Opening the door, Alan sighed a little, then stepped aside. "Come in, Danny," he said, waving his old friend inside and closing the door after him. "What brings you here?"

"I was in the area on Union business and I thought I'd stop by and see how you guys are doing," the other man replied, shaking snow off his shoes and wiping them on the mat. "You're home? I expected Zoe."

"I've taken a month off for medical leave," Alan replied, turning and heading towards the kitchen with Danny following. When they arrived he moved to make some coffee. "I've got enough seniority it's not a problem, and Zoe was… pretty persuasive."

Danny snorted a chuckle. "Yeah, I can imagine. She's not happy about this whole thing."

"Not really, no," he agreed, turning the machine on having filled it with the relevant fixings, then sitting at the table. The other man sat opposite him. "She's made that abundantly clear over the last few days, believe me," he added ruefully.

"Can you blame her?"

"No, in all honesty I can't." Alan shrugged somewhat helplessly. "Most of this is my fault after all."

His friend regarded him for a moment, then sighed. "I don't think 'most' is really accurate. Quite a bit, yeah, that's on you. You should have gotten some help for yourself, and Christ you should have done that for Emma. And not getting involved with Sophia and her parole thing would probably have been a good idea." Alan nodded guiltily, sagging a bit as the other man's words hit home. "On the other hand, you weren't in a good place, which I know from personal experience really fucks with your decision-making abilities. And you had no way to know just how psychotic that little bitch really was, or how she'd twist poor Emma like she did. Don't blame yourself for everything because it's not all your fault. And at least we managed to catch it before something really bad happened…"

Staring at the table and absorbing the words, Alan finally nodded a little as he raised his eyes to meet Danny's. "That helps. Thanks."

"No problem. We've known each other for twenty years or more, and I'd prefer this not ruin a friendship like that." He grinned. "Even if you are an asshole sometimes."

"That didn't help as much," Alan replied with a long suffering look. Getting up as the coffee machine began filling the carafe he'd put in it, he busied himself for a minute or two then sat again, putting a mug in front of both of them. Danny poured black coffee into his and took a sip, nodding appreciatively. "How's Taylor handling everything?" Alan asked somewhat tentatively.

"Much better than I expected, and better than I would, I think," his friend replied, lowering the mug to the table. "She's grown up a lot in the last couple of years, much more than many people would at her age. I'm mad at myself that I didn't notice, but there's a lot of blame to go around with this whole shitshow. Taylor is about the only one who's blameless." He sipped again, then added, "Although she's not convinced about that herself. Thinks she should have talked to me earlier." With a shrug and a sigh, he went on, "I really can't say if that would have prevented this or not. Neither one of us was in a good place for much too long. But at least we did finally reconnect properly and our relationship is a lot better than it's been for far longer than I like to think about."

"You're home schooling her at the moment, right?"

"To be honest she's doing that herself," Danny grinned. "I think she really wants to put Winslow behind her and one way to do that is get high school out of the way. I've wondered if she'd be better off going for a GED, she's smart and driven enough to do that inside a year or so at a guess. But at the same time I still think she needs friends her own age. Problem is she's extremely gun-shy about teenagers now, for obvious reasons, and I honestly can't blame her for that." He shook his head as Alan nodded thoughtfully. "And not all that impressed with authority figures either considering how much most of them have let her down," he concluded.

"Yeah, I can see that," Alan replied. "I'm not surprised all things considered. You're probably right that she needs to be in a good school, with kids her own age, but I'm not surprised she's a bit dubious about the whole idea. I would be too in her place."

"Well, we won't be in a position to really do much about that until after Christmas anyway, and with a little luck we can get the School Board so terrified of us they beg her to go to Arcadia or something." Danny smirked a bit, causing Alan to laugh. "They're having a really bad time right now. And the Winslow staff are having a worse one. Which makes me very pleased."

"Me too," Alan readily agreed, scowling. "Those assholes are more to blame than anyone else. How the fuck they let this go on so long is beyond me."

"Incompetence, corruption, and general idiocy," Danny shrugged. "And most of them are going to lose their jobs because of that, and probably get blackballed from teaching for life. Serves the bastards right as far as I'm concerned."

"Can't disagree there," Alan nodded. After a short pause, he said, "Look… Give Taylor my apologies, will you? I am so sorry all this shit happened to her. The kid didn't deserve any of it and I hate to even think what she went through. Those recordings are…" He swallowed, shaking his head. "She's a very strong young lady to have handled that for so long without burning the entire school down."

His companion sighed, nodding. "That much I know," he agreed soberly. "Stronger than I am. That's her mother's influence. I'd have torched the place after six months, if they were lucky, but then I always was a hothead when I was younger."

"Not that much younger," Alan chuckled. "I can remember more than a few bar fights that weren't all that long ago."

Danny grinned. "And we usually were the last ones standing."

"Not completely sure that's the point, but whatever."

They fell silent for a while, drinking coffee and thinking about the past, while Alan felt relieved that his friend wasn't going to take out his frustrations on him, even though he still felt it was probably deserved. He hadn't been looking forward to facing an angry Danny Hebert, the man had a vicious right hook and didn't hesitate to kick some one who was on the ground to make sure they stayed there. Luckily it seemed that his old friend was reserving that anger for the school and the PRT. Which was fair enough, Alan had a large reserve of extreme irritation for both entities himself.

Footsteps coming down the stairs made both of them look around to see Anne, who came into the kitchen and stopped when she noticed Danny. After a moment her face crumpled and she started crying, causing the man to stand up and put his arms around her. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Danny," she sobbed into his shoulder. "I didn't realize what was happening. I'd have stopped it, I promise. Taylor didn't deserve any of it."

"I know, Anne. No need to cry, neither of us blames you. We don't really blame Emma, either. She's… not well. Taylor realized that even though she's still going to have a hard time looking at her."

"I can't believe my own sister would do that to Taylor," Anne sniffed, wiping her eyes. "They grew up together! Taylor knows her better than I do. How could this happen?"

Guiding her to a chair as Alan got up and retrieved another mug, filling it with coffee and sliding it in front of her, Danny sighed. "The mind is a strange thing sometimes," he said, taking his own seat once more. "Especially under stress. Take it from me, when you're in the wrong place in your own head, it's very hard to even notice never mind fix it." He wrapped his hands around his mug as she listened. "You keep telling yourself everything is normal and it's the rest of the world that's not behaving, and after a while you start to believe it. In the end you don't even notice how bad it's got. Depression, PTSD, whatever it is that affected Emma like it did, it's sneaky and nasty. And it feeds on itself."

He glanced at Alan, then looked back to the young woman. "Sometimes you need something to shock you out of it and make you wake up to how bad things got, before you can start to heal. Other times you need something much longer term, professional help, that sort of thing. And sometimes…" He shrugged sadly. "Sometimes none of that helps. I've seen it more than a few times at the Union. Some people are so badly damaged they never do get better. Sometimes they manage to cope with it, sometimes they don't."

He reached out and squeezed her hand. "On the bright side Emma is young, pretty smart, and has you and your family. Try to keep smiling and with some luck things will work out although it might take quite a while. It'll be hard but there isn't really a shortcut as far as I know."

She nodded a little, wiping her left eye with a fingertip, then sighed. "That helps a little. Thank you."

Danny smiled at her. "My pleasure. And don't worry too much about Taylor. Yes, she's still angry about it, and yes, she's going to have trouble even looking at Emma for quite a while I think, but she also realized Emma is a victim almost as much as she is. Sophia really made the whole problem much, much worse than it should have been. The school completely dropped the ball, over and over again, and basically betrayed all of them by not doing their job. And the PRT themselves are at least partially to blame because their pet psycho wasn't kept on a short enough leash. Like I told Alan, there's a lot of blame to go around and Emma's part in this wasn't the biggest one by a long way, as bad as it was."

Anne shook her head, looking depressed. "I still can't really deal with all this, but I'm trying. And I want to apologize to Taylor. I should have noticed how my sister changed but I was so busy with college…"

"We all missed it, honey," Alan put in. "Me most of all. Because I was there and I didn't realize how badly Emma had been affected, which started all this."

"The ABB started all this, Sophia pushed it along, and dozens of people on the way didn't stop it," Danny retorted. "Don't waste time worrying about things that are done and can't be changed, worry about the things we're doing now. Or even better, don't worry about any of that and just get on with life while Michelle kicks their shit in."

Unable to help himself, Alan burst out laughing, raising his nearly empty mug in a salute. Danny clinked his against it, Anne doing the same moments later. "To the ruination of our enemies and the lamentation of their women, right?"

"Damn straight." All three of them smiled, Anne looking much more cheerful although still stressed.

After a little while, Danny asked, "How is Emma doing?" He sounded worried.

Alan exchanged a look with his elder daughter, then met his friend's sympathetic gaze. "Not… well. I mean, she's eating and looking after herself, but… the fire's gone out of her, you know? Like there's hardly anyone home. It's… not easy to watch."

"Mom took her to the therapist again a while ago," Anne added. "She's on her fourth visit, and I really can't say if it's working or not."

"These things take time," Danny replied, causing the girl to nod.

"I know, I know, but it's still hard to watch. And we have to keep an eye on her around the clock, we just can't risk leaving her alone." She yawned widely, before saying, "Which isn't helping with the stress. I'm exhausted."

"It's quite likely we'll need to arrange having her stay at the hospital for a while," Alan said quietly. "The doctor thinks it might help. Probably only for a few weeks then reassess the situation, and I know she's probably right, but… Putting my daughter in a mental institution… That is hard to think about."

"That's understandable," his friend replied, watching him closely. "But if it does help her, it's worth it."

"Yeah." Alan sighed, turning in his chair to put his empty mug on the counter. "I keep telling myself that. Maybe I'll eventually believe it."

"At least it's a local hospital, so you can see her every day," Danny commented, causing him to nod. "And driving yourselves crazy in the process of trying to help her won't help any of you."

"True enough."

Danny looked at his watch a moment later. "I'm going to have to go, I've got a meeting with the administration in forty minutes. Discussing the asbestos removal contract, which is getting complicated. Every building we survey we find the goddamn stuff. There's no way the last check was actually done, I can guarantee it, and there's probably going to be a lot of lawsuits over that sooner or later."

With a snicker Alan shook his head. "I still can't believe their cover story is actually true."

His friend grinned a little. "It's pretty bizarre, yeah. Not what I expected. But then it's bringing in quite a bit of work and making the public safer, so that's good. Could be worse, anyway." He got up, smiling at Anne, then heading for the door with Alan trailing behind. "Keep in touch, OK? If I can help, let me know." He put his hand on the doorknob and looked at Alan, who nodded.

"You've helped already much more than I'd have expected you to, so thanks. You're a good friend, Danny."

"I try, although I can't claim to be perfect," the other man replied with a shrug. "Nowhere close to perfect. But us little people need to stick together against the Man, right?" He grinned when Alan laughed. "See you around."

A few seconds later Alan was watching his friend's car drive off, feeling considerably better than he had an hour ago. Returning to the kitchen he bent down and put his arm around Anne's shoulder, kissing the top of her head. "It'll be OK, Anne," he said softly. "One way or another, it'll be OK."

"I sure hope so, Dad," she whispered, turning to hug him. As he held her he cursed his past self for not having done the right thing at the time and was even more determined to do it now, whatever personal cost there was to that.

Looking at her tablet when it pinged, Emily read the message displayed there and sighed to herself. "He's here," she commented, raising her eyes and scanning the faces of the others around the conference table. Luke Davies, the ENE Image department head, winced almost unnoticeably, apparently not all that keen on meeting his ultimate superior. Armsmaster and Miss Militia exchanged glances, the former putting his own far more powerful tablet to the side. Renick was making notes on a pad, scribbling away intermittently while referring to several reports, and the lawyer, Sommers, was sitting calmly waiting with his hands folded on the table in front of him.

No one spoke, they just waited, a tap at the door only a couple of minutes later heralding the arrival of the group from the PRT head office. It opened to reveal the rather corpulent and untidy form of Glenn Chambers, the head of Image for the entire organization, along with two other people, a blonde woman in a sharp suit and a short Asian man also dressed very carefully to impress. Emily pegged them instantly as lawyers and was internally briefly amused at the contrast between their appearance and that of Chambers, who was well known to carefully cultivate a look that suggested he paid it no attention at all.

She waved them to seats, half standing for a moment, before sitting again with a mild wince since her kidneys were being more of a nuisance than normal today. Most likely due to stress, she thought irritably. Which wasn't surprising considering the total pile of crap Hess had dropped on her head. "Have a seat, Mr Chambers," she said, "and friends."

He nodded to her as he sat, a lawyer on each side. They regarded each other for a few seconds. "This is a fine mess you've created," he finally stated.

Emily saw red for a moment, and apparently something in her expression made him realize he might have overstepped the mark just a touch. If he'd been fishing for a reaction he definitely got more than he bargained for, judging by how he visibly paled behind his glasses.

"Do. Not. Blame. Us," she grated. "I told you people that Shadow Stalker was a liability waiting to happen. I have an entire paper trail showing that I, along with Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Deputy Director Renick, and our legal department all warned you at various points about that girl, and her excessive tendency towards violence. Not to mention her complete lack of any visible amount of empathy, self control, or the ability to realize that actions have consequences. We suggested more than once that if you absolutely needed her power available that she be transferred somewhere other than this insane city and kept on a very short leash. But I was overruled right from the top and told she was effective enough that her personality flaws and disregard for authority were lower priority. And that she would come to see sense and settle down in time, because her attitude was just that of an angry teenager and all she needed was training and support."

Leaning forward, she stabbed two inch thick pile of reports in front of her with a finger. "Guess what? You were wrong. Exactly like I said you were, and he said you were, and he said you were." She moved the finger to indicate Armsmaster and Renick in turn. "All she learned to do was hide what she got up to much more effectively then kept right on doing it. Culminating in a terror campaign against a completely innocent girl who in my opinion should be given a pistol and a full magazine and aimed at that little shit. A terror campaign aided and abetted by one of our own people and the administration of what may be the most corrupt high school in the entire state. Yes, the buck stops with me, but this whole nightmare is entirely due to my superiors, who appear to lack not only common sense but any ability to understand that Brockton Bay just doesn't work like anywhere else you can imagine. Despite everyone here telling them that so many times I've completely lost count over the years."

By now she was standing and leaning over the table, almost shouting in his face, and most unusually he'd lost quite a bit of his normal confidence even under trying circumstances. "So do not walk into this room and disrespect me and my people like that, when we're doing everything we can to keep a lid on this insane asylum while being outnumbered five to one by the gangs, two to one by their capes, and about ten to one by their budgets, even as the PRT as a whole seems to be sitting back and taking bets on how soon the entire fucking place explodes."

Breathing heavily, she met his eyes with her furious gaze, until he lowered them and nodded. She collapsed back into her seat with a grunt and glared at him.

"My apologies, but I feel quite strongly about the situation," she added much more mildly when she'd calmed down after about thirty seconds of complete silence in the room.

Glenn swallowed a little, then opened his mouth. "We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, Director Piggot," he said very carefully indeed. "I didn't intend to imply disrespect."

She just looked at him.

"What I meant but seem to have somewhat badly said is that we have something of a PR nightmare in the process of happening here."

"That much I am very well aware of," she snapped.

"Yes. Well… It's my job to try to head that off at the pass."

"How do you plan on doing that?" she asked bitterly. "Hess was caught red handed in possession of enough narcotics to make the Merchants smile, having tried and failed to implicate the Hebert girl as a drug dealer or something similarly twisted. And then the cops managed to find firm evidence that she's been happily acting out her psychotic fantasies by murdering random criminals with that fucking crossbow and cold-bloodedly covering up the fact by mutilating the corpses. God alone knows what else she's been up to, but I'd be shocked if that was it. Not to mention the Hebert/Barnes suit claims she used psychological techniques to warp the mind of the Barnes girl when the kid was in a mentally disturbed condition, which to the general public sounds much too close to Mastering than I like to think about. PR nightmare is a huge understatement. This could destroy the ENE's reputation completely in the worst case."

"Is she a Master that somehow managed to slip through power testing?" the female lawyer asked when Emily paused.

"No," Armsmaster answered immediately. "We checked. Several times, as the whole situation regarding Miss Barnes is highly unusual. It appears to have been a combination of mental trauma exacerbated by an extremely idiosyncratic personal ideology applied at precisely the worst possible moment. And reinforced by the continual lack of Winslow School's ability to deal appropriately with the results. Which in turn was motivated by corruption on the part of both Maria Welton, Shadow Stalker's PRT liaison, and Principal Blackwell, although the contribution from most of the remaining school staff shouldn't be ignored." His mouth showed how angry he still was about the whole thing, and Emily was feeling exactly the same as all the others were too.

"I see," the woman replied, making some notes.

Chambers put his briefcase on the table in front of him and opened it, removing several file folders, then closed it again and put it back on the floor beside him. Arranging the folders he opened the top one and scanned the page, which would be a summary of the whole thing. "OK. I understand the scale of the problem, but let me just go through a few things to make sure we're all agreed about what's facing us."

Emily gestured in a get on with it sort of way, as he looked up at her, then pushed his glasses up his nose and turned the page. "As you said, Hess was initially looking at charges of possession of a banned substance, suspicion of dealing in the aforementioned banned substance, and resisting arrest. Correct?"

"Yes," she replied shortly.

"Subsequent to that the BBPD found a weapons cache directly behind her locker at Winslow High School, containing crossbow bolts identical to the ones she was known to use during her vigilante days, two knives, and a set of brass knuckles. The cache was in a hole in the wall and presumed inaccessible without the use of her Parahuman ability, the logical conclusion being that she put it there herself."

"Unless you want to believe that a sixteen year old girl with no Brute rating was somehow moving a bank of lockers weighing somewhere north of three hundred pounds, which took three cops to drag away from the wall. And doing it silently," Emily replied, nodding.

"And her fingerprints were also found inside the locker belonging to Miss Taylor Hebert, a girl who had complained multiple times in the past that her property was regularly being interfered with by means unknown."

"Correct."

Glenn rubbed his forehead with a finger, disturbing the not quite a mohawk his hair was set in, and sighed faintly. "The BBPD ran DNA derived from blood samples from the weapon cache through CODIS and had positive hits on two deaths that occurred since Hess Triggered, which have subsequently been determined not to be stabbings but shootings made to look like stabbings. And they strongly suspect there are at least three more similar cases due to circumstantial evidence but can't yet prove it. Therefore reaching the conclusion that Sophia Hess has unlawfully killed, if not deliberately murdered, between two and five people, at least one of these killings happening while she was a Ward. Do I have that completely right?"

"You do."

"Jesus." He shook his head. "This is about as bad as it gets."

"Tell me something I don't know," she growled.

After a moment or two, he turned some more pages. "And to add to our woes, the BBPD absolutely knows that Hess is Shadow Stalker, although they haven't actually admitted to that, but they've made it very clear that they do know, and that they know we know they know. Not helped by the fact that our people snagged Hess out from under them, which from what I've learned has only added to the animosity between the PD and the PRT, which goes back years."

"Unfortunately that's all true," she said with a shrug. "I can't say they hate us, they're at least minimally cooperative, but they certainly don't go out of their way to pretend to like us either. We've stepped on too many toes too often for that. Again, something I've told the Chief Director multiple times while asking for some sort of help to fix the situation, and something I've always more or less been ignored for. Exactly the same as with requesting at least two full time therapists." Which was something she was extremely miffed about. Capes, by definition, were disturbed people most of whom desperately needed professional help in her opinion. Not to mention the rest of her command who were generally overworked and stressed nearly to the point of PTSD.

Both so far unnamed lawyers were making quite a lot of notes as Emily and Glenn spoke, and exchanged glances behind his back at this last comment.

"Wonderful." He didn't look happy at all, which entirely failed to surprise her. Moving the first folder to the side he opened the next one. "Then we have this lovely little landmine… A suit filed against the PRT claiming criminal negligence, conspiracy to cover up multiple crimes including aggravated assault, assault with a Parahuman power, grand theft, misuse of federal funds, and half a dozen other felonies. It adds Winslow High School and the Brockton Bay Board of Education as co-conspirators, and names the parents of Sophia Hess, Madison Clements, and eight other students as involved parties. As well as every teacher in Winslow personally bar one."

Pinching the bridge of his nose in apparent pain, he shook his head a little, then met her eyes. "While it doesn't directly mention Shadow Stalker, there's no doubt at all that this was drawn up in the full knowledge of what Sophia Hess's cape identity is. The subtext is very clear. Which means we also have a major information leak on top of all the other shit."

"They also filed similar lawsuits directly against both the school and the school board, without the Parahuman charge or mentioning the PRT," Sommers put in helpfully, apparently rather enjoying all this in an intellectual way based on the tiny smile he'd been wearing the whole time. Both Emily and Glenn glared at him and he shut up.

"So at least one person too many knows about Stalker," Chambers went on when he looked back to her.

"It's going to be a lot more than one," she replied heavily. "Alan Barnes and Emma Barnes knew, and signed NDAs at the time we took Hess onboard. But I can guarantee you that one or other of them told Miss Hebert's lawyer at a minimum, and I'd be surprised as hell if she didn't tell her dad, and it's very likely that both Miss Barnes' sister and mother also know. Plus who knows how many cops, and anyone they might have let it slip to. If we're very lucky there are only a few in on the secret, but there's no way to know. Which is likely to bite us in the ass sooner or later as we're certain that at least a few of the PD are moles for the Empire if not active supporters. We've had enough trouble with that crap here."

"This scenario is tailor-made to fit right into the Nazi propaganda stream if the Empire find out about it," Armsmaster commented with a scowl. "A black girl torturing a white girl then trying to set her up as a drug dealer would be nearly a worst case situation from that point of view. Especially if they let slip she was a Ward."

"That you do not need to tell me," Glenn groaned. "I was having that exact nightmare last night. Although most of the other possibilities are nearly as bad." He scanned the page again as if looking for a miracle, then sighed and closed the folder. "All right. I just wanted to be absolutely sure I hadn't missed anything. We are in a very bad position right now. Legal agrees from looking at the suit and the evidence so far submitted that we hardly have a leg to stand on. Not least because that damned girl did everything the Heberts and Barnes' are claiming she did and they can prove it. I'm here to try and find the least damaging way to fix the problem we seem to have acquired."

"Bury Hess in the darkest cell we have for a decade or two, pay off the Barnes and the Heberts with anything they ask for, and very politely request they keep their mouths closed about the full scope of the settlement and the case," Emily promptly said, shrugging. "While lending any support we can get away with without it being obvious for their case against the school and the school board. When they win, pin Blackwell and her asshole staff to the wall on federal charges."

"That's certainly one idea," Chambers sighed. "It's not one that Head Office can be said to be overly fond of, though."

"Tough. We have very little real recourse here." Emily shook her head in disgust. "That little bitch couldn't have caused a bigger problem if she'd planned it out in advance, but that would have taken an ability to think more than one step ahead I'm certain she doesn't have. I don't really see any other practical approach that won't cause bigger problems than it solves."

"We can lean on the Heberts and the Barnes on the grounds of national security, get them under a pile of NDAs a foot tall, and bury their case against us," Glenn replied. "Let the civil cases go through, they'll win those easily based on what Legal says, but keep our involvement out of it."

She leaned back and folded her arms, fixing him with a hard stare. "Oh, really? That's your brilliant idea straight from the Head of Image? Cover up the whole thing and pretend it didn't happen? What a stunning tour de force of public relations. I'm impressed, honestly."

Her sarcasm nearly took the finish off the table.

"Aside from any other issue I have with that idea, and there are many," Renick cut in, "an NDA cannot be used to cover up an illegal act. Their lawyer will know that, and their lawyer will tell them that. If we try anything that heavy-handed, it will come back to haunt us."

"If I was them I'd sign anything we put in front of them then take it straight to a judge and get it added to the case as another example of corruption in action," Sommers commented acidly, not looking even slightly impressed. "We hardly need to hand them more rope to hang us with. Hess has already done a fine job of that."

Glenn Chambers sighed. "Yes, I know, and I agree. But I was ordered to suggest it. I've suggested it, we all agree it's a stupid-ass idea, so we can move on. But somehow I have to figure out how to balance justice, angry parents, and not blowing up the Wards program, which isn't exactly a trivial problem."

"Welcome to Brockton Bay," Emily couldn't resist saying with a certain level of schadenfreude.

He didn't look too happy about that but didn't say anything either.

It was a very long meeting...

Carol Dallon stood up as her one PM appointment walked into her office, her assistant closing the door behind the other woman. Holding out her hand, she shook the offered one. "Ms Lichfield. A pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise, Mrs Dallon," the slightly younger blonde replied, taking a seat when Carol indicated it as she returned to her own chair.

"How can I help the DWA?" Carol asked. "You mentioned a court case?"

"Yes. It's not directly for the DWA, but for one of our members, and has somewhat grown from our original intention as evidence has come to light," Ms Lichfield replied, nodding. "I was originally representing Danny and Taylor Hebert, on Taylor's behalf, but we recently added the Barnes family to our side."

"Barnes? As in Alan Barnes?" Carol echoed, puzzled and taken aback.

"Those Barnes, yes," the other woman confirmed.

"What on earth is this case about?" the Dallon woman asked curiously.

"Ah. It's an interesting one, which I suspect would be something you'd find both personally and professionally worth looking at," Lichfield smiled. "We've filed a number of suits, and I'm essentially doing the preparatory work required should it go to court. While I'm fully capable of the tasks needed to date, we feel it would be sensible to locate a legal expert with experience in a complex case such as this one has turned into. Most of my previous work has been contract law, defending various people from fairly modest charges, and similar things."

Carol sat back and regarded the other woman closely for a few seconds. She appeared composed and professional, and from her own research after the initial call the lawyer knew her guest was highly respected in her area of law, although they'd never crossed paths before. Eventually she replied, "I'm intrigued, I will admit. You realize my professional specialty is Parahuman law?"

"Indeed I do. Which is one of the main reasons I contacted you." The other woman's expression sprouted a small smile for a moment, as Carol raised her eyebrows.

"Ah." They looked at each other, then she added, "I believe I would like to know more."

"I thought you might. Here's a summary of the case." Reaching into her case, Ms Lichfield removed a folder and slid it over the desk, Carol picking it up and opening it. She started reading, got about half-way down the first page, and stopped dead. Rereading the paragraph she looked over the folder at her visitor who was watching her. "This is entirely accurate?"

Making an affirming gesture with one hand, Lichfield nodded. "Yes. Although it doesn't go into detail, that document is correct insofar as what it says."

"Jesus." Carol read the entire thing very carefully, then put it down in front of her and stared at it for a while. "This is… not good."

"That's rather our opinion," Lichfield replied with another smile. "Are you interested in becoming involved if required? We do have other options but your name was the first one I thought of."

"I believe I would find it well worth my time," Carol nodded slowly.

"Excellent. I was hoping you'd say that." Leaning forward, she held out her hand again. "Michelle."

"Carol." They shook, then started sorting out the relevant paperwork.

Lying on her bed, Taylor tossed a small rubber ball into the air almost to the ceiling, catching it again as it dropped, then repeated the process. She was thinking deeply and hard, mulling over various aspects of what she'd achieved so far and what she hoped to achieve later.

Her experimentation in momentum transfer had shown that Anton's technique was even more flexible than she'd originally thought, and potentially very hazardous. There was a somewhat impressively large hole through an inch of plywood in the basement that proved that well enough. The nut had ended up with enough kinetic energy to probably qualify as a bullet, and scared the shit out of her in the process as she really hadn't expected quite so spectacular a demonstration of what she could do.

She was now wondering just how large an object that could be applied to, and how much energy could be applied. At the moment she had no real feel for what the limitations of the techniques and its variations were, aside from a vague sensation that she wasn't anywhere near them. Which, if she was honest, was both terrifying and exciting.

Tossing the ball up again, she gestured at it, grinning when it silently vanished. "That never gets old," she muttered with a sense of satisfaction, making the ball come back again and catching it. Then she stopped halfway through throwing the thing again and stared at it, before lifting her free hand and looking at that too. "Hmm…"

A thought had struck her, that being that her original hammerspace idea had been a non-obvious modification of Little Anton's original method. Then the momentum experiments had shown she could modify the whole thing even further than she'd initially considered, which in turn tended to imply that there might well be other modifications that could be made if she could figure out how to do it.

The thing that had just occurred to her wasn't quite as worrying as being able to make a random object break the sound barrier by thinking too hard at it, but it was intriguing nonetheless. She still used a small gesture to do the whole reaching through another dimension thing or whatever it really was she was performing. The question that jumped to mind just now was… Was the gesture actually necessary?

When she'd originally taught herself to see beneath she'd done it by dint of a lot of squinting and going cross-eyed in a rather comical and not very comfortable way, but after practicing for hours and hours she could now do it pretty much without effort at will. It was just a matter of changing how you looked at things, which didn't as it turned out need that change to be a physical thing at all. So it seemed plausible that the act of 'reaching through' beneath might actually be more symbolic than real and not require the use of her hands at all. Which would be cool as hell, as it really would be doing things with her mind alone.

The big question was, how to do it? She pondered the orb of rubber in her hand for a while, rolling it around in her fingers and inspecting it both in normal reality and beneath. After a while she tossed it up and vanished it, twitching her fingers slightly, while watching what happened when she did so. Bringing it back she repeated the process, again and again. A few minutes passed until she got a really good idea of what the exact process was, yet again in a way that would be very hard to put into words, then she tried experimenting.

When she finally, after nearly two hours of effort and almost accidentally, hit on a way to make the ball vanish without moving more than one finger by reflex, her grin could have lit up the room. It took another solid hour and a half to get the whole process down to the point she could repeat it without moving at all, by which point she was extremely pleased with herself and quite hungry too.

Sitting up, she reached for her notebook and wrote in it for a while, documenting what she'd done and how in a way that probably no one else could follow, then she put it away and grinned at the ball which was hopping back and forth in a parabolic arc over her desk without her anywhere near it. Each time it neared the end of the arc she willed it out of existence, then back again with the momentum sign reversed. "I think that calls for lunch," she said out loud, feeling like she'd achieved something useful again.

So she got up and went in search of food, the ball disappearing as she left the room.