Entering the grocery store, Benny picked up a basket from the stack inside the door, walked three steps, stopped, stared, turned around, put the basket back, and left. He got back into the car which Rudy was waiting in, his friend looking oddly at him.

"I thought you were getting some snacks."

"Boss Hebert was buying cheese."

Benny's voice was almost calm. Inside, he was shaking.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Rudy sighed as he started the car. "That's four times now. First he was buying a bottle of brandy when we went in to deliver Guido's shipment. Then he was visiting that bookshop and just happened to come out as we were walking past. Then the woodwork store on fifth right at the same goddam time we were going next door. Now here. How is he doing this? And why?"

"Boss Hebert works in mysterious ways."

Rudy looked at his old friend with some worry, the note of barely suppressed hysteria was growing...

Dinah finished writing the essay, putting her pen down and flexing her hand a little as she leaned forward and read it over for mistakes. Muttering to herself she found a couple of minor spelling errors and painstakingly corrected them, hoping the teacher wouldn't subtract marks for that. The scratching of pens on paper was almost the only thing she could hear in the room as her classmates wrote their own essays.

She wasn't the first to finish, Melinda had had that honor and was now sitting quietly reading a book at the front of the class, but she certainly wasn't the last either. Satisfied in the end that she'd done about as well as she could hope for, the girl leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment, thinking about the next few hours.

Once school was over, she was going to make her debut as the latest Ward in the city, the thought making her nervous all over again. Despite her power assuring her there was only a 5.74% chance of anything going wrong, which for this place was pretty low. She was still going to have a lot of people staring at her in her first press conference, which was enough to make anyone nervous.

Luckily, her experience with Raptaur down the boardwalk a little while ago had exposed her to a lot of public staring, not to mention shock, so she was fairly sure she could deal with a mere PRT publicity exercise. Or so she was telling herself. If she kept doing that, hopefully it would become true.

The teacher looked up from her own work, then at the clock. "Five minutes, everyone. If you're not done by then, just put your pens down."

The people who were still writing started writing faster, but Dinah was pretty sure at least half of them didn't stand a chance if they weren't done yet. Feeling quite happy that she'd bothered to review the relevant chapters in the geography book last night, she went back to wondering what would happen later.

And what the Family were up to. And, for that matter, what Taylor was up to. Her new friend seemed very interesting, and Dinah thought that the fact that she had a tail was really cool. As was the way she could stop people seeing it. That was amazing.

Smiling a little as she pictured what her mom would say if she came home with a tail one day, she doodled idly on some spare paper as she waited for the class to end. If nothing else, it took her mind off the event later, although she was pretty certain it wasn't something that was ever likely to happen. But one day she wanted to find out how Taylor had become Tail-or.

Snickering under her breath at her own joke, she kept doodling and thinking.

"Nope."

"Just get in there, it's a McDonald's for god's sake," Rudy growled. "Someone like him isn't going to be in a place like that, and I need some coffee!"

"It's not worth it. He's 'bumped into' us seven times in the last three hours, for Christ's sake!" Benny waved both hands at the fast food joint, his eyes a little wild. The drive through queue was packed, so they'd parked outside. "He'll be in there. I don't know why, I don't know how, but he'll be there!" He grabbed Rudy's shoulder and shook it.

"He's doing it on purpose, I'm telling you. He's following me."

"He's there before we get there, Benny," Rudy said in as reasonable manner as he could, unclasping the fingers gripping him painfully tightly. It was certainly becoming more than a little worrying the way that Boss Hebert seemed to pop out of nowhere like that, but he was trying to be reasonable about it. Most likely it was just a run of bad luck on their part, the guy couldn't possibly know where they were going every time, and even if he did, why would he be waiting for them like this? Someone like him wasn't going to waste time with a couple of low level if very talented professional goods relocators like them.

"That's the point!" Benny hissed, looking around suspiciously. He even looked in the rear seat, just to be sure. Rudy was glad they'd dropped the women off earlier at the salon, if Ella saw his friend acting like this her caustic comments were certainly not going to help matters. "He's always there! Boss Hebert is everywhere!"

"Stop being a fucking lunatic and just get me some coffee, will you, Benny?" Rudy sighed. "Look, we can see inside, right? There's no sign of him. So just go and buy some coffee and we can get on with work."

"You go and buy the coffee," Benny said, folding his arms stubbornly and almost pouting. "I'm staying here where it's safe." Rudy glared at him, then turned the engine off.

"Jesus, fine! I'll get the coffee. God, you need to get a hold of yourself, Benny, the boss won't be happy if we're late because you keep making me take some weird shortcut to get away from Boss Hebert."

"But we can't get away from him!" Benny said, looking around again and staring at everyone walking past with suspicion. "No one can get away from Boss Hebert if he doesn't want to let them go. He's got eyes everywhere. That sort of man always does. Anyone could be working for him. He's been running Brockton Bay for over twenty years and no one knew it!" His friend turned to him, twitching a little. "You know how much work that must have taken? How many people he must own? How hard it would be to make his organization just look like some normal dock worker's union? And what about the Family? Where do they fit? They're taking out the competition one after another and you know as well as I do who benefits. HIM."

Rudy couldn't help the involuntary shiver that went through him at his friend's words. He remembered that trip to Brockton Bay at three AM sometimes, and he could never get to sleep again afterwards. Perhaps Benny was onto something…?

He shook his head firmly. No, that place was certainly somewhere he didn't plan on visiting again, ever, if he could possibly help it, but he didn't think the man behind it would waste all this time following the two of them around even if he could do it. All this had to be some weird sort of coincidence.

Although…

Someone like Hebert would be an expert at making things look like a coincidence, even if they were anything but.

Or especially if they were anything but…

Shaking himself a little as his paranoia started to get away from him, he scowled at his friend. "Benny, we've known each other since we were kids, and it's as a friend I'm telling you, stop freaking out about all this before you drive yourself nuts."

"You're starting to think the same way, right?" Benny asked knowingly.

Rudy stared at him, then got out without another word and stomped off towards the golden arches. He heard the doors lock behind him but didn't look back.

And he hated the way the back of his neck was tingling the entire way across the parking lot, but he couldn't help it.

Once he'd got the coffees, and a couple of muffins as well, he returned to the car, again finding himself walking just that little bit faster than normal and looking around somewhat more cautiously than he usually would. Even up at the surrounding buildings once or twice, since he couldn't forget what Benny had told him about the sniper kid in the DWU cafeteria. Even though he knew he was being stupid, he couldn't help it.

'Fucking Benny,' he thought with irritation. 'Sometimes he gets something stuck in his head and just won't drop it.' At least he wasn't going around asking the wrong sorts of questions now, since he'd come back white as a sheet from a meeting with the boss, and Antonio himself. His friend hadn't said a word about what they'd told him, but Rudy could guess.

Tapping on the glass when he reached the car, he waited impatiently for Benny to finish checking it was really him, then unlock the door. Once he was inside he handed the cup-holder and the bag of muffins to his friend. "Hold this," he said curtly, restarting the vehicle, then backing out of the parking space. Moments later they were slowly heading to the next location on the list of jobs for the day. Benny, his hand slightly trembling, handed him one of the coffees, then leaned back sipping the other and inspecting the occupants of each car they passed with alert worry.

"Turn left up ahead," his friend suddenly said.

"Why?" Rudy sighed. "That'll take us an extra ten minutes, it's the long way round."

"Maybe we can throw him off," Benny explained. Rudy rolled his eyes, but with a sigh indicated and turned. By the time they'd negotiated the maze of roads this new heading had led them into he'd finished his coffee and muffin, idly wishing he'd bought two of the latter since he was still hungry.

Eventually they reached their destination, an innocent-looking dry cleaners down a side street in a semi-industrial area. He parked the car, then both of them got out. While he opened the trunk to get the package, Benny was looking around carefully, one hand in his pocket. This was good in a way, he was at least as alert as you could possibly hope for, but in another way it was bad, since Rudy was pretty certain his mind wasn't on potential hijackers.

"See?" he said as he slammed the trunk lid, the heavy box in his other hand. "No sign of him. You're imagining things, after a few weird coincidences."

Benny didn't stop looking around, but seemed to relax just a little. He tensed again as they reached the entrance to the dry-cleaners, but after a cautious look inside, appeared less stressed. Shaking his head slightly Rudy followed him inside. The old man behind the counter reading a newspaper, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, glanced up at them through the smoke. "You're late," he muttered in a hoarse voice roughened by too much tobacco.

"Sorry, bad traffic," Rudy replied mildly. He put the delivery on the counter. The old man stood with a grunt, dropping his paper on his chair, then picked the box up.

"Wait here," he said, before disappearing through the curtain that separated the dingy front part of the place from the much larger rear part, from which mechanical sounds and odd smells were drifting. Rudy and Benny looked around while they waited, the latter eventually just standing staring out the window at the small amount of traffic going past. A couple of minutes later the old guy came back with a different box, which he put down, before picking his paper up and sitting in his chair again. After that he ignored them.

Rudy grabbed the box and turned on his heel without a word, Benny following him out. "Get here on time next week," the old man called as they left.

"Never liked that old bastard," Benny grumbled.

"No one does," Rudy said. "Not even him." When they got to the car he popped the trunk and dropped the box in, closed it, then headed for the driver's door. Benny got in the other side and they pulled away from the curb.

Rejoining the main road and the flow of traffic, they resumed their journey. After a while Benny seemed to relax even more, which made Rudy relax as well, since sitting next to someone full of that much nervous energy was tiring. "See?" he said a few minutes later. "No sign of him. Told you. All a weird coincidence."

"Maybe," Benny replied eventually. He dropped his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. "Maybe not." He didn't sound convinced.

Rudy sighed. "Just keep your head in the game and forget Boss Hebert. We'll probably never see him again and we have a job to do."

"I'd pay good money to make sure that never happened," his friend mumbled, but didn't press the point. He seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep, despite the coffee and the early hour. Too much stress, probably. At least it would keep him quiet for the next twenty minutes until they got to the next job, Rudy thought.

He shook his head a little. His friend had too much imagination sometimes. Sure, Boss Hebert was a scary, scary guy, as bad as Antonio was at least, but Rudy was sure he wasn't going to follow them around all day just for shits and giggles. That was just paranoia at work.

Pulling up a the red light in front of him and Idly turning his head to follow the path of a spectacularly good looking woman walking down the sidewalk, he smiled a little. As he looked away, he met the eyes of the driver of the car in the next lane who had done the same thing as he also slowed for the light.

Rudy paled.

Boss Hebert winked, then waved, before indicating right and disappearing down the side road ahead.

It took the guy behind him leaning on his horn before Rudy twitched and put his foot on the gas.

He decided not to mention anything to Benny, although he was starting to think his friend might just have a point...

Aisha sighed, leaning her head on her hand, as she half-listened to the teacher drone on about something to do with fractions. It was very boring. Math and her were definitely not good friends, although she wasn't completely hopeless at it. She just found it hard to concentrate long enough to really get it a lot of the time, there was always something more interesting to do. Brian tried to help her, he really did, and to be fair so did their father as much as he could, but she just couldn't find it something she enjoyed doing. Or even tolerated given an alternative.

She assumed that there probably were people who had math come easily to them, but that didn't describe her at all. And they were probably really boring people who never did anything fun anyway. Glancing around she wondered if she could get away with doing something to liven things up, but she didn't really have anything good in mind and there wasn't much scope for amusement in math class anyway. Not like chemistry, there was always something you could do by mixing random chemicals and pouring them down the sink that would cause a little welcome chaos if the lesson got too boring.

The trick was doing that and getting away with it.

She liked to think she was pretty good at that part, although she wasn't perfect. Not through lack of trying though.

Softly kicking the leg of her chair as she mused on the unfairness of keeping people locked up in school when they could be outside having fun, she looked out the window. After a little while, watching the trees across the road bend nearly double in the strong wind, and the rain splatter on the windows, she amended her thought; they could be inside somewhere else having fun. It really didn't look like the sort of day she wanted to be wandering around in at the moment.

Hopefully it would clear up later. Her dad had said it was supposed to be fairly dry that afternoon, although it was likely to be windy for the rest of the day. With any luck when she finally got out of school it would have stopped raining and she could find something interesting to do.

Possibly go down town and take a look at this new Ward that was supposed to be introduced at a press conference at the PRT building? She'd seen a report in the paper that it was happening around four that afternoon. Sure, she probably wouldn't get in, but it was worth a try. She'd managed to sneak into places she wasn't supposed to be in the past, after all. And was pretty good at it.

Sitting up and raising her head as the teacher glared at her, she tried to pay more attention. Brian wanted her to behave, and she didn't want to let him down, but this was so boring! What good was math in the real world anyway?

She remembered something Cloak had said, about how what her powers did being interesting math. OK, then, perhaps if you were some weird family-associated floating clothing math was useful, but since she wasn't…

Thinking of the friendly disembodied apparel made her think of doughnuts. Which made her stomach growl.

She could really go for a doughnut.

OK. Get through the day without passing out from boredom, seek doughnuts, then go look at the new Ward if she could. You never knew, she might bump into Cloak wandering around. That night had been one of the best ones she'd ever had and she'd jump at the chance to do it again.

Picking up her pencil she made a few notes, to show willingness if nothing else, then went back to listening with half an ear and day-dreaming. The sooner school was out the better as far as she was concerned. At least she had lunch to look forward to.

Aisha sighed again. Perhaps she should try sneaking into the DWU after sneaking into the press conference? She'd like to see where Brian was working, and maybe meet more of those crazy lizards.

Whatever else Saurial was, boring wasn't part of it.

Getting back into his car, Danny pondered his day so far. Aside from stumbling across Benny and Rudy more often than chance would suggest was likely, there wasn't anything that particularly stood out about it. He'd asked Antonio and Serafina last night for some suggestions for places to get various little gifts and souvenirs from, finding that the shops they'd recommended seemed to be just what he was looking for. Antonio had even told him the best order to visit them in to minimize travel time, which was very helpful. Danny's own knowledge of the roads around here was somewhat out of date and things had changed quite a bit.

Annette's favorite bookshop had yielded a couple of nice works on weaponry throughout history that he suspected Taylor would like, along the lines of the Roman engineering book she'd spent some time reading. He didn't himself know enough about math to even begin to know where to get her any good books on the subject, and suspected she was far past anything that he was likely to find in a shop in any case. He'd asked Antonio where he'd got that very nice brandy and had picked up a bottle for himself as a treat.

Then he'd visited a place that the old man had recommended he check out, an establishment that was run by an ancient woodworker who'd made a lot of the furniture that was in Antonio's and Serafina's home. The guy was ninety if he was a day, but acted a good thirty years younger, and was a true artist. He'd perked right up when Danny had mentioned who'd sent him and the pair of them had spent a happy hour going around his workshop looking at various things he had for sale. In the end Danny had bought a beautifully made box intended for jewelry or something similar which he intended to keep his watches in. It was too nice not to get.

He'd also picked up a few little carved figurines, made of some very dense African wood he'd immediately forgotten the name of, which the elderly man made just as a hobby to keep his hands supple. He thought they'd make nice little gifts for various people in his life. Taylor got a little dragon, which seemed appropriate, Amy had a delicate little palm tree, Lisa had a very smug looking monkey, and he'd found suitable ones for Kurt, Lacey, Zephron, and Mark too.

Overall he was pleased with the results of his shopping trip. After stopping off to get some of the cheese he'd liked the night before from another place Serafina had recommended, he'd just visited a few places he remembered from years back. Now he was pretty much done with that part of his trip and was heading back to Antonio's place and what was undoubtedly going to be another enjoyable afternoon and evening.

Pausing to watch a remarkably pretty young woman walk past as he slowed for the light, he smiled to himself. 'Even at my age...' he thought to himself, a memory of how Annette would have poked him in the ear for a wandering eye if she'd been sitting next to him as he so wished she was coming to him with a tinge of regret. Looking back to the front, he caught sight of a familiar face in the car that was waiting to go straight on, the driver having clearly just seen the same young lady. He winked at Rudy, who seemed a little embarrassed at being caught looking, smiled with a small wave, then made his turn and went on his way.

Yes, this trip had been the right thing to do, he mused. Reconnecting with Antonio and Serafina was what his father would have wanted, and having done so, what he wanted too. He hadn't fully realized how much he'd missed the old pain in the ass. Despite their differences, they also had an awful lot in common. And this problem he had with a family member of his own could be interesting, depending on how things worked out. Hopefully well.

Danny thought it was nice, as much as he loved his home and his people, to get away from the craziness of Brockton for a little while. Not too long, he'd probably end up missing the excitement after a while, but a couple of days was good. He'd made some new friends, who certainly seemed to be busy and conscientious workers based on how much he'd seen them making deliveries and pickups around the area, had fun bowling… Things had definitely worked out well.

Hopefully Kurt had managed to keep a lid on the DWU in his absence, and Taylor was restraining herself and her friends from the more bizarre activities they so enjoyed. He'd find out sooner or later one way or the other but he'd much prefer not to do that via the news...

Lisa grinned at the object on her desk, then picked up the phone. Dialing, she waited for a moment for it to be answered.

"Roy Christner," a familiar voice answered.

"Hello, Mayor Christner," she said politely. "This is Lisa Wilbourn from Danny Hebert's office. We've met a few times in the past. He gave me your direct number."

"Hello, Lisa," he replied with a smile in his voice. "Yes, I remember. Danny's assistant, right?"

"That's me," she said. "I've been asked by the Family to contact you about arranging a time to talk about how they can help provide the city with some upgraded equipment for the police and fire services. Apparently you were talking to Danny about it at your dinner engagement and also mentioned it when you last visited."

"Ah. Yes, indeed, I and my people would be most interested in discussing the matter," he said, sounding abruptly very invested in the conversation.

"Unfortunately, with the current trouble with the rogue, Saurial is tasked with guarding Taylor, and the others are busy on various projects quite a lot of the time. They've asked me to represent them for an initial meeting to go over some of the ideas that they've come up with, and take any requests or suggestions that your people have. I have a good working knowledge of the capabilities of the Family and should be able to answer most of your questions. Anything I don't know I can talk over with them. Raptaur said that she was hoping to finish her current workload by next week and she could make some prototypes of whatever you decide you want to try then. And demonstrate them as well, where required."

"I see." She could hear pages flipping, her power telling him the Mayor was someone who liked traditional methods of organizing his time. Although he certainly was more than comfortable with technology too. "That sounds entirely reasonable. All right, I'll need to talk to a few people and work out the best ones to meet up, but… Would later this afternoon be possible? Perhaps around half past two? I think I can get most of the necessary personnel together by then."

"Of course, Mayor Christner, that's no problem at all. I can bring a few samples that have been prefabricated, mostly as a result of making costumes for New Wave and Vectura, as well as body armor for our security department. Saurial thinks that it's pretty close to what the police might want, but obviously it can be customized however you need."

"Excellent. Thank you, Lisa, I'm looking forward to seeing what you have. I'll leave word in reception here to have you brought in as soon as you arrive. Unless you hear otherwise, we're on for half past two." He sounded pleased. "I've been meaning to chase this down and you've saved me the effort."

"Always glad to help, Mayor," she told him, smiling a little. "Bye, then."

"Good bye, Lisa." The line clicked and went silent. Putting her desk phone back into the cradle, she leaned her chair back and put her legs on the desk, while picking up her notebook and crossing off one of the items on the list. 'Going well so far,' she thought with satisfaction. While she could just as easily have done this as Metis, she thought it was a good idea to put forward the idea that the Family were often busy and couldn't always drop everything without warning. It wasn't entirely untrue after all and would become steadily less so as time went on.

She'd been wanting to start commercializing some of Taylor's work for a while now, as she could see that it both would make a decent profit, and help people out. Not to mention get them used to FamTech equipment and ideas. Amy's fixers were one step in that direction, and a somewhat radical one. Balancing that with something much more prosaic yet valued like top quality and essentially impenetrable body armor, protective equipment of other types, tools, and the like would help make that little golden Varga logo become well known and symbolic of the best equipment on the market.

Too much, too soon, was a recipe for chaos. But holding too much back for too long put people at risk needlessly. She well understood the dilemma that Amy had faced with her one-shots.

In a way it was the other side of the problem, she mused. Amy could fix people who got smashed up. Taylor's equipment could hopefully stop them being smashed up in the first place. Between the pair of them, a lot of people were going to have a much better time of it.

On a slightly longer timescale they were going to have to think about how and what to do about Linda's mechs, and the re-programmable vehicles. The latter were likely to be the sort of thing that was a real game-changer, she thought. Her power had gone completely silent when it had first worked out what was going on, then nearly fallen over itself with glee. It was completely in love with the Tinker's abilities, nearly as much as it was fond of Amy's and Taylor's. In the latter case, it was actually closer to completely awestruck almost to the point of worship, she thought with a mental grin.

But that could wait. Right now, protective clothing, armor, batons, and a few other things were quick and easy for her friend to make in quantity, didn't have any of the Tinker Tech maintenance issues, and didn't have nearly the same potential problems if they got into the wrong hands. Hopefully that wouldn't happen and they were going to take precautions, but you couldn't always guard against everything. They'd all discussed this last night while setting up Kevin and Randall's new place, settling on the current approach.

'We probably need to find someone who knows more about clothing in general to bring in on this at some point,' she pondered. 'Perhaps it would be worth talking to Parian? Her business is doing pretty well from what I hear and some of this is right up her street. Maybe she'd be interested in some commissioned work. Taylor can't spend all her time making this stuff, she has far too much to do already. Confusing the crap out of the world is a full time job on its own...'

Snickering to herself, she tapped her pen on her notepad a couple of times, then reached for the phone again, dialing another number from memory.

"Hi, this is Lisa Wilbourn from the DWU calling on behalf of BBFO. I'd like to talk to Armsmaster if he's available..."