"How is it going?" Emily asked, looking around the data center. The towering form of Dragon in her armored suit loomed over the PRT techs running around trailing cables everywhere.

"Well, so far," the Canadian Tinker replied, typing rapidly on a keyboard for a couple of seconds, then turning to her. "We've got about half the server functionality in here duplicated so far, and I'm copying the data across from the original ones through my own filtering equipment as we speak. We've located several compromised systems that have very subtle back-doors in them, which have obviously been there for years. We're leaving them alone so we don't trigger anything and keeping an eye on them."

"Will it be ready in time?"

"I believe so. Nothing is jumping out at us as unexpected so far, although obviously I can't guarantee that will continue." Dragon turned back to the keyboard when something beeped at her, typed some more, then looked at Emily over her shoulder. "I'll let you know if we find anything that requires immediate action."

It was clearly a polite dismissal. Emily nodded, took one last look around, then headed back upstairs. Cables were strung all through the corridors, with computer equipment put anywhere it would fit, since all the original stuff was still in place. The new kit was in most cases smaller, faster, and higher performance than the original, but it still took up space.

In the long run this was probably good, a solid housecleaning of staff, systems, and security was never really a waste of time. But in the short term it was a fucking pain in the ass.

Returning to her office, she sat behind the desk, then pulled the next report off the top of the stack of work that kept building up. She couldn't do much about the computer upgrade aside from get in the way so it was best to try to get on top of some of the stuff that steadily built up regardless of what else was going on. Soon enough, they'd be ready to go and make Calvert have a very bad day, but for now, there were papers to check, sign, and file.

While she worked, she pondered one thing that she'd learned the day before, namely that the new Ward Prospect, otherwise known as Dinah Alcott, had apparently ended up visiting the Family and was considered a friend. That was… interesting. And potentially concerning, although there was no indication that the lizards had any idea that she was a Parahuman. Or that they'd actually care if they found out.

For whatever reason, Emily was finding that while she was still very curious about their origins, their motivations, and their relationships with the DWU, the one thing she wasn't worried about was the Family telling anyone anything they knew about civilian IDs of other capes. They seemed to take that part of the rules pretty seriously, unless you managed to do something to massively piss them off, which Calvert had definitely done. She got the distinct impression that Metis particularly found him annoying, and Raptaur was none too pleased about him either.

Knowing what she did about his past, she wasn't surprised.

So, all in all, there seemed no real reason to be concerned about the Family knowing Dinah. If anything it was another layer of protection for the girl. Between Armsmaster being able to find her more or less anywhere she went if anything happened, and the Family being able to go and retrieve her under the same circumstances, the young woman was probably about as safe as anyone could be.

Even so, she didn't really want any of the other Wards meeting the Family too closely. They tended to be impressionable, and one thing all of the lizards were very good at was making an impression.

"God help us all if Vista starts learning anything from them," she muttered under her breath. "Her and Cloak comparing notes..."

She shuddered a little. While she hadn't had the pleasure of meeting the animated clothing herself yet, she'd had some pretty vivid descriptions from several people who had, most of which had come away feeling disturbed.

No, it was probably best to keep people like Vista and Kid Win well away from the Family on anything other than a purely professional level.

And definitely keep Clockblocker away from Saurial. He was bad enough simply being in the same city as Assault…

The abrupt thought of Mouse Protector turning up and getting involved made her shudder again, think longingly of the bottle of good whiskey in the cupboard at home, then dive into the next report and try to push the horrible thought out of her mind with boring minutiae about mandatory firearm certification assessments for PRT troopers.

"Visiting friends. No, I'm afraid not. She's fine. Upstairs." Saurial made a pleased face as Lucy giggled, holding out her hand which the girl took and shook eagerly. "Nice to see you too, Lucy, and you both as well. How's life treating you all?"

"Pretty well, thanks," Mandy smiled, shaking the offered hand too. Vicky did the same, but in a rather absent-minded manner. Various thoughts and theories she'd come up with in the last week or so were rearranging themselves in her mind at a rate that was making her a little dizzy.

"Taylor, get down here," Saurial shouted up the stairs.

"Hold on, you reptilian annoyance," Taylor's voice came back to them. "I was just using the facilities."

"Mammals. Always needing to deal with their biological inadequacies," Saurial snickered.

"I heard that," the Hebert girl yelled.

"You were meant to!"

Saurial smirked, then turned back to them. "She'll turn up sooner or later. Amy's in the living room, food's in the kitchen."

"Are you going to be here long?" Lucy asked with great interest.

"I'm not due anywhere, so yep," Saurial nodded. "Not planning on going anywhere until tonight. I thought it would be fun to sit in on one of these math, movie and food sessions and check she was doing it right."

"Of course I'm doing it right," Taylor said as she came down the stairs, smiling at all of them. "I've made quite a lot of food," she went on cheerfully. "I hope everyone is hungry."

"I am." Saurial held up her hand.

"You always are, you bottomless pit," the brunette chuckled. The lizard-girl shrugged, looking pleased with herself.

"Not always, but fairly often," she replied without rancor.

Taylor grinned at her, then went into the kitchen. "Come on in, guys, you'll want some of these cookies while they're fresh."

All of them went after her, Amy appearing moments later from the living room. "Hi, everyone," she said, looking around at them.

"Hi, Amy," Mandy and Lucy both echoed. "Something smells good," Lucy added, sniffing.

"That's probably the pasta dish," Saurial commented. She lifted the lid of one of the pots on the counter, peering in. "It's a nice one, I've always liked it."

Turning to the cupboards, the reptilian girl started pulling plates out of them with an ease which, to Vicky, suggested familiarity. She was shortly arranging them on the counter along with silverware, while Taylor was putting various portions of food on them and Amy was opening bags of chips. "Drinks in the fridge," Taylor said. "Same as usual. Help yourselves."

Holding up the bag she'd brought, the blonde said, "I got what you wanted, Taylor."

"Can you put that over there on the end, please?" her friend replied after a quick glance at it. "No point opening anything until we need it."

"OK."

"Grab a plate, let's go and sit down in the living room," Taylor said, following her own advice. Everyone did the same and all six went into the other room.

"So, why are you here, Saurial?" Lucy asked, watching as the lizard-girl sat on one of the chairs and made herself comfortable. "And dressed like that?"

Saurial looked down at herself, then back at the Chinese girl, grinning a little. "It's my day off?" she replied, making everyone but Vicky, who was watching and thinking, laugh. "I can be casual. I often am, in fact. It's just that most of the time when people are taking photos of me, I'm wandering around in my armor dealing with criminals, or going to or from dealing with them." She glanced at Amy, who was nodding. "Amy knows, we went to that Thai place just after we first met. I was in disguise."

She ate one of the jalapeno poppers while Amy snickered. "Yeah, great disguise," Vicky's sister retorted. "Like anyone was fooled for an instant."

"Hey, it was nearly perfect," Saurial protested with a smirk.

"Oh, sure it was. A six and a half foot tall, overly talkative lizard in a leather jacket and skirt with a hat. Very inconspicuous."

"No one complained," Saurial said mildly, eating another snack.

"Because they were terrified of you, mostly," Amy grinned. "Not so much these days, we all know your Family is insane, but mostly harmless."

"That's the cunning plan," Taylor put in with a chuckle, having been looking between the two with amusement. "They sneak into our city, become practically indispensable by helping out and just acting all reasonable, then..."

Saurial cocked her head at her friend. "Then?"

"Then you seize the opportunity when everyone has been lulled into a false sense of security and do whatever dastardly thing your weird alien demon family is planning," Taylor said in a low, intense voice. "And it's too late to stop you."

"Curses," Saurial complained, looking entirely not upset. She ate another popper. "You're onto us, wretched human scum." Waving a finger in the air, she added, "We must fall back and regroup. Immediately. If not sooner."

The last popper went down and she looked at the now empty plate, appearing disappointed. "But not before eating all your snacks."

"Reptilian horror," Taylor giggled. "Leave some for everyone else who hasn't turned up yet." Saurial got up and headed for the kitchen, poking the girl in the shoulder with her tail as she passed, grinning to herself. "And mind the tail!" Taylor shouted. "And get my laptop!"

"Where is it?" the call came back.

"My room, of course. On the desk."

"OK."

"Have you been reading PHO again and listening to that lunatic who thinks the Family are all demons, Taylor?" Mandy asked, having been sitting with both hands over her mouth the entire time, holding in giggles. Lucy was silently heaving with laughter beside her on the sofa.

"Or worse, Void Cowboy," she added, looking horrified as the thought struck her. "Please tell me you're not listening to him. Even the demon guy is less annoying."

Taylor leaned back and laughed, shaking her head. "No, I would never strive to emulate Void Cowboy of all people."

"Thank god," Amy said with over-done relief, wiping her brow dramatically. "I was really worried there for a moment. Two of them would be at least three too many."

"Not to mention we're not all demons," Saurial put in as she reappeared, holding a laptop in one hand and her refilled plate in the other. She handed Taylor her computer and sat again. "And we're not all aliens either. I think both of those guys have the wrong end of the stick."

Vicky listened, and cogitated.

"Do you come here lot, Saurial?" she asked after a moment, slowly and casually. Then she ate some chips, doing her best to look idly curious.

The scaled girl looked at her, with a short nod. "I've spent a lot of time here, but not as much in the last month or so as before," she replied. "I had a hole in my schedule and thought I'd visit, like I said." She grinned at the Hebert girl, who was eating a sandwich at this point. "Taylor's been doing all that schoolwork since the Arcadia thing and has hardly had time to come to see the BBFO office until recently. I think that this week was the first time we've both been there for ages."

Mandy was watching the two with interest, nearly as much as was Vicky. "So you two really do know each other well?" she asked.

"Oh, god, yeah, we're like sisters in some ways," Taylor smiled. "So close you couldn't separate us with a knife blade. Like that." She held up a hand with two fingers pressed together. "It's like we were twins, sometimes. Admittedly of different species, so I don't know how that would work, but..."

"Stop laying it on so thickly, you're worse than I am sometimes," Saurial laughed, making Taylor stop and grin at them. "Yes, we've known each other for a while," she continued, looking back at the rest of them. "Her family and mine are pretty close. Unfortunately I can't really say too much about how we met, for personal reasons, but we get along well."

Vicky kept thinking. And discarding some theories, while others were dusted off and re-examined in light of new evidence.

"I think it's so cool you're here," Lucy said enthusiastically. "I had so much fun that time at the DWU."

"We noticed," Saurial laughed. "Raptaur thought it was hilarious, the expression you had the entire time you were there. What did your parents think of the video?"

"When they stopped gaping, they were laughing like idiots," Lucy giggled. "Dad couldn't believe it really happened, he was sure someone was playing a trick on me. Apparently, 'No cape that powerful would just take people for joyrides, Lucy.'" She put on her best attempt at a man's voice, not wildly convincingly. "And 'Even if they would, I can't really see anyone letting someone else ride on their back around the entire city,' as well. He was a little shocked, let's leave it at that." She seemed very pleased.

"My parents were a little surprised as well." Mandy grinned. "My mom said you guys could make a killing in the entertainment business taking people for rides around the city."

Saurial nodded, an expression of humor on her face. "We've discussed it. Amy and Raptaur were plotting how much to charge and whether she should give them checkups first, to make sure their hearts could take it."

"Something to do in the summer when school is over," Taylor suggested slyly. "Considering that most of the criminals seems to have gone on holiday or something, you'll need to find something to keep you busy."

Shrugging, Saurial chuckled. "I guess we could consider it more. Up and down the boardwalk for ten dollars, up and down the Medhall tower for a hundred."

"Oh, god, Max would pop a gasket," Amy chortled, appearing to find the idea both funny and interesting. "Let's do that."

Vicky considered her sister oddly, then the suggestion.

Then the thought of Max Anders looking out his window at the tenth paying customer waving as they went past the penthouse on Raptaur-back.

Then she started giggling herself.

Sure, she was thinking about some worrying things, but that was actually pretty funny.

Saurial cocked her head, seemed to listen, then turned to look at Taylor. "More people arriving, I think."

"How do you know?" Vicky asked, glancing out the window behind her, having moved the curtain to the side, to see another car she recognized approaching and slowing.

The lizard-girl tapped the side of her head. "Really good hearing," she replied.

"I'll say," the blonde commented, impressed. She watched as the car stopped and disgorged two people. "It's Eric and Rich, looks like Rich's father gave them a ride."

"Quick, answer the door again," Lucy urged. She was grinning mischievously. "See if you can get them to go 'eep' like Vicky did." The girl made a surprised little squeak sound, like a mouse that had unexpectedly been stepped on.

Vicky stared at her, frowning. "I did not sound like that."

"You did," Lucy grinned.

"Did not."

"Did."

"You did, actually," Saurial snickered as she got up. "It was hilarious." Walking quietly into the hall, the others all getting up as well and following to see what happened, she waited inside the door, visibly listening. Putting a finger to her muzzle, she counted down with the other hand, then yanked the door open, to reveal Rich standing on the other side with his hand raised to knock.

"Welcome to the House… of Death!" she hissed, making him yip and nearly jump into Eric's arms, the other boy behind him flinching violently. "No… Wait." She looked over her shoulder at Taylor, who rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.

"Math. House of Math. You mad reptile."

"Not Death?"

"No, that's across the street and down two. Mr McKillystabs. This is Hebert. Math."

"Sure?"

"Definitely."

Saurial shrugged, turning back to the two boys, who were gaping at her in bemusement now. Vicky and the other three girls were creased up, partly at the dialog and partly at the expressions their friends were wearing. "Sorry, House of Math. Welcome to it. Come in." She stepped to the side and waved grandly into the hall.

They exchanged a glance, shrugged, and entered. Saurial slammed the door behind them. "Muah ha ha," she said in a low, evil voice. "More victims. I mean, students."

Eric looked at her, then turned to Taylor, who was smirking at him. "You have very weird friends," he complained.

"That's what she keeps telling me, but personally I like you guys," she laughed, putting an arm around his shoulder. "Ignore the insane lizard. Come and have some food, then we can work out what to do next."

With a glance back over his shoulder at Saurial, who was now grinning at him with far more teeth than were natural, he shook his head. "Why do I feel that I should have stayed at home?" he asked rhetorically, but with good humor.

"No idea," she shrugged.

Rich was watching this all with a bewildered expression. He turned to Vicky, who was closest. "Um…?"

She shrugged, still trying to work things out in her head. "Not a clue. Taylor's bad enough, Saurial is worse, and we're now seeing both of them at the same time in the same place." She lowered her voice. "This might get weird."

She was at least half-serious...

Looking at the house that matched the description Vicky had given him, then the letterbox with the street number and the name 'Hebert' on it, Chris said the obvious.

"I think this is the place."

"All right," his mother said as she stopped the car at the curb. "Do you really think this girl can help?"

"I have no idea, but Vicky thought it was worth a try, so I guess I might as well give it a shot. Taylor has a reputation as being a math genius and a nice helpful girl. Maybe she really can figure something out. It's not like anything else is doing much good, is it?"

She brushed his hair back with one hand, giving him a look of affectionate concern. "Don't be disheartened, Chris. I'm sure, one way or another, that you'll do fine. Go and have fun with your friends, do your best, and even if things don't change right away, at least you've had a good day."

He shrugged, still looking at the house with a certain amount of worried anticipation. After a moment he reached for the door-handle. "OK, Mom. I'll call you when I'm ready to leave." Glancing at her he put on a smile. "Thanks for giving me a ride."

"You're welcome, son," she smiled back. "Don't forget your backpack."

Reaching into the back seat he retrieved the pack, then pushed the door open and got out. She leaned over to look up at him. "Have fun. That's the most important part."

"I'll try, mom," he assured her. Closing the door, he waved as she pulled away, then turned to look at the house again, before taking a deep breath and heading up the path to the porch, studying the house as he approached it. It wasn't huge, but it was a reasonable size, needed a new coat of paint, yet otherwise looked like it was cared for.

He'd bumped into Taylor Hebert a couple of times at school, knew she was close friends with Amy Dallon after only a fairly short time of being in Arcadia, and that she got on well with pretty much everyone. She had a smallish group of good friends who normally sat together at lunch, like he did with his fellow Wards and Vicky, but was considered by others to be likable and approachable if not outgoing.

She certainly wasn't the extrovert Vicky was, but she wasn't the introvert Amy had been either, and had somehow managed to bring the other Dallon sister out of the funk the girl had lingered in for most of the time Chris had known her. Amy was no less sarcastic or snarky these days, but seemed to be having fun rather than merely marking time and trying to ignore everyone else. So that was good.

Not really knowing what to expect, he went up the steps to the front door and pressed the doorbell button, hearing it ring inside. Footsteps approached then the door opened, to reveal Taylor smiling at him, Vicky behind her. "Hi, Chris. I'm Taylor, as you probably know. Welcome to my home." The girl held out her hand, which he shook. "Come on in. Everyone else is already here."

"Thanks," he replied, entering the house and looking around. She closed the door, then walked around him.

"Let's go into the living room, we were just discussing watching a movie to get everyone in the mood for proper learning. We've got lots of food, no one is going hungry today."

"That's for sure, the kitchen is stuffed with snacks, and that pasta thing is delicious," Vicky smiled. He glanced at the tall blonde girl, who seemed happy, yet to him also a little bemused about something. She met his eyes, gave him an unreadable look, then floated off, her feet an inch off the ground which amused him. Taylor followed his eyes and snickered.

"We permit her to fly indoors, but only at very, very low altitude," she whispered conspiratorially behind her hand. "She gets twitchy otherwise but we don't want any cabbage-related incidents."

Chris started laughing to himself. "The Great Coleslaw Explosion..."

"Exactly. Amy told me about that in great detail. Not in my house. Dad would be… annoyed."

They shared a grin, then went after Vicky who had disappeared into what turned out to be the living room. Inside, he glanced around, seeing that Amy was sitting talking to Mandy, the odd girl who ate entire burgers at once then nearly choked on them, her friend Lucy, and the two boys Rich and Eric, who he recognized from school but didn't know well. All of them looked up and nodded to him, calling greetings.

The final person in the room was…

"Hi," Saurial chirped brightly as his astonished gaze stopped on her. She waved. "I'm Saurial. You know everyone else?"

"Um..."

"Of course you do, from what Taylor says you only sit a couple of tables away at lunch in school." She seemed in a good mood, from what he could tell.

"Um..." A little helplessly he turned to Taylor, who chuckled.

"Oh, yes, Saurial is here too. She's a close friend and wanted to see what we got up to, since she was at a loose end and is incurably nosy."

"That's me!" Saurial grinned. She patted the seat of the sofa next to her. "Have a seat, Chris. Taylor, get the poor boy something to eat, he looks ready to fall over."

"Back in a sec," Taylor said, giving him a gentle push towards the lizard-girl, then heading across the hall into the kitchen. He wandered over and sat down, putting his backpack on the floor. Saurial held out her hand, which he took and shook.

"Sorry, I was gaping a bit there," he apologized when he recovered a little. "I didn't expect to meet you today."

"Hardly anyone expects to meet me, judging by the expressions," Saurial grinned. "But I turn up all the time, all over the place."

"So I've heard," he replied, relaxing a lot. The presence of the reptilian cape had definitely thrown him for a moment, at least partly because he'd never thought much about her home life. With the utterly non-human appearance she'd stand out anywhere and somehow that had made him at least subconsciously not picture her simply lounging on an ordinary sofa in an ordinary living room in front of a perfectly normal TV. Not to mention in the presence of half a dozen teenagers who were largely simply treating her as one of them.

Vicky was certainly watching her closely, he noticed, although he still couldn't work out her expression. The half-Chinese girl Lucy was also watching her, but in that case her expression was easy to discern, since it was one of delight. He remembered that she was supposed to be mad about reptiles and had a pet iguana, so that part was explained.

His interactions with the lizard-girl when he was out as Kid Win had been nothing other than friendly and sometimes hilariously funny as in the case of the Tabasco sauce incident, which had entered PHO legend. She was terrifyingly dangerous when she needed to be, but everything he'd learned about her, and as far as he was aware that anyone else had learned about her, indicated that she genuinely didn't actually want to be a danger to anyone.

And, if what he'd picked up from overhearing other people talking, specifically Armsmaster and Dragon, she was also beyond brilliant at mathematics. Between her and Taylor they probably had more mathematical ability than the entire university math and physics departments put together. Perhaps they really could help him?

Like he'd told his mother, it was worth a shot.

Taylor came back into the room carrying a plate and a glass, both of which she handed to him. "Here you go. Something to keep you from starving to death, and some coke. There's a lot more, so if you want anything else, just let me know."

"Thanks," he replied as he accepted the food, putting the plate on the coffee table in front of him, then sipping the coke before placing the glass there as well. Picking up one of the sandwiches she'd given him, he looked around the room again. Vicky was apparently deep in thought, glancing between Taylor and Saurial. Amy, Lucy, and Rich were now arguing quietly over a pair of DVDs, while Mandy was eating, and Eric was looking at the back of another DVD case with interest.

"So how do you do this?" he asked curiously. "Just get together, eat too much, watch movies, and do math exercises?"

"More or less," Taylor smiled. "The order is different each time, but it's basically movies, math, and food. So far it seems to be working. I've helped Amy with some problems she was having difficulty getting to grips with, that's what started it all off when we first met. Since then everyone else sort of turned up. The results are encouraging."

"I'll say they are," Mandy put in, finishing her latest sandwich and swallowing quickly. "She fixed me right up with algebra, and my calculus is coming along well. The teacher was surprised, in a few weeks I've suddenly done better than I did most of last year."

"Me too," Rich nodded. Eric did the same. "Taylor is really good at explaining the problems in ways that I can understand. Her homework is actually useful as well."

"She's very strict, though," Amy grinned. "You don't get more food if you don't finish all the questions."

"I'm so terrible at math, though..." Chris looked around at them all, feeling overwhelmed. Calculus? He'd be happy to be able to learn multiplication tables properly. "Won't I hold you back?"

"No, don't worry about that, Chris," Taylor said, sitting on the chair at his end of the sofa. "We'll figure something out."

"I can teach your friends while you talk to Chris if you want," Saurial suggested. "Have you started them on multidimensional matrices yet? Or folded space calculations?"

Everyone stared at her. Taylor was grinning a little.

"What?" Saurial looked around with a puzzled expression. "It's easy. Look." She was suddenly holding a two foot square whiteboard in one hand and a marker in the other. "As an example, these are the basic equations governing six dimensional hyperbolic space mapped onto three dimensional space-time." She wrote quickly, a series of horrendously complex symbolic equations filling the top half of the board. "Obviously, to do most of the really interesting real-world applications you need to take into account more dimensions, then start fractally nesting them, but this is a good place to begin." She wrote down a couple more equations, then studied the board.

Everyone other than Taylor was gaping at the whiteboard in a mix of astonishment, horror, and shock. "That's math?" Mandy squeaked. "It looks like someone's word processor vomited. I don't even recognize most of those symbols."

Eric was squinting at the board with his head on one side. "I think some of those are something to do with high level number theory, but I agree, most of them are new to me."

"You're trying to introduce them to Family mathematics and I haven't even finished with basic human math yet," Taylor snickered. "I don't think they're ready."

"Sure?" Saurial looked at her, then back at the board she was holding, one eye-ridge up. "This is pretty basic stuff. You can't understand the complicated math without a good foundation to build on." Vanishing the pen, she held up a… thing… that made most of those present wince and look away for a moment. "They'll never understand fractal dimensional constructs like this until they can handle the math behind it."

"I'm not sure I want to understand something like that," Rich muttered, peering sidelong at the little object she was holding and rotating back and forth. Chris could almost swear that the lighting in the room was altering in time to the movements, and that he could feel that gravity seemed to be going in subtly different directions than it should. "What the hell is it?"

"Just a little children's toy, for learning how higher dimensional surfaces interact with three dimensional space," Saurial smiled. She tossed it to him, everyone watching as it flew through the air, following a path that was anything but normal, in a way no one could afterwards describe. Taylor jumped to her feet and neatly intercepted it just before it would have beaned him, then frowned at her scaly friend.

"Don't throw warped pockets of space-time around the living room. You know what happened the last time. Dad will be annoyed."

Saurial shrugged, grinning. "I could fix it."

"Not the point." Taylor looked at the thing she was holding, tutted in a slightly annoyed fashion, then spun it in her hand and flipped it to one side. It arced across the room and somehow landed in Saurial's hand, even though it hadn't been aimed directly at her.

"Nice shot," the lizard laughed, making it vanish. "You compensated for the fifth dimensional gravitational distortion pretty well."

"Like you said, it's not too hard. But they're a way off learning that sort of thing. Stop showing off."

Both of them looked at each other, appearing amused at this point, as if there was a private joke they were sharing, then turned to the others. Amy was watching with a small grin of her own as if she had seen this before, Vicky was now examining both Taylor and Saurial with narrowed eyes, and everyone else was looking between then in mild shock. Chris stared, trying to work out what had just happened, and why his head was suddenly full of bizarre ideas that made no sense.

"OK, you teach them for a while, and I'll talk to Chris," Taylor said as she sat again. "But no Family math, no higher dimensions, and no more non-Euclidean toys flying around the room."

"Ma'am!" Saurial snapped, shooting to her her feet and attention, her hand at her brow and her tail tightly tucked against her legs. "Yes, Ma'am!"

"And knock it off, you're making everyone think you're strange," Taylor added, shaking her head with a grin. Saurial relaxed, smirked again, then sat down once more.

"Strange? Me?" She looked at herself, then around at the others. "I'm entirely normal. It's all you mammals who are strange. Why don't you fall over without tails to help you balance?"

"We somehow manage," Mandy said, now grinning. She'd apparently overcome her surprise at the 'toy' that the lizard-girl had made.

"Tails are cool, though," Lucy added, which made Saurial wave at her with the end of her own appendage.

"A human with good taste, as I've said before," the blue-scaled girl laughed. Lucy smiled back at her.

"Can you understand that, Taylor?" Vicky asked slowly, indicating the board which Saurial had put on the sofa, leaning against the back, when she'd jumped up. Taylor looked at her, then the board, which the reptilian teenager obligingly held out.

"It's fairly straightforward," the tall brunette nodded. "Although I'll admit it's quite a long way past anything you guys are ready for."

"Interesting..." Vicky trailed off, sitting back in her chair and nibbling some chips, a faraway look on her face. Taylor stared at her, then looked at the girl's sister, raising an eyebrow. Amy shrugged, meeting her eyes. After a moment, Taylor did as well, turning back to the room at large.

"Anyway..." She walked over to where Saurial was. "Go over there and stop being any more annoying than you have to be," she instructed, pointing at her former chair. Saurial smirked at her, then followed the directions, the board disappearing as she got up. Taylor sat in her vacated spot next to Chris.

"Let's watch a movie, eat some more, and then we can get to the fun part," she said, glancing at them all.

"Fun part, she says," Mandy whispered loudly to Lucy, who leaned over to her.

"To her it is," the other girl whispered back, just as loudly. Both of them were looking directly at Taylor, who was smiling. "I think it's weird too. Just roll with it."

"OK."

Both of them straightened up and gave Taylor matching brilliant grins. Saurial was snickering to herself. Taylor shook her head, then looked at Chris, who felt that he'd somehow ended up in a peculiar variant of the Twilight Zone. "Ignore them, they're just jealous," she advised. "Did you bring any of your special textbooks, the ones Vicky told me about?"

"I did," he replied, picking his pack up and unzipping it. He pulled out the books in question, handing them to her. She flipped through them quickly, before settling on one of them and putting the rest on the table.

"OK. I'll have a look through this while we watch the movie and try to work out something that might help you. Guys, pick one and put it in the player, will you?"

Eric held up the DVD he'd been examining earlier. "The new Tron one?"

No one seemed to have any objections, so he handed it to Amy, who was nearest to the player. She put the disk into the tray, closed it, and hit play, while Lucy got up and fully closed the curtains. Rich turned out the lights, Taylor disappeared into the kitchen for a couple of minutes and came back with popcorn, and then they all sat back to watch the movie play.

Chris kept glancing at Saurial for a little while, trying to figure out why her little joke had sparked such odd thoughts in his head, but in the end forgot about it and got into the movie.

Beside him, Taylor was leafing through the book, half her attention on it and half on the screen.

He wasn't expecting much to come of this, but if nothing else his mother had been right, so far it was a lot of fun, if a little strange.

Vicky watched digital people fight each other.

She ate another sandwich.

Then some popcorn.

And all the time, she was thinking about Saurial, Taylor, the Family, and the Heberts. Not to mention the DWU and an awful lot of very strange things she'd read about recently.

How did it all tie together?

The only thing that she was sure of at the moment was that there was a connection between Taylor and Saurial that was a lot deeper than it appeared on the surface, and it was really confusing her trying to put the pieces together.

She ate some more popcorn and kept thinking.

"Vicky is worried."

'That's what it smells like, and looks like,' Taylor agreed, glancing at her friend with her Saurial aspect. 'I wonder what the problem is?'

"Perhaps, when we have a private moment and some time, we should find out. She's a good person, I wouldn't feel right not offering to help if there was something we could do."

'Me too,' she agreed. She watched the blonde quickly look at her Saurial aspect through her Taylor one. Neither viewpoint shed any light on what her friend was worried about, aside from making her sure there was something bothering her. It probably had to do with whatever thing had been making her get odd expressions every now and then for a week or so. Looking at Amy, she saw that the brunette was also clearly aware that her sister was acting a little oddly. She met Amy's eyes, the other girl making a very small motion with her head that conveyed puzzlement.

Oh well. It was probably nothing particularly difficult to deal with. For now, there was a movie to watch, a book to read, and a problem to attempt a solution for.