Gaiana filled the room with her loud snorting noises. She turned up to Skidmark and yelled, "who the FUCK do you think my ass belongs to you limp dick mother fucker!" Gaiana stood up and flung her head up backwards before falling to the ground. She raised her arms and yelled, "if I say I'm here for a goddamn mission, you better believe I'm telling the truth you jizz stained biiiitch!"

The other Merchants watched as her hands dropped down. Her eyes closed, and for a moment they wondered if she overdosed. They were quickly proven wrong once she flew up, and ran to the table. She proceeded to snort the remainder of the other Merchant's cocaine.

"Alright bitch," Skidmark groaned. "When I said you have to sample some as a test, I did it to check you weren't a cop. I didn't want you smoking up our whole fucking product."

Gaiana raised a finger to stop him from talking. Her face stayed plastered on the table, sniffing the leftover grains he'd given her. "You think I give a FUCK what you want. I'm here to win. W-I-N. You thought I'd back down from a little dust!?"

Gaiana pulled out a plastic bag from her pocket. It was crystal clear methamphetamine. "I don't just visit from the nose fairy, I AM the nose fairy. Your ghetto ass sprinkles didn't even make my nose bleed. You don't got nothing until you taste my tinker tested grade A PIXIE SHIT."

Gaiana opened the bag and borrowed a needle from another gang member. She proceeded to tie a rag around her arm.

"Gaiana, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?" All of her sisters screamed at her through the mind link. Gaiana paid no attention to any of them.

Elisha yelled, "you said this wouldn't happen again!"

Natasha protested, "last time you got that high I had to drag your vomiting ass off the defibrillator!"

Liliana spoke monotoned, "at least use a clean needle."

Angela kept yelling, "why does this keep happening? Focus on the goddamn mission!"

Gaiana ignored them all as her mind relaxed. A wide grin spread across her face as the tinker potent drug overtook her. "Man, I think my mouth just jizzed."

"Gimme some of that!" Squealer took some rock from the bag and passed some to Skidmark to share. Mush only watched in amusement as the three of them tested Gaiana's tinkering skills.

It was a potent product. When Gaiana stepped in to offer her tinkering services they were skeptical. But now it was clear the Merchants wanted her aboard. All three of them spent the rest of the afternoon lounging back while high. After a certain point, Gaiana turned off her mind-link to ignore her nagging sisters. Even Skidmark's high school recruits left after growing tired of their girth.

Two hours passed before their extra member stepped in. She wore a heavy jacket and boots. Her dirty auburn hair was just as scruffy as her dog's fur. Gaiana looked over at Rachel with a half high grin. Rachel scowled at her and rolled her fists up. Gaiana quickly turned away, avoiding a potential confrontation. Rachel spat at the ground, and took her dogs to the upstairs attic of the Merchant warehouse. Not a word was said among any of them.

Gaiana turned to Skidmark and asked, "the fuck was that?"

Squalor answered in a giggled tone. "That's Bitch. She came here once with all of her dogs. Since she's not a cunt, we agreed to protect dem dogs if she protects our base while we're gone." Squealer began laughing hysterically with no one in particular, "She's more like a stray cat than a stray dog!"

"Don't let her hear that!" Skidmark yelled back with a laugh.

Gaiana almost laughed along with them, but decided to get busy instead. She stood up and activated a detoxification power. She shook her legs and limbs to rub off the potency of her own drugs. Sober, she yawned as she walked upstairs to where Bitch was headed.

The warehouse attic was messy, but it was also roomy. There were about two dozen dogs there, ages ranging from a few weeks to a few years. Gaiana noticed that many of them were crippled, with dog tags and medical bandages implying that many of these strays meant to be euthanized.

Rachel glared at the sight of Gaiana, "what the fuck are you doing here!?"

Rachel pointed at Gaiana and ordered her dogs to attack. Gaiana waved her hand and quickly put the trained dogs to sleep. Rachel charged towards her and punched her across the face. "What the fuck did you do to them!?"

"I just put them to sleep."

"You fucking bitch, you think you can put my dogs to sleep!? Wake them the fuck up!"

Gaiana glared directly at Rachel, "only if you don't make them attack me."

Rachel growled at her, she stepped back to give Gaiana space. When Gaiana was released, she waved her hands forward for them to wake. Before they could return to their assault, Rachel ordered them to sit.

Gaiana sat back against the wall. She began counting each of them. "Get the hell out of here," Rachel ordered, "I don't need to watch some jackass looking at my dogs."

Gaiana finished counting the dogs. "Bitch, four of your dogs are dying."

Rachel clenched her fists, "what's that supposed to mean?"

"You got some of these dogs from vets, right? Some of these are dogs that needed life-saving surgery. There's no way they'll live for much longer."

Bitch looked away, "I already know that."

Gaiana stepped forward and petted the dogs, "I can fix them, if you'll let me."

Rachel paused for a moment, but wordlessly nodded permission for her. Gaiana rested a hand on each of them. She cleared the bloodstreams of the more terminal pets, and made sure to painlessly morph their insides into what was healthy for each of them.

"No one else would take these dogs?"

Rachel shook her head, "bastards just left them to die."

Gaiana nodded, "yeah, those bastards."

She finished healing the last pet in the dog crib. They moved more freely now, with more energy than Rachel had ever seen before. A smile fell across her face. Gaiana noticed. "I do good?"

Rachel glanced back at Gaiana, realizing that she was grinning. Rachel rolled her eyes, "yeah, you did good."

Gaiana walked over to Rachel and put a hand on her forehead. Rachel, oddly enough, wasn't upset by this. It almost felt like Gaiana was petting her. "Bitch… You're sick too."

"What?"

"You're brain… What I mean is, have you ever felt like you can't relate to people? Like human people?"

Rachel took a step back, "so what?"

"So… I think you have brain damage. When people trigger, sometimes their neurology gets screwed up to better adjust with their powers. Your mind is jumbled, like it's meant to make you more in sync with dogs instead of people. I think that brain damage stops you from connecting with your inner humanity."

Rachel's eyes furrowed. She hated the idea of that, and yet it made so much sense. Rachel turned away from her. "Whatever."

Rachel knelt down to one of her younger puppies. A blind dog that only recently learned to walk. Gaiana placed a hand on the puppy, curing its blindness. "Rachel, if you'd like, I can fix that brain damage. Make you more normal again."

Rachel fell quiet for a moment. She asked, "will that make me hate my dogs?"

"Not hate, but it will make you less attached to dogs than you are now."

"Then don't do it. I don't need people anyway."

Gaiana knelt next to Rachel, eyeing her closely. When Rachel looked up at her, it wasn't an angry look anymore. It was more like Gaiana was studying her, trying to understand her better through eye contact. "Dogs are better than people anyway, right? So why lose that."

Rachel nodded, agreeing with another person for the first time in her life.

A bomb was exploded downstairs. Rachel jolted up but Gaiana stopped her. "Hold on, just wait here!"

Gaiana said it as an order, physically pushing her palm on her chest to stop her from moving. Gaiana spoke over the mind-link, "what was that?"

"We tried to warn you!" All four of her sisters yelled back.

They all spoke at the same time;

Natasha said, "there needs to be a rule against turning off the link!"

Liliana commented, "we do not cut the link to play with puppies, Gaiana."

Elisha yelled aloud, "if this is another lesbian thing-"

"Shut up!" Gaiana shouted. "Bomb, downstairs. Huwhy?"

"ABB," Angela said over the link. As Angela explained, Bakuda shot grenades at the other Merchant gang members, paralyzing their bodies in a time stasis. Any hope they had of fighting back was gone. Gaiana's drugs had lowered their senses to the point of being defenseless from the onslaught of bombings.

"Bakuda is desperate for more conscripts now. We took out Oni Lee, and no one cares about the Merchants. She's going to take them to her lab, and put bombs in their head to force them to fight for her."

A few teenage gang members, Asian boys with tattoos across their arms, took Skidmark and Squealer by the hair and dragged them to the truck. Bakuda ordered her boys to search the building for more members of the Merchant gang.

The perception of time slowed as Gaiana spoke more calmly with her sisters. "What do I do?"

"Ooooh, now you want our help," Elisha groaned. "Maybe you shouldn't have cut off that link!"

"Guys, I'm serious. We've got four precogs here, can't you guys figure it out?"

"It's pretty obvious," Liliana answered for her. "Save the Merchants."

"But I hate the Merchants," Gaiana murmured, "they're trashy…"

Natasha yelled, "you were literally snorting crack with them a minute!"

"Yeah, but I was just being ironic. They literally do that for fun."

The three of them berated her, but Angela's voice stood out amongst all of them. "Listen to me. Bakuda is about to take the Merchants out of the game permanently. If she gets them all, then all of Merchant territory will fold into the ABB. Bakuda will finally get the people she needs to wedge into the city. If you don't stop them here, Lung comes out on top."

Gaiana thought about Rachel. "Bakuda is planting bombs here, right?"

"Yes," Angela answered.

"She's going to blow up the warehouse, with all of Rachel's dogs too."

"Yes," the four of them answered.

Gaiana asked, "be straight with me. If I go save the Merchants now, are her dogs doomed?"

Only Liliana answered. "If you fight Bakuda, she'll trigger a fire in the warehouse. Bitch would die too. The only way to save Bitch and her pets is to not engage in Bakuda at all."

Gaiana fell quiet. She cut off the mind-link. Time returned to normal as she turned to Rachel, "Bakuda is here. Your dogs are in trouble." Gaiana opened up a small portal at the edge of the room, "if you don't want your dogs to die, we have to escape through here."

XXX

The last or Rachel's dogs made it to a nearby building. It was an abandoned construction site of a large office building. Insulated enough to provide her dogs warmth, with far more room than what Rachel had at the warehouse. Rachel didn't say thank you, she only stayed close to her smaller dogs as they escaped. Gaiana turned on the mind-link again. "So… That happened."

There was no reply. Gaiana asked, "do I still have time to save the Merchants?"

"No," Angela yelled. "Of course you fucking don't. I'm watching them right now, the bombs are already in them. Next time we face her, she's going to start using people as kamikaze weapons. She'll throw people at you like it's a goddamn carnival game. All because you couldn't-"

"Shut up," Gaiana yelled. "I don't regret this. No way in hell was I going to save the Merchants over these dogs!"

Rachel heard Gaiana say that, but stayed quiet. Angela said, "I was going to say, all because you turned off your mind-link to screw around."

Gaiana crossed her arms. She couldn't deny that. They never really established rules for when the mind link could be turned off. Being in Brockton Bay was the first time they'd truly tried being heroes. Before Brockton Bay, they had all wordlessly agreed that it was alright to turn off their mind-link anytime for the sake of privacy. Angela let out an audible sigh over the link, "just be honest with me. After everything I just told you, about the stakes getting worse… Do you think it was worth it?"

Gaiana looked over at Rachel. She looked at ease, more at ease with her dogs than she had ever been before. "Yeah, it was worth it."