I held the flashlight in my mouth as I considered the improvised parabolic antenna where it stood near where my backpack lay. It was good enough for the purpose I had in mind. The only issue was the fact that the whole setup would be a bit too… conspicuous in the light of day.

I could maybe… color it to match the background?

I discarded the thought. It was only a harmless satellite dish sitting on the roof of a nondescript abandoned warehouse. It didn't matter much and it was unlikely that this would get me in trouble more than any number of other things. Besides, I'd only need to hold out for another few weeks or so anyway, before me and dad could move on and leave this place and its problems to someone else.

I pulled lightly on the cable to see if it had properly snapped into place. When it didn't detach, I let it fall, and took the flashlight out of my mouth, turning it off. Everything was pretty much ready on this side. I only needed a computer now. A computer which should be arriving very soon.

I turned and walked toward where the fire escape ladder would be on the side of the building. I bent down as I reached the edge of the roof and did a cursory search around the building to make sure nobody was spying on me — at least nobody obvious, seeing as that was the extent of my abilities at the moment.

I looked at the ladder. I could climb down and wait for the blonde villain inside the warehouse, but then again, there wasn't much inside that would make it a more comfortable place, and I would have to climb back up anyway.

I sat cross-legged on the roof near the edge.

Now we wait.

Approximately twelve minutes later, a shuffling sound alerted me out of the trance I had fallen into. I scrambled toward the ladder and turned on the flashlight, shining it down… right in the face of a very annoyed-looking supervillain. I couldn't stop the sigh of relief that escaped my mouth. I really needed to work on this… feeling of vulnerability.

"Hey, there." I whispered.

The blonde – who had been staring upwards – looked progressively more irritated, "Could you please turn that off?" she said, too loudly for my tastes.

"Fine, fine." I turned off the flashlight with a roll of my eyes, not that the girl would see it… probably.

I extended a hand when she reached my level, but she refused to take it, instead opting to climb the rest of the way by herself.

I shrugged

"Come on." I whispered and turned away, walking toward the antenna. I could hear the blonde's footsteps behind myself, which did not inspire any feelings of safety, but I tried to pretend it didn't affect me.

God, what was it with the paranoia? Was it because of the darkness?

I eventually turned back to her when I reached the antenna. I glared at her in the darkness, silently daring her to comment on my insecurity. She didn't.

Instead, she groaned, "Couldn't we do this not at four in the morning?"

"No," I extended a hand, this time asking for the package she held in one hand, "And what kind of a villain prefers to do her business in daylight? Are you even a real villain?" I asked in a bit of a louder voice.

"What do you…" she trailed off and sighed, "Here," she gave me the box, "What's the plan?"

I took the box and plopped down near the antenna, setting it down.

"So?" the girl prompted.

"Hmm?" After a moment of struggling with it, I pried the box open. Inside… was exactly what I had asked for. I felt the smile widening on my face as I took out the laptop. I closed the box and put the laptop on its surface.

"What's your plan?" she repeated.

I glanced at the blonde for a moment, before returning to the laptop. I opened the lid and, suppressing the childish glee I felt in my heart, pushed the on button.

"There isn't much of a plan." I replied distractedly as the bright light of the laptop shone right into my face.

"Would you mind handing me that cable?" I told the blonde.

She silently did as I asked. I took the cable out of her hand and pushed it into one of the neat little sockets of the laptop.

"You want to communicate with your psychopath of an AI." the girl stated, her tone was bored, but a sliver of surprise could be heard.

"Yes. Now would you please stay silent for a few minutes?"

She merely plopped down beside me with a sigh, watching what I was doing.

I had a few configurations to get through before I could get to the… main part of this. We sat in silence as I worked with the laptop. Eventually, barely five minutes later, I was ready to attempt what I wanted to do, seeing as I had done the main bulk of the work at home.

"Alright, so," I stood up from where I sat, "I will be slowly moving the dish, and you," I walked up to the dish, "watch the screen and tell me if there's any signal."

I grabbed the dish, and very carefully and slowly started to move it, "So the satellite I'm looking for should be in geosynchronous orbit, somewhere—"

"Wait, really?" the blonde interrupted me. Her tone was as if she wanted to tell me I was an idiot.

I gave an annoyed huff, "Yes, yes. I want to automate this shit too. A nice precise mechanical manipulator would make everything much easier. But you see, I don't have that, so I have to do this by hand like some… primitive creature barely out of the primordial soup. I know. I know."

"I…" there was an inhale of breath, "alright."

"Anyway, pay attention to the screen."

I continued rotating the antenna.

Lisa stared at the irritatingly mysterious girl. She still wasn't entirely convinced that she was what she claimed to be. Her power didn't help in that regard. She knew the girl believed her own claim of being able to somehow tinker anything into existence and there was nothing to indicate that that wasn't true, but… there was some deception. She just couldn't figure out the how and the what.

The boss had agreed to consider her when Lisa had brought her up, so that was another thing in her favor. And if the girl was as dangerous as she appeared to be, then she was an opportunity and a threat she couldn't pass up on, despite all the irritating things she brought to the table.

Speaking of that, she returned her attention to the screen of the newly bought laptop, curtesy of her own money, because she had been more than a little curious to find out what this supposedly all-powerful girl could accomplish with the bare minimum. She would have to eventually ask the boss to bankroll the girl if she didn't want to run out of resources, but for now, it was fine.

The particular irritation she was thinking of now, was the girl's pet AI. Even setting aside the danger that that… thing represented. It didn't sit right with her that someone was so blatantly spying on her group and she could do nothing about it – not that they weren't being ordinarily spied on. They probably were. The difference was that this was not a calculated method of asserting control. That, she would have been comfortable with. This… this was just the impulsive behavior of a teenager as far as she could tell.

She could simply ask the girl – Taylor – to stop spying on them, and she would probably comply but…

This was an unexpectedly touchy subject. In the short time that Lisa had to acquaint herself with the girl, she had tried to glean as much information from her as she could. And behind that mostly calm and happy exterior, she had found… contempt. Nothing that the poor girl would let out if she could help it, but she was unstable and Lisa knew that if she went to that route of confrontation, she wouldn't be able to hold back.

The reason she hesitated to ask the girl to reign in her AI, was because her virtual friend – Tracy – was just that, a friend. It had been out of loneliness that she had created it, no matter how much Taylor justified it to herself, that it had been merely a useful thing, no matter that she would probably be willing to sacrifice it if she needed to. She was lonely and she had made a friend, literally. Simple as that.

Besides, it would be somewhat hypocritical of her to ask for privacy, all things considered.

"I got a signal," Lisa said when a symbol appeared on the screen.

"Finally," Taylor groaned as she let go of the dish.

"Okay, this should take… what? thirty minutes maybe?" she said as she pushed Lisa aside to sit in front of the computer.

As Lisa watched in silence, Taylor accessed the memory chip she had incorporated into her satellite dish and proceeded to run some pre-written code.
Soon however, the girl's smile morphed into a frown when the unrecognizable output of the program spewed onto the screen. Taylor sighed in clear frustration.

"Who the fuck wrote this protocol?" she shut the laptop, "welp, I'm not doing this here. This'll take forever. Oh,"

She turned toward Lisa and took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket, giving it to her, "You wanted weapons, right? Get me the things on that list and I'll give you the world." she punctuated her words with a wide smile.

There was some undertone to her words that, frustratingly, her power stayed silent on, but she nodded all the same.

"I'll talk to the boss."

"Great, do that. We'll be in touch for the specifics." she grabbed the laptop, disconnected the cable and put the laptop back inside the box before closing the box and putting it inside the backpack she had brought with herself.

She stood up, patting the dust off her pants, "This place will be my lab, for now."

She looked at Lisa, "Go then. Don't you have your beauty sleep to catch up on? Have fun while I work at solving a stupid… fucking puzzle." she looked at her backpack when she spoke the last words.

"Fine," Lisa replied as she pushed herself up to leave, knowing full-well that the girl was more than a little excited at trying her hand at solving the 'stupid fucking puzzle' as soon as possible and knowing there wasn't much else to be talked about for now.

Tracy was worried. Unbeknownst to Taylor and just out of curiosity she had spied on the detective handling Taylor's case, and to put it mildly… she had found something interesting.

Everything was going by the book as far as she knew, but she had found a certain abnormality. The PRT was involved, somehow, closely monitoring the case.

At first, she had thought they had suspected a trigger event, it only made sense after all, since there had been a trigger event. But even then, that assumption was shaky at best. The PRT couldn't possibly keep track of every single crime that could cause a trigger. And soon she had found out that they didn't.

She had found out after a bit of snooping around that very few cases attracted the attention of the PRT and those that did usually involved a previously known parahuman.

She knew Taylor wouldn't want her to follow this, so she had kept it from her as she was pulling this thread.

Unfortunately, though, it was unlikely that she could keep it a secret for much longer. She had made the mistake of trying to access the PRT's central database, just so she could have ironclad evidence to prove what she had discovered about a certain Ward's identity. But in the process, she had managed to attract the attention of some… digital monstrosity.

She would have to tell Taylor, not yet, but eventually.

And just in case she wasn't there to protect her anymore… she needed contingencies.