"What was the one thing I said would help you remain neutral? The one thing?"

John Doe ("Mr. Doe until we open the shop, only serious business partners get to use my first name.") has close-cut brown hair shot through with threads of silver and the build of an athlete. Not like a runner or a swimmer. More like a linebacker shrunk down to two hundred pounds instead of three.

I sigh, slowly sawing through the steak Mr. Doe ordered for me ahead of time. "Don't go on patrol." I manage not to break a toe bone in irritation. Barely. It would be a tad ungrateful.

When Mr. Doe said he would buy me lunch, I didn't appreciate what that meant until I showed up at a place with a name I couldn't pronounce where no one was allowed through the entrance in anything less than a suit. The menu at the door didn't have prices on it, and every name was infuriatingly French. My nervousness only increased when a waitress escorted me to a private room where Mr. Doe sat waiting.

I don't want to think about how much it all costs, so I swallow my pride and keep eating.

He sighs, having another bite of his rack of lamb before continuing. "It's not impossible to get investors as an independent hero, but it's harder. People don't like worrying about their venture capital being blown up." I wince at the rather current context of his statement. I think he picks up on it because he puts down his fork and looks across the table at me. "I get that you have powers. I get that you want to make the world a better place by going out and bringing in criminals. But the Protectorate is literally paid to do that. They get years of training and the best technical support in the world. And they're the ones who do it because it's a dangerous job that can and does get you killed."

I think back to my encounter with Lung and bite into my meat a little more aggressively than is probably necessary.

We eat in silence for a bit.

"Do you have the signatures?" he asks, changing the subject.

"Right here," I answer, pulling out the folder with the forms in it. He scans the papers before nodding and placing the folder down beside his chair.

"Now we just need that meeting with the Mayor's office and the PRT. What days are good for you?" he asks, taking a sip of his seltzer water. I shrug.

"Basically any day, any time. I don't have a lot of things clogging up my schedule," I say, contemplating the upcoming weeks and marveling at how much free time I'll have. Mr. Doe dabs at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

"You don't have school?"

I look at him across the table, thorns growing out of my armor. If he actually knows who I am, he can't be allowed to get to a computer or a phone before I kill him. But he'd probably have a few dead drops so I'll need to find those first. Does he have family? Someone I can use to make sure he doesn't set them off early? Can I get to his family? If not, what's another source of leverage? Is he a good enough samaritan that he would put his life on the line for a random gangbanger? A random person the street? I'll have to follow him out of the restaurant, find a quiet space, whack him across the back of his head. Fast, because some of the dead drops will be time based. But what if he's seen this coming and-

"Relax." His voice cuts through the murder haze and I notice his face again. It's remarkably calm. He points to my hands. "You're breaking the silverware."

I look down. The fork and knife I'm holding are bent nearly double and there are gouges in the table where the hastily-grown thorns have torn through the soft wood. I wince behind my mask. That's going to be expensive.

Also, fuck. I just almost killed my lawyer. Guilt spikes through me and I pull the thorns back in, sagging from a sudden wave of exhaustion. How badly did I just screw myself over?

"I asked about school because you didn't bring any forms that needed a statement from a banker," he continues, dropping his eyes and going back to his meal. "Now, that could be for a variety of reasons. You could be an ex-con and the bank could be refusing you service. Probably not though," he adds, waving a hand dismissively. "Criminals who develop powers don't tend to start legitimate businesses. You could be an illegal immigrant but given that you don't have an unusual accent or difficulties speaking English that seems unlikely. So, out of the legal limitations that could stop you from opening up a bank account, age seemed the most likely, and also implied that your guardians don't know about your power." He grabs a roll, tears it in half, and starts mopping up the remains of his meal with it. "So before we go too much farther, I want to clarify a few things." He looks back at me with an almost primal fury on his face.

"I'm not interested in helping a kid go out and play hero. I'm not interested in funding your death. If you want to find someone who will do that, join the Wards. I want to help another adult make it in the world. If you're doing this because you want to cut class and be a superhero," he practically spits the word out, "Then you can find yourself different legal representation."

Something fragile and pleasant shatters inside me. Rage roars through the breach.

"Do not presume to know about why I have chosen this path," I whisper, meeting his gaze and actively pushing down the blades under my skin that want to reach across the table and fillet him. "If you want to leave this restaurant unharmed, choose your words more carefully, sir. This is not a small decision for me. I have not idly thrown away a normal life. It was torn from me," I growl, shattering ribs left and right loud enough that he should be able to hear them across the table, "And I am trying to spite my tormentors in a way that doesn't leave them corpses and me on the run."

We maintain the impromptu staring contest for too long. We both blink after a minute.

"I was out of line-"

"I'm sorry-"

We both pause, and Mr. Doe sighs.

"May I?" I nod. He nods back before taking a breath and letting it out.

"I have seen how some other members of my profession encourage their clients to go out and be heroes," he says, looking at nothing in particular. "Some of them represented small children." I note the past tense. I wonder if it means that they dropped the kids or if the kids are no longer around? "With all due respect," he begins again as his gaze lands back on me, "I find that most children with powers are either spoiled brats or simply incapable of functioning in everyday life due to some sort of mental trauma. Telling one of them to fight strikes me as a morally indefensible action. So, when I meet parahumans who have not met their majority, I check to see if they are sane before I take them on as clients." He looks pointedly at the gouges. I lay my hands flat on the table, deliberately avoiding the damaged areas.

"You say that, and your first course of action is to needle the very cape who has asked you for help." My mind is racing, trying to find ways to turn this around while also shoving away the spikey murder thoughts. "Isn't that a little hypocritical of you?" It's not a little hypocritical, but I'm trying to be the bigger person here.

I keep telling myself that, even as I struggle to keep the jagged things inside of me. He shrugs.

"Yes. On the other hand, I need proof that I can interact with you as an adult." He finishes the last of his water and his face softens from focused to tired. "All I need to know is if I can trust you to take my advice and seriously consider it. I need to know if I should drop you as a client because I won't be able to hold you to your word."

I lean back, dropping my hands into my lap and thinking. Will I stop patrolling? Maybe when Oni Lee is dead or the ABB stop coming after me. Can I keep my word? As long as I'm careful with it. Can I take working with some slimy little lawyer shit who would only understand fucking misery if I bled him out from over the edge of a-

I snap a toe bone. Yes, I can.

"There is a personal reason I would prefer not to discuss for why I am targeting the ABB," I say, tone even. "Beyond that you can expect me not to instigate conflict with anyone else unless myself or my property comes under attack, and then I will retaliate proportionally to ensure that future attacks are discouraged." His face sours at that last bit but I still get a nod of understanding. "You can trust me to never lie to you and to keep my promises. Is that enough?" I finish, managing to keep any and all bitterness from my voice.

He mulls it over for some time, simply looking at me. It's an odd experience. Dr. Fedorov looked at me like I was a sample on a slide, and Crystal like I was too close to the edge of a rooftop. His analysis feels more like a spreadsheet, a careful and unbiased weighing of costs and benefits. I turn my gaze away from him, trying to find something, anything, to distract myself. I look down at my hands below the lip of the table and see talons. I pull them back, but keep the bone pliant.

I start growing an arrangement, channeling my barely-restrained indignation into the lukewarm bone. Roses appear, as do magnolias, fully grown, the kind of bloom that you see just before they die. I twine the stems, trying to weave them into a crown sized for a kid. No thorns. One smooth tendril grows into the next until a pattern impossible to make in reality is formed, intricate and infinite.

Once the little circlet is done I lift it up and place it gently on the table before disconnecting from it, the warmth slowly fading.

"May I?" I look up. Mr. Doe's gaze has shifted from me to my creation. I push it across to him wordlessly. He picks it up, surprise etching itself into his face.

"It's light," he comments. I shrug.

"Bone has one of the greatest strength-to-weight ratios in the world," I say, trying to get a read on him. I think I see something like wonder.

He turns it around, admiring the symmetry, and then his eyes get that faraway look Dad's sometimes do when we talk about Mom. I swallow down something hard. He eventually puts down the circlet and looks at me.

"I'll see you at the PRT building tomorrow at noon." He doesn't seem particularly excited about it, but he doesn't seem unhappy either. I nod and accept that getting him to trust me will take some time. He cracks a smile. "Dessert?" I almost laugh at the sudden release of tension, and a hysterical kind of happiness flows through me. I relax.

"Why not?"


Mr. Doe leaves me with a burner phone that has his number on it, bought from a cheap electronics store after we left the restaurant.

"I look forward to our appointment," he says, looking me in the eye more easily than some. Part of that is his exceptional height, part of that is a slight decrease in the lifts on my heels.

We had agreed to be equals, after all.

I head back home more slowly than I'm capable of but still faster than a normal human. I don't really know what my standing with Mr. Doe is right now but I want to call it tentatively professional. It could be worse, but if I hadn't mauled a table in front of him things definitely would have gone better.

Once I'm back in my room I check PHO. The raid on the drug house has its own thread with multiple professional-looking photos of it gracing the top of the page along with statements from the Protectorate, the police, and the Travelers themselves. Well, a statement from Trickster at least. I can't really see Ballistic using more than two adjectives in one paragraph.

There's some talk about me as well. Some of it's nice comments on how this is an unambiguous good, and I feel warmth rush through me as I read them. Some of it's not so great, pointing out my relative inaction before this. Those posters get shut down by a few others for being off topic, but they still bring up... complicated emotions.

Then there's the bad.

The guy I stabbed? He's still in the hospital. It turns out that the paramedics misdiagnosed his right arm and that they won't be able to fix his shoulder. The end result is a permanent range of motion limitation and chronic pain. Isidis could heal it but she made it clear a few months after her debut that gangbangers wouldn't get much more than life support from her. When she came under fire for that, she just shrugged and told the public to pick a safer profession.

The reactions to my mutilation of the gangbanger have been mixed. The barely-veiled E88r's are ecstatic, the ABBr's promise vengeance and cry for oversight, and the people with random in-jokes as their handles are split. On the one hand, slavers. On the other hand, permanent maiming. Most seem to fall under the "join the Wards and get some training" umbrella, with a few nutjobs hailing me as the second coming of Shadow Stalker or decrying me for daring to harm another human being when I had less dangerous options available.

I hug a pillow and look at the screen, memorizing the face of the now-crippled gangster, trying to figure out how I feel. One part of me doesn't care. At all. This guy was a thug who chose his own path. He could have dropped the gun. He could have decided to be a baker and not been there in the first place. He was a free, rational agent who had options that wouldn't have lead to me stabbing him.

The other part of me sees how this could affect what people do when they see me on the street. That part reminds me about how New Wave definitely won't be going out on patrol with me now, and how any business I try to start is going to be known as the place run by a cape who crippled a guy. I'm not sure how people will react to that.

When I go to sleep I'm met with troubled dreams and the feeling that I fucked up, but only in an airy, intellectual sense. There's a stronger feeling of satisfaction, and I try not to think too hard about where that's coming from.