AN: For all of those who spent 2 days looking for chapter 4, believe me, I was as frustrated as the outage as you were. I really wanted to put this up yesterday, but I didn't know when this would be resolved. I thought it was fine Sunday night (US time), but it was "fixed" for less than 3 hours. As of now, the site still hasn't fixed anything but I'm still moving ahead with the story.

To yellow 14: FF was seriously annoying this week…

"Did you hear about what happened last night?"

Bri hummed in mild disinterest and raised an eyebrow at her flatmate, pulling out one of her earbuds and pausing her music. It was a little before noon the next day, the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky, and they had just crossed the street off the College campus and turned onto the Strand. "No, what happened?"

Anne held up her phone to show two sketch artist's renditions of a man with a shaggy mane of hair, dark glasses, and a thinning beard. In the second one bruises covered half the man's face. "Another Ripper attack. The victim survived, but the Ripper escaped." Unconsciously she fingered her tree necklace. "Do you see those eyes? I know it's just a drawing, but… that monster is seriously dead inside."

"Well, it looks like someone tried to make the outside match the inside," observed Bri wryly, nodding to the second drawing. She quickly skimmed through the rest of the story. News of the Stripper Ripper hadn't broken yet when she made her choice to attend King's College London; if it had, perhaps that would have changed her college decision. The idea of going to school in a serial killer's backyard didn't exactly sit well. Though considering her lycée years… "It doesn't say here how he got away," she commented, rereading the paragraph. "Or how the woman survived, just that she was too traumatized to give more than this description of her attacker… huh." She frowned. "It says here the cops saw a dog near the scene when they arrived."

"So?"

"So it was blue. Do you know of any blue dogs?"

"Personally?" Anne laughed. "No, but I thought unusual was your area of expertise, Mademoiselle Parisienne!"

Bri poked her in the side with her elbow. "You know I left to get away from the 'unusual' stuff, right?"

Anne rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, lycée was too interesting and all that. Personally I don't see what the fuss is about; the Ladyblog made Paris sound absolutely deadly!" She ran a hand through her long red hair, pulled it over her shoulder, and nodded toward the outdoor café they were nearing. "Speaking of interesting…"

Bri pursed her lips and bit back a groan. Right. "I'll see you later, okay?"

"Yeah…" Anne's voice trailed off. "Later." She shook her head, smiled confidently, and patted Bri on the arm before picking up her pace and walking briskly down the street toward the tavern where she tended bar. "Have a good lunch," she called behind her.

Bri turned into the café patio and found her father sitting at a small table near the gate, facing the street. He waved her over with a bright smile, and she dropped into the chair opposite him, picking up the menu in front of her without a word. Summer hadn't even ended yet officially, and the days were still warm enough to wear shorts if she cared to, but the warmth of the sun couldn't take away the chill she felt just sitting across from her father. Although he had called her almost weekly since she moved to London in June shortly after her graduation, she had always allowed the calls to go to voicemail – only to delete the messages without listening to them. And then yesterday he had sent a text message saying he was in town on "business" and inviting her for lunch near campus today. She had almost refused to answer.

Almost.

"How are you, honey?" her father asked, glancing at her over the menu and putting on an eager smile.

She didn't look up from the menu. "Just super."

"And school?"

"It's fine."

"So what's good here?" her father asked, laying his menu down open in front of him on the table. "As convenient as this place is, I'm sure you eat here all the time!"

Bri shrugged. "Not too often," she replied. "Eating out costs money."

"You know I would be happy to help you pay for school – and any other expenses."

She scoffed. "I don't need your money, Papa. I have a job; I'm fine paying for everything on my own."

He gave her an indecipherable look. "Well, at least let me pay for this meal, then."

She quirked an eyebrow. "Whatever." She turned back to the menu, staring hard at it without actually seeing anything, the music playing in her ears a welcome distraction.

"Everybody has a different way
To view the world"…

The lunch menu at this particular café was short, only a small number of options. Of the bunch, the only one she ever chose on those days she didn't have time to pack a lunch before running to the repair shop was the fish and chips. There was a small picture of a trout on the menu in the middle of jumping into a fishing boat, a cartoon fisherman in exaggerated waders holding a net directly under it. But what's the most expensive menu item…

Her father sighed, pulling her attention away from memorizing the menu. "You know, Bri, if you'd stayed closer to home for University, you wouldn't have this problem. You wouldn't have to pay tuition, you could have lived at home, and we could have seen each other every day," he observed, a wistful expression in his eyes.

"You're right: we could have," she agreed evenly, turning off her music, stowing her earbuds, and focusing all her attention on him. "And yet I chose King's College over PSL. So what does that tell you?"

He studied her face for a moment and frowned. "It tells me I must have done something to upset you, but I can't for the life of me figure out what," he replied, a troubled look in his eye, as the waiter came to take their orders. "But whatever it is, if you would just tell me, maybe we could make it better.

Suddenly left without a menu to hide behind, Bri placed one elbow on the table in front of her and ran her other hand through her bright blue bob cut hair. Perhaps she could tell him exactly what was on her mind. But would that change anything? One look at her father's face and she knew her answer. "What's the point?" she asked rhetorically. "Let's just say I wanted a chance to practice my English."

Her father furrowed his brows and frowned. "Well, it's been rather quiet at home without you," he observed. "The apartment has been so empty since you left. Your mother–"

"Don't try to use Maman against me," she interrupted, seething.

He fell silent, examining her quietly. "Very well. All the same, Paris has been rather… dull."

She scoffed. "Not according to the news. Hell, it sounds like I left just in time!"

"What do you mean?"

She took a sip of her iced tea and arched an eyebrow. "As far as I can tell, there's been war in the streets all summer between superheroes and super-villains. In fact, according to the Ladyblog, that Night Bat character and his cronies got their asses handed to them all up and down the Seine for a month!"

Her father smiled thinly. "Yes, I suppose it has been rather… exciting in Paris recently," he allowed. "Perhaps it's a good thing you're in London where it's nice and quiet–"

"Not too quiet," she muttered under her breath.

"–where you can focus on your studies," he finished, seeming not to have heard her. "Even with this rapist serial killer running loose." He gave her a worried look. "You're staying safe, right?" he asked. "If you need, I can get you–" He cleared his throat awkwardly. "If anything–"

"I'm being careful, Papa," she promised, sighing. One hand drifted unconsciously to her other wrist. "You don't need to worry about me. I'm just treating him like a constant Akuma drill from a few years ago." She shrugged: maybe Hawk Moth had been good for something…

He let out a relieved breath. "That's good to hear, though you know I'm always going to worry about you. You may be a country away, but you're still my little girl." He was quiet for a moment, giving her a fond look. Eventually he shook his head and coughed. "But perhaps a cheerier topic is in order. How are your classes going?"

"They're going fine, Papa," she assured him. "Mathematics for Engineers is still reviewing the basics – I can almost sleep through that one. And we just started building circuits this morning in Mechanics for Engineers."

He snorted in amusement. "That's what your tuition is going toward? You've been wiring circuits since you were six!"

Bri grinned. "Yeah, the TA was a little surprised when I had my circuit finished in half the time. It didn't look anything like the model, but it was still twice as efficient!"

"That's my girl!" he cheered, clapping enthusiastically.

"When I showed him your wiring method he was suitably impressed," she agreed. She shifted in her chair to find a more comfortable position and dug into the fish and chips that the server had just dropped off. "So much of what I know came from you," she admitted.

Her father gave her a gentle smile. "And I couldn't be more proud," he acknowledged, taking a sip of beer before starting on his ploughman's lunch. "You've grown up so much since the days when we were building models from kits together!"

"Hopefully we'll start building some of those things for real soon!" she commented. "I already have a few ideas for my final project third year, though there's still time to decide."

"'Still time'…" her father echoed, shaking his head. "You only just started, sweetheart! Three years is a long time. The world of engineering will be worlds different just by the end of this year, to say nothing of next year."

"Oh, I know," she agreed, nodding. "Robotics alone has made tremendous advances just in the last year. Who would have thought something like Mecha-Man was even possible two years ago, but now look where it has gotten to?"

"Where indeed…" her father mused. He blinked a couple times and nodded to her wrist bracelets. "I see you still have those. Have you made any improvements since the design schematic you showed me last spring?"

"Some," she confirmed, twisting her wrist back and forth. The bracelet fit snugly around her forearm, around six centimeters wide and under a centimeter in thickness, with a clear screen on the top of her arm, a clasp on the bottom to remove it, and a couple ports along the edge closest to her wrist. "The power source is still pretty weak, so even though each one has the memory and processing speed to do much more, at the moment it can't handle more than basic computing functions – only marginally better than a graphing calculator or a smart phone. But once I get that power issue resolved I already have some ideas of how to give it more functionality. I've got something pretty exciting in mind!"

"I could help you with your power problem," he offered. "I have a new power source I've been playing around with lately for some of my own projects."

She snorted quietly. "I think I'm good."

Her father shrugged in resignation. "Have you considered patenting it and selling it?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "Wearable technology is all the rage these days, and if your bracelet catches on you could be set for life!"

She shook her head. "I'd rather keep it for myself – definitely until it's perfect, and probably even after that." She glanced down at the display. "Speaking of, I need get going: my shift starts in fifteen minutes, and I can't afford to be late."

"I'll be in town a while longer for business," her father told her as she stood up. "Can we do this again?"

She looked into his eyes. So much had happened… "I don't know," she replied evasively.

"Okay." He sighed, a tear in his eye. "I just want you to know how proud I am and that I… I love you."

She nodded, but couldn't bring herself to smile. "I love you, too, Papa."