Max sat behind his desk, his chair swiveled around to face the window that pointed towards the bay, pondering various things. Every now and then he sipped from a tumbler of scotch, allowing the alcohol to run over his tongue and savoring the taste.

Ever since Sunday he'd been contemplating what the latest changes meant for him, his visions, and his city. Seeing Kaiju up close like that, listening to her talk, and meeting that alien if friendly gaze so high in the air, had been…

He sighed a little. Awe inspiring was a trite label for the experience, but it was a valid one.

Feeling so completely outclassed by something wasn't a sensation he'd had much before. Possibly only the Endbringers had produced such an impression of overwhelming power in his mind, something that he knew was far past his own abilities to really prevail against. No other Parahuman, not even Lung, had that effect, certainly not to anywhere near that level. Oh, sure, intellectually he knew the Asian dragon could, when sufficiently ramped up, go through almost anything that got in his way, he didn't hold any illusions about how dangerous Lung really was. But he was also fairly certain that if one took steps before that point it would be possible to bring an end to the threat reasonably easily.

He was, in fact, mildly surprised that no one had tried it before. As he'd told Brad some time ago, a good sniper with the right weapon and experience could deal handily with the majority of Parahumans, from a sufficient distance that there would be little if any warning. Oddly enough, no one seemed inclined to try that method, though, which was on the whole something he was fine with. He didn't want a bullet in his own head after all.

Which was one of the reason he had always felt that upsetting the DWU too much was liable to end in tears. They had more than enough people with the requisite skills to make themselves very dangerous should they have enough of a reason. Marquis had known that, so had Allfather, and even the Teeth had generally steered clear of the Union. For that matter, even before the Family arrived on the scene so dramatically, Lung himself had tended to leave well enough alone, although the Docks bordered the area of the city generally considered to be the stomping grounds of the ABB.

It was, thinking about it, only people like the Merchants who seemed too stupid to realize that every time they started something, the Union boys stopped it. Usually with prejudice and a generous helping of instant karma. They might not have had capes, but they had a hell of a lot of experience in giving a good solid beat-down if needed and weren't shy about doing so if sufficiently motivated. And there were a lot of them, who acted much like an ant hill. Leave them alone, they went about their business and mostly ignored you. Rile them up and the entire fucking lot jumped in. Even with powers that wasn't something to ignore and he knew it.

Pity Brad hadn't got the memo…

The big problem now was, of course, that the DWU had capes. Quite a few of them. And the Family, whatever the hell those reptiles really were.

Vectura, Über and Leet if his latest information was correct, the former Undersiders, probably Panacea if you looked at it correctly, possibly even Glory Girl in some ways as she usually turned up where her sister was sooner or later. Then on the Family side you had Saurial, Raptaur, Metis, Ianthe, Kaiju, and he was hearing rumors of something even larger than the latter as well. Something that made the PRT extremely cautious even past the potential threat of the Tanker Mover. Plus Cloak, of course, who was creepier than any three of the others put together.

He remembered that tiny Death staring at him all too well...

So the Dock Worker's Union could call on two Tinkers, three healers, several Brutes, most of whom were combat experts as well, at least two Thinkers, a Master, and several others. Many of these categories spanning several people too, since at least the Family members seemed to have a completely bewildering variety of abilities, with more being pulled out of Saurial's hat every few days.

All of these people were loyal to Hebert's gang of blue collar lunatics, all of them ranged from dangerous at the low end to totally ludicrous at the top end, and all of them seemed intent on fixing the city rather than the more normal cape fighting, or territory grabbing. And that was ignoring the sheer amount of logistical support the Union itself could bring to bear, which thanks to the reclamation project was growing in leaps and bounds on a daily basis.

They also had enormous and increasing popular support as the differences that had been made already in the city became ever more apparent as time went on. Roads were being quietly and amazingly effectively repaired throughout the most deprived areas of the city, infrastructure that had been slowly crumbling away was suddenly back in pristine condition overnight, even road signs seemed to mysteriously turn into brand new ones that actually matched the roads they were on. All of it done, apparently, by Saurial and Raptaur when they had nothing better to do than wander around fixing everything they laid eyes on.

It was incredibly weird, in his view. Capes just didn't act like that. Nobody acted like that. People always had an ulterior motive, some reason they did things to accrue benefits for themselves, either directly or indirectly. Usually directly since most people weren't smart enough to play the long game.

But these lizards seemed to simply enjoy repairing civil infrastructure, which was just bizarre. Who, even if they could, would waste their time magicking up a new road surface out of nowhere or whatever the fuck it was that they actually did? A sensible person would approach the city and sell them that service, for a considerable sum too.

As far as he'd been able to establish, the fucking Family did it for free. Without being asked, or even mentioning it to anyone.

Trying to figure out what their motive for doing it was had been driving him slowly nuts for months…

And that was leaving aside their distinctly… unique… approach to heroing, which mainly seemed to consist of jumping anyone they found committing a crime when they were casually wandering around and basically ignoring anyone who managed to evade their attention. They certainly didn't, from what his informants and observations said, go looking for trouble, or regularly patrol various areas, or any of the other standard methods the heroes used. Sure, they seemed to find trouble without any real problems, but this was Brockton Bay, there was always something going on somewhere even these days. The point was, the lizards didn't seem to actively seek it out. Nor did they go after capes, unless those capes had the ill judgment to go after them first. That had only happened once so far and the lesson seemed to have stuck.

That was also somewhat disorientating, he mused.

And if his latest information was correct, even Lung was treating them with an odd degree of respect. He didn't know why, unless the rage monster had either decided that he'd wait and see what happened, or had decided that there were things that even he couldn't deal with. Or possibly both, of course.

Kaiju herself was basically the same sort of mystery on a much, much larger scale. She turned up, actually literally joined the DWU, then just moved things around. Or built enormous constructions out of nothing, or resurfaced acres of ground by walking around on it, or whatever.

On the whole, it had to be said, he was glad that she didn't go looking for fights, since he had no wish to see what something that large would do if provoked. Even if it took an ungodly amount of provocation which is what his information told him. He had a nasty feeling that should such provocation succeed the results would be spectacular on a level few would want to be anywhere in the vicinity of.

Certainly, having actually met Saurial in person and seen the keen and calculating mind that lived behind those inhuman eyes, then looked up at her incomparably vaster sister and observed much the same, he didn't think it was wise to do anything to attract the ire of either one. Or any of the others for that matter.

Raptaur had trashed Brad with almost no effort and made it look like she'd expected more of a fight. He wasn't convinced that Saurial couldn't have done exactly the same with as much ease. He was convinced that Kaiju could simply squash him like a bug, possibly without even noticing. And Hookwolf was easily the most resilient and dangerous member of the E88. If he didn't stand a chance against any of the Family, the rest of them were basically fucked should the lizards decide to come after them.

And now they had a dragon of their own. A real one, with a sense of humor as twisted as the rest of them, who seemed to think it was funny to scare him out of a year's life and was apparently working with Glory Girl to make his life as exciting as possible, but not in a good way.

He sighed and finished his whiskey, putting the glass down with a click, then massaging his temples.

The look Saurial had given him when he'd met her at the DWU's event a couple of days ago had stayed with him. It was assessing and knowing at the same time, and made him think that some things he'd thought were a secret just might not be. How, he had no idea, but some of her comments, and more precisely how she'd said them rather than what was said had left him thinking that they were aimed at him personally. He hadn't missed how she'd looked at Nessa and Jessica either.

No, that lizard girl was dangerous, knew way too much, and was overall someone who it would be a very, very bad idea to underestimate.

He was also fairly sure that the Hebert man was a lot smarter than he'd expected and was someone who the lizards told more than they told most people. Saurial clearly respected him, he'd seen that just by watching them interact, and he was certain that any threat to the DWU or the Heberts would attract instant retribution from the Family, almost certainly their Tinker Vectura, and quite likely all the other Parahumans they'd managed to adopt recently. And, of course, about three hundred and fifty angry and armed dock workers, which was something that sounded a lot funnier than he suspected it would be in real life should it happen.

Those people were insane, he was all too aware. And usually very strong, very loyal, and very creative.

Max had no desire to find out first hand what the end result of both the DWU and the Family going all out would be, and was certain that either one being attacked would bring the other along for the ride. Ever since he'd seen Kaiju's debut he'd been horrified at the implications and the more he saw the more worried he got. Luckily most of the rest of his group also realized that they were way out of their depth where the Family was concerned and had listened to him when he'd ordered that the DWU was entirely off limits. Stormtiger was the only one who'd protested, under some delusion that he could prevail against Saurial at least, but Max had shut him down cold when he'd started mouthing off about that idea.

While he was morbidly curious to see how many pieces the idiot would end up in, he wasn't curious enough to risk having Saurial come looking for him after going through the fool like a brick through a bowl of eggs. He had a shrewd idea that she would hold him responsible for anything that happened as a result of his own people going after hers.

He didn't want that. Not one little bit. He was good, he knew he was good, but there were battles you simply didn't fight if you had any choice in the matter.

So, ultimately, the big question was; What was he going to do now that the Empire Eighty Eight was effectively shut down, probably for good? It simply wasn't sensible to risk the current status quo. The Family appeared to be tolerating their existence but he had no doubt that it was only tolerating them, not avoiding conflict out of some worry they'd have any trouble dealing with them. Considering how easily they'd dealt with the Merchants when that fuckwit Skidmark managed to piss them off, he was sure that no matter how well his people fought back, they'd lose. It wasn't worth the risk. You didn't engage an enemy that outclassed you by that much unless there was no choice.

Pouring himself another measure of liquor, he sipped it while watching the waves roll across the water and the noticeably increased amount of shipping move hither and yon. He was sure that someone with his ambition and wit could work out, eventually, some method to profit from the abrupt change to the dynamics of Brockton Bay. All he had to do was stay off their radar and think carefully, then seize whatever opportunity came his way.

Sooner or later he'd come up with something. He had intelligence, money and time after all.


Lisa tapped on the door to Danny's office, then opened it when he called out. "Hi," she said as she entered, seeing Taylor's father was inspecting a series of documents very closely.

"Hello, Lisa," he replied while she closed the door and moved to sit in one of his free chairs. He glanced up, then returned to the document he was examining for a few seconds before nodding to himself and signing it. "I hear from Taylor that there was an unexpected visitor to our friendly lizards yesterday evening."

"Yeah," she smiled, remembering how totally shocked poor Vicky had looked after she'd gotten over the raw fright and worry. Lisa was fairly impressed at the courage the other Dallon girl had shown at the time, and pleased that at last they'd set her mind at ease. "She wasn't in a good place. I think she went away happy though. Confused, but happy."

"Often the case when people spend any time with Saurial and her relatives," he laughed, putting the rest of the documents in order into three piles, one of which went into an envelope, the other two stacks into a pair of folders. "They do seem to manage to sow confusion wherever they go." He looked meaningfully at her, causing her to snicker. At least partly due to the way they were talking around the true identity of the people involved while in his office where they might theoretically be overheard...

"So I understand," she replied mildly. They shared a grin. "What's that?" she asked, nodding at the paperwork, which her power told her was to do with property development.

"Land deeds, mostly," he said, closing the folder. "For some purchases the DWU has just made."

"Oh." With that information, she worked out the rest. "Ah. Buying some of the land the Ship's Graveyard is on. I remember you mentioned that a while back."

"Yes," he agreed, looking pleased, "The majority of the ships cover just under nineteen hundred acres along nearly three miles of shoreline, including several small islands near the shore. The largest of those is almost a hundred acres on its own. There's also two rivers under all that lot somewhere although they're completely choked up with old ships now as far as I know. They were taking smaller ones up the rivers and beaching the things, while the bigger ones were left either in the shallows or dragged up on the shore at high tide. It's a real mess. At a conservative estimate there are over a thousand ships of one sort or another there, either on land or sunk just off shore."

He shook his head in regret. "No one knows how many more are in deeper water and not visible even at low tide. Nobody's bothered to even look for at least twenty years. The things have been building up there for… oh, probably since the fifties at least. Possibly even before the war. When Brockton was smaller, and had shipyards, that was well outside the city and they just dumped stuff without even thinking about it."

"And when the bay got blocked, the dumping rate went way up from what I've found out," she commented.

He nodded. "Correct. In its heyday, the fleet in Brockton Bay was probably upwards of a couple of hundred, maybe over three hundred, vessels. Mostly fishing ones, small freighters, that sort of thing, but a few big cargo vessels and at least two tankers. Plus all sorts of pleasure boats too. This place was perfect for mooring and protected from storms by the narrow bay entrance. Of course, once that was plugged, or the shipping channel at least, all the large ones were stuck inside the bay. Some of the smaller ones could get past and went down to Boston, or other ports, but even a lot of that size just ended up abandoned in the end. Some were beached, some were just scuttled when they got too expensive to keep floating, and so on."

Danny shrugged. "So no one has a clue what's really out there. We have a rough estimate but it really is just an estimate, and probably at the low end of reality. It's the largest collection of scrapped shipping on the east coast. At one point about thirteen or fourteen years back people were actually bringing small ships into the bay to get rid of them, all the way up from the other side of Boston. I wouldn't be surprised to find some actual archaeologically interesting things under the more modern crap when it's all moved. But it's going to take a while even with Family help to shift it, years at least."

Looking at the map on the back wall, he indicated the area marked in red. "Once all that is cleared up, and properly drained, it's going to be some of the most prime real estate in the city. At the moment it's zoned for heavy industry. Roy's been talking about possibly making part of the inland area a wildlife reserve or something along those lines, by removing all the really rotten buildings that used to be part of the shipping industry back in the late nineteenth century and letting it revert to nature. It's most of the way there already and a lot of that land is so boggy it would be hideously expensive to build anything modern on it."

Lisa studied the map, nodding to herself. "And that's where one of the rivers is too, right?"

"That's what the map says, but all you can see on the surface these days is a huge muddy area with decaying buildings and ships sinking into it," Danny confirmed. "Apparently the mouth of that river used to be, a long time back, a prime area for oysters and other shellfish. Maybe that would come back too. I know the fish are returning already, something about the moving of the tanker altering the currents and encouraging it. There are some marine biologists from BBU who are already studying how that's changing."

"Huh. So we're already having an effect. That's cool."

"It's going to get steadily bigger, I think," he smiled. "This is only the start. And that land will be worth, in the long run and if things go to plan, an enormous amount of money. Probably not for a decade or so at least, but in time it could turn into a fairly substantial industrial park. Anything that needs access to the water would bite your hand off for the chance to use it. So shipping companies, ship builders, marine electronics, things like that. And probably a lot of the support infrastructure required by them too, which all means a lot of money, a lot of jobs, and a hell of an upgrade for the city. The knock on effects of all that will transform this place."

"It'll be interesting to see what happens," she commented, turning around in her chair to face him once more. "And you've arranged for the DWU to get some long term benefits from it?"

"Yeah, I have. The DWU just bought, at rock bottom prices, two hundred and eighty acres of what's currently useless land but in the long term could provide income of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year minimum as rent. That's all going into the pension fund, which should keep things ticking along nicely for a long, long time. It's a choice parcel, too, a strip along the shoreline about half a mile long, going back nearly three quarters of a mile, right up to the nearest access road."

"How much did that cost?" she asked curiously.

"We got it for three hundred and ninety seven thousand," Danny told her, opening one folder and checking the top page. "Which is insanely low. But even with the reclamation project going on, that land is almost worthless right now. It's not even worth as much as bad farmland, since nothing useful will grow on it and it's covered in scrap metal, which isn't part of the deal. Only the land was sold, the stuff on it belongs to the city. But give it a year to really sink in that this is actually going to happen and it'll hit a couple of grand an acre or more. A few years after that it could be hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars an acre."

She nodded thoughtfully, impressed. "That's one hell of a return on investment."

"I hope so. It was a lot of money, but in ten years or so we should have a steady income stream for the union, which will make an enormous difference to hundreds or even thousands of people by then." He turned to look out the window at the busy yard outside, where the crews were finishing off the scrapping of what remained of the old tanker, new rail cars being filled steadily. "I still can't believe how fast all this happened, but it's going extremely well."

"We're going to have to get some more ships out there soon, they've nearly finished with the big one," she pointed out.

"I don't think Kaiju will have any problems with bringing some of the sunken ones up," he smiled. "And when they're out of the way we can get barges in to haul the beached ships onto and bring them back. Vectura's mechs will make that a lot easier than we ever expected."

"Especially since they can fly now," she chuckled. "I'm told that they can lift a hell of a load. You might not even need barges."

Danny shrugged, spreading his hands. "We'll use everything we have access to. The guys like the mechs, and like Vectura, so I don't see them not being used."

"Has the money for the first train load come in yet?" she asked.

He turned to his computer and wiggled the mouse to bring it out of sleep, then clicked a few times. "We've got the receipt for the metal and a breakdown of the payments by type, but they're still sorting out the last few cars and can't give us a final figure until tomorrow afternoon. What they've already reported is even more than we expected, though. Roy is incredibly happy about that." He grinned as she laughed. "So am I. The DWU gets thirty percent of the first load profit which is going to make a big difference to us."

Turning the screen so she could see it, he pointed. "Total load weighed in at the smelter was twenty seven thousand two hundred and six short tons. So far, that breaks down into twenty thousand and some tons of various grades of steel, one thousand and ninety tons of stainless, three thousand and forty tons of copper and copper alloys, sixty tons of nickel alloys, and the remaining three thousand odd tons being aluminum."

He brought up another set of figures. "Scrap steel is about five hundred dollars a ton, so that's over ten million dollars already. Aluminum is just over twenty one hundred per ton, giving another six point three million. Stainless is about three and a half thousand per ton, another three point eight million, nickel is twenty seven thousand per ton, so that's one point six million there. And copper is eighty five hundred per ton, or a total of seventeen point six million for that as well."

"Holy shit," she murmured, somewhat shocked. She'd never really looked into the cost of bulk scrap metal before. "That's..."

"Forty four million, one hundred and sixty five thousand, five hundred dollars and eighteen cents," he said with enormous satisfaction. "Subject to final assay, which might make it go up or down about ten percent at most."

"Giving the DWU just over thirteen million dollars."

"Minus taxes, wages, expenses, equipment upgrades, fuel, supplies, and so on, as well as repaying the short term funding Roy arranged, we clear nearly seven million. That will pay for a lot of repairs around the place, new hires, increasing the pay of all the people here to a more sensible amount, and so on." He looked very happy. "Even once we've paid off all the outstanding debts and loans that we needed to keep the place afloat, we'll still have over four and a half million in the accounts, which is higher than it's been in..." He shook his head wonderingly as he appeared to try to remember. "Practically ever. Decades at least. We'll be completely solvent again and everyone's jobs will be safe."

Lisa watched him for a moment, almost able to feel the satisfaction radiating from the man. "That must make you relieved. I know how close this place has come in the past to dying completely."

"You have no idea, Lisa," he sighed, although it was a contented sigh. "I've put in over fifteen years of my life trying to keep the DWU going, and all these people in work. Finally, I can think that I didn't waste all that time. Sometimes I wondered, as we managed to get a couple of jobs here and a couple there, just enough to keep the lights on." His mouth formed a strange smile for a second. "If it wasn't for all the capes around the place smashing things up all the time we probably wouldn't have made it, funnily enough. But I've seen a lot of friends go, some permanently. Debt and no work drives some people too far to come back from."

She nodded slowly, knowing what he meant. "Despair does that."

"Yeah," he said heavily. "It does. And I've seen it happen more than I care to remember." Taking a deep breath, he visibly forced himself to cheer up after the momentary depression. "However, that is in the past, if I have anything to do with it. We're back and we're keeping it that way."

"I think the Family feels the same," she joked, causing him to grin again.

"So I believe." Turning the monitor around again he clicked the mouse, then pushed the keyboard to the side. "Are you going to be dropping some of the BBFO demo products off today? Roy asked about that when I talked to him a little while ago." He motioned vaguely at the phone as he spoke.

"Yeah, I was just about to call and arrange that," she replied with a nod. "Kevin assembled the electronics into some of the flywheel units Saurial made over the weekend from the parts that came yesterday. We're waiting on the remainder of the shipment before we can put more together though. Apparently one of the power semiconductors they use for that is a little unusual, and they bought all the ones that were in stock locally. The rest are coming from California, they should be here sometime this week. But he was able to get four of the high power units and fifteen of the standard ones finished."

"That should be enough for the demos, I would think," he remarked.

"Should be, yes. The city will get five of the standard ones, the PRT has one already and I'll drop off another four, and two of the high power ones for Armsmaster to play with. Knowing him they'll be in his bike in about two days." She grinned as Danny nodded, smiling. "And I'll take over enough of the firefighting stuff and all the other equipment to let them test it properly. Then we just wait for an order to come in."

"Considering how impressed Roy sounded when he was talking about your first sales pitch, I don't think you'll be waiting long," Danny replied.

"No, probably not. And there's a lot more to come, I've got pages and pages of notes for FamTech products. Never mind all the things Saurial has come up with, and Ianthe, and even Leet." She produced a small smirk. "You won't believe what he invented this morning..."

Danny gave her a slightly suspicious look. "Do I need to start evacuating now or wait until I hear the bang?" he asked cautiously.

She laughed a little. "No, it's not really even Tinker Tech. Just a really cool idea that Saurial can probably make without any trouble." Lisa explained, amused at the various expressions that went over his face as she did. When she finished, he just stared at her.

"Jesus," he finally breathed. "I don't believe it."

She shrugged. "The math seems to check out. We had to make a few assumptions about how Saurial does that spatial congruency trick, but based on what I've seen, I think they're valid. If so, we have a way to generate basically free power indefinitely."

After a long moment, he sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for some time. "Just when you think you've got used to them, something like this happens," he finally said, lowering his eyes to meet hers. "I think we'll have to be careful about who we tell about that particular idea and how. It's going to cause some peculiar issues, I suspect."

"Probably." She spread her hands. "It might not even work. But I'm fairly sure it will, and Leet is completely sure it will. When Saurial turns up we can find out. It can wait as a product, though, since we've got plenty of slightly less paradigm-breaking hardware to sell already."

"Yes, I've seen the stockpile of that stuff. She may have got just a little carried away," he replied with a wry grin.

"She wanted to get making it out of the way for now," Lisa said. After a moment, she added, smirking a bit, "Hey, did you see the latest Family thread on PHO?"

"Oh, god, what did they do this time?" he groaned, turning to his computer again. A little later, both of them were watching a video and laughing, mostly at the expressions of the people standing around in the car park at Arcadia.


"Not bad."

Kevin looked up from the lathe as George spoke.

"Not bad at all, for a kid your age." The considerably older man was only about five feet tall, but solidly built and while entirely white-haired, clearly still active and strong. His hands were stubby-fingered and scarred but moved with amazing precision when he took the object Kevin removed from the chuck and handed him. Putting a pair of glasses that were hanging around his neck on a chain on his nose he squinted through them at the small cube of metal, then pulled a micrometer out of his pocket and carefully measured each side. "Only half a thousandth out from a perfect cube. Good job."

He put the block of steel on a nearby workbench, then picked up a hammer and whacked it hard twice with the ball end on three of the faces. Kevin winced a little. Handing the now badly distorted block back, the old man grinned deviously. "Make it a perfect cube again. You've got one hour."

"Christ, you have a direct way to test someone," Kevin muttered, which got a laugh from the old guy, who then wandered off to annoy someone else. Sighing, he picked up the calipers and measured how far out of true his former nice neat cube was, calculated the amount of metal that needed to be removed to make a smaller cube, then put it back into the four jaw chuck and started to repeat the tedious and exacting machining process. Despite his minor irritation he was rather enjoying the work, he thought as he minutely adjusted the chuck for the first operation.

"Lisa Wilbourn from the DWU is here, Sir."

Roy replied, "Thanks, send her through," and released the intercom button. A few seconds later the door to his office opened to allow the entry of the blonde girl, who smiled at him, then at the other people in the room. "Hello again, Lisa," he said as he walked over to greet her, holding out his hand, which she shook.

"A pleasure as always, Roy," the girl replied. Turning to look at the people around his conference table, who were the same group as at her demonstration the week before. "Gentlemen."

"Miss Wilbourn," Commissioner Hoskins replied, looking at the two large bags she was carrying, one in each hand, with great interest. She also had the same backpack she'd had the previous time on her back. "I suspect you have some new toys for us."

"I do indeed, sir," she smiled, approaching the table and lifting both bags onto it, before removing her pack and placing it by her feet. She opened one of them as Roy retook his seat, watching with interest. "We've supplied five complete suit sets, one extra than you asked for as we thought it might be helpful." The blonde lifted out a helmet and handed it to him. Taking it, he studied it, then nodded, passing it on to his technical expert who was immediately engaged in examining the thing very closely. "We think we've made them adjustable enough to cover the bulk of sizes you'll run into but if there are any issues just let us know and we can sort them out."

She pulled out four more helmets one after another and put them on the table, then produced five neatly folded fire suits as well. "Gloves and boots are in the pockets of each suit," she pointed out. "In the bag is the suit air supply charging unit, which has six outputs so it can refill half a dozen of them at once, and the CO2 scrubber regenerator which will do the same. There are also a dozen spare scrubber canisters so you can swap them out while the depleted ones are being recharged, which takes about four hours."

The Commissioner looked into the bag, half standing from his seat, then nodded while looking pleased. "Excellent," he replied.

Unzipping the other bag, she extracted one of the implausibly small firefighting backpack water systems and put it next to the suits. "Five complete fire suppressant rigs with tanks and flywheel power units, ready to use. The tanks are filled and the flywheels are at full speed. There is also a flywheel charger unit, again with six slots, and five tank filling adapters." She held one of these up, then put it back into the bag. "That should be everything you need to properly evaluate the system. Take as long as you need and make sure you're happy with it." Holding up a fairly thick book she added, "Complete technical documentation and operators manuals on all parts of the system are also included. We'd welcome feedback on any and all aspects of the system where you feel things could be improved or simplified. You guys are the experts in using this sort of thing so let us know if we got it wrong and we'll fix it."

Hoskins took the book she handed him and flipped through it, looking more and more impressed as he did. "I have to say this is one of the better manuals I've come across," he commented.

"Thank you. Saurial is firmly of the opinion that a good manual is important, and the DWU has a very competent documentation section," Lisa replied with a smile. "Again, anything in there you think is wrong or not sufficient, tell us and we'll change it."

"We'll do that. Thank you."

"No problem. Hopefully you'll be customers of ours very soon and we want that relationship to start off on the right foot." The girl looked around at them all. "Part of that is being honest with our clients and giving good value for money. We're in it for the long haul, instant profit isn't what we're interested in."

"I suspect," Roy said with his own small smile, "that we're going to be doing quite a lot of business with BBFO."

"I hope so, Mayor," she grinned.

Turning to Chief Mellor, who had been watching the equipment come out of the bag with a look that showed he was slightly despondent that there wasn't anything for the BBPD in it, which made Roy smile to himself, the girl said, "We haven't forgotten the police either, Chief." She picked up the backpack she'd left on the floor and opened it, then pulled out several items. "BBFO has supplied the DWU with protective clothing as a standard issue item in the last few days, so we thought we'd give you a few sets in different sizes to evaluate. It's armored against industrial accidents more than anything else, and obviously isn't a police uniform, but the technology is the same as the low profile body armor I mentioned on my previous visit. It should let you work out if this is the sort of thing you'd want."

Picking up one of the piles of cloth, Mellor opened it out to reveal a work jacket with a fold out hood, the lining soft while the outer layer looked hard-wearing and waterproof. On the face of it, it was very similar to a completely normal version of the same clothing, something that practically every workman wore outside. It definitely didn't look at all like body armor, Roy thought as he studied it.

'Huh. That's very interesting indeed,' he mused. 'That means that the entire DWU workforce is now wearing bulletproof armor all the time, but no one can really tell. Are they expecting trouble, or just not taking any chances? I wonder if it was Danny's idea, or Saurial's…?' Knowing both of them, although as of yet not well in the latter case, he suspected that it was entirely possible it was something they'd each had independently. 'And it means that the next time some fool takes a shot at a dock worker he's going to get one hell of a shock… And probably the kicking of a lifetime.'

He had to admit, the thought was quite amusing. The implications were not so much funny as extremely intriguing.

Roy wondered if the PRT had any idea about it yet?

"We've got pants, gloves and boots to match too," Lisa went on, showing one of each item mentioned. "Try them out, see if you like them, and we can talk about producing official BBPD uniforms using the same technology."

"Fascinating," Chief Mellor mumbled, feeling the fabric inside one sleeve of the jacket he was holding and looking impressed. "This will actually stop a bullet?"

"Yes. We've tested it and stand by that. The amount of kinetic energy that it will absorb and handle is truly ridiculous," the girl replied immediately. "The fabric is EDM lined and designed to lock solid under impact or large applied forces, stiffening up to protect the wearer. If you manage to get a large enough hit that your entire body is accelerated at a lethal rate, it won't save you, but anything less than that shouldn't cause too much problem. You could get run over by a tank and get up afterwards with only some mud on the coat. Which will wipe right off."

She smirked a little as he chuckled. "The tank's main gun wouldn't penetrate it either, although I wouldn't want to actually test that unless you were a Brute. Handguns and rifles won't do anything much more than maybe knock you over if you're not braced."

"Tinker weapons?"

"Tasers won't have any effect, EDM is totally non conductive. Laser weapons will eventually heat it enough to be uncomfortable but it's also insulated pretty well, although not quite as well as the fire suits. A flame thrower or something like that would be dangerous more because of the risk of inhaling the flames than actually getting burned where the clothing covers you. If you avoid that, you could walk through a fire without too much trouble." She shrugged. "It'll block radiation and electricity completely, heat mostly for a long time, kinetic energy almost entirely, stuff like that. Some exotic powers will penetrate it, or at least go past it, but nothing we're aware of will actually damage it. At all."

"Wow." He shook his head in respect. "That is truly incredible."

"We're pretty pleased with it," she admitted. Pulling out another item, she put it next to the clothing. "And there are three of the standard sets of more traditional body armor BBFO designed for the DWU security office as well. Much lighter and thinner than kevlar and ceramic composite plates, but far tougher."

"The techs are astounded by those trauma plates you provided," the chief noted as he picked up the body armor and looked closely at it. "They tried everything in the armory against them, up to fifty cal armor piercing explosive rounds, with no effect at all. They were in the process of trying to arrange to borrow a twenty millimeter anti-materiel rifle from a local gun collector the last I heard. And someone was muttering about depleted uranium rounds, which makes me a little nervous."

Lisa grinned widely. "Neither of those will help," she told him with confidence. "Nothing that leaves the building standing will affect them in the slightest."

Chief Mellor nodded, apparently believing her, then turned to Roy. "I'm pretty much convinced," he stated. "We'll test these, but assuming that Miss Wilbourn is correct, we need to place an order as soon as possible."

"Write it up and let me have it, I'll get it authorized," Roy told him. "We have the money now, or will soon, with the success of the first part of the scrapping scheme."

"Thanks," the chief replied, putting the armor back on the table.

"You can keep the bags, they'll help with moving all this stuff," Lisa told them. She turned to Roy. "I think that's everything you needed. You have our details if you want to discuss an order, or anything else to do with this equipment."

"Thank you, Lisa, very much," he replied. "You got this to us even faster than I expected."

"Family mass production methods are fairly effective," she told him, her lips twitching slightly.

"I can imagine," he chuckled. "Or perhaps I can't. Either way, I'm impressed. Thank Saurial and her relatives for me, please."

"I'll do that, Roy." She looked around at them all. "Any questions or requests while I'm here?"

No one seemed to have anything to add, so she nodded. "In that case, I have to drop off some more equipment to the PRT, so I'll be on my way. It was nice to see you all again. I hope that you find this equipment meets your expectations."

Roy stood and shook her hand once more. "Thank you for stopping by, Lisa," he told her.

"It was my pleasure. See you again," she smiled, then turned and left. He watched her go, smiled a little to himself, and returned to the table to discuss the various items with his people.