I spent the rest of that night, and much of the next day, in a sort of haze, still reeling from the magnitude of Ms. Liberty's betrayal. The idea that she would make me do this, that she would tell me I couldn't learn anything until I'd done it...if I hadn't been so tired, I probably would stayed up crying all night. As it was, I fell asleep in only a handful of minutes. Despite this, by the time I woke up, my pillow was soaked, and I was incredibly thirsty.

And I was still feeling shocked and hurt by what she was making me do.

But eventually, my brain started to kicking into gear again.

There was a lot of things to say about this, but...she had a point.

Maybe.

I mean, there were a lot of potential explanations for what Emma had done, for what she'd become, but...could I really afford to ignore them? Could I afford to not know what had happened, and how to avoid it happening a second time? I mean, if it had just been her meeting Sophia, okay, I can sort of see that, because Sophia was a psychopath, and possibly evil besides, but what if there was more to it than that? Sure, like I said, there were a lot of potential explanations...but wasn't a sudden change in behavior like that one of the classic signs that somebody had been Mastered?

And if that were the case...could I really live with myself if I didn't do something to free her?

Of course, that ran into the rather big and immediate problem: namely, that I didn't have any idea how to do something like this.

I mean, seriously, I was a sometime hero, and a very junior apprentice wizard. What the heck did I know about how to find something like this out? Maybe if we were talking about how to find some book in the library, maybe, but as it was?

Not a clue.

On the other hand...

I like to think that I'm an intelligent person. And one of the things my mother always told me was that, when smart people get stumped, they don't just keep banging their head against the same wall, hoping to knock a hole in it. Smart people ask for help.

Now, I could have asked Ms. Liberty for help. That was probably what she was expecting. But...this was a punishment. So even if I did ask for help, beyond a few suggestions as to how to find out whatever I was supposed to find out, she probably wasn't going to be much help. Which would really suck, if I was a regular wizard.

I mean, I'm sure most wizards would try to work out some way to track Emma remotely with a couple of hairs or a drop of blood and a mirror, and put her under all kinds of magical surveillance, and stuff like that. But I'm a very junior apprentice wizard. I don't have any clue how to do that. If I wanted to track her down as a wizard, I'd have to do it by following her on foot, and taking pictures, and hoping that she didn't notice me, or something.

So screw that.

After school ended, I make a beeline for home, and, first thing I did, was I got on our home computer, and I logged on to PHO—ParaHumans Online.

Because if there's one thing I can promise you, it's that somebody who could infer all kinds of information from little clues?

Yeah. If Tattletale couldn't help me with this, I'd eat my socks.

It took about a half-hour before I got the notification that I had a private message. According to the header, it was from AllSeeingEye.

Huh. According to the speculation at Winslow, she was one of the top candidates for being the Simurgh in disguise. So I guess it was good to know that she probably was not.

The message was simple.

"Bug7

We are, of course, happy to help if we can. If your friend wants to meet, we will be available at the park on 7th

and Melbourne in an hour.

Tt."

For the first time all day, I could break into a smile.

"So, what seems to be the problem?" Tattletale asked. I could tell she was practically twitching with impatience, which was making her black-and-lavender costume—not black-and-gray, apparently the low light had been playing games with my night vision—almost seem to vibrate with energy.

This was not a girl who handled not knowing things well. Which meant that her not being able to fully read me had to be frustrating as all hell. And for a bit more than an hour and a quarter, leading up to our meeting, and then our subsequent relocation to an empty warehouse nearby, she'd been trying to hold it in.

Beside her, Grue was clearly fighting to hold his laughter in. He was doing a good job, too, but I'd seen Dad trying to hold in his laughter at Emma and I often enough to recognize the signs. I gathered that this is not a position Tattletale was in very often.

I just looked at her and smiled.

"Can't you tell?" I asked her cheerfully. "You know, with your power?"

She actually twitched.

"No," she growled. "I can tell it has to do with our meeting last night by the speed with which you got in touch with us, and that it wasn't something you were expecting to need to do. I can tell you spent most of the day at school, and if I really wanted to push it, I could tell you which school that was. And I know that either it's about somebody close to you, or that you're on a time limit. But that's all I'm getting."

"Ah," I said. Then I frowned at her.

"When we first met," I asked, carefully, "what did your power tell you about me?"

She frowned, and then gave me a good once-over, before nodding.

"Your costume, and choice of name, implies that your power is supremely flexible, and that it revolves around things that are normally considered to be opposites," she said. "Which, given that you've demonstrated a Blaster power, that likely means that either your power involves two different elements, or that you've also got something like a Master or a Stranger rating, since those are the two ratings most opposite a Blaster rating. Judging by how little you reacted when Grue and I showed up, I'd guess that it includes a heavy dose of information gathering, but what kind, I can't tell. Judging by how you're carrying yourself, I'd guess that you feel you are very new to cape life, and that you feel your costume and your skills to be very incomplete. As a related note, I'd suggest you look into getting yourself a cape-name account for the PHO—that whole thing about a friend asking you to contact us is really transparent, and it can get you into a lot of trouble if you pull it again."

I winced, and she gave me an apologetic expression, before continuing on.

"Judging from the copper rod which you dropped at the site of last night's battle—I picked that up, by the way, just in case you wanted it back-you're one of those capes who likes to call their abilities magical, as opposed to normal parahuman abilities, which implies that in civilian life you are either very much a known skeptic, or that you're very much a fantasy geek. The of the runes you've carved onto the copper suggests that you've only just started working on it, while the lack of a coherent theme or design to their layout means that so far, they're more decoration than anything else, and that you haven't invested any kind of mental effort into assigning specific properties to each rune or its position. The fact that most of your costume seems to have just a single row of stitching implies that you made it from scratch—good job on the sewing, by the way, but you're going to want to add more rows of stitching, so the costume doesn't come apart under stress—presumably because what you could get commercially either wasn't up to spec, or wasn't something you wanted to pay for. Given your clear feeling that your costume is lacking, I suspect it's the former, which implies that at the very least you've given your costume a kevlar lining, if not other reinforcements.

"Let's see...now that we've gotten the really obvious things out of the way—"

"Right," I cut her off. "Got it. You can pick up a lot. But there's two things you're wrong on."

"Your powers, and your use of the magic theme," she replied instantly. "Right?"

I gaped at her, and she just smirked at me.

"Right," I finally managed. "Okay, so...the power is the easiest thing to start with. I only have one power, and it's not anything like as flexible as you're thinking."

I shrugged off the backpack I had slung over one shoulder, and carefully placed it on the ground. Then, just as carefully, I unzipped it.

Squire Rattus popped out of the opening immediately, and flourished his whiskers at them.

"Wow," Grue said. "You've got a rat...wearing a white jacket and a fedora. How on Earth did you manage that?"

"That's her power," Tattletale said, staring at Squire Rattus. "She can control rats...no, not just rats. Rodents of all kinds. And the more you control them, and the more you work with them, the smarter they get. Huh. Wonder how smart they...oh, bullshit!"

Both Grue and I stopped, and turned to stare at her, but she just glared at Squire Rattus, who was giving her a decidedly smug look back, and wouldn't say anything more. After a few minutes, the two of us turned, and gave mutual shrugs, before moving on.

"So...control over rats," Grue said carefully.

"Yep."

"How the hell does that equate to throwing lightning bolts strong enough to take out Lung?!" he asked incredulously.

I sighed.

"Because the lightning bolts aren't a parahuman power," I told him. Then I held up one hand, index and middle fingers spread, and concentrated. An arc of electricity ran up my fingers, and stayed at the top. "And the thing about the magic theme I'm working with? It's not something I'm pretending about. Most of the stuff I did last night was magic, not parahuman. Because as much fun as playing with my rats might be, it's not something that can really take on somebody like Lung on its own."

There was another moment of silence.

"Bullshit," Grue finally said. "There's no such thing as magic."

Then he turned to his companion.

"Right, Tats?" he asked, when she stayed silent.

She frowned at me, and then, slowly, she shook her head.

"She's not lying," she said. "Whether it's really magic or not, I can't say. But that's not a parahuman power she's using right now."

"Okay...so...what is it? Tinker-tech?"

"Not according to my power," Tattletale said. "According to my power, that's...that's all her. She's doing it without any kind of tech, Tinker or otherwise, or any other power-based abilities."

Grue turned, and stared at me.

"You mean, all you did with your parahuman powers was distract the gang members?!" he finally managed, his tone even more incredulous than before, and I nodded.

"It was all I could do," I told him, truthfully. "I'm not very good at this, yet, and-"

"And taking out Lung drained you a lot more than you thought it would," Tattletale interrupted me with a smirk. "Gotcha. So the power for this...magic...has to come from you. Not from some kind of parahuman power."

I nodded, and Tattletale grinned.

"That's probably for the best," she told me, sounding smug. "The PHO boards say that Lung's mask was partially melted onto his face. They had to cut it off, and let his regen fix him up after. If you'd hit somebody unpowered with that, you might have killed them."

I winced, before I could stop myself. Not that I'm sure it would have mattered, really.

"You didn't want to hurt him, did you?" Tattletale asked, her eyes narrowing as she gazed at me. "No, you knew you were going to hurt him. You're worried about something else...you could have killed him? Correction, you could have killed him with your power. Interesting. There's rules against that, in particular, aren't there?"

"Seven of them," I confirmed, reflecting on how annoying this girl was going to be, if I kept working with her. "The Laws of Magic. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not transform another into a new shape, thou shalt not invade the mind of another, thou shalt not enthrall another, thou shalt not reach beyond the boundaries of life, thou shalt not swim against the currents of time, and thou shalt not open the Outer Gates. Breaking any of them earns you a death sentence."

"Kind of a scary mix," Grue said, before Tattletale could come out with a smart remark. "I'm guessing there's limitations to all of those, though. Although I'm curious about that last one. What are the Outer Gates?"

"I don't know," I said with a shrug. "The one time I asked, I was told that finding out about it was considered a breach of that law."

"Wait, what? Why?"

"My teacher said that it was dangerous knowledge, and that it had driven more than one person mad."

"How?"

"Something like Cthulhu, I think," I said. "Something where it's so alien that just knowing about it can be enough to damage your mind."

"Huh," he said. "Okay, that makes sense. Just one question."

"Let me guess: what's Cthulhu?" I asked, rolling my eyes.

"No," he said. "I was going to ask if I needed to worry about my getting executed. Or is it something that ordinary people can find out about, as long as they don't follow up on that knowledge?"

"Oh. No, not as far as I know. And if you don't tell anybody, it shouldn't matter."

"Okay," he said, sounding satisfied.

"Let me guess," Tattletale said, "you're going to look up Cthulhu when you get back."

He shrugged.

"Nah," he said. "I've already read all Lovecraft's books. And the guys who came after him just don't quite measure up, so I stopped reading that stuff a while ago."

I had to stop, and gape at him. For that matter, so did Tattletale.

"I have never seen you read anything but those stupid Conan books," she finally growled. "How the hell do you know about H.P. Lovecraft?"

"Duh. The guy who came up with Conan was Lovecraft's best friend. They corresponded a lot, and a lot of their work built off each other," he said with a smile. "So of course I went and read the other."

"Oh, bullshit!" Tattletale exclaimed in disgust, throwing up her hands. Then she turned around, and glared back at me.

"This is your fault!" she announced.

"Why is it my fault? I just wanted some help!" I yelped.

"Because you brought the subject up!"

I sighed.

"Okay," I said. "Regardless. I have magic. I can do spells. Not very many. And I'm not very good at them. But what I can do is legitimate magic.

"Unfortunately, like I said, I'm not very good at it yet, and when I went out, it was some months before I was supposed to."

"And you got in trouble for it," Grue said with a sigh. Then he muttered something, and shook his head.

"And I got in trouble for it," I confirmed. "And now I have to do something before my teacher will start teaching me again."

"Well, that's kind of a dick thing to do," Grue said immediately, earning something like a million brownie points with me.

"Squeak!" Squire Rattus said, sounding stern, as he glared up at the bigger boy. Grue just snorted.

"I don't care if it was for her own good, it was still mean," he said.

"Wait, don't tell me you understood that!" Tattletale said, whipping back around to glare at him again.

"Well...yeah," he said, sounding confused. "Why wouldn't I?"

Tattletale opened her mouth, and then closed it again, looking very much like an outraged fish, and Grue quickly reached into one pocket, whipped out a cell phone, held it up, and snapped a picture.

"I am so going to get you for this," Tattletale finally said, glaring at him, but Grue just shook his head. I couldn't see his expression, but I would have bet there was a smile on his face.

"Too late," he said. "It's already been sent to Regent and Bitch."

"Anyway," I said loudly, drawing their attention back to me. "My teacher told me that I need to investigate something, and find out what happened. And I don't have the first clue on how to do that. But if anybody is going to know how to investigate and figure out what happened..."

I let my voice trail off, and she frowned.

"Hm," she said, looking thoughtful. "We are rather good at things like that, yes. But...there will be a price, I'm afraid. Let me...let me take a look at this, and get back to you."

It was later that night that I got a private message on my PHO account asking for the name of my Inverse account.

Honestly, if Tattletale hadn't mentioned it, I probably would have forgotten about it completely.

Part of this was because the PHO wasn't something I took part in on a regular basis. But a large part of it was also because I'd been focused on finishing my homework, and getting a few alterations made to my costume.

Tattletale was right, that I'd made it myself. Or...well...no, I hadn't, really. But my rats had. Rats, and mice. It was...honestly, it was kind of bizarre. I'd ended up having them make a kind of weird gantry around a dress-maker's dummy. It took an entire crew of rats and mice to handle the sewing, but they were surprisingly adept at it, and they could move very, very quickly. They could probably have done it faster if I'd had access to a sewing machine, but I couldn't figure out where to get one. Besides, I wasn't sure that a sewing machine would take the ultra-heavy thread I was using.

I had another crew going over my texts and my notes, and a third working with the computer to type my homework up, while I went over my math. I'd had a brainstorm, on my way back, and decided to try an experiment. I'd always been good at multi-tasking, even before I got powers, but I'd noticed that that seemed to have been enhanced even further once I did get my power. Like, a lot further. And today, I'd decided to see how far I could make that go.

I wasn't sure how to classify my results, so far. On the one hand, this was all working out most excellently—the only reason I was having to do the math homework myself was because I couldn't figure out how to get my rats to hold the pencil so they could write it out themselves—which was going to make doing my homework in the future even easier. On the other hand, I was definitely experiencing throughput problems in that I only had access to one computer, and could thus only do one assignment at a time.

Well, two assignments at a time, once you included the math homework.

Regardless, it was impressive...and still limited.

The cold, hard truth was that this experiment was a failure, because I still didn't know to what extent I could push my multi-tasking. I'd run out of things I could do at the same time, before I'd exceeded my multi-tasking capacity.

On the one hand, that was great. On the other hand, it was frustrating. And on the third hand, it was a little scary.

Seriously. How the hell could I devote that much brainpower to so many tasks, and not cook my own skull?

Regardless, I managed to finish almost a week's worth of homework, inside of half an hour. Needless to say, Past Me, who'd agonized over her homework so often, was feeling massively jealous, and was very clearly Not Speaking To Me.

Not that I blamed her. I was kind of massively cheating, here. But you know what they say: if you're not cheating, you're not trying.

Er...not academically, though. Academically, I wasn't cheating at anything. I was just doing it in a way I couldn't have done it, otherwise.

Vaguely, I wondered if I could take my tests like this, before deciding that I probably couldn't...well...maybe...I'd have to think about that. But I wasn't going to cheat, and look things up, because that's wrong, and, besides, it would be hurting me farther down the road. But it was something to think about.

Anyway, about half an hour after I got home, I got a PM from Tattletale. Frowning, I got up from the desk, and moved over to stare at the computer.

All the message said, besides reminding me to give her my cape account name, was, "Yes". Followed by a number I should call to get in touch with her.

Frowning, I moved over to the house phone, and was just about to start dialing the number, when I was struck by a thought.

Caller ID was a thing, right? Could she track my phone number to my address?

Hm.

I was going to need to take some extra steps, it seemed. Maybe there was a reason why all the capes I'd ever seen seemed to use cell phones?

I got home—again-just shortly after Dad did.

"Hey, hon," he said, as I opened the door. "You okay?"

I almost rolled my eyes, before remembering what I'd been doing last night.

"Getting a cell phone," I told him, and he frowned.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked me. "I mean...uh...won't you have to get a new one, once you start studying with Ms. Liberty again?"

I sighed, and shook my head. Mom died because of a cell phone, and Dad had been frantic about them ever since. But whether I liked it or not, I was going to have to have one.

Come to think of it, so was he. Good thing I'd gotten a spare, just in case.

"Here," I said, coming into the kitchen, and putting the spare cell phone beside him. "You're going to need one, too."

He looked up at me, and frowned.

"They're burner phones," I said. "Cheap, and disposable. It has been...pointed out to me, that I need to make it possible for people to contact me, as a cape, without necessarily being able to trace it back to our landline."

"Ah," he said, still frowning. "And the second?"

"So I can call you—or vice versa—without us leaving records on our land lines," I told him. "That way, there's no way for anybody to track us, once I get started."

The light dawned, and he nodded, slowly.

"Good point," he said. "Good idea."

I shrugged, and then sat down.

"I talked to some people I met last night," I told him. "I don't have any idea how to figure out what happened with Emma two years ago. And I don't want to just ask her parents. I get the feeling that there's more going on than they know about. So I got in touch with some people who say they're pretty good at ferreting out information."

He stared at me for a second, and then, slowly, he nodded.

"Using your connections," he said, sounding more sure of himself, as he visibly decided against asking who I was talking about. "Sometimes, it's not what you know, but who you know."

I frowned at him, and he shrugged.

"You can't know everything you need to know," he explained, never pausing in his task of chopping vegetables for what looked like it was going to be a nice salad for dinner. "Nobody can. One of the life lessons I've learned in my years as a Union leader, is that if you try to get to know some people who know things, or can do things, that you can't, it lets you do more with what you have. That way, when something comes up, you know who to ask, even if you can't do anything on your own. And if they don't have the answer, they can at least point you at somebody who might."

He shrugged.

"Half the time, that's what the union does for people," he added, scooping up all the vegetables, and tossing them into a pair of salad bowls. "A lot of people miss the implications, but skilled workers are getting scarcer and scarcer. And even with the city's economy shrinking, there's still a demand for skilled workers. So if people can get some kind of skills that are in demand, I can usually find some work for them with somebody or another. Sometimes it's a permanent job. Sometimes not. But it's something, at least. Better than nothing, I'd think. Mind you, I'd prefer for us all to be working the docks again, but a lot of times, I can't put the work together to justify that. So...I talk to people who might need skilled workers, instead. Not what I know, but who I know."

"Huh," I said. "Then...yeah, I guess this is the same. I don't know what they're going to want in return, though."

"Just make sure it isn't too dangerous," he said. "Or too illegal."

Then he paused.

"You might call up Assault, while we're thinking about it," he went on. "We still have his card, you know. He might be able to help you. Or, at least, give you some advice about what not to do."

I frowned, and then, slowly, nodded.

"After dinner," I said, firmly, as I looked up at him. "I'll call him first thing after dinner and dishes."

"Alright," Dad said, nodding towards my room. "Go make sure your homework's done, then, and I'll have dinner ready by the time you're done."

I didn't tell him that I'd already finished most of my homework up already, and instead, I took the opportunity log on to the PHO, make a new cape identity and account, and look up the four capes I'd met last night, and seen again this afternoon. The results had been...illuminating. The four of them were part of a gang known as the Undersiders—a small-time villain gang that specialized in small robberies, and minor heists, particularly focusing on gang-related businesses, and taking extra care to make sure that nobody got hurt when they hit a place. As villains went, they weren't too bad, and I figured that as long as I didn't commit any actual crimes with them, I'd be okay if I still wanted to join the Wards once I was fully ready. Certainly, it wouldn't be a stain on my conscience if I did ask them for help. But...now that Dad mentioned it...

Yeah, calling Assault to make sure of things was definitely going to be a smart move.

"Assault's PRT Taxidermists, you snuff 'em, we stuff 'em!" came the answer over the phone.

I took the phone away from my head, stared at it, and then put it back to my ear.

"Assault?" I said, feeling uncertain.

"Speaking!" came the cheerful reply. "What can I do for you?"

"I don't know if you remember me, but this is Taylor, Taylor Heb-"

"Miss Hebert! Yeah, I remember you!" Assault's voice cut me off. "Yeah. Hey, I suspect you're calling about that Wards position, yeah?"

He paused, and I nodded, before realizing that he couldn't see me.

"That's right," I said, slowly. "Sort of, anyway. But...are you sure you should be saying my name out loud like that?"

I could almost hear him shrug.

"Eh," he said. "I'm at home, off-duty, and the only other person here is my wife. And she's both in the kitchen, and read in on your identity anyway. So...yeah, you should be fine."

"Oh," I said. "Okay. So...Wards?"

"Yeah," he said, sounding a lot more serious. "Yeah, I'll be honest with you, kid. If you want to join now, I'm not going to stand in your way, or tell you not to. But I'd appreciate it if you'd hold off another few weeks, because there's still some stuff going on, and if you can hold out long enough to let certain things happen first, you're going to be a lot happier. It's better than it was, and if you want to join now, it'll still be a lot better than when you first came in to us. But I'd still appreciate it if you could hold off a little longer, until a few things happen. It's gonna be...a lot less ugly, that way. Sorry."

"Uh...okay? What kind of things?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you that," Assault said, sounding apologetic. "All I can tell you is, you'll know them when they happen."

I sighed.

"That's not very helpful," I told him.

"Yeah, I know. Wish I could tell you more, but...it's classified, I'm afraid. All I can say is that you'll find out soon enough."

"Oh. Um...okay. Uh...anyway, thanks for the update, but that's not what I called you for."

"Oh? Whatcha need?"

I explained my situation to him.

"Huh," he said. "So that was you last night. Cool. We've been wondering about that."

"With that big Asian dude? Yeah, that was me. Was...was he really Lung?"

"Yep. He was the real deal, alright. Big, Mean, and Scaly himself. Pretty impressive for your first cape battle, yeah?"

"Oh. I thought he'd be tougher, though. I mean-"

"Nah," he said, cutting me off. "Lung's big thing is that he keeps getting stronger and tougher as the fight goes on. Once he starts ramping up, there's no stopping him. Give him enough time, and he can take an Endbringer in a fight. So if he had known you were there, you'd have been in a world of trouble. But until he activates his power, he's pretty squishy, just like the rest of us. It's the nature of Changers, I'm afraid. You hit him or any Changer hard enough before they Change, and they'll go down every time. Basically, you sucker-punched him. And it looks like you've got enough juice, that you could hammer him hard enough for that one hit to do the job."

"Oh. Uh...thanks. Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he was just starting to come around when Armsmaster showed up. The boss tranqed him, and he went back under again long enough to get him to lockup. Got to hand it to you, kid. That was a hell of an ambush you pulled."

"I...uh...I didn't mean to," I said, feeling obscurely ashamed. "I'm sorry about that."

"Why? Kid, you're going to run into a lot of people, in this profession, who can hit harder, or take more punishment than you can. Failing that, you'll run into an awful lot who are just so fast that they can just get the hell out of there before you can bring them down. Announce that you're there before you can actually do anything, and the bad guy is going to escape six times out of ten. That's the downside of being a hero, I'm afraid. If you're going to join the forces of good and justice, you're going to have to be a lot sneakier than the other guys, or they'll escape more often than not."

"Oh. Uh...I guess."

"Trust me. I've seen more bad guys than I care to think about get away because somebody gave them warning we were coming."

"Gotcha. Okay. That makes me feel a lot better. I think. Uh...anyway. That's not what I wanted to talk about. I was hoping you had some suggestions for my investigation."

There was a silence on the other end of the line for a few minutes.

"I gotta tell you, kid, investigations aren't my specialty. Usually, I need to do an investigation, I turn to a trained professional. Same for the rest of us, really. If I can contribute something to the actual investigation, besides muscle, it's usually because I know somebody I can ask to get certain questions answered, or because I've run into enough criminals that I can act something like an expert in some fields. If you want my advice, the best I could do would be to tell you to get in touch with Battery. Out of all of us, she's the only one who's actually a trained investigator."

"Oh. Uh...do you think she'd help?"

The phone went silent for a bit, and when he answered, he was a lot more hesitant.

"Maybe? I mean, it kind of depends, I guess. She's...she's a much better investigator than I am, but she's also a lot more hard-headed and skeptical. Given her schedule, you'd probably have to bring her some kind of hard evidence that there's something going on that she needs to check out. Otherwise, she's busy enough that she'll probably have to refer you to a regular investigator, and I'm guessing they won't be much help."

"Oh," I said. "Okay. Well, if I get anything, I guess I'll call her. Tha-"

"Hang on, kid!" he interrupted me before I could hang up. "One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"This thing, with your friend's personality changing like that? And nobody seeming to notice? I may not be able to help with the investigation, but I can tell you that there's only a couple of things I've seen that can do that, and not have anybody notice any signs that something strange was going on. And none of them are good. Best I can guess, based off of what you've told me? Either she had a really traumatic experience, and got some really bad advice on how to get out of where it left her...or there's a parahuman involved. Or somebody who can act sort of like a parahuman, anyway."

"You think she's been Mastered?" I asked, something in my heart thrilling to hear his words. "You mean, this might not be her?"

"There's a lot of people out there who are sick enough to get off on stuff like that," he told me, his voice flat. "And while they're kind of rare, they're not that rare. Especially not...well. In your part of town, I guess. If you know what I mean."

If I'd been talking to him directly, I would have given him a blank look, but as it was, I couldn't.

"What, like, my neighbors?" I asked him.

"Not really," he said. "Look, I'd say more, but not here. Trust me, there's a better chance of that than you'd think, and if what you're saying is right, you're looking at some of the classic signs. I'd have to agree with your teacher—this is something you need to look into, and see what you can find out. And you need to do it sooner, rather than later. Especially if you're getting started on your career as a cape this early. If your friend has been Mastered, or is even just being manipulated, you need to know. And even if she isn't being controlled, then there's good chance that, if you can address whatever caused her to change, you might get your friend back again."

I had to pause, and think about that for a moment.

"I'm not sure I want her back," I finally said sadly. "After all she's done..."

I trailed off, then, unable to say any more.

"That's up to you," he told me after a moment's sympathetic silence. "Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to forgive someone. But if you don't know what happened, you'll never be able to decide, will you?"

And to that, I had no good answer.

"So, here's the thing," Tattletale told me, as we sat down on the park bench where she'd said to meet her. "I am, as you know, something of a genius. And I've been going over your friend's Facespace page. Because that's where a lot of rich kids like her post all their inner feelings and crap, right? And sure enough, she's been posting there for years. Everything that happens, everything that she thinks, everything that she feels, everything.

"And up until sometime the July before last, everything was picture-perfect for a happy teenage or pre-teen girl. Then, suddenly, there's a gap in her posts, for almost a month. And when she starts posting again, there's a dramatic shift in the tone, and the content. And that's not all. Take a look at this, and see if anything stands out to you.

I frowned at the screen of the laptop she'd shoved in front of me, and started moving through the posts. Aside from the shift in tone, I couldn't really see any difference. But she was right—it was a dramatic shift in tone and content. Aside from that, though...huh.

"There's spelling mistakes here," I finally said. "Emma never used to make spelling mistakes. She always spelled out every word, in full, and correctly. We used to tease each other about it—her spelling was better than mine, and my mother was an English professor."

"That's part of it," Tattletale said, sounding smug. "See anything else?"

I frowned, and looked again.

"The later posts are shorter," I finally said. "Short, and terse. As if she was posting a bare minimum, instead of everything in the world. And she's not going into details as much."

Tattletale nodded.

"According to my power," she said, "it all fits a pattern. Your teacher was right to mention it. Your friend is being controlled, somehow. I don't know how. I don't know who. But somebody is feeding her lines, or they're making her act a certain way. And I don't think she likes it."

I frowned.

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know. And my power isn't giving me much, either. All it's saying is that this is aimed at least as much at her, as it is at you."

She frowned, then.

"I can't tell you for certain," she said. "But I don't think this is from somebody directly Mastering her outright. Not permanently, anyway. And most of the time when somebody gets Mastered, they do whatever they're told, and they like it. That, or they think it's their own idea. Or something along those lines. There isn't this sense of...not pushback, no, but...reluctance. I don't think that's happening, here. I don't think your friend is actually being Mastered, as such. I think there's something else going on, and I think she's doing whatever she can to fight this. And whatever she can do, it's not enough."

I frowned, then.

"After the rat thing, Sophia and Madison backed off," I said slowly. "Sophia more than Madison, but they've both largely stopped. Emma's still trying. It's just that without the other two, it's a lot easier to avoid her."

Tattletale nodded.

"That's another good sign," she said. "Usually that kind of shock inspires people to either pull back, or take a different approach. Especially since you've said there's a lot more official notice being taken of what's happening to you. She's not doing either one. Which suggests that either she's completely insane, and has somehow fixated on you somehow, or that somebody else is doing the thinking here, not her."

"Okay," I said, finally, after thinking about it for several minutes. "I still think that sounds awfully optimistic, but...assuming you're right. Now what?"

She shrugged.

"I've hit the limits of what I can do without direct surveillance," she told me. "What's happening here looks more like she's being handled, possibly with regular check-ins, than anything else. So the next step is to start putting her under surveillance. And I don't know how to handle that. Not without getting directly involved. Which I've told you I can't do."

I frowned, then, to hide the grimace. She had told me that. Actually, she hadn't, but somehow she'd figured out that telling something to a rat or a mouse in my general vicinity was the same thing as telling me...and it was apparently a lot less likely to be picked up by watchers. But according to Tattletale, the Undersiders—that was their group—had a boss, who they answered to, and who paid them for their heists. I don't think any of them liked said boss, but according to her, they didn't have any good way of breaking free from him. Just to start with, Bitch was wanted for several counts of potential murder, Grue had a sister he was trying to get out of a bad home, and Tattletale had literally been recruited at gunpoint. Anything that looked like they were trying to break free of his hold was likely to be received...extremely poorly.

So openly helping me out was unlikely to be a good thing. Not unless they could claim to be trying to recruit me, anyway.

Which I was definitely leery of. You know, what with their being villains, and all that.

"I think I can handle the surveillance," I finally said. "At least, assuming I can get a mouse into her backpack or her purse or something."

"Great!" Tattletale said. "Cause that's the good news. According to my power, the reason why your friend suddenly started making spelling mistakes is because somebody else is demanding final say on everything she posts, and not letting her go back and fix the mistakes. So that means we're dealing with a control freak, and one whose ego is insecure enough to need constant reinforcement. Which means that, even with some kind of remote control over your friend, she's going to be called in to report or get her orders directly on a fairly regular basis. Probably two or three times a week, if not daily, unless my power is totally off-base."

She shrugged, then.

"Once you can get a name or a face," she said, "I can run it through the stuff I've got access to, and find out who or what's behind this. Until then, though, that's all we can do."

I nodded, then.

"I think I can do that," I said, slowly.