Sophia Hess:

I'd gone out, after we were done talking to Emma's dad, and hit the streets again, but it just wasn't the same. Even when I caught some muggers, and beat them so hard that they literally shit themselves...it just wasn't the same.

Nothing was the same.

I don't know how to describe it. Like, I'd been running on this burning, roiling rage in my gut, this fire at the center of my being, for so long. Trying to make sure that I was strong enough. Tough enough. Trying to make sure that I would always be a predator. That I'd be the city's apex predator. That I could be somebody who was be bad enough, and strong enough, and scary enough, to clean out this city, and let everybody else stand up for themselves, without goddamn Nazis and the fucking ABB and the Merchants trying to drag them back down again.

And now, I couldn't focus on the anger anymore. I couldn't even feel it. It was like all that anger, all that rage...it was just...gone. There weren't any embers, or sparks, or flickers. Just...cold, dead ash.

And it wasn't coming back.

The fire wasn't coming back on. No matter what I thought about, no matter what I saw, it wasn't coming back. Like it was gone. Gone forever, maybe. Like, I'd fucked up so bad, that the fire wouldn't come any more. All I could do was just sit here, like a lump, on the roof yet another decaying building near the docks.

God. What a fuckup I've become.

That was all I could think about, really. I mean, I could think about other stuff, but as soon as I lost concentration, I kept circling back around to Twiggy.

Her dad was a twig, too. I could see where she got it.

Twig. Heh. That's a laugh. Or it would be, if I could find it in me to laugh. A little, tiny twig. Thin, fragile, weak. Easy to break. Easy to bend. Standing there all alone, with no help, no support, no nothing. And he's got the whole goddamn city, leaning down on him. Pushing. Pulling. Twisting. Trying to break him. Trying to make him give up, give in, sell out, sell his people down the river, sell the docks, sell the city, sell us all, sell the whole fucking city. He's the last public figure who's still standing tall, still fighting the good fight, the last one who still refuses to bend or break, who's still trying to make the city a better place, and damn what everybody else says. Even when everybody else has given up. Because that's what they've done. They've given up. All of them. They're all telling him, telling all of us, that it will never get any better, that this is what Brockton Bay is going to be from now on, that this is as good as it can ever be. That all we can do is slide down the drain a little slower. That there's no chance to ever build ourselves up again, to make something of ourselves, to make this place better than it was when we were kids, when we were growing up. And the only person who's saying otherwise is Danny Hebert. Him and his stupid ferry project, and his stupid dreams of bringing money back into the city, when everybody is telling him that it's impossible, that he's a dreamer, a fool, an idiot.

I followed Twiggy home, once. Just on a lark. Wanted to see where my prey lived. What kind of person they were. So I followed her home. Saw her house. Her neighborhood. Everything. She doesn't know I did, but...fuck, I don't know. Point is, her place is shithole. Not as bad as mine, but it's a shithole. And her neighborhood's just as bad. Just another poor as shit neighborhood in a poor as shit city. And her dad's in charge of hiring for the union. He lives in that tiny little house, in that shitty neighborhood, while Kaiser and Lung and even fucking Skidmark are waving million dollar checks under his nose, and he says no. He could do everything he's been dreaming of, for years, if he'd just take their money, and he won't. Just because he doesn't want their money. Just because he's a good man, and doesn't want...fuck, I don't even know. Just for pride, I guess.

I didn't think I could have said no. Not for that much money. Not to just...go fight somebody else. Just for one night. Even if I'd known that somebody would get hurt, I'd probably tell myself that I could come back, and fix it again the next night. And besides, it would be their fault for being there, right? Their fault for not watching where they were going, or for pissing off somebody bigger and stronger than them, or for whatever. Or maybe I'd tell myself that I could use that money to make things right again, or for some bigger goal, something that I had to do, or it wouldn't ever get done. Hell, even if I wasn't that noble, the truth is, my family needs the money. Emma might not understand about that, but...a nice house? Good doctors? Good schools? Something my little sister could sure as hell use, when she gets older.

Hell, that's how police bribery starts, isn't it? Something little? Here, have a sixty thousand dollar check, just to go get some donuts at ten, instead of eleven. Double your salary, just to get your donuts a little early. It doesn't mean anything to me, I bring in a couple mill a week from selling drugs, but to you, it's a lot of money. And there's always something you can do with that kind of money. Something to make your family's life a little easier...or maybe just make the neighborhood a little better. Make the world a little better place, right? Just turn your head, and look the other way. And then the next thing you know, you've got a corrupt cop, someone who's just a uniform away from being a criminal. Fuck. Fuck, and double fuck.

I mean, fuck, that's what I did, wasn't it? Not for money, no. Which almost makes it worse. If it was for money, I could at least do something with it. Make my...make my crimes mean something, I guess. But no. I did it just because I was pissed, and I needed an outlet. So I just let my anger out, just a little. Started with targets that nobody cares about. You know. Criminals, scum, people everybody knew needed to be dealt with. But it wasn't enough. The anger just...it just kept getting worse. And the next thing I knew, I wasn't trying to clean up the city anymore. I was hunting. Looking to hurt people. I wasn't looking for targets, or outlets. I was looking for victims. Like right and wrong didn't enter into it anymore. As long as I was hunting, I could make the city a little better, one bolt at a time. Didn't matter who the victim was, or what they'd done. So long as I was hunting. And look what that fucking got me.

Fuck.

I bet Hebert's got anger issues. Hell, they both probably do. I'd bet my life on it. After what they've been through? After what they've seen, what they've felt? What's been done to them? Yeah, they got anger. This deep, raging inferno of anger. Something that makes my own look like...like little fire-poppers. Or maybe just a match. I bet if they ever broke, if they ever let that anger out, they'd...fuck. They'd burn the world, just to kill one person, wouldn't they? But they don't. They live, they die, they move, and they don't ever let that rage out.

I know that powers change people. How can they not? They come, at your worst point, when you're praying for something, anything, to save you, and they give you a way out. That's got to change somebody. But...fuck.

Ten years ago, I would have met Taylor, and I would have known something. Something that I'm just now realizing all over again.

She's better than I am.

Not physically. She's not stronger, or tougher, or faster than I am. Not physically. But she's...she's better than I am. Morally. Mentally. Emotionally.

Physically? We can fix that. You want to put the work in, you can make yourself better, physically. You can make yourself into the physical incarnation of perfection, if you put enough work into it. But the rest? You can't fake that. You can't make yourself something you're not.

I know. I've tried. For years, I've tried. Tried to make myself a predator. Tried to make myself something I'm not.

And when I met Taylor...she challenged me. You know? She wasn't a predator. She wasn't prey.

So I tried to make her one. One, or the other.

I tried to break her.

And all I did, was make another predator, stronger. I gave Kaiser the Union. Emma's dad is right. Hebert's dad doesn't know who did this. Doesn't know who put Twiggy into that locker. Not for sure. Doesn't know that it wasn't the same person who put the rat into her backpack. All he knows, is that his daughter almost died. And now, somebody is threatening to do it all over again.

And I can't tell him. I can't tell him that his girl's safe. That it wasn't us, that we wouldn't do that. That we wouldn't make that kind of threat. That we wouldn't let the gangs do that to his girl. Because, fuck, even if he'd believe it—and he wouldn't, because the fact is that, given time, we probably would have made that kind of threat—even if he'd believe it, it wouldn't change anything. He'd still have to do something about it, wouldn't he?

Even if he didn't, I don't think I want Mr. Hebert to lose his temper at me. I don't want him to get mad at me.

Funny. They say beware the nice ones. They don't tell you that it's because hurting them, always hurts you more.

And the worst part was that, for somebody like Kaiser, the docks are more than just the city. There are other white supremacist gangs in the country. I know that for a fact. Even without groups like Gesellschaft in Germany spewing their poisonous creed, white power isn't anything new. It's not Kaiser's invention. He's just taking advantage of something that's already there. Something that we've managed to keep repressed, to keep squeezed into relative insignificance on the national scene, for all these years. But if Kaiser has direct access to things like drugs, or guns, or other things to make money with...there are other gangs, yeah, but none of them have the kind of parahuman presence that Kaiser does. None of them can field the sheer number or parahumans. Kaiser might be mostly limited to the Bay, yeah, but that's just because he has to get the stuff he sells from elsewhere. He's dependent on New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, or wherever he gets his fucking drugs or guns or recruits from. But if he could get them straight from the boat...if he could smuggle them into the country directly, from Europe or Columbia or wherever they come from, instead of waiting for them to come in overland...? If he could do that, he could sell them out of state. He already has the contacts. He could have all the money he needs, earn all the favors he wants, sweep up all the other gangs in other cities that he wants to bring around to his point of view, create an empire in fact, as well as name, an empire that even the Feds couldn't challenge with impunity. He could do all that, even if he didn't do anything in the Bay. And, really, what were the chances that he'll leave the Bay alone?

Fuck.

Fuck.

Why couldn't my mother have met Danny Hebert? Why did she have to meet my stepdad instead of him? But no, my mother has to fall in love with a piece of shit asshole, and I get stuck with him, while Taylor gets...while Taylor gets...

Fuck.

While Taylor gets a fucking hero for a father. An unpowered, ordinary person who goes toe-to-toe with Kaiser and Hookwolf and fucking Lung, and walks away in one piece. Who walks away alive and unbroken. Somebody who stares the worst and the most terrifying people on the planet—or at least in the city—straight in the eye, and spits in their face, and makes it stick. Not because he's strong, or powerful, or any kind of predator or anything stupid like that. But because that's just who he is.

I can't even get mad about that. I want to. God, I want to. But I can't.

I have never been more jealous of anybody in my entire life. And I can't even hate her for it. I mean, I could have had that, too. I could have been there, been part of it, been part of that family. That's what it all keeps coming back to. What I keep thinking about. I could have had that. I could have been there, been part of that. Me and Emma. Fuck, Emma was already part of his family to start with, until I took her, and twisted her around, until she couldn't even see what she was walking away from. Fuck. I could have...God. I could have had a dad again. Somebody to look up to. Somebody to respect. Somebody who's so fucking badass that he can make fucking Lung back down. Without powers. Without fighting. Just because of who he fucking is.

I mean, I've heard about this. About the Empire, or the ABB, or the Merchants trying to make inroads on the Dockyards. Like, not just the neighborhoods around the docks, but the actual Dockyards. You know. Those big piers where they load and unload the ships. Everybody wants them. Even if there's not as much shipping left, even if the ships are leaving Brockton Bay, and focusing on the bigger ports, like Boston or New York...everybody still wants them. You get control of the Docks, and you've got access to unlimited smuggling. You can get anything you want, into the city. Drugs. Guns. People. Stolen goods. Even fucking capes. But as long as the DWU holds out, the Dockyards stay clean. As long as a bunch of un-powered blue-collar schlubs are willing to tell the biggest and the baddest capes in the city, or even the East Coast, to piss off...

Fuck.

As long as the real heroes are willing to fight to protect this city, the Protectorate and the Wards and the PRT still have a fighting chance. That's strength. Forget turning into shadows, or growing metal blades from your skin, or setting shit on fire. That's not strength. That's just...that's just compensation. I can see that now. That's all we are. Heroes, villains, everybody. That's all we are. We're just...broken. Broken toys, with a bag of special tricks, trying to tell ourselves that we're something special. But Mr. Hebert? He's not like that, is he? He's the real deal.

For the first time in my life, I have to wonder if I'm worth the effort. If I'm worth the faith. Heroes are supposed to bring hope. Not make things worse. Which is all I've ever really done. I always wanted to be a hero, to make the city a better place, to help out, to help people clean the city out, make it a safe place again. What if I can't do that? I mean, people die to hold out for that kind of hope, that kind of savior. Am I enough of a hero, to be worth that kind of sacrifice?

And if I'm not...can I ever be?

Danny Hebert:

It's been twenty-six hours since somebody found a rat in my daughter's backpack.

Three of those hours were a nightmare of fear and anger. The rest, was just anger.

I didn't tell her this, but I know why that Sophia girl decided to pick on Taylor. I've always known. I raised my daughter to be a good girl, to be kind as well as strong, and there's something about that attitude that just...draws hate. There's people out there who see that, and they just have to break it. They just have to prove that they're stronger. That good people survive, only because they allow it. They have to prove that they're important, somehow, when they know that they're really not.

I've got a temper. God knows, I've got a temper. And when I was younger, I used to let it out every so often. You know. When I didn't think anybody was looking. Back in the days when it was Marquis and the Allfather running the gangs of Brockton Bay. Back when you could still walk the streets, and be somewhat safe.

Back before I met Annette.

I don't think it would be a good idea to tell that Sophia girl all this, but I get where she's coming from. I really do. There was a time when I used to wander the streets, looking for trouble, looking for a fight. Looking for something to prove that I could make a difference. Good, or bad. I don't think it ever occurred to me to wonder which. As long as I could tell myself I was doing something.

Of course, I haven't done that for years, now. Not since I met Annette. And not just because I've gotten too old for that kind of thing. I had a family. Or I was going to have one. And I couldn't do that to my family.

I mean, let's face it. I'm a dock worker. I might have been something else, once, but now, I'm a dock worker. I'm not Batman. I don't have the car, or the money, or the tech...or the subtlety. And the villains here, they're a lot worse than the Riddler or the Penguin. Maybe not worse than Joker. But worse than the others. Because the villains here in Brockton Bay aren't crazy. They're sane. Terrifyingly, horribly sane. Sane, and intelligent, and organized. And that's a problem, because crazy people, you can predict. You may not know everything they're going to do, but once they start, you can figure where they're going pretty quickly, so long as you understand their brand of crazy. Sane people are harder to predict. They make their decisions based on reality, and unless you know their objectives, and everything around them, you don't know what kind of information they're making their decisions with. That's always what made Batman so dangerous—he wasn't just a Thinker, he was a sane Thinker, one who could make deductions, and come to conclusions, and then take into account what the other side was going to try to do, while everybody else was scrambling to figure out what had just happened a few minutes ago.

Not that most people would know what I was talking about, these days. Comics on Earth Bet sort of died, when Scion appeared. Just didn't measure up to the real thing, I guess.

Pity, that. I always wanted to be Magneto.

But like I said, I understand where she's coming from. Doesn't mean I'm going to let her do it. Just that I understand.

Twenty-six hours. God, how the world changes in twenty-six hours.

In four more hours, I'm due to show up at the PRT headquarters, with Taylor in tow, for power testing.

How do you test this kind of thing, anyway? How can you tell how dangerous it is? How many rats she can control? Or do you have to get a little more...finicky? And how does that whole bit about the rats getting smarter over time, how does that play into things?

I'll be honest. Finding out that your girl has powers? That she's a cape?

That changes things. I'd tried to keep her safe, keep her whole, keep my own problems from coming home with me, only to find that I'd missed that she had her own problems. That I'd been so focused on keeping the bad away, that I hadn't been there when she needed me to bring the good.

That, at least, I can fix.

But how do I fix the rest? How do I keep my baby girl safe? How do I keep her happy? How do I keep her sane, when she's facing off against some of the most vicious animals in the world, day after day?

And then there's Martha Liberty, and everything she represents.

Magic. Witches. Wizards. Hogwarts and Harry Potter, or the next best thing. A whole world, walking alongside our own. A world that bleeds over into ours, on occasion, and leaves people broken and twisted wrecks when it does.

What does it mean that Taylor could be part of both worlds? Is that something that's going to be a problem? She said it wouldn't be, but how can she be sure? I mean, Taylor's too young to remember this, but there was a time when Kaiser wasn't the one in charge of the Empire Eighty-Eight. Back when it was Allfather who ruled that particular gang. After Marquis left, he ruled the city without question for almost a year, before he suddenly turned up dead.

Some of the stories I heard said that he fought a tall, black woman, right before he died. The stories claimed that it was one of the few times when Allfather really cut loose, and let fly with everything he had. He was one of the more powerful and dangerous Blasters in this part of the country, so that had, apparently, been quite a bit. It hadn't been enough. No sign of the woman had ever been found. Just Allfather's corpse, mangled almost beyond recognition. It was one of the great unsolved mysteries of the city's history. Not that anybody cared enough to try, really. Most people were just happy that the racist bastard was dead.

Then I met Martha Liberty. A tall black woman. She looked about sixty, but if I had to guess, based on how she talked, I'd say she was a lot older.

A lot older.

I wondered, sometimes, how old she really was. Had she seen the Prohibition? The World Wars? Heck, was she old enough to have seen the Civil War? Or was she even older than that? And did it matter, if she was? Was it really all that important?

I'd let her in, and given her permission to enter our house to teach Taylor, almost against my better judgment. But I'd seen Annette, sometimes, when she thought I wasn't looking, do things that seemed impossible. Nothing big. Nothing noticeable. But opening a locked door just by resting your hand over the lock? Yeah. That's not normal.

"Hey, you listenin', boss?" the man in front of me said, and I shook myself, and refocused my attention on the matter at hand.

"Sorry, Rob," I said with a sigh. "Long night, last night."

"Yeah? You got some kind of problem, to keep you up all night? Or you just been playing too many video games?"

"Somebody made a death threat against Taylor," I told him, sticking to the cover story we'd come up with.

Robert Anybody blinked, and sat back.

"No shit?" he said, and I gave him a tired smile.

"Yeah," I said. "No shit. Worst part is, I'm pretty sure it wasn't somebody I haven't been able to find enough work for."

"Hey, man, much as we might bitch about not getting enough," Rob said, the irritation on his face morphing into something much gentler, "much as we might bitch, we all know that you're the best we've got for this. Hell, we've all tried to find work on our own, you know. And you're still the most reliable source of income most of us have. Even if those City Council dicks still won't touch your ferry project."

I shook my head, and sat back myself.

"It's not reliable enough," I said with a sigh. "Fuck, man, I hate having to tell you I don't have anything for you, yet. I wish-"

"Hey," Rob said suddenly, sitting upright with a jerk. "What if there was...you know all those ships out there?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I mean, all that steel, it's got to be worth something, right?"

I turned, and stared out the same window Rob had been looking out of.

"You want to salvage the ships?" I asked him, turning back to face across my desk.

He shrugged.

"Got to be better than nothing, boss," he said. "And let's face it: right now? Nothing is what we got. And until you get ready to pull the trigger on whatever it is that you've been working on with Kurt and Lacey, nothing is all we're gonna have, right?"

I frowned at that reminder that, tight as my security might have been, the dockworkers were still starting to notice that I had something up my sleeve, before deciding to dismiss the problem for the time being, and turn to stare out my office window at the wrecks in the harbor instead.

"How?" I finally asked him. "Most of those ships are sunk, basically. Foundered, certainly. That, or run aground. How the hell are we going to get them to the docks, or anyplace else where we can salvage them, without having to pay a fortune to refloat them?

"Easy," he said. "We can fill them up with ping pong balls."

I...I had to sit back, and think about that.

"Ping pong balls?" I said.

"Yeah! I saw it on a TV show, once. Supposedly, if you seal the hatches, and put enough ping pong balls down there, it forces the water out, so the ship can float again. It really works, believe it or not. It's not easy, but it works."

I turned, and stared back at the ships in the Bay.

There were a lot of them. Even just the ones that had sunk.

They called it the Boat Graveyard, although that was a bit of a misnomer. It was mostly ships, out there. The boats, by and large, had either been hauled out of the water already, or had just been sailed out to someplace safer, where folks figured that they could afford to rely on the boats to stay safe in the event of an Endbringer attack. Mostly, that meant cities where people with more money than sense lived. In other words, not Brockton Bay.

But there were a lot more ships there, than there should have been. When the protests against the sudden and widespread loss of industry and employment in the city had kicked off, a lot of ships had been trapped in the city, both by the shipping companies, and, more pertinently, by the fact that a lot of sailors joined in on the protests. By the time the whole thing settled, the harbor was effectively half the size it had been, and most of the ships had been looted of pretty much anything valuable...and with a lot of the holding companies having suddenly gone out of business (which is what had sparked the protests in the first place), the ships suddenly didn't have any owners, and there was nobody to care what happened to them. So they'd just sat here, for years, slowly rusting away. Technically, if we claimed them, it would be salvage, just like a shipwreck. Ours until somebody proved differently, type of thing.

"How would we pay for that?" I finally asked.

"Fuck, man, I dunno. That steel's got to be valuable for something, right? Maybe we could sell that?"

I frowned.

It wasn't much. Certainly not enough to keep people employed on an ongoing basis. But...hm.

Maybe.

Steel was valuable, after all. Maybe not tremendously so, not on a per-pound basis, but there was a lot of steel, out there. Steel, and other things. Even after all these years, it wasn't all rusted away. Not even most of it, I didn't think.

But...was it worth enough? I thought for a moment, and was about to shake my head, when I saw something flying by overhead.

Something...or some-one.

Ah. I had forgotten about that...but it did change things, didn't it? It might not be economical for the Union to refloat the ships, salvage them, recycle the steel, and then ship it out...but capes were a different story, weren't they? Capes could do things that regular humans, or even the best purely human tech, couldn't do. And they could do it for cheaper, most of the time.

And the truth was that Kurt, and a lot of my other allies in the Union, were making noises at me. Not angry noises. More...distressed noises. A lot of them knew, or thought they knew, something about what we were calling "the ferry project". They knew—or thought they knew—and they wanted in on it. Not necessarily because they wanted the income, but because they were starting to get an idea of just how much work was going to be involved in this thing. And Kurt was right—the faster we could move the setup through the early stages, the faster everything would be able to come together later on, and the more trouble anybody would have trying to take it over or crush it. But...the whole thing was being run on a shoestring as it was. I literally couldn't come up with the money to start moving things—and people—into place any faster. But...ships are expensive. Even small, rusting ships, they're expensive. They're worth money. Lots of money.

If this could work...yeah, the jobs would be nice, but the extra money in the Union's coffers would be the real thing. Money that could be used to accelerate...all kinds of things.

I frowned, thoughtfully, and then turned back to Rob.

"You still on speaking terms with that girl from Pittsburg?" I asked him.

He frowned, and gave me a confused look.

"You know?" I asked, my face neutral. "That steelworker's daughter?"

The confusion cleared, and he gave me a beaming smile.

"Dunno," he said. "Guess I'll have to give her a call, find out if she still wants to talk to me."

I nodded.

"See if you can. Talk to her dad, maybe. See if we can't get some idea of what's involved in getting that much scrap steel cut down, shipped, and processed."

"Does that mean-?" he began, but I shook my head to cut him off.

"I don't know," I told him. "There's a lot of specialized stuff involved in cutting up old ships, I think. And I don't know how, or where, I'd get my hands on it. I may be able to work my way around that, but...unless we can get some idea of what's involved, I can't even work out how much money we could be talking about. Let alone figure out a way to make it practical."

His smile grew, and I sat forward, and growled at him to get his attention.

"I'm serious, Rob," I said, once he'd focused back on me. "If word of this gets out, and it turns out to not be possible...people are going to be pissed about that. Pissed enough that it could break us, once and for all. And I can't afford that. Not now, of all times. So you talk to that girl, and you don't talk to anybody else. Got it? And until you can get me something hard, you don't know anything about this, and I haven't heard word one about this. Understood?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, sure," Rob said, with a wave of his hand. "But don't worry, boss. It's gonna work. Trust me."

"That's the other part of the problem," I said, sitting back. "I get a dozen ideas that should work through here every day. Some of them are good. Most aren't. But even the ones that are good, more often than not, the gangs find out about them early, and that's all she wrote. If the gangs find out about this before we're ready, they'll make sure that it can't ever happen without their cooperation. And I'm not willing to pay the price for their cooperation. Which means that it's not going to happen. Got it?"

"Ah...yeah," he said, sounding significantly less enthusiastic. "Yeah. I forgot about that. Don't worry boss. We'll keep this a secret, till you're ready to pull the trigger."

"Good. Cause if the gangs try to get involved, then answer is going to be 'no' automatically. And I'd rather not do that to you guys."

He nodded, and then, at my gesture, he got up, and left the office. As he stepped out the door, something occurred to me, and I sat upright once more.

"And don't call me 'boss'!" I yelled after his retreating back. It was the third time I'd yelled it today. Experience told me, it wouldn't be the last.

By the time we got to the new six-story PRT Headquarters, it was almost five o'clock.

Well, by the time I got there, anyway. Taylor and Martha were already waiting for me.

I don't know if I really trusted Martha. No. Strike that. I don't trust Martha. That is a woman who hides far too many secrets, secrets that I have an uncomfortable suspicion are going to come back around, and bite my daughter in the ass. But she wasn't lying when she said Taylor would need her help. Seeing her accidentally weld herself into her locker with her magic was proof enough of that.

Is she evil? Probably not. But I've met people like her before. People so used to keeping secrets, that it starts to become difficult to know when you can—or even should—tell the entire truth. Spend too much time in the world of "need to know", and it starts to distort your own view of the world. Trust is a central element to the human experience, after all. If you can't trust the people around you, it starts to have a bad effect on your psyche.

Regardless, though, she is a necessary good. For now. Hopefully, at some point, she may become something more. But for now, she has not deigned to do so.

"Martha," I said, as I stepped out of my car onto the sidewalk beside her.

"Danny," she greeted me. "Are you ready?"

I gave her a flat look, and a very tiny smile crossed her face.

"Stupid question, I take it?" she asked, and I just gave her a tight nod. No father wants to hear that his daughter will go into harm's way, much less as a hero or a Ward. Of the two, the option of becoming a Ward is by far the better option, since the Protectorate makes every effort to keep the Wards safe, but it's still not something that I'm happy about. The survival chances of independent heroes, on the other hand, are not worth mentioning...and that's assuming that they don't get coerced into joining a gang, by one means or another.

And like hell I'm going to put up with that for Taylor.

"You ready, Little Owl?" I asked Taylor, and she gave me her own grin. It was nervous, I could tell, but still confident.

She'd been a lot more confident since the locker incident. I guess when you've survived something like that, the rest is just gravy.

"Let's kick some ass," she said, and I gave her my own nervous smile, and then I nodded.

"Sounds good to me," was all I said.

"Taylor? Taylor Hebert?" the man in the red costume and mask said as he stepped into the room. "Nice to meet you. I'm Assault."

I swallowed, and stood as he entered, offering my hand. He smiled, and took it, and I had to smile a little in relief. Assault was supposed to be one of the nicest heroes in the city, and that was a surprisingly high bar to set, considering how Armsmaster was among their number. Which was a good thing—Armsmaster is a great hero, don't get me wrong, but everything I've heard about the man suggests that outside of battle, he's something of an asshole.

"Danny Hebert," I said, as we shook, and his mouth twitched in what looked like surprise. "Good to see you again. And thankfully in somewhat better circumstances than the last couple of times."

"Heh. Yeah, that is a nice change," Assault admitted. "Gotta admit, I was getting awfully tired of meeting you in the middle of a major cape battle."

"It's the secret to a healthy relationship," I told him, faux sincerity coloring my tone. "You have to have at least a couple of interests in common."

He started at that, and then burst into laughter.

"Don't tell my wife, that," he said, when he'd recovered. "I don't think she needs more ammunition. Anyway, sorry to hear about your daughter Triggering. That's...that's never a fun experience."

"No," I said with a sigh. "No, I don't imagine that it is. And I have to tell you, it's worse when you're the father. Which is why I'm kind of sorry that to see you like this."

Assault shrugged.

"Hey," he said. "At least this time we're not fishing you out of the Bay. Small victories, right?"

"Maybe," I said, my tone turning grim. "Maybe not. We'll see."

He seemed to catch the shift in my mood, and gave me a more serious nod.

"Right," he said. "So, with that out of the way, let's get down to the testing."

He turned towards Taylor, and gave her a friendly grin.

"So," he said, "what's a nice girl like you...?"

Taylor blushed beet red, and tried to look scandalized, even as her lips started to twitch.

"Rats!" she blurted. "I control rats!"

Assault blinked.

"Huh?" he asked.

"That's my power," Taylor said, sounding a bit less anxious. "I control rats."

He blinked, and then frowned.

"Rats?" he said.

Taylor nodded.

"Huh. That's different," he said. Then he turned his head, and gave Martha a level stare.

"I presume something about that is related to why Ms. Liberty is here, also?" he asked, his tone polite.

Martha gave him a steady look, and simply raised one eyebrow. Assault rolled his eyes, and sighed.

"I do recognize you," he said, his tone distinct. "We have met, if you will recall."

For the second time since I'd met her, I saw Martha's face assume the blank, expressionless mask that I was pretty sure indicated surprise of some sort. In an instant, it was gone, and she nodded, sharply.

"Madcap," she said, her tone certain.

"That was what I was called, once," he said. "Before Battery brought me in, and persuaded me to side with the angels."

"Pity," she said. "We had a great deal more work lined up for you, before you disappeared."

He shrugged.

"Sometimes," he said, "duty calls. Even for me."

Then he turned his attention back towards Taylor.

"I assume you have magic, too?" he asked, and I almost fell out of my chair in shock.

"How did you know?" Taylor asked, looking surprised.

"Simple. Like I said, I've worked for Ms. Liberty before. Plus, the Protectorate likes to make sure that there is always somebody in every base who's familiar with the White Council."

I blinked.

"I thought the mortal authorities were supposed to be kept ignorant of magic," I said, and he grimaced.

"Yeah, that's the official story," he said. "And we make it a point that most people in the PRT, or the Protectorate, don't know anything about it. But first of all, it would be stupid for the powers of the supernatural world not to hire the occasional villain or rogue for their schemes, given what we can do. Which, since the PRT tries to rehabilitate minor villains, means that they'll find out sooner or later. And, likewise, there's a fair bit of overlap when the supernatural world bleeds over into the mundane, so we tend to get called out for those kinds of things semi-frequently. And secondly, well, there's the Endbringers. And magical people are just as much under threat from those things as anybody else. So...yeah. The Protectorate knows about the magical world. We don't interact with them, much, because they've got other concerns. But we know about them."

He frowned, then.

"Some of us know about them," he corrected himself. "But not all of us. I think here in Brockton Bay, it's just me and Armsmaster. And he tries to avoid wizards on principal. Something about them not getting along with his armor."

Martha sighed.

"He will have to get over that sooner or later," she said, some asperity in her tone.

Assault shrugged.

"He's a Tinker," he said, as if that explained everything. "Anyway, why not show us what you can do?"

"You know," Assault said, half an hour later, as they all sat back to take a break, "if you had asked me, this morning, what the scariest power I could imagine was, I wouldn't have picked control over rodents."

"Oh?" I asked, giving him a closer look. "What would you have picked?"

"I dunno. Control over bugs, perhaps?"

"Bugs?"

"Oh, God, yes. Bugs are scary. I mean, you ever seen a swarm of army ants? Scary stuff. And that's not even taking into account things like spider-silk costumes, and other stuff. Then you start looking at what some of the more exotic bugs can do...like bombardier beetles, or bullet ants, or murder hornets...yeah. That's a scary power. Power like that, I could believe you could take it up against just about any cape alive—up to and including the Triumvirate-and have a pretty good chance of winning."

"Huh," I said. "I...never thought about it like that."

"Yeah, I'm weird like that. Anyway, like I said, that's my personal nightmare power. But being able to boss rats around...that's pretty good. Flexible. Adaptable. Gives you decent striking power, and some surprisingly effective intelligence-gathering options. I wouldn't try going up against somebody like Lung with it, but it's...yeah, I can see you making a big impact with that power.

"Got a question, though. Nothing big, or important, really. But...whose idea was it to dress them up in little costumes like that?"

I grinned, and had to resist laughing out loud when Taylor sighed, and rolled her eyes.

"It was theirs," she said, sounding mortally offended. "I wanted to bring them in just basic brown fur, but nooo, they had to dress themselves up in yellow jackets and tiny little hard hats, because 'that's Union regulations', and 'it's a safety issue'. Like they're going to be any safer going out on a recon mission when they're wearing bright yellow vests and plastic hard hats!"

"Huh," Assault said, grinning. "Where'd they get the hard hats?"

Taylor threw her arms up into the air, and sighed with exasperation.

"I don't know!" she almost shouted. "That's the part that makes no sense! I can't figure out where the costumes came from!"

"Huh," Assault said. "Well, I suppose we'll have to file that under 'powers are bullshit' for the time being, and move on."

Then he glanced at Martha, and sighed.

"And the other bit?" he asked.

"The other bit?"

"The bit you brought Ms. Liberty for?"

"Uh...oh. Right," Taylor said. "Uh...right. Okay, this is going to be a bit weird. Even by my standards."

She reached down, into the backpack, and brought her hand back out with the first of the mice.

"Why is it wearing robes, and a tiny wizard's hat?" Assault asked, humor heavy in his voice.

Taylor sighed

"I don't know," she admitted. "And I don't know why one of them is carrying a toothpick, either."

"A toothpick?"

"You'll see."

Sure enough, soon, she had twelve mice in robes, one of which was apparently bound and determined to carry a toothpick in one of its forepaws. How it was doing so, given that mice have no thumbs, and weren't evolved to have a forepaw free to carry anything anyway, was something else that was probably going to have to be written off as "powers bullshit".

"Huh," Assault said, peering more closely as the be-staffed mouse stood on its hind legs, and gravely nodded at him. "It kind of looks like a mouse version of Gandalf the Grey."

The mouse bristled its whiskers at him, and then squeaked. Taylor rolled her eyes, and glared at it.

"Mousedalf? Seriously?" she said, exasperation in her tone. "Why would you want to be called Mousedalf?"

The mouse squeaked again.

"No, I do not believe that Mousedalf the Maroon was a real person," Taylor said "Or a real mouse, for that matter. Nor do I believe that he was some great and famous ancestor of yours, or that he was the chief advisor for the Mouse-King Squeak-thur. Care to try again?"

Mousedalf squeaked again, and its owner sighed.

"No, you are not an emissary of the Valar, sent to help us recover from the treachery of Annatar the Gift-Giver. Nor are you a comic book character, nor any kind of Guardian of the Tradition. Now. Would you like to give me a real answer?"

The mouse stared up her, and then, definitively, shook its head.

Taylor sighed.

"Right," she said. "I don't know why I expected anything different, really."

"Wait," I said. "You mean, you don't name your rats?"

"No, they pick their own names," my daughter told me. "Trust me, if I got to pick their names, they'd have very different names."

"Huh."

"Pretty much. So..."

She looked down at her mice, and coughed. A moment later, they were scrambling into a circle, and she closed her eyes, and raised one hand.

A second later, a tiny arc of electricity spat from her palm at Assault.

"Gah!" he yelped, as it hit him. "Static shock! Static shock!"

He shook his hand, just as Taylor opened her eyes, and turned an exaggerated expression of pain to her.

"That hurt!" he told her, giving her an accusing look. Taylor just rolled her eyes.

"Oh, please," she said. "It wasn't even as bad as scuffing your shoes in the carpet before touching a door handle. Quit over-acting."

"Sorry," he said, giving her a grin. "It just caught me by surprise, is all."

"Oh. Uh...sorry about that," Taylor said, blushing.

"No, don't worry. It was just shocking, that's all," Assault told her with a grin.

We all stared at him for a moment, and then Taylor dropped her head into her hands, and groaned.

"That was bad," I had to admit, and he gave me an unrepentant look.

"Thank you. We aim to please," he said with a smile. Now it was my turn to roll my eyes, and shake my head.

"So, how far can you take that?" Assault said, turning back to Taylor. She grimaced, and shook her head.

"That's about as much as I can do right now," she admitted. "And even for that, I have to have the mice. I'm still working on turning it into something I can do on my own. Not to mention something with a bit more of a punch behind it."

I nodded, cautiously. As far as I knew, she hadn't been able to do even that, this morning. I was guessing it was a new development, coming from her obsessive reading, and taking notes, on that old book Martha had given her to read.

Assault sat back, and gave us a pensive look.

"I'm going to be honest," he said. "We're still going to have to wait for the official word to get back, but right now, I expect that the rating we'll get is going to be something along the lines of Master 3, Blaster 1, with possibly a Thinker 1 or Thinker 2 thrown in there for good measure. Which is good, and we'd probably be able to get a fair bit of use out of you. Especially since the team is currently lacking in any kind of Thinker support.

"But….

"As I said, I'm going to be honest. Right now, the Wards are...having problems. What kind of problems, I can't tell you. But I would advise—strongly advise—that you to hold off on joining the Wards for at least a few weeks, if not months. Not only to give you more time to develop your powers, and get an idea of what kind of offensive options you might have...but also to give you time to come up with some kind of cape name, costume, and identity before the PR department tries to do it for you. Because young lady, I promise you, if the local PR hacks try to create one for you, they're going to see that whole 'sorcery' angle, and try to dress you up in a costume that has about half the amount of cloth you feel comfortable in. And while they might be good enough to make that seem sexy, it's gonna be cold as hell in the winter, and that's going to make winter patrols purely miserable. Not to mention potentially dangerous, if the weather turns too nasty."

He paused, and then went on, appearing to choose his words carefully.

"If you find that you cannot wait that long, you can come in at any time, and we will be happy to accept you into the Wards, although, again, that probably will not be a good idea for at least the next several weeks, if not the next few months. If you wish, however, I can pass your name to a few folks like the New Wave, or maybe a few others, so that if you feel that you have to get out and patrol, you won't be doing it alone. I am...I would strongly suggest, that you do not try to go on patrol all alone, if only because heroes that try to fight crime on their own, typically don't have good survival rates. Younger heroes like yourself tend to live a little longer, thanks to the Unwritten Rules, but they're also a lot more subject to being pressured to join one of the gangs, or just finding themselves forced to go down the path of mercenary for hire, or even outright villain. Generally, a young hero on their own lasts about six months, no more, before they're either killed, badly injured, or forced to join one of the local gangs or villain organizations."

He got to his feet, reached into his utility belt, and pulled out a card.

"If you find yourself in a tight situation, or that you need PRT or Protectorate support, give me a call," he said. "And I'll tell the Wards to try to keep an eye out for you when they're on patrol, and give you all the help they can. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that's all I can do at the moment."

He gave us an apologetic look and extend his hand, with the card still in it. Taylor looked shocked, and I had to admit to feeling a little bitterness myself, but I reached out to grab the card anyway. Surprisingly, he didn't let go, but stepped closer to me, still holding on to the card.

"You didn't hear this, and I never said anything to you," he said to me, his voice very quiet. "But we're having some internal problems in the Wards. So this isn't about your daughter, whatever it may look like. Something has gone very quietly and very dangerously wrong inside the Wards program, and unless we can get the problem-and its fallout-under control, and make sure it won't happen again, your daughter could be in considerable danger if she joined at this time. That's the only reason why I'm asking her not to join right now. Just so you know."

He released my hand, and the card, and stepped back. Taylor gave him a wide-eyed and innocent look, and he spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. She stared at him for a moment, and then, slowly, she nodded.

"I understand if you're confused, Mr. Assault," she said, her voice earnest and helpful. "My dad is pretty awesome. But I have to warn you that I'm pretty sure he isn't interested in other men like that."

The look on Assault's face when she said that...man, I wish I'd brought a camera.

Like this work? Check out my Pa treon page at /wlindsay to get Queen of Rats chapters several weeks early, as well as the rewrite/expansion I am working on to turn it into an original story without many of the issues plaguing Worm and its offshoots.