~*T*~

"Oh, bloody fucking joy," Harry moaned, putting her face in her hands.

"What?"

"Butcher just let herself out of jail."

Luna sighed, "Teleported?"

"Yep. She's down again. Keeping her sedated is going to be a pain."

"Hmm," Hermione sighed, "Really don't know what to do about that."

"Hey, The Great and Powerful Turtle, could you go pick up an escaped prisoner for us?" Luna brought the phone down away from her mouth, asked Harry, "Can you keep her down for half an hour?"

Harry nodded.

Luna brought the phone back up, "That'll be fine, we can wait for you to get dressed."

~*i*~

"This is odd," Dragon said.

Armsmaster looked up, glancing at the website Dragon had up on one of his monitors, "Looks like a throwback to 1994."

"Hand-coded HTML, nothing fancy. The content is what has me a little worried," Dragon highlighted a paragraph.

"That would be a little worrying," Armsmaster agreed. He pulled the cuff of his left sleeve back, looked at the partial words on his wrist, "Make that a lot worrying." He doffed his armor and pulled his shirt off.

He read the words on his wrist aloud, "Healing Factor Version 1.0.1," read the first line, and "www dot healingfactor dot org," read the second.

"The website said it went live at the same time that the healing factor was supposed to be activated, April 1st, Midnight, 2011."

"Midnight GMT, looks like," Armsmaster said, then turned from the page he was reading. He looked over his board of carefully shadowboxed tools, and pulled out a small blade on a large handle, and sliced the side of his left index finger with it, right next to a scar from an earlier cut, "Oww."

"Let me see," Dragon demanded.

"Pain response appears normal," Armsmaster said, presenting his finger to the camera, "It stopped bleeding quicker than expected, and," he wiped it with a tissue, pulled on the wound to either side. It didn't open back up, or bleed again, "Seems to be healing about a hundred times faster than it should."

"They just put up a statistics page, and claim that there are 3,556,357,223 people on Version 1.0.1, and 2,586,486,387 people on Version 1.1.1 ß," Dragon said.

"Over two and a half billion people on a beta test version?" Armsmaster said, "That is as worrying as live-testing a production version on this scale."

"From the wrist-pics on facebook, the beta testers are children and old people."

"That's interesting. The world isn't going to take this well."

"Eternal youth? It's going to be a bloodbath."

~*i*~

The Great and Powerful Turtle had Butcher gripped in one claw, and floated back toward the PRT building.

"How would you get rid of a body-stealing, immortal villain?" Shadow Stalker asked, conversationally, from her perch on the top of The Great and Powerful Turtle's shell.

"Powers don't work past low Earth orbit somewhere, so I'd drop her skanky butt on the moon. Problem solved."

~*i*~

"Loose again," Harry sighed, "Down."

"Stalker? Yeah, let The Great and Powerful Turtle know we'd like her to pick up Butcher again."

Hermione nodded, "I'll ask,"

"Yeah, thousand a week, plus two hundred a pickup, retroactive," Luna said, "I think Butcher's just trying to catch us asleep."

"Yeah, thousand a week for being on-call, another two hundred a pickup," she listened a moment.

"Each," Luna answered.

"Yes, for each of you."

~*i*~

Sophia groaned, wiped her face, reached for the ringing phone, "Cockblocking bitch."

She picked up the phone, "Where is she?"

Anne copied down the address, then went back to shimmying into her uniform trousers.

Anne sat, watched smiling, while Sophia got back into her costume, "You could borrow one of my spare uniforms," she teased, "You're a medium long, so a small-regular would only be a little tight."

"And deprive you of the chance to watch me get dressed?" Sophia teased back.

"You know I enjoy undressing you a lot more, right?"

Sophia flashed her a grin, "I'd hope so," and pulled her mask back on.

~*i*~

"How often do you do this?" Vicky asked as the audience ransacked the remaining candy.

"Once a week," Harry answered.

"Why?"

"Because Luna still finds it funny, mostly." He watched the kids eating their candy, "And it makes people happy."

"And maybe a bit safer."

"Maybe." He looked at her side-eyed, "Would you like some candy, little girl?" he teased.

"No, I just wanted to see this little show in person. Dad actually laughed over it, when he found a video."

Hermione turned to look at her, "He did?"

"Yeah, new shrink, new meds, seems to work a bit better."

"Good."

"You're invited back over for dinner, Easter, bring any parents you want," Vicky said, looking down to the left, away from the other three.

"I'll ask my dad," Harry said.

"Expect four of us," Luna agreed.

~*i*~

"Mmph," Harry muttered, blinking awake. She pulled Hermione's phone from the table by their bed, waited for her eyes to focus, unlocked it, and texted The Great and Powerful Turtle an address.

That done, she called. It rang, went to voicemail. She hung up, dialed again, got an answer on the fourth ring.

"Yeah? Got it, we're awake. Ish. Call us again in ten minutes if we're not on the way yet."

"Gotcha. Thank you, Shadow Stalker."

"No problem. Four hundred a trip makes up for," she paused, "Eh, makes it easier to put up with."

Click.

~*i*~

"They've finally decided they're getting her out of Brockton Bay. Not sure where she's going, but at least it's not here."

"How are they going to contain her?"

"I don't know. Her teleporting is limited, so I believe they're marooning her somewhere."

"That might work."

~*T*~

Note: The Ultimate booby prize: Eternal youth, even harder to kill than normal humans, (slow, if they don't eat right) repair of all injuries, including lost teeth, limbs, injuries caused by bad diet, polio, or emergency work like spinal fusions.

The ßs get even better things - they can eat anything, can't be poisoned, have appetites that will steer them towards whatever they need to eat, won't hit puberty (if they haven't already) until they're at least 20, and build muscle like orangutans.

Then there's the Undocumented Features, such as how to re-enable fertility or change sex.

There's only 6.2 billion in this 2011, instead of 7 billion, due to endbringers, parahumans, and general strife.

15 & 16 updated, reposted 3 September. (1-14 were updated and logged in the previous chapter)

17-22 updated, reposted. 28 September.

23-26 updated, reposted 29 September.

27 & 28 updated, reposted 2 October

29 & 30 updated, reposted 4 October

31-34 updated, reposted 10 October

35-40 updated, reposted 12 November (even if the update to 40 was just this note saying I updated)