Coming out of Emma's room, Zoe looked back at the snoring lump under the blankets, sighed faintly, shook her head, and pulled the door quietly closed. She went downstairs to the living room and slumped into a chair, wiping a tear from her eye.

"How is she?" Danny asked, looking concerned. He handed her a refill on her coffee, which she accepted gratefully, momentarily wishing she could put something a little stronger into it but realizing that probably wasn't the best idea right at the moment. She needed a clear head.

"Sleeping," she replied after a good swallow of coffee. "The pills kicked in and she just kind of switched off." She sighed heavily. "On top of the stress she went out like a light. I'd imagine she's likely to sleep for hours." Picking up the bottle of sleeping tablets, two of which she'd slipped her daughter twenty minutes earlier, she looked at the label for a moment then dropped it back on the table. "I hope so, anyway. Any more stress like that and she's likely to crack completely, assuming she hasn't already."

Putting her cup down she massaged her face with both hands, trying to remain calm in the face of anger, worry, and uncertainty. "God. I don't know how to handle this," she moaned. "What are we going to do? How do we fix her?"

"Unfortunately, 'fixing her' is likely to be a long and difficult process, I'm afraid," Michelle commented after a couple of seconds. Zoe peered at the other woman through her fingers, seeing her looking back with sympathy. "As far as I can see, your daughter has suffered a psychological crisis stemming from the trauma of the attack she and your husband endured, and Sophia Hess met her at exactly the wrong moment in time with exactly the wrong ideology to make that crisis much worse. She should have been in therapy after such an event, and even then it's likely that she'd have had problems. But that girl has dramatically increased the severity of Emma's mental issues, and it's going to take considerable time to get her back to a place where she's stable."

The lawyer shrugged a little. "It's not my field, but I've had some experience with this sort of thing due to some of the problems caused by dealing with ex-military people at the Union. It's more common that you might think, and I strongly suspect Emma is suffering from untreated PTSD among other things."

"That's more or less what I was thinking," Danny nodded as Zoe lowered her hands and stared at both of them. "I've seen breakdowns like that before too, although never in someone so young. Her mind was pushed to the limit and she seized on Sophia's nihilism as some sort of way to deal with her trauma, but when she was forced to confront what she'd done earlier, well…" He spread his hands helplessly. "She couldn't lie to herself any more and just fell apart. Or that's what it seems to me. I'm not a psychiatrist. But I do have some personal experience with trauma, and trust me, it can really fuck your mind up even if you understand what's happening." He looked sadly at the floor, heaving a deep breath, before meeting her eyes again.

"But that doesn't mean you can't come back from it. Emma is probably going to have a longer trip than Taylor and I do, but all you can do is try. You need to talk to an expert, and get Emma to do that."

Zoe shook her head, not in disagreement but only because all this was so hard to deal with. "I'll make some calls and see if I can find someone," she replied after a moment. "Alan is going to need some help too. Whether he likes it or not." She scowled, thinking about her husband, who would be getting onto the plane in LA in a few hours. She didn't plan on calling him again to tell him the latest information about their youngest, partly because it would only worry him, and partly because she wanted to look him in the eye when she demanded to know why the hell he hadn't let her know about what had happened. This entire debacle could have been avoided if he'd come clean, she was damn sure of that.

"If you need me to hold him down as well, call me," Danny chuckled, making her momentarily smile.

"I'll do that, thanks."

She picked up her coffee and drank some more. Lowering the cup, she shook her head. "I have no idea what I'm going to tell Anne. She'll be home in about two hours."

"The truth is probably the best thing." Danny looked seriously at her. "She's more than old enough and mature enough to handle it, and she deserves to know. I'm sure she'll support her sister and you in all this."

"It's going to absolutely devastate her," Zoe sighed. "She loves Emma even if they've grown apart in the last year, which we now know the reason for. And she always liked Taylor too, as well as both you and Annette. It's going to be very hard for her to accept all this, at least as hard as it is for me."

"Unfortunately there's no way around that, Zoe," the man replied softly. "We're all in a bad place, and we will all need to work out how to pull ourselves out of it in our own ways. But what we found out today has changed the approach we are going to use a lot." He glanced at Michelle who nodded soberly.

"It certainly has. My original thought had lawsuits for the school, the school board, the Hess and Clement's families, and yours. But in light of the information we now know I think we have no choice but to change that considerably. Emma is, as Danny mentioned, in many ways as much as a victim of all this insanity as Taylor is, even as she was one of the main issues facing Taylor. The Clements girl is largely irrelevant, I suspect, and we can largely ignore her without too much of an issue. Hess, on the other hand, is very much implicated in a whole series of highly damaging and completely deliberate actions that the school had a duty to interrupt as soon as they became aware of it."

"Which would have been very soon after it started since Taylor reported it over and over again," Danny put in with a scowl.

"Indeed. From what she said and what her recordings verify, they most definitely have records of any number of assaults on her person, both physical and verbal, going on for months. Quite a few of the staff have observed such actions directly in front of them and done absolutely nothing, if not actively enabled it by their inaction. Which goes far past incompetence into malevolence in my opinion." The lawyer gestured in disgust. "Hess would have been a far smaller problem if not for that. And from what Emma has told us we can make a fairly accurate guess as to why the administration didn't intervene even when it is specifically their job to do exactly that."

"The fucking PRT…" Zoe snarled.

"Exactly. That involvement, Hess being a Parahuman and a Ward, explains far more things that I was confused about than it should do, and leaves me believing that someone in a position of authority was either deliberately allowing this to go on for reasons I can't yet decide on, although I strongly suspect a financial interest, or so utterly incompetent that they should never have been allowed in such a position to begin with. Hess's outlook on life as relayed by Emma also casts severe doubt on whether the girl should in fact have been a Ward at all. And we can be fairly certain that someone higher up the chain of command is well aware of the current state of play, based on their removal of the girl from the hands of the BBPD. Whether it goes all the way to the top, or whether they've known all along instead of the arrest being the trigger, I have no idea. Yet."

Michelle didn't look pleased but she did look determined. "Of course, this all makes the whole situation more complex to handle, as the laws surrounding unmasking a Parahuman, especially a member of the Protectorate, especially if that member is underage, are not trivial to work around." She smiled a little grimly. "But they are not impossible to work around either."

"The problem I can see is that if we go after the PRT and Protectorate, it's going to get hellishly expensive," Danny put in with a reflective tone, looking between both women. "The DWA is backing a lot of this but we simply don't have unlimited money, even with the new job from the city."

"I'm more than happy to help out, Danny," Zoe said immediately. "Our family isn't rich but we're well off. And those bastards are at least partially responsible for their semi-tamed psychopath warping my daughter into someone I can hardly recognize. I want a piece of them as much as you do. And I owe it to Taylor and Annette's memory to help out as well."

Danny examined her, then looked at Michelle, who nodded after a moment. "I can't see any reason we can't change our approach to incorporate the Barnes family on the side of the plaintiff," she said. "The details will need some thought, and Taylor may well have a strong opinion on the subject, but if she agrees, it would allow us to combine forces quite effectively."

She paused, thinking, then went on, "It is also quite plausible that we could attract a legal representative of much higher profile and more direct expertise in this case, based on who we would be suing. The payout from both the PRT and the school could well be rather significant, which would allow a lot of legal expenses. And the PRT at least are quite likely to want to settle out of court since if it actually got to a case in front of a judge they stand to have a very large PR hit, which is something I can guarantee they wouldn't be keen on."

"Who are you thinking of for that part of it?" Danny asked curiously.

"The obvious one is Carol Dallon, as this is exactly the sort of case she's nailed her colors to the mast of in the past. We do have a possible conflict of interest issue as Alan is her colleague, but that doesn't eliminate her as a possibility, it merely means we would have to make certain we were fully compliant with any required regulations. And there's also Quinn Calle. His firm has a certain... reputation. Not entirely undeserved, as he has represented a number of somewhat insalubrious defendants in the past, but the man is very good and has a knack for navigating the complexities of Parahuman law more effectively than most." Michelle shrugged a bit. "I can probably locate some other people who would also be good choices, but those two are the ones I can immediately think of. And they're both local which is useful."

She looked at Zoe. "Alan absolutely must recuse himself from this entire affair," she added. "He is far too close to the source of the problem, in a number of ways, and does not have the relevant legal training to achieve anything other than getting in the way. We don't need that. And to be honest he'd do far better using his time in therapy than complicating my job."

"Oh, don't worry, Michelle, my husband isn't going anywhere near this, if he knows what's good for him," Zoe growled. The other woman looked somewhat amused and Danny snorted with laughter.

"I'll redraw the relevant documents tonight and file them tomorrow," the lawyer continued after a small pause. "I'll need to speak to Taylor first, and listen to the recordings from today to find out exactly what happened, but I don't see any reason we can't have the initial suit filed by close of business tomorrow. At that point, be ready for things to get more than a little busy. I expect the school board to immediately get rather upset, and the PRT may well try to throw their weight around to close us down. They won't succeed, but it could be annoying. I would think that we'd have someone insisting on NDAs within hours of the documents being noticed, which is their standard response to basically everything surrounding Parahumans."

"Will that cause us problems?" Zoe asked.

"Minor ones, but nothing more. An NDA cannot be used to cover up evidence of an illegal act. At best they can insist on our knowledge of Sophia Hess being Shadow Stalker remaining out of the public domain, which isn't too much of a burden as we're primarily going after the girl in her civilian ID. They certainly can't legally prevent us submitting evidence to the court that would strongly imply a Parahuman link, although I doubt that will stop them trying. What the law says and what the law does are often rather… divergent." Michelle shook her head in annoyance. "Especially when it comes to law enforcement. But we know that, can anticipate their moves, and put suitable countermeasures in place. Like I said, it will complicate the whole thing but not render it impossible, merely irritating."

The three talked over their plans for another hour or so, until finally Danny and Michelle got up to leave. Zoe rose too and accompanied them to the door. Danny stopped and turned to her, and she stepped forward and hugged him. "Thank you for being so understanding and helpful, Danny," she said in a low voice, trying not to cry. "I am so sorry about what happened to Taylor, and all this aside, if there's anything at all I can do to help make up for it, you tell me and it's done."

Returning the hug, he smiled down at her, somewhat sadly. "Thank you, Zoe. I'm also sorry. None of this is your fault, and in a way it's not really Emma's fault either, although I don't know if Taylor will ever see it quite like that. All we can do is wait and see. You get that poor girl the help she needs and we'll handle the legal side of things. Once we've sorted all that out, however long it takes, we can reassess Emma's situation."

"I hope so," she sniffed. "Please ask Taylor if I can see her at some point to apologize."

"I will." He released her and stepped back. "Try not to break Alan's neck until you get the story out of him."

She almost managed a natural smile at the joke. "We'll see." Holding out her hand, she added, "Thanks for all the help, Michelle."

"It was my pleasure, Zoe." The legal expert shook her hand. Zoe stood in the door and watched as they walked through the snow to Danny's car, getting into it and closing the doors. She lifted a hand and waved as he started it, backing out onto the street then turning and driving off with a last honk. Sighing when it was out of sight, she closed the door, leaning on it with her eyes shut, until she finally recovered enough to go into the kitchen to start a small supper. When Anne came home soon she would be hungry although the woman suspected not for long.

Writing the last few words of a paragraph of observations on what she saw when she played around with looking beneath, Taylor put the pen down and flexed her fingers, before sitting up from where she'd been leaning back against her pillows. She'd spent a good couple of hours thinking through various concepts her experimentation had brought to mind, cross-referencing them with Papa's notes, and was starting to get some quite intriguing ideas about what was going on and where it might be possible to take the whole process. Some of those ideas meshed rather oddly but remarkably well with her thoughts on the gnurr resonator crystal, which led her towards a few possibilities that bore examination in detail at some point.

Closing the notebook she dropped it into her storage with a casual effort, without really thinking about what she was doing since it was so routine these days. At times she found herself sort of watching her actions from the outside and at those moments the true bizarreness of the entire thing hit her quite strongly, but such times were less and less common as she got used to it. Stretching, she caught sight of the clock and realized that her father was probably going to turn up fairly soon, so she should think about sorting out some food. Not to mention she was quite hungry too since this sort of heavy thinking seemed to build the appetite very well.

Standing up, she got halfway to the door, before she stopped and looked back at the clock, her eyebrows raised a little. A thought had been sparked, one that suggested an experiment she hadn't tried yet.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket she flipped it open and stared at the display before navigating to the clock app, getting an analog clock face on the LCD. She made sure it was displaying the same time as was shown on the bedside alarm clock, then when the second hand crossed 12, she stored it away. Sitting on the bed she stared at the alarm clock without blinking for exactly one minute.

As soon as the minute digits flipped over, she pulled the phone out of storage and studied it. "Well, isn't that interesting?" she murmured when she saw it was running precisely one minute slow. A few seconds later the time corrected itself as the phone updated from the network, but the experiment had already told her a lot.

And left some fascinating questions in its wake.

Jumping to her feet she hurried down to the kitchen and rummaged around in the relevant drawer for the emergency candles they kept there, digging out a lighter at the same time. It only took a moment to get the candle sitting in a shot glass from the cabinet and lit. Making a mark with her thumbnail on the wax just at the point the flame was softening it, she took a breath and stored the candle away. It vanished without fuss exactly as everything else so far had.

Setting the egg timer for ten minutes, she then busied herself finding the menu for the pizza place they liked, and working out an order. After that she made sure the dishwasher was emptied and everything put away properly, finishing just before the timer went ping. Turning to the tableTaylor sat down then pulled the candle back out of storage.

Staring at it, she grinned widely. The wick was still merrily burning and as far as she could see it was exactly the distance from the mark she'd made as it had been ten minutes ago, rather than the half an inch below it that it should have been in that time. "Holy crap," she breathed in amazement. "Does time actually stop passing completely, or just slow way down?" Thinking about Papa's notes, and some of her own ideas, she rather thought that the passage of time inside whatever it was that she was using as hammerspace probably did effectively stop dead. He'd made comments that the gnurrs came from yesterday, which implied a sort of time travel, and if that was right there was certainly some form of interaction with more dimensions than the usual ones as she understood it.

Little Anton's trick, and more precisely her modification to it, did seem to bear some resemblance to what the gnurr-pfeife did as far as she could tell, although she admittedly was still very early in her understanding of how it all worked. But assuming that was actually true, it looked like that when she stopped the process of bringing something through whatever it was that it went through, leaving it halfway, it was sort of at right angles to the normal flow of time. As a result time effectively stopped from the point of view of whatever the thing was. Which was weird as hell, but she could see some really useful outcomes from it too…

The main one being that whatever she put away would remain unchanged until she retrieved it. That was going to come in very handy indeed, not least as it would let her keep hot or cold things hot or cold more or less indefinitely. Like pizza.

She giggled in a sort of mad glee, thinking that she owed Papa a massive hug, and it was a real pity she'd never be able to give it to him.

Reaching for the phone, she dialed the pizza place, while picking up the emergency debit card her dad left by the phone for this sort of thing. Shortly she'd ordered the pizzas, some garlic bread, drinks, and a few other things, asking for the delivery to be as soon as possible. Because of course now she didn't have to worry about reheating anything, which was kind of neat.

It was always helpful to find a practical use for esoteric techniques after all.

That job done she went into her dad's study to download the day's recordings, adding them to the usual places. While the computer was working, she looked out the window to the snow-filled back yard, visible in the light through the window and from street lights at the front of the house. As she watched, she saw a familiar squirrel zip down the tree nearest the house, then bound across the snow, stopping every now and then to look around. She knew a family of them lived in the old oak, and quite often in the summer when she went into the yard the rodents would get quite talkative. Making a mental note to see if they still had some peanuts left, she smiled as the creature hopped around, barely visible in the dim light.

After a minute or two, she sat up a little as another idea came to her. Pondering it, she finally shrugged, whispered, "Sorry, little guy, this is for science," and reached out in that very specific way she'd learned. The squirrel disappeared in mid leap, causing her to start laughing in glee.

"That never gets old," she chortled, checking the time on the computer. Waiting for five minutes she put the squirrel back, only a few feet closer to the house. A very confused-appearing rodent popped into existence, dropped to the snow as its interrupted leap completed, then looked around with all indications showing it was extremely puzzled. As far as she could see there were no ill effects at all, which she'd been fairly certain would be the case based on the candle experiment and her own ideas about how the trick worked, but came as a relief anyway. Eventually the squirrel, which had turned in a complete circle twice, ran back to the tree and vanished up it into the dark.

Laughing, Taylor went into the kitchen and found the half-empty bag of unshelled peanuts she'd remembered, took it to the back door, and tossed a couple of handfuls onto the snow. It only seemed right.

"Yeah, this has possibilities," she giggled as she closed the door. Going back to the study she waited for the download to finish, idly browsing the web and looking at local news sites to see if anything had yet been posted about Sophia and the mess at Winslow. Not finding anything, she shrugged and moved onto cat videos, which is the natural end state of having an internet connection and no specific goal as everyone knows.

Just as the files finished downloading, the doorbell rang. Getting up she answered it to find the pizza guy, who handed her a stack of boxes. "Thanks," she smiled, giving him the four dollars she still had in her pocket from her earlier purchases at the shop as a tip. He smiled back, nodded to her, and went back to his car. Closing the door she took the food into the kitchen, removing a slice which went onto a plate before she pushed the rest into hammerspace for later. Eating the pizza she returned to the study, disconnected the audio recorders, shut everything down, and headed up to her room to do more work on her notes in light of recent discoveries.

Getting out of his car, Danny waited for Michelle to exit as well, then locked it. Her own vehicle was parked on the driveway next to his. She followed as he walked to the house, unlocking the front door and going inside. Stamping snow off his boot while she closed the door behind her, he called, "Taylor? We're back. Can I smell pizza?" The aroma of pepperoni was quite evident in the house.

"Yeah, Dad, I got your favorite," his daughter called back moments before she appeared at the top of the stairs. Descending, she added, "Hi, Michelle."

"Hello, Taylor," the lawyer replied with a smile. "It sounds as if you had an entertaining time at school today."

"That's one way to put it, yeah," Taylor snorted, shaking her head. Danny grinned a little. "Those assholes outsmarted themselves though."

"If you hadn't worked out Anton's trick you'd be in a bad place right now, so don't trivialize what they tried to do," he noted. She scowled ferociously at his words.

"Oh, trust me, I know fucking well what that bitch tried to do to me," she grumbled, turning and heading for the kitchen, the other two following having hung up their coats. "I thought it was only fitting that I returned Sophia's present. She deserves whatever she gets as a result."

"I can't disagree," he replied, feeling much the same anger. Reaching the kitchen, he looked around, a little puzzled. "Where's the pizza?"

"On the table," Taylor said with a grin, pointing behind him to the table on which there had definitely not been several boxes from the local pizza place seconds earlier when he'd walked past it. He and Michelle stared, looked at each other, then turned as one to the girl, who opened a box and pulled out a slice. "Come on, dig in, don't let it get cold!" she added with a somewhat smug expression.

"Oh, for…" He put a hand on the box, seeing it was indeed as hot as if it was freshly made. "How long have you had it stashed away?"

"About… fifty minutes or so?" She glanced at the microwave clock, then nodded. "Yeah, just under an hour."

"So when something is stored away with that technique time doesn't pass for it?" Michelle queried, a fascinated expression showing. Taylor nodded again.

"As far as I can tell, yep. It hit me earlier when I got home, and I tried sticking my phone in hammerspace. It lost exactly the same amount of time it was in there for. Then I put a lit candle in for ten minutes, and it was no more burned at the end but was still lit." She shrugged, looking very pleased with herself. "And the squirrel was fine too but he was really confused."

"Squirrel?" he echoed a little helplessly. "What squirrel?"

"One of the ones from the back yard," she replied happily. "Don't worry, I gave him some peanuts after. One should always reward one's experimental subjects."

Danny put his hand on his forehead and massaged it. "Oh, for god's sake…" he muttered, causing both Taylor and Michelle to exchange amused looks. "I can't deal with that craziness right now, not after today. I need some food."

Taylor was already removing plates from the cupboard and putting them on the table. Shortly all three of them were sitting around it, eating. Danny was trying to work out the best method to explain what had happened to his daughter, and how to broach the whole Sophia being Shadow Stalker thing, which was going to be awkward at best.

"Hey, did you know Sophia Hess is Shadow Stalker?" Taylor asked conversationally a few seconds later, before taking another bite of pizza.

Or not, possibly, he thought.

"How did you find out?" he asked, sighing again.

"So you did know?" she asked curiously. He nodded slowly.

"We found out earlier."

She looked at him with a quizzical expression, but replied, "I got hauled into Blackwell's office with a dozen or so other witnesses after lunch. There were two 'cops' there." She made little finger quotes. "Except they weren't cops."

He stared at her, then turned to Michelle, who now seemed very interested. Turning back to Taylor, he asked, "How did you know they weren't cops?"

"Well, they didn't look like cops for a start. Their suits were much too nice, they didn't have that attitude all the real cops have, the one that says they're just about done with all this shit and are only dealing with it because it's less trouble than not dealing with it, you know?" He nodded slowly, as this was indeed a pretty good description of most of the police in Brockton Bay. It matched his coworkers well too for identical reasons. "And of course they both had three different phones or something like that on them, all of which were way past the usual sort of thing, and teeny tiny probably Tinker Tech earpieces in," she continued with a shrug. "So I assumed they were either FBI or PRT. FBI seems unlikely, why would they care about one girl getting busted for possession of hash? On the other hand, PRT made a weird kind of sense when I thought about it."

She hesitated while he thought over her words and couldn't find any problems with them. "There's also this." Suddenly she was holding a transparent plastic bag, inside of which was a black cloth roll like a small tool set. He examined it curiously for a moment before raising his eyes to meet hers, the question unspoken. "I… looked… at Sophia's locker when I was walking past it, right about when Emma was kicking the cop in the face. Spotted this behind it, right in the wall. There's a sort of cavity there, it looked like it might have had some sort of water pipe or something in once, and this was in the hole."

"What is it?" Michelle asked, leaning forward and inspecting the contents of the bag with great interest.

"Half a dozen broad head crossbow bolts just like the ones Shadow Stalker used to use before she joined the Wards, two knives, and some brass knuckles," Taylor replied, putting the bag on the table and picking up her slice of pizza once more. "At least one of the bolts has dried blood on it." She bit down and chewed, watching their reactions.

Danny stared at her, the bag, then Michelle. "Well, well, well," he finally said. "That is interesting."

"Yes, isn't it," Michelle muttered, studying the bag carefully. "Very interesting indeed." She looked at Taylor. "I trust you thought ahead and didn't get your fingerprints on it?"

"I'm not an idiot," his daughter smiled. "I wore latex gloves when I opened it to have a look upstairs. There shouldn't be any evidence I touched it."

"Excellent. Now, the question is how do we make best use of it?" the woman mused thoughtfully. "The biggest problem is that we need to, for best effect, establish a chain of evidence that does not implicate Taylor or bring her to the PRT's attention. Which is slightly tricky since finding this more or less proves something they would find of interest occurred. So if we happen to claim it was anonymously handed over, they'll be looking for a Parahuman, I would think. Which will only complicate matters."

"I could put it back," Taylor commented. "I think I could probably do that from outside the school, if I try hard enough."

"Really?" The woman looked intrigued. "That could be useful. Let me think about it. And I'll need to make some calls, find out what the PRT was actually doing in the school other than questioning students."

"There were at least four of them, I saw two more just like them when I left," Taylor said. "They went inside as I was going out."

"Probably looking for more evidence, I would imagine," Michelle commented. "The question becomes whether they checked the location you found or not. If so, if something magically reappears there after the fact it will again raise questions." She shrugged minutely. "I'll look into it. On another note, when you were called into the principal's office, what exactly happened. Who said what? Your recorders were running, I hope?"

"Oh, yeah, they were, don't worry about that," Taylor grinned. "I got the whole thing. Blackwell basically told me to answer any questions, and I specifically asked if I needed Dad there. She said no." Danny felt irritated about that, and Michelle smiled like a shark. "Then she introduced them as cops. They asked me about what I'd seen, what I thought about Sophia, that sort of thing. Nothing particularly strange considering. Probably the same questions they asked everyone. I did think about doing what Dad told me a long time ago and clamming up without a lawyer there, but when I worked out they weren't actually real cops, I thought it might be better to just play along. Especially since it was all being recorded."

"I see. That may be useful. Did they notice your recording warning?"

"Yep. Didn't really say anything about it but they seemed to believe it. One of them asked me to send him the recording of the arrest." She held out a card that appeared between her fingers. "Gave me his card and everything."

Danny took it from her and looked at it for a moment, then pulled out his cellphone. Taylor and Michelle watched him with near-identical looks of interest. Smiling grimly, he got up and retrieved his address book from his briefcase, thinking he needed to get used to putting the data into the phone now he had one after all this time, flipped through it to find the number he wanted, and dialed. "Hello," he said when the call was answered, "Is Sergeant Jeffries still on shift? Yes, tell him it's Danny Hebert. Sure, thanks." He waited for a few seconds until a familiar voice came to him while the other two kept quiet and just listened.

"Hey, Danny, what's up?" Earl queried.

"Hey, Earl. Got a small question for you. It's sort of connected with our discussion earlier."

"Ah… OK, shoot, but I may not be able to tell you everything." The other man sounded cautious, his voice lowering, and Danny got the distinct impression he was probably trying to avoid anyone else in the room with him hearing anything.

"Taylor got interviewed in school today," he said. "There were a pair of BBPD cops in the Principal's office asking about the Hess bust. One of them gave her his card and asked her to pass on the recordings she's been making of the abuse going on there. All legal, since she's been wearing a card around her neck saying flat out she's recording audio all the time. Not her fault if no one seems to believe it…"

Earl started snickering. "OK, that's pretty fucking funny," he chortled.

"Yeah, I know. You wouldn't believe some of the things she's recorded. Anyway, being a good citizen and all, obviously I want to help the police with their inquiries into the horrible situation that led to a drug dealer of all things being arrested in my daughter's school, and I wouldn't want the recordings to end up in the wrong place. I just wanted to check that the details on the card she received were correct so I can send a DVD with all the files on. Wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands, after all."

His voice was very innocent, causing Taylor to roll her eyes while grinning and Michelle to sigh and shake her head, even though she looked very amused. A pause of a few seconds was broken by Earl replying, sounding as if he was trying not to laugh, "Of course, I understand completely, Danny. What's the name of the cop in question? I can make sure the details are right."

"Great." Danny read the information on the card. "Lieutenant Leon Christoff, Brockton Bay Narcotics Division, extension 8182."

Earl was quiet for another few seconds. Eventually he replied, very carefully, "Those details are familiar to me, yes."

"Of course they are. I can't imagine the narcotics division is all that large, so you've probably met everyone in it over the years." Danny smiled to himself.

"You might put it that way, Danny. I'm not personally familiar with Lieutenant Christoff but his name is certainly one I recognize."

"Seeing how we live in Brockton Bay, I expect the Narcotics division has quite the job keeping up," Danny said brightly, rather enjoying himself. "They could probably do with some help from the feds or something."

"Yeah," Earl responded in a manner that convinced Danny he was trying not to burst out laughing. "But like I said when you were here this afternoon, we can't always get things working from that specific direction, even if they're around sometimes whether we want it or not."

"True enough. All right, then, sounds like I can send that DVD over." He paused, then added, "Probably best if I address it to you, though, if Lieutenant Christoff isn't always available. I can trust you to get it to the right person."

"Sounds like a plan to me, Danny. I'll make sure that it does indeed end up in the right hands."

"Wonderful. I'll get someone to drop it in tomorrow sometime. Later, Earl, and thanks."

"No problem, Danny. Have a good one." The line dropped and he flipped the phone shut and put it away, sitting down again and reaching for another slice of pizza with a slight smile on his face although he was also rather irritated.

"Yeah, they're PRT all right," he said before he took a bite.

"Impressive, Danny," Michelle said admiringly. "The only minor problem with your call is that the recordings might possibly not be as securely delivered as the PRT might wish for."

"Really?" Danny looked at her, his eyebrows raised a little. "I can't see how that could happen. Earl promised me they'd end up in the hands of the right people." He winked at her, which make Taylor start giggling.

"Oh, I have no doubt the PRT will end up in receipt of them, as you well know," she commented, shaking her head. "Eventually."

"Hey, I had to make sure that everything was above board, after all," he protested without heat. "Can't trust anyone these days. For all we knew those people might have been involved with one of the gangs or something! Taylor didn't actually see a police badge after all."

"You can stop the act, Dad, we get it," Taylor said in a dry voice. "That was pretty cool though."

He grinned at her. "Thanks. So by the sound of it your day has been strange, annoying, but productive too?"

"Yeah, that's sure one way to put it." Taylor sighed faintly. "I won't miss Winslow. Except Mrs Knott, I like her. She's about the only person in the entire damn place I do have any liking for."

"I will get your home-schooling documentation filed at the same time as the legal papers, Taylor, so you'll have no trouble with that aspect of life," Michelle told her. "And we can start the process of looking into getting you into a better school. Luckily we're nearly at the end of the school year so that should make transferring easier than it would have been if we'd had to do this after a new semester started."

"I could really do without people being so… so… teenaged… at me," his daughter grumbled, propping her head on her hand and nibbling on the end of a slice. "It's getting old."

"Well, you'll have a break of at least a month or so regardless," he assured her, reaching across the table to pat her hand. "That should help you get into a better place."

"Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. After finishing the remains of her food, she brightened up. "Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot the other thing that happened."

He looked at her, a bit apprehensively. "Good thing or bad thing?" he cautiously asked.

"You tell me." She held out a slip of cardboard. He took it from her and stared at the lottery scratchcard, Michelle leaning sideways to also examine it. Quite a long time passed in complete silence before two pairs of eyes turned to look at the girl, who shrugged with a small evil smile. "Guess what else I figured out Anton's trick was good for?" she said mischievously.

"Fuck me," he muttered, going back to looking at the hundred grand winning ticket he was holding. "OK, next time the pizzas are on you."

"Fine by me," she giggled. "You'll need to claim the prize though, you need to be over eighteen to do that."

"In theory you need to be at least eighteen to buy a scratchcard in this state," Michelle pointed out.

"Guy in the shop didn't seem to care," Taylor grinned. "So I just took the opportunity fate handed me. I got lucky that there was a winning ticket in stock. But I guess I could probably just keep collecting lower prizes, the odds are much better on those things."

"Best not to do that too often, Taylor," the lawyer pointed out. "It's exactly the sort of thing someone would eventually notice, and the least worst ones to do that would be the state gambling authority. I'd advise taking this as your winning hand and not pushing your luck too much. And it's not as if you're likely to be hurting for money once we've finished with Winslow…"

"True," the girl smiled. "I just couldn't resist when I saw it there. And it might come in handy, right?"

"It may at that," Danny agreed, handing the card back to her, whereupon it vanished again. "I can arrange to claim it later in the week."

He took a breath, then glanced at Michelle, who made a little gesture. Nodding, he met his daughter's gaze, which was now somewhat apprehensive as if she'd picked up on his own nervousness. "Time for me to tell you what we found out from Zoe," he said, the good mood abruptly dropping. "You're not going to like it."

"I didn't think I would," Taylor sighed. "But I'll listen, even so."

He got his thoughts in order as she waited patiently, then began explaining. "We found out about Sophia being a Ward as well," he said, leading into a recounting of the last few hours. Taylor listened carefully, and he could see in her face that she was absolutely furious within five minutes. For many, many reasons, all of which he agreed with. He wouldn't have blamed her for rejecting the entire idea of combining forces with the Barnes', but when he finally stopped talking two hours later, the three of them now in the living room where they'd moved when the food ran out, she was thinking silently and deeply.

Eventually, neither of the two adults having said anything while she considered the new information, she looked up. "Emma still did all that shit."

"She did, yes," he replied.

"She deliberately did everything she could to hurt me, used everything we'd had together since before I can remember as a weapon against me."

"I know."

"And she turned the entire fucking school against me. For a year and a half. God knows what would have happened, what they'd have done next."

"All that is true, I agree." He was watching her closely, feeling anger on her behalf and massive sympathy for her.

"I can't just forget it all, or forgive it all, just like that," she stated with a scowl.

"No one would expect you to, Taylor." He shook his head. "I wouldn't blame you for an instant if you never wanted to talk to Emma for the rest of your life. I know what she did, what Sophia and the others did, and there's no excuse for it. But…"

"But…" she echoed, sadly. "We now know the explanation for why she did it. And… while I hate it, I can't completely hate her. She's sick."

"Unfortunately," Michelle put in, "that's exactly the situation, yes. Emma is very obviously mentally unwell, and has been in need of major psychiatric help for nearly two years. Sophia made that all far worse. I have no doubt that Sophia herself also requires some mental help, which is hardly uncommon among Parahumans, although she's certainly taken it to extremes. But without her getting involved with Emma it's likely, I suspect, that the girl wouldn't have become nearly as destructive as she did. Or self-destructive too, because the inevitable end result of her actions would have caused any number of bad outcomes for everyone."

Taylor listened, looking at the lawyer, then nodded slowly. Turning back to Danny, she stared at him for a little while, her fingers intertwined in a grip that left the skin white, until she finally slumped into her chair with a sad sigh. "Fuck it. Be mature, right? Sure, why not, we and the Barnes' against the world that screwed both of us."

"It's never easy when you are forced to face the fact that the world isn't black and white, but merely shades of gray," he told her quietly. "Both you and Emma are victims, in different ways. And in my mind you are the stronger person, because you didn't break in the face of provocation that would have made most people burn the school down. I'm proud of you, and I'm sorry it took so long for us to reconnect so we could do this."

"Not your fault, Dad, or if it is it's mine as well," she sighed, staring at the carpet. "You should have noticed, I should have said something. Life's shit sometimes."

"All too true," he agreed. "And on the bright side, we did reconnect, we're getting better, and you found some interesting hobbies."

She peered up at him, not really lifting her head, and after a moment laughed a little. "Yeah, I did do that, I suppose. And if all this goes sideways I can always call the gnurrs to visit Winslow…" Her small smile was very dark indeed.

He couldn't help laughing even as he was hoping she was joking.

Although he was pretty sure she wasn't...