"Fascinating."
"That's some damn fine Spocking there, Armsy."
Armsmaster gave Assault a severe look, which the other hero merely grinned at, appearing entirely unmoved. "Not helpful," he complained.
"Am I ever?"
"No. Shut up."
Looking highly amused, Assault subsided for now. Armsmaster turned back to inspecting the images on the large screen everyone was staring at, which was being fed from the cameras of a small ROV that was holding position a couple of feet off the floor of the bay several miles away, where until recently several tens of thousands of tons of partially sunken container ship had been.
Several tens of thousands of tons that had been mysteriously spirited away before dawn, only a strange sound having been reported coming from the thick fog over the water during whatever had happened. No one at the time could localize the sound, variously described as 'creepy,' 'terrifying,' 'a sort of groaning creak,' and 'the soulless cry of an alien demon seeking prey, having risen from the depths where it had slumbered the eons away.'
He glared at Assault out of the corner of his eye. The man was infuriating at times. Especially when he came over all poetic.
In any case, the fog was probably the major reason the sound had been so hard to pin down both in location and type, since fog tended to muffle sounds very effectively as well as distort them. Once it had lifted that morning, it had been immediately apparent that the noise had to have been associated with the vanishing of the ship. A vanishing that had taken, at most, eight hours or so, since that was the last time any image of the thing could be located on any surveillance camera aimed in the right direction. No one bothered keeping an eye on it as it was far enough out in the water to be difficult to reach without a boat, had nothing of value left on it after all these years anyway, not even to a Tinker, and aside from that was just a rusty obstruction far too expensive to move.
He'd initially suspected that the vessel might have finally decayed enough that it had slipped over the edge of the reef it was hung up on and sunk out of sight, but once they'd deployed the ROV, it became apparent that the thing had instead simply disappeared. Along with a rather horrifying amount of the reef itself, for that matter. By his best calculations something approaching a hundred thousand tons of metal and rock had just somehow evaporated into thin air, without any signs of how or where it had gone. Not one fragment was left anywhere detectable, not even on the seaward side of the reef in deeper water.
The Rig's radar system hadn't shown anything particularly useful, largely since it was primarily configured for aircraft and other aerial threats rather than shipping. The sunken vessel, especially during high water, had so little superstructure protruding from the sea that there wasn't much of a distinct return from it, especially as the rest of the partially sunken wrecks in close proximity on the shore on both sides of the bay inlet tended to inevitably confuse the data due to reflections.
Instruments had shown no strange energies, no apparent weapons fire, no explosions, only minor seismic traces consistent with the rapid removal of a very large mass. There hadn't even been much in the way of water disturbance registered on the instruments at the base of the Rig's legs, which didn't make any sense. Not that any of this did.
If he took the seismic trace, which was the only direct measurement available that might be connected to the event, as completely accurate the whole thing became even stranger. That implied the ship had vanished in no more than about fifteen minutes, which was plainly ridiculous. If it had been teleported away, about the least unlikely thing he could think of to produce such a clean disappearance, that would have occurred nearly instantly, which would definitely have produced quite a large wave as water rushed in to fill the void. Nothing of the sort had happened, and the monitoring instruments would have detected any of the known teleportation methods if something that big had such a phenomenon associated with it.
Which was another problem, of course, since a hundred kilotons of mass was far, far more than any teleportation he'd ever even heard of could handle. By several orders of magnitude for that matter.
If it hadn't been teleportation, anything he could plausibly think of would have required quite a lot more than fifteen minutes, aside from something like a rather impressively powerful antigravity system causing the ship to simply fly away. But the problem with that was that no radar readings had shown anything remotely large enough anywhere in range and no such antigrav system existed either to his knowledge. Not could it have been refloated and towed away, because again it would have stuck out like a sore thumb on radar, would have required vast effort and time to raise, and would have fallen apart in the process anyway since it was more or less a steel sieve by now after fifteen years of decay.
The only useful thing the radar data showed were a few small trawlers that had gone out before dawn, a couple the same general size coming in some hours later, which might or might not have been part of the first set. This was entirely routine and undoubtedly not connected, since you'd need a lot more than a mere fishing boat to do whatever had been done. He'd found himself, after a lot of thought, completely stumped over the problem, which was an annoying feeling. So he'd sent the ROV to directly investigate and the results were making things even more baffling than they'd started as.
"Those marks look awfully familiar," Assault pointed out after there had been silence for several seconds while they all tried to process the visuals.
Armsmaster nodded slowly. He'd immediately thought the same thing once he'd got the remote probe close enough to the reef to make out the scoring on the nearly flat upper surface. It looked like some sort of ultra hard tool had been repeatedly scraped across the rock, slicing through everything without pause and leaving small grooves under a sixteenth of an inch wide criss-crossing the entire area. It did indeed look very familiar…
He thought back to the first warehouse they'd investigated some time ago, and the several more than had been looked at since. Aside from one, the remains of which had many thousands of small holes in to the point the end result was close to a brick and concrete sieve, all the other ones had sustained similar damage. And like this, there had been no trace whatsoever of where the missing material had gone. It had just disappeared like ice on a hot sidewalk. Even the perforated remains were much smaller than they should have been, suggesting that a variant of the same thing had happened to that particular building.
What that was he didn't have a clue. But it looked like the ones responsible had escalated their activities by a hell of a lot. The ship and reef out-massed any of the warehouse events by a factor of a thousand at least, which was a massive increase that frankly stunned him.
"Agreed," he commented, still pondering the screen and trying to come up with some plausible mechanism behind the marks and the vanishing of the material that had once been present. "I have to admit I can't immediately suggest what could have caused this to happen."
"Like I said the first time, that looks more like tooth marks than anything else I can think of," the other man suggested a little uneasily, causing everyone else who'd been silently staring to transfer their gazes to him. He looked around and shrugged. "I had gerbils when I was a kid and they left marks a little like that in the stuff they gnawed on."
"I hardly think it's likely that a horde of gerbils ate an entire nine hundred foot container ship," Director Piggot cut in acidly. "Or any other form of rodent. Please at least attempt to make sensible suggestions, not whatever… that… was."
He shrugged, his eyes still on the video feed. Armsmaster piloted the ROV along the sea floor with small motions of the control stick under his hand, keeping it at a constant distance and taking measurement after measurement. The cold water was unusually clear and he was getting some good imaging data. None of which showed anything useful.
Eventually he tapped a control and put the ROV back into autonomous mode, allowing it to go back to fully mapping the entire site, and turned to the others. "Lacking enough data I can't really come up with any good explanation for what happened, who was responsible, or why," he said, frowning a little at the statement which somewhat grated on him. But he was honest enough to admit when he was stuck, and right now he was definitely stuck.
"Why seems simple enough, I think," Velocity remarked, causing them all to look at him. "That ship has been a pain in the ass to the city for a decade and a half. I'd guess that someone got rid of it to open up the harbor. And I'll bet the Mayor wants to give them the keys to the city now." He chuckled as everyone exchanged glances. "I don't know who did it or how but they're going to be popular in City Hall if they ever admit to it."
Considering the idea, Armsmaster slowly nodded. "That is one interpretation of the situation which may well be viable," he replied after a moment. "Although there are certainly less civic-minded possibilities."
"Someone stole an entire container ship, and you call it civic-minded?" the Director commented with a somewhat irritated look at him.
Velocity shrugged. "Stole? I guess you might put it like that, but as far as I know no one technically owned that thing. The city probably had the best claim on it but they sure didn't want it. The shipping company that originally owned it went bust at least a decade ago. The only reason no one ever moved it before was because it was so expensive and difficult no one could afford to move it. Like most of the other wrecks, really. If the entire lot vanished as well most people would sigh in relief. The big ship was so wrecked and falling apart it wasn't even worth salvaging it for the metal, from what I've been told. You'd lose money on the whole thing no matter how you did it."
"Be that as it may," she replied with a scowl, "No one asked permission, and technicalities aside that makes it theft. Obviously via Parahuman means since there's no possible way to have done it overnight without that, which makes it our problem." She looked around at each and every one of them. "We need to find the Parahuman who did this and deal with them before something important disappears without trace."
Fixing Armsmaster with her gaze, she went on, "Clearly whoever it was has been practicing on the derelict warehouses you've investigated. I'd assume they perfected whatever Tinker device they're using and this was a larger demonstration or experiment with it. I'm uneasy thinking something that destructive is loose in the city. Especially since it may fall into the hands of one of the gangs, assuming they're not behind it to begin with. I trust I don't need to describe what could be the result if that thing was turned on something valuable like the Medhall building, do I? Or the PRT building, for that matter, or even the Rig." Several people paled slightly at the idea.
She thumped the table with her fist. "Find them first. After we have them, we can work out if they're actively hostile, or just irresponsible, but we can't let them just wander around erasing whatever they like."
Suppressing a tiny sigh, Armsmaster waited for her to calm down a little, then said, "We have thoroughly investigated all of the known previous events where whatever was responsible was used. Without anything useful coming to light, unfortunately. We simply don't have sufficient coverage of the derelict areas of the docks, and barely enough even in the populated areas, to allow us to discover anything useful. Certainly if we happened on them while they were active we might well be able to learn more, but each of the cases we've so far seen have been reported or noticed days to weeks post-event. No trace of the mechanism behind this have been found, it doesn't match anything on record, and the locals are singularly unhelpful when questioned about whether they noticed anything."
"The locals mostly being junkies who even the Merchants don't want, and dock workers who generally more or less politely tell us to fuck off and let them get back to work," Assault put in, making the Director glare at him and Armsmaster to simply nod agreement.
"That area of the city is certainly not particularly welcoming to outsiders asking questions," he said mildly. Which was an understatement if anything.
"I have some contacts I could ask," Miss Militia suggested after a couple of seconds of silence in which the Director's teeth could be heard grinding. "I might be able to find out something although I can't guarantee it."
"Do that," Director Piggot instructed with a nod. "Anyone else who has any potential source of information, do the same. I want to know what's going on before something actively hazardous happens. Which it almost certainly will, because that's what always happens around here." She glanced at the still-playing video and shook her head. "God help us if it's the E88 or the ABB testing a new weapon," she added with a sigh.
The suggestion was certainly a somewhat disturbing one, Armsmaster acknowledged to himself. Looking around he could see everyone else was thinking much the same.
The director scowled. "The worst part of this is that I can guarantee the Mayor is going to call me and gloat sooner or later. Pestilential man, he never misses an opportunity to annoy me."
Armsmaster very carefully didn't say a word, nor did anyone else. They weren't stupid.
Leaning back he frowned a little as his special heavy duty chair creaked slightly. It needed maintenance. Again.
"You need to oil your Armschair," Assault commented with a grin, making him sigh. Every time. Every single time.
He hoped Battery got back from visiting her parents soon. The man was a pain in the ass even with his wife present to deal with him, and without her he was insufferable...
"...person or group claiming responsibility for the mysterious disappearance of the wreck of the Northern Girl container ship that had, until last week, blocked the shipping channel into Brockton Bay harbor for just over sixteen years. As our listeners will undoubtedly be aware, the wreck seemingly evaporated without trace sometime between late evening last Sunday and dawn the following day. Sunk during the labor dispute riots in the mid nineties, the vessel caused shipping into and out of Brockton Bay to rapidly decline to near nonexistence, as nothing larger than a medium sized trawler could pass it due to shallow water filled with dangerous reefs and other submerged hazards. These included multiple previous wrecks although nothing on the scale of the Northern Girl."
"Piloting even the ships that can navigate the underwater hazards and strong currents is a dangerous and skilled occupation, limited to the small number of professional fishing vessels still based in the harbor and the occasional brave tourist. The harbor patrol has rescued the crews of seven small vessels in the last six months when they failed to successfully run the gauntlet, and Brockton Harbor has long been marked on shipping charts as a place to avoid."
"This appears to have suddenly changed. With the removal of the obstruction, even in the face of no one coming forth to explain how this was done, who did it, or why, the city administration has wasted no time seizing the opportunity presented. Mayor Roy Christner announced less than seven hours after the disappearance became public knowledge that the city was allocating an initial budget of five million dollars to the redevelopment of the harbor facilities and connected industries. This will include reconstruction of abandoned and decaying dockside infrastructure, and a feasibility study into reopening the cargo rail links and associated railway yard that has lain unused for more than fifteen years. He stated that the Brockton Bay Dockworker's Association was in talks with the administration as the primary source of skilled workers that would be required to help revitalize the city. Several hundred jobs are expected to be directly created as a result in the coming months. Indirectly our sources suggest that number will be at least triple that figure when support industries flood into the city to take advantage of the commercial openings which are expected to arise."
"The PRT ENE Director, Emily Piggot, released a statement at a press conference the day following the disappearance saying only that the organization was investigating the act but currently had no reason to suspect any Parahuman villain was involved. Obviously a Parahuman involvement exists as all experts agree there is no conventional method to have removed a wreck that size so rapidly and so cleanly, but to date opinion is divided on the exact method used. Unless those involved come forward, it appears this will remain a peculiar if welcome mystery. A reward has been offered by the PRT for any verifiable information. Mayor Christner, at the PRT press operation, announced that City Hall is also offering a substantial sum as an after the fact payment for services rendered."
"Director Piggot refused to comment on his announcement."
"If and when more is known on this story we will be sure to update our listeners. This is Jenny Hall, WNQB News, your local station for local people. Next, the weather for today and tomor…"
Turning off the radio as he got up to put his coffee cup in the sink, Taylor's father gave her a grin, causing her to giggle. They'd been avidly listening to the news cover the story as it developed, each feeling a considerable sense of amusement and satisfaction. None of the people who knew the truth were likely to tell anyone, since it was limited to a small number, none of whom had any great love of or trust towards the PRT. And to a lesser extent to the rest of the civic authorities. The docks area of the city was traditionally a place where people tended to keep to themselves, although they also tended to have a fierce loyalty to each other and the city as a whole, as it was their home.
They just didn't care for being told what to do by people who didn't know how hard it was earning a living, by and large.
They'd discussed if it was worth the possible problems that would result trying to claim the reward the Mayor had offered, which was significant if not ridiculous, but quickly decided that the attendant publicity and the certain interest from and irritation caused by the PRT getting involved wasn't worth it. Now that the city suddenly seemed keen on plowing money into the docks, the Union was going to have more work than it could handle, which was reward enough for both of them.
Taylor felt very pleased overall, as she'd managed to do something useful that would help thousands of people. It was a nice sensation, knowing she'd made a difference. Her dad clearly felt likewise and was looking much happier these days than she'd seen him for a long time. Which in turn cheered her up immensely. Their little family was in a much better place than it had been for years.
Now, if only she could get the three little shits to stop their crap, life would be pretty good.
As if he'd read her mind, her father turned around, clean cup in one hand and a dishcloth in the other as he dried the receptacle off. "Everything ready for another day of evidence gathering and scholastic learning?" he queried with a chuckle.
She sighed, rolling her eyes. "The day anyone learns anything other than the best way to hold a switchblade in Winslow is one that will end up in the history books," she replied sarcastically, although good-naturedly. He snorted, shaking his head in agreement.
"It truly is a wretched hive of scum and villainy."
"If you're being generous." They both laughed. After a moment, she sighed faintly but nodded. "Yeah, got everything ready as usual. No one is paying any attention at all to the sign these days, and some of the stuff I've recorded is nuts."
"All the better for us," he agreed, albeit sadly. Putting the cup away tossing the cloth onto the counter, he walked over and hugged her for a second. "One way or another it'll be over soon enough. Just hang in there."
She returned the hug. "I will. It's easier knowing I have someone in my corner now."
"You always did, Taylor, but I'm sorry that wasn't obvious for so long." He smiled down at her. "I have a lot to make up for."
"Yeah, me too, I guess… I won't ask for a pony, though." She grinned impishly at him. Her father laughed again.
"Thank god, I'm allergic to horses. And they're very expensive to run."
"Hey, maybe I could tame a gnurr?" she said brightly, making him wince. "If I can figure out how to get just one gnurr." Tapping her chin thoughtfully, she added, "Might be tricky as they always seem to turn up with about a billion of their closest friends…"
"I would much prefer that you don't do any gnurr-related experimentation anywhere near something we want to keep, kid," he replied eventually, having been staring at her as if he was trying to work out if she was joking or not and desperately hoping it was the former.
"Probably a good idea," she smiled. "I don't know what I'd keep it in anyway. So far we haven't found anything they can't eat, other than living stuff." Getting up she hugged him again for a moment. "Don't worry, I most likely won't try to get a pet gnurr."
"That is not quite as firm a promise as I'd prefer, but…" He sighed, shaking his head as she smirked a bit. "Don't miss the bus. I'll see you later, probably around half past seven or so. We've got a hell of a lot of paperwork at the moment so I'm going to have to be late."
"I'll be fine, Dad," she assured him. "We could get pizza?"
"Sounds good, I'll look forward to it." She followed him out into the hall where he took his coat down and pulled it on, then picked up his briefcase and car keys. With a last smile, he left the house, closing the door behind him in a flurry of snowflakes. The cold wind that had blown them in whistled through the rafters for a moment then died away.
Taylor went back into the kitchen and rinsed off her own glass and plate, put them both along with the cutlery into the dishwasher for later, quickly tidied the kitchen, then went upstairs to collect her school stuff. Some of the more valuable items vanished from sight into the hammerspace pocket she'd been assiduously practicing with since she'd figured out how to make it, which left them secure from any form of damage from her personal bullies. She'd taken to doing that almost immediately as she'd grown extremely tired of constantly replacing things. The other odds and ends went into the backpack, which she slung over one shoulder. Glancing at the flute case she was momentarily tempted to stick that into her storage space but decided against it immediately. The temptation to sic a large number of gnurrs on the school might outweigh her common sense if those bitches pushed too hard…
She had a momentary mental picture of the three of them screaming and flailing around as their clothes and everything else got eaten by ravaging gnurrs, grinned evilly, and sighed as it was just a happy thought. There was no point risking everything for petty revenge no matter how hilarious it would be. And she didn't want to come to the attention of the PRT, because she didn't really trust them after hearing stories from her parents, and the various dock workers her dad worked with. Most of them didn't have a very high opinion of the organization, for a number of reasons, some good and some bad.
In her own mind she just didn't want the hassle. Life was enough of a pain in the ass as it was, so why add stress to it?
It wasn't like she had actual powers either, although it seemed likely that the PRT wouldn't believe that, and even if they did they might well start getting funny about her gnurr-pfeife. Or any of the other things Papa's journals mentioned, some of which she was quite interested in seeing if she could recreate, but the bulk of which would give them conniptions at the least.
Running back downstairs again after a glance at her bedside clock, which showed the bus would be arriving in under two minutes, she quickly grabbed a few apples out of the fridge without opening the appliance, left most in storage for later, stuck one in her mouth, and left the house after putting her coat on and locking the door behind her. Shortly, after a hundred yard trot through the fresh snow, she was sitting at the back of the bus watching the scenery pass by and wondering what inanity Sophia, Emma, and Madison would come up with today.
The three girls had very sadly been having a run of bad luck recently, for some reason. Emma kept tripping over herself, or random sticks, or untied shoelaces, for example. Madison had gone absolutely mental in Mr Gladly's class two days ago when she discovered the top of a full bottle of glue had managed to unscrew itself in her bag, coating absolutely everything with sticky white goop. She'd even managed to get it all over her hands, then her clothes, then Mr Gladly, and finally Sophia, who had not reacted well.
It had been more than a little hilarious and even now the memory made Taylor laugh quietly to herself.
And even Sophia seemed to keep losing her pencils all over the place. They just would keep falling out of her pocket. It was quite strange.
The brunette hid a small and ever so triumphant grin. She was being very careful, and always making sure that whatever she did was plausibly an accident, but the sensation of getting just the tiniest measure of relatively innocent payback was glorious. It had gone a long way towards making this entire debacle a little more tolerable.
The problem was, of course, that while the girls had no idea why things seemed to be going wrong, they hadn't given up, and if anything the occasional annoying accident seemed to make them even more intent on taking out their frustrations on Taylor. When they weren't shrieking at other students who were laughing like idiots, in Madison's case, threatening to beat people up if they didn't delete the video of the pratfalls, in Emma's case, or just looking like they wanted to kill everyone nearby in Sophia's. All three reactions had happened a number of times and if nothing else it was starting to make even the teachers look somewhat irritated, for the first time in Taylor's experience.
And now Taylor was wondering just how they'd escalate the stupidity. Things were still going missing from her locker or bag, although now that she was making sure that little other than just enough in the way of books and supplies to keep suspicion off her was in either place, she hadn't lost anything irreplaceable or particularly important. She had no idea how precisely they were pulling that trick off, aside from having managed to obtain a copy of the school's master key for the locks. Unfortunately replacing the lock with a better one would immediately cause trouble because the administration insisted that they have a method to get into any locker at any time. Not that they actually bothered searching lockers, or they'd probably find enough weapons to fight a small war aside from anything else…
So yeah, it probably was the master key. She doubted that any of the other girls was any good at picking locks, none of them really had the patience aside from anything else.
She'd also managed to avoid them at lunch time more often than she'd pulled off in the past, since she could look beneath and see them coming right through a door or a wall, which she'd started doing regularly just to avoid the bitches. The end result of this practice was her evasion rate had increased significantly, although she'd also thought about it, resigned herself to her fate, and deliberately failed at the task every now and then just to make sure they didn't get suspicious. If her hiding ability went to one hundred percent overnight they'd sooner or later work out something was going on and that would only lead, one way or the other, to trouble. Still, she'd at least been able to reduce the stress considerably which helped a lot.
Sighing a little she sank into the seat and waited for the trip to end. It was a pain in the ass but until they were ready she had no real choice but to keep putting up with the crap.
Eventually, after having to take a detour due to one road not having been plowed and as a result completely impassible because of the snow drifts across it, the bus creaked to a stop outside Winslow. Taylor waited for the mad rush for the exit to die down and followed somewhat reluctantly but with determination, keeping her head down and not looking around. Even so she was, as always, alert for incoming idiots.
Somewhat oddly nothing happened, which instantly made her very suspicious. Normally she was greeted only a few steps into the building by nasty comments at the least, but this time no one seemed to be paying attention to her at all. Clearly something was afoot and she wondered who was going to do what and when.
Grumbling under her breath, she climbed the stairs to the next floor and headed for her locker, which was half way down a corridor on the left side of the building. As she turned into that corridor she immediately saw a number of students hanging around in a not-nearly-as-inconspicuous-as-they-thought manner, all of them very deliberately not looking at either her or her locker.
'Great. So there's a trap,' she thought with vast irritation, even though her face was wearing her practiced and entirely blank expression. 'Probably put something inside that'll explode all over me again.' With great inner annoyance she walked towards her locker and put her hand on the combination dial, aware that at least twenty students were surreptitiously watching. Before she turned the dial, she looked beneath at the contents, checking for anything out of place and ready to duck the moment she opened the door.
There was no visible mechanism to fire paint, or glitter, or any of the other shit she'd experienced before, which somewhat puzzled her. She knew something was amiss, there was no doubt that the trio had set something up, but nothing…
Then she spotted a small container, like the sort of thing 35mm film used to come in, sitting behind one of her torn textbooks. A container that definitely didn't belong to her, and had not been in her locker the day before.
A container that, when she examined it, contained a couple of lumps of a dark substance, looking like crushed chocolate.
Taylor was a daughter of the docks. She knew cannabis resin when she saw it, despite her age.
'Those little fuckers,' she thought furiously. 'They planted drugs in my locker, which probably means that…'
A commotion at the far end of the corridor made her look over her shoulder. Then hide a massive sigh of irritation. Sure enough. Principal Blackwell was stomping towards her, accompanied by a cop and a dog, which she instantly assumed was a drug sniffing one. Trailing behind them were Sophia and Emma, both of whom were wearing not particularly well hidden smug grins.
'Fine. You want to play it rough, do you?' Taylor turned around, having made a tiny gesture behind her back at the locker. Inwardly she was again wearing a disturbingly hard smile although on the surface her face was neutral with a hint of surprise.
"Miss Hebert," Blackwell exclaimed harshly as she reached Taylor. "Step aside. This officer is going to search your locker."
"Why?" she asked mildly.
"We received a tip that you had illegal substances in there," the pinch-faced blonde woman snapped.
"Illegal substances?" she echoed innocently. "What sort of illegal substance? I haven't hidden any of the food from the cafeteria if that's what you mean. I bring my own lunch."
The cop almost smiled, she could have sworn it, although Blackwell's face darkened.
"Drugs, Miss Hebert," she replied with a scowl. "I mean drugs."
"I don't use drugs, Mrs Blackwell," Taylor calmly replied, standing to one side. "I don't like that sort of thing."
"We shall see," the woman snarled. "Our information is from a reliable source."
Raising an eyebrow, Taylor emoted polite skepticism, but didn't say anything else. Pulling a master key out of her pocket, the principal unlocked the locker door, swung it open, and reached for the inside. The cop said, "Leave it to me, please," causing her to stop mid-reach, then nod once. Moving out of the way, she along with everyone else watched as the cop directed his dog to start sniffing inside the locker. Taylor glanced sideways past her hair to see Emma looking gleefully at her, and Sophia grinning maliciously.
She made another little motion with her fingers, which were in her coat pockets. No one noticed a thing.
The students surrounding her were pressing as closely as they dared while the cop and his dog poked through her locker. Eventually the man turned to Blackwell, shaking his head. "There's nothing here."
"I was informed there was," the principal blustered. He shrugged.
"You appear to have been misinformed," he replied calmly. Closing the locker he relocked it and took the key out, handing it to her. "I suggest you take it up with your informant."
Nodding to Taylor, he added, "Sorry to inconvenience you, Miss."
She nodded back. "No problem." Inside she was thinking there very much was a problem but there was no way she was going to give her bullies the satisfaction of getting a rise out of her.
The cop turned away, paused, turned back, studied the badge warning of her recorders with a somewhat puzzled expression, then raised his eyes to meet hers. She shrugged a little. He scratched his head, then sighed and turned away again, clearly not willing to get any more involved here than he needed to, which she couldn't really blame him for.
Emma and Sophia were looking at each other with confused expressions, in between staring alternately at Taylor's locker and Taylor herself. The red-head seemed annoyed and Sophia was definitely pissed off, but trying not to let either the principal or the cop see it. Blackwell had glared at her rather nastily after the cop declared Taylor's locker was clean, and it didn't take a genius to realize where the tip had come from. The cop had obviously noticed too but didn't say anything, he just issued a quiet command to his dog and headed back the way they'd come.
A moment later the dog, who was passing Sophia, stopped dead with a whine, making his handler look down at him. The animal was staring fixedly at Sophia, who looked back at it with a puzzled expression.
After a second or two, the cop gave another command to the dog, which shot forward and pawed at Sophia's coat pocket. She leaped back with a curse, the animal growling and following. Growling back she yanked her coat out of range and shouted, "Get that mangy mutt away from me!"
"Looks like Cosmo has scented something interesting after all," the cop commented almost idly, walking closer and looking down at the girl, who was by now apparently furious. Emma was staring at both her friend and the dog, which was now sitting next to his handler with his attention still fixed on Sophia's right pocket. "Let's see it."
"See what?" Sophia demanded.
"Turn out your pockets," he replied with a long suffering sigh. "I want to see what's in them."
"You can't do that!" she yelled, everyone in the hallway watching the drama with interest, Taylor included.
"My dog has indicated that an illegal substance is present, Miss, and I am here at the request of the school specifically to locate exactly that. So, I'll ask you one more time, turn out your pockets, or I will do it for you." He didn't look amused. Neither did Sophia, who sneered at him, stuck her hand into her pocket, and froze with a sudden horrified expression crossing her face.
Taylor very carefully schooled her own expression into absolute neutrality.
"Slowly remove your hand, please," the cop instructed, his hand on the taser on his belt. Appearing extremely reluctant, and apparently somewhat worried by where his hand was, Sophia did as instructed. "Open it."
Everyone waited, then when she finally did as told, inspected the small container in her palm. He studied it while he pulled on a blue disposable glove, with which he picked the thing up and popped the lid off. A very strong smell immediately infused the air as he prodded the contents with one finger. "Well, well, well, if I'm not mistaken that is some exceptionally high grade hash, miss. I think you and I need to have a talk down at the station." He put the lid back on, then pulled an evidence bag from his pocket with his other hand and dropped the container into it, not taking his eyes off Sophia once.
The girl's eyes swiveled frantically around, while sweat beaded on her forehead. Emma was staring at her in shock, as was Blackwell, and the reactions of the rest of the enlarged crowd ranged from laughter to sneering. Several cell phones were evident too.
After a pregnant pause, Sophia turned on her heel and bolted for the stairs. She got about ten feet before there was a phut!-zap sound. With a screech she collapsed onto the floor.
The cop sighed loudly as he released the taser trigger.
Emma screamed an obscenity.
Sophia swore weakly and passed out.
Taylor looked at the time, shrugged, and headed to class just as the bell rang.
Sometimes life just handed you a win, she mused, although it helped if you urged it along a little.
As she passed Sophia's locker, she idly glanced at it, looking beneath. For no other reason than curiosity after what had just happened, as she was wondering where Sophia had got the drugs from and whether she was stupid enough to keep more in her locker.
She blinked, looked both ways, and saw that the cop was currently involved with cuffing Sophia while fending off Emma who was still screeching and swearing, with Blackwell hovering in the background frantically talking on a cell phone for some reason. Sure no one was watching, Taylor quickly reached out in her special way, then resumed walking, leaving the chaos behind her.
As she walked she wondered just why Sophia had a little roll of stubby arrows hidden behind her locker, along with a knife and a set of brass knuckles. And, for that matter, how she'd managed to put them there in the first place…