Salvage was the last one to step off the teleportation pad. "I won't lie, that thing gives me the willies," he said, his shoulders hunching as if his hackles were rising. "Teleportation is scary enough as it is, without trusting it to machines. And especially after you've spent three days reading up on the Bastard Son and what he's capable of."

"Don't worry, it's not my tech," Leet said, clapping the midget on the shoulder.

Panacea was finishing up on Taylor's face, returning her to her own appearance. "So where did you get a sword from, anyway?" Panacea asked.

"My dad wanted me to have it," Taylor said, patting the hilt. "It was the Mouse Protector's. See, funny thing about this sword. It's actually six weapons in one, if you count. Starting with the tip here, it's a chisel-shaped tip that is reinforced down the length of the blade, good for punching through armor, doors, or anything where you -"

Uber tapped on Danny's shoulder. "Hey, boss, are you really okay with us selling the factory? I know you've put more time into this place than any of us, maybe we could just put you in charge of it and-"

"Don't worry about me," Danny said. "Your factory. You named your company after this team, but that doesn't give me ownership over the money that you and Leet earned."

"Well, it's just that you've been off a bit all day," Uber said. "I can be an expert in reading people, and you've had your vocal responses delayed, your eye contact reduced, and your gestures have been inside your posture all day. I know something's up, and I wanna make sure it's not us."

He jerked his head towards the door, and he and Uber walked out discreetly while the others bantered around. Everyone was present except for Gambler, who was still at home with her parents. It meant less danger to her if she stayed away from the factory and the team. She had a console at home, enough to give her some tactical information on the team in the field, and Leet assured them it was unhackable. Something about it being entangled, Danny didn't get all of that. By mutually unspoken unanimous agreement, the team took the utmost care to never endanger Dinah to any degree. She was a sweet kid, and probably the most powerful and valuable of them all. The door slid shut behind the two men, and they walked the halls together. After hours, the lighting was low and dim, drowning the little color left in the factory. The place was gray on gray, Trainwreck's spray foam layered over slapped-together rubble.

"When I woke up today, I paid attention to what was going on, instead of half-tuning it out like usual," Danny said. "I've got almost infinite attention for my power, which sometimes is like having no attention for anything. In a lot of ways, multitasking as many things as I do is a lot like running on autopilot, just doing what you know you need to do and not second-guessing your movements. But now I wonder how long I've been running on autopilot. There were witness statements typed out in my name in the police precincts. Apparently while I was asleep, my rats witnessed a murder, reported it, helped the police apprehend the perpetrator, recovered the evidence, oversaw the crime scene forensics, dictated out a witness statement, signed my name, and logged the case number. During hours I was asleep. One murder today, a dozen assaults, a dozen burglaries, three child neglect cases, two smugglers, and a partridge in a pear tree. It all happened exactly like I would have done it if I was awake. I checked the memories of the mice and rats to make sure. Most of the rodents in this city now were born after I got my powers, they only live a few years and they breed fast, especially when I'm helping. So most of them have enough intelligence for me to review their memories, and I saw what they did, how they moved, everything. And it was all by the book, my book."

Uber looked a little distressed. "Shit, boss. Now, I just happen to be an expert in parahuman powers, right now, so I can tell you that powers like yours don't activate when you're asleep. It's a protective mechanism, like the Manton limit. If using a power was like moving your arm, something you could do that reflexively, then every pyrokinetic would burn down their house, every teleporter would wind up in the street in their pajamas. It doesn't happen."

"Right," Danny said. "So, what if this infinite multitask thing means that my brain is always active when there are rodents in my radius? Like, what if my brain isn't actually asleep when I think it is? What if I'm not really rested, I just feel rested? I've read about people with brain damage that kept them from sleeping, they degenerated badly. We need sleep, and some part of me is not ever sleeping. There has to be a downside to that, am I going to burn out?"

"I'm only an expert in what someone might know," Uber confessed. "Maybe talk to Gambler about this."

Danny stopped at the corner and leaned against the wall. "Can't do it. I'm her hero, I can't get her scared for me, can't make her wonder if I'm going to fall apart. If I plant that idea, it will poison everything she ever thinks about me from this day forward."

"So, it's not worth worrying Gambler about, but it's worth worrying yourself about," Uber said, sighing. "Theo was right about you." He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.

The breath rattled out of Danny slowly, a heartfelt silent sigh. "Uber? Are you getting what you want?"

"I want to make video games, to hang out with friends, and for the world to not end," Uber said without hesitation. "You guys are my friends. We're going to prevent the Eschaton. And if I sell the factory, I can go back to programming any time I'm not working with you guys. So, yes yes and soon, if that's okay."

"I want you to be okay," Danny said. "If the factory is not what you want, then sell it off. We'll find another headquarters. It'll be easier now that our auxiliary team has given us a teleporter pad."


Papers rustled as Taylor cleared a spot on the corner of the desk. "I think you need to stop and self-assess again," she said, looking her father in the eye. "Remember what we said about confidence, and certainty, and how it turns you into the worst version of yourself?"

The chair tipped back with a creak as Danny rocked back, a wry half-grin etched on his face. "Seriously? Confident and arrogant is the last things I feel right now. I'm being eaten up by doubts. I have doubts about my doubts, and I have doubts about those doubts too. Am I right to start an auxiliary team? Do I have the right people on it? Have I told the right people about it? Should I keep it secret so they can catch enemies by surprise when it really counts, or should I publicize it so that people like the Elite stop thinking that there's only a handful of us protecting this whole city? Is the mayor doing enough to put Accord's plans into effect? Is he finding a way to betray me? Did Accord slip some booby traps into those plans so that we'll accidentally screw everything up if we follow his instructions? He is devious enough for that, you know. Do we have any hopes of preventing the Eschaton? Are we crazy to try? Should I expose Cauldron so they lose their power? Should I help them stay secret so that they don't panic people? Am I relying on Gambler too much? Am I counting on odds too much, when it's let me down and gotten people killed before? You know. Stuff like that."

"Right, but I'm not worried about the doubts you have," Taylor said. She pulled her foot up onto the desktop, tucked her chin onto her knee and laced her hands over her ankle. "I'm concerned by the doubts you don't have. Agnes Court," she prompted.

"You mean not killing her?" Danny asked, sitting forward and standing up. He started pacing around the small office. "Agnes isn't like Nonpareil or Blueblood. Her power is constructive, not inherently dangerous. And while she's amoral enough to employ people like the Bastard Son and Regis Rex, she's not actually the type to get her hands dirty. She is dangerous as a leader of the Elite, but she's not dangerous as plain old Agnes Court, former leader of the Elite. There are very, very few people in the world that can do construction on the scale she can, as quickly as she can. That's a valuable resource, one that's too important to throw away. Not like-"

"Yeah, I gotta stop you there," Taylor said. "Ahem. Resource."

Pausing in his pacing, Danny considered his words. "I didn't really mean it like that."

"But you said it anyway," Taylor reminded him. "And maybe you didn't realize what you meant or didn't mean until I called you out on it."

His pacing picked up again, and he stared at the bulletin board for a few seconds while he gathered his thoughts. "If Agnes Court loses her minions and her power, she will lose her money. She will be easy to recruit for the reconstruction of Brockton Bay. We still have major road damage, and a lot of foundations need to be shored up around the sinkhole, and our population is expanding fast. In our world, talents like hers are outnumbered a thousand to one by people that break things or burn things. So, we can pay her, pennies on the dollar, to fix things and build things. She can start making up for the damages she's caused. The rest of the Elite can never compensate, they will only hurt people as long as they were alive." His fingers picked at a sticky note, and he turned around to pace the other direction. "There has to be more to these powers and this life than just trashing what other people worked hard to build."

"You've been wrong about this sort of thing before," she pointed out. "When you try to decide for yourself who gets to stay and who is no good to anyone." She turned to look at the map on the wall, and used the Mouse Protector's sword to tap on the big empty space north of the Trainyards, deep woods too rocky and overrun with small streams for anyone to try to develop or build on.

Danny winced. "Okay. Yeah, I was wrong about Hellhound. She's doing a great job there. I really thought she was going to be unmanageable, a loose cannon that would kill anyone who annoyed her. I thought the city would be plagued by giant monsters if we let her set up her wildlife refuge that close to the city."

"She prefers to be called Bitch," Taylor pointed out.

"I prefer to be called Your Highness, but nobody seems to care about that," Danny shot back, grinning at his own joke. "Maybe I shouldn't have ordered the rest of the Elite killed. Maybe I should have killed Agnes Court. I don't actually know. I made the best call I could. I can have my second-guesses and my second thoughts, my endless doubts and my lists of pros and cons. Nobody sees the indecision, you don't see the indecision. Because only the decisions are visible to anyone but myself."

She gave him a long look. "I suppose so," she said. "But not that long ago, you asked me to double check you. And now you're telling me that you don't need that much double-checking. So either you're further gone than you think you are, or I'm overdoing it a bit. I think we should change the subject a bit and then come back."

"Change to what?"

"Why did you give me the sword?" Taylor asked, raising the steel weapon to gesture with. "I know it meant a lot to you. And I get a bad feeling when you start giving away personal items, especially sentimental items, before major confrontations. It makes me wonder what Gambler's told you that she doesn't tell the rest of us. People do that sort of thing when they know they're dying, dad. And I think that you still remember how much it hurt both of us that Mom never said goodbye."

Danny leaped across the room and gathered the girl up in a hug. "Jesus, Taylor, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you think that's what's going on. I'm sorry that you thought I've been getting ready to die. The answer is no, God no, I'm not planning on going anywhere. Don't think that. Don't think that I'd get ready to die, and not bother to say goodbye. I wouldn't, couldn't do that to you. Okay? No, I just gave you the sword because it's a good sword, and it should be used the way that Mouse used it. And I thought you would do that, I trusted you with the sword. That is all, nothing more. It's no memorial to her when it's sitting on my wall. It's only a memorial to her when it's being used by a hero, the way that you do."


"I honestly just can't believe the city actually went for this," Pariah said. "I especially can't believe that Bitch went for this. She's about as hostile and stand-offish as anyone could be."

Danny turned half-over his shoulder to answer her. "She might be hostile and defensive, but she's also overwhelmed. The city's been bringing her every stray they catch, and it's a strain on everyone's resources. And since there's basically no better dog trainer anywhere in New England, she's the perfect choice to turn feral strays into potential pets." Pariah was sitting in the back seat, because her legs were the shortest. Both Danny and his daughter had long lanky legs that served best in the front seats of the car.

"And we all kind of needed a day off," Oni Lee said into the comms. "It's been a long time since we took any time for ourselves."

"I'm not sure I have ever once seen you do anything for fun, Oni Lee," Taylor said. Her voice held a smile as she stared out the window. They were crossing the Trainyards to the north of the city, taking the highway. To the right was a thin screen of scrub and shoreside shrubbery and a long expanse of water that was hard to look at, reflecting the sunlight. The mile-marker posts were dusty with sand on that side. To the left was a dense wall of trees, mostly thickly-packed evergreens that seemed to spill over the side of the highway like a frozen wave. Danny thought it looked like the trees were gathered together to try to push the road into the ocean.

"I won't lie, it'll be nice to be out and about and out of costume," Gulliver said. "It seems like all I do is go on missions and train for more missions, every minute I'm not in school. I haven't had many opportunities to just chill out with people."

"Me too," Salvage said.

"You watch like twelve hours of Netflix a day," Uber pointed out. "You can go socialize and meet people any time you'd like."

"Screw you big guy," Salvage shot back with mock-annoyance. "I'm still learning the pop culture of your dimension. It's really important that I have all the right touchstones and idioms of speech."

"Still weird to think of you coming from another dimension," Gambler pointed out.

"Tell me about it," the small man said. "I'm lucky I speak the language at all. I'll probably never know where Cauldron got me from or why, or what I looked like before they turned me into a Smeagol and Panacea gave me a new face. That's not just regular amnesia, that's like being born as an adult with no history at all and no knowledge of the world itself."

Panacea spoke up for the first time. "Still, twelve hours is pretty excessive. You might have an easily-addicted personality. You should watch out for that, stay away from stimuli that could tempt you into long-term addiction."

"Awww," Salvage whined exaggeratedly. "But binge-drinking looks like so much fun! Oh, and heroin! I've been meaning to get into heroin!"

"I'll turn you back into a frog-goblin if you mess around with that stuff," Panacea said. "Don't even kid about that."

"Yes, mom," Salvage drawled.

"Panacea, are you on-site yet?" Danny asked.

"We're just pulling in now," she said. "And when you see me, it's Amy, not Panacea."

Leet spoke up. "That's right, no code names today. No costumes, no powers, no codenames, no reference to what we do. Just ten people from mixed backgrounds that happen to be mutual friends, hanging out at a public event."

"Man, I'm not even sure I know what all of your names are," Salvage said. "Seriously, it's been a long time since we interacted outside of Scavenger business."

"I'm Sabah," Pariah reminded him. "Don't worry about the inflection, nobody gets it right."

"Call me John," Leet said.

"And I'm Karl," Uber added. "My real name, I haven't gone by that in years."

"I guess I'm still going by Josh," Salvage added. "So today I'm Josh."

"I've decided to be Bruce," Oni Lee said.

"You can't be serious," Sabah said. "That is way, way too on the nose."

"There are still Asian men named Bruce, they're not all named after Bruce Lee," Oni Lee replied.

Karl snorted. "You're fooling yourself, man. They're all named after him."

"And, uh, my name is Theo," Gulliver reminded them.

"I just this second realized that name is short for Theodore," Josh said. "Your father, the white supremacist crimelord who creates swords at will, who names his bodyguards after Norse mythology, named you his own son after the fat guy from Alvin and the Chipmunks."

"I was not named after a chipmunk," Theo shot back, his tone heated.

"Cool it you two," Danny put in.

"Yes, mom," Josh said.

Danny turned towards his daughter. "Screw Cauldron, I'm gonna kill them myself."

"There's our turn," she said, untroubled by the incipient murder.

They turned off the highway at the temporary sign that was erected at the side of the road. Hellhound's Canine Preserve it originally read, but someone had already corrected the proprietor's name back to Bitch. Danny had put mice up here to watch the area weeks ago, and he already knew the layout. The preserve itself, or ranch or shelter or dog-run or whatever one wanted to call it, was about thirty miles on one side and ten miles in the other direction, for three hundred square miles. Plenty of room for dogs to run and romp about, even after they had been turned into three-ton monsters of raw muscle and barbed bones. The exterior was surrounded by a chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top, regularly posted with signs warning of wild animals and parahuman threats, and that trespassers would be killed on sight and the killers would not be prosecuted. So far, that had been enough to keep anyone from breaking in. That, and the fact that there was nothing worth doing or seeing inside the fence line other than giant half-trained murder machines.

The southeast corner of the property was marked by a wide, low-slung building made in the style of the late Trainwreck. The warped concrete and rough shapes reminded the heroes of the factory they worked out of or lived in. The building was set at an angle on the corner, and from the front of it and the parking lot there was hardly any sign of the ominous fence and its overtly threatening signs. The front was made almost entirely of roll-up garage doors, the interior was empty space with structural pillars. The back wall of the low-slung building was a single waist-high wall from one side to the other, and a series of broad windows with huge shutters that opened outward and upward like an awning. Most days, this building was completely empty, or used to store dog food and medical supplies. On most Saturdays, it was the site of a delivery of dogfood and supplies and some bare human necessities almost as an afterthought, and a single vet that drove up from Brockton Bay to make sure the dogs were still healthy. On this Sunday, it was open for the first time to the public, and there was nothing but standing room available.

Citizens of the city were up here to see the massive dogs and their supervillain handler. Tourists were here to see the display. PRT reps were here to keep the peace. Dog lovers from the area were here to take in the sights, and to try to pick out an adoptee; word had gone out that this first opening was a show-and-tell only, but that in subsequent weeks arrangements would be made for the fully-trained animals to be rehomed and adopted out. Bitch was famously protective of her dogs, but after the first few hundred of them she recognized that she needed to offload some of the animals.

"We could flash our credentials and move to the front of the line," Uber said, staring in disgust at the mass of humanity between him and the show.

"You mean use our superpowers and let people know that the Scavengers are on the scene," Theo said.

"Yeah, that."

"Everyone waits for their turn, and we're not better than them," Danny said.

"We kinda are, though," Uber pointed out.

"Hush." Danny looked around, and spotted what he was looking for. "C'mon, Taylor."

He led the way through the thin crowd at the periphery, people who were not yet committed enough to join the press and crush that was shoving its way into the small concrete bunker. "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Dallon," he said, reaching forward to shake their hands. "I believe your daughter goes to school with my daughter."

Panacea and Benthic gave each other an upnod while Flashbang and Brandish turned to appraise this stranger. Danny grinned at them, and Mark Dallon shook his hand before his wife Carol did. "Wait, are you W-" Carol started to say, but Amy hushed her with a hiss. "Right, uh, sorry," she said. "I'm not used to seeing the masked heroes outside of their costumes. Or rogues, or whatever your group is."

"Strictly speaking, we're all rogues since the Protectorate stranded us here," Danny said, still smiling. "But, after working with your daughter as long as I have, I thought it was well past time that we all meet face to face."

A big man loomed out of the crowd, nearly as big as Neil Pelham, Manpower. Uber stepped neatly into the conversation. "So, since they're already recognized heroes, without secret identities, how about they flash their credentials and get us to the front of the line?"

Leet stepped up right beside him. "You'll have to forgive my associate," the weedy little man said. "He's used to throwing down smoke bombs when he wants to get to the front of a line. Hi, I'm John," he said, shaking hands with the New Wave, starting with Mark and Carol Dallon, then Neil and Sarah Pelham. "This is Karl."

Carol raised an eyebrow and mouthed something like 'tuber and meat', but Uber and Leet knew what she meant and they gave her a discreet pair of nods.

"Oh, and speaking of people that go to school with your kids," Theo said, stepping into the circle of bodies. "I'm Theo. Theo Anders."

Sarah, Lady Photon or Photon Mom depending on who you ask, gave a wince at that. "Sorry about that, Theo."

"No problem. He's in jail now, along with, well, every living relation I've got," he said. "I'm technically a ward of the state, but that mostly just means that I come and go at the orphanage whenever I want, they're not trying to foster me out because the laws that allow the Wards to operate as adults are still active even if the Wards don't reside in the city anymore. Sometimes I crash at our headquarters, sometimes at the orphanage. And nobody gives me a hard time, because everyone knows who I am. That's like the only benefit that ever came out of that debacle when Coil revealed the identities of the entire Empire."

Mark Dallon nodded. "That actually doesn't sound that bad," he said. His wife favored him with a smile and squeezed his arm. Danny thought there was something going on there that he wasn't privy to, but he had no idea how to ask about that and was pretty sure it was no part of his business at all.

"So, Neil," he said, turning to the big man known more commonly as Manpower, and known for his great strength and invulnerability, "I understand that your contracting company has been expanding."

"Mostly acquiring," Neil replied. "The local market has been pinching a lot of the owners out of the construction business, at the same time as there is more construction work to be done. So I've got more projects, more personnel, but barely any more profit."

"That doesn't make sense," John/Leet said, shaking his head.

"Localized deflation," Neil said. "Cost of living in Brockton is in a freefall, cost of goods and services is dropping fast. Wages are dropping almost as fast. It started with the changes in the housing market after the Class-S attacks and the new residents, add the local production manufacturing to that mix and it creates a downward pressure on prices and an upward pressure on the value of currency. So for businessmen that were used to making a million dollars a year, making eight-hundred thousand is like losing money, so they sell their company to me and they move to some other city that is still in an inflation cycle. It should stabilize in a few months, but it's going to stabilize at a low rate, with cheap housing, low wages, and cheap local products. Less shipments in from outside the city, more shipments outward from the city, it's a boom time to be working construction or manufacturing in Brockton Bay, and it's only getting better."

John and Karl traded a look. Karl shrugged. "Still haven't changed my mind. We didn't make games to make money, so we're not managing a factory to make money." John shrugged back off-handedly.

"The reason I ask," Danny started. "Is-"

"Are you an economics major or something?" Salvage asked, from down around Manpower's knees. "How do you know all that stuff?"

"My major is actually in business administration, but I read all the time," Neil said. "I can't stand anything with commercials. Hi, I'm Neil."

"Josh," the midget said, shaking his hand. "And if you've seen me on the news, I was the really, really big one."

"Ah," Neil said, nodding knowingly. "I understand my niece invented that face you've got."

"Beats the one I had before by a long shot," Josh said.

"Ahem," Danny said. "The reason I asked, was because of someone that worked on Bilder road crews before Pelham Contractors bought out Bilder. There's a certain young man with a secret that I'm not presently at liberty to share."

Neil hesitated, then nodded. "Got it. We'll talk later."

"Where's Victoria?" Carol asked, looking around them.

"Over with Sabah," Amy said, pointing just behind her.

Tori and Sabah looked up briefly, gave a wave, then looked back down at the smartphone where Sabah was showing off her designs for the girl. Their conversation was quiet but heated, moving fast and involving a lot of gestures. Danny felt he should leave well enough alone. Instead he looked around, and spotted a familiar family headed his way, with a twelve-year-old girl talking quickly and animatedly to the Asian man that walked with them. He broke away from the Dallons to approach them.

"Mr. Alcott, Mrs. Alcott," he said, smiling and shaking hands. "We've met before, but never strictly speaking face-to-face."

"It is you," Dinah's father said, grinning as he pumped Danny's hand. "I recognize the voice, if nothing else. Thank you again for rescuing our girl."

"I feel bad taking your thanks after your daughter has saved all of our lives so many times over," Danny said, but he nodded graciously as he did. "C'mon, I'd like you to meet my daughter, Taylor."

Sabah saw Dinah on her way over, and groaned. "Not fair!" she blurted. "The last time I saw Dinah, she was the shortest girl on the team!"

Victoria Dallon, the Glory Girl, looked up at the twelve-year-old, then over at the twenty-two-year-old. "Have you considered heels? Fashionable shoes would help you a lot with that sort of thing. Besides, you have an actual midget on your team, you're never really the shortest."

Sabah sighed. "When he's walking around, he usually binds up enough sand or dirt to make himself a normal-sized man, more or less, and just wears long pants, long sleeves, and gloves so it's not obvious. He only skipped that today because he'd have to hold one size for the whole trip."

Danny arranged introductions between the Alcott family and the Dallons and the Pelhams, and introduced all of them together to his daughter Taylor. "I have to say, I've always admired what you guys are trying to do," Danny said. "No masks, no costumes, public identities. Full disclosure, full accountability. It seems like that should be the way that heroism is handled. I just can't get behind the idea of bringing your kids into that."

"You've got your own daughter on your own team," Mark pointed out.

"Your daughter triggered after she joined this team," Panacea pointed out. "And after she had already been accepted as one of the Wards, then dropped out. Heck, I was right there, Taylor definitely triggered because she was on your team."

"Oh, my god the line's finally moving," John said.

"Only a few feet. Patience still," Karl replied stoically.

"Okay, that's true," Danny said. "But there's a difference between getting a child involved in parahuman hijinks, and getting your child involved with no mask on. As of now, Laserdream and Shielder and Glory Girl are never going to have the option of obscurity. They're public, and they'll always be public. Panacea wears an organic power armor so people don't realize that she's splitting time between your team and ours."

"Speaking of, ick," Glory Girl said.

"I've fixed it up, it's pretty comfortable now," Panacea said, elbowing her sister.

"But anyway," Danny continued, speaking over the teenage girls. "I think that nobody should be committed to that sort of a life until they're a legal adult, acting on their own. It just seems a bit... I don't know. Presumptuous maybe? Not quite the right word."

"I get what you're saying," Sarah said, nodding. "And we did think about it. But the kids had valuable powers that could help people, and we needed all the help we could get. Besides, if we were unmasked, they would need to be unmasked. We couldn't just divide our lives in half, and keep them raised in a basement so nobody would connect them to us."

Danny winced. "I hadn't thought about it that way."

"And we had an ace in the hole," Carol added, dropping a hand onto Amy's shoulder. "Any of the kids that decided they didn't want this life, we could give them a new face and start them off fresh anywhere they want."

"Okay, that too," Danny conceded.

"I think you all underestimate how lucky you are," Mr. Alcott said. "Your children are part of these teams with you. My wife and I just try not to take too much of Dinah's time away from her team."

"And the team tries not to take too much of her time away from you and your family," Danny said, shrugging. "It's a hard life for all of us, and I'm sorry you've been pulled into it."

"I absolutely understand what you mean," Carol Dallon said, and took Amy's hand again. "Amy here is trying to split her time between our team, your team, school, and her volunteer work at the hospitals."

"Honestly less of a challenge than you'd expect," Amy said. "There's not nearly as much pressure to heal people at the hospitals as there used to be, ever since I created a virus that cures cancer."

"Well, there has to be a ton of work despite that," Mr. Alcott said. "There's always people sick or hurt that need help."

Amy sighed. "I'd love for that to be the simple truth. Before I built the cancer-killing cold, all they let me work on was Stage IV cancer. Late in the cycle, the patient is terminal, no hope for recovery unless I help. Basically, after they had tried everything they could, and billed the patient for everything they could, and there was nothing left to do but wait for the patient to die, then they'd let me use my powers. I can cure a hundred Stage I cases in the time it takes to cure one Stage IV. I could prevent Stage I patients from ever reaching Stage IV. I could save their families months of heartache and tens of thousands of dollars in costs. And yet they never let me work on a patient until they had extracted all the money they could. They call it 'preserving jobs', but you could just as easily call it 'exploiting tragedy'. They even threatened to sue me and my family if I started going to patients' homes to cure them outside the hospital. They ruin thousands of lives every year for the sake of making sure their doctors have something to do and charge people for."

"Lots of things work like that," Danny pointed out somberly. "There are plenty of terrakinetic parahumans out there, but you rarely see them working construction or cleaning up after disasters. Because it would keep someone from earning money. I've got a faint hope that Agnes Court could add something productive to the world, but even if she wanted to, there'd be obstacles. I just... I just feel like saving lives isn't enough. We have to do more than just minimize the damage, we have to do more than just mitigate the harm. If heroes don't do anything but try to keep villains from winning too much, then we've set our sights way too low. We need to make the world better, not must 'less worse'."

"Maybe the world doesn't want to be better?" Amy asked, folding her arms over her stomach. "They won't let me treat broken arms or major burns, because they'd rather let people suffer than lose money, and because they're still mad at me for curing cancer. Did you know that they're restricting access to cured patients? There's a room full of people who sneeze and cough and recover from cancer, and they won't let anyone in there until they're at Stage IV. If they just let this into the open, we could prevent literally hundreds of millions of deaths over the long term. And then there's all the laws against letting tinker inventions out into mass production, and the NEPEA laws that keep parahumans out of media and business."

Sarah sighed and shook her head. "It's not a new conundrum. What do you do when people don't seem to want your help? When you could make things better but nobody seems to want it? It's a moral quandary that we all just have to deal with for ourselves."

Danny opened his mouth, paused, glanced at Taylor, and then closed his mouth. If it was an age-old ethical dilemma, and he was about to tell everyone how they should deal with it, then he was probably thinking from the wrong place again. The part of him that didn't know how to be indifferent or indecisive, the part that used people to get its own way. He just shut that down, swallowed what he was going to say, and shelved that idea for later.

They were moving forward, gradually. It was the same sort of herd intelligence that kept people traveling in the same direction in grocery stores and zoos, a gradual movement that brought people in from one side and moved them to the front, and then across, and then back out. It was nothing so defined as "standing in line", but it worked the same way. They were finally standing under the shade of the low-slung roof. That meant they were close, but it also meant that people were pressing in tight around them so it was no longer safe to discuss their shared line of work.

"I ran across a quote from Ambrose Bierce the other day," Danny said to his daughter. "Ahem. 'Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret'. I think that sounds kind of like that thing we were talking about."

"Like the way that you get worked up, and you get irrational, and you get persuasive, and you can get people to do what you want them to but only when you probably shouldn't have that po- uh, talent?"

"Like that," Danny agreed. "It's actually kind of nice to know that it's not just me that gets like that, you know? It's about how passion always cuts both ways. There's a reason that the French word for strong feelings can also be the word for fire, after all. That strength of emotion can carry you far, but it will always let you down at the end."

"Interesting thought," Amy said, gnawing at her lip. "But there's a deep-sounding quote for anything you want to say, and it's easy to read too much into it."

"Stop being so wise," Josh retorted. "Hey, I wanna remind you guys that when we get to the front I'm gonna need one of you guys to give me a boost."

Taylor chuckled. "I'll do it."

"It'll look weird if you do it," Karl pointed out, his eyes flicking back and forth between his body and hers. He was a tall, broad-shouldered muscleman, she was a teenage girl so thin as to be scrawny. She was significantly stronger than him, because of Panacea's alterations, but that did not change what they looked like.

"Fine," she sighed. "How about Bruce?"

Bruce just nodded disinterestedly. He was the physically strongest of them, without changing his shape, he had portions of three different sets of superstrength and his own rigorous exercise training.

The line started moving fast, and Danny could see through the eyes of a harvest mouse as Bitch leaped off the back of the dog she was pacing back and forth, yelling at one of the visitors. Some kid was trying to feed one of the dogs some beef jerky out of his hand, and she let him know, at the top of her lungs, that this was not acceptable. It was bad for their training if it worked, and it would be worse for their training if there was an accident. He was just trying to bribe the dog with a treat so it would like him, but the dog needed to like its own pack, and its eventual family, and not some snotnose dickhead that had some jerky. Teaching dogs not to take treats from strangers was one of the hardest and most important lessons, they were trusting and sweet and humans could poison anything at all. The boy's family tried to hustle him along to the side away from her, but she followed them and kept yelling, threatening. A couple dozen people moved with them, put off by her attitude and language. The crowd moved somewhat as the abashed audience made their way out, and that brought Danny and his party to the front early.

She was turning back to jump up on her dog when she noticed a dozen harvest mice sitting on top of the animal, staring straight at her with perfect stillness and calmness. "Rat," she growled, turning back to the building. Her dogs were pacing back and forth in the clearing, showing off for the audience like a zoo exhibit, all of them grown to full size and showing the full range of their gnarled mutations. He knew it was not all of her dogs, just the ones that were safe to have at this size around people. The less-trained ones were stashed somewhere in the nature preserve. She stalked forward to the awning-decked windows, and glared around until she spotted Danny, picking him out by his height and build. "You," she said.

"Quietly, please," Danny said, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on the windowsill and leaning forward. "You've settled in well."

"You tried to send me to jail, Rat," she snarled, stalking forward. She was practically nose-to-nose with the man, but at least she had her voice low enough that it didn't give away his secret identity. "But the PRT gave me my deal," she said, smugly.

"Yeah, the PRT cut a deal with your lawyer to keep you out of prison," Danny said. "And they set up all this land to let you run your dogs. And they were writing out checks every week to pay for your supplies. And we're all lucky that the PRT stayed behind when the Protectorate moved out of the city. But I wanted to stop by and make sure that you're okay. And I wanted to see if you've thought about my offer."

Her eyes narrowed spitefully. "I should say no just because it's you."

"But it's not just me," he reminded her. "And, you would never even see me or talk to me. The auxiliary wouldn't activate unless I was too far away or too busy or something. And you wouldn't even be leaving this place at all, really."

She glared, and crossed her arms over her chest. "You're going to tell me I don't have a choice."

"Actually no," he said. "I'm not working for or with the PRT. They're your handlers. I'm running an unsanctioned team. I can't do anything but ask you to do this."

"Then no," she said, grinning fiercely.

"But you'd be helping your friends if you did," Danny pointed out.

"All my friends are inside this fence," she retorted. "Fuck everyone else."

"Grue and his sister? Tattletale?" he prompted her.

She shrugged. "It was about money. I worked with them. Now I've got what I want, and they can fuck off."

Taylor arched an eyebrow. "Jesus, I'm glad the Scavengers aren't like that. I'm actually shocked the Undersiders didn't tear each other apart early on."

"Shut up Baby Rat," Bitch shot back.

"It's not like the auxiliary really needs her," Danny said, shrugging. "They've got Mockshow, and that's even better. Everything made of mechanical parts instead of living animals."

"Bullshit," Bitch snapped, jabbing a finger into Danny's face. "I've seen what she does, and it's not the same. Sure, she makes something big and tough that follows her orders, but her shit is made out of cars and refrigerators. It might be as strong as what I do, but she can only make one or two at a time, and her shit is slow. My dogs are faster, they can jump and think for themselves and they've got instincts. My dogs would tear her shit apart one-on-one, and they would outnumber her a dozen to one. No, you can't just replace me with that dumbass."

"But you haven't heard about Chariot," Danny pointed out. "The new tinker for the backup team, he specializes in speed and vehicles, but not like Squealer. He's already made some teleporters for us. If they've got him, and Mockshow, they don't need you. And if they need even more speed, then there's Madcap. He's a super-speed hitter."

"I'm as good as both of them put together," Bitch sneered. "Better."

"So you think they really do need you?" Danny prompted her.

She scoffed. "Damn right they do. But I don't need them. So fuck off." She started to turn away again.

"And you have absolutely everything you need?" Danny asked, his voice trailing up expectantly. The crowd was pushing him from the right, pressure building up as more people wanted to see the giant mutant dogs and their mistress.

"Everything," she insisted. "Dogs, food, I'm building a cabin for myself. Don't need anything else."

"Nothing at all? Nothing small or simple that bugs you because you don't have it?"

She hesitated, then gritted her teeth. She knew he had caught her hesitating.

Danny stood up straight, coming off his elbows. "Just think about it a bit. I'll ask Tattle to send Wordsworth and Wallop around to talk to you, maybe take Floret with them. Maybe it's music, or a new knife, or a toothbrush, I don't know. I don't need to know. But they'll come around next week, and you can talk to them then." He let the crowd carry him away, and the rest of the Scavengers were pushed out onto the parking lot again.

"Wordsworth and Wallop?" Josh asked.

"Couple of new arrivals," Karl said. "One of them can cause explosions when he curses, the other one can expand parts of his body. They're both kinda low-power, but they are parahumans and they needed a job, and working for the Scavenger's Auxiliary is better than a lot of jobs. We're getting to the point that lots of new people are moving into the city, and not all of them want to try to take it over."

"I'm not wild about Floret," Sabah added. "Take it from someone else who works with small objects and small powers, it teaches you to be sneaky. I don't think we'll ever be able to trust her."

Danny snickered. "Seriously? You're going to talk to me about how small powers teach you to be sneaky?"

"You don't count," Sabah said. "Your power is huge, when you understand it, it only looks small to idiots."

Dinah was grinning hugely. "I think I want a dog," she said, tugging on her parents' arms."

"Um," her mother said, "they don't stay that big, do they? They do shrink back down into regular dogs after a while, right?"

"It'd be kinda nice to do this again," Sarah Pelham said. "Two teams just coming together for an afternoon. New Wave and the Scavengers, just having a hero's day off."

"Eight point six five percent chance," Dinah said. "Sorry to burst the bubble."

"I would have given us at least a thirty percent chance," Carol joked weakly.

"Just dropped to seven point nine seven percent," Dinah said, wincing.

Danny heaved a sigh and stepped forward. "This is probably a one-time thing. But maybe that's okay. God knows the city's big enough for all of us. If we get Hellhound in the Auxiliary, that's twenty-seven heroes in Brockton Bay, more than there ever has been. Your team inspires people with its message, with bright colors that play well on the camera. We're the black-bloc strike force that doesn't hang around for publicity. You show people what they should aspire to, and we show them why they should aspire to that. We get involved in politics, you get involved in media. And there is room for both ways of doing things. Earlier, Sarah was talking about the moral quandary: what do you do when you can help people who don't want your help? Do you let them suffer for their own reasons, or do you help them despite their protests? Maybe we need two teams, so we can do it both ways. New Wave to respect people's wishes, and the Scavengers to do the right thing nobody wants them to do."

Sarah gave him a long stare, sizing him up, thinking about what he was saying and what it would mean. "So it probably would be best if we weren't seen in public together. And I don't just say this because it gives mixed messages, but because I kind of think that I don't like you. You're comfortable bullying people into doing the right thing and making up your own reasons why that's okay. And I don't want to get comfortable doing that."

Carol winced, and turned from her sister to her foster daughter. "Amy, you work with both teams, even if nobody knows it's you on his team. I won't tell you to drop that, but... you told me once that this won't last much longer. Just a few more missions, a few more fights. I really hope that's true."

Danny looked from the mother to the daughter, the awkwardness and the conflicted feelings. "I will do what I can to step things up a bit, and get this whole situation resolved," he said. "I'm well due for a vacation, and I'd like to take it sooner rather than later."

John the weedy little tinker scoffed loudly. "Pshaw! As if you could really quit and go back to a normal life after this!" He elbowed the taller man.

"In a heartbeat," Danny said with a stony deadpan expression. "If I thought my work was done, I would quit this minute, and go work a day job and hang out with my daughter, my friends from work."

"Well, by all means let's finish your work up so I can get my daughter back, and you can get yours, full-time," Carol said.


The room was a neat half-cube. The ceiling was ten feet up from the floor, the walls were twenty feet on a side. And Danny carried in two chairs, comfortable but spare-looking. He arranged them carefully, measuring the space out with a lot of trial and error. He settled on putting them both centered in the middle of the room, facing each other, with six feet between them and the walls behind them, and about six feet between them. It was an arrangement that seemed to respect personal space but kept them in conversational distance, with a minimum of distractions. He sat in each one himself to make sure they were comfortable and secure, and when he was satisfied he shrugged off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. A half-dozen small mice dropped from it and scampered out the door. He blew out a breath and concentrated, to make sure he wasn't forgetting any. It had become such a habit to keep mice or rats on his person or in his proximity that it was hard to focus on all of them, he just thought of them as part of himself.

And then he shut the door, locked it from the inside, and sent the mice and rats to go get something to eat, far enough away from this room that they could not come to his aid in time. He patted himself down to make sure he hadn't kept any reserve weapons on him, not so much as a containment-foam grenade or a roll of quarters. When he was sure that he was as harmless as he could be, he stood beside his chair and spoke into the air.

"Would you please let Contessa know that she is invited to speak with me?" he said.

It took a few minutes, during which he grew ever more self-conscious, before the door opened in the air. And the dark-haired woman stood in the doorway, staring straight at him with a look that was partly curious, and partly appraising. She wore a well-tailored suit that let her move and kept crisp shoulders and waistline, with a matching fedora tucked low over her forehead and nearly hiding her eyes. Danny gestured towards the other chair. "Thank you for coming," he said. "Would you care to sit?"

"I will sit," she said. Her accent was faint but he placed it as something almost Italian but not quite. She moved to the front of the chair, stepping from Cauldron's gleaming white tile to the Scavenger's uneven cement. She unbuttoned her jacket and then took a seat, crossing one ankle over the other, her hands laced together in her lap. "What would you ask me?"

"Well, certainly you already know," he said, smiling as he sat down across from her.

She shook her head. "No. As your powers have developed you have turned into a blind spot for my own powers. I rather thought you already knew this, why else would you flaunt our wishes and taunt us with insults and accusations?"

"I suspected that you couldn't see me clearly," Danny admitted. "I just wasn't actually counting on it."

She tilted her head. "Then why did you say so many things and do so many things that you knew we would kill you for?"

"Because I was counting on you not being the sort of person that would kill someone just because you don't like what they say," Danny replied.

"It is very good for you that you were wrong about why I did not come after you, because you were very wrong about what kind of person I am," she said deadpan.

He nodded. "You're probably right. But I think I know why your power does not really recognize me, and it's the same reason that I called for you. You see, as I understand your power, it shows you the path to victory, and allows you to walk that path without failure or faltering. But that's an incredibly narrow, limited power. It only works in situations where there's a winner and a loser, combat and competition and challenges. But I'm not about those sort of things, my interests don't lie in defeating my enemies."

"You do rather a lot of it, for someone who is not so inclined," she replied, her eyebrow arching.

"I do, but that's when I have no choice," he conceded, ducking his head to acknowledge her words. "But my preference is for situations where I win, and so does everyone else. I'm not a fighter, I'm a negotiator. I do my best work under flag of truce, or recruiting like-minded individuals, or defusing conflict. Which unfortunately means that there is no path to victory, no perfect method to succeed and defeat the enemy. So, obviously I'm not here to talk to your power, I'm here to talk to you. And I have the impression that it's been a long time since anyone talked to you, and not to your power."

"Did your daughter tell you that?" Contessa asked. Her hands scooted down to her knee, lacing over it and drawing her upper body slightly forward.

"She did," he admitted. "This is an important discussion, between the two of us, and I thought it was important to do my homework first."

"Your daughter the mind-reader?" the woman asked, the eyebrow arching higher.

"The same," he said. "Why?"

She took off her fedora and twirled it in her hand. "There are no mind-readers. It is impossible. A brain is by nature more sophisticated than a mind, and a consciousness is less sophisticated than a mind. So for a consciousness to actually understand a brain, would be utterly impossible. No, the Doctor is quite confident that your daughter is retro-cognitive, able to see the past. The opposite of a precognitive, but no less powerful, and able to see someone's secrets and convince that person that their mind has been read."

He combined a shrug and a nod. "Okay, I'll grant it's a good theory, and it explains all the information at hand, so you keep believing that, and I'll keep insisting that she's a mindreader, and we can agree to disagree," he said. "See? We're already making progress, mutual benefit."

"And what else do you intend to get out of this conversation?" she asked.

Danny leaned back and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "Everyone asks each other what they want, even you. That's not quite the right answer. But the world is full of people that never quite ask the right questions, and you're not actually different." He dropped his hand and leaned forward, holding eye contact. "Okay, what I want is for you to leave Cauldron, walk away from Doctor Mother, and abandon your mission."

"Impossible," she said, standing and seating the fedora back onto her head, her shoulders turning as she moved towards the doorway.

"What does your power do if you ask it the wrong question?" he asked.

She paused, staring down at him. "What do you mean?"

"If you ask how to defeat the wrong enemy, or if you ask it how to capture someone you ought to kill, does your power do what you ask of it, or does it know better than you do? You're a human being, fallible. Is your power fallible, or infallible."

She stared at him, blinked twice slowly. "Explain your question. Get to the point."

"Decades ago, you killed a Lovecraftian horror and-"

"A what?"

He blinked in surprise. "A Lovecr-... you know, Cthu-... oh, I get it. You were raised on a different Earth in a different reality, and while you have spent a lot of time in our reality you never really studied culture or literature at all, did you? You just moved from one goal to the next, from one victory to the next. Um, Lovecraft was a writer who specialized in stories about extra-dimensional beings of terrifying power and inscrutable natures, whose minds were unknowable and whose motives were either hostile or inimical to humanity, often with many mouths and eyes and tentacles. Anyway, as I was saying, decades ago you and Doctor Mother worked together to kill a being of seemingly-unlimited power and terrifying form. And you knew that there was another, in our dimension, hiding behind a false face as Scion, the greatest hero in our world. So, you two decided to help us, and your people, and every other human in every version of Earth. And you asked your power how you could defeat Scion. And that set you on a path that created Cauldron. You kidnapped tens of thousands of research subjects. You killed hundreds of thousands of people. You enslaved people, intimidated people, you exploited and vivisected them. You sold superpowers to people, you manipulated world events. All because you asked the wrong specific question."

"I said explain," she demanded, taking a step forward. Her fists were clenched, and her eyebrows were drawn low over her eyes.

"You should have asked how Scion could be defeated," Danny said. "I'm certain your power would have told you to sit back and relax yourself. But instead you asked it how you, you two, could defeat Scion. Because you had not learned a hard lesson that I'm still in the middle of learning: you don't have to do everything yourself. The only way you two could defeat Scion was to create a transdimensional conspiracy of torture and abduction and exploitation and manipulation that compromises every tenet of ethics and law. But other people could defeat Scion without committing genocidal atrocities. There was always a better way to do this, but you never looked because you trusted your power more than you trusted yourself. But I trust you, Fortuna. I trust you more than I trust your power, more than you trust yourself. Let us do this the better way, the way that works for everyone."

She snorted through her nose. "And what? You will talk to Scion and convince him not to destroy the world?"

"You say that like it's hard."

"I say it like... " she trailed off. "You really are entirely serious. That is actually your plan?"

"Of course it is," he said. "Which raises the question: why was that not your first plan? Seriously, when someone is doing something you don't want them to do, the first step is to ask them to stop. Every reasonable person knows that, it's incredibly obvious. But your power thought the only obvious answer was to assassinate the person first, and ask them to stop after. And you just never, ever questioned that. You harvested test subjects and conscripted armies and perverted the course of justice because you never stopped to question whether what you were doing was the only way to accomplish your goal. That's why I wanted to talk to you, not your power, Fortuna. I think you're a decent person who has never been confident in her own opinions enough to speak out."

"You really think that none of it was necessary?" she asked, sinking back down into the chair. "You think we did not need to do anything, to do any of ... what we did?" She shook her head, her dark hair splashing against her cheekbones. "No, it cannot be. Everything that you know is after thirty years of our planning. The world you know has been shaped by our efforts. Your team includes our test subjects and one person who bought their powers from us. We did what we had to do, we could not sit back and hope that someone else, some skinny middle-aged man with a second-tier powerset would save the world for us. We saw the world needed saving and so we took steps. Sooner or later Scion will remember that his purpose in this world is to create and harvest conflict, and he will indulge in conflict himself, against us. He will slaughter billions. We need to defeat him, our way. We did not undertake this lightly, we did not plow ahead without considering our options. We are not stupid children, Wharf Rat. The stakes were too high, we could not afford to rest on our laurels and hope that a savior would sweep in from off-stage and rescue all of us."

"You have a low opinion of how high an opinion I have of myself," he chuckled, shaking his head. "Look, let's loop back to the important point that was brought up. You and the Doctor never stopped to ask if there was a better way. You saw an enemy and you started planning a preemptive attack."

"And you said you'd just ask him nicely not to slaughter all of humanity," she replied, her tone condescending. "You understand that he is alien, yes? That his understanding of our world is not compatible with our own? No communication is possible. He barely understand simple concepts of the physical world, nothing abstract at all. His perceptions are so far above our own that we cannot begin to comprehend him."

"So?"

"So we-" she sputtered to a stop, then threw her arms up in the air and stood up again. "So I give up. I cannot get you to make sense at all. You just called me here to frustrate me."

"How about it I explain my plan to you?" Danny asked. "Would you consider what I say then?"


The doorway in the air closed up and Danny turned the doorknob, stepping out into the hallway. The team was clustered up by the door, and they cheered as soon as he set foot outside. Uber whooped with joy and picked Danny up to swing him around, and as soon as he was set down Taylor grabbed him in a great big hug that threatened to snap his ribs. Her Panacea-enhanced body was growing ever stronger and more durable. As soon as he could draw air, he wheezed out the words "I guess you guys heard."

"Yeah, we heard that the bogeyman of Cauldron is going to stand down and let us save the world," Pariah said, grinning widely.

Gulliver grinned. "Sorry, once we realized what was going on, they made me snoop in on you." His apology didn't quite get to his smile, but at least he made an effort to look apologetic.

Dinah was standing to the side, beaming as she stood in her own Scavenger costume, black uniform with her hood laying flat on her back. "I can't see your chances of success," she said. "There's way, way too many variables that I can't see at all. But I can't help feeling like it got a bit better for you. This really could work!"

Oni Lee dropped a hand on the preteen's shoulder. "So, now we just need one more piece of the puzzle."

Danny hugged his daughter tight across the shoulders, beaming. "And best of all, this is going to be the only part of the entire plan that is actually easy. But, that can get put off until tomorrow, no worries."

Gambler arched an eyebrow. "There's still a thirty-percent chance this will go wrong. And if you get overconfident, I think that thirty-percent on paper is more like ninety-percent in the field."

"Shut up all of you," Leet demanded, pulling himself up to his full height. "Let's get out of costume, and let's go get some beers!"

"There's four of us that aren't legal to drink," Panacea pointed out to him.

"Let's go get some iced tea!" Leet repeated in the same tone.

The ten of them went to Somer's Rock, the bar that Danny had attended villain conclaves in. The place was half-full, it had gotten a bad reputation but the neighborhood was revitalizing. The twin bartenders were still fast and efficient, the deaf waitress made sure they needn't worry about being overheard when they talked their business. Leet slipped a couple hundred bucks, and the waitress was able to get them the back of the bar to themselves, separated from the rest of the bar patrons by a bank of televisions that were showing the the Big Game for the cheering fans.

Dinah sniffed at her glass. "I think she mixed up my iced tea with yours, Uber." Uber reached over to hand the girl her sweetened iced tea and take the Long Island version for himself.

"So, I suppose you heard that I was chatting with one of our prospective buyers today," Leet said, looking across the table towards Danny. "I just assume that you hear everything with your rats."

"I did. And I need to teach you how to negotiate for yourself, you let them drive the price way too far down," Danny chuckled.

"And you know why I did that," Leet prompted. "And why it would have been a conflict of interest for you to talk on my behalf."

"I do," Danny said, still smiling. "And I appreciate it."

Salvage poked the tall man. "Spill it, boss, what's going on?"

"Scavenger Industries got a buyout offer, and accepted it," Leet answered for him. "The new owners will be allowing us to keep all our current quarters and equipment, as well as our jobs for any of us that still want them. It's the Dockworkers Association, Wharf Rat's employers before he joined the Protectorate."

"Oh, no shit?" Salvage said. "That's pretty awesome!" Today he was wearing long sleeves and gloves, and was a normal-sized man rather than a little person. Pariah glared at him from time to time, because she didn't want to glare at Gambler for having grown enough that Pariah was now the shortest on the team.

Uber was grinning widely. "Ah, here's to going back to making video games! I've got an idea for a new game mechanic, a third-person platformer where your enemy actually is the camera, for real this time. And a survival-horror game where you direct the action by yelling at the game the way people yell at horror movies, all like 'no don't run upstairs you idiot!' and 'look out he's behind you!' and stuff like that."

"So when is all of this going to go down?" Taylor asked.

"What?" Danny asked.

"You're either playing dumb, or being dumb," she said, quirking her lips in a wry grin. "Neither one looks cute on you."

He nodded. "Oh, that. About seventy-two hours. We're going to need to make sure we're entirely prepared before then," he said.

"Psssh," Salvage scoffed with scorn. "What's to prepare? We're gonna sit back and let you handle the hard stuff, then we stand up when it's time to hand out trophies."

Danny chuckled. "Honestly, that's probably the right attitude. This either works easily, or it turns into horrible tragedy and disaster. Why bother yourself worrying when the stakes are that dire? But, not worrying doesn't mean not preparing. We should come up with some backup plans, and muster our resources."

Gambler rolled her eyes. "Thank god. I was starting to worry that I was the only one taking this seriously. I still miss Trainwreck, and Circus. We can't forget them, can't start getting careless."

"Maybe we should muster the Auxiliary?" Oni Lee asked. "Nobody knows they exist, they could be a great ace in the hole."

Danny looked unconvinced. "We only just put them together, rushing them straight into a mission seems like bad form. Besides, I think we're going to need that element of surprise later, we should keep them in reserve."

"Reserve for what?" Salvage asked. "C'mon, this is the home stretch. We get the Boston girl, we go after the big girl, then it's Scion himself. There's no way that any element of surprise is going to make a lick of difference. Either we win or we lose, and element of surprise and a dozen extra hands aren't going to help with this. If they don't help now, they won't help later."

"Emergency reserves," Uber said. "C'mon, we wait for the emergency."

"Table that issue, let's talk about other measures we might take. I'm going to be working on uniforms," Pariah said. "I can get a higher concentration of nanotubes into the fabric, I can make it tougher and more protective."

Uber nodded. "I intend to be on the rooftops with my Widow. Snipers are always an asset to a street battle."

"I kind of wish there was something I could do ahead of the fight to help out," Gambler grumped, stirring ice cubes in her glass. "Some trick that would let me help more during the fights."

Leet patted the girl's shoulder. "Don't sweat it, squirt, you're already the MVP on this team. You're doing more than we could ask of you, and just because you're already giving as much as you can is no reason to be disappointed."

"Pariah and I have been working on a trick," Salvage said. "I build my body up, using fabric and jagged metal or broken glass or something. I fight like that for a while, no big deal, then on a signal she starts pouring her telekinetic energy into the fabric in one arm. I hold it in, restrain it, and then I let go all at once so my arm explodes. Plus, it makes good material for me to build up with, and also it lets me transport more cloth for her to use."

"Nice," Panacea said, nodding. "I've been thinking about rat upgrades. Neurotoxin, regeneration, maybe some sort of jamming signals to shut down mental powers. It's doable if I get a chance to study the subject."

"I can barely control the full range of rats and mice as it is," Danny said. "No gerbils, no squirrels, voles, capybara, nothing like that. I think that my powers have a pretty strict definition of what they will and won't effect. I wouldn't be surprised if neurotoxin rats slip right out of my control. Still, it's probably worth a shot."

"If you're looking to make upgrades, I could use a few," Taylor said. "I've made a list."

"I've seen your list," Panacea retorted. "You want me to remove the limiting governors from your cerebellum so that you can activate your full adrenaline strength at any time. And also to weave organic carbon nanotubes into your tendons and ligaments to increase their tensile strength. And to reposition your muscular insertions for maximum leverage. Among other things. I can't do anything to your brain, stop asking. I can't do molecular chemistry, I do organic chemistry. And if I remix your muscular insertions you will stop looking human, and also you'll lose a lot of flexibility and comfort for a small boost in strength."

"This shit right here?" Leet said to Pariah, jabbing a thumb at Panacea and Taylor. "This shit is why I won't go for any upgrades. You ever know those people that get one tattoo and then they get addicted and they keep getting tattoos until they'll never have a day job again? Yeah, it's like that."

"How about kangaroo heels?" Taylor said. "C'mon, you said it seemed feasible, whaddya say?"

Gulliver sighed. "I think maybe it's time I carried guns. Rubber bullets only, or beanbags or whatever they are. But I need something bigger and more versatile than these stunguns I've been using. A pair of nine-millimeters should do it."

"Ah, come with me son," Uber said, smiling broadly. "I will teach you much about the ways of choosing and customizing a handgun."

"Too late to change my mind?" Gulliver gulped.

"Look, if you're that damned eager," Leet said to Taylor, "I can do some stuff with your armor. Those pods on it are made to be modular, and they're surprisingly versatile. I can whip up some new tricks, something custom-built for this fight, and maybe plug those into your armor."

"I think I'd like that," she said. "It helps to have options."

Oni Lee tapped the tinker on his shoulder. "Do you suppose I could borrow that bomb satchel of yours? I may need something with real punch at range."

"Sure thing, I'm sitting this one out. It's been pretty cool sitting out the field missions, you know that? Uber and I used to go out on every mission together, and while I loved the jobs and working with someone that really understood me, there were times it really sucked. During downtime I spent all my time building and working, putting in hundreds of hours. And then during missions I was basically dead weight. I got hurt a lot. Now, sitting back away from the fights, I get to see my stuff field-tested, get to help out with cool missions, and I don't get the scabs and bruises I used to. So yeah, if you want the bomb satchel, have at it."

Uber slammed another shot. "Me, on the other hand, best of both worlds all the time. I'm out in the field, with all the excitement, and during downtime I'm still helpful, still with the training and the hacking and the strategizing. It's a pretty cool life I've got here with the Scavengers. And I want to thank Danny for bringing me in. I could've gone to jail. I could've been sent packing like Faultline. I could have gotten killed, even. But instead, Danny here decided that he saw potential in me and Leet. He talked to Kaiser about a contract with us. And then he asked us if we were getting what we wanted. He talked some sense into us, told us to do what we want instead of staying on the wrong path. To the Wharf Rat!" he raised his beer, and a wave of other glasses raised up to clink against his, toasting their leader.

"He taught me to make my own decisions and look for the future, not the past," Pariah said, holding her glass to the others.

"He got me to the people that could rebuild me as a person," Oni Lee added.

"He taught me how to help people without giving away every part of myself," Panacea said, her voice more grim than they were used to hearing from her.

"He got me out from under the Empire," Gulliver said quietly.

"He gave me a place after Cauldron dropped me off and Lamia abducted me," Salvage said.

"He saved me from Coil," Gambler sounded a bit sad as she considered what her life would have been without his intervention.

"He's always been there for me," Taylor said. "To my father." And then the Scavengers finished their toast and drank.

"Now then, let's talk about Boston," Danny said, uncomfortable but gratified. "I'll be scouting, obviously, and handling backup. Gambler's taking care of the timing. Our boots on the ground are Uber, Panacea and Benthic. All three for threat elimination, threat assessment, and transport."

Pariah chuckled. "I really don't miss having to build those wings to take us everywhere. That Chariot kid earned his keep a hundred percent when he built that teleporter. But Uber, you're good at everything, why don't you ever get into the mission planning?"

"No wait!" Leet blurted out, but it was too late, Uber was already puking onto the floor beside his chair. "Awesome," Leet grumbled.

The rest of the Scavengers jumped up and backed away, making various noises of surprise or disgust. "What happened?" Panacea said, moving to the man's side to cure what ailed him.

"Have you been watching him?" Leet asked. "He's been pounding shots like crazy, all night. He switched his power over so he'd be an expert at holding his liquor. I've seen him do it before, and yes that's really a thing. Then Pariah asked him for a tactical assessment, and he switched his power over before he thought about it. And now he's not an expert in holding his liquor."

"I wanna die," Uber groaned, slumped on the floor.

"I know," Panacea said, patting his shoulder. "I know."

Leet started tugging hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet. "Okay, let's get him out of here and I'll pay for the damages, I'll meet you guys back at the factory. We can talk more about dealing with the Fallen, and Blasto and Morrigan, from there."

Author's note: thanks go to the Nachoman for fact-checking my information about carbon nanotubules. I have made adjustments to the story as needed. I was tempted to handwave it off by saying that it "makes comic book logic", but that's not really what this setting is about. And thanks also go to Star Iron, who preemptively pointed out that I was steering this story in a darker direction for no good reason. Character deaths are powerful moments, if they serve a purpose. This series is almost done now, and it's already nearly as long as a trilogy of novels. I thank everyone who reads this far and enjoyed it. I know that time and attention are finite resources, and you chose to spend yours with me. I am flattered.