Glenn looked frustrated enough to punch his desk, but he was just not that kind of man. "You really put me in a bind here," he said. "You compromise with villains, but you won't compromise with the PRT. You subvert the law to get villains to surrender, and I know that you're refusing to report hundreds of drug offenses every time you go out patrolling. But you handed me a fiasco because you refused to let Shadow Stalker's violation of probation slide, and I live in fear that you're going to catch me in some procedural error and get me arrested like Piggot. What am I supposed to do, Druid? Really, tell me, what am I supposed to do?"

"Your best," Danny said calmly. "Do your best, and we'll be fine. Shadow Stalker was not doing her best, and Piggot was certainly not. They were both choosing to hurt other people for personal reasons. Don't do that. These villains I'm working with, they're fine as long as they do their best. I check up on Circus and Trainwreck to make sure they're still doing the right thing. I'll be keeping an eye on Grue and Tattletale too. If they screw up, I'll bring them in. And as for that drug thing, I actually did report all of those during the Brockton Bay Bust, and it took me weeks to get the trust of the people back. People can tell the difference when you're protecting them, or when you're cracking down on victimless crimes just because you think the law is more important than people."

Glenn settled back, sighing deeply. He seemed to deflate as he settled against the chair. "You want to know something? If you'd cut me in, things would have gone even better. The PRT owns a few thousand acres north of the city we used to use as a proving ground before the safety standards got so good that we can do weapons tests inside the city. We could have taken all the stray dogs in the city and sent them up north with her. All she wants to do is take care of dogs, and the dogs need taking care of. The cost to feed them would be the same if they're in shelters or in her care, so nothing is lost."

Danny nodded. "So, go to her prosecutor. Arrange an insanity defense and an alternative sentence, a few decades of community service taking care of the dogs. It should be even easier for you to cut that deal than it was for me to arrange Grue and Tattle to break out."

"I guess," Glenn said. "But Regent is going to go to the Birdcage. He's killed a lot of people, and slavery is one of those crimes that just doesn't get any forgiveness."

Danny sat on the corner of the desk. "I figured that would be the case. Listen, that thing today was rough, and it could honestly have gone a different way. If they hadn't liked my flag of truce, it would have gotten ugly. I was surrounded by dogs with the hope that Bitch wouldn't want to hurt them, but if she'd been inclined she could have turned them all into giant monster murder-machines. Regent never lifted a finger against me, but he could have really messed me up if he had good timing. I handed those weapons they were carrying over to Armsmaster, and he's still working on them but the answer so far is 'lethal'. If they'd gone at me instead of listening, I would probably be paste. Okay? Now, the reason I'm telling you this, Glenn, is that I want you to hold off on any big gloating celebrations. I don't want you to make this a big thing, because if you challenge the supervillains of the world, I'm gonna have to clean it up. And I don't want to count on being lucky, Glenn. Just give me a few weeks, at least until the roads are all fixed and things are back to normal."

"Sorry," Director Chambers said. "It's done."

"What's done?"

"Brockton Bay, the Villain-Free City," the fat man said. "Brockton Bay, Victory City. The Jewel of the Protectorate."

"Oh god tell me you're kidding."

"I'm not kidding. These are going out to travel agencies around the nation," Glenn said, dropping some samples on the desk. "The idea is to give the tourism a boost. We advertise that we've got the Leviathan memorial, we advertise that we've gotten rid of the last villains in the city, super-crime is a thing of the past. People feel safe here, we've got great weather, great attractions, the new Boardwalk, we bring in a ton of money from around the nation or even the world."

Danny put his face in his hands. The mask was smooth in his palms. "You're putting a bull's-eye on my back, man. A giant bull's-eye for the whole world. Jesus, I'll be lucky if the Ash Beast doesn't come here to see if I've earned the hype. You're going to make my daughter an orphan."

"It's not that bad, it's-"

"It's that bad," Danny said, looking up. "You've told every villain that if they come here, there's no competition and only one guy to beat to earn it all. They'll be tripping over themselves to claim it all for themselves, Glenn. I don't want to have to beat every villain in the entire world just to keep my home safe, and that is exactly what you've just done to me."

"Now that's not-"

"Asshole," Danny said. His voice was tired when he said it. "Why did you do this?"

"Because I had to," Glenn said. "Where do you think those favors come from, Druid? Where do you think I get all the influence with the city council and the bureaucrats? How do you think it is that I have that kind of pull owed to me? It's because I do things like this. It's because I can convince them that I can shoot millions of dollars into the local tourism board. It's because I can tell the voting constituents that they're safe and that their leaders did a great job. That's how I can make arrangements with the DA. That's how I can get the ferry restarted. That's how I can keep us all in a job. That's why the city is paying for our tower, and our materials, and our staff, even though we've now made sure that there's not a job to do. I had to publicize this, I had to make sure that the people who believed in us get their own payout. That's my job, Druid, and if that's an asshole's job then so be it. Now get out of my office, go clean the streets and bust the crooks, I need to do a speech from the courthouse steps with the mayor tomorrow and I've got a hundred things to do."

Danny stormed out, the cloak swirling. He felt ridiculous wearing a cape. More and more, he felt ridiculous wearing a mask. He had dropped by the Dalton house a few times to visit Panacea socially, and he thought maybe that New Wave had the right idea. No masks, nothing to hide. No costumes, no spandex, they could all just dress in normal clothes like sane adults while they threw fireballs and controlled armies of rats.

"Druid to console," he said.

"Console here, Velocity speaking."

"Hey Velocity. I'm going out on my route, keep me appraised if anything comes up in my vicinity, would you?"

"Will do. By the way, they've got Tattletale tied into our comms now, I understand that's your doing."

"In a way. I thought she could help."

"We'll see. Even if she's not a villain, she's still very hard to trust. It'll take her a while to earn our trust like you did."

"Are you saying that you didn't trust me when I signed up, the way you don't trust her?"

"I've got another call coming in," Velocity said. "I'll ring you if I've got anything."

Druid laughed a little as he signaled ahead to the motor pool that he needed a ride out. Assault was there, warming up the VTOL when Druid stepped aboard. "Afternoon, Dru," the superstrong speedster said. "Destination?"

"Downtown central," Danny said. "They got hit hard, but all the road crews are working on suburbs and the Boardwalk for now, so the downtown proper has been kinda neglected."

The man nodded. "No problem. This cleanup has been a pain in the ass. The first week was pretty cool, there were damaged buildings that needed to be demolished safely before they could be rebuilt. And that is just cool as hell, you understand. With powers like mine, how can I not dream about opportunities to trash a building completely and be okay for it." The craft lifted off, the rotors angled, and they took off towards the skyline district. "But after that, there's just not a lot for me to do. My ability to magnify or redirect kinetic energy doesn't let me lift and carry a load of rubble, or truck away garbage. It's just completely useless. So I just hang around the tower and wait for a call, but lately that just means showing up to pick up a mugger or carjacker who's already pinned or knocked out, and carrying them away to jail."

Druid nodded. "I hear you. If I think of anything you can do to help, I'll be sure to let you know, but I don't have anything right now."

"Even my wife is helping," Assault groused. "Short bursts of super-strength and super-speed are good enough for her to clear debris and set up materials. Triumph is down by the waterfront hauling sandbags. But Dauntless and Miss Militia and I? We just take turns driving the plane, grabbing bad guys, and filling out inprocessing paperwork."

"And reminding people that the Protectorate didn't stop watching over them when Leviathan died," Druid reminded him. "Times like this, I could believe in patrols, just to maintain a presence, just to remind everyone that we're still here and we're still helping. Trust me, that's going to be important."

"Why, what's up?" Assault said, banking the VTOL around on a ruined street with no traffic on it.

"Glenn is working on a publicity campaign naming this as the Villain-Free City, the Jewel of the Protectorate. The City Where Heroes Won."

The landing gear touched down, and Assault craned around to see the other man, his face incredulous. "He didn't."

"He did."

"We're fucked."

"Yep," Druid said, standing. "Thanks for the ride."

"Thanks for the head's-up," Assault said, shaking his head as he looked back at his dashboard. The ramp descended, and Danny walked away. His feet hit the street and Assault lifted off before he even closed the back ramp. He began organizing the rats, moving them out of their hidey-holes and collecting them to do the work. By now, at least, word had gotten around, and people were separating their trash. Anything perishable was set in different piles than the rest of the trash, in most of the yards and driveways up and down these streets. But he was noticing something different in his rats, more and more of them were smarter, sharing their memories with him. Originally that had only been present near his home, where he spent most of his time. But as he thought about it, the proportions had been shifting that direction for a while, and it was really peaking ever since the Leviathan attack. All the trash to eat and work to do had kept him setting adult females on overdrive, cranking out new litters to multiply his workforce. Most of the new batch was still juvenile, but there were plenty of intelligent adults for him to work with.

He set them to work, eating anything that could be hazardous if the next trash pickup didn't come for a few weeks, and clearing as much of the puddles and debris as they could. Rats didn't have a lot of lifting strength, but their tooth enamel was significantly harder than iron, and they could chew large objects into smaller parts for easier transport. They weren't good for construction per se, they couldn't pour concrete or lay rebar, but they could do the time-consuming setup so that trained humans could get straight to work instead of wasting their time.

"Druid to Tattletale," he said. No response. "Druid to Tattletale," he repeated.

"Console here Druid. Forgot to mention earlier, she's not using that handle. That name is registered to a known villain that the Protectorate would never cooperate with. But there is an entry for Lisa on the comm channel."

"Oh, is Lisa her real name?"

"No," Velocity said, and hung up.

"Weird," Danny Hebert commented. "Okay then. Druid to Lisa."

"Lisa here, what's going on Rat Man?"

"Did you get through to Faultline?"

"Yeah I did, and they told me just what you told me to expect. And it turns out the problem is a lot bigger than that. This symbol, it comes up a lot of places. There are dozens of heroes in the Protectorate that have this symbol and mysterious origins. I'm making some phone calls, it's kind of fun to ring someone up and say 'Hi there, do you have amnesia?', it just really gets you the greatest reactions."

"Glad you're enjoying yourself. Conclusions?"

"This thing is huge. It's international at least, and it keeps tapping into other unexplored mysteries. Sometimes people show up speaking languages that are not spoken by any other person on Earth. Or they retain vague impressions of their former life that are completely impossible. One dude was apparently a native speaker of Ancient Egyptian, and that's impossible because that's been a dead language for millennia. And lots of these people, including a few in Faultline, are pretty sure they remember being tortured or studied. This is sounding a lot like an alien abduction theory, but actually even more mysterious. And the chatter on the conspiracy theorist networks gives this thing a name: Cauldron."

"Cauldron," the Druid of Brockton Bay mused. "That's not really a positive-sounding name, is it?"


Flechette raced away, running up the chain to take the rooftops, waving over her shoulder with a cheery grin. Parian smiled back and waved, less enthusiastically but just as heartfelt.

"I didn't mean to snoop," the Druid said, stepping out of the shadows. Parian jumped back, stifling a squeal of surprise, and loops of thread tipped with sharpened metal needles flung up from her hands as she moved to defend herself. She recognized the man, and lowered her hands, the needles sliding back into concealment. "I just got here," he said. "Came to congratulate you on your degree."

"Thanks, I guess," she said. She looked down and away as she sat on a bench. "Not sure what to do with it though."

"It's a degree in fashion design," he said. "You become a fashion designer with it."

She shrugged. "I know, but now I'm one of the four people that killed Leviathan. I'm being offered a book deal. And besides, getting to be a top-shelf fashion designer is as much about luck as talent, you have to know the right people and make the right connections, trust the right people. It's hard to feel comfortable in an industry that fickle. And what would I design? It's not like there's only one kind of fashion design. I always pictured myself doing haute couture, but it's a glutted market with more pretenders than opportunities. I just.. I thought there would be some sort of sign that I was doing the right thing."

"Do you feel like it's the right thing?" Druid asked.

"Not really."

"Then that's the sign. That's the only sign you get," he said. "You're hardly the first college graduate to have trouble picking a path when you graduate."

The girl sighed, resting the chin of her porcelain mask on the backs of her wrists crossed over her knees. "I guess. There just aren't many things I'm really certain about, and it would be so easy to make a mistake."

"Man, I know that feeling," he said, remembering the boil of frustration, the what-if's and should-I's. "But I don't think many people in your field feel that way. I would think that anyone that decides on fashion design would be pretty confident about her choices."

"I had been in computer technologies," she said. "And I decided to do something different. As different as I could. And it works with my powers, I can sew and weave faster than anyone, more accurately, hold the fabric taut for a cut, everything."

"Why did you decide to do something different?" Danny asked.

She shrugged, still not looking at him. "My parents were pushing so hard, and I'd never felt strongly about computer science. I went through a ... hard time, and when I was back to myself I knew I didn't want to be where I was."

"So you never felt strongly about fashion design, you just felt strongly about 'not computer sciences'."

"Maybe."

"And now that you're here, you're not feeling strongly about any of the paths in front of you."

"I guess," she said.

He sighed, and sat beside her. "Parian, it sounds like this isn't a problem with fashion design or computer sciences, or your degree or your book deal. It's a problem with you. You're very indecisive. Now normally I'd tell you to beat that on your own, or resign yourself to always being handicapped by your inability to commit to anything. But honestly, the indecisiveness is not your biggest problem."

"Oh, and what is?" Parian asked.

"It's tough," Danny said, "because I cannot think of any good way to put this. There's no diplomatic phrase or euphemism that softens the blow."

"Whatever," Parian said, lowering her head again.

"You're immature," he said, his voice sad. "Clearly intelligent, but socially undeveloped and emotionally stunted. Probably sheltered, isolated, held to high standards in some ways with goals that insulated you from outside experiences. So now you are using your powers to create stuffed animals, dressing like a children's doll, and flirting with someone six years too young for you. Parian, you're twenty-two and she's sixteen, and that is criminal."

The woman leaped up, her shoulders tense. "Stop it!" she yelled. "Dammit, it's not like that!"

"There's something you feel strongly about," he said, his voice still sad. "And I'm sorry. But if I turned a blind eye, I'd be an accessory to this. And they call this sort of thing 'grooming', when an adult like you takes an interest in a child like her. It's not good for either of you. But it looks like to some degree you're trying to reclaim your own childhood or adolescence, almost a regression."

"I said stop," she said, and a wreath of threads spread from her sleeves and shoulders, arcing like cobras ready to strike, dozens of needles aimed straight at him. "Leave me alone, and don't talk to me anymore."

"No," he said, standing. He loomed over her, and her needle-tipped threads dipped, wilted. "The Protectorate has an on-call psychiatrist. You need to see someone, get some counseling. You're unable to commit to anything except rebelling against your parents and flirting with someone two-thirds your age. Actually, let me take that back: I think the Protectorate would be bad for you. It's a very structured environment, which could give you purpose and guidance for a while, but some day you'd retire and you'll be right back where you are now."

"So what do you think I should do?" she asked, sounding defeated.

"Make a mistake," he said. "A major one. Deliberately, consciously. To see how bad it is. To see how you recover from it. Pick a job that you know you'll hate, or that you know you can't do. Try it, suck at it. Leave it, do something different. Find a hobby, something of your own, something that nobody can tell you whether you're doing it right or wrong. Keep a journal and record your thoughts, and only your thoughts, nothing that anyone else says to you."

"And Flechette?"

"Wait. She'll be eighteen in a couple of years. Wait until she's nineteen, so she's closer to where you are, and so that you don't feel like you're pouncing on her the second she's legal," the Druid said. "I've got to go now, but... I'll be around if you want to talk. You're going to have to do some hard things, and there's nothing that can make them easy. But we can talk." He turned and he walked away, feeling terrible about what he had said. He slipped into the shadows, following the rats that navigated for him.

"Damn," Lisa said into his ear. "Is that what it looks like from the outside? Because that looked cruel."

"I wasn't trying to be cruel," he said. "And I didn't think I'd left my comms open."

"Oh, you didn't. I hacked you," she said easily. "So, I've got a power that lets me know things about people, but I thought your power was all rats."

He shrugged. "You don't need a power to understand people. You just need to know some people. And also rats can smell people's emotions and things like that. It's pretty easy to see where someone is at with that. Her emotional responses reminded me of an adolescent or a child, not a young woman of twenty-two. It's an observable difference."

"Well, I guess that makes sense. Man, if you did have my power I wonder what kind of stuff you'd be able to tell about people."

"If you had my senses, or if I had your power, we'd neither of us ever be happy with what we knew," he pointed out.

"Spoilsport."


"So, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Taylor asked, as they walked to Fugly Bob's.

"Well, for one thing I haven't been out with you for a while," he said. "We work in the same building and we never see each other anymore."

"I've been busy. You've been busy. And we chat on the comms for like two hours a day."

"Still, nothing quite like seeing each other in person," he said. "And, yes, before you ask, I need to do cleanup for this area, my way."

"I thought that was a given," she said, smiling. She was wearing a crop-top and loose-fitting shorts, it was a hot day today. Too hot for the cloak and armor, so he was more than eager to do his work in street clothes. "So, did you hear about Chris?"

"What about him?" Danny asked.

"He figured out what his specialty was. Apparently he's got a special knack for modular creations, multi-purpose parts, things like that. That's why the Alternator Cannon came together the way it did, not because it's a cannon but because of the alternation. I'm not sure I fully get that, but now he's working on a whole new suite of inventions that interact and interplay with each other for increased effects, or one thing that does a half-dozen functions."

"Damn," Danny said, almost stopping cold before he remembered to keep walking. "Damn, we need to get him into Armsmaster's workshop!"

"Why's that?" Taylor asked, opening the door for her father. They walked gratefully into a blast of air-conditioning.

"Because he does miniaturization and efficiency, condensed parts and stuff like that. Adding modularity and multi-purpose design into that would make them both exponentially more powerful," he said. "Now, no more of that talk until we're seated. Figure out what you want."

They checked the menu board and made their picks, made their orders and paid with credit card. They sat, and waited for their order to get delivered. He took a couple napkins to mop at his forehead and scalp, wiping away sweat.

"It's about time to get you a haircut," Taylor said. "At this point you either cut it short or you look like you're trying for the comb-over."

"No comb-over," he said. "Okay, haircut it is. Now then, we should put those two working together, same projects, same workspace. I really think they'd make a huge jump in what they could do."

"That would be something else," Taylor said. "Parahumans Online has already moved Armsmaster up to one of the world's top twenty tinkers, and he could keep climbing that ranking. Add Kid Win's talents, and they could rival Dragon. So, let's talk some. You've been really, really busy since Leviathan."

"So much to do," he said, shrugging. "Ah! Thank you!" he said, accepting the tray of food for the two of them, then setting them down to dole out their portions. "Hey, eat your own fries missy! Anyway, I'm working to keep the city sanitary until the trucks can start their work again," he said. "Cargo bikes can bring in the groceries, but they just lack the capacity to haul garbage like a truck does. And in way too many places, people are trying to solve their problem by stuffing garbage down the storm sewers instead of leaving it by the curb, or just flushing everything they want to throw away. It's as much work to keep the tunnels clear as it is to keep the streets clear. And you know what annoys me the most? I haven't had time to get back out to the west end where the damage was so minor. I have no idea what's going on with the Travelers at all. I'm pretty sure they're still pulling small thefts, but it's hard to be sure since we don't really have the police presence to investigate property crimes."

"Right, the Travelers," Taylor said. "I forgot about them. So technically every time Glenn calls this the Villain-Free City, he's lying, because the Travelers are still around somewhere."

"Since you said technically," Danny replied, "technically the last place they were suspected was an unincorporated suburb, so strictly speaking they are outside the city limits."

"That's lame," she said, munching a fry.

"It is. But Glenn's lame."

"True," she said. "Oh! Did you see that bust I got the other day, the drug smugglers?"

"I had Velocity send all the information to my head's up display, including the article in the paper."

"It's okay to call it a HUD, dad, you won't turn into a gamer nerd if you use the acronym."

"Screw you," he said with a grin, and she smiled back. It felt good to joke around with her. There had been bad times. He refused to dwell on them. "Anyway, it was a good catch, and I'm proud of you. It's tough, because not only can Danny Hebert not tell people how proud he is of his daughter Benthic, but even the Druid can't talk about it." He took a drink, then said a bit more somberly, "I'm concerned that this might be my fault. We've gotten rid of parahuman villains, so regular criminals don't have anything to fear here, and I've been very lenient on drug offenses so far. So I shouldn't be surprised that my actions have tempted the cartels into taking a run at us."

She frowned sternly. "That's not on you. We arrested them and sent them to trial because it's their fault they made that decision. It's not your fault, got it?"

"Got it. By the way, Oni Lee says hello."

"Does he?" she said, surprised and a bit delighted. "That's great, he's been making so much progress!"

"It's compounded," he said. "The longer he goes without teleporting, the more of his own mind and his own initiative he recovers, and he starts remembering how to remember more. Basically, the doctors said some really, really complicated stuff. So this next week he'll make more progress than the past six weeks together. If he can avoid using his power, he'll be a fully and healthy human being in just a couple weeks, and ready to be discharged and given a job. But yeah, we got to talking, and I told him I have a daughter. And when it was time for me to leave, he told me to tell you hello. He's still imprinted on me like a baby duck, his worldview is focused around having a boss that tells him what to do. I think that'll be the last thing to leave him. But soon, it will leave him."

Taylor grinned. "Okay, yeah, status update. What's up with Circus and Trainwreck?"

"Circus is apparently making a living as a pool shark," Danny said, swirling a fry through the ketchup. "Perfect accuracy makes for a damn good hustler. It had been cards, but I advised against that. Trainwreck is still hanging out at the impound lot his friend set him up in. But, he showers a lot more now, and he gets out and walks around and is trying to have a social life. He's still inventing, but now he's making himself useful by repairing cars instead of cannibalizing them."

"I had my doubts," his daughter said. "I really didn't think that Circus was going to find a way in this world other than killing people or stealing stuff. I mean, hustling pool isn't great, but it's hard to see someone get hustled and not think they deserve it a little bit. And I'd always thought that Trainwreck was always so greasy and messy because he just had no social graces, but if he was confined to power armor I can see why he'd look like that. Okay, um, next, tell me what's going on with Dinah."

"She's using her powers to calculate the odds she can get her dad to give her a pony," Danny chuckled. "And, she's still a bit fixated on me. If she didn't have such a happy home life already I'd be a bit worried about it. She designed a costume for her future persona, Gambler. She wants me to get Parian to make it for her." He paused, and Taylor prompted him with a gesture. "Okay, Parian. She's going through some trouble right now. She's broken up with Flechette, and even though I told her to do it that still hurt my soul to hear about. They were just nuts about each other. She's stayed away from couture design, and is instead applying for a bank loan to open her own seamstress' shop, to do alterations and custom fittings. And, she's come out to her parents. I think I gave her bad advice, she's pushed herself really far and she's gonna suffer a lot before things get better for her."

"She needs to harden up," Taylor said. "People have to suffer to harden up. It sucks, but we didn't make those rules. Okay, uh, Panacea."

"She's been working even harder than she was when she was in the hospital curing cancer every day," Danny chuckled. "Turns out she's got a brilliant understanding of medical science, which shouldn't surprise anyone. She's been auditing classes at the university, taking notes, and she was talking about testing out of the last year of high school, taking college early, and getting her doctorate. And in between she's still going to the clinics to heal broken legs and heart disease. Though she's focusing more on birth defects these days, she says they're easier and the benefit is bigger. And she's been tinkering, if you will, with ways to make bodies better, not just healthier. She's not on human testing yet, but she's got some animal subjects she's been testing ideas out on."

"Whoa, mad scientist," the girl chuckled. "God, it's actually hard to believe she's only a year older than me. She acts more like she's your age."

"It can be hard to tell the difference between maturity and just being tired," he joked back. "You haven't asked about Uber and Leet, but I'll tell you: those guys are about two weeks from unveiling their creation. They've been working on a video game, and while I didn't understand much they repeated a few phrases so many times that I had to remember them. Uh, massively-multiplayer-PVP with absolutely authentic physics, destructible environment, zero-lag zero-latency. Apparently Leet invented one computer that coordinates a whole bunch of other computers so well that it beats most of the problems that normally come with this kind of game. It's a really popular genre, they expect to be literal billionaires after this."

"Whoa," Taylor said, nodding. "I'm impressed. But not surprised. I've never heard of any tinker or supergenius that wanted or loved an invention as much as Leet and Uber love video games. That kind of love makes a world of a difference. But then there's Squealer. I hear you're helping her out with her lawsuit? You know that if she wins that lawsuit she'll have enough money for some lawyers that can get her out of prison and she'll never face justice for the people she's killed."

"It's her intellectual property, she's earned the proceeds, even if she abuses them," Danny sighed, staring at his burger. "Besides, it's likely that her designs will save a hundred times as many people as she's killed. But only if they get out. And they only get out if she owns them, and not the Protectorate. So she needs to win this."

"But you gave that stuff to the Protectorate, why are you taking it away now?" she asked, dabbing mustard off her chin.

"Someone had to see them work right before they would make an offer on them," he said, and took a drink.

"Oh shit," Taylor said, her eyes wide as they focused behind him. "Oh, shit dad. Oh shit look at that."

Danny turned around, followed her eyes. The television in the corner of the room was tuned to a local station that was showing the local news. And the view right now was from the Boardwalk, watching an Asian woman walking down the street, heading towards the Leviathan monument. His first impression was Bakuda, but this woman did not wear a gas mask, and she wore heavy armor completely unlike the mad bomber. And she carried a minigun, a massive belt-fed Gatling gun that normally was mounted on a heavy vehicle like a Humvee or a helicopter. She carried it like a handbag. Her armor was covered in gruesome trophies, scalps and ears stapled to the blood-red metal. "Oh shit it's Butcher," Taylor murmured. The woman approached the railing of the monument, and teleported past it with a pair of concussive blasts and gouts of flame. She strode to the spot in front of the spire, and turned, and stood. Exactly where Danny had stood.

And then she spoke one word: "Druid."

"Fuck you Glenn," Danny murmured. His stomach somersaulted, flopped over, and tried to drop completely out of his body.


"Okay, I'm going to be right in your ear," Lisa said as the Druid strapped into his armor. Velocity and Miss Militia and Triumph were helping him into his gear while Assault drove the jet. They were circling the Boardwalk, mustering rats from the surrounding areas to give him an advantage. "Your asset here is that she has no regeneration and that armor of hers is not decorative, it's functional. She is only somewhat more durable than a regular human. If you can hurt her, it'll stick. But she feels no pain, so this will be tough. It's a war of attrition, you need to stay safe and hurt her any way you can. She's got a ton of powers, teleportation, strength, perfect aim, supersenses, danger sense, projected pain, a rage aura that can make you go crazy and make mistakes, and the ability to fester wounds. You can't afford to take any hits from her at all, okay?"

"Got it," he said. "This is going to be a ton harder than it sounds."

"Yes," Lisa said, too quickly. "Okay, the other thing to know is that you can't kill her. If you kill her, you become the next Butcher. All that power, all that homicidal savagery, all those memories and voices in your head."

"But she doesn't feel pain, and so it's going to be really hard to stop her without killing," Danny pointed out.

"Yeah. We know," Lisa said into his ear. He shouldered on the last plate and worked his way into the cape. "And, you absolutely won't be able to negotiate with her the way you did the Undersiders."

"I expected that," he said. "Shit, wish I could bring the whole team for this."

"She called you out. And if you get your team, she gets hers. It's not as big a help as you'd think," Lisa said. "Now, she could have weaknesses we've never heard of, so try everything. Throw it all, see what sticks. You won't be able to dodge anything, that's a given because of her power. But you're wearing your armor, and it's pretty high grade. It's rated against high-penetration bullets, so there's a very real chance that you'll be all right until you can bring her down. Try to keep her on the move, it disrupts her agony projection power, and stay clear of her rage aura or you will make fatal mistakes. Now, you're locked and loaded with Armsmaster's prediction software in your helmet, and I know you've practiced with it a little bit so it should help. Hopefully it gives you an edge against her danger sense. Try to wound her, we need her stopped without killing her."

Danny shook his hands out and tried not to hyperventilate. He was going to fight a supervillain. For real. Up close, personal, armed and loaded for bear. When he had started fighting crime he had promised himself it would never come to this. He'd be a block away, anonymous, behind several buildings worth of cover, no danger to himself, just helping out any way he could without taking any personal risks. And now he was doing it. He had to wonder if he had just had his last conversation with Taylor, if he was going to die today.

"I can't do this," he gasped. "Get me out of this armor, set me down someplace else. Let her stand there on her own for a few hours, it doesn't mean anything. We'll just ignore her. Or drop a bomb on her, I don't know. But don't make me do this, okay? Guys?"

"If we let you bug out now, it'll just be one villain after another calling us out, making us look bad," Miss Militia said, clapping her hands onto his shoulders. "Get a grip on yourself, use the weapons we've given you, you're going to be fine."

Assault looked over his shoulder. "I know what'll help," he said, and thumbed open the CD case strapped to the wall. He flipped a few pages, picked a disk, and slapped it into the console for the intercom sound system.

Danny froze as the first chords of "Eye of the Tiger" pulsed through the air. "Oh, that's just cheating," he growled towards Assault.

"Whatever. Get in there and kick her ass," Assault grinned, and the cargo hatch dropped open.

"I'll do it," he said. "But, you know, if I die, tell my daughter I died thinking of her. And tell Glenn that I died calling him an asshole."

The Druid of Brockton Bay strode out, bouncing on his toes a little bit as the rats came streaming out of the city to surround him. The gnarled wooden staff was in his hands, and birds flew in to circle overhead and around. Howls burst through the air as the dogs approached.

Butcher looked up at the birds overhead, watching them carefully. Her face broke its impassivity long enough to show a bit of wry amusement. "Tricks," she said, and then her face shifted to utter contempt. Danny vaulted over the railing, gripped up on the staff, and nodded towards her with grim resolve.

Butcher looked bored as she pressed the trigger of her massive weapon, and a spray of bullets pounded straight into Danny's chest, almost one on top of the other. The force of them lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards, slamming against the railing and pinning him there. Mice in his cloak were crushed to death and a dozen birds fell out of the air at once. The armor held, though he could feel where there were going to be bruises on his chest later. He tried to rally back, swinging the rest of his birds into play. He swept them towards her eyes to blind her, while rats lunged towards her legs. They were unable to sweep her legs, her stance was well-set and her armor and gun made her heavy enough to be hard to dislodge. So instead they gnawed, working at the plates that protected her heels and hamstrings. She teleported a few feet closer to him, and she disappeared and reappeared in a gout of flame and shock that killed a score of rats each time.

A bird flew into the small of her back and exploded like a grenade, flinging her down to the ground. She snarled savagely, and for the first time she looked invested in the fight. She teleported back to her feet, killing rats in a wide range, and brought her gun to bear again. The bullets rattled out under the roar of the gun barrel, sweeping around to kill the mechanical birds. Each bullet hit a target, even if they had to curve in the air to do it. He lost the other grenade birds, the thermite-bird, the containment-foam birds, the birds that trailed invisible wires and had huge high-voltage batteries to simulate a bolt of lightning. Even the birds with the boom microphones and long-lens cameras or the laser range-finders. But before he could work a new plan to deal with the loss of the drones, he was hit with a crippling agony.

It took his breath away, and the world went white and then gray. He slumped back, his muscles locked, his whole body on fire. Butcher swung her gun his way, and she pushed the trigger down, held it down. She watched as the bullets pounded into him, arms and legs and chest and face, slamming him like a thousand hammers against his hard-shelled armor. He twitched and flailed under the assault. The bruises on his skin spread, joined together. The wounds she gave festered with a little time, the injuries almost healing in reverse as they spread. And those thousand hammer blows multiplied, he could feel something wet pouring down his chest as the skin ruptured and split. The small bones of his hands cracked and fractured, his eyes swelled shut and the cartilage of his nose cracked audibly.

But somehow he managed to mount a defense. He raised the staff and pressed four knots in the wood with his two hands, and a hum and buzz surrounded the top of the staff. Bullets that entered the blurred air disintegrated, turned to smoke as they were broken down into components so small they floated on the air. Literally vaporized. She released the trigger, amused at this development. Danny tried to pull himself upright, to advance on her with the staff held up. His right hand thumbed aside a panel of fake wood to expose a patch of golden metal at the core of the staff, and he pressed his hand to it and concentrated.

Butcher teleported immediately before the blast of lightning went off, appearing just a foot to the side as the beam of electricity streamed out like a laser too bright to look at directly. She swung the gun to the side and pulled the trigger again, and the bullets arced in the air to hit him from the side, curving around the blurred nano-saw projected from the staff. He was thrown sideways and the staff fell from his nerveless grasp as the agony struck again. He had no control over his thoughts, his limbs, or his rats. There was just a relentless beating that went on and on and on. He screamed anew when his kneecap shattered, then his clavicle. His throat was raw, his lungs felt like they were filling up with fluids. His fingerbones crackled as they broke all in a row. He could smell vomit but he couldn't recall having thrown up, and his whole world was a merciless unending pain.

She strode closer, walking across the field of rats. Their bones sounded like potato chips under her feet. The ammo box ran dry and the gun's chambers clanged open, she dropped the Gatling gun and walked closer. She smirked as her rage aura kicked in, filing him with a blinding hate that rivaled the pain he felt, agony warring with anger as he twitched helplessly in his failing body. So many tendons torn, bones broken, that she didn't need to immobilize him, he was quite helpless. She reached back to the back side of her shoulder and pulled a contraption from a sheath there. It unfolded into a compound bow, heavily built and sturdily reinforced for her superhuman strength. She bent down and ran her hands through the debris of dead rats and broken glass and gun brass, and when her hand came up again it held an arrow. A long, triangular arrowhead looked perfect for piercing hard-shelled armor, she nocked it to the bowstring and sighted down on him. It was aimed at his heart, a single killshot.

And then a blank-faced Asian man in a hospital gown was clinging to her back, drawing a kitchen knife across her throat. A huge gout of blood erupted from her neck, and she dropped in place, the arrow falling to the ground. And Oni Lee stood in place, his face twitching as the Butcher essence transferred into him. A dozen homicidal maniacs in his head, a rush of new powers and strength. The force of the Butchers, I through XIV, stormed forward to overwhelm his will. And Oni Lee's eyes stretched wide, and another of him appeared. Both of them took a deep breath, and three of them tipped their heads back. Four of him opened their mouths so wide that the tendons in his neck stood out, five of him screamed. Six of him flung their hands to his head, seven of them slumped to fall on their knees. Eight Oni Lees dragged their hands down their faces, nine Oni Lees crumpled forward as their screams ran out of air. And then one by one they vanished in a puff of white dust and smoke, leaving only one behind. He looked up, blank-faced, impassive, and implacable, as the crowd rushed forward. He didn't make a move as the heroes rushed his way, led at the front by Panacea and Circus, with a ponytailed man behind them who was only barely recognizable as Trainwreck.

Circus posted herself between Oni Lee and the fallen Druid, wary as if watching him for a hostile move. Trainwreck helped Panacea remove his helmet, gingerly and carefully, while pulling his hood forward so that onlookers could not make out his face. Panacea laid her hands on his face, and shuddered at what she felt. She whispered a few words, and the other heroes began unfastening his armor, laying it aside piece by piece to expose the seeping, twisted ruin that was his body. His thin frame showed every broken bone and burst artery, and the cameras showed the world what the Druid was willing to suffer to keep his city safe.

It took her an hour and a half to finish healing him. The crowd gathered around grew every minute of that time. When he finally stood up with help from Dauntless and Armsmaster, a cheer went up from the crowd. Circus and Trainwreck melted back into the crowd, fading from the scene even as Danny gave them both a small wave goodbye. He stumbled over to Oni Lee, who someone had draped a blanket over sometime in the past hour and a half.

"You gave up your mind for me," Danny said to the assassin. Oni Lee just stood there, staring, waiting for orders. "Oni Lee, do you feel anything? Do you hear any voices, in your mind?" Oni Lee just stood there, staring, waiting for orders. "Oni Lee, do you hear the Butchers?" Nothing. He sighed. "Oni Lee, go back with your doctors, and help them help you. I will be by to give you orders as soon as I can. No teleporting until I say otherwise."

Oni Lee nodded, and walked away. Danny sagged on his legs, and let himself be bustled into the back of the VTOL.


Danny dialed the phone at the side of his hospital bed.

"Director Chambers here."

"Glenn?"

"Yeah?"

"You're an asshole."

"Yeah."

"And I told you this would happen."

"... yeah."

"Glenn?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm taking the rest of this week off."

"Yeah."

Danny hung up. He called Taylor.


He looked up and down the street. "Okay, I'm impressed."

"You were meant to be," Dauntless said, bracing his hands on his hips. "Mayor Christner and Glenn went on television just hours after your fight with Butcher, and they said the reason you lost was because you'd been spending weeks without rest cleaning up the city and trying to take care of things. So, they said it was the city's fault for not helping you more during those weeks. They got a bond initiative going and diverted a ton of city funds to get this done."

The streets weren't repaired, but they were improved somewhat. Most of the roads had at least one lane open on either side, with metal planks laid out at the intersections so that slow traffic could cross over the ruptured fissures in the pavement. And planks of wood at the side for bicycles and pedestrians to cross on. The traffic signals were still on blinking red, indicating a four-way stop. No traffic was allowed on the roads other than service vehicles for the time being, but as districts were cleared and fully repaired the normal operation would commence again. For now, people commuted by bus or bike, but garbage pickups were back on schedule, mail was being delivered, police were patrolling, ambulances were at work, construction crews were able to move deeper into the city to repair more of the roads at once, and trucks full of food and water were making regular deliveries on schedule.

"I have to say, it's a vast improvement," Danny admitted. "The cynic in me wants to see those contracts and bond resolutions, our mayor has a long history of corrupt real estate developments and I think he stands to make a dozen fortunes on this sort of tragedy. On the other hand, maybe I was too hard on Glenn."

"You probably were, but I think he understands why you said what you said. Still, an apology wouldn't go amiss," Dauntless suggested.

"Yes, fine. And by the way, thank you for loaning me your spear for the fight against Butcher. It was my big weapon, and I know you've invested years of your energy into it. It's a huge help, and I know it means a lot to you so it means a lot to me that you allowed me to borrow it."

"No worries," the big hero said. "It came back to me in one piece. But a lot of people already figured out that it's my spear you were using, covered in Armsmaster's fake staff and those nano-weapons of his. So, now they're starting to realize that we were propping you up and that all that power wasn't really yours. Clever folks on the Internet are already figuring out all your tricks. The drone birds, holograms, everything."

Danny chuckled, running his fingers along the chestplate of his lightweight costume, the comfortable one that was just for show."Well, the end of an era. Looks like we might be done with the Druid and his fakery. But I realized that my power doesn't really come from armor or lightning or bombs. In the end, it's people. People who are willing to loan me extremely powerful weapons, for instance. People who are willing to spend weeks in a workshop working on equipment to help me. People who are willing to give me a ride to my destination, or pick the music that will bring out the best in me. People like Oni Lee who was willing to give up his mind and his identity to protect me against my orders. People like Trainwreck and Circus who were willing to try to protect me from Butcher XV. People like Glenn who will get the ferry going again and repair the streets even if it's an uphill battle. Lisa, who gave up the life she loved because she trusted me. I got a get-well card from Parian, thanking me for ruining her life. Panacea has helped me several times over and never seems to get tired of my requests. People like that are where power is. And I need to accept that, I need to be open about that. I need to tell them. Hiding behind a cloak and armor feels like I'm shutting people out, and that's not the direction I need to go."

Dauntless paused, staring off into the distance as a team of bicycle couriers cruised through a break in the slow traffic. "The Druid of Brockton Bay never really seemed to suit you. It wasn't your style. Some people can pull off cryptic and iconic looks. Myrddin can. Chevalier can. Eidolon really doesn't. Armsmaster for sure, and Triumph can pull it off more often than not, and he's barely out of training wheels."

"You do a damn fine job of iconic majesty yourself," Danny pointed out. "And maybe Eidolon has a hard time with his image, but I chat with him pretty regularly and he really grows on you."

"Kind of you to say. But you, you're down to earth. You're just not the guy that waves a spear and calls down lightning. It's not who you are."

Danny snorted a laugh. "I'm the guy that calls in a favor and gets your kid a nice job. But in my case, getting that kid a job dismantles a team of villains."

Dauntless nodded. "Exactly. Now that people are catching on to the trick, the Druid persona won't last much longer. I just wonder how Glenn is going to spin it."

Danny let a dozen ideas flit through his head, but none of them seemed Glenn enough. "I have no idea," he answered. "Hey, long as I've got you here, I was hoping to pick your brain. Have you ever heard of an outfit called Cauldron?"

"Well, sure. When you get the team leaders together, talking shop and sharing stories, it comes up with the other rumors and ghost stories. I've heard that Alexandria is actually an indestructible robot, and that the reason Legend can bend light is because he literally the center of the universe. I've heard that a scientist has found proof that the Manton Effect is proof that God exists. I've heard that one day the Endbringers will join together and wipe out continents with a single blow. And I've heard that there's a secret conspiracy that calls itself Cauldron and it is guarded by a boogeyman that nobody can beat and some people can buy powers from them."

Danny paused. "That's a hell of a thing. Being able to buy powers?"

Dauntless shrugged. "Like I said, you hear lots of things. Scion comes from the future, Myrddin comes from another dimension where magic is real, parahumans have always existed and in days of old we were hailed as gods. I've heard that Dragon has uploaded her consciousness to a computer and no longer has a physical body, and that some parahumans are triggered by alien abductions."

The tall, thin man considered all of this. "That helps me put it in context. So, would you say that there's more evidence for the Cauldron story than those other rumors?"

"I'd say that the stories say that anyone that snoops around too much might get a visit from the boogeyman to remind you not to snoop. Or just kill you and walk away," the team leader replied. "Look, either there's nothing there, or there's something there and you don't want it. Now, change the subject. What are you going to yell at people about now that the ferry is running?"

"The Boardwalk."

Dauntless laughed aloud, shaking his head and even leaning over to wheeze out the end of his belly laugh. "Of course you are. It's only the new centerpiece of the city's economy, the pet project of the mayor and the city council and the chamber of commerce. And our own director. Why wouldn't you pick that as the next item to receive the Wharf Rat treatment?"

"That seems uncharitable and un-called-for."

"It may seem that way," Dauntless said, still laughing to himself. "But really, what's wrong with the Boardwalk?"

"Enforcers."

"Oh," the other hero said, sagging somewhat. "Okay, yeah, maybe that. It's a bit... ugly."

Danny turned to face the other man directly. "It's way past ugly. A syndicate of business owners has hired their own private police force that disregards the law in favor of what's good for business. They use excessive force against people who have done nothing wrong but offend the wrong people. They mete out excessive punishments and there's rumors of much worse. They are a violent gang operating with public sanction, making their own rules and subverting the essence of the law itself."

"You understand that most of what you just said applies to us to? It's hard to be a superhero and speak out against private police forces without being a total hypocrite. The enforcers operate with the cooperation of the city just like the PRT and the Protectorate. The laws that make it possible for us to operate make it possible for them to operate."

Danny waved a finger. "Nuh uh. Don't make that comparison. We go after villains and parahuman criminals. We go after threats that are too dangerous and too deadly for police to handle. The enforcers go after bums and street kids, people too harmless and helpless for police to be bothered with. That is not the same thing at all, not by a long shot."

"And what do you intend to do about that?"

"Would you believe that it's better if you don't know?"

"Fine."


"You're doing that thing again," Taylor said. "Thousand-yard stare."

"Sorry," Danny said, and heaved a sigh. "It's just hard to be around here without remembering. I can't even tell you how badly it hurt, I just don't have the words. It's the kind of pain that changes your life."

She leaned in and gave him a hug from the side. "It'll be okay, you'll forget it and everything will be fine. Just keep your eyes on the crowd."

He nodded and tried to keep something or someone between him and the monument. He tried not to think that he had suffered, nearly died, for the sake of entertaining Glenn's audience or satisfying his journalists. He tried not to think that he had let himself get bullied into nearly turning his daughter into an orphan for the sake of an advertising campaign for the local tourism board and the Local Businessmen's Guild. A red thread of anger flared through his thoughts, and it grounded like lightning on the enforcers.

The two of them walked along the new boards, already distressed to look like they'd been there for decades dredged up from the beach. Bollards with rope railings separated the walkway from the waterway, this part of the city didn't have any beaches to speak of but it did have spectacular views over the water. All the sand and surf was to the south side of the bay, where the city was constantly trying to build resort hotels only to find again and again that the bedrock was buried too deep and the sand was too soft to root a foundation in. Ahead of them was the Protectorate tower, a weird parallel to his first week as a hero when he had disguised himself to walk in their front door.

"Got one," he said. "I can stop this before it goes too far.."

"If you stop this one, you only help one victim," Taylor reminded him, pitching her voice low so nobody would overhear. "Catch a dozen, you can help hundreds of people. Catch a few dozen, you can prove that there's a pervasive culture and you can keep this from ever happening again. But if you butt in, the enforcers will know exactly who their enemy is."

A hundred and fifty yards away, a thick-necked man with a blue polo shirt and navy blue slacks was throwing a teen runaway up against a wall and pinning the kid in place with his boot while he snapped out his extensible baton. And then he proceeded to beat the hell out of the kid, grinding the breath out of the teenager to make sure there wasn't enough air to make significant noise. And a rat in the corner with a camera strapped to its back recorded the entire thing. He heard the whimpers and the moans, and he flinched, his knuckles clenching as he kept walking with his daughter like nothing was wrong. He could see the bruises spreading, bullets hammering against his armor... he shook himself out of his funk. What the enforcer was dealing out was nothing like the agony he had suffered from Butcher. Except in its principal, its cruelty, and the complete lack of necessity for it. And he had to make himself leave well enough alone, had to pretend like everything was all right. And he let the enforcer finish. He chose to not save someone he could save.

It felt like the fight with Butcher all over again, right in his chest. Every time the teenager kicked, he felt it against his ribs. He had to shake himself again to pull away from the scene.

He picked up another enforcer up ahead, and the local rats had plenty of memories of this man's violence, he was one to watch. Danny slowed up to look at T-shirts, Taylor stayed by his side and went through a rack of children's Druid costumes. They would probably be on clearance as soon as the Wharf Rat announced that he was retiring the Druid of Brockton Bay identity. It seemed that the revelation that the Druid's powers were technological and not parahuman had actually increased the merchandising and not reduced it; Danny tried not to scowl at the matching sets of Dauntless and Druid with the staff and spear that fit together with authentic lightning action!

The teenager was released, kicked away to hobble off to whatever passed for home. The camera rat scrambled away, ready to find another spot to take shots from. The second enforcer had stepped into the crowd and pulled out a young woman wearing a bikini top with cutoff shorts, her brown hair twisted into something that could turn into dreadlocks soon, with deeply tanned skin and badly-worn flipflops. He was asking where she was from, she replied she was here to visit the beach and came up the Walk to get something to eat. He asked to see her driver's license so he could see she was from out of town, and she balked. He grabbed for her purse and slapped her back when she objected.

"More shantytown scum," he declared when he found her address. "Get off the Boardwalk and get back on your side of town, shanty," he snarled.

"I can walk here!" she insisted, snatching back her purse. "I've still got rights!" And then he started teaching her differently.

"Shit," Danny said. He needed to keep the rat in place, he needed to keep the enforcers from finding out that the Wharf Rat had turned his attention on them. But he couldn't let this go for a minute. He slipped off the Boardwalk, away from the press of people, and ran through the alleyway backing the shops. This space was just for dumpsters and garbage cans and the trucks that emptied them, and the occasional criminal assault or sex crime. The ground was unsteady and there were hidden obstacles all over, but he navigated them easily at a dead run, stumbling only when he fumbled in his pockets for a few seconds. He crossed the next block in good time, moving nearly silently as he did.

And he had a roll of quarters in his fist when he punched the enforcer in the side of his head. He felt his knuckles break, and he switched the roll to his other hand for the follow-up punch. The enforcer dropped to the ground, and Danny started kicking. Bruises bloomed and spread and knitted together into an unbroken sheet of red and blue. Taylor grabbed him from behind and pulled him back, then grabbed the girl with the torn clothes and helped her up, tugging her away from the scene. Danny reached down and carefully maneuvered the man's body, bracing his ankle against a fencepost and his hip against the wall, with some space on either side of the rest of his leg. Then he took two running steps and kicked a field-goal right at the man's knee, following through, smashing it in half. The scream stopped pedestrian traffic for half a block in either direction, and Danny walked away, following after Taylor.

Taylor had a hard time understanding after the fact. "Holy shit Dad," she said. "That's over the top. That's beyond the pale. Jesus. Okay, maybe it's time that the enforcers learned that the rats are after them. If this is the only way you can help them without using the rats, we'll just use the rats."

"The plan was good," he said. "We just didn't anticipate some asshole would be bold enough to grab a girl off the street to rape her in an alleyway in the middle of his shift."

She eyed him skeptically. "So, that was a onetime thing? Unexpected circumstances, unlikely to repeat?"

"Yes," he said, wincing as he adjusted the wrappings on his hand. "I'd say I'm very unlikely to do that again."

His daughter tried to smile but it was weak and brittle. "It's just I have a hard time believing you, Dad. For one thing, we'd only been out there for half an hour on your first day before you went medieval on that guy. And for another thing, you had the quarters on you already. You were prepared for this."

He took a deep breath and let it out slow, counting from ten. "I pack the quarters like I pack my keys or my phone. It's been part of my kit every day for months. It doesn't mean that I was planning to beat some guy today." He forced his own smile, and while it looked better than the one she was faking, it stung him to see her incredulity.


The middle of the night was a surprisingly quiet time for superheroes, very few crimes happen at the witching hour and fewer still that require a superhero's intervention. The hours after sunset and right at last call were busy, but midnight is a good downtime. And since Danny was mostly doing patrols these days, scheduled on his own recognizance, he was sleeping well at the middle of the night. After all, he had earned some privileges after the past several weeks. But despite those privileges, he did not expect the Protectorate to deliver a woman to his bed. Especially not Mouse Protector.

She yelled out a "yipe!" as she fell full body on top of him, and then scrambled back to fall off the bed and onto the floor with a thump. She lay there for a few seconds before she called out "I'm okay!"

Danny turned on the bedside lamp. "Mouse Protector? What the hell?"

"Hey partner," she said, grinning. "I was just chilling at my place and I thought 'wouldn't it be fun to drop in on my buddy Wharf Rat?' and so I did and here I am," she said. "What happened to your hand?"

"Street tiddlywinks, we play for pinkies," he said. "Could you have called ahead?"

"Street ti- holy shit I should write that down," she said, grinning manically. "Everyone tells me how dour you are, Captain No-Fun of the No-Fun Zone. Do I just bring out the best in you?"

"I think it's my rebel nature. You want me to be the Abbott to your Costello and I just have to flip the script. I should get dressed."

"You should. Since you're up, let's go get a pizza. Where's the best place to get a three-cheese pizza at this hour?"

"I have no idea. Could you hand me that robe? And/or turn around?"

"How can you not know? Every hero I've ever met, in any city, knew more about local late-night restaurants than a food critic specializing in cab drivers and potheads."

"The only grease trap I eat at is Fugly Bob's, and that's a burger place. When I eat pizza I make it myself from scratch."

"Okay, that sounds amazing, and I applaud you for that, but it doesn't get me any closer to that three-cheese awesomeness."

"You're really not going to turn around, are you?"

"Fine. Prude."

When Danny Hebert walked out of his room with a woman, Velocity and Battery both stopped their conversation mid-word. Velocity took his feet down off the console and sat up straight. "Dude, I don't even know how you did that, and I was the king of RAs in college before I got powers."

"Velocity, you've met Mouse Protector before. Mouse, you remember Velocity and Battery."

The two Brockton Bay natives traded a look. "I've never seen you in anything but a helmet with ears," Battery said. "I was half-sure you really had ears like that."

"So, where's the best place to get a three-cheese pizza this time of night around here?" their visitor asked. She was wearing a pair of his cargo shorts that hung past her knees and a plaid button-up shirt rolled up to her elbows. He had no shoes that would even begin to fit her, so she wore her Mouse Protector boots and hoped for the best.

"Of course three-cheese," Battery sighed. "Of course you're that committed to the theme. Okay, um, you'll be looking for Dolentino's on Lord Street."

"No way," Velocity said. "Moonstone Bar down by Cherry Circle a block from the campus bookstore. They've got a kitchen that runs all night to last call, and while I wouldn't wish their meat-lover's pizza on my worst enemy, they do something with melty cheese that is magical, hand to God."

Battery looked back at Danny and Mouse. "Go with Moonstone. Dolentino's is good, but it's not magical."

They took a bus to Cherry Circle, since the VTOL was going to be in high demand as last call approached, and it was conspicuous. The Moonstone was loud and boisterous, and the local college's colors were in wide representation. They made their way straight past posturing frat boys and coy sorority girls and hard-drinking grad students, heading straight to the bartender.

"Hey, can we get the cheese pizza?" Danny asked.

The bartender's face showed a crushing disappointment like a puppy had died. "Dude, no, Tyler quit. Like, two weeks ago. He's running a food truck out by the Boardwalk these days."

Danny checked his watch. "Is he still open late or does he only work during the day?"

The bartender raised helpless hands. "I have no idea, sorry."

They headed back out. "So, do you want to hit the Boardwalk just in case he's serving the late-night crowd, or just wait for tomorrow?" Danny asked.

"You say that like I won't track this man down to his home and wake him up just to make me a magical three-cheese pizza," she said, her eyes glinting.

"Except you wouldn't actually," he reminded her.

"You don't think I'd go that far for melty cheese?" she pressed, leaning forward.

"I'm less sure than I was five seconds ago."

There was no sign of a food truck operating within four blocks of the Boardwalk, but some of the smarter local rats knew the truck in question and their memories of it only included sunshine. "Looks like Tyler went into business for himself so he could keep his own profits and set his own hours," Danny said. "Sorry Mouse."

"Oh, it's okay," she said, sighing. "Tell the truth, I wasn't really all that hungry. I just make a point to sample cheese pizza in every city I visit. Let's get back to the tower and call it a night."

"Deal. No more appearing in my bed."

"We'll agree to disagree."

"Sounds like we'll disagree on agreeing."

"Ouch. Easy with those burns, man."

The next day they walked the Boardwalk over and over, with Taylor keeping a tight grip on her father so he would not hare off for another righteous beatdown, and Mouse Protector hanging on his other side mostly just to annoy him. They ate funnel cake and drank sodas, they shopped for kitschy merchandise and they posed for pictures, and they documented several abuses of power and human rights in the name of local commerce. They stopped for lunch to each three-cheese pizza that was just as good as Velocity had promised, and occasionally Mouse Protector would pester them about Danny's hand or try to get them to slip up. And in the late afternoon, an hour before sunset, Glenn called him on his cell phone.

"Hello," he said noncommittally.

"What's this I hear about you messing around with the Boardwalk and the Local Businessmen's Guild?"

"Guilty."

"Why?"

"Because someone should," Danny said. "The enforcers are a blight on the city. Police power should not be handed off to anyone that pays enough money to beat up whoever they want."

"Well that sounds like hypocrisy, because you and your teammates aren't cops either, but you seem to have that same privilege. Are you a blight on the city?"

"We protect the city from Endbringers. We don't kick scruffy kids in the neck because they're not good scenery for the tourists."

"We're going to have a talk. You come back to the tower and-"

The phone was plucked from Danny's hand. "Excuse me sir," said a thick-necked man in blue polo shirt and navy slacks. "Boardwalk security. Could you come with me?" He ended the call and tucked Danny s phone into his own pocket.

The rat in the alleyway heard eight heartbeats from that direction, meaning nine enforcers total. "No, I don't think I will," Danny said.

The thick-necked man just grabbed hold of Danny's wrist and twisted it behind his back, marching him into the alley. Two more bullish bodies in polo shirts stepped out from behind Dumpsters and blocked the path behind to cut off Taylor and the Mouse Protector. "You should stay out of this," one of them grunted.

"You guys really shouldn't do this," Taylor advised him. "There's a lot you don't know here."

"Fuck off," he replied.

"Really you-"

"Fuck off," he replied.

Mouse Protector pulled a length of planking out of a garbage bin, about sword-length, and gave it a spin. "Good enough," she said.

Two meaty fists slammed into Danny's stomach, and another into the side of his head. Their knuckles didn't break. "Hold his leg," one said, backing up for a running kick. A rat snuck up behind him and snipped through his Achilles tendon and he dropped in place, screaming.

"Fuck, did you see that?" one of the others said, still punching Danny while he looked the other way. "I think that was a rat!"

"What? Wait, so the Druid's nearby?" the one next to him said, twisting Danny's arm hard enough to strain the socket.

"I love that guy, we should get an autograph," one said while smashing his elbow into Danny's mouth.

"Except that rat just bit Stang, so it can't be Druid, he's a good guy," said another one while he kicked Danny's knee backwards.

And then the Mouse Protector teleported to him and started laying them out with her plank while he lay screaming in the alley. Her board collided with heads and shoulders and hips, stunning the big men and getting herself some room. But the ones she stunned first were getting up, pulling out their batons. She tried to pull Danny up to retreat back out of the alley, but her superhuman agility and stamina did not make her unusually strong. She leaped into the fray, spinning and bounding as she swept around with her club to clear some space and get them away from Danny. Two of them still blocked Taylor from helping, and the Mouse Protector couldn't help her without letting up on the other seven to gang up on her.

And then another pair of chisel-like teeth clipped through a hamstring, and an enforcer went down heavy. More came running from every direction, if he had a little time he could resolve this. But the Boardwalk didn't have a lot of rats, not enough hiding places with all the recent construction. So for him to monitor the area, he had to spread them thin. Not enough to disable more than one or two guys, they needed numbers and position to use the bear-baiting maneuver. And the telescoping batons the enforcers held gave them enough reach and force that Mouse Protector was forced to spend more time defending herself, rather than pressing the offensive. The tide was turning, and he wasn't sure the rats would arrive in time to turn it back.

"Oh shit! Guys, fucking stop!" one of the two blockading enforcers yelled, spinning in place with Taylor's phone in his hands. "This guy s the fucking Druid!"

The seven of them froze in place, while Mouse Protector stood over him, holding her plank at the ready, and they all froze as the men realized what had happened here. And then the rats arrived, and just flayed them.


"It's like you're not happy unless you're dancing on the edge of getting kicked out!" Glenn railed, gesturing wildly. "With Piggot you antagonized her directly, went after her power and her pride until she was looking for opportunities to throw you out without besmirching her own reputation. But now that you've got a big softy like me that lets you get away with stuff, you do this! How am I supposed to deal with this? How do we bounce back from this? You're starting fights with security guards, crippling them, disfiguring them horribly, and nearly killing them. There's no spin on this! The best spin just keeps you out of the Birdcage!"

"There's a lot of accumulated damage to the knee here, mind if I just clean that up while I'm at it?" Panacea asked.

"Go for it," he said, then turned back to Glenn. "I caught a rapist in the act and I stopped him. Maybe I went too far. It was the heat of the moment dealing with a rapist in the act of raping someone. Get that? I've got the evidence because I was building a case against the whole organization and I was going to take them down with him. And then nine of his friends came looking for me, abducted me out of a public space, crippled me, and then showed every intention of beating me to death. So then, after my second near-death beating in the past week, I reacted strongly in my own defense and the defense of my daughter who was on scene. And you're going to make me out to be the bad guy here assaulting these innocent security guards? They're enforcers, Director Chambers. Learn the local dialect."

"Well, they didn't know they were defending a rapist," Glenn answered back.

"Is that the best you can do for making excuses for them?" Danny scoffed. "They made a premeditated effort to abduct, torture, and kill me in cold blood, and you think that none of them knew what their buddy was up to just a few hundred feet away while he was still on the clock?"

The director sighed, and crumpled into a chair. "Of course they're in the wrong. Jesus, there's almost nothing a man can do to earn a meaningful beating like rape. But I have to explain this stuff, reason with people, I have to show our side of it. And I have to show that we're safe, and in control, and we're good for business."

"I'm gonna repair some liver damage while I'm here," Panacea said.

"Thank you," he said towards her, then turned back to the director. "I understand the tight spot you're in. It's a rock and a hard place. They're utterly corrupt. You have to convince them that we're only interested in the kind of crime they're not perpetrating, but that we'll never interfere with the crimes they are perpetrating. You need to tell them that they will always profit from exploiting and coercing other people and make them feel like they've got the moral high ground at the same time. You represent law and order but they only want order, I get that. I'm sure every day you have to choke back the urge to remind them that they're the bad guys and they don't get to dictate terms to superheroes. But Glenn, just because you're glad-handing them above the table and taking their money, doesn't mean that those of us doing the street work should compromise over when a man is allowed to rape a woman or beat a kid half to death. That's how we divide our labor, right? I stop bad people from doing bad things, and you say the sweet words so they don't use their influence to shut us down. And someday we'll have this place cleaned up so that you don't have to sugar-coat the news and play coy parlor games with embezzlers and racketeers."

"Don't need this now," Glenn said, slouched so deep that his belly pushed up and his chin pushed down until he was talking into his own belly.

"You don't need all these free radicals do you? And I could adjust these neotonous hormone levels..."

"Glenn, I know it sucks. But everyone in this city knows that what the enforcers do is wrong. They look the other way, and I think we've proven why that is, eh?" He gestured down at himself, in a hospital bed again with Panacea fixing him up again. "The Boardwalk shop owners put themselves above the law. And for the people of Brockton Bay to really and truly believe that things are going to be all right, and that the good guys are going to win, they need to see the enforcers thrown out. This is a city where people who live in the wrong place get the shit beaten out of them for walking into the wrong area to see the pretty parts of the city. Nobody with a conscience can defend that."

The director just muttered curse words to himself while Panacea worked.

"So what happens to those enforcers that know my secret identity now? And probably Mouse Protector, too?"

He kept murmuring swear words at his stomach for a minute, then looked up at Danny. "You'd like to know that, huh? Well, this is the part that gets really expensive. They're going to be monitored to make sure they don't tell anyone. Electronics, audio, mail, every conversation they have is going to be checked to make sure they don't tell. And if they do ever tell, they get immediately sent to trial for conspiracy to commit murder with a superpower and accessory to attempted murder with a superpower. They're not allowed to leave the area, and they'll need to check in regularly. It's almost a lifetime house arrest. And is it expensive to assign all that personnel to keeping an eye on them? You bet it is. But do we take those efforts to protect your ungrateful butt? You bet we do. Nine of them, Rat. Round-the-clock surveillance on nine people for life because you couldn't stick with a professional investigation."

"You're calling me Rat again."

"You're acting like a rat again," Glenn said, frowning.

"Brace yourself," Panacea said. "This is gonna feel weird." And then she slid the knee back into place with a deep 'thock!' sound.

"Truth in advertising," Danny said, rubbing his hands up and down the joint as if to massage pins and needles out of it.

The acting director sat up straight and then pushed himself to a standing position. "All right then. You call me before you start any more crises, okay? I'm tired of being blindsided by stuff." He walked out in such a funk that it took a minute for either Panacea or Danny to talk for a minute.

"So," he said. "You do a bioscan on anyone you touch, don't you?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Lots of parahumans, right?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think you could tell the difference between someone that got their powers naturally and someone who was treated by an outside party?"

She turned and looked at him, up and down his face to see if he was kidding or lying. "You're saying that not all powers are the result of a natural trigger event?" she asked.

"I m saying that. And it looks like it's connected to some bigger mysteries. I just figured that you have more hands-on experience with parahuman biology that anyone I'm likely to ever find again."

She frowned. "I have never noticed anything. But I'll make a point of checking from now on, to see what I can see."

"Thanks," he said. "I owe you. Again."

She patted his hand, smiled, and got up to leave the room. "By the way, I think that Mouse Protector really likes you," she said, pausing in the doorway.

"That sucks," he said, sighing. "I'm really committed to the single-father image, you know? Just one of those guys that think that dating again is disrespectful to the dead."

"Not a healthy attitude," the girl replied. "Moving on is important."

"I'm not really a poster-child of healthy attitudes," he pointed out.

"You raise a good point. I'll see you next time."