre-poisoned her arrows, and realized that in all her planning she hadn't thought of a good way to find Hebert. Her father was easy enough to grab on his way to or from work, but she had heard rumors of discreet monitoring of their home. Rumors with no basis in reality, granted, but she didn't know that. As she wandered, doing her best to both stay moving and undetected, she pondered the problem.

"Colin," Dragon said, sounding worried. "The Simurgh just started acting up again, though it isn't on an attack vector."

"What is it doing, then?" Colin asked. "Adjusting orbit to account for Family movement?"

"It did adjust it's orbit," Dragon responded. "And is currently looking directly at Brockton Bay. While wearing a cheerleader outfit with the Family emblem on it and eating popcorn."

Needless to say that due to unusual circumstances Sophia had a lot longer before Armsmaster would make any unaided connections to what was going on and her escape.

Lisa stared at the PHO thread Winged_One had started in the Brockton Bay forum, wondering what "The Hunt Begins! All pity the hunter for her judgement is nonexistent!" meant. The moderators were torn between closing it and waiting to see if something panned out. Though the locals had apparently started prepping cameras and escape routes, just in case.

Now that she thought about it, cameras were a good idea. She quickly called Kevin and Randall to get them to launch the Snitch as she started trying to use her power to pick the right traffic and/or security cameras.

An hour later Taylor and Amy were walking down the boardwalk as their perfectly normal human selves, on their way to meet up with Vicky and Dean. The latter two were officially on a date but Vicky had insisted that Amy at least join them at Fugly's. Amy had just finished a hospital shift, and Taylor had been told to take some time away from school and Family. Due to the latter Amy had decided Taylor should also go to Fugly's. Along the way Lucy had decided to tag along to chat for a few minutes, but had already eaten and had other things to do and was going to go on her own way instead of joining the group.

Varga was currently flying around as an invisible mini-dragon, playing harmless pranks on people like moving their drinks when they weren't looking or tieing together the shoelaces of that would-be pickpocket.

Sophia just happened to pass through and spot Taylor and in her rage tunnel-visioned, ignoring everyone else around. She had moved to be in position to get a good shot off and, being downwind, had gone unnoticed by everyone in the area other than Dean, who didn't realize what suddenly had him on edge.

Of course, the Snitch is both not a person and was broadcasting to people not in the area, so Kevin and Randall were cursing the fact that Taylor had, apparently, not brought any phones with her. In reality she had, but she also had them in an EDM-lined bigger-on-the-inside pouch right now so they weren't getting any signal. By the time they thought to try calling Amy, who was right next to Taylor, it would be too late.

"Ames!" Vicky yelled, darting over to grab Amy. "What kept you?"

"I had to walk," Amy responded, looking down at Vicky's feet that were not, in fact, on the ground. "You know that thing where you use your feet to get around through the interaction between them and the ground?"

"I am sure that some day The Amy will learn to fly," Lucy said. "Until then she is slow and must contend with obstacles such as other people."

Sophia sighted down her crossbow, aiming to put the bolt as close to into Hebert's heart as she could. She just had to wait for the perfect opening. Finally Hebert stopped moving and turned around to look at the two Dallons yapping. She adjusted her aim and let the bolt loose, grinning as it was on target. And then she noticed that Victoria had apparently noticed the bolt and was moving to intercept, damnit.

Vicky happened to turn around at just the right moment to see Sophia's shot and was moving to intercept as she started yelling a warning. She almost got in position to block the bolt, but instead it glanced off of her forcefield. This caused it to just miss Taylor, passing within a hair's breadth of her shirt as she spun around in the wrong direction to see it in time to do anything.

If that was all Sophia's day would have ended up much better. Unfortunaetly for Sophia, Lucy happened to be in the bolt's new path and it lodged itself in her leg. She screamed in pain as she collapsed to the ground.

Vicky was rocketing through the air in an instant, heading straight for Sophia even as Amy grabbed Lucy.

"That arrow was poisoned," Amy growled, glancing up at Taylor. "And I think it was meant to kill you."

Taylor, for her part, was doing her best to not reveal too much as she reached into her pocket and manifested a collapsable baton to pull out for show. After all, Varga had things in hand for the moment.

Randall had been just about to initiate the call to Amy when they saw the bolt fired, glance off of Glory Girl, and hit Taylor and Amy's friend. At which point his brain decided that Amy had enough to worry about. Shadow Stalker as well, for that matter, though why was Taylor just standing there?

Then the feed from the Snitch swung around as Glory Girl stopped in mid-air, to show that a massive dragon was materializing out of the shadow of the building behind Shadow Stalker. Not that she had noticed just yet, but she would any moment.

SHIT! Sophia thought as Glory Girl rocketed towards her position. She grabbed her stuff and turned to run, only to stop and look up at the obstacle in her path. Was that a dragon?

"Why hello there little one," the dragon said, leaning down to look at Sophia. "I do believe we have some things to discuss, given that you just tried to kill at least one friend of mine."

Sophia made to dart to the side, only to have a very hot flame suddenly flow from the dragon's mouth and stop her. How the roof hadn't caught on fire she wasn't sure as her clothing was singed from several feet away.

"Now then," the dragon said after giving Sophia a moment to consider what the flame could do to her. "As I understand it, normally the younger members of the family would knock out and restrain people like you. You are, however, a bit fragile, so I can't guarantee that I won't hurt you in the process. Thus I think I will be nice and give you a chance to disarm yourself and surrender, as I can't guarantee that if I disarm you it won't be much more literal."

Sophia gulped and carefully considered her options. On one hand she saw herself as a predator. On the other hand even a predator can be hunted, and her fear response was making it very clear that she was not the alpha predator in this situation. The fire the friggin DRAGON had fired a moment ago felt too hot to pass through in her shadow state from a distance, she didn't want to know how hot it was at the source. And, of course, the dragon had snuck up on her, meaning that it likely had better stealth than her.

She hadn't even realized she had made her decision when she noticed that she had carefully put the unloaded crossbow she was holding down on the ground. She followed that by removing her extra ammo, several knives, a small pistol she didn't remember the source of, and was reaching for her mask when the dragon interrupted.

"I do not need to see your face," the dragon said. "Nor do the cameras."

It was only a couple hours later, with multiple new cuffs attached and sitting in a cell with an electrified web in the walls, floor, ceiling, and active current in the bars that she finally realized that hurting a friend of the family was probably the exact wrong thing to do before asking them to teach her.

Where she picked up the damned stomach bug that caused her to come to that realization on the toilet she had no idea.

Amy smirked to herself, having created a very annoying stomach bug targeted to Sophia's genetics from some skin samples that had been left on the crossbow bolt she had extracted from Lucy. In theory it should actually be essentially permanent unless Sophia's entire GI tract was cleared of all bacteria, beneficial or otherwise, and kept that way for a couple of days. Sophia deserved far worse for the poisoned bolt and Lucy was lucky Amy had been right there to help her.

She doubted anyone would even consider asking Panacea to help Sophia with her illness, no matter how long it went on for. Or any member of the Family, for that matter.

The following day the video from the Snitch, essentially unedited beyond some blurred faces, had become the latest internet sensation and people were clamoring for information on the dragon while at the same time calling for Shadow Stalker to be executed, birdcaged, or turned over to the Family for punishment. Amazingly enough nobody seemed to recall the odd behavior of the Simurgh. After all, how else do you react to the family?