"Right, then." Taylor looked at Amy with a wide, worrying smile. "Time for a new project."

"Ah… Explain, please? Only you're scaring Lisa again." Amy nodded at the blonde, whose eyes were almost entirely pupil, and whose face had gone ashen.

"Oops. Sorry, Lisa." Taylor quickly guided their friend to a chair and gently strapped her in. "Damn, I thought we'd got her past that point."

"I think it was just that smile, actually," Amy mused out loud, watching. "I should probably be worried that it doesn't affect me like that." She shrugged after a moment's thought. "Meh, probably not worth bothering about. Where were we? Oh, yeah, new project. Explain. Explicate. Expound."

"Exterminate?"

"Not yet, unless you have a good target."

"Sophia."

"That'll do." They shared a dark smile. "Is she back in town?"

"We got a whiff of her distinctive blend of fury and idiocy when we were wandering around last night." Taylor shook her head, the Varga appearing next to her as Saurial and looking somewhat irritated. "She's tricky, I have to admit. We followed her scent all over the neighborhood, but she's hard to pin down. That shadow form doesn't leave scent traces and there's no thermal output either. But she was definitely casing the house, and I'm pretty certain the bitch was hanging around the school too. That's going too far, she could hurt one of our friends, or some completely unrelated bystander."

Amy scowled. "No, we can't have that," she said briskly. "Not at all. Any sign she's been to the DWU yet?"

"Nope, which probably means it's her next target. I've got lots of ideas how to deal with the lunatic, and to be honest I'm feeling mean enough to want to draw it out a little. So I thought you might like to help with the opening moves of Operation 'Fuck With Sophia.' I think it'll be fun."

Amy grinned in an even more disturbing manner than Taylor had. Lisa, who picked that moment to open her eyes and rejoin them, took one look at the healer's face and passed out again. Both the other girls, and the demon, peered at her, then exchanged glances.

"Well done," the Varga said proudly. "Well done indeed. We may make a demon of you yet."

"Thanks." Amy giggled. "So, what's the plan?"

"We need a lot of onions, some carefully designed constructs, and DNA samples from a couple of people including me pre-Varga..." Taylor produced a comb and held it up, carefully pulling a couple of strands of hair free. "Like this."

"I think I might be starting to get an idea of what you have in mind," Amy snickered, taking the hairs and inspecting them. "Oooh, I just had a wonderful idea. I've got DNA data on anyone I've ever touched and that includes quite a few fairly senior people in the PRT..."

Taylor stared, then roared with hilarity. "Yep, we're doing that."

Lisa woke up again, looked at the laughing pair, sighed heavily, and waved at Taylor. "Untie me, you menace to sanity. Someone has to keep an eye on you guys to make sure you don't end the world by accident."

"We would never do that by accident, Lisa," the Varga said in reasonable tones, making her glare at him.

"Let her up, we'll need her," Amy chuckled, heading for her workshop. "She can check the work and make sure it's good."

"'Good' may be exactly the wrong word to use, but I'm in," Lisa commented as the straps holding her to the chair vanished and she stood up. "Against my better instincts."

"You're as nuts as the rest of us, Lisa, you just say things like that because you want to look like the normal one," Taylor laughed, putting an arm around the other girl's shoulders. "For some reason I don't understand."

"No, you wouldn't," Lisa mumbled. "Come on, let's do this before I change my mind."

The rest of them followed Amy into the workshop and closed the door. Quite a lot of laughter could be heard, very faintly, if someone had happened to be in the main room.

It went on for some time.

Sophia ghosted through the warehouse, passing into and out of walls and support columns one by one while carefully checking for observers. So far she'd limited herself to moving around mostly at night while looking for her targets and any PRT observers. The night before she'd spent an hour or so very cautiously sneaking around in the general area of that little bitch Hebert's house, watching it from a distance great enough that any PRT protection they might have shouldn't have been able to spot her. She'd found a good observation spot on the roof of a four story apartment building two blocks away, which had let her peer at the target through a pair of very nice binoculars she'd lifted from a sporting goods shop in Iowa a couple of weeks earlier.

Hebert's father had been visible through the gaps in the curtains, moving between what looked like the living room and the kitchen, but there had been no trace of Hebert herself. Sophia had worked out which upper floor window was probably her bedroom, but the curtains had been closed and she could only see a faint light, which looked like it might have been from the hallway rather than the room itself. At the time it had been just before midnight so Hebert was probably in bed.

Half tempted to simply end things then and there, she'd caressed the sheathed hunting knife that had come from the same place as the binoculars, but in the end had decided it wasn't worth the risk. Until she'd fully worked out a good plan of attack, jumping the gun would be foolish. Smiling grimly to herself at the thought of how her former colleagues would probably have expected her to rush in and get caught, she'd kept watching until all the lights in the house went out, then left as carefully as she'd arrived.

The next day she'd put together a disguise that she was sure would fool anyone who wasn't looking very carefully and gone to check out Arcadia, again from a sufficient distance that she could make a break for it if something went wrong. Spotting the well hidden PRT troop transport that was parked behind the gym had taken her nearly half an hour and made her happy that she'd been so cautious.

Further observation had let her be fairly certain there were at least four PRT troopers with disguises of their own mingling with the staff, and she thought she'd also spotted Saurial at one point. Why the lizard girl was there she didn't know, but at least when she finally made a move on Hebert there would be one of the Family present to see how much better than the girl she was. Assuming that she decided to do it at school. In a way, she rather thought it would be the coolest place to do it, since it would be right under the noses of the Wards and the PRT, showing them just how useless they all were.

Still, it was the high risk option. At home in her bed was much safer.

Right now, though, she wanted to have a look at the Dock Worker's place, where Hebert's father worked, since she was still wondering if she should do him first, do him and make Hebert watch, or some other plan. The second option was the harder one admittedly but it would give her more pleasure watching her prey's face…

Shaking her head, since she was getting ahead of herself, the girl slowly and carefully located an observation point at a window on the third floor of the abandoned warehouse, overlooking the DWU facility, and got her binoculars out. Shortly she was scanning the site and making notes on the genuinely rather professional security measures she could see, working out methods to bypass them if required.

Floating several hundred feet in the air Vicky watched as the last traces of the sun set over the hills in the distance, simply enjoying the stillness of the spring evening. She was feeling fairly serene right now, flying tended to calm her down, and after all the weirdness of the last few weeks, she needed a break. The blonde was in an almost lying down position, effortlessly lounging on nothing at all, and just chilling out for a while.

Home was much better than it had been in the past since Amy had given Carol an earful, followed by Aunt Sarah doing the same thing only more so. And since Ianthe's little miracle healer thing had been used on their Dad, he was a lot closer to normal than he'd been for literally years. That alone had made their mother calm down noticeably, making their home environment a lot nicer in another way. Even so, she still liked to get away at times and just be on her own for a while, no family, no boyfriend, no criminals, just her and the sky.

In the distance she could hear a couple of faint gunshots, an unfortunately common background noise in any decent sized American city, and up until recently a very common one in this city. These days it was actually fairly rare, and only a few seconds later sirens sounded as the cops responded. Since the lizards came to town, the crime rate had dropped so much that the BBPD had, for the first time in probably a couple of decades, enough personnel to respond to even fairly minor crimes. Rather than the former problem of being utterly overwhelmed merely by the really serious ones.

Overall, she liked the change. True, she didn't get to round up as many idiots with guns and bad attitudes as in the past, but she also had a lot more time to do things that were in their own way more fun. Like just floating around, for example.

Smiling up at the moon, Vicky gently cruised around on her back, feeling very mellow.


{She's in that warehouse, second window from the end on the third floor.}

{OK. We're all set here.}

{Are you sure this is going to work, Taylor?}

{It'll work, Randall. Don't worry about that. And thanks, guys, we needed more people to pull it off properly.}

{No sweat, this is fun. And we get some great new toys out of it too. I've got all sorts of ideas for these…}

{You said it, Bro. Coolest thing ever.}

{We're fully cloaked. Let's all get into position and see what happens next.}

{Danny just left, so he'll be safe even if things go weird. And I told everyone to stay inside for now, because we were setting a trap for a rogue parahuman.}

{Thanks, Lisa. Amy, you ready?}

{Yep. This is going to be hilarious.}

{Not so much for Sophia.}

{Do I look like I care about that?}

{No more than I do. Right, you guys go that way, Lisa, you get over to that warehouse, Amy you take the other one, and I'll start things off.}

{Got it, Taylor. Sophia, you're about to see what happens when you piss off the Family.}

{Hee hee hee...}

"You have to be kidding me..." Sophia looked down and to the side, not believing her eyes. Taylor fucking Hebert was walking casually along the street, her distinctive long hair waving back and forth as she passed under the occasional streetlights which still worked. The girl was coming from the direction of the DWU and heading roughly towards the boardwalk, and was clearly in no great hurry.

'Take the opportunity or wait?' The hidden observer wondered what she should do. On the one hand, this was almost too good to be true. On the other hand, fate had apparently just handed her an opportunity out of the blue that bypassed most of the problems she would otherwise have. Suspicious, she carefully looked around, not seeing anything or anyone that might indicate this was a trap. Assuming she wasn't missing something, this might well be her best chance. Never a massively patient individual even after recent events had given her a new appreciation of thinking things through, Sophia wavered as her target diminished into the distance and darkness. Eventually, after another very deliberate scan of the surroundings, including listening intently for any footsteps other than Heberts, she shrugged, grabbed her pack full of weapons and supplies, and headed after the other girl.

Using her powers to allow her to leap from building to building, she followed the brunette below her as she turned the corner and kept going, apparently heading home via the dock end of the boardwalk. It was a route that made sense as it bypassed the most wrecked and sketchy areas of the surroundings and any possible inhabitants of them. 'Must have been visiting her damn dad,' Sophia mused, pausing on one rooftop to peer down and locate the person she was tailing. 'I can't believe how convenient this is. Idiot doesn't have the sense to even look up every now and then.'

She looked around again, not seeing or hearing anything close enough to be a problem. On the edge of hearing were some sirens and a number of gunshots, but that was so common in the city she ignored it. The sounds were obviously miles away in any case. Nearby, there were only the faint sounds of her quarry's shoes on the pavement and the occasional car noises coming from the roads a few blocks over. Once or twice she could hear a ship in the bay blast its horn, the sound echoing around the entire city for several seconds, but dulled with distance.

As far as she could tell they were basically alone, the nearest people probably either the odd junkie that hadn't cleared out when the Merchants became defunct, or the union guys back at the DWU, which was nearly a mile behind them by now. She looked down again, seeing the girl turn another corner. Slipping back into her shadow state she glided across the alley between this building and the next one, then checked. Yep, still wandering along as oblivious as most people.

Sophia knew this general area reasonably well, as in her vigilante days she'd hunted criminals all through the place. When she'd been press-ganged into the Wards policy had kept her in 'safer' areas for the most part, but she doubted much had changed in eight months or so. If she remembered right, about half a block ahead was an old factory that was a warren of corridors and rooms, which would make an ideal place to ambush the girl. Knock her silly, then drag her inside, and she'd be practically trapped and unlikely to be heard outside, even assuming anyone was around to hear.

Mind made up, Sophia cut across the next few roofs until she reached her destination well ahead of Hebert, then sank through the roof and the next couple of floors to ground level. Putting her pack down in a safe place, she rummaged through it until she found a collapsible baton and some zip ties.

'Whack her, cuff her, and drag her here,' she thought, looking around with the aid of a small penlight. 'I can tie her to that girder, she won't be going anywhere. Then we can have a little... talk...' She smiled maliciously, slipping the ties into her pocket and putting her knife into her belt, just in case.

Flicking the baton out to full length, she headed for the front of the building. As soon as the girl passed, she'd come in behind her and then the fun would start.

"She's very predictable, isn't she, Brain?"

'Unfortunately, yes,' Taylor sighed mentally. 'Like a sort of tunnel vision, I guess. But it makes this easier.'

"Indeed."

The demon passed on the word to the others, teleporting between them, while Taylor kept walking at an even pace. She could smell Sophia up ahead, and hear her heart racing with excitement. 'I hope whatever she hits me with doesn't break,' she giggled. 'That would ruin it too soon.'

Her other aspect teleported to immediately behind the entirely oblivious former ward, the micro dragon sitting on a ledge above her and watching her. "Just a standard baton, and she has a knife sheathed at her belt," the Varga remarked. "Not even a Tac-Smak."

Taylor grinned internally. That worked.


Concealed in the dark behind the broken door, Sophia listened as the footsteps drew level with her then passed. Giving it a couple more seconds, she went to shadow, slipped out through the wall, snuck up behind her prey, then reverted to normal and swung hard. The Hebert girl went down without a sound, slumping to the sidewalk. Smiling viciously, her attacker knelt down and rolled her onto her front, pulling her hands behind her and putting a nylon tie around her wrists. Pulling it unnecessarily tight with a vip sound that echoed a little, she stood up again and grabbed the overly tall girl under the arms.

With some effort, she managed to drag her into the building. It took considerable work but in the end she got her target into the interior room and cut the tie, before pulling Hebert's arms around the steel support pillar and putting a new one on. Now the girl couldn't get away.

Hebert slumped at the base of the pillar, mumbling a little. Leaning down, Sophia slapped her face. "Wake up, Hebert," she called quietly, a note of nearly psychotic pleasure in her voice.

It took a couple of harder slaps, but eventually Taylor stirred, then opened her eyes. A moment later she froze, before trying to bring her arms back in front of her. A brief struggle resulted before she spotted Sophia smirking at her in the dark, only the penlight which was now wedged into a crack in the wall providing any illumination.

"Hello, Hebert," Sophia hissed. "Surprise."

"Sophia? What the hell are you doing now? Wasn't that fucking locker enough?" Taylor seemed more indignant than afraid, although she looked nervous.

"You fucked me over, Hebert," Sophia replied nastily. "I never forget something like that. And it's time to get payback. Then I think I'll visit your dad." She reached out and stroked the other girls hair. "Wonder if he'd like some of this as a reminder..."

"You are a very sick person, Sophia," Hebert said after a moment. Sophia was pleased that her voice had a quaver to it.

Without replying, Sophia swung her baton, catching the girl on the upper arm. "Ow," Hebert said.

"Ow?" With a nasty grin, she tried again, harder.

"Hey! Stop that, it hurts," Taylor protested.

Slightly surprised at the mildness of the complaint, Sophia gave it another go, putting her back into it. The baton struck Hebert's shoulder with a distinct crunch, making her wince. "That really hurt, you crazy bitch," Hebert complained loudly. "Stop this, or there's going to be trouble."

"Trouble?" Sophia laughed. "From who?"

"Me, for a start," said a voice in the dark. It was vaguely familiar. Sophia spun around and yanked her knife out with her other hand, startled. The face of the girl standing in the doorway was one she recognized.

"Amy Dallon?" She was more than a little confused. While she'd heard that Hebert was a friend of Panacea's, and had seen proof of that in the video she'd seen of Hebert taking down the carjacker, she hadn't expected the Dallon girl would turn up at this point. Or that anyone would, really, that was sort of the entire idea. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask the same of you," the other brunette said, frowning. Her face was barely visible in the dim illumination. "Last I heard you were running like a scared little girl with the entire PRT looking for you, but here you are torturing my best friend."

"Hebert? Your best friend?" Sophia looked scornfully at the taller girl, then back to the shorter one. "She's useless. Got a few tricks that her scaly friends taught her, true, but she's still prey." She reached out and poked Hebert with the end of the baton to make a point.

The Dallon girl frowned, taking a step forward. "You'd better stop that, or..."

"Or what?" Sophia smiled, feeling superior. "You're a healer, not a fighter. What are you going to do?" She held up the knife in a gloved hand. "No skin contact. You can't do anything to me."

The snap of a similar collapsible baton to hers opening made her twitch. Amy smiled back at her in a similarly vicious manner, holding the thing in a way that appeared to show a certain level of familiarity. "You may want to rethink that."

"Yeah, very scary. A healer with a baton. Big deal." Sophia suppressed her surprise. "Anyone can wave one around, but it takes skill to actually use it."

She yelped as the end of the baton whipped out and caught her under the ribs. "Fuck!"

The Dallon girl grinned, while behind them, Taylor snickered. "Like that?"

"You fucking bitch." Sophia swung at her unexpected opponent, barely missing her wrist as the other girl moved slightly. The return blow got her on her upper left arm, almost causing her to drop her own weapon. Swearing in pain, she dived sideways and rolled as the girl swung again, much faster than she'd expected.

They danced around for a few seconds, Amy landing three more blows on her ribs, while she got only one into contact in the other direction. Shocked at the skill the girl was using, she finally resorted to using her powers, going to shadow and letting the next strike pass through her. Going solid again she lashed out as hard as she could, her baton hitting the Dallon girl directly in the side of the head. She dropped like a sack of bricks, landing on her back.

Looking at the blood spreading from around the head of her attacker, Sophia swore under her breath. She didn't know if she'd killed the healer or not, but she certainly hadn't improved her. "Fucking cunt," she grumbled, kneeling down to check. She wasn't sure what she'd do if the girl was indeed dead, but if she was, it was going to cause problems that would make her revenge more complicated.

"You fucked up there, Sophia," Taylor said almost cheerfully. "Vicky's going to kill you. Then Saurial's going to kill you, and Raptaur, and Lady Photon, and Brandish, and… well, all of New Wave will want a part of you, the Family certainly will, not to mention the DWU too. They really like Amy. Oh, and the PRT will crucify what's left."

"Oh, shut up, you stupid cow," Sophia growled. Reaching down she felt for a pulse. "Damn it." There was nothing.

"Yep. Fucked up beyond belief," Taylor helpfully put in.

"Shut. Up. Hebert." Sophia was on the edge of taking her knife and doing some whittling. Standing, she kicked the body on the floor as hard as she could in the ribs, feeling more than a little aggrieved. "Stupid Panacea, sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong." She kicked again. There was a crack of breaking bone.

"Will you stop that, you idiot human?"

The new voice sounded annoyed, weird in some hard to place way, and quite high pitched. Sophia stopped dead, looking wildly around. "Who the fuck said that?" she demanded. Staring at Hebert, who was looking back with a slight smile, she squinted suspiciously.

"Wasn't me," the tall girl said. Her head moved in a jerk sideways. "Over there."

Turning back around, Sophia scanned the surroundings. There was only the body on the floor, and no visible signs of anyone else.

"You have any idea how much these things cost?" the high-pitched voice complained. "Repairing this is going to be a nightmare. The Mark Five Human™ is an obsolete model so spares are hellishly hard to get hold of. Might need to get them custom made, which will take weeks."

Descending into aggrieved muttering, the voice sank out of intelligibility. Sophia, very slowly, tilted her head downwards to the form of the defunct Amy Dallon.

She gaped.

In the dim light, she saw with horror that the head, neck, and chest of the body had split open in a line from forehead to stomach, a bluish light coming from the opening. It widened some more, to reveal…

...To reveal a tiny dragon, about a foot long, which was glaring at her from what looked like a control chair of some sort, custom designed for the thing, which was impossibly inside the deceased Panacea.

"Holy fucking Christ on a pogo stick!" she screamed in shock, stumbling backwards.

"You broke six ribs, ruptured the spleen, damaged a kidney, and totally screwed up the calibration of the optical system, you great mammalian fuckwit," the miniature dragon shouted. It reached out and prodded controls on the tiny little console in front of it. One hand twitched, making Sophia jump back, her eyes so wide that they hurt. "Look at that! Completely shot. This will take days to fix. Thanks a hell of a lot, that's really helpful. You wouldn't believe the paperwork I'm going to have to deal with now. This thing has been in the family for longer than you'd believe and now look at it! Dad will be furious." It went back to grumbling almost inaudibly, fiddling with the controls. Sophia stared in horror.

"She's right, those things are a pain in the ass to get serviced," Hebert remarked. "They'd probably send you the bill."

"What… How..." Sophia kept gaping at the little dragon as it muttered imprecations and hit tiny switches, making parts of the Dallon girl's body move randomly. One arm lifted, then dropped.

"Damn it! Nearly had it working there. Maybe if I run a bypass from the left leg and route it through the motor cortex I can..." The micro-dragon trailed off, then stuck its head under the console and fiddled around. "Anyone got a one millimeter spanner?"

"What?!"

Sophia just stared. This was so far outside her experience that she could almost feel her mind shutting down.

"Hey, why don't you just cut me loose then go and hand yourself into the PRT," Hebert suggested, making her finally tear her eyes away from the impossible sight before them. She looked at her hated enemy, who was watching her with her head cocked a little to the side. "Trust me, it's probably better than waiting for her to call this in."

"Call it in..." Sophia wondered if she'd heard right, then wondered exactly who the fucking miniature dragon would be calling it in to. "What the fucking fuck is going on, Hebert?"

"Well, first you stalked me, nice one there since you're Shadow Stalker, then you assaulted me, kidnapped me, tied me up, and tortured me," Taylor replied with a small smile. "Then you tried to kill my best friend. And here we are. Not what I planned on doing tonight but what can you do?"

Sophia looked at her in disbelief. She pointed with her baton at the body on the floor, from which a noise reminiscent of an arc welder was now coming, intermittent blue-green flashes emitted from the hole in the thing illuminating the room brightly. There was also a constant stream of faint curses accompanying the sound effects. "No, I mean, what the fucking hell is that?"

Taylor glanced to the side. "Amy Dallon, of course."

"It's a fucking meat robot with a tiny fucking dragon driving it!"

"And?"

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, AND? Where the hell did that come from?" Sophia shrieked in disbelief.

Taylor sighed heavily.

Sophia screamed in shock as her body suddenly split down the middle in the exact same manner, another tiny dragon being revealed as a result. "Same place this one did, of course," the thing said in a similar voice to the first one. "And I have to say I'm not all that happy about how you've treated it. She's right, they're expensive."

"At least yours is a Mark Six," the other dragon yelled, sounding very pissed off. "You can still get the parts for those. Lanky fucking thing though it is. Mine is much more customized, and that costs."

"You didn't have to buy the freckle upgrade, you know," the Taylor-dragon sighed. It glanced at Sophia who was watching in total incredulity. "She's always wanted the cosmetic mods, and nothing I say will get her to see sense."

"Gah..." Sophia felt weak at the knees. None of this made any sense at all unless you were prone to believing some of the weirder theories mental defectives on the internet promoted. She'd laughed at a few of them on her rare visits to PHO, since they were obviously the work of insane people. But now… "How are you doing this, Hebert?"

"Doing what?" The little dragon cocked its head in the identical manner that the girl had, looking at her quizzically. "I was just walking home and you attacked me. Now you've found out something you shouldn't have. Not good."

Stepping back a pace or two, Sophia stumbled over her pack and went to one knee. Grabbing it, she flung her knife and baton down and with a shaking hand retrieved the hand-gun she'd brought with her, holding it in both hands and aiming at the bizarre sight still zip-tied to the support column. "This is some weird trick. I don't know how you're doing it, but stop doing it!"

It couldn't be real…

She didn't know how the illusion was being done, but it was the only thing that made any sense. Some weird Parahuman power at work, it had to be. Somehow Hebert had found a cape to fuck with her.

"You OK? Only you don't look well," the Hebert-dragon remarked, squinting at her in the flashes of light still coming from the body of the girl on the floor, along with a constant stream of inventive invective. "Maybe you should sit down and have a rest. Let me go and I can call the PRT to come and I'm sure they'll give you a nice warm bed for the night."

Reflexively, Sophia pulled the trigger, the gun firing with a bang that was painful in the enclosed space. The muzzle flash lit the entire room with orange light, the round barely missing the girl tied to the pole and disappearing into the dark at the back of the room.

"Hey, watch it!" the Taylor-dragon snapped. "Any more damage to this and I'll be taking it out of you in kind, you idiot."

Mind whirling, the former Ward tried to work out what the fuck was going on. She was interrupted by a sound from outside the immediate area. "Taylor? Was that shot something to do with you?"

"In here, Dad!" the little dragon yelled, the voice suddenly back to Hebert's normal one. "Shadow Stalker is torturing me, but I don't think she's going to be much longer. Is it important?"

The older Hebert's voice grew louder, accompanied by footsteps. Sophia stared at her captive, the mumbling body on the floor, and the doorway into the rest of the factory, wondering exactly when she'd entered the Twilight Zone.

"You're missing dinner so I came to find you," Hebert's father called, nearing the room. Sophia could see a flashlight beam bobbing around down the corridor. "I made lasagna." Moments later, the man appeared in the doorway, Sophia instinctively pointing her appropriated gun at him. He ignored it completely, instead looking around the place, then examining the Dallon thing on the floor. "Oh, are you girls busy?" he asked mildly. "I can come back later if you are. Amy, what happened to you? Your mother will be annoyed, you know how expensive those things are. It's rather irresponsible to break one like that."

"You think I don't KNOW that, Danny?" The little dragon operator stuck her head and neck out of the Amy-suit and glared at him. "I'll be paying for this damage for months. Although I may well take it out of HER hide." The thing pointed at a gaping Sophia, who was trying to work out just when she'd managed to be exposed to a hallucinogen. "Idiotic human wrecked a family heirloom." Scowling ferociously, the head retracted, followed a moment later by hammering sounds.

"Oh, dear," the elder Hebert sighed, shaking his head. "You girls do seem to have been playing rather roughly. Sophia, that was very wrong of you, breaking Amy's Mark Five like that." He looked at her with a disappointed expression that inexplicably made Sophia feel guilty, until the surreality of the entire experience caught up with her.

Her mouth worked silently for a couple of seconds while the Taylor-dragon and her father, if indeed that was even remotely the right term, both looked at her. Then she screamed, "This is fucking INSANE! What the hell is going on?" at the top of her lungs. She kept the gun aimed at the Hebert man, standing up and moving back out of range, shaking with both rage and fear.

"Going on?" He looked confused. "I assumed you were a little smarter than that."

"You didn't go to school with her, Dad," the Taylor-thing snarked. "If you had you wouldn't think she was smart at all."

"Now, now, dear, don't be rude about the human's intellectual capacity," he chided. "Some of them are quite bright. Look at Armsmaster, for example."

"Yeah, that's true. I like him," she replied thoughtfully.

Sophia looked frantically between them. The older Hebert turned to her. "Now, Sophia, if you've finished torturing my daughter, perhaps you can give me the weapon and we can get you over to the PRT. I don't want to let dinner go cold." He glanced down. "Oh, would you like to come over, Amy? There's enough to go around."

"Thanks, that would be nice, Danny," the other micro-dragon said, sticking her head out of Panacea's chest again for a moment. "I love lasagna." She disappeared once more. Sophia would always swear that she heard the sound of a tiny circular saw start up after that.

At the point of feeling that her mind was going, Sophia almost calmly aimed at his heart and fired.

"Ow."

She stared, then experimentally fired again.

"Must you?" He looked down, fingering the hole in his coat. "That's very annoying."

The girl, in a state of eerie zen-like calm now, emptied the magazine into him. When the echoes died away, he was standing regarding her with a sort of sad irritation. "You may well be right, dear," he remarked to his daughter, or whatever the little dragon really was. "That does seem to be the action of someone not entirely clear-minded."

"What should we do with her?" Taylor-dragon asked, cocking her head. "I mean, she's found out some things we really don't want the rest of them to know, after all."

"Good point," Hebert senior nodded thoughtfully, as Sophia looked helplessly at her gun, then dropped it to her side. She peered at him, seeing a number of holes in his clothing, and a couple of apparent nicks on his exposed skin. One of those was on his face, just under his right eye. He raised a hand and felt the damage, sighing again.

"That's a pain," he added. "This will take some effort to put right. I've run out of spares."

With total horror, even after the last ten minutes, Sophia watched as he reached down the back of his neck with both hands, grabbed something, and pulled. There was a sucking sound and the entire human head of the man peeled away like a mask, which she realized it was. Revealed under it when he'd finished was a reptilian head that looked like Saurial's older brother, dark green scales glinting in the illumination of the little penlight. She watched with numb terror as the disguised lizard held up the blank-faced mask and poked a talon through the hole under the eye. "Yes, all the way through," he grumbled. "How frustrating. That was very silly of you, young woman."

"Ig." Sophia tried to say something else, swallowed hard, looked wildly around at the three horrors, then bolted, going to shadow as she hit the wall and passed through it.

All three people left behind exchanged a look, and after a few seconds fell about laughing. "God, that was hilarious," the tiny dragon inside the Amy Dallon construct giggled. A moment later the thing twitched and straightened out from the crumpled mess as she fixed everything that Sophia had damaged. "Phase two?"

"Phase two," the 'Danny' simulacrum nodded with a smile. The Varga disappeared, while the other two grinned at each other. 'Taylor' flexed her arms and snapped the zip ties like wet toilet paper, then closed the construct up as 'Amy' did the same. Standing up, the fake healer moved to stand next to her friend and both vanished as well.

High above the city, Vicky rotated in the air, listening intently. A fusillade of shots had come from somewhere below her, but she couldn't quite pinpoint from where. Peering down she wondered if she could afford a set of night vision binoculars, which would make this sort of thing easier, while trying to work out the source of the gunfire. After a minute or so, she gave it her best guess and headed downwards, keeping alert for trouble.

Capturing a criminal after a nice chillout session would be a decent end to the day, she felt.

So scared and disorientated that she didn't even think to ascend to the rooftops, Sophia reverted to normal outside the factory and ran for her life, her footsteps loud in the quiet. Pelting along the sidewalk with the full speed of her track experience, she tried to think what to do next.

'They're all lizards,' she thought, her mind whirling. 'How long have they been lizards? Have they always been lizards? Who else is a lizard?'

It didn't make any sense at all, but it did match up unnervingly well with some of the bizarre stories she'd read about. Was it possible that any of them were true? 'Can't be true, it's insane. But on the other hand, they're fucking lizards! Tiny little dragons running meat robots.' She shivered but kept running, her pack in one hand slapping against her legs. She realized after a quarter of a mile that she'd forgotten to grab either her baton or knife, and she'd dropped the gun somewhere too. That left her with only her crossbow back in her hidden car and another small knife in her boot.

Rounding a corner she ran straight into an obstruction, bouncing off with a grunt and rebounding into the wall of a building.

"Hey, are you OK, girl?" a man's voice asked in concern. "You shouldn't be running around like that looking over your shoulder, you could hurt yourself."

A large hand helped her up. She shook it off irritably, feeling slightly less stressed since there didn't seem to be any pursuit from weird tiny-dragons-driving-human-meat-robots at the moment. That wasn't to say she was calm, because she very definitely wasn't. But she was no longer panicking quite as badly, and was starting to wonder if she'd been seeing things. Possibly her thoughts of a Parahuman power or a hallucinogen were right, and it was out of range and/or wearing off?

Desperately trying to rationalize away what she'd experienced, she examined the guy she'd run into. He was about six feet tall and strongly built, wearing clothing that was typical of one of the dock workers. Beside him was a somewhat smaller man dressed almost identically. "You OK?" the first man asked again.

She grunted a yes, stepping back warily. Dock worker meant DWU which meant far too close association with Hebert and the Family than she liked. "Fine. Thanks." She moved to walk around them, planning on running again when she was past and in the clear.

As she stepped sideways, the smaller man twitched at a muffled sound, reaching into his pocket to remove a phone. "Hello?" he answered. "Oh. OK, yeah, I understand." His eyes met Sophia's and she felt chilled for a moment. "Yes. Can do, sure. No problem." Closing the old battered device he dropped it into his pocket and took one step forward.

Sophia looked around quickly, her hands clenching into fists. He didn't look like much, but he was watching her closely in a manner that had her instincts screaming. Abruptly spinning around she dashed in the other direction, or at least, tried to. A hand dropped on her shoulder, halting her in her tracks. "Boss wants a word with you, Miss Hess," the second man said.

"Fuck off!" she yelled, whirling and lashing out. Her fist caught him on the side of the head, making it move sideways. It felt like she'd hit a rock. "Aaagh!" she added at the top of her voice, dropping her pack and folding her body around her damaged hand in agony.

"What did you have to go and do that for?" a voice said with a familiarity to the sound that was ghastly. Slowly she raised her head to see a weirdly distorted-appearing face, the man's eyes not centered right. She stared in disbelief as he put his hands on either side of his head and apparently tried to adjust something, before grumbling under his breath and pulling his entire head off.

Again, under it was a lizard. One that looked very annoyed as he shook out the mask and carefully examined it. "Some people are just rude," he complained.

There was a faint hiss and a dim blue light from next to him. Wide-eyed and otherwise motionless, Sophia moved only just enough to look at his companion. She felt faint as she saw another micro-dragon peering out of the slit in the chest of the large man, an expression of sympathy on its little face as it studied the damage to its friend's mask. "Damn, man, that's just sad. All squashed like that. Told you you should have got the good gear, these cheap ones are way too squishy."

"She hits impressively hard for a human female," the disguised lizard complained. He carefully pulled the mask back on and fiddled with it. "How's that?"

With a sense of unreality, like she was floating around a bit under the influence of something really good, Sophia found herself saying, "Your nose is crooked."

"Oh, thanks," the thing said, grabbing the mentioned nasal appendage and giving it a yank. His entire face shifted and warped in a gut-wrenching manner before settling down. Making a few experimental expressions he looked enquiringly at her. She nodded, unable to think of what else to do.

"Great," the now apparently human man said, although she knew the truth. His companion pulled back into his own meat robot and the slit disappeared, leaving by all visible indicators merely a pair of dock workers on their way home. "So, you going to come and talk to the Boss?"

Three seconds later, Sophia screamed at the top of her lungs and ran like Satan was offering her a chance to visit. For all she knew, that was pretty much exactly what it was.

Vicky stared down at the street a couple of hundred feet below her, watching as the two men exchanged glances, grinned, and wandered off. She was holding her breath in shock. Eventually, almost getting dizzy from the lack of oxygen, she gasped, then shook her head violently.

"Must be seeing things," she murmured to herself. "There's no way that just happened."

Deciding that she really needed something to eat, since obviously her blood sugar was low if she was having flashbacks to some of her more paranoid ideas from a while back, the flying girl headed back up and aimed herself homewards. She was intermittently looking over her shoulder the entire way…

"Phase three?"

"Phase three."

"This is the best phase, I think."

"I agree entirely."

"All this stuff from the PRT armory will have to be put back discreetly, but I don't think they'd be too upset with us borrowing it."

"I expect Director Piggot might think otherwise, but as she doesn't know, it won't be a problem."

Panting for breath, the former Ward alternated between swearing violently and laughing hysterically as she ran for her life. She found a place she could get onto a rooftop with a leap in shadow form, heedless of who might see her without a mask, and bounded onwards, heading out of the docks and towards more populated areas. Ones that were, critically, much better lit. "How many of them are there?" she asked herself, gulping for air as she ran. "Maybe they're all lizards. The whole fucking DWU. They're hiding right in plain sight and they know I know."

A shudder of absolute despairing fear went through her. What would they do?

Shaking her head, she floated across a street, nearly out of the dock area now. She could see cars moving around in the streets, although since it was Sunday evening the traffic was light. Encountering a wide road, she looked frantically around since it was too far for her shadow form to be able to reach the other side, then jumped down and went back to normal as she touched the ground. "Got to get away from them," she gasped to herself, bent over with her hands on her knees. She felt like she'd used to after finishing a race at school.

Raising her head, she spotted a black SUV driving towards her. Looking both ways, she pondered her options, then groaned and stood up, stepping into the road and holding up a hand. Despite her own feelings, she decided her best recourse was to try to get to the PRT and throw herself on their mercy. Maybe they could hide her from the lizards, and they might go easy on her if she told them everything.

The vehicle slowed, then stopped. Walking around to the driver's side, she bent down a little as the window whined down, then her eyes widened again.

"Director Piggot," she said faintly.

"Sophia," the blonde woman said with a note of spiteful delight. She was pointing a PRT issue sidearm at the girl, Sophia absently noticed. "What an unexpected pleasure. Are you planning on trying to run again, or have you come to your senses?"

"I'm done running," Sophia sighed. "I… I need help."

"That has been obvious for a very long time," Piggot snapped. "So you're turning yourself in?"

"Yes," the girl nodded, feeling broken and distraught. What else could she do now? They were everywhere.

"Stand back." She took a few steps back, as the Director got out of the vehicle, keeping the gun on her. After a moment, the older woman reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs that Sophia recognized as ones the PRT had designed to give a vicious electrical shock if required. They'd block her power. Tossing them to her, Piggot said, "Put them on."

She did so, managing to close them around her wrists. They beeped and a green light began blinking.

"Walk around the vehicle to the passenger side." Following the instructions given by her former superior, Sophia was soon belted into the passenger seat, her cuffed hands on her lap. Piggot had quickly and competently patted her down, removing everything she was carrying, then made sure she was secure. Moments later the other woman was in the driver's seat and they began moving. It was impossible to miss that the gun was kept down her left side, ready for use but well out of reach of Sophia if she'd been minded to try something.

After a minute of driving, Piggot asked, "Why do you look like you've been chased by a pack of wolves?" She seemed merely curious.

Sophia laughed unevenly. "Wolves would be better than what's out there," she replied with a haunted note in her voice. She looked around, then spoke more quietly, "They're everywhere. Watching us. Moving among us. And no one knows about it."

"Who are?" The Director looked at her like she suspected Sophia had a screw or two missing.

"Them," the girl hissed, looking around suspiciously again. "The Family."

"The Family?" Piggot sounded a little surprised, and thoughtful. "What do you mean?"

"They're walking around looking like ordinary people but they're not," Sophia snarled. "Meat robots with little tiny dragons driving them. Or lizards in people suits. The dock workers, I think it's all of them. And the Heberts, and maybe all of New Wave too!" Peering over her shoulder, in case a lizard was following, she saw nothing. "Amy Dallon for sure, but I don't… know… if..." In turning her head back, she spotted something wrong with Piggot's face in the illumination from a passing streetlight. It seemed almost… wrinkled?

She stopped dead and stared hard. Piggot gave her a sideways look after a few seconds, frowning. "Something wrong, Stalker?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No," Sophia hastily said, quickly looking ahead and discreetly testing her cuffs. Unfortunately she'd managed to put them on properly and they weren't coming off without the key. In the corner of her left eye, she saw a hand come up and discreetly poke the wrinkled face back into shape over what she was now certain was in fact something scaly underneath.

'Is this the real Piggot?' she wondered fatalistically. 'Or did they replace her while I was on the run?'

Out loud, she said, "Maybe I was seeing things," hoping that the woman-thing next to her wasn't suspicious.

"Perhaps," Faux-Piggot nodded. "I doubt there are really lizards in disguise all over the place." She chuckled. "I'm certainly the one in a position to know, after all."

"Of course," Sophia agreed, slowly reaching for the seat-belt buckle with her cuffed hands. As the thing driving the SUV slowed for a traffic light, she hit the release with her thumb, jolted sideways and grabbed the door handle with both hands, yanked, and tumbled out onto the road.

"Oh, Sophia, why run now?" a voice said. "It's far too late for that."

As she was scrabbling for purchase to stand up and get away, the cuffs beeped again, the light flashing red. A second later a violent shock went through the terrified girl and the world went away.


"I enjoyed that a lot more than I probably should have done, I'm afraid."

"Considering how that girl treated you, and what she was clearly prepared to do to reach her goals, I don't think that a little enjoyment would go amiss, Brain. I doubt most other people who know her would disagree for that matter. She is a very unlikable person who has done her best to burn all her bridges."

"And she tried to kill me, too, which wasn't very nice."

"Good point."

"Anyway, it'll be amusing to see what happens next..."

"Your acting skills are amazing, Lisa."

"Thanks. It was a hell of a lot of fun. You invite me to all the best parties, Taylor."

"I live to please, you know that."

"You live to troll, that's what I know."

"Fair enough."


When Sophia groaned and opened her eyes, her entire body aching, she found herself looking up at about a dozen faces peering down at her. Familiar ones. Armsmaster was looking very satisfied and slightly confused, Miss Militia simply seemed a bit sad, several PRT troopers were pointing a mix of foam sprayers, tasers, and automatic weapons at her, and…

"AHH!" Sophia yelped and violently shoved herself way from Director Piggot, who was staring at her with a dark look. "Get it away! Lizard! In a mask! She's one of them, get me away from it!"

"What the hell is wrong with the idiotic girl?" the 'Director' asked acerbically. "Other than the usual."

"I have no idea, Director," Armsmaster commented, studying Sophia, who had pressed herself against the legs of a bewildered PRT trooper in her attempt to escape. "Perhaps the stress of her unauthorized trip has become too much?"

"She's a lizard in a mask!" Sophia screamed. "She's one of them! They're all over the place. The DWU is made of lizards!"

Everyone else exchanged puzzled looks. Assault popped up next to Armsmaster and stared at her. "The DWU has lizards," he said in a reasonable voice, "but I don't think they're actually made of them."

Realizing that her hands were now uncuffed, Sophia leaped to her feet and lunged at the Director, who looked shocked as she went down under the weight of the attacking girl. "I'll prove it," Sophia gibbered, grabbing at the woman's face with both hands and pulling hard.

"Fucking get this crazy bitch off me before I shoot her!" Director Piggot roared in fury, grabbing at Sophia's wrists. She went to shadow then back again, still trying to rip the mask off. Again, a shock went though her and she blacked out as one of the troopers tazed her senseless.

It was something of a relief in many ways.

Director Piggot looked through the window of the isolation room at the form strapped to the bed with electrified restraints, then shook her head. "What do you think, doctor?"

"The girl is highly stressed, which is to be expected of someone who's been evading the law for weeks," the psychologist remarked, looking at his notes. "Additionally she appears to be suffering from paranoid delusions that a large number of people at the Dock Workers Union, the Hebert family, and you yourself, Director, are in fact reptile people in disguise. She's described two different forms of 'hidden lizard,' to coin a phrase, one being a very small dragon-like creature operating a human construct of some form, a meat robot in her terms, and one being a human scale lizard in a realistic mask."

"Neither option appears particularly reasonable," Armsmaster put in from where he was listening. "The second is at least plausible if very unlikely. The first seems a stretch. Although I will admit with Parahuman powers, very little is actually impossible."

"Well, I'm damn sure no lizard in a mask," Emily said firmly, shuddering a little at the very idea. She noticed that Miss Militia was looking subtly worried, but saying nothing.

"No tail for a start," Assault commented with a smile. She glared at him.

"Even if such a thing was plausible, I have made inquiries and I can state with confidence that both Heberts are entirely human," Armsmaster went on with a glance of disapproval at his colleague. "I called Danny Hebert and explained the situation and he was gracious enough to submit to a scan with the portable system Leet designed. His daughter also agreed, in the interests of ensuring that Sophia Hess was properly dealt with. Both read as one hundred percent human. So does Amy Dallon, who appeared to find the entire thing both humorous and irritating. I even managed to scan a number of volunteer DWU members who met the young woman's description and none of them were anything other than perfectly normal human beings."

He shrugged a little. "The only reptilian people at the DWU are the ones we already know about and deal with regularly. Saurial seemed pleased that Shadow Stalker has been captured, and commented that it saves her family the effort of tracking the girl down."

Miss Militia had seemed to relax as her superior spoke, and was now watching Sophia with an expression of worry.

"Any idea what would have triggered these delusions?" Emily asked after some thought. The psychologist sighed.

"It's difficult to say without a much longer examination. If I had to guess, I would think a combination of her existing mental issues combined with the travails of weeks on the run, a mix of powerful painkillers and other drugs she appears to have self-prescribed, and obsessing over the Family and the Heberts, who she seems to hate with a passion I have seldom encountered. The young woman suffers from a number of delusions, her mental state was never ideal in any case, and she definitely has a great dislike of a large number of individuals."

He looked at Emily. "Including you, Director. She had plans for 'dealing with' you, Armsmaster, the Hebert family, and almost everyone else she worked with. What those plans are I don't know but considering the number of weapons that were found in the vehicle the BBPD recovered last night, I think we can probably guess they weren't good."

"Not likely," she agreed, angry with herself as much as anyone for not insisting months ago that the damn girl was committed to somewhere that could sort her out. Oh well, they had her now, and she certainly wasn't going anywhere this time.

With one last look at the restrained and muttering girl, she left the room to make a report to the Chief Director.

Blinking awake, Sophia looked around, after a brief moment's disorientation. The room was dark and she was still strapped to the bed. No one seemed to be around, which was explained by the clock on the wall showing the time to be 3.14 AM.

Relaxing as much as she could, she tried to work out how much of what she could remember of the last day was real. Now, a lot of it seemed crazy, but this was Brockton Bay after all.

Sighing, she put her head back onto the pillow. Maybe she could talk herself out of being committed to the loony bin, but she knew there was no way she wasn't going to prison at least for a while.

Moments later, she stared upwards in total fright. The tiny black dragon clinging upside down to the dormant light fitting above her winked.

"Ceilin lizard is watchin U," it said with glee, then disappeared.

She was still shivering when the nurse came to check on her two hours later.