Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

Lying in bed, Taylor considered how things were going. So far, in her view, most of the activities she and her friends had been involved in had worked out pretty well. There was no denying that the renewal plan was moving ahead in leaps and bounds, as she and her father had hoped, and as the plan the Mayor's friend Phil had so carefully written up had predicted. So far, he was almost exactly right on all the timings all the way down the line, and where he hadn't quite got it correct, they'd actually exceeded his best projections.

She suspected that there would be an update to the plan soon enough, since she was sure he was observing their progress and getting a better idea of the capabilities of the DWU and the Family to do the work. He seemed to know what he was doing and most likely had simply not been aware quite how Varga magic would change things. That wasn't surprising, even she hadn't realized that either. She and her demon were constantly coming up with new ideas and concepts, drawing on his immense knowledge and experience and her apparent ability to think laterally to a level he claimed was very unusual.

Taylor wasn't really sure she was doing anything all that odd for someone in her place, but he was fairly convinced of it and admittedly did have one hell of a lot more experience of people than she did. Or anyone else she'd ever met either, for that matter, which wasn't really surprising.

Some of the wilder ideas that they'd had between them she hadn't told even her father, and wasn't sure she actually would without real reason. There were things that she was almost certain that she could do that absolutely terrified her, far past even the things she'd discussed with him and her friends. It was horrifyingly easy to work out methods of destruction that leveraged Varga abilities, things that made her disintegration mines look like party favors. And destruction was not what she wanted to do.

Making things was much more fun, and making things that helped people was best of all. Yet there was no denying that almost everything she could do could be turned into a weapon with almost no effort at all.

She was fairly sure she had a very good idea what Amy had gone through before they'd met. And was certain she had an enormous respect for her friend's stability and sense of ethics when one considered that she had been all alone with that preying on her mind, with no one to turn to. She had the Varga, and her father, but poor Amy had been stewing over her abilities and hiding ninety nine percent of the truth about them at least for literally years, ever since she'd Triggered. One little mistake could have cascaded into the most ghastly fuck-up Taylor could even imagine, and she had a very good imagination…

At times she wondered if, given the same circumstances for her, if she could have managed to avoid that herself. Especially with the Trio doing what they'd done.

Meeting Amy had been an enormous stroke of good luck for everyone, she was almost totally sure. And she'd ended up with a friend who was nearly as close to her as the Varga, someone she trusted completely.

A slight sigh was accompanied by a smile as she regarded the skyline visible through the window as the sun rose over the city. Six months ago, she had been convinced that she would never have anyone she could call a friend again. Now, she had a demon in her head, more options than she could use in a thousand years, and an expanded family that might not be related by blood but were as dear to her as her own parents. And, of course, her father back.

No, she mused, in some very bizarre way, she did owe those three little bitches thanks, as she'd thought in the past. Thanks enough that if they stayed out of her life, she felt no impetus to do anything more about what they'd done to her.

It was a pity that Sophia at least was unlikely to let it go. Taylor wished she would. Wished she'd just go somewhere else, forget about her and Brockton Bay, and move on with her life. She'd quite happily let bygones be bygones if that happened, and leave it up to the authorities to deal with things.

"You know that's not going to happen," the Varga said quietly in her mind, his deep, deep voice comforting her as always.

'I know,' she sighed. 'She's not the type to forget an insult. Or what she thinks is an insult.'

"That type tends to consider the mere existence of the Universe itself a personal insult, Brain," he chuckled. "I have met them before, many times. In most cases, the only way they give up is when they are forced to. Such drive would almost be admirable if it was not for the complete lack of foresight that commonly goes with it. The end results are often not pretty. Lack of enough intelligence to work out the likely consequences of one's actions only adds to the problem."

'Sophia isn't stupid, but she does seem to fixate on certain problems and completely ignore everything else,' Taylor agreed sadly.

"So your memories of her would suggest, yes," he said. "As do the actions I've seen for myself, and those since she was caught by your little ruse."

'Well, there isn't much we can do until and unless she turns up again,' the girl commented, stretching her arms to the sides and taking a deep breath. 'I for one don't feel like going looking for her, there's far too much to do that's actually important. If she comes back and makes a nuisance of herself, we'll deal with it then. Even odds the police or the PRT gets her first, I'd think. Or possibly someone else. There are a lot of people looking for her.'

"True enough, but she is a slippery character at best, and as you say not entirely unintelligent. The PRT themselves trained her well enough to make tracking her complicated. Somewhat ironic, but there is nothing we can do about it that doesn't risk giving away more of our true capabilities than is ideal. I would agree that she's not important enough to warrant that."

Taylor nodded, turning her head to look at her bedside clock, which showed it was 6.45 AM. 'Yep. I'm more worried about Skidmark to be honest. He's completely nuts, and a lot more random than Sophia. I have a feeling that he's going to cause trouble.'

"The man's reputation is not good," her friend agreed. "I will admit to a certain amount of reluctant admiration over his ability to evade the remarkably large hunt for him. With how many groups are actively attempting to locate him, it's somewhat surprising that he's vanished so completely."

'Maybe someone got him and didn't mention it?' she suggested a little hopefully. 'Or he got hit by a car or something and no one realized it was him.'

"I suspect we cannot rely on such good fortune," he laughed. "Best to assume he will sooner or later become a nuisance and plan accordingly. The information we have suggests he's already overdue, so we must be ready to act."

'Idiotic drug dealers,' she grumbled. 'We didn't start anything, this is all him being a dick.'

"Agreed. But it is pointless dwelling on it."

'OK, I'll stop,' she smiled. 'There are lots of other things to dwell on that are much more cheerful.'

"Indeed."

^Taylor? Are you awake yet?^

Taylor grinned at the interruption. ^Hi, Amy. Sleep well?^

^Yes, thanks, I did,^ her best human friend replied, sounding relaxed and happy. ^This plant helped too. Best sleep I've had for months.^

^Have you thought of a name for it yet?^ Taylor asked. ^Maybe The Relaxoplant?^

Amy giggled in her head. ^Lisa wouldn't like that one.^

^Calm Tree? Bush of Ease? Sleepwort?^

By now her distant friend was flat out laughing.

^I'm not sure any of those are ideal, although I do quite like sleepwort,^ Amy said. ^Unfortunately it's taken.^

^Really? What is it?^

^Lettuce.^

Taylor couldn't help herself, she laughed out loud. ^Lettuce? You're kidding.^

^Nope. Honest, it's an old name for Lactuca virosa which is a variety of lettuce.^

^Huh. Learn something new every day, I guess. Lettuce...^ She shook her head in wonder. ^Oh well. We'll come up with something. Is Vicky still OK?^

^Yeah, I think she'll be fine,^ Amy replied after a moment, sounding happy. ^She was in a good mood when we got home. Better than she was for some time. She didn't smell all weird and confused any more, just sort of relieved and relaxed.^

^I wonder if she will join in the fun at some point?^ Taylor asked.

She could almost feel the shrug over the link. ^Honestly? I couldn't tell you one way or the other. Before last night I'd have said I thought it wasn't likely, since it's all icky biology and that sort of thing and she's all about looks.^ Amy sighed slightly. ^But I realized that I've missed parts of her character, parts that changed a lot in the last few months. I should have paid more attention, I guess. She's grown up a lot more than I realized.^

^As I told her, I was genuinely impressed by the level of self knowledge your sister showed last night, Amy,^ the demon put in gently. ^I suspect she has spent more time than any of us knew engaged in reflecting on her past actions and future wishes. Many people never manage to do that as successfully as Vicky has.^

^I guess, yeah,^ Amy replied. ^It's a good thing. Mom…^ She sighed again. ^Mom is a bit damaged in some specific ways, and she's passed on some of her more annoying issues to Vicky and me even when we could see the truth. You grow up in that sort of environment, so black and white, you can't help absorbing it. Me, I know she was sure at least subconsciously that I was one step away from villainy due to who my biological father was. She couldn't help it. And I was terrified for years that she was right, even though it wasn't until maybe the last couple of years that I consciously realized what she thought. When I Triggered, that got worse. Reminded her too much of Marquis, I suppose.^

Both Taylor and the Varga stayed quiet as Amy paused for a few seconds. ^Trying to live up to being a good person, and avoid being evil… Suppressing all the things my power wanted me to do… That was hard. Really hard.^

^You're a good person, Amy,^ Taylor softly told her. ^I know that. Varga knows that. Dad knows that. I don't know exactly what it's like with Parahuman powers, but I know enough to know that suppressing them like you did for literally years is incredibly difficult. I admire your stubborn insistence on doing the right thing more than I can really say.^

^Thanks,^ her friend replied very quietly. ^That means a lot. And thanks for being there. You saved me from myself.^

^Always, Amy. Anything for Family.^

Both of them fell quiet for a moment, then Amy said, ^These comms implants are fantastic. It's like you're right next to me. I can see a lot of uses for them.^

^Me too. And the practice from making them helped us figure out all sorts of useful tricks too. Bet Kevin and the others can come up with even more.^

^Yeah, they're going to love the things.^ Amy's voice had a smile in it, making Taylor herself smile too. ^Think I'll get up now, before Vicky grabs the shower. She always takes way too long. See you later.^

^Later, Amy.^ With that her friend was gone again.

'Such a cool invention,' she said to the demon, who manifested as the small dragon and lay on her chest looking out the window at the sunrise with her. She put a hand on him and the other one behind her head, both of them just enjoying the morning for a while.

"We have a lot to tell your father," her companion noted.

"Yep," she said out loud. "All sorts of things. It'll be interesting to see what he thinks." After another few minutes, just as the clock displayed 7:00, she sat up, stretched again, and got out of bed. Ten minutes later she was making breakfast, showered and dressed.

Looking blankly at his empty plate, Danny thought over what Taylor had told him at breakfast. She hadn't gone into details since they didn't have enough time, although she'd promised to tell him more that evening, but the implications of all the things they'd learned and worked out from the visit of Faultline's crew was… worrying.

How, or even if, it tied into the greater issue with the Endbringers neither he, the Varga, or Taylor could work out yet. On the whole he suspected there was some form of link, but it was possible they were entirely unconnected. At the moment there was no way to know for sure.

The origin of powers, though, that appeared to be at least peripherally connected to this not very competent secret organization, since they were on the face of the evidence selling powers, presumably for a considerable sum. He hadn't heard about that himself, but he trusted that Lisa's research was solid. Faultline's information added enough to that to make it virtually certain the group existed. He'd been appalled by the lack of thinking that on the face of it was apparent in their releasing Case 53 individuals with their name and symbol on them but believe Taylor's deductions. How such a group could still be functioning after possibly more than twenty years with such bad security he couldn't work out, aside from using some fairly potent Parahuman powers and a lot of luck.

It made the Family seem entirely sensible, in his view. At least Taylor and her demon weren't going around leaving clues to the truth all over the place…

Admittedly, they were leaving clues to the story all over the place, but that was perfectly sensible considering the end goal.

He paused as he was about to pick up the plate and put it in the sink, wondering if perhaps Cauldron was doing something similar… Possibly some sort of double or triple bluff. After a few seconds thought, he shook his head and went on with washing the dishes. That didn't fit the evidence, although it wasn't impossible that it was true and Cauldron were much more clever than Taylor and her friends thought. But he doubted it. The demon, aside from anyone else, would probably also consider that and presumably had rejected it as a possibility.

Sighing faintly he finished with the dishes, dried them, and put them away. Sooner or later he had little doubt that the truth would become apparent. If Taylor was right, that truth would be fairly unpleasant. But as she said, there was no hurry and they'd take the information as it turned up. In the meantime there were other more important things to do. The rest of the tanker to cut up, the next shipment of old ships to get on shore, and so on. With the arrival of the first trainload of scrap at the smelter over the weekend, the initial payment would be turning up shortly which would kick-start the hiring of new people and the purchasing of new equipment.

In the not too distant future it looked like the Docks would become a rather busy place, assuming the plan went as they expected. Absent any major problems, that looked likely. Once he'd wiped the table down, whistling a little to himself, he put his coat on, grabbed his briefcase, and stepped through the front door to arrive miles away in his office, still finding the entire thing ridiculous but entertaining.

Kevin and Randall regarded each other for some seconds, then simultaneously turned to look incredulously at Lisa, who was smirking the smirk of someone who was pleased she knew something you didn't.

"You're seriously telling me that Taylor and her demonic little friend, along with Amy, have invented instantaneous communication over arbitrary distances and figured out how to put it into your head?!" he asked very carefully.

"Basically, yes," the blonde replied with a nod. She didn't seem too shocked, he noted rather as an aside, presumably either not realizing what it implied or more likely having had time to come to terms with the whole concept. He numbly fumbled behind him for his chair, then sat down, almost missing it.

Randall was still staring at her.

He looked into space, his mind whirling with the possibilities. "Oh my god," he mumbled. "Faster than light communication. I thought my wormhole was cool, but those girls…"

"Your wormhole is extremely cool," Lisa said soothingly. "Don't worry about that. You invent some of the most bullshit stuff I've ever even heard of. No one doubts your Tinkering ability. It's just that Taylor is cheating like a cheating cheater. Who cheats. Magic and Demon Math, it's a weird combination."

"You're telling me," he breathed, ideas coming thick and fast. "Nano scale portals, basically?"

"She says it's not really a portal," Lisa shrugged. "Like her teleportation isn't really teleportation, and their idea of telepathy isn't really telepathy. It all just looks like that."

Randall shook his head in wonder. "Congruent space. That's what she called it. The wormhole generator makes tunnels from here to there, collapsing distance to almost nothing by going through subspace or something like that. Which is where the gamma radiation comes from. Armsmaster told me he thinks it's a variant of Hawking radiation. But Taylor's trick is much closer to what Vista does, only better. It makes two completely different places in space congruent, so they exist right next to each other. You don't actually go through anything, they're just there."

Nodding, Lisa smiled a little. "That's how she explained it to me too. I still don't understand the math, and even my power has a lot of trouble with it, but you're right, it seems to think it's more or less a superset of the sort of thing that Vista is doing. Different methods to achieve a similar result only more so. Taylor can probably do everything Vista can if she wants to, although she doesn't seem to really think about it like that." The blonde girl looked thoughtful for a second. "I've seen her pull off some of Vista's tricks, in fact."

"Huh." Randall looked intrigued. "That could be helpful if we need Cloak and Vista in the same place at the same time."

"Yeah. It's bound to come up sooner or later."

"Can she make these communicator things work with electronics?" Kevin asked, only half-listening. "I mean, if it's basically just a hole..." He jumped up again and started tossing various things around on his workbench until he found a notebook and pen, then started frantically drawing. "Congruent space," he muttered. "Runs neural signals through it, brain to brain communications… Maybe remote controlled constructs? Whatever, could broadcast radio waves through the… No. No, no, no, it's congruent space. Just run a wire through it! Optical fiber? Range unlimited, no delays..." His mind was whirling with ideas and he was drawing as fast as he was thinking, not really paying attention to what he was saying.

"Upgrade the snitch… hard link back to here, increased bandwidth allows higher resolution and no storage limitations… Yeah, perfect. No power limitations either! Holy crap, just feed power up the cable to anywhere you want… Big flywheel here to provide all the power we… Oh my god…." His mumbling stopped dead as an incredible idea abruptly hit him.

He drew a small sketch, stared at it, shook his head, drew another more detailed one, inspected that closely, modified it, wrote down a few equations and solved them, looked at the result, then dropped back into his chair and stared into space again. His face had a peculiar smile on, he was dimly aware of that, but he didn't care.

"Kev? You OK, man? You look weird." Randall prodded him in the shoulder with one finger, then exchanged a look with Lisa, who was examining him curiously.

"He just thought of something really incredible," the girl said slowly. "A new Tinker thing? No, not really Tinker tech, but important. A power supply?"

Kevin nodded absently, interrupting her power-driven analysis of his idea. "Yeah. A power supply. Something for powering fixed installations, more than anything else." Blinking, he looked at the sketch again, then up at his friends. Lisa's eyes were widening steadily, clearly having worked out most of what he'd done, while Randall was looking puzzled. "Taylor is so ridiculously overpowered and half the time she doesn't even realize what she's managed to do," he went on, shaking his head in wonder.

"Just the side effects of her tricks are world changing. She wants to make eldritch architecture and ends up working out the most bizarre excuse for mathematics you've ever heard of. And then figures out how to use that to first teleport, then make pockets of holding, then fucking portals, and god knows what else." He sighed in mildly frustrated admiration. "And casually invents a telepathy simulator to boot. Which is also faster than light travel and communications, as well as power distribution."

"She does seem to be able to leverage her ideas in unexpected ways," Randall agreed, grinning in an impressed manner. "But what's your big idea?"

"It's all connected. I just saw something she probably hasn't. Yet, anyway." He put the notebook down on the bench and rummaged around again until he assembled a small collection of odds and ends. "OK. You know how a generator works, right? A plain old electric generator, something the Victorians would recognize, not Tinker stuff like those ones Linda makes."

Both of them nodded slowly. "A conductor moving through a magnetic field," Randall replied. "Or a coil of wire spinning in one."

"Exactly. Move either the field or the conductor and you convert kinetic energy to electricity. Simple. Reliable." He held up a coil of wire that had originally been part of a small motor. "Take this, and shove a magnet like this through the middle, you'll get a pulse of electricity out of it. Make the magnet go back and forth on the end of a piston, for example, and you have one version of a generator. That's more or less how those flashlights you shake to recharge work, a big magnet bouncing up and down in a coil of wire."

Randall nodded again.

"OK. Now, say we take a lot of magnets and link them together into a long chain, and drop that chain through the coil. Same effect, kinetic energy of the chain moving makes the magnetic field vary which makes electricity, right? And if you just let gravity pull it through, you're converting gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy into electrical energy. Like… like a water wheel, basically. But you can't do it forever since the chain isn't infinitely long, so you have to lift it back up again, which takes more energy than you get from the generator, since it's not a hundred percent efficient." He demonstrated with a length of old bicycle chain.

His friend, yet again, nodded, then suddenly got very wide eyes. Kevin grinned. "You see what I'm thinking?"

"Holy shit. Taylor makes the top of the coil and the bottom of the coil the same place and the chain can be linked through that to form an endless loop. It will fall forever."

"Yeah. Free power in one easy step. It's bypassing the potential energy cost with magical bullshit and producing a genuine perpetual motion machine."

There was silence for some time, then Randall breathed, "Jesus. And no Tinker Tech at all."

"No. It's like the flywheels, it's all off the shelf stuff with a very simple machine at the heart of it, but made of something only she can make. This is even better because I'm pretty sure Vista could learn to do the congruent space trick, and if Varga is actually right, it's not impossible a normal person might one day learn enough Family math to do it too."

Lisa was still looking at the coil in his hand, her expression one he recognized as her using her power. "It would also be the basis of a fucking terrifying weapon," she finally said, somewhat reluctantly.

"Unfortunately yes. That occurred to me too," he admitted. Randall looked slightly puzzled so he explained, "It's functionally an infinitely deep hole. Toss something in and it'll fall forever, at a steady one G acceleration. Without pulling energy from it it'll just get faster and faster and faster..."

"…until either you turn off the spatial warp, in which case BOOM, or divert it to a separate target, in which case BOOM somewhere else," his best friend said, understanding.

"Pretty much. It would need to be in a perfect vacuum to remove any air resistance but the speeds you could get would be hellish given enough time. Drop something in at the top, that means..." He made some calculations. "Just over fourteen seconds would give about a hundred and forty meters a second. Less than a minute and you're up to nearly five hundred meters a second, more than one and a half times the speed of sound. Half an hour and you're doing nearly eighteen kilometers per second, which is way over escape velocity. And even with only a kilogram mass that's about the equivalent energy of eighty pounds of TNT."

"Pretty decent bang."

"More than enough to fuck you up. You could let it fall long enough to reach relativistic speeds in the end, which is really terrifying."

Lisa suggested, a little worriedly, "You could also make the distance between the ends large enough to put dozens or hundreds of masses in it so you'd get a machine gun effect."

"And Taylor could make it as long as you want, while still only taking up the size of a can of beans, too," Randall pointed out. He was also looking a bit worried.

"Shit." Kevin was almost wishing he hadn't come up with the idea by this point. On the other hand he was sure Taylor would think of it sooner or later anyway, and she certainly didn't need any help designing horrifically lethal weapons. "OK. Let's try not to think about misusing it. I need to work out how large the thing would need to be as a generator to make it a viable solution for real power generation."

"It'll need a load on it all the time or it'll run away on you," Randall pointed out.

"That's easy, it just feeds a flywheel big enough to store any reasonable amount of energy," he replied, making calculations on a fresh page. "And some form of mechanical interlock to keep it stopped if you need to disconnect it. Braking the chain is easy, you use the coils as a motor. In fact you'd throttle the speed of the thing just by loading it down. A big enough load should practically stop it. A simple EDM bar across it would work as an interlock… make the chain out of EDM too, that'll never break, housing of the same stuff just in case… some sort of guide to make sure it falls exactly straight..." He finished his scribbling and studied the figures.

"Easy enough, a hundred metric tons falling a hundred meters at one G delivers ninety-eight point one million joules. With decent efficiency in the coils and power conversion electronics it should be able to produce at least sixty megawatts continuously. That's a fair amount but nothing particularly special, completely conventional systems could handle that without even trying."

Randall looked impressed. "And it would scale nicely too, right?"

"Sure. Multiply the mass by a hundred, you get a hundred times the energy available. And true mass EDM would let us make the chain mass almost anything you want in a small amount of space. Taylor can make permanent magnets no problem, we have the superconductor as well..." He was getting excited now. "We could prototype this in an hour when she gets here. If she can fold it down to something smaller, which I can't see being a problem, we could get gigawatt output levels in something the size of a truck."

Shaking his head, he smiled to himself, almost ecstatic with the ideas he was still having. His own power seemed almost stunned, and had been since Lisa had explained what the girls had done the night before. "She's solved the energy generation problem for at least a city scale installation and doesn't even know she's done it."

"And the power could be distributed through the same method," Lisa said thoughtfully. He nodded.

"Yeah. The number of things I can see using this technique for just keeps going up every time I think about it."

Lisa was looking at him in something very close to admiration. "Not bad work for someone who hasn't even had breakfast yet."

Kevin grinned. "Thanks. For my next trick, I will solve world hunger, then go on to prove Taylor is actually a figment of our imagination."

She giggled, then replied, "I'm not a hundred percent convinced we're not figments of her imagination." As he laughed, she looked at the clipboard she'd come in with a little while ago. "Oh, right, world changing inventions aside, I've got your first DWU work here. Kevin, you're scheduled to meet George in the machinists department, he wants to see how well you can run a lathe and a milling machine."

"Sounds like fun," Kevin smiled. "I've always liked working metal. It's relaxing." He thought back to the days when his father had taught him to turn metal. "I love the smells of a machinists workshop," he added, "hot oil and metal, coolant, all that sort of stuff. Takes me back to my childhood. Dad had a pretty good workshop in the garage and used to fix all the neighborhood appliances and tools, stuff like that."

The girl looked amused and made a couple of notes on the clipboard. "You'll probably like George then. He's about sixty and has been a master machinist for nearly forty years. Danny says he's absolutely incredible at it, and the people he trained are way above average. This place has enough talent to make things for NASA and do it better than they do, from what I've found out. You name it, there's someone who knows how to do it."

"I'm constantly amazed at the sheer talent around here," Randall commented. She looked at him and shrugged.

"The DWU collects talented people. That's what's kept the lights on, them being good at what they do even though there isn't much of it, or wasn't for a long time. As far as I can tell if you went back to the fifties and sixties there was more technological innovation around here than in most places. Lots of ships, lots of machines, lots of new ideas. And an awful lot of people seem to end up in ports one way or the other."

"Yeah, that seems to fit what I've heard," his friend nodded thoughtfully. "Back when they were building ships they did some really good work, but that never took off like it did in some other places down the coast. Norfolk, for example. But the ships they did make here were damn good. Even did some smaller military vessels back during the war, I think."

"That's what Danny said, yeah," she agreed. "Before his time though. Anyway, Mark wants to talk to you about personal combat training, then there are four other department heads that would like a word." Lisa pulled a sheet of paper off the clipboard and gave it to Randall, then handed Kevin another one. "One way or another both of you will be able to earn an honest day's wages for an honest day's work." She smirked a little, adding, "For once."

"Look who's talking, Miss Undersider," Kevin snarked with good humor as he accepted the paperwork and examined it.

"Miss Ex-Undersider, I think you'll find," she replied haughtily. "And unlike a certain villainous duo, the Undersiders never actually got caught."

"No, they only nearly ended up stomped flat by Lung," Randall chuckled. "Glad they got away. I kind of like them."

"Even Alec?"

"He… grows on you," the other man said a little dubiously.

"So does fungus." Lisa grinned as he laughed once more. "But despite his problems, he means well as far as I can tell. And he definitely likes it here."

"No one makes him do anything, there's free food, and all the games he can play," Randall replied immediately.

"That would do it," she agreed dryly. "Well, I'm going for breakfast. Then I have a lot of work to do, we're going to be interviewing the first batch of new applicants later this week and I need to go over all the applications again."

"Going to have Metis vet them?" Kevin asked curiously.

She smiled darkly. "Oh, yes, they're going to have to talk to the big scary lizard, as well as Zephron, Danny, and Kurt."

"Poor bastards," Randall muttered with a theatrical shudder, which made her snicker. "Come on, Kev, I'm hungry too, let's get some food." He folded his own document and put it in his pocket, then got off the bench he'd been sitting in. Kevin nodded, looking at his notebook once more, then tossed it back onto his workbench and followed the other two.

When Taylor turned up, he had a lot to discuss with her…

Dennis watched Amy approach from his position next to his friends just outside the main door to the school, then looked past her at her truck in the car park. "You beat Taylor here," he commented when she was near enough. The brunette Dallon nodded, a slightly peculiar smile on her face. "Normally she turns up about the same time if not before, which is impressive for someone who runs to school."

"I live a fair distance further, Dennis," Amy replied calmly. "As you know. And she runs really well. But I think she's taking a different way to school today."

"Got a lift from someone?" he asked, nodding.

"Sort of."

Seconds later a very large shadow moved overhead, causing everyone outside the school to look up.

Then gape.

Amy snickered.

Dennis stared.

Breksta landed.

Taylor grinned.

"Holy fucking hell," the red-headed boy managed.

Lucy shouted "Taylor! It's amazing, isn't it?" from right next to him, enormous joy in her voice as she dashed over to meet the dragon again, followed by quite a number of other people. Most of whom were moving rather more cautiously, staring in shock as Taylor slid down out of the saddle on Breksta's back looking very pleased with herself.

"This city has gone very strange," he heard Dean sigh, sounding extremely puzzled.

He sympathized, but that wasn't going to stop him meeting a dragon.

Vice Principal Howell looked up as Mrs Adil appeared in her office doorway, an odd expression on her face.

"What's wrong?" she asked curiously.

"One of Saurial's relatives gave Miss Hebert a lift to school today," the other woman replied, shaking her head. "It was… unexpected."

"Raptaur?"

"No." Mrs Adil shrugged. "Breksta."

"Breksta?" She thought. "Isn't that..."

Her eyes widened.

"Yes. There's an enormous dragon in the car park." Her colleague sighed, sitting down in one of the chairs in front of her desk. "Do you remember when life made sense?"

They exchanged a look, then she almost smiled. "Not really. This is, after all, Brockton Bay." Standing, she added, "I've always wanted to meet a dragon. One that wasn't Lung, of course."

As she headed to the front entrance, she mused that the life of a school teacher was always interesting, albeit often in ways that one wasn't quite anticipating...