When I heard my sister's name come out of Triumph's mouth as the real identity of Zookeeper, I'll admit I lost my composure a bit.

"WHAT!? Woah woah woah. Time the FUCK out! Is this some kind of sick joke? My sister is not a parahuman. She would have told me!"

"We have evidence that she is in fact a parahuman, and whether or not she told you this is the only fact in contention. Though it is highly probable you did in fact know." Triumph said trying to restore some professionalism to the conversation.

"I live with her, I can tell you for a fact that she isn't."

"Well I've been collecting and keeping track of all the evidence around Zookeeper for the past two months and she's the only one it could be." Triumph claimed.

"Oh really? Then explain. I would like to think you would have some proof before you'd suddenly start accusing me of breaking the law."

Miss Militia looked over towards Triumph and gave a nod before saying "It would probably help us reach some common ground if you lay out the evidence for her."

Triumph nodded back and said "Alright, if you want to hear our reasons for suspecting you that's fair. When we talked about you collaborating with Zookeeper, we were mainly talking about financial support."

"Uhhh… You do remember that I get minimum wage working for you guys right? I'm not exactly rolling in extra money. So I'm not sure where you got the idea I'm bankrolling someone I've barely ever interacted with."

"That is not quite what I meant. Zookeeper had a significant financial windfall recently. Do you remember her claiming the bounty money, correct?"

"...Yes but you were the ones who paid that to her. Not to mention I actually lost money cause the bounty was split."

"Technically true, but that's not the whole story. The money you earned was all going into a trust fund, which you wouldn't be able to access for years. But an independent on the other hand would be getting cash they could spend immediately. So if Zookeeper was your sister then you could make sure she could participate in your take-down of the Tigers so she had a claim on their bounty money."

"But that's not true! And why would you think that Zookeeper is my sister?"

"We actually suspected from the beginning, or rather Miss Militia thought it was a possibility." Triumph nodded in Miss Militia's direction, which she took as a cue to speak.

"When you stopped the Tigers you mentioned during your initial debrief that you were shopping with your sister at the time. So when we were considering potential identities she was added to the list. We eventually ruled out the hostage and we came to the conclusion that your sister was the most likely identity, given she knew about the crime and had recently suffered a traumatic event that could plausibly cause a trigger event." Miss Militia said.

I couldn't help but feel like I had been tricked. Nobody had ever mentioned to me that Taylor was a suspect, only Julia. The only reason I had even suspected Julia was that Miss Militia herself had suggested it. Now she turns around and says they had dropped her as a suspect in favor of my own sister without telling me until now? I resisted the urge to call her a bitch right there, even if I thought she deserved it.

Miss Militia continued "We were initially going to leave it alone from there. You wouldn't be the first ward with a sibling that triggered and didn't join. But then she came to collect the bounty"

"We made the assumption that given how the take-down of the Tigers happened, you knew about her identity. You delayed while she collected the animals she needed to overwhelm them. So logically she could have learned about the bounty from you, despite the Tiger's bounty being fairly low profile." Triumph added in.

"That's absolutely not what I was doing, I was delaying them for you guys. And why would it be a problem that she collected the bounty, assuming she was my sister for a minute? There's no rule saying family members can't split a bounty." I tried to rebut. I very carefully avoided mentioning that she technically did learn about it from me when I mentioned it to Julia.

"But it is against the rules for a ward to assist an independent cape, especially financially. Which you knowingly helping Zookeeper earn bounty money qualifies. The PRT leadership doesn't tolerate wards using their position like that. That meant we had to figure out whether Zookeeper was using the money for any cape related activities with an investigation." Triumph replied.

"But none of that proves Taylor is Zookeeper. I didn't even know the Tigers had a bounty when I went to deal with them, or that Zookeeper would show up." I said. This was ridiculous, everything they were saying so far was guesswork and assumptions.

Triumph didn't seem to be phased by my statements though. "I can't say I have evidence that you knew one way or the other, but I do have decisive evidence that Taylor is Zookeeper. I was able to call in a favor to get a question to Think Tank on how I could get a lead. They pointed me towards three potential pet shops Zookeeper could have visited for supplies. It made sense since her power was animal related, so she would likely need animal feed for any animals she kept. My investigation turned up this."

Triumph picked up a folder that was sitting on the table. He opened it and took out a large picture that he showed to me. It was a picture from a security camera of Taylor in a pet store. I suddenly had a horrible feeling in my gut. I knew how unlikely it was that she was there just to browse, since we didn't have any pets. I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound like a weak denial. Triumph continued on from there.

"I asked this particular store's owner if he had seen any large purchases of animal feed from new customers and he pointed to this girl, which as you can see is clearly your sister. The other two stores also noted seeing her, and the store copies of the receipts showed she bought different types of animal food from each store. Most likely to avoid any awkward questions of why she was buying things like bird seed and dog food in bulk at the same time. But the final bit of evidence is the most solid."

Triumph took out another piece of paper from the folder, this time with a picture of a hundred dollar bill.

"While we aren't allowed to mark the money we give out in bounties, we do record the serial numbers for auditing reasons. We were given the authority to do this after several incidents of PRT employee's attempting to commit fraud with the bounty system. Your sister paid in cash, some of it was in large bills. We found this particular bill in the same store your sister visited."

"How do you know it was from her? It could just be a coincidence." I felt like I was grasping at straws but I had to try.

"The owner confirmed the bill is from her, since she was the only customer to pay with a one-hundred dollar bill in the preceding month. Most people used a card for their larger purchases. The serial numbers on this bill match one of the bills in the bounty payout. So unless there was some other way your sister could have gotten this bill, I don't see any other person it could logically be." Triumph concluded.

I was speechless. Any words of protest or denial died on my lips. This was conclusive evidence my sister had lied to me. That she had hid being a parahuman for months now. And I hadn't even seriously suspected her, just assuming that she wouldn't betray my trust so thoroughly.

And then it occurred to me that she had almost died today. Zookeeper and Precaution were clearly about to be finished off by the Empire before I had arrived. My sister was about to die and I didn't even know. It was sheer dumb luck I had decided to go and help them. If I hadn't then me and dad only would have found out she was a parahuman when the morgue called us to identify the body.

"Manes, if you need a minute to yourself, that's fine. I can see that this is a lot to take in." Miss Militia said, snapping me out of the spiral I had gone into. I realized I had been staring at the table for the last minute.

"...Yeah I think I need a minute to process."

"Alright, if you excuse me I need to check something. I'll be back in a minute." Triumph said before walking out of the room.

After he left I tried to get my head back into the game. I had to focus on what I could do now. Even if my ward training wasn't designed for this it did teach me what to do in a general crisis. And it taught me that when I didn't know what to do, that I should focus on what I can do in the here and now.

So what I needed to do was think about how I could get them to believe me. As far as they were concerned I had been covering up for my sister for months now. Maybe if I cou-

Then Triumph came right back into the room with a pained expression. He walked up to Miss Militia and said "She's been telling the truth."

She looked a bit incredulous "I'm sorry what?"

I'll admit I was as confused as her. Why the sudden turnabout?

"Armsmaster's lie detector hasn't detected a single lie from her the entire time. So unless she's very good at fooling a system she didn't even know about, we need to reevaluate the whole case."

"Okay, time out! What the hell are you talking about? What lie detector?" At no point had they mentioned Armsmaster was watching me live out my worst nightmare.

Triumph looked at me and sighed "Armsmaster has been working on a new lie detecting system. He's been observing our conversation to see if he could observe any lies. He didn't find any. He swore up and down that this version is working 'fine' apparently. "

"So that means you really didn't know your sister was a parahuman." Miss Militia said, with a tone that said 'And that means this is even a worse clusterfuck than I realized'.

"So what now? Do you at least believe me?" I said with a little hope in my voice. Maybe now that we were on the same page finally we could figure something out.

"Well here's the thing. This whole investigation was about looking into whether you were knowingly supporting your sister's activities as an independent cape. So while we believe you, the people who run the PRT will need something else to collaborate with Armsmaster's lie detector." Triumph explained.

"But…why wouldn't they believe Armsmaster's lie detector? "

"By nature a lot of the leadership of the PRT is suspicious of tinkertech. It also doesn't help that Armsmaster's lie detector isn't admissible in court, so if this case ends up in court you'd only have your word. To be safe we'd need something else to prove that you didn't know."

"Couldn't I just ask my sister to come in and testify that she wasn't working with me?"

"That… might work for now. But the problem is that it would be a band aid solution. That's because now you undeniably know her secret identity, and anything she does going forward will result in you being scrutinized. You'd likely be under scrutiny the second she went out as a cape again. It wouldn't take much to have you be put on probation."

"But I've only had a normal schedule for barely two months now. It's not fair!"

"I'm sorry Manes, but the only way to make this problem go away quickly would be for your sister to sign up for the wards. For completeness sake Precaution might need to sign up too but that is a separate matter. The worst case scenario if that doesn't happen is that you would likely be asked to transfer to another branch."

"That's bullshit! Why the fuck should I get punished for my sister being an independent cape!" I shouted. I couldn't imagine leaving my friends behind.

"The problem isn't that your sister is an independent cape, it's that she's not restraining herself." Miss Militia said.

"That's…. not entirely true. She hasn't killed anyone." I tried to rebut.

"Perhaps, but did you know that every single one of the Tigers required hospitalization? Considering they all have brute ratings it's hard to pretend that was an accident. But that could be explained away as something done in the heat of the moment, since a hostage's life was on the line. But today was different, do you know why?"

There were a lot of differences between today and then, like the fact that Taylor had gotten her ass handed to her today. But I had a good idea of what difference Miss Militia was actually referring to "Because she started the fight?"

"Not just a fight, it was practically a full out parahuman battle in the streets. If she was just stopping some muggings or raiding a single location, that would be one thing. But she's basically declared war on the Empire 88 with her stunt. That's why we brought you here today. She escalated this far beyond something we could just ignore. We've already had to put out press statements to assure the public that this wasn't the start of Brockton Bay's version of the Boston Games."

Triumph decided to chip in "The only reason she isn't being charged with any crimes today is that the only people she hurt were Empire members, so they were healed by Othala instead of going to the hospital and having their injuries documented. It's a small miracle that the several bystanders that were hurt in this whole mess only needed minor medical attention."

Miss Militia rose from her chair and walked up to me, and then put her hand on my shoulder. I looked up to meet her eyes.

"Manes I know this is hard in a lot of ways. But I've known you for a long time. and I know you're strong enough to get through this. If you work with us we can figure out a way to make sure you're not going to be punished for what your sister did."

"...I trusted you. I trusted you when you thought my sister could be Zookeeper and you didn't tell me! And you!" I pointed at Triumph "I thought we were at least friends! My sister fucking trusted you to find the fuckers who almost killed her. Then you fucked up and let ten of them get away! What the hell ever happened to that huh? Did you get distracted with this little investigation?"

"I was ordered to take this investigation, Manes. I was told it had priority." Triumph said steadily, if a little weakly.

"Oh that makes it all fucking better huh? Guess I know where your fucking priorities are."

Miss Militia tried to interject. "Manes I get it, you're angry and frustrated. We were probably too quick to suspect you. What is it that you want that can make this better?"

"What do I want? I wanted to just be a normal ward. I didn't want anything else until you dragged me in here. All I want now is for things to go back to normal! Is that too much to ask?"

That definitely brought them up short. The silence stretched for a few seconds before Miss Militia replied. "I'm sorry Manes. I wish I give you a better answer than asking your sister to come in, but I can't"

Triumph spoke up next saying "I can sympathize, I wouldn't know what to do if my cousin became a parahuman and she became a vigil-"

*Knock*Knock*Knock*

All of us turned towards the door when we heard the knocking. Triumph and Miss Militia exchanged glances at one another before Triumph decided to be the one to go answer the door. When he opened the door a bit to see who was interrupting us, I caught a glimpse of a young PRT intern standing outside. Even though I couldn't get a good look at her because of where Triumph was standing, I could still hear what she said.

"There's someone from the Youth Guard who wants to see Manes. She claims it's urgent and she's ready to escalate the issue to the national organization if she can't see her immediately."

If Triumph ever looked more displeased before I couldn't remember it. I wasn't sure what the Youth Guard wanted with me now, but given how things were going I expected they just wanted a turn to yell at me for whatever reason. He looked over towards Miss Militia.

"It seems we'll have to wrap this up for now." Then he looked at me. "Look you're not under arrest but if there's any hope of salvaging this mess we'll need to work together. For now the only thing you need to know is that until this gets sorted out you're going to just be on console for the next few days. In the meantime I think you should take these just in case."

He reached into his uniform and pulled out a couple of pamphlets. I recognized them as the ward recruitment pamphlets that heroes sometimes carried around with them on patrols. Apparently some heroes took the possibility that a recruitment opportunity could come at any time seriously.

"Try not to do anything rash and if there's any problems at all call us. If you decide you need help persuading your sister to join the wards then we'll be happy to support that in any way we can."

"What makes you think my sister will want to join the wards? I think she's made it pretty clear she wants to go her own way." I said with a bit of suppressed rage. The only reason I wasn't telling him to go completely fuck himself was that I had to come back here tomorrow.

"I know that even if she's a bit misguided, she clearly wants to be a hero. Try to remember that okay? Now you should get moving along and not keep whoever it is from the Youth Guard waiting."

I yanked the pamphlets from his hands wordlessly and put them in my pocket. I wasn't much in the mood for more chitchat so I silently followed the intern through the hallways until we reached another conference room. When the door opened I immediately recognized who it was.

"There you are, I was worried I'd need to go all the way to the top to get you out of that interrogation you were in. How are you doing?" Mrs Houlihan greeted me.

"Honestly? Like crap" I told her. I was too emotionally drained to lie right now. One of the things I liked about her was that she didn't mind me swearing occasionally.

"Oh dear I was afraid of that. I heard that you were going to be questioned as part of some investigation into your activities only half an hour ago. I wasn't sure what was more infuriating, that this was the first time I was being made aware you were under investigation or that you were being questioned without me or even your father present. The absolute nerve of these people sometimes, I swear."

"Wait, so you're not mad at me?"

"No, not in the least. Unless you think there is a reason I should be mad at you?"

"I don't think so, though they seem to be finding plenty of reasons."

"Well don't take it too personally, the people who run the PRT can be very heavy handed at the best of times. I've contacted your father and he agrees with me that the allegations against you are completely unfounded. However it will be difficult to make much of a defense until we can get ahold of an unredacted file with all the details. Is there anything you can tell me? Of course if it's classified I can wait to hear the full story until after I jump through the necessary hoops."

As much as I wanted to tell her that my sister was Zookeeper, I knew I couldn't just spread my sister's secret identity around. So I kept it to a short and general description of the situation.

"They think I'm helping out Zookeeper because they found out I know her secret identity in my civilian life. But the thing is that I didn't even know that she was Zookeeper until today."

"Oh my. Yes, I can see how that would cause problems. But if you did nothing wrong then I'm confident that the truth will come out. Now I know you've had a long day so how about you change and I can provide you a ride home hmm?"

"Wait, really?"

"Yes, your father was meeting someone a bit outside of town today so he'll need some time to get home. Besides, we were due for a friendly chat anyway. So I figured a chat on the car ride home would be a good way to get your mind off this whole mess. We can discuss this whole business tomorrow once I can get cleared to read the whole file and your father can find a lawyer."

"Yeah, that sounds good."

"I'm glad you agree. Now remember if they want to sit you down for any more questions don't tell them anything. You have the right to remain silent. I know you work closely with them but until this is cleared up they're not on your side anymore. Right now they're only concerned about their own interests. It's very important to remember that."

"Sure, I'll…. keep that in mind" I said.

It hurt to think it but she was right, they weren't on my side anymore. Even worse was that they haven't been on my side for a while now, ever since they figured out my sister was Zookeeper. Could I even trust the other wards anymore? The worst part of this nightmare was that for so many people the trust I had taken for granted was gone.

After that I was able to swing through the Wards room quickly to get changed out of my costume and into my civilian clothes. I even skipped my customary after duty shower just to get out of there quicker. I might have had mixed feelings about going home but I didn't feel safe in the headquarters anymore.

Mrs Houlihan kept to her promise and drove me home in her VW Beetle. She said it was the car she and her husband had first bought when they first immigrated here since it was bought secondhand. She spent the car ride home regaling me with a couple of interesting stories about her first few months living in America ("I still can't believe I forgot you have different outlet types here. It took two bloody weeks to find an adapter we could use"). It was definitely a nice distraction from how messy my own life was getting.

When we pulled up to my house it was just after it had gotten dark. Mrs Houlihan only asked me to stay in touch and wait for dad to get home before I did anything else. She said she'd make some phone calls tomorrow to help sort things out. After that I waved goodbye as she drove away.

Taking a deep breath I pulled out the pamphlets that Triumph had given me. I didn't remember seeing any pamphlets when I had signed up, since my recruitment was sort of rushed on account of the "training accident" I had with Taylor. Looking back it felt strange to think of a time when I wasn't in the wards. So much of my life had revolved around the wards here that I couldn't imagine how I could cope if I had to do the unthinkable and transfer somewhere else.

I had spent so much time focusing on my ward's career that I hardly had any friends who weren't in the Brockton Bay Wards. And a few of those who weren't were New Wave kids so they weren't exactly normal either. If I had to transfer I'd basically be starting over socially, which Taylor had demonstrated was not something you could easily recover from.

Now the only path forward to going "back to normal" was getting Taylor to join the wards. But then would that even still be "normal" if she ended up joining? If there was one thing I had learned today, apparently I didn't know my own sister like I thought I did.

But what other option did I have? I couldn't imagine dad was going to approve of Taylor making a go of being an independent hero, especially after today. Granted that meant I was essentially doing the PRT's dirty work, but I wasn't doing it for them. They could go fuck themselves at this point. I was doing this because making Taylor join was the only way I could salvage some normality from this shitshow she had gotten me into.

Maybe now is the best time to confront her about it? She's fresh off a big failure, and I doubt she has a clear idea of what to do next. Dad's been clued in that something is seriously wrong so he'll probably have a few things to say when he gets home. Plus as far as I'm concerned she owes me big for the fucking nightmare she's put me through today.

At the very least Taylor could try to tough it out in the wards for a few months to learn some basic survival skills as a cape. Because while I don't know exactly what her plan was today, it was clearly made by someone who didn't understand what a horrible idea it was. Only someone with suicidal overconfidence would attack multiple Empire locations with only two capes. It was one thing to throw a bunch of birds and insects at some C tier supervillains, but the Empire was not some gang you just choose to mess with on an idle weekday.

After a minute or two of clearing my head, I went into the house. When I got inside I heard the TV was on in the living room, and while I couldn't make out the exact words it sounded it was on the local news channel. I set my book bag aside and took off my shoes. I still had the pamphlets in my jacket pocket though when I entered the living room.

Walking in I saw that Taylor was sitting on the couch watching the news, which just happened to be going to commercials. Taylor didn't seem to be injured, though I imagine if I demanded she submit to a full physical right now the doctor would find some sprains and bruises. I decided to give her just one last chance to come clean.

"Hey Taylor, how was your day?"

"Oh it wasn't that great, me and Julie had to cancel our study session after the bus line we were going to use had to stop service while that big fight downtown was happening. It kind of sucked having to walk home."

"...Really that's all that happened today?"

Taylor seemed to be catching on that something was amiss from the tone of my voice and she turned off the TV before continuing. "...Yes, if you want to, you could ask Julia about it later. Did you have a bad day?"

That was cute, trying to use an accomplice as an alibi. Too bad for her I'm not in the mood for any more games.

"Yeah, you could say I had a bad day. The worst in fact. But I do have a surprise for you."

I took this opportunity to take the recruitment pamphlet out of my pocket and threw it at her head, because I needed some catharsis that didn't involve punching her. Taylor must not have gotten any super reflexes from her power because the pamphlet hit the top of her head as she reflexively ducked.

"What the fuck Sam, you can't just throw pamphlets at peop-" she stopped as she looked down at where the recruitment pamphlet had fallen and noticed what exactly it was about. It took a lot to rattle Taylor but I think I managed to do it.

"Actually I was thinking we could have a little chat about what you've been up to the last few months. Just between you and me, little miss Zookeeper."

A/N

-So begins the clash between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. Hopefully Sam's motivations make sense, in that she's lost a lot of trust in the PRT/Protectorate but she's not ready to just give up on her friends in the wards. So she's going to make an effort to try and get things back to normal, even if it means dragging Taylor into the wards kicking and screaming.

-I love it when I can call back to earlier plot points and put a new spin on them. The bounty money that seemed like a boon at first is suddenly revealed as what screwed over Sam and Taylor. Because now the PRT has a fairly convincing cover story for trying to press gang Taylor, that she was trying to game the bounty system by using her sister in the wards as a co-conspirator. Even if it's not true it'll be hard to convince a court of law, let alone the court of public opinion, otherwise.

-This chapter used to be a lot longer before I decided to edit out a bunch of stuff that was mainly Triumph listing off the events of the last arc and Sam repeatedly denying she was working with Taylor. Had to remember that you can only go over old info for so long before readers lose interest.

-Please leave any feedback that you have. I'm always looking to improve and I appreciate the responses.