Missy did not like being kept in the dark for very long, so as soon as I got off the school bus she immediately zeroed in on me. Her face had a very determined expression as she moved through the crowd of students going into the school. When she got within earshot she made it clear she wasn't taking no for an answer.

"So you read all my text messages this morning?"

Despite everything it was still funny to me when Missy got 'ultra serious'. So I gave her an amused look and said "Yeah I did. You sure that you don't want to shake me down for details right now?"

"I know how to be patient."

"The half dozen text messages I got this morning before I could answer you on the bus says otherwise."

"You could stand to answer a little more quickly. Most people don't need half an hour to answer."

I threw up my hands a bit"Oh come on, give me a break. You know how my Dad is with cell phones. He only lets me use mine in the house when it's part of the job. I need to keep it in my bag when I eat breakfast with him or it'll be really obvious that I use it for other stuff."

"I thought you said that you and Taylor talked him out of banning cell phones in the house?"

"We did. They just bring up bad memories for him so we agreed to limit how much we use them, okay? I'm pretty sure Taylor hasn't used her cell phone in ages."

"Fine, whatever. So you know where to go during lunch right?"

"Yep, though I'm really hoping when we go to Arcadia there's better places to have a private conversation." I glanced around at the dwindling crowd of students to emphasize my statement. Missy just nodded and motioned for me to follow her into the school.

Once we started walking in she followed up saying "I didn't realize you were so picky about meeting places."

I glanced around again for potential eavesdroppers as we entered the school and whispered "Well it'll be pretty hard to explain to anyone who finds us what we're doing in a utility closet without sounding suspicious."

"If that's the only problem you have we can think about our cover stories while we're in class." Missy suggested.

"I bet I could come up with a half decent one. If one of the teachers who's 'in the know' finds us we wouldn't even have to lie that much."

We approached the hallway intersection where we split up everyday. Missy took this as the cue to end the conversation. "Well don't forget why we're meeting up. Just because you're in trouble doesn't mean you have to deal with this alone okay?"

"I know, it's just a bit… complicated. I'll give you the whole story during lunch." I said. Missy nodded and accepted that as I gave her a small wave goodbye.

We shared a few classes, but not during the first period. At the very least one thing I've learned from having a secret identity was how to compartmentalize. Granted it wasn't a skill taught in any of the wards training manuals, but I learned it regardless. It definitely came in handy as I overheard some of the scuttlebutt around the big battle yesterday during my history class.

The kids at my school weren't necessarily sheltered, that was nearly impossible in Brockton Bay, but they didn't get exposed as much to the gangs as other schools. So that means when a big cape fight happens, there's going to be lots of talk flying around. Most of it was fueled by rumors on the internet, mainly PHO. I tried not to pay attention to it, but it was hard since one of the people who actually saw the fight was a classmate of mine named Raymond Torres.

He was one of my classmates in my first period history class, and like many of the other boys my age he was coming into his own as a jackass. I wish I could blame puberty but he was one of those kids that enjoyed being the loud attention seeker and dedicated pest. Basically the kid that enjoyed playing "I'm not touching you" or answering questions in class with a dumb accent. The main difference now was that he tried to get respect from the other boys by "acting tough" sometimes.

The reason this was a problem for me was that I had been assigned to a group project with him in my history class. We were supposed to pick an important technology invented sometime between the late 1800's to early 1900's and make a presentation about it. Because life can't be simple for me, my group had stalled out on step one.

When we had been assigned this yesterday, Raymond had gotten it into his head that we should do a report on a weapon. The issue with that was that weapons weren't actually an allowed choice for the project. The story I heard was that last year someone had the bright idea to include a picture of a gunshot wound as part of their presentation on automatic pistols as a joke. That had brought the school administration down like a ton of bricks on that group's, and the poor history teacher's, collective asses ("A shame too, the presentation was actually pretty interesting aside from that one slide").

My group had wasted most of our last period arguing about that until the teacher could come around to set Raymond straight. This period Raymond had decided to waste our time telling us about what he had seen after school when the big fight broke out. He was making a big deal about seeing some of the capes in person from his apartment. What made it worse was that the other members of my group were indulging him by insisting on listening to his story, so I was stuck listening to him until he finished..

"I'm telling you guys, it was crazy. Those two capes the empire was chasing were booking it down the street when I first saw them."

"Who was chasing them?" asked the other girl in our group, Jenny Pearson. I could only distinguish her by her red curly hair and freckled face.

"That's the really crazy part. It was freaking Hookwolf himself. I'm pretty sure it was him because he was covered in a bunch of metal razor blade things. He was really gaining on them."

"Did you see him, like, impale them or something?" asked the other boy in our group, Clayton Roberts. Basically an aspiring meathead who was already gunning for a future spot on the high school football team.

"Nah, but I did see something better than that. They must have seen him getting close, cause when he was about to jump them they dodged behind a power pole. And you want to guess what happened next?"

Jenny saw where this was going. "He hit the power pole?"

"Exactly, he must have crap vision when he's a murder blender cause he ran right into it and caused it to fall on the street."

"No way" Clayton had said in near awe.

"Yeah it was amazing. Only reason the guy survived was that he backed off real fast when he realized the power cables were about to fall and hit him. Guess he didn't want to find out if he was electric proof."

Jenny followed up by asking "So those two capes got away then?"

"Yeah, the power cables got thrown across the street between them and Hookwolf, so they must have gotten pretty far before he could get past that. He seemed pretty scared about getting electrocuted, cause he stayed far away from those wires. It did knock out power at my apartment for a few hours, but I ain't gonna blame them. It was so cool to see Hookwolf getting played like that."

I will give Raymond some credit, it was a better tale than most of his other stories. If Taylor had been responsible for causing a power outage I can see another reason why the PRT was so angry with her. The director would have skinned us alive if any of the wards had caused a power outage like that. Though now I had to add a tally mark to my mental count of the number of times Taylor had been in mortal peril, which was getting higher than I was comfortable with.

Unfortunately it seemed I had to be the responsible one in the group today, so I spoke up "Alright that's a cool story and all, but we still haven't picked our topic yet."

"How about we pick electricity? It can do all sorts of stuff, like scare off supervillains." Clayton joked lamely.

"I'm pretty sure electricity isn't a technology by itself. But I guess we could cover power systems like AC or DC." I suggested, hoping against hope I could finally get over this one tiny hurdle.

"Nah, sounds boring. We should do dynamite. Gives us an excuse to watch videos of explosions in class." Raymond interjected.

"Raymond, for the last time we can't do weapons." I said.

"Dynamite isn't a weapon, they use it all the time for mining and stuff."

"Yes it is. If it can blow you up it's a weapon." I countered. I glanced over to Jenny and Clayton but they seemed to be too amused by the argument to stop it.

"Oh but apparently electricity isn't a weapon either?"

I stared at him, and answered evenly "No, I'm pretty sure electricity isn't a weapon."

"But they use it for electric chairs. I'd say that's pretty lethal." At this point I could hear Jenny and Clayton snickering.

"Oh for the love of… Look, I don't want to argue about what is and isn't a weapon right now okay? Let's just do something safe like trains or something."

"Well you can run people over with a train, so that could count as a weapon too."

Raymond is so damn lucky the teacher is watching us cause I would have knocked him upside the head for that if I could. Instead I restrained myself and answered smoothly. "Yeah well if you throw anything at a person fast enough it'll be lethal. How about we have a for or against vote on picking trains. Show of hands?"

Thankfully Jenny and Clayton seemed to have had their fill of watching Raymond arguing with me and they voted for trains. Raymond also voted for trains, which confirmed my suspicions he was just screwing with me to get his kicks. Unfortunately, before we could go any further the bell rang, which meant we'd wasted two periods picking a topic. Just super.

Clayton volunteered to pull a little of his weight by letting the teacher know our choice, which let the rest of us leave quickly. Before I could move on to my next class though, Jenny leaned over to me while we were walking in the hall and told me something crazy.

"You know I heard Raymond has a crush on you."

My brain briefly froze before I recovered in time to avoid smacking into a passing classmate. I couldn't quite comprehend where the hell this was coming from.

"Are we talking about the same Raymond that was messing with me in there for shits and giggles?"

"Yeah, but I think he liked getting a rise out of you. My mom told me some boys like to mess with girls they like. She called it 'pulling pigtails' or something."

"That sounds so stupid."

"Well a lot of boys around here are stupid."

"Point. Well either way I'm not interested."

"You sure? He's not the worst looking guy around here."

"If this is how he flirts, then no amount of good looks is going to make me interested in him." I said, concluding the conversation as the bell rang for the next period.

The next few periods were blessedly less aggravating. Missy and I crossed paths again a few times but we knew that the big conversation had to wait until we were alone. Finally lunch rolled around and I retrieved my bag lunch from my locker to take with me to the third floor utility closet. Missy was waiting there for me.

"Glad you made it, now it's time to spill."

I put up my hands as I tried to appease her "Alright, alright. Where do you want me to start?"

"Well you mentioned the whole reason the PRT was charging you was that they thought you were working with Zookeeper. Where the heck did they get that idea?"

I weighed my options. I could keep Taylor's secret from Missy, but that would make explaining things a lot harder. Not to mention that Missy could probably figure out for herself who Zookeeper given enough time. Besides, I needed to talk to someone else about what had happened last night. And who else could I do that with besides Missy?

"Okay before I tell you, I need you to swear not to tell anyone else that I told you. If anyone asks, you figured it out yourself. Got it?"

She weighed her choice for a few seconds before agreeing "Fine, I swear."

"Alright." I took a breath to brace myself. "Zookeeper is my sister. She triggered when she was attacked last year and didn't tell me."

I could tell Missy wasn't quite prepared to hear that because her face took on an expression that was a combination of surprised and horrified. She could only respond with a small and brief "...Oh."

"Yeah, oh. It gets better. She's gotten the PRT real mad at her. Mad enough to throw some dumb charges at me before they realized I wasn't in on the secret."

"Hold on, they knew before you did?"

"Yeah, apparently if you have a scary enough power they're willing to bend the unwritten rules into a pretzel shape to find out your identity."

"Oh man, that's dirty."

"I know, I gave them a real earful about their dumb priorities. After they figured out I wasn't in the loop they decided they weren't going to arrest me since their bullshit charges wouldn't stick. But now if they want to ever put pressure on my sister when she causes trouble they can just squeeze me instead. Isn't that fucking great?"

"They… they can't get away with that!" I could see that Missy had gotten over her initial shock and was moving towards anger.

"It probably doesn't matter if they do or not. I talked it over with my dad, and he said he'd try and work with the Youth Guard to figure something out. But I think he's just going through the motions before he pulls me out of the wards."

"What! He can't pull you out!" Missy almost shouted. I quickly shushed her because this utility closet wasn't exactly soundproofed. After she calmed down a bit I continued.

"I'm not happy about it either. But what else can he do after the PRT pulls a stunt like this? If we tried to sue it'd take years to win. Going public would just stir up a lot of anger and it wouldn't fix anything."

"But… You can't leave Sam. You're the one person on the team who gets me."

"I wish staying could be that easy. I already tried to get Taylor to join the wards but we just ended up yelling at each other until Dad separated us and she left for her friend's house."

"She didn't want to join? Well I guess after hearing about how the PRT is acting I wouldn't want to join either."

"No, she had another reason for not joining. I…. I found out that she secretly hates me. She said she wouldn't join the wards because I was on the team." It hurt to admit, but I couldn't pretend Taylor hadn't said it.

Missy seemed to be thrown by this. As far she knew me and Taylor had our rough patches, but we still got along overall. It must have been shocking to hear it had gotten this bad so suddenly. I couldn't believe it myself either honestly.

But she didn't let it stop her from trying to comfort me "Sam, you said you were arguing with her last night. Are you sure that's what she meant? People say a lot of stuff they don't mean when they're mad."

"I'm not sure what else it could have meant. She kept her power secret for months. What else am I supposed to think except that she doesn't want to be on a team with me?" I said, and now that I had spoken it out loud I couldn't help but start to feel a sadness well up from inside of me. After all, what kind of person drives away their own sister without even realizing it?

Missy tried to reassure me "...People keep their powers secret for a lot of doesn't mean she hates you."

It sounded reasonable but I couldn't help but doubt. Looking down at the floor I asked her "Missy, I want you to be honest with me. Am I a bad person?"

Missy's expression hardened a bit at that. "I would be the last person in the world to think you're a bad person. That's because I know you. And I can say 100% that you aren't a bad person."

I lifted my head a bit and looked toward her "Really?"

"I won't pretend you've never done anything wrong, but you've always tried to help people. You understand what being a hero is about. You're not looking for money or fame. And you're not about hurting people, even if it does happen on the job occasionally."

"...Thanks Missy, that means a lot coming from you. And for what it's worth you're a great hero too. One of the things that helped keep me going when I was benched was getting to work with you."

Missy seemed very pleased to hear that, judging from the grin that appeared on her face. She responded "I guess we're both awesome to work with. The other wards don't know how lucky they are."

I snorted. Leave it to Missy to find a way to cheer me up. If there ever was a reason to stay it was to keep a friend like her. So I collected myself and focused on the task at hand.

"Well I guess all we need to do is convince my sister how awesome we would be to work with, right? Once she's on the wards someone can knock some common sense back into her."

"Are you sure you want to keep trying to get her on the team? We already have a member with an attitude problem. I'm not sure how your sister would fit in. That's not even mentioning whatever the hell the PRT is doing right now."

"I know. I have some doubts too but at this rate she's going to get hurt if she keeps working as an independent. It's only a matter of time."

"Really? What makes you say that?"

"She's convinced that she can beat the gangs all on her own because apparently we haven't been trying hard enough."

"What?" Missy seemed utterly baffled by that. "Didn't she get her ass kicked yesterday?"

"That's what I told her. She seemed convinced it was a fluke."

"...How the hell has she survived so long?"

That was a good question, my sister was normally smart but she wasn't showing a lot of good judgment lately. But then again she hasn't been working alone. Precaution, who I was almost certain was Julia, was working with her. I didn't know her power but I was willing to bet she was a thinker. So it would make all the sense in the world if Taylor was relying on her.

"Well my sister has made a friend recently. I've told you about her right?"

"Yeah, you have mentioned her before. Her name was Julia right?" I nodded, and then Missy got a funny look on her face. "Wait…Zookeeper has a partner too. If they're so close then that means…" Missy was putting the pieces together very quickly now that I had laid them in front of her. I always liked how she was so quick on the uptake.

"Yeah. I only know the basics about her but it seems like she's been a good influence on Taylor."

"What makes you say that?"

"...Huh? What are you talking about."

"Think about it, when did she and Taylor start being friends?"

"A few months ago, a week or two after… Oh that bitch! She knew the whole time and didn't say a word to me!" I shouted when I realized. It hadn't occurred to me that Julia had also been lying to me about Taylor's secret cape life. Now it was Missy's turn to shush me as I attempted to calm down.

Once I had taken a few calming breaths Missy followed up "So the point I'm trying to make is that we know Julia is clearly important to Taylor, but we're missing some key details. Like why is she going along with all of this? I think we should ask her what exactly her role is in all of this."

"Yeah, you're right. I think it's her turn to get asked some tough questions. I know where to find her but we'll have to wait until the weekend when we'll have the time to talk to her."

"Are you sure we'll even be able to meet her? Last time we tried approaching them it didn't work out that great."

"Don't worry, I'll think of something." I checked the time on my phone quickly since we had been here a while and found it was already over halfway through the lunch period. "Well unless you had something else to bring up I think we should clear out of here before someone comes looking for us."

"The only other thing I'm wondering is what's going to happen to you in the wards in the meantime? It's not like you can just casually walk in today like nothing happened."

"I talked to my dad about that. The Youth Guard is watching our branch like a hawk now, so they're currently on thin ice. There's going to be a lot of backroom negotiation and politicking for the next week or two so they're going to just stick me on the console until they figure out what they're doing with me."

"Wow the Youth Guard is being useful. Hell must be freezing over."

"I know they're annoying with all the rules they like to add but they're not all bad. I'm not sure what I would have done if Mrs Houlihan didn't show up yesterday.

"Yeah they could be a lot worse I guess. I'm just jealous how you seem to be on such good terms with the caseworker for us. How do you do that?"

"It helps to listen to her stories, she loves talking about her time back in the UK."

"Wait, I thought she was Irish?"

"Yes she is, Northern Ireland is still part of the UK after all."

"Huh, I guess you learn something new everyday."

We left the utility closet and avoided attracting any attention before we slipped into the cafeteria to quickly eat our lunches. While the whole situation still sucked, having Missy on my side and a course of action helped soothe my nerves. I'm not sure what I was going to learn from Julia, but if it helped me understand where I had gone wrong with Taylor it would be worth it. After all, what could be the harm of asking a few questions?

A/N
-Took a break for Easter and now I'm back in the writer's saddle. As usual I try to mix it up so the chapters don't get too similar. Getting a peak into Sam's time as a student was hopefully a nice change of pace.

-When I wrote Raymond I made a point of not making a Greg Veder clone, so I sort of took a different and distinct flavor of annoying teenage boy as the template for Raymond. Basically the attention seeker who likes pushing other people's buttons because that's what gets a reaction out of them.

-I imagine towards the end of the chapter that somewhere in the shard network Missy and Sam's shards are basically saying in shard-speak "It's getting a little too chummy around here, time to make a few nudges." I'm sure neither Julia or Taylor will misinterpret Sam's intentions at all when she approaches Julia.