Emily Piggot:

Emily Piggot leaned back from her desk, and took a drink from her oversized cup of coffee—one of the few luxuries that she permitted herself, even knowing that it was going to make her dialysis session that night longer, and more urgent—before she nodded at Colin, signaling for him to begin with his morning briefing. She could have just gotten this from the email reports he sent, but those tended to get buried among the several dozen other urgent reports, and it was easier to ask him questions if he was here in front of her. Plus, as she'd told him at the start of their little tradition, as the senior member of the Protectorate, they had to meet to have a formal discussion on a lot of these things anyway, so it made more sense to be able to combine all their many meetings that would otherwise be scattered through the day into one short meeting early in the day. At the very least, it cut down on travel time between his lab and her office.

"Right," he said, his mouth twitching slightly as he queued up the first of the items for her to act upon on his helmet's HUD. "First things first. We have confirmation that the...creatures...Shadow Stalker brought in last night were definitely the young of a very large jurogumo spider, with all the potential problems that entails. Fortunately, they're just babies, so there shouldn't be any of the problems you get when a city has a whole nest of those creatures, like the ones they're seeing on the West Coast. But unfortunately, the size of these spiders means that it's almost certain that their parent was one of the older ones. And-"

"How old?" Emily interrupted, lowering her coffee cup slightly. Colin winced, and then sighed.

"Predictive algorithms based on the size of the younger spiders Shadow Stalker brought in marks it as probably being around four hundred years old," he said. "Old enough to have gained a semi-significant Master rating due to its control over other spiders, and possibly old enough to have gained significant supernatural abilities. So far as we know, none of the more dangerous types of spiders—especially the ones from the Nevernever-that jurogumos like to collect have showed up, but we don't know that for sure."

Emily nodded, and then took one hand off the coffee cup, and gestured for him to go on with his original report. He nodded, and resumed.

"As I was about to say, there is some indication that this one had managed to survive in our city for some time without anybody noticing. We're still looking into how that happened, but so far, our working theory is that it mostly preyed upon the homeless and drug addicts in the city's underbelly, since they are the least likely to be monitored effectively, and the hardest to track. A sizable amount of human remains was found, at any rate, from a number of different bodies. Forensics is still going over the site to determine just how many victims we're talking about, but...it doesn't look good. The problem is that I don't think that it had been there for very long—no more than one or two years, at any rate."

"You think it's the one the ABB found two years ago?"

"I do. As you'll recall, we suspected that the original jorogumo in that incident escaped from Lung and Oni Lee both, despite their claims to the contrary. We don't have any confirmation of how, but I believe that it caught one or two local girls in its web, and used them to find itself a new home. After which, it seems to have killed and eaten at least one of them, if not both. Whether it did this because they were no longer as cooperative, or because it didn't need them anymore and didn't want them to tell anybody anything, I couldn't tell you."

"Regardless, as far as we can tell, the spider itself was found and attacked by the Undersiders, in conjunction with an unknown Blaster with a fairly flexible lightning-based ability, and another Master who has a fairly powerful control over rats at the very least, if not other rodents as well. Indications are that the group deliberately ventured into the jurogumo's lair to draw it out of the shadows, and engage it. They managed to wear out the jurogumo, while keeping its offspring from swarming them with what amounts to an electric fence in combination with a lot of very large wharf rats, and had it at their mercy, when Shadow Stalker decided to intervene by shooting it in the head with a steel bolt. She claims that she did so because the jurogumo was in the shape of a woman at the time, and that she felt that it was best if the Undersiders did not have to deal with the death of what could be mistaken for a human being on their records. Given the nature of the jorogumo, that was probably for the best, anyway, since Shadow Stalker would have been able to use her Breaker state to avoid any magical traps the spider-demon had left to be activated on her death, and the Undersiders likely would not have been able to do so as efficiently. Plus, of course, there is the known weakness a lot of denizens of the Nevernever, including creatures like the jurogumo, have to iron and steel weapons and projectiles."

"I thought we took away all of her steel bolts when she joined," Emily said idly.

"We did. And then again when she confessed her additional crimes a month ago," Armsmaster confirmed. "She appears to have found more. Apparently, her power starts getting very, very antsy when she doesn't even have the option for lethal attacks. According to Dr. Yamada, we will likely have to find some way for her to have a target that it's genuinely acceptable to kill before too much longer, or there's a very good chance that it will actively force her to start getting worse again."

"You're saying that if she doesn't kill something every few months, she starts to go actively and dangerously insane," Emily said, finally putting her coffee cup down to glare at him. Armsmaster just shrugged at her.

"Her testimony at the trial states that she triggered roughly two years ago," he said. "And within three months, according to her mother, she'd started to suffer a significant personality shift. And less than two months after that, we have her actively ignoring threats to her targets' safety when she fought, and within another four months, she'd accelerated to actively trying to kill her target. She failed, but all indications were that she was legitimately trying to kill Mr. Tyrone, and her failure doesn't seem to have tempered her urges in the slightest. And it wasn't until she finally managed to kill Mister Campbell at the beginning of last summer that she apparently calmed down enough to be tolerable for a few months. Which was right about the time when she was inducted into the Wards, naturally, because life's always really helpful like that."

"Before she got right back to it with the start of the new school year, apparently," Emily sighed. "This...is going to be a problem, Colin. If Sophia can't control those urges without making everybody's life miserable..."

She didn't say anything more, but then, she didn't have to. Sophia Hess had been excused once for her breach of probation for the sole reason that evidence had surfaced indicating that the PRT employee assigned to oversee and supervise her outside of the Wards had been actively trying to drive her towards murder in hopes of being able to have what amounted to a pet parahuman assassin under her control. How Christine Addams had guessed that Sophia would need to indulge in bloody violence on a regular basis when everybody else had missed the signs, Emily had no idea. Obviously the woman had done a lot of work to cover up the warning signs of Sophia's oncoming self-destruction, but how she'd realized what was happening early enough to do so was still being looked into...and until they had an answer, that represented one more very large headache for her to deal with.

"I have...a solution," Armsmaster finally said, looking decidedly uncomfortable with his words. "Potentially. As you know, Assault has reported a potential new recruit for the Wards, one who has measurable supernatural abilities in addition to her parahuman powers. Apparently, he doesn't think she's ready to join yet—or, rather, he doesn't think that she's ready to deal with who she'll be fighting alongside—but he's been pushing to get matters resolved so that she can. Given this, we will almost certainly have to read in all or most of the local Protectorate and the Brockton Bay Wards on the truth of the supernatural world sooner, rather than later, so that our new recruit doesn't blow the whole thing wide open by accident. What you may not know is that, over the weekend, Sophia seems to have become noticeably more relaxed than she had been before. I'll still want Dr. Yamada to check her out, preferably this afternoon if we can swing it, but her power does not appear to differentiate who, or what she kills, so long as she kills something, or possibly just so long as she kills something with a defined minimum intelligence."

"I think I see what you're getting at," Emily said thoughtfully. "You're suggesting that bringing her with you when you get the call-out for Special Circumstances calls."

He nodded.

"Most of those calls tend to result in the death of the perpetrator," he answered her. "And when the perpetrator survives, nine times out of ten, it's not for the lack of trying on our parts. That would seem to suggest that she will get plenty of chances to sate her need for bloodshed. It would also let us somewhat mitigate the fact that such calls often tend to be rather casualty-heavy for our unpowered agents. Enough so that both Assault and myself are often somewhat reluctant to take them with us unless we know ahead of time that we will absolutely need the manpower. Which has gotten both of us in trouble before, I will add."

Emily sat back, and contemplated this.

"You'll have to upgrade her arsenal," she finally said. "As well as give her additional training. Both combat, and otherwise. As things stand, we can't send her out to fight a sidhe. Not with just a hand crossbow and a handful of steel bolts. If she tries to engage a faerie lord and just rely on her own powers, she's going to get fried the first time one of them throws a levin bolt at her, and that will likely be enough to kill her in its own right."

Armsmaster nodded.

"I have my suspicions that we may be able to work some copper mail weave into her uniform," he said. "I don't know for certain whether that would help protect her from electricity, but simulations suggest it would be worth a shot. If not, we'll have to talk to Kid Win, and see if we can't rig up some kind of energy shield to block or at least ground out incoming lightning bolts. It won't be perfect, but it will give her a chance at survival if we run into an enemy that can fling electricity around."

Emily nodded, then, and appeared to come to a decision.

"Very well," she said. "You have my permission to explore this farther. You will still have to clear it with the Youth Guard, of course, but I'm sure you already have a plan for that."

He winced.

"That might be a problem," he pointed out. "The last member of the Youth Guard who was cleared for the supernatural was transferred out three months ago. Given the current leadership of the Youth Guard for the ENE region, there is a strong likelihood that we will be declared in violation for taking Ms. Hess on such patrols, whether it's necessary, or not."

Emily grimaced, and sighed. Unfortunately, Colin was right. The current leadership for the Youth Guard in ENE region was determined to cut down on injuries and exploitation for the Wards in their charge. Which Emily couldn't fault—much as she wanted to—but the reality was that this was Brockton Bay. Most months, it was all she could do to keep the Wards' patrols from being actively and specifically attacked more than once or twice a week, even if they were restricted from intervening in any way, which were orders that, despite numerous efforts from the Youth Guard in the region, she now point blank refused to give. Twice in the last six months, those attacks had been part of an effort to actually kidnap one of her Wards, after all. Which...wasn't part of the Youth Guard's models. She wasn't sure if that was a design oversight, or just simple incompetence. For that matter, she wasn't entirely sure that there was a difference between the two.

"All right," Emily said. "I'll talk to Director Costa-Brown, see if we can't get that problem rectified."

"You might mention that Assault says that we might be getting a young wizard into our ranks," Armsmaster told her. "Which will make it necessary to have somebody sympathetic to her needs in the Youth Guard's ranks for the region, if we don't want to see random power discharges and other problems."

Now, Emily was feeling that she may have wasted her previous grimace. Or, perhaps, simply used it a little too early in the conversation.

"I'll talk to her," she said. "And if that doesn't work, I'll pull favors, if I have to. I don't want another San Francisco on our hands."

"Quite," Armsmaster said. "If that will be all, Director?"

Emily Piggot nodded, and Armsmaster left to start his own day.

The email was terse, blunt, and to the point.

Emily,

After careful consideration, we have elected to decline your request to lean on the Youth Guard to provide a representative with the necessary clearances to understand your situation. Think Tank pre-cogs, as well as several other sources that you are not cleared to know about, are all emphatic that such actions would be majorly detrimental to your department, and potentially to the country as a whole. All simulations and other methods that have been tried are unanimous on this, and are unequivocal regarding the results should we do so. All predictions point towards your death, and that of over 90% of all personnel assigned to Brockton Bay PRT within the next six months if these transfers are allowed. Predicted Protectorate and Wards casualties are expected to reach almost 50% in such circumstances, IF Shadow Stalker is not transferred out at the earliest opportunity, and would be even higher if she was transferred before that time. Cape and PRT loss of life throughout the ENE region is expected to be somewhat less catastrophic, but not by enough to make the risk worth it. As of now, nobody can account for these results, or explain to me what threat could be so severe that this level of carnage would ensue, but those Thinkers we have that can try to verify these predictions, have all come back in the affirmative.

For these reasons, as well as others that you are not cleared for, your request has been denied. We realize this puts you in a very unfortunate position, and for what it's worth, you have my sympathies, as my understanding is that, no matter what is done, your next few months are going to be...unfortunate. For this, you have my sincerest apologies. Know that I would not do this to you if there were any other way.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Costa-Brown

Chief Director of the PRT.

Emily read the email, and then she stopped, and swore.

Then she thought about it, and swore again.

That email suggested things that she was very unhappy contemplating. Both in terms of what could happen if they did what Colin had suggested...and in terms of what would happen if they did not.

Emily sighed, and sat back to think.

Sophia Hess was a psychopath, pure and simple. Not by choice, perhaps, but if what Colin had told her was true—and after some careful digging, she had found at least two additional independent reports in her files (reports which she was willing to swear had never actually appeared in her inbox before being filed, which was...problematic) to suggest that it was—then not putting her in life-and-death situations, where she would be allowed to use lethal force against her opponent, would almost guarantee ongoing friction between herself and the hypothetical recruit Assault had reported, at the minimum. Friction that would also turn the dark-skinned girl into a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off, even if it did nothing to the soon to be inducted Ward. Which, given that said Ward apparently had at least some wizardly talents, and those talents ran off of emotion, was not something that Emily Piggot was prepared to wager large amounts of money on.

But if she understood the summary of the results of the Think Tank's predictions—which she might not, especially given that she wasn't cleared to get the full results of their simulations-then she didn't dare send Sophia away to another city's or region's Wards team, even if that team might be better suited to help her with her problems. Which was even more problematic because that was the standard policy for such situations where there was real and understandable tensions between two Wards. And, regardless of the reasons, the Youth Guard was unlikely to look upon any effort to put Sophia into the kind of life-and-death struggles that kept her sort of sane with anything but horror contempt, and outright disbelief in their reasons for doing so. Which...unfortunately was more a sign that they were doing their job, than anything else. So Emily couldn't even be upset about that.

And the reality was that Emily would not be able to hide what Sophia was doing. Even if the frequent joint patrols with Armsmaster or Assault weren't a red flag, the fact that Shadow Stalker would have to be ready to be called out on a moment's notice for emergencies would throw up all kinds of alarms that the Youth Guard would be unlikely to miss barring staggering incompetence. Which, even if it did happen, would invariably blow up in Emily's face as the Youth Guard tried to blame Emily for the many mistakes made on their side of the equation, because the number of Youth Guard who viewed themselves as an accountable organization, that needed to make sure that they were doing the right thing, and sometimes made mistakes themselves, could be counted on the fingers of a blind butcher's hand.

She sighed, and then shook her head.

Her relationship with Cheryl Cooper, the local senior representative of the Youth Guard, was always rocky, at best. The woman was too fond of grand gestures, and hardline, black-and-white positions that left no room for reality to intrude upon the line she'd drawn in the sand. But she was still the senior Youth Guard representative in the region, and that meant that she'd have to be informed of what she was cleared to know about the current situation.

"Absolutely not," Cheryl said, her tone flat. "Putting a Ward—any Ward, let alone one from such a disadvantaged background as Sophia Hess—in high-risk situations is completely unacceptable. No matter what reasons you might have for doing so."

Emily sighed.

"And you will not budge from this position?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

Cheryl snorted.

"Of course not," she said. "Safe-guarding the Wards' mental and physical health is the cornerstone of why the Youth Guard exists. There is literally nothing as important as this in the Youth Guard's charter, and this is as clear-cut a case as any I've ever seen."

Emily growled to herself.

"And if I were to tell you that there is a strong chance that one of our own Wards was going to end up dead if you did not agree to at least some aspect of our request?" she finally asked.

Cheryl visibly rolled her eyes, but gestured for her to continue.

"As you may or may not recall, Sophia Hess undertook a systemic campaign of bullying against one of her fellow students for some years," Emily began, before Cheryl interrupted her.

"Yes, I am aware," she snapped. "Failures in your agency to protect your charges' best-"

"Failures you mandated remain in place, even when warned they may be insufficient for the current environment," Emily snapped back, her already frayed temper snapping at the other woman's blind assumption of superiority. "Very well. I am giving you a formal notification now, so that you will not be able to claim that you were not warned, and that we have not done everything allowed to us to prevent this disaster from happening. The reports I have been given suggest that the former victim of choice for Sophia Hess's bullying has Triggered, in large part due to said bullying, and has begun exploring the possibility of joining the Wards program. I will leave it to you to imagine what will happen when those two meet for the first time, but assuming both girls survive that meeting, without some method of mitigating Miss Hess's more psychopathic tendencies, I expect that it will not be long before that bullying campaign renews itself. At which point, I will be issuing a formal complaint regarding your behavior, and your utter and depraved indifference to the needs of the local Wards program."

She leaned across her desk, and extended the two sheets of folded paper towards the other woman. Cheryl for her part, ignored the pages in favor of glaring back at her.

"I realize you may not care much for us, or our mission," she shot back, her tone icy. "But I fully intend to make this clear, Emily Piggot: as far as the Wards go, your authority extends only as far as I allow it. And this, I can promise you, I will never allow. Not for you. Not for your pet Tinker. And certainly not on behalf of your half-baked pseudo-religious psycho-indoctrination efforts. If that will be all, Director Piggot, than I bid you good day!"

And with that, she rose, spun around dramatically, and stormed from the office, taking great care to slam the door behind her.

Emily Piggot stared after her for a moment, her brows raised, and then she withdrew the hand with the folded papers within, sat back in her chair, and sighed.

That woman was going to drive her batty. You just wait and see.

Lisa:

There were very few things Lisa liked less in this world than being ordered around by Coil.

Very few.

Given how he'd recruited her, in fact, if Lisa had been able to find a way to break away from his control, she gladly would have done so.

"No, boss, I don't know if she would join us," Lisa said into the telephone, as these thoughts passed through her mind. "In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I'm pretty sure she won't. Not yet, anyway. She still sees herself as too much of a hero."

"You need a heavy hitter," Coil's voice came back. "Your failure to recruit Spitfire proved to be a serious disappointment on that front, Tattletale. I trust that I don't have to explain to you just how important it is that you have the firepower to withstand the retaliation of the gangs and the Protectorate? Otherwise, I am not going to be able to offer your group access to high-profile jobs that carry risks the Undersiders are not prepared to counter."

Lisa grit her teeth at that, but made sure to smooth out her expression, and plaster a smile on her lips before she responded.

"Gotcha boss. But I gotta warn you, pickings are getting mighty slim around here. The only capes I've seen or heard about that are around our age in Brockton Bay are Spitfire, and Inverse. And Spitfire went and joined Faultline's crew, and Inverse is still leaning pretty hard towards the hero end of things."

There was a pause, and then Coil spoke again.

"Very well," he said. "I will look into ways to apply pressure to Inverse to avoid the PRT for the time being, to let you have time to make the pitch to her. In the meantime, I have a job for you. Next Friday, I want you to rob the Brockton Bay Central Bank, during the lunchtime rush. Are you on board?"

"Absolutely not," Lisa snapped back. "There is no way in hell that the BBCB keeps enough cash on hand for it to net us anything more than the raids on the drug dens you have been asking us to stage, and the public relations risk is immensely greater. And that's not even counting the reduced payout it would offer compared to our previous jobs, or the very real possibility that there would be multiple heroes converging from all over the city to deal with us. I don't even have to bring this to the team—I can tell you right now that the rewards from our end aren't going to be worth the risk."

There was a sigh on the other end of the line.

"Do not worry about the heroes," Coil told her. "I've made arrangements to stage quite a sizable distraction on the other end of town for that time period. The heroes won't be showing up."

"What kind of distraction?"

"It seems that the Empire is due to become emboldened by Lung's capture, and will be staging a major push into ABB territory," Coil said. "While they will be unsuccessful, that should give you enough of an opening to stage a quick in-and-out bank robbery, yes?"

Lisa sighed, and shook her head.

"It's still going to be no," she told him. "Face it, boss. The bank just isn't going to have enough ready cash lying out and about for a bank robbery to be worth it. Unlike dealers, they don't just hide the money, you know. They lock it up in a big huge safe-type room, and then they stand back and laugh at us when we try to open it. That'll take more than fifteen minutes, and you know it. Figure we're going to be lucky to get four, maybe five grand from that robbery, tops. It's not worth the time, or the risk, even with a distraction."

There was another pause.

"Very well," Coil said, sounding distinctly testy, this time. "Whatever you get, I will either double, or I will pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. Whichever amount is larger. Will that be acceptable?"

Lisa was silent for several minutes while she thought. Then, finally, she sighed.

"I'll pitch it to them," she said. "But don't expect miracles, boss. We don't have a heavy hitter yet, so we're really not equipped to do this."

"Do your best," Coil finally said, after a moment's heavy silence. "If your people don't want it, they don't want it. But do see if you can persuade them. I wouldn't want you to feel...less than useful. And do make sure that they understand that this job would be the gateway to bigger and more profitable jobs in the future, as well as my investing additional resources in your organization in the coming months."

Then the line went dead. Lisa's fist pounded against the desk for several minutes, before she, too, hung up the phone, and stood from her desk. Clearly, Coil wasn't going to let her out of this job, which was a shame, because if there was one thing that Lisa was certain of, it was that she didn't want the Undersiders to rob that bank. Or any bank, come to that. But the problem with Coil holding her leash was that when he gave the order, she had to obey. Obey, or die. And she didn't want to die.

Now she had to convince the others. And, maybe, if they were going to have any hope of getting out of this without getting captured, Inverse. Because, by and large, there was a reason the Undersiders had avoided places like banks before now. Banks were big, flashy, visible targets, and robbing them tended to bring all kinds of heroic and villainous attention. Attention that the Undersiders didn't have the firepower to survive. Not yet.

Robbing a bank around lunch-time would bring the heroes—all the heroes—down on the Undersiders like an avalanche. Even if they couldn't show up immediately, they'd be on the PRT's radar, and the next time the Undersiders pulled a job, the heroes would be showing up in force. Something that Coil had to know. It would seem, then, that Coil's plans were moving into the final stages, and that he'd decided the time had come for the Undersiders to assume a much bigger profile in the city's affairs. Whether they could survive such an experience, or not.

And, given the circumstances, Lisa knew that while her situation was probably the most blatantly dangerous, neither she nor the others had an overabundance of choices, right now.

Ethan:

Ethan's phone rang just as the movie was ending, and he grumbled a bit as he unwrapped one hand from around his sleeping wife to pick it up.

"Yo!" he said, quietly, so as not to wake Sam up.

"Hello, Assault?" came the response. "I...think we may have missed a few things in my power testing. Is there any way I can...can I come in again? Like...I dunno...next week, or something?"

Ethan blinked.

"Huh?" he said, not really fully awake himself. "Could you...could repeat that? Maybe starting with a name?"

There was a brief, embarrassed silence on the other end of the line.

"Oh, sorry. This is...this is Taylor. Taylor Hebert. Sorry. I...sorry."

"Okay. Tay. So...whatcha need?"

"I need to go through power-testing again. Uh. For my rat."

"For your rat."

"Yes. And my friend. I think."

"You think?"

There was a brief pause, and then the familiar dryness in the youngster's voice reasserted itself.

"Well, I claim to think, anyway," she said. "I don't know if that proves anything, but that's what I claim."

Ethan shrugged, slightly.

"Fair enough," he said. "So...wait, did you say you need us to test your rat?!"

"Uh...yeah. He...he kinda...he kind of Triggered."

Ethan just sat there and blinked for a few minutes, as his brain tried to process that.

"YOUR RAT DID WHAT?" he finally yelped.

Damn. Now Sam was awake, and he had to let her go the rest of the way.