When an Endbringer attacks it's protocol for wards to get to the branch HQ and report for duty ASAP. It's mainly to make sure everyone is on the same page as a large portion of the local heroes get teleported off to the battle. There's about a 16 hour time difference between Canberra and Brockton Bay (Depending on daylight savings). So as the Simurgh attacked in the morning there; me, Aegis, and Gallant were just about to finish our afternoon shift when the alarms sounded.

This wasn't my first time dealing with an Endbringer alert as a ward so I quickly went through my little checklist. I either called or left messages with dad and Taylor that I wasn't going to be home for a day or two ("Yes Dad, I already packed some stuff here so you don't have to drop anything off"). Just about every hero here went, except for Dauntless and Velocity who were left here as the reserve. They had to leave quickly so when the other wards started to arrive they had already been teleported to Australia by Strider.

As Kid Win became the last to arrive, the rest of us were huddled around the console listening to the radio news bulletins on the console. We didn't have live feeds on account of potential Simurgh influence but we were trying to stay updated. We could tell that things were looking worse and worse for the Australian capital, as the longer the battle went the more likely it would be that it would need to be quarantined. Then the announcement was made.

We can confirm that the Simurgh is retreating. I repeat the Simurgh is retreating. Casualties in the battle are currently moderate. A decision on whether to quarantine the city is still pending.

A few cheers went up in the room, more for the winged bitch getting beaten than any real victory. But we knew that like most encounters with her that any victory was pyrrhic. The only city she has attacked to avoid quarantine was London, and that was mostly because of an early intervention by Scion. Canberra's fate was probably sealed though, the Simurgh had been present for too long there for it to be safe. It was just a matter of the decision being announced. Aegis decided to turn off the broadcast to make an announcement.

"Alright everyone, now that the attack is over we need to start thinking about what we need to do. Until the heroes who were present at the battle complete their screening they can't come back for any emergency. So for about the next week we're going to be pulling double duty on patrols. In theory it should be simple since the truce should keep the gangs from starting anything, but we should still be prepared for anything. Questions?"

Clockblocker raised his hand "Who's going to be the first patrol out?"

"That'll be Kid Win and Vista. Then you and Stalker. I'll finalize the rest of the schedule for the upcoming week with the Director shortly." Aegis outlined.

That sounded fine to me. It was getting late and I needed to get ready for bed. Even if school was canceled I needed to be rested for the next patrol. I didn't like spending nights here since the beds were lowest bidder crap and the showers were communal. But we needed to stay close to base in our off hours until the heroes returned. We hashed out a few more details but other than that there wasn't anything unexpected. After listening to a few more news updates on the casualties, with thankfully none from Brockton Bay reported so far, I went to bed.

In the morning I was greeted with the news that another city would be condemned to quarantine. When I had been growing up, finding out that was possible kicked off for me a few nights of nightmares where Brockton Bay was quarantined. It was hard to wrap my mind around getting dealt a fate like that. Trapped in your city only living on imported rations cause your cities economy is ruined and you can't afford regular food anymore. Any escape cut off by well armed guards and capes. Basically a large scale prison with no hope of release or parole.

So when I started my patrol of the day with Vista I was in a slightly depressed mood. Vista wasn't up for much talking either so we kept our conversation limited to some observations and reporting in. We were covering the Docks today so there were lots of ABB and old Merchants tags marking places. We usually didn't patrol here but the whole Endbringer situation meant we needed to fill in where necessary. I knew the neighborhood well enough but it was strange how quiet things were with everyone avoiding going out, like it was bad luck.

Suddenly Vista noticed something and looked up toward the sky. I followed her gaze to see an owl was circling around in the air, staying focused in a tight pattern. Vista began to wonder about this.

"Hey Manes, aren't owls supposed to be nocturnal or something?"

"Most are, but I think there's a couple that don't care as much. You think we should get a better look?"

"Might as well, I'll get us some elevation." Which was her way of saying she would collapse the distance between us and the roofs of the nearby apartment building. A few steps and we suddenly were several stories higher and could survey the neighborhood from our vantage point.

Something that caught our attention immediately however was an empty lot two blocks away. It wasn't visible to the street because of a wooden fence that blocked people from seeing it. But we could see that the lot was hosting a small flock of birds. What made it strange was that it was clearly a collection of several species such as ducks, hawks, crows, and pigeons. The owl landed there and a hawk immediately flew up to take its place. The other birds barely seemed to move, only making some space for the owl that had landed.

"Hey Vista, you don't think that Zookeeper might be in this neighborhood right?"

"We've never tied her to any other part of the city, so I wouldn't doubt it."

"Right, I'll report in to the console quickly and see if we can get permission to try and contact her."

"You think we can actually get a hold of her?"

"Between what you and I can bring to the table, I'm feeling pretty confident." I activated my communicator and contacted Clockblocker at the console. "Manes to console, we are sighting some strange animal activity and we believe Zookeeper is in the area. Permission to contact her?"

"Console to Manes. What kind of activity are you seeing? Aegis just made these patrol schedules, he wouldn't be happy if we started ignoring them for wild goose chases."

"No gooses, but I am seeing a lot of owls, hawks, crows, and pigeons gathered together in an empty lot. It looks like they're taking turns keeping watch in the sky."

"Really? I guess that is strange. Alright you have permission. Remember it has to be non-hostile. If you don't find anything in half an hour check in again and hurry back to the patrol route. That isn't the kind of neighborhood you want to loiter around in."

"Roger that. Thanks Clock." I turned to Vista with a grin. "Looks like we're good to go."

Then glancing back to the lot I noticed a pair of people walk out from one of the adjoining buildings. It was an old corner store that looked like it was abandoned, but apparently they were making use of it. They were too far away to make out in detail. I could only confirm that one seemed to be wearing a costume, and the other had a hoodie and jeans with the hood up.

The figure with a hoodie was carrying a bag and taking a handful from it to spread some birdseed around on the ground. The birds gathered orderly towards the dropped seeds and started to eat. Given the second person present it looks like Zookeeper had a friend we didn't know about.

I glanced back to Vista and made a suggestion. "I think we can get close without them noticing. She'll probably be distracted feeding the birds for a minute or two. You think you can make it that close in time?"

She smiled and said "Child's play." She then shrunk the distance between the roof and the street again and with a wave of her arms towards the street said "After you."

I smiled back. "Let's pay them a visit then."

We started a light jog back onto the street. Missy performed several warps as we rounded a few corners approaching the apparent hideout of Zookeeper. We stuck close to the buildings to stay out of sight from above. As we got close I glanced up at the hawk that had taken up position in the sky. It seemed to stick to its circling without any indication that it had spotted us. Vista made one final warp and we were at the front door of the corner store where Zookeeper was residing.

Now that we were close I could tell this used to be a pet store of all things, which certainly seemed oddly appropriate. The windows and front door were boarded up but we could still see the signage that said 'Pet Paradise'. We considered our options with Vista offering idea's first.

"You think we should go inside? You could go ghost and check for openings we could use."

"Probably not. I'm curious but it would probably be viewed as hostile if we start poking around in their space. Don't want to start during an Endbringer Truce."

"Okay so we're just going to say hello?"

"That and see if we can establish some kind of rapport, maybe get a way to contact them in the future. We can pitch it as trying to coordinate patrols for the Endbringer truce."

"I can see that working. Alright we'll go to the roof and see if they're still feeding the birds in that lot."

I nodded in agreement and Vista compressed the distance to the top of the building. A couple steps put us on the roof. We jogged to the other end of the store's roof to get a view of the lot. But when we got to the end of the roof it appeared we were too late.

"Where'd all the birds go?" Vista said in confusion. I could share the feeling. We had been outside the whole time and I hadn't seen any flock take flight. I looked up to where the hawk had been circling to find it had disappeared.

"Okay she clearly must have noticed us approaching. Maybe we should call in to-" I paused as I started to hear a faint buzzing. "Vista I think we should go."

"Huh? Which way is that sound coming fr-" Vista was cut off as the faint buzzing suddenly became a loud roar when a large swarm of insects emerged from the roof vents. They didn't go for us but went to the edges of the roof. Suddenly we had to back off from the side of the building as we found ourselves surrounded. Then the roof access door swung open and the missing birds came pouring out. They took flight into the air as they flew out. After a minute we found ourselves under a cloud of flying birds. This left us stuck trying to find a direction we could go that wasn't blocked off, Vista's warping nearly useless with so many animals in the way.

Then someone came out from the roof access entrance, and when they emerged the birds began to calm down and land around us. Was this person Zookeeper? There was still no direction we could go without having birds in our way. The insects also settled on the roof, reducing their volume substantially.

The person was clearly a girl though, from what we could see of her face and long brown hair bound into a ponytail. She wore a dark miner's helmet with a lamp attached. Below that a domino mask was covering her face. She wore a heavy dark jacket that was large enough that the bottom of it reached her thighs, with dark pants and boots completing the look. She greeted us.

"Hello, sorry for the surprise. We mistook you for someone else. My friend is still working on how to use animal senses properly. You must be Vista and Manes."

That voice sounded awfully familiar. In fact it sounded like a certain friend of Taylor's. I decided to wait before jumping to conclusions but I was starting to suspect Julia and Zookeeper really were two different people. Vista responded first as I was thinking.

"Yeah that's us. Who exactly did you think we were?"

"Oni Lee and potentially a friend of his, and since this is ABB territory it made sense. She said a pair of people were moving here very quickly, appearing and disappearing. Honest mistake."

I was a little skeptical of this claim, since there were two of us and as far as I knew Oni Lee's teleportation didn't allow for passengers. But maybe they didn't know that? I decided it was better to focus on information gathering before trying to poke holes in their story, so I started with the basics.

"I guess I can't fault you for being careful. Though you should probably know that Oni Lee can only teleport himself for future reference. Are you Zookeeper by the way?"

"No, I'm just working with them. You can call me Precaution. You'll have to excuse me if I don't tell you my powers though, it's just a precaution." She smiled at her lame pun. I wonder if she planned on using that on everyone she introduced herself too. I hope for her sake she doesn't.

"Okay, well we can clearly tell that Zookeeper is here. We were hoping to contact her about coordinating for the Endbringer truce? We try to do that with any cape that isn't a villain."

"Sorry, she forgot her costume at home. If you insist I can get her to use her crows." She then bent down towards the crow that was closest to her. She gestured towards it and it made a small jump into the air before flying to her shoulder. "Gah! Still need to work on the soft landing there. Lucky thing I picked a thick coat for my costume."

The crow let out a "Sorry". It then adjusted itself so that it was sitting on Precaution's shoulder like a parrot did for a pirate. Once it was finished she stood back up.

"You should introduce yourself" Precaution suggested.

"Hello. Names Zookeeper" The crow pronounced out. It clearly was relaying the words as Zookeeper was working out how to say them. Aegis was right though, it was very freaky.

"Can she actually hear us through the birds?" Vista asked. Thinking about it, that was certainly a valid question.

"She can hear us well enough. I can do most of the talking though since she's still slow with the crow speech. So what exactly did you have in mind when you say coordinating?"

I answered that question "Well at the very least we were hoping to set up a contact number. I heard you used a payphone for the bounty pickup phone call. If there were any imminent dangers or if we wanted to ask you something, a phone number we could use to talk to you would help a lot."

"Ok that makes sense. I've been telling her we should do something like that but she kept hemming and hawing about how we were still 'setting up'." She put some air quotes around the last two words. It was probably a phrase she had heard Zookeeper say a lot to emphasize for her like that.

The crow relayed a comment "Still deciding name."

"A name? Are you starting a group?" I asked. They both already had cape names, so what else could they be naming?

"Maybe? We're still figuring a few things out. I'm still not sure if we need a group name if there's only two of us. But we can set up a burner phone in the next day or so that you can call us on."

"You guys could each get a free phone if you came down to the HQ to register as independents."

"We thought about that but we prefer getting a burner phone. No offense but we're trying to keep a low profile and we have no clue what could be in those phones."

"...um Ok. If you feel that strongly about it you could just register."

"Is there any reason to register?"

"...The free phones are usually the reason but you also get some goodwill from the PRT."

The crow spoke up "No thanks"

Precaution gave the crow a look and followed up with "We'll think about it. Anything else?"

"The other thing we could also do is try to coordinate some patrols together."

"We're not necessarily doing patrols right now. We still have a few things to work on before we start being active capes."

"Really? What are you doing?"

"That's actually private."

"...Really? Is there anything you can tell us? You are trying to be heroes right?" I was getting a bit frustrated. I get someone being a little suspicious of the PRT but they were coming off as paranoid.

"Rude." The crow said. Precaution gave a small nod at that.

"Yes we are going to be heroes. We just weren't exactly expecting any visits today so you'll have to excuse us if we don't have a lot of answers for your questions." Precaution answered evenly.

Vista put her hand on my shoulder. "Okay I think we said everything we needed to say. Right Manes?" She gave me a look that said 'So help me if you start a fight I'm not backing you up'. I could try to throw my weight around but that was a bad idea in the best of times, especially so during an Endbringer truce. I decided it was best to finish.

"Yeah, I guess so. Could you at least ask Zookeeper to clear the roof so Vista can warp us down? Unless she wants us to go through your hideout to get back to the street."

The birds and insects surrounding us suddenly all jumped up in the air at once. It was actually startling for me and Vista, though Precaution seemed to take it in stride. Once the roof was cleared the crow on Precaution's shoulder spoke again "Done, you can leave now"

I wasn't sure how to interpret the tone the crow said those words with, but I assumed it was probably not friendly. I guess we had imposed ourselves with our visit, but you'd think they'd be a little more accommodating to fellow heroes. It would probably be best not to push our luck by trying to stay longer. Maybe I should try to end on a professional note?

"Alright, you know how to call us. We look forward to working with you in the future."

"Yeah sure. We'll probably be moving our base soon so no need to waste your time visiting here again." Precaution replied.

I resisted the urge to ask if that was something they were already doing or a result of our visit. Me and Vista waved goodbye as we walked to the edge of the roof, and with a nod to her Vista warped the street to let us down. Soon we were walking away from the building, and once we were far enough away that Zookeeper probably wasn't going to eavesdrop Vista decided to break the brief silence.

"Alright so were you getting a paranoid vibe off of them cause I sure did."

"Yeah I'm thinking they're probably on the less well adjusted side of the spectrum as far as parahumans go. Not quite as bad as Stalker but they definitely share the anti-authority impulse with her."

"That's concerning because Stalker got quite a few felonies from hospitalizing almost a dozen people on her rap sheet before we caught up with her. You don't think they're going to go the violent vigilante route do you?"

"I don't know. But if they did it would be way easier for them than for Shadow Stalker just using Zookeeper's power. And we don't even know what Precaution's power is." I said.

Which was the truth, though I did have a hunch. If Precaution was Julia like I suspected now, then that added a new aspect to her hostage incident. If she had powers then, they must have been useless because she didn't know I was helping her for a good stretch of time. Taylor hadn't mentioned anything especially bad happening to Julia afterwards so she must have triggered before the incident. So the most likely power-set was a thinker's, with the possibility of something else that required certain conditions to use.

Though now that Julia was unlikely to be Zookeeper, that cast a new light on the hostage incident. Zookeeper must have known Julia before the rescue, cause why else would they suddenly reveal themselves in such an over the top way? The amount of force used to subdue the Tigers was clearly someone who was trying to protect a friend or comrade.

I hadn't considered Taylor much before but this made her less likely, since I know for a fact they only became friends after the incident. But Taylor had mentioned once that Julia had one friend she had used to be close with before they drifted apart in the last year. She just happened to be the very same person to visit us last December, a girl named Charlotte. I don't remember much about her except that she was Jewish and that Taylor had gotten angry at her because she didn't want to be friends after Taylor had gotten punched for her. Suddenly that refusal of friendship looks a lot more suspicious. I had to put my musings aside though as Vista asked another question.

"So do you mind reporting this in and doing the paperwork? Because honestly that whole side adventure was your idea."

"Sure, I don't mind. Even if they didn't answer a lot of questions I'd say it was very informative."

A/N
-So the biggest reveal in this chapter was that Julia is a parahuman as well. She will be the next POV character for the upcoming interlude (next chapter). The only other detail I'll reveal now is that her trigger event was the result of AU events in this story. I'll let you speculate on that and exactly what powers she has in the meantime.

-Once again Sam is very good at reaching very logical and well supported conclusions that also happen to be completely wrong. Only one or two bad assumptions can really throw you off hmm?

-Taylor only chose that spot for her base because she was certain Sam didn't patrol that area. So when the wards started covering extra routes Taylor got a bit of a surprise.

-Please leave feedback. I'm always looking to improve.