Author's note: Some reviews have made clear that I did not do a good job explaining something several chapters ago. To clarify: Danny had a second trigger event in Chapter Nine, while he was arguing with Director Piggot about her undoing his entire life's work because of her disdain for him. It is in fact similar to canon Skitter's ability to manipulate parahumans and her unerring tactical sense, though in Danny's case the tactical application is partly about social engineering as well as some combat applications. I intend to go back to chapter nine and clarify this better, over the weekend. Sorry for the issue.

"You think that it's dangerous to be confident?" Taylor said, taking her eye off the road to look over at him with an eyebrow raised.

"Well, it's not just as simple as that," Danny said. "Careful of that broken glass, don't want a flat tire. It's more like sometimes, I get so sure of myself that I stop thinking about why I'm so sure of myself. If I start making bad decisions, catastrophically bad decisions, I won't even know it. Even if someone tries to tell me. Heck, I've been able to talk people into things, so if they try to talk sense into me, I could just drag them into my mistakes."

"But you think that I might help?" she prompted. The wind lifted the long black hair off of her shoulders, branches rustling all above them. It was cooling and comfortable, but as tired as both their legs were it was just another obstacle that made their complaining muscles protest louder. The city's roads were far from fixed up. Leviathan had done a lot of damage, and it was only partly repaired. Lamia's mutants had done a lot of destruction of their own. But the city had at least managed to lay out planks and platforms at the intersections. It was enough for cars to cross slowly, trucks to cross carefully, and bikes to cross easily. Large numbers of citizens had already sold their cars out of town and were commuting by bike full-time.

Danny looked both ways before crossing, with Taylor right at his side. "You shook me out of it before, for a few seconds. I think that if you were aware of it, you'd be able to keep me on an even keel. I don't think I ever really had destructive or self-destructive tendencies before, but maybe I have them now. God knows, a lot of what I've accomplished, that seemed like such a great idea at the time, has looked pretty bad in retrospect."

"You killed Leviathan," she reminded him. They went silent a few seconds as a twenty-something barista passed them up.

"I did help kill Leviathan," he admitted. "And that one seems like a great victory, but maybe if I hadn't he would have killed Lamia. He was heading west, and she was in the west side of the city. And when I did help kill him, it blew up a good-sized piece of the city, that wasn't great either. I'm lucky that it wasn't a black hole or something that destroyed the earth, I had Tattletale telling me that it was a mysterious creature with a core that defied normal physics, and I told Flechette and Alexandria to stab it in the physics-breaking heart with a physics-breaking steel beam. That's just about the most reckless thing anyone could have ever done. And there's other possibilities, other stuff that may be going wrong because of it. Look, I'm not saying to stop me from doing anything at all. I'm just saying that I need someone to keep an eye on me when I stop acting like myself. And I need it to be someone who is really, really important to me."

"You're just saying that because you're my father."

"No. I love you because I'm your father. I trust you and respect you because I have spent enough time around you to know you well."

"Pull over," Taylor said. "We need a hug."


The city was bustling in some districts, but others looked like a photograph. In the middle of the day the Docks area was almost surreally still once one was away from the harbor district. Businesses here were having a hard time, and the residents were all at work. Any children enjoying their summer vacation still were doing it safely indoors. With no wind and no clouds, everything was so utterly still that it felt dreamlike. It gave him an impression of the city itself, without the people, without things happening or sounds to distract; just the city itself, the buildings and the place. The way the architecture changed from block to block, showed how different classes and different time periods affected the design of the city. It was rather like the way that tree rings could show a good year or a drought year.

"You're quiet," Taylor pointed out.

"I'm giving Trainwreck instructions on how to make the factory most convenient to the waterline. And I'm watching Circus training Salvage and making sure she doesn't go too far. And I'm keeping an eye on Uber while he works his blueprints. And the rest of the city. I'm being briefed on crimes reported to the police and sniffing around for evidence at the same time. I'm chewing through a fuel line to keep a kidnapper from escaping before the cops arrive. I'm bringing a contingent of harvest mice to Panacea so she can turn them into repeaters so I can watch the countryside at the edge of the city itself. I'm leading some homeless families to an easy meal. And I'm enjoying a quiet afternoon with my daughter, just enjoying the view. I don't really look at the city much, you know? The last several weeks I was in the Druid armor, and the augmented-reality faceplate was informative but it has no atmosphere. The last several days I've been tied up by the Lamia situation and the evacuation of the Protectorate. Before all of that I was just adjusting to my powers. I haven't, just, y'know, eased up and just enjoyed an afternoon in a while."

"It sounds like you're really, really bad at taking it easy," Taylor pointed out. "You're doing a hundred Wharf Rat things at the same time, and you think that's chilling out."

He shrugged. "Matter of perspective. This whole 'infinite multitask' thing is a real game changer. Early on it was weird and distracting. But once you've learned how to see through a hundred sets of eyes, a million eyes, it's hard to be just a person. Sometimes I have to let all of that stuff be... someone else, something else. Kind of like putting it on autopilot, except that it's... well, not that at all. But sometimes I have to just put that stuff in one place, and put myself in another place, and just act like Danny for a while, even if I can't switch off all the rats, all the mice."

"We could just do this all the time," she pointed out. "You could just let the Wharf Rat be this thing that happens in the city, while Danny Hebert is just here hanging out with me. We could get another house just like the last one, and have each other full-time. I mean, you've got rats everywhere to see everything. You've got hologram projectors and hologram overrides. You've got consoles that let you send phone calls or comm signals using your own voice, operated by mice at tiny keyboards. If you do it right, nobody would ever know you were away. You drop by every so often to keep Oni Lee company, and the rest of the time you're a voice on the phone, watching everything and always helping."

"Like Charlie and his angels," Danny chuckled. "I have to admit, it's awfully tempting. And probably feasible. We might get to try something like that soon."

Taylor made a face. "This is the part I'm going to hate, you've already got an excuse for why you've got to be there yourself, doing all that stuff. I'm not sure there's anything more condescending than a well-rehearsed 'yes but'."

"I assure you there is plenty more condescending than that," Danny said, grinning wryly. "But the last several times I've been in trouble, or the city was in trouble, it was because I got blindsided. When I was working with the Protectorate, I got pulled into their way of doing things, their rhythm and pace. And it's defensive. I was sitting back and waiting for things to go wrong. And you can't stop things from going wrong like that. That's not helping people, that's just damage control. And I need to stop that happening. I need to get back to the system that worked for me. Back when I was riding around and investigating, things went well for me. I took down Lung and the ABB, made it look easy. I dismantled half of the Empire Eighty-Eight. And I did it proactively. Things started going wrong for me when I fought Butcher. When I let the Travelers slip away because PRT policy said to wait them out. When I started public patrols to make public appearances. Hell, I managed to find a way to be proactive against Leviathan, and that turned out better than anyone expected."

Taylor tied her hair back, getting the curls up off the back of her neck. It was a warm day, and the weight of it on her skin was just enough to start her sweating, even sitting astride their bikes in the shade. "Okay, so you want to take bad guys down before they come after you. I get that. So, how does that keep you from just chilling at home and sipping a beer while the Wharf Rat does his thing?"

"Well, at this point there aren't any real threats to the city, inside the city," he said, his tone guarded.

She turned to face him incredulously. "Wait, you want to go out of Brockton Bay to go find more bad guys to pummel? You've solved all the local problems so you want to go find other trouble to solve? What the hell, dad?"

He sighed and leaned his elbows on the handlebars, his arms crossed. "I wouldn't have put it that way, but you're not wrong. Now, I'm not going to say that I don't have my doubts. I've got plenty. But I know that people are going to be coming after us. This is a port city with no smuggling, so every cartel and dealer is going to think they need to come here to set up a smuggling operation. We've got underground casinos that don't pay protection money, so every strong-arm and capo is going to think they need to come here and demand protection money. There's no villains anymore, so every villain is thinking that there's no competition, and no heroes. I'm watching everything, all the time, to make sure that there's no villains moving in and setting up shop. And they're going to hurt people here, unless I stop them before they even get to the city."

"Not crazy about it," Taylor said.

Both of them stopped talking as they watched a single cyclist ride past. The young woman wheeled down the sidewalk, feet pumping steadily. She wore blue jeans and a white blouse, her loose black hair bobbing off her shoulders as she rode. She passed within feet of them, without sparing either of them a glance. It seemed even more surreal and liminal than the utter stillness of the street before she arrived. She crossed them and then rode away, disappearing down the block and vanishing into the distance.

Danny spent the time thinking about his next words. "I was really ready to call this a retirement and just keep an eye on the city, and phone the PRT every time the villains turn up and let them know where to go to make the arrest. But I know there's going to be more threats. And soon. Brockton is cursed or something, or maybe just us. Or just me, I don't know. But we're not done. I'd like to be done. But Gambler is pretty clear that there's more danger on the way. I can either get ahead of it, or fall behind it."

Taylor did not move, just stared across the street as if she was memorizing the pawn shop's frontage. "Shit," she finally said.

"Yeah."

She sat up straight, one foot on the ground and one on the pedals. "How many more times, dad? How many more of these are we going to do?"

"Between four and eight," he said. "Depending on how things go, or on what you define as a battle. Less if we lose, but if we lose it.. goes badly."

"Obviously," she said, and sighed. "You and your darn cryptic precognitive. I know that girl would give clearer answers if she could, but it doesn't keep me from getting annoyed with the whole thing. Though I suppose it's tons better than not having any precognitive at all. Still, four sounds... good. And eight sounds manageable. As long as they're not all like the Lamia Slaughterhouse debacle."

Danny straightened, and turned the handlebars. "I can promise you easily that I'll do everything in my power to keep that from happening again. C'mon, let's get some sandwiches while we talk this out."

The put up their kickstands and rode for a bit. The warmth of the ride brought sweat to their skin, but the slight breeze evaporated it away. Crossing from the Docks to downtown, they had to pause for a break in car traffic before they could ride across. The growth rings of a tree, from drought to thriving.

"Say, dad, I meant to ask, now that the PRT isn't paying you a paycheck anymore, what are you doing for sandwich money?" she asked.

He paused before he answered. "Well, for time being I'm paid as an employee advocate for Leet and Uber's new factory. I'm liaising between them and the Dockworkers Association. It's aboveboard work, taxes paid and everything, so I can slip back into a secret identity for a while. I think that the guys thought this was going to be just some cushy title for a free paycheck that wouldn't bother me or distract me, but I think they've underestimated how seriously I take the union."


Danny was wearing his best suit. It was a new one, befitting his new paycheck. And also befitting his new shoulders, he had put on some muscle during his time with the Protectorate. With his head shaved, his glasses missing, and a summer tan, few people would have recognized him from before his Wharf Rat days.

The mayor was one of those people. "You," he said with a deep current of venom. "I remember you. I don't forget anyone that threatens me like you threatened me."

"Indeed, your honor," Danny said, closing the door behind him. "And once again, I had to sit on a waiting list just to get ten minutes of your time. Now, you may recall that I represent the Dockworkers Association-"

The mayor dropped a hand onto his phone. "I should have you thrown out."

"I know why Rory doesn't play professional sports," Danny said. "If you get my meaning." He held up one hand, fingers and thumb curled into the shape of a C, cocked upwards so the open end looked like a spilling cup or a tilted U.

The mayor took his hand back, glaring daggers at the union representative. "Rory had moved to a college out of state, he can mind his own business."

"And I can tell Cauldron that you're the one that led me to them," he said. "You know you don't want that. I can lay out the paper trail that I followed from you to your son to their doorstep. Because there was a paper trail, you know. It took a lot of patience, but now the dots are connected. So, rather than minding Rory's business, let's discuss your business."

Mayor Christner stepped back behind his desk and sat down. His hair looked a little flatter, thinner, less leonine than before. "What about my business?"

"Right now there's a ton of cash coming in. Federal emergency funds, PRT recovery funds, charitable donations. And I just want to make sure that the money goes where it was intended. Infrastructure, public works, utility improvements, heavy industry, local jobs, things like that. Because, after the Leviathan attack, the city just sort of patched a band-aid onto the major problems, and then started issuing no-bid contracts to a short list of real estate holdings and private developers, half of which trace back to companies you sit on the board for. You skimmed every level of that recovery money, taking cuts off the top and then cuts off other people's cuts. But this is too important for your usual kickbacks and underhanded dealings." Danny crossed his ankle over his knee, and laced his fingers together as he spoke. "Mayor Christner, I know that you intend to squander the recovery money. You're going to pay your own companies at inflated rates for substandard work and pocket the difference, to repair private businesses owned by your friends and partners. And you're going to have the insurance companies you own write off the claims for the maximum amount and divert the federal funds to an insurance bailout. And then when the broken roads start to corrode further, or the next attack hits, you're going to have the city condemned and take the payouts to relocate your businesses and bury the evidence of your shady double-dealings here in Brockton Bay. That, your honor, is your business."

The mayor went very, very still. "How could you know anything at all about my business?"

"I've spent months untangling your paper trails," Danny said. And I've had mice in your house listening in your phone calls. "Your honor, I don't know everything about your business. But I've learned how you hide your dirty laundry, and that's what's important today. Now then, I need to know that this reconstruction project is going to go by the books. No shady deals, no sketchy contracts, no diverted funds, no bailouts in exchange for campaign contributions."

"There's already too much in the works," the mayor said. "I've made commitments, I've already started the wheels turning. It can't be backed out now."

"Unless you resign?"

"I-" the mayor blurted, then paused, the sound dying in his throat. He sank back, staring balefully at Danny. Slowly he spoke again. "If I resign, then the contracts I signed that have not been executed yet go back to the city council for review. But the council will just renew them as-is and send them back to be signed by the interim mayor. Nothing would change."

"Unless the council foreman were to resign, and the first and fourth district aldermen," Danny said. "And Judge Klein."

Mayor Christner held Danny's eyes, rock steady, and opened his desk drawer. Danny was ready for a gun, but wasn't expecting a remote control. The mayor raised it, pressed a button, and a television blared to life in the corner.

"-surprising developments in the city council as three members were today indicted for fraud, racketeering, embezzlement, money laundering, graft, bribery, and obstruction of justice. Also under investigation is Judge Klein of the city's-"

"I thought they were going to resign," Mayor Christner said levelly, staring at Danny as he shut off the television.

Danny shrugged without unlacing his fingers. "They didn't resign fast enough."


Danny and Taylor stood in the crowd, eating shaved ice from the concession cart. "Three!" they yelled with the rest of the people gathered at the construction site. "Two! One!" and thousands of voices cheered together as Trainwreck pushed down a plunger that looked like an old-timey dynamite detonator. There was a second or two of a pause, then a rumble, and then the building snapped up into place behind him, rising from the ground in a second. Metal straps snapped tight, hauling debris and rubble together, forcing them together. The metal straps were woven together so that the bound concrete was forced into a specific shape, and the walls and ceiling leaped up from the ground like a special effect, a demolition in reverse. Walls five feet thick supported the ceiling, and then the interior support pillars snapped into place. The crowd cheered while a troupe of new figures marched into the open, carrying huge rusty tanks with hoses attached to sprayer nozzles. The figures wore a basic black, and carried different size tanks. One was sixteen feet tall and carried a tank the size of a bobtail truck, four of them stood eight to ten feet tall and carried tanks the size of small cars. They moved in on the building and started spraying a foam out of their tanks that splattered onto the rough walls and hardened to cement in seconds, sealing the walls. One human sized figure in black was carrying an outsized tank, the last two human-sized figures carried more reasonable equipment.

Uber and Leet traded a high five on the stage, while Trainwreck just stared at it all and looked very pleased with himself. After a minute, Uber moved back to the microphone. "All right, they're going to be sealing up the walls for a while, so let's not stand here staring. We're going to be moving in the machinery all week, and while most of our management is already hired we need hands! Hundreds of hands! So find our website, put in your application. We do on-the-job training, marketable skills you can take with you to any industry or manufacturing job. We do the work in Brockton, we keep the jobs in Brockton, we're here to help Brockton!"

The crowd cheered. He was surprisingly good at public speaking. Sure, his power could make him an expert at anything, but it was a bit surprising to see. Taylor nudged her father. "So, where'd they get the concrete?"

"Some of it's asphalt from Leviathan's attack. Some of it's from the buildings that Purity leveled when she went on her rampage. Or the Lamia Slaughterhouse. This city's been collecting rubble and debris for months, but Trainwreck built something out of it. Building materials for pennies on the dollar," Danny said. "The stuff he makes doesn't last long, but they only needed to last long enough to make one building. And now he's going to make more tinkertech stuff to build the machines that Uber designed, and since he didn't build those things himself they'll last the regular lifetime."

"You seem to know a lot about this," said a teenage boy from nearby.

"I do, yeah," Danny said, giving a smile. "I'm their liaison with the Dockworkers Association, I've been working with them for a few days. And they love to talk about their project. In fact, it was Taylor here that gave them the name they're using." He gestured at the sign on the side lawn. The sign read Future Site of Scavenger Industries!, and a man in coveralls was striking out the word "future" even as they spoke.

The teenage boy nodded, looking around. "So, you know the management. Do you think you could get me a word with them?"

"From what I understand, it's hard to say a word they don't hear," Taylor pointed out.

"But, if you want a face-to-face, I'll need to know what it's about," Danny said.

"It's about joining up," the boy said. "My name's Theo Anders, and I'm a parahuman."


"I gotta confess," Trainwreck said. "I'm impressed by your powerset. Lots of utility there. But the name just doesn't speak to me."

Theo Anders looked nervous with this sort of scrutiny. "Uh, I can change the name, sure, I just wouldn't know what to change it to."

"The name's fine," Danny said.

"It's a bit lame," Taylor rebutted.

"We favor understated names around here," Danny pointed out. "Well, except for Uber and Leet, but they skate by because of the irony of it."

"Thanks," Uber said smugly, then leaned forward as he understood. "Hey!"

"So, tell us where you've been and what's been going on," Panacea said, staring at the teenage boy.

Theo took a deep breath but didn't look at any of them directly. "Okay, so after the Wharf Rat took out Crusader, my stepmother Kayden took -"

"I knew I recognized you!" Danny said, slapping the table. "You were in that apartment the day I got Crusader!"

"Yeah, I was. Anyway, the PRT kidnapped Aster-"

"A judge declared her unfit because she was a career criminal and the child was taken into the foster system," Pariah interrupted.

"Uh, yeah. Anyway, she got captured, Wharf Rat again, and so my father didn't have anyone left in Brockton to dump me with, and he put me up. And then when he and the rest of Empire left the city, they took me with them. And then my father, Kaiser, uh Max Anders, put his sister in charge of testing me to provoke my trigger event. I don't know if you guys have ever heard about Iron Rain, but -"

"Similar powers to Kaiser, except she creates spears, blades, and metal weights that drop out of the air instead of emerging from solid objects," Salvage said. "Her personality has been described as similar to her brother's, but with the brakes taken off."

"Basically," Theo said. "She's not any more sadistic or barbaric or narcissistic than him, she's just less restrained. They spent weeks drilling me to make me manifest powers. She got Fenja, Menja, even Hookwolf to help her push me to the limits. Spears falling at me, giant swords swinging at me, being chased by giant chainsaw-monsters, only pausing when I was doing pushups or sit-ups or pull-ups, and even then only briefly. It was... it was pretty bad."

"I should think so," Danny said. "You're at least forty pounds lighter than you were when you left."

"Twenty pounds, some of it came back as muscle," Theo corrected. "Anyway, I was at dinner listening to my father tell me what a failure I was and how I wasn't worth the trouble, even superpowers wouldn't make me a strong person just a strong failure... and then everything went weird and I triggered. After that, there were two of me and not just one. One of me was always invisible and immaterial, the other was solid and visible. And we could switch back and forth-"

"-any time we felt like," said Theo from the other side of the room. "It's always me, and I can see through both sets of eyes," he said, walking across the room from left to right. "But I can't disappear both of me at the same time, or appear both of me at the same time." He vanished again and the Theo in the chair reappeared. "So that was the first thing I noticed about it, and it helped me get away from Iron Rain's spears and stuff, let me dodge her attacks a lot more easily. It was a complete accident when I found out that I'd inherited a bit of my mother's size changing abilities."

He vanished, and the other Theo appeared, still walking back and forth across the room. But this time he was ten feet tall, nearly scraping his head on the ceiling. "This is nearly my biggest size, not very big as size changers go," he admitted. "Still, enough to get the edge on most noncombatants or unpowered folks. Especially with the element of surprise that I'm always going to have. Most teleporters, they need a split second to reorient themselves when they teleport, but since all I'm doing is becoming solid or intangible, there's no disorientation." He vanished and was replaced by a foot-tall Theo that stood on his chair to be seen around the table. "And, I can only change my size while I'm dematerialized. But while my maximum size caps out at about eleven feet, I don't seem to have a minimum size. I've gotten myself down small enough that I got picked up by a stray breeze like a speck of dust. I may be able to get small enough to handle atoms, I don't think it's safe to try though. There's nothing to breathe if you're smaller than an oxygen molecule." The small Theo was replaced by the pacing Theo, back to regular size. "So, that's what I've got. Do you think you've got a place for me?"

"I was sold when I found out that you ran away from a gang of white supremacists," Pariah said. "It takes guts to leave home, even an abusive home. But you hated what they were about so badly that you came to search out the guy that chased your father away, and I respect that as much as I hate what your father does."

Salvage nodded. "I'm ready to get you in just so I won't be the new guy anymore. These folks all worked together before I showed up, and it's awkward."

Uber squinted thoughtfully. "Do you know how rare it is to have actual invisibility? Much less with that walk-through-walls stuff? You're like the only guy who could possibly be a better scout than Wharf Rat. And if we get you some weapons, you'll be- oh, don't freak out, doesn't need to be anything lethal. But you're absolutely right about the advantage of surprise. You've got the goods, you've got the powers, and you've got the right attitude."

Leet nodded, and Panacea too. Gambler had already logged her vote in his favor before anyone else knew who Theo was. Circus and Oni Lee both stared at him impassively, and he seemed creeped out by them. Trainwreck shook his name. "I say again: the power's good, the kid's good, but... Gulliver? It's just an awful name."

"Yeah, it's a real... train wreck," Panacea grinned.

"Bite me."

"I think it's damn near the only name you can pick when your powers let you travel great distances, shrink and grow," Pariah said. "Really now, what other name covers all of that?"

"Macro-scale quantum mechanics," Uber volunteered.

"What other name that most people can pronounce?" Pariah corrected.

"Nah, the issue is that macro-scale quantum mechanics would include about a hundred powers that Theo doesn't have," Leet said.

Panacea rolled her eyes. "Let him have his literary name. For pity's sakes, it's at least easier for most people to spell and pronounce than 'panacea'."

"If we bring you on board," Danny said quietly. "You're going to work as hard as you did for Iron Rain and Kaiser. Training, drilling, working, fighting. And, we're going to make sure you get back into school when it starts-"

"Week after next," Taylor contributed.

"Shit, already?" Danny flinched. "God, time flies. Okay, week after next. Like I said, training, drilling, working out, working with us, all of that. But somehow, I think it'll be a lot easier for you here than it was working for them."

"Why is that?" Leet asked, cocking his head to the side.

"Because it wasn't the hard work and training that gave him his powers," Danny said. "The trigger event was mental, not physical. Forgive a bit of armchair psychoanalysis for a minute: Kaiser is a classical narcissist and a sociopath. He worked relentlessly to break down your confidence and keep you insecure. And then he used that insecurity to bludgeon you with. He would alternate between demanding that you be strong enough to stand up for yourself, and cutting you down to make sure you couldn't stand up for yourself. He would alternate his demands, so that whatever you were doing was the wrong thing to do. You turned into a textbook escapist-enabler because of him. All your life you've just retreated into yourself and done whatever other people want so they'll leave you alone. That's how your power manifested. It makes you big and imposing or small and unassuming, depending on what you need to be. You needed to be two people, so you became two people. And it made you the perfect getaway artist to escape the trouble you were in. We could work Gulliver twice as hard as Kaiser and his sister did, as long as we never told him he was wrong for doing exactly what we said to do."

"Well, damn," Theo said, sitting back, his eyes wide.

"Maybe I'm wrong," Danny said. "But I probably got most of it right. And I can tell you that we're not going to yell at you for doing the right thing."

"The name's fine," Trainwreck said, turning away. "So, now we're up to twelve members. Damn."

"Twelve?" Pariah said, glancing around and taking a quick count. "Oh, you're including Taylor."

"Damn right I am," Trainwreck said. "She punched out Jack Slash, that's an asset to any team."

"Yeah, guys, hey," she said, waving her hand for a bit of attention, "no powers, remember?"

Pariah smirked. "If the high-and-mighty oh-so-noble Protectorate can bend the rules to let you in without powers, I think the rogues and misfits of the Scavengers can get away with it."

Uber looked over at Leet. "We're discussing this? I thought she was a founding member."

"Fine," Taylor said, raising her hands in surrender. "But still, no powers."

"I've still got the plans for your Benthic armor," Leet said. "I don't need to invent anything, but I could if I need to."

Panacea raised her hand to speak. "I can do some modifications. I've been practicing somewhat. I can probably get you superhuman senses, muscle density, some organic weaponry, things like that."

Uber looked over at Danny. "Remember that stuff you were saying about me making myself an expert martial-arts instructor? I can start teaching her any fighting style you like, and she'll pick it up faster than almost anyone else could."

"I can probably upgrade the armor," Trainwreck said. "Trade out the capacitors for disposable fuel cells. I can whip 'em up a dozen at a time and they'll give you a hell of a lot of oomph."

Danny grinned over at his daughter, and she had to suppress a smile. Because they both saw already that working together in the Scavengers was not going to be like working different shifts in the Protectorate and Wards.


A month later, the changes to the city were clear and obvious. The new mayor, under judicious pressure, had made rapid changes to the city's infrastructure and roads, putting together a stunning repair job. Part of the roadwork was sped up by the contributions of Scavenger Industries, Trainwreck was shockingly good at building construction equipment and earthmovers that would last long a few weeks. The city had plenty of manpower to run the machines, working three shifts a day to get things fixed. And it was sped up and simplified further by narrowing the streets; in many places the major damage in the center lanes of the road were either filled in with dirt and planted with grass to make a median divider. The city had less traffic congestion since the population had adapted to riding buses and bikes or just walking about, they didn't need as much road as they had before. And with fewer lanes it was easier to make a fix and get the planks out of the way, replaced by recently-poured asphalt.

The Protectorate Tower was gone, though the PRT offices next door still stood, and the excess PRT personnel from the Tower had been redistributed to the police precincts for consultation and armed support if necessary. The Tower itself had been broken down for steel and concrete, fed to Scavenger Industries for materials. The Boat Graveyard was also gone, the rusted metal converted into bulldozers and cranes to fix the city, leaving behind a clean new stretch of harbor for loading and unloading. With new jobs in that area and no more eyesore, land values began to rise and the neighborhoods improved as the residents found their squalid homes now had equity and investment value. The big flat gray warty square of Scavenger Industries sat near the north ferry station in the Docks, convenient to the boat harbors and the trainyard. A lot of the senior management and engineers for the Scavengers actually commuted up from downtown on the ferry, while the more educated kids from the Docks got new jobs downtown. The division between the districts was beginning to dissipate. The Boardwalk was more bohemian now, the fashionable poor mingling with the fashionable rich. The overpriced Local Businessmen's Guild shops were losing their stranglehold on tourist money without their enforcers around to kick out the local art students who sold their wares or performed for the out-of-town visitors. The first of those established souvenir shops had already closed its doors, been bought out and replaced by a gallery serving local artists.

But it wasn't enough.

"Seriously, we've proven that there's a real industrial market out here!" Danny fumed, pacing. "We can get the factories going, we can hire people, ship in materials, ship out products! I've already got them a tax break for this stuff, and we've proven that the business works!"

"We can't force them to keep their doors open," Panacea said, calmly. "I mean, unless the Scavengers want to threaten or coerce them."

Danny tried not to snap. "I don't want anything like that! I just want them to do the right thing, the smart thing!"

"If people were good at doing what was right and smart, this would be a very different world," Panacea chuckled. "Seriously, we live in a world where people who get tortured or abused too much get superpowers that let them kill whoever is torturing and abusing them. And yet despite that, people did not stop abusing and torturing each other. Any sensible species would immediately have become as kind and peaceful as possible just to keep from getting set on fire, but humanity... well, it's what we have."

Danny paused in his pacing. "That is... that is a tremendously good point. Holy crap. But all I'm saying is that these other factory owners are throwing money away! They should be happy to stay in business! I mean, we're not pricing them out of the market, we're not underselling them by much, we're not paying our employees much over the market value. It's no more expensive for them to ship their materials into the city as it is for just us. Heck, we supply by ships and trains, the economy of scale should make it easier for them to cut costs! But instead..."

"Instead they're selling their land to a developer to turn into condos," Taylor said. She was half-sitting half-laying in a slouch chair, draped all over it. "Sorry Dad, but when the land values started coming up, they saw a payout. They're probably going to try to build new factories out in cheaper land further from the Docks, closer to poorer and more desperate people that will work cheaper."

"Cleaning up the Docks and bringing prosperity back to the city's manufacturing centers was supposed to solve problems," Danny half-shouted, turning his eyes up towards the ceiling. "Instead I've got greedy idiots causing new problems because they think they can get paid twice. But if they move their factories further from the water, it's going to send their costs up not down!"

"We're still lucky that they haven't moved all their business to Mexico or China," Taylor pointed out. "Maybe you just had your expectations pegged way too high." Panacea nodded but didn't say anything.

Danny paced around the room a full lap before he spoke again. "You know what Uber and Leet suggested? That we just buy out the factories they're selling, refit them, and expand our business. We could grab five or six in a row, and then we'd have to choose between whether we'd rather make scandalous profits, or just pay our employees several times the average wage for this work. But I know that if we try that, we're going to be pushing real close against the local monopoly laws. Taking that big a piece of the market share would kick in incentives for competitors. Have you looked at how those incentive payouts are arranged? I've looked at it. It would be more profitable for our so-called competitors to fire all their workers, keep the factories open in name only, and collect the subsidies. If we buy too many factories, all the other factories will lay off their people and refuse to sell to us. And if they keep selling off like they've been doing, it'll trigger the incentives anyway."

Panacea looked away from the other girl for a moment. "So, either Scavenger buys up several factories and puts them to work and the rest of the owners just sit back and collect free profit, or we don't buy them and they build condos until they've sold enough to sit back and collect free profit. Sounds like a stupid law, someone should make a better law."

"The owners of a local factory putting forward a motion to the city council to change the monopoly laws just as the rest of the competition is dropping out? That looks bad," Danny said. "Heck, it is bad! There's no way that won't end up completely corrupt. There is nothing we could propose that wouldn't wind up with us abusing our influence and authority to earn more money."

"It's not like we keep the money," Taylor said. "Surely that changes things?"

Panacea tapped the other girl on the elbow. "Okay, you're done for now."

Taylor nodded and stood up, shook herself out. "Any side effects I should know about?"

"Food cravings are likely to be intense this time," Panacea said. "Especially for meat and colored vegetables. No matter what food cravings you get, don't eat anything raw. There may be some pain, aching and soreness is fine, if it progresses to shooting pain let me know. There could be tremors in extremities, again call me immediately. If you poop anything you shouldn't poop, call me immediately. Some skin peeling is normal, keep track of any flavors that taste different to you after this and let me know so I can adjust for it. I've left samples for myself in clearly labeled areas, I can reverse all the changes if I need to."

Taylor nodded. "Got it. Okay, I've gotta get back to my training. Thanks, Pan. And Dad? Leave this factory thing alone for a while, think things over, don't do anything impulsive." The door swung shut behind her, and Danny tried to control his pacing. And his ranting. He could hear her tone, he knew she was scolding him not to let his convictions take over and send him off the rails again. But he really missed the feeling of being right, and he was ready for all these swirling doubts and questions to be gone. It was hard to hold close to them when he could just start doing something and fix the problem. But, he knew that he could hurt a lot of people like that, so he held himself back.

Panacea stood and stretched. "Look, you've had a tough day, I've had a tough day, let's just let the chips fall where they may with this factory thing. It's starting to look like factories in this city might just not be meant to be. I don't know. But you need to go crash out, or you'll be tired tonight. Or, you can let me do some of the upgrades I put on your daughter. She only needs ninety minutes of sleep a day, and I didn't even mess with her brain directly."

Danny shook his head. "There may be a day soon when I want superhuman strength, regeneration, and only a little sleep each day, but not quite yet. Can you give me anything to help me sleep?"

"Yeah," she said, reaching forward and grasping his forearm. "Just a second... okay, that's in your bloodstream now. Get yourself in a bed or you'll wake up really uncomfortable."

"Thanks, Pan," he said, echoing his daughter. He went off in search of a bed, so he'd be well rested later. After all, in ten hours they were going to fly into Boston under cover of darkness and take out a lot of potential threats, and we've got a full briefing first."


The two shapes glided mostly silently through the night sky. The wings beat steadily, tirelessly, to support the weight of four people apiece. The gliders were larger than they seemed, sixty foot wingspans, but rather than the lazy glide of a large bird of prey they had the wingbeat pattern of a smaller bird. Most large birds used gliding instead of beating because they couldn't keep up the energy expenditure for long. But since these were shaped telekinetic constructs, usual biological limitations didn't apply.

"Okay, Sierra Leader, your GPS says you're nearly there. You just crossed city limits, heading to downtown." Dinah Alcott, the Gambler, was back home in Brockton Bay, but the comms kept them connected. And she was just as useful from back there as she was right in the thick of danger.

"Roger, Sierra Zero," he said, pressing his palm to the side of his head to activate the earpiece and shouting to be heard over the roaring wind. He looked over at the other glider, and pointed downward at a sloping angle, aimed at a cluster of low buildings on the verge of the downtown district. The young woman that sat at the head of that glider nodded, and their vehicles began dropping altitude, swooping down in that direction. He looked over his shoulder, and found his squad members stretching their legs, taking their bearings, and getting ready to deploy for the mission. He made eye contact with Circus, Uber, and Leet in particular and waited until each of them had given him a nod before he turned around to face the rooftop they were landing on. The gliders turned into broad crude parachutes in the last twenty feet, and they landed as softly as they could.

Wharf Rat tucked and rolled, coming up to his feet alongside the others. Trainwreck was still on the ground, wincing. "Sprained something," he muttered through gritted teeth, and Panacea moved to his side, laying her hands on to heal him up. Seconds wasted. It was seconds they had, but it showed a need for a little more practice and a little more precision. Meanwhile Circus was pulling his jacket out of her dimensional space and handing it to him, then handing slim backpacks to Uber and Oni Lee. Gulliver appeared at his normal human size, and handed Circus back her mallet. It was big, and heavy, and it took a lot of room in her dimensional space. But if it traveled with Gulliver, it had no mass at all. Oni Lee teleported in and adjusted his gear, sharing a nod with Wharf Rat, while Pariah unstitched the gliders they had ridden in on, folding the fabric up into a saddlebag she pulled out from under her blousy robes.

Danny directed thirty or forty rats to Amy, and she gave each one a brief touch as she repeated the familiar maneuver of turning ordinary rats into repeater rats. He sent those rats out into the city, broadening his range while he brought two blocks worth of rats all together for her. They swarmed up Amy's body, covering her in a thick layer, and she began rebuilding them, reshaping them, joining them together with a sample of Crawler that carried his power and forming her giant suit of biological armor. Salvage jumped down into the alleyway, and began unspooling his limbs to merge with trash and debris back there while Trainwreck went to assemble his new suit. Circus and Gulliver stepped in to help Uber set up the workstation.

"Sierra Zero, by cardinal directions," he said into his mouthpiece.

"West of you," she said, and he nodded, directing the repeater rats to the west. Pariah had reduced the gliders down to panels of fabric and thread, and she was restitching them while she called down into the alleyway where her teammates were disassembling an abandoned car. In a minute Pariah's headless horses were hitched up to Trainwreck's cart, and the team leaped into the open carriage while they worked. Trainwreck was assembling his armor with help from Panacea and Benthic, Uber and Leet were conferring in low voices over comms while the big man worked on their portable console. Salvage and Panacea were jogging alongside, with Oni Lee teleporting from rooftop to rooftop to give a running overwatch. Pariah unspooled some black cloth to form uniforms for Salvage and Panacea, stitching it directly over their bodies. With hoods pulled low and dim lighting, it could become hard to tell the different members of the Scavengers apart from each other.

He held up a hand, and the horses trotted to a halt and the tires of the cart came to a rest. "Okay, I think this is the place," Danny said. "Start deploying on Plan A while Sierra Ten confirms the location."

"Yeah, it's the spot," Gulliver said, glaring at the sprawling estate he had been held prisoner within. The front gates were ornate but solidly built, the walls were high and topped with a discreet ridge of broken glass and barbed wire. The main house was palatial, and there were a dozen outbuildings, guest houses and cabins. And in the basement was a gym and a regulation-size basketball court whose floor was trashed by thousands of spear points he had spent weeks dodging. The manor estate that Empire Eighty-Eight had bought out and hidden themselves in while they worked on rebuilding their network of criminal enterprises without the benefit of anonymity.

Oni Lee stopped next to Wharf Rat, and paused. "This should be easy," the Asian man said, his voice still faltering. All these weeks of recovery, and he still had a hard time taking the initiative enough to even ask a question. But he was more engaged, more involved in the world, even a casual glance made that clear.

"Absolutely," Danny reassured the man. "They're villains, they're tough, but they're nothing like the Lamia and her creations."

"Good," the man said, and jogged away.

Trainwreck pulled himself upright, wearing his shiny new suit of armor. It wouldn't last long, they never did, his power eroded the materials too fast. But for now, it was in top shape. "Sierra Eight, give a hand?" he prompted.

Pariah nodded and rolled out more black fabric, this time covering Trainwreck. It fit loosely in folds but was pulled in tight at the joints to keep it from interfering with movement, and to help conceal the shape underneath. Even in strong lighting, it would be hard to tell Trainwreck from Panacea or from one of Pariah's telekinetic constructs or from Gulliver at his full size, or Salvage at half-size. And since every one of those individuals had very different powers, and very different weaknesses, and different fighting styles, mixing them up could easily be the difference between victory and defeat for their enemy.

Small inconspicuous field mice and house mice began moving into the property, infiltrating every vent and room, while the Scavengers began moving to surround. Uber worked his console and remotely hacked the security system to loop the cameras and disable motion detectors and infrared sensors. With tinker-made gear, expertly-programmed intrusion software and expertly-executed hacking technique, he could work electronic magic. Danny leaned against the console while the rest of the team vaulted the estate's perimeter walls. Oni Lee helped Uber, Benthic and Circus vault over the fence. Pariah began filling her loose-fitting robes with telekinetic force, lifting her feet off the ground and bulking her out with virtual mass that turned her into a big, brawny hitter like Trainwreck and Panacea. Panacea's armor gave her the same size and strength, and with the alley trash he'd picked up Salvage was the same. And they had little trouble climbing over the tall wall, moving in with little real stealth but out here with nobody to hear them it didn't matter. Gulliver helped Oni Lee over the wall, they couldn't afford to have him teleport explosively to get inside and Danny was not ready to have Oni Lee give up all his recovery for the sake of this intrusion. Gulliver was the last of the team to move in, and he simply disappeared seamlessly.

"Sierra team, be aware that all members of Tango target are present in the area of engagement. Rules of engagement are still primary, take prisoners for the PRT and disengage if the only option is to kill or disengage. Tango targets are arranged as follows: In the main house, second floor, north side, we've got Tango One, Six, Seven, and Eight. Main house, first floor, south side, I see Tango Two and Four. In the poolhouse, upstairs, Tango Three and Nine. The guest house by the stables, Tango Four. Chauffeur's suite, Tango Five. Guest cottage, Tango Ten. Currently walking the footpath between north and west quadrants, Tango Eleven. Poolhouse ground level, Tango Twelve and Thirteen."

"Sierra One to Sierra Ten," Leet said over the channel.

"Go for Sierra Ten," Gulliver said.

"Your folks are nasty," Leet said.

Gulliver sighed into the comms. "I know it. Sierra Ten to Sierra Leader, permission to assault the main house second floor north side."

"Denied, Sierra Ten. You're needed at the poolhouse, you're targeting Tango Three and Nine. I don't want them to have a single second to resist. But, stand your alternate by at Tango One. Okay, Tango One and ... guests, in the main house upstairs, is going to Sierra Two, Five, and Six. Tango Two and Four are going to Sierra Three. Again, fast and hard, but nonlethal. Sierra Four, you get Tango Eleven."

"Aw, man," Trainwreck said. "The little girl?"

"The high-end telekinetic," Danny corrected. "Look, you're the one least able to make a silent breach, but your current armor moves fast over level terrain. You're best suited to an open-air attack. Sierra Seven, you're getting Tango Ten. He's near your position, you're resistant to his attacks, and that should free you up to play free safety. Sierra Eight, Tango Twelve and Thirteen. I fully expect you to have that wrapped up in seconds, if you get my meaning."

"I do, and I hate you for that."

Wharf Rat chuckled, but continued. "Sierra Nine, go straight for tango five in the garage, and don't hold back anything at all. Everyone remember, after your target is secured, escalate upwards. Got it?"

A full round of affirmatives and yeahs answered him.

"All right. Sierra Zero?"

"Eighty-ish percent, fluctuating. Be ready for changes, guys," Gambler said.

"You heard the precog," Trainwreck said. "All right, we're ready. On your mark, Sierra Leader."

"And three... two... one... go!"

Lots of things happened at once. Pariah leaned in to look through the window, and spotted Othala and Viktor in their bed. She punched out the window and shot a thread from her telekinetically-enhanced uniform out to pierce the blanket they slept under. They both woke up to find their sheets and pillows binding them tight and choking them unconscious. Panacea kicked in the door of Stormtiger's room and smashed him in the chest while he summoned up his compressed-air claws. He raked futilely at her Crawler-flesh arm while she made contact and flooded his system with sedatives. Trainwreck revved his engines and tore across the lawn, catching Rune with a sideswipe from one massive steel hand before she realized anyone had interrupted her nighttime stroll. Salvage busted through the wall of the garage into the chauffeur's quarters where Alabaster was playing video games, and the largest member of the Scavengers hit the white-skinned man with a massive haymaker punch that slammed him through the opposite wall, every bone broken. Oni Lee teleported into Iron Rain's bedroom, the explosion was devastating in those confined spaces. He pinned her in place by projecting excruciating pain while he used his tazer on Krieg to knock him out. And in the same second Kaiser's windows shattered from three directions as Benthic, Uber and Circus all leaped in through with a shower of glass. Circus reached up and grabbed her mallet out of the air and started swinging for Heith Anders, Theo's mother, but a sword blade shot out of the butt of the handle and speared into the ground, immobilizing it. Uber took a second to shift from his acrobatic skills to his martial arts skills, and in that second sword blades shot out of the walls and floor to pin him in. Benthic was grabbed by two buxom blondes, one on each arm, and while she was terribly strong they had leverage and mass, and started trying to shove her out the window even as they started growing, adding two feet to their height in a second. Meanwhile Gulliver was appearing in the room that Hookwolf and Cricket shared, and he held one tazer in each hand, already touching them with the triggers pulled to shock them unconscious without them ever seeing their assailant.

Mice watched each scene and Danny instantly coordinated the next phase. Mice on the console worked different controls to send several messages simultaneously to his team.

"Sierra Two, grab one and take her out with you, split them up."
"Sierra Three, secure them both then move to the north side of the house, between the kitchen table and the planter."
"Sierra Four, taze her to be sure then head for the garage."
"Sierra Five, switch to knives, nonlethal hits only, slow them down."
"Sierra Six, grapnel one of the blondes."
"Sierra Seven, head for the garage, arm up for big hits."
"Sierra Eight, finish with those two, be putting together two stuffed shirts."
"Sierra Nine, keep hitting him and don't let up."
"Sierra Ten, how many can you get?"

Benthic quit struggling to get free of the two blondes that were growing stronger by the second, and instead grabbed one of them with her own grip and threw herself backwards, using their own force to propel herself out onto the lawn. Either Fenja or Menja went with her, tumbling face-first, and let go of Benthic to catch herself. Oni Lee teleported out of the downstairs bedroom and down the hall towards the kitchen, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake as he traveled with rapid-fire short-range teleports. Trainwreck fired up his tazer gauntlet and shocked Rune to make sure she didn't interfere, then he dug his wheels in and shot off towards the garage where Salvage was pulping the white-skinned man. Circus let go of her mallet and started throwing knives; every one of her blades sunk into meaty flesh away from major organs or arteries, enough to hurt and to slow down the villains. Uber used the distraction to grab his grapnel gun and shoot it at one of the growing blondes, wrapping her arm in the cable and hauling her in towards him, bearing down on the blades that hemmed him in. Kaiser swore and flung out a hand, but rather than dispelling the swords he had made to hold Uber in place he created new ones that slanted against them from the outside, so that the blonde would hit the blunt side safely and shove the blades towards Uber. He let himself tumble backwards out the window to dodge the blades, and the growing woman followed him. Panacea was sprinting across the lawn, adapting her Crawler armor for vicious organic weapons and giant claws while she moved to support Salvage. Pariah kept throttling Viktor unconscious with his own blanket, Othala was already out, and with her other hand she started pulling the last of her black fabric out of her belt pouch and tossed it out to form two more telekinetic constructs, indistinguishable from herself. Salvage leaped to the offense as Alabaster rolled back up to his feet, unharmed and untroubled. The white-skinned man could recover nearly instantly from any damage, but not quite fast enough to keep from getting hit again and pounded to paste. Back in Kaiser's bedroom, Gulliver appeared out of nowhere and shocked his mother unconscious, thrusting both tasers into her neck to bring her down. He was as tall as she was right then, and the tasers were similarly outsized. He knew how fast her durability scaled up when she had started growing, and he did not hold back. Kaiser was lunging for the windows, and paused when he spotted the two fights out on the lawn.

"Sierra Two, roll clear, wait for backup, play for time."
"Sierra Three, straight up, let 'em have it."
"Sierra Four, I need a big digger."
"Sierra Five, show me a backdraft."
"Sierra Six, I need you dodging, backup is on the way."
"Sierra Seven, keep him hurt and move towards Sierra Four."
"Sierra Eight, skip over Tango Five and get to the main house."
"Sierra Nine, you're doing great, angle him to the left."
"Sierra Ten, get clear!"

Gulliver disappeared just as Oni Lee materialized in, the explosion devastating the room, the concussion taking Kaiser out before he had a chance to manifest giant swords for Fenja and Menja. Circus took hold of the flaming explosion with her pyrokinesis and blew it out the window, away from herself and into the back of the two giants. They were super-tough, but a focused and enhanced explosion was enough to singe their skin pretty badly. Their targets danced clear, looking for opportunities to do more damage. Trainwreck slapped his hands together and formed a crude bulldozer blade, and dug into the ground to lift a few tons of dirt up and leave behind a massive hole. Salvage swatted Alabaster with a massive fist and flung him away. Panacea punched him out of the air and sent him flying, landing at Trainwreck's feet. The tinker kicked the white-skinned invulnerable man into the pit and dropped the dirt on top of him, trapping him underneath. Pariah and her constructs raced past, heading for the two giantesses who were threatening the rest of the team.

"Sierra team, stand clear. Sierra Three, take them out like we discussed."

Oni Lee looked down from the devastated bedroom to the two giant women, and he focused his agony-projection power on the further one. She screamed with immense lungs as she toppled forward, crumpling and writhing in incredible torture. Her twin sister leaped forward to help, cradling her, while Oni Lee leaped out of the window and landed behind her, activating his rage-aura power. And Menja, cradling her sister, felt all her compassion and love turn to bitter hate in an instant, blindingly angry, rushed with red-eyed madness. And the two sisters began punching each other, beating each other savagely. Few things could really hurt them significantly when they were at this size, but one of those things was each other. They were both nearly knocked out when the PRT arrived to clean them up.

"That felt good," Gulliver said.

"Roger that, Sierra Ten," Danny said, his tone much less stiff than his words. "Okay, rendezvous at the vehicles, we're moving to Phase Two."

The lead officer for the PRT on scene stepped out of the response van, and looked down to see a large rat holding a rolled page of paper, staring up at him. He paused, looked around, and squatted down to take the paper. The rat managed to salute clumsily, then turned and ran off into the night. Officer, our enemy is monitoring radio channels, don't mention our presence please. Thirteen villains here on site, all alive and incapacitated. Alabaster is under the big pile of dirt. Our regrets for the property damage. Signed, Wharf Rat and the Scavengers.


"Okay, any injuries?" Panacea asked as the carriage took off. Circus raised her hand and Panacea got to work. Oni Lee's explosion came with fire that Circus could manipulate, but also a shockwave that pyrokinesis could not divert, and even at a distance of fifteen feet it was enough to cause some injuries.

"You've got a target?" Pariah said, looking over her shoulder to Wharf Rat.

He nodded, and pointed. "Two blocks down, then take a right. Then five or six blocks, make a detour or we'll get caught up in a roundabout. I'll walk you through after that."

"Okay," she said, and turned her eyes back to the road, controlling the two huge quadrupeds that towed their carriage around.

"Locking down channels and frequencies," Uber said, without looking up from the console. "I'm working PRT frequencies, police band, EMTs, local news, local traffic, ham, CB, and that's not even getting into message boards and social media. Good news is I don't have to screen it all at the source, I just need to keep certain individuals here in the city from hearing anything. And this late at night it's easier than it would have been during the day."

Salvage just nodded. He was shrunk down again, midget-sized. He could gather mass and drop it easily, and for travel it was easier if he was small rather than big. "Okay, so that went well. That's thirteen white supremacists out of commission. Why was that important?"

"Because they used to be based in Brockton Bay," Trainwreck said. "And then the boss chased 'em out. He got half their people arrested, and then he joined the heroes. So Kaiser took his Empire to Boston to meet up with his sister, and he started gathering his out-of-town troops and recruiting new people. And now that the hero team has left Brockton, it was a matter of time until Kaiser comes back to Brockton to try to take back what he thinks of as his, and also revenge on Wharf Rat. So, this is an imminent threat that was wiped out in just a few hours, with no losses and no danger to anyone else."

Wharf Rat nodded. "It's about taking initiative. Every time I've let the bad guys set the timetable, they've made sure it was to their advantage. Or they've hurt a lot of people before we've been able to stop them. So, from now on, we're on our timetable, not theirs."

Panacea pushed back her hood, bringing her face out into the open. The wind whipped at her hair. "It's the next part I'm not sure if I get. Sure, beat up the white supremacists before they can get revenge. But taking on the Boston underworld at the same time just seems different."

"Yeah," Oni Lee said. His forehead was crinkled with concentration.

Wharf Rat leaned back against the side of the carriage. "Okay, it's about the biggest bad guys we've ever faced. Worse than Endbringers. It's about the people that screwed over Trainwreck and Salvage, took their bodies and their memories and their families. It's about the conspiracy that created Lamia, Shatterbird and Siberian and turned them loose on the world. We found a trail that leads to them. It took me a few days of asking Gambler questions, but we got it pinned down. And it turns out that it's not that far out of our way, we can make a lot of progress tonight before we go home. And in the process, we'll work our way through a dozen more villains, one of whom is going to try to attack Brockton just to take Gambler away from us, and probably bring some of the others with him."

Taylor examined her elbow, checking the armor for damage. "Add to which, this guy we're after is like the textbook definition example of what Rat was saying about letting bad guys take initiative. This villain is basically unbeatable if he's had time to plan, and helpless if he has not. And also a sadistic sociopath, a casual killer with no remorse. So, if there's anyone we need to make a field trip to take out, it's this guy."

"But we don't know where he is exactly," Gulliver said. "I mean, I know he's in the city. And my father had occasional deals with Accord. But usually through a middleman. So, we're looking for the middleman."

"Which is why I'm navigating," Wharf Rat said. "Ever since we hit Boston I've been combing the place with repeater rats, and I have a fix on something that has to be the place. Kaiser's smell is there, along with his bodyguards. And lots of other people. And lots of drugs, and weapons. So, if this isn't where we find Topsy, it's someone that can tell us where."

"Which floor?" Salvage asked as he trotted for the door.

"Sixth floor west," Danny said. "Target's on the seventh." He listened, he smelled, he watched what he could, and moved in his troops. Panacea followed after Salvage, and then Trainwreck in his refinished armor, and then Pariah filled her clothing with her telekinetic force and the loose robes bulged with virtual muscle that transformed her into an eight-foot-tall brute. Circus, Benthic and Uber started vaulting their way to the roof of a nearby building, then readied the grappling hook. Gulliver disappeared, and Wharf Rat made the call to switch the console over to a frequency scrambler just in case their targets managed to get a call out. "Gulliver, check in when you've got confirmation."

Theo Anders was currently one inch tall and hiding in the apartment's kitchen cabinets. He was also twelve feet tall and incorporeal. His hands reached through the glass of windows and settled on the windowsills, pulling himself up hand over hand. His feet set on the windowsills and pushed up, and he climbed the building almost faster than the elevator did. As soon as he got to the sixth floor he slipped himself inside the building, then stood up straight and shoved his head through the ceiling. He looked around the seventh-floor apartment, and took in the drugs and guns and muscle in the place, and the three tough-guys who stood like they were wearing guns. Also a spooky-looking thin man leaning against a wall, Theo recognized him from his picture: Watch. A teenage girl he couldn't place and didn't seem to fit in, she was probably parahuman, probably new. And there on the couch was Topsy himself. He crouched down into the sixth-floor apartment while the rest of Team A walked inside, the brute squad. Nobody home, Wharf Rat had already chased the residents out with nips and hisses. He solidified his larger self and reached up to touch the earbud. "It's the place, we're go," he said to Wharf Rat. His smaller self was already growing to regular size and walking out of the cabinet.

Danny hit the all-call channel on his mouthpiece. "Topsy's inside, seventh floor west, along with two unknowns and at least three human henchmen and a shit-ton of blow."

"Breach team in position," Panacea said. The earpiece was with Amy so it was her voice they heard, and not the crackling growling sounds of the Crawler armor. "Checking off: Salvage, Trainwreck, Gulliver, Pariah, Panacea."

"Roger," Danny said. "Marking the support beams for you." Inside, rats were punching holes in the sheetrock of the ceiling in the sixth-floor apartment, baring the load-bearing beams that kept the seventh-storey floor from caving in on them. The thick fingers of large hands punched through the marked areas and grabbed the beams, ready for the signal, and he pulled the rats back to a safe distance. Circus and Uber fired their grappling gun, punching the far end into the brickwork over the sixth-floor window, then readying themselves for the slide. "Okay, gang, keep in mind the building is occupied, collateral damage minimum, got it? Three, two, one."

His super-strong teammates pulled, and the beams snapped at the same time, dumping the seventh-floor apartment into the sixth-floor apartment in a colossal avalanche of furniture and fixtures and plaster dust and falling bodies. Oni Lee teleported, blowing out the window just in time for Circus and Uber to slide in and hit the ground in a roll. The targets were dazed and any attempts they made to right themselves were hampered by the breach team trying to pull themselves out from under the floor and furniture. Oni Lee clocked Topsy across the mouth with a fist, Circus took Mockshow in a chokehold, and Uber punched Watch in the side of the head and felled him with one expert knockout punch. Gulliver grabbed the cell phone and handed it off to Uber while the breach team gently knocked out the three hired guns. Uber swung down the grapnel line and rappelled down to the street while the rest of the Scavengers pulled themselves free and headed back down the building's stairs or jumped out the window to drop to street level.

Uber only took a few seconds to hack what he needed out of the phone. "Got an address," he said, nodding.

"Gambler, confirm and speculate," Danny said.

"Ninety-seven percent plus, and your outcome is really cloudy. It seems generally better if you strike with surprise."

Cars pulled out of the way as the carriage galloped down the streets of Boston, converging on one skyscraper office building. A block away they pulled over into an alley and moved to their infiltration. Uber began overriding the building's security measures, looping cameras and disabling door locks and alarms, spoofing them so the on-call security service would think all was well. Danny found them a path underground, a service tunnel from the parking garage that led down to the basement and gave them access to the freight elevator. Rats streamed through the building's systems and floors, gathering towards the top, towards the objective.

Danny checked his watch, it had been an hour and a half since they had landed in Boston.

Accord had six of his Ambassadors spread through the building, two of them attending to various duties or standing by for his whim. Danny stayed at the base of the building and directed his teammates by radio and signals from the rats. Internal communications were shut down or redirected so that when the team started to advance, the Boston villains had no advance notice at all. A flood of rats spilled through the building, and the Scavengers walked in. The floor thudded under the giant feet of Panacea, Salvage, Trainwreck and Pariah. Uber and Circus watched every direction for traps, sensors, alarms, or any other problems. Gulliver walked with the team, as his counterpart walked through walls and snooped around. Benthic and Oni Lee walked at the center of the group, waiting for a signal.

"Internal directory puts Accord's quarters on the second-to-top floor," Uber said, looking up from his smart phone.

"I'm already bringing the elevator down," Wharf Rat said.

After that it all went to shit.