"Are you two going to be OK if I go out for a while?" Danny asked, looking at Taylor and Lisa, who were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa in the living room, each reading through a pile of paperwork the latter had printed out from Coil's confiscated servers. "I need to visit a few people."

"We'll be fine, Dad," Taylor replied, looking up with a smile. She put the papers to one side, got up, and walked over. Wrapping her arms around him she hugged him. "You did what you had to do," she added softly, as he put his hands on her shoulders and smiled down the few inches separating their heights. "I'm proud of you. Go do the other things you need to do."

"And bring back pizza," Lisa interjected, her face amused but her eyes showing a level of understanding beyond her years.

Laughing, he nodded. "I will. Probably be back around… ten, I'd think. I'll call if I'm going to be later."

"OK." Taylor released him and stepped back. "Have fun."

Shaking his head a little he repeated, "Fun… Possibly, yes. We'll see. Try not to punch any more holes in the house while I'm gone."

Taylor looked up at the ceiling and the hole where the ball from her demonstration had penetrated it, Lisa and he following her gaze, then met his eyes with a slightly guilty expression. "I'll try my best," she giggled. "And I will fix that. And the window."

Patting her on the head, he grinned. "I'll enjoy watching someone else do manual labor," he joked. "Later, girls." Leaving the living room as his daughter went back to sit down, he took his coat off the hook inside the door, shrugged it on, and exited the house. Shortly he was driving away from home, mulling over various thoughts.

A crunching sound in the snow outside made Taylor look up from the document she was intently reading, then peer beneath through the front wall of the house. The car that had pulled up into their driveway was one she recognized although she hadn't seen it for some time. Lisa was watching her closely, having also heard the sound, but relaxed when she shook her head. "It's fine, Lisa," the brunette said as she got up. Going into the hallway she reached for the doorknob even as the bell rang.

Taking a breath, she pulled the door open. A face that was all too familiar and set in an expression of worried anticipation mixed with regret and apprehension met her gaze. "Hi, Anne," she said after a couple of wordless seconds. Stepping aside she waved the older girl inside. Emma's sister, after hesitating for a moment, entered the house, Taylor closing the door behind her, then turning to her unexpected guest.

They regarded each other for some seconds.

Eventually, and very tentatively, Anne leaned forward and hugged Taylor, the older girl not quite as tall as her, but close enough. "I'm so, so sorry, Taylor," Anne whispered into her ear as Taylor carefully returned the hug, having been a little surprised at first, but after a moment or two not really that surprised. "I should have done something. Anything."

"It's not your fault, Anne," Taylor replied equally quietly. "I don't blame you, or Uncle Alan or Aunt Zoe. I should have tried talking to them too. We all screwed up in our own ways, and the people who are actually to blame are going to regret it."

Anne was almost crying, so Taylor disentangled herself a bit then led her into the living room where Lisa was studying them with interest and a knowing look, her power obviously working out a lot as well as her native wit letting her figure things out. Taylor had, after all, told her the story. "Sit down, I'll make some coffee," Taylor said.

"I'll get it," Lisa put in, standing and placing her own pile of papers where she'd been. Taylor nodded gratefully as the other girl left the room, then turned her attention back to Anne, who apparently hadn't even noticed Lisa's presence. The young woman had sat almost automatically in the chair Taylor had urged her towards, not taking her eyes off Taylor.

Moving to sit down in the adjacent chair, Taylor let Anne hold her right hand tightly, as if she was worried the Hebert girl would vanish if she let go. "How are you doing?" she asked, as if the answer wasn't obvious.

Anne laughed a little unevenly for a second. "I've been better," she managed to reply, wiping one eye with her free hand. "How are you doing? Because you're the one who should be really angry, not me. I mean, I am really angry, but not at you. Never at you. What my…" She paused and swallowed as Taylor listened quietly. "What my sister did to you is completely beyond my understanding. I can't see how anyone could do something like that to anyone never mind someone as close to her as you were."

Sighing, Taylor shrugged, lowering her eyes to look at their clasped hands. "She's sick, basically," she replied after thinking over her words for a while. "PTSD, trauma from the attack, Hess's totally screwed up world view at exactly the wrong moment… Lots of reasons. Emma was always a little… well, high strung, I suppose would be one way to put it. You know what I mean."

Anne nodded a little. "She did tend to get over-emotional when things went wrong sometimes," she replied sadly. "Not always, and she didn't mean to be nasty, but sometimes she was…" She trailed off while trying to find the words.

"Yeah," Taylor agreed. "I think she just couldn't handle what happened and she basically… broke. And no one really noticed, because one thing she was really good at was pretending to be all right when she wasn't, after that first getting loud and emotional about stuff. You remember the time with Mr Snuggle?"

Emma's sister started giggling. "Oh, god, that thing. I remember that. She was furious. Then pretended she was over it and she was too grown up to be upset, but I could tell. She was only seven."

Grinning rather sadly, Taylor nodded. "Yeah. Trust me, she got better at hiding her feelings over the years. To the point even I didn't really realize just how broken she was until it was way too late. If she hadn't met Sophia… If your dad had got her into therapy right away… If the fucking school had paid any attention at all to what was going on and done their jobs… Maybe we could have avoided all this." She shrugged tiredly. "But everyone, including me, dropped the ball. I should have told Dad a lot earlier, but I didn't want to add to his stress after… well, you know. And I wasn't exactly in the best place to think things through as well as I should have done. Dad didn't have a clue about all this, which I could blame him for not noticing, but I can't do that without blaming myself at least as much because I was deliberately not telling him."

"And Mom and Dad didn't notice either, or didn't notice enough to do anything, because we're all so busy and caught up with our own problems to pay attention to other people's issues most of the time, until it's too late," Anne sighed. "I should have noticed. She's my sister and I didn't even see she was turning into someone I can hardly recognize now. You're nearly my sister and I didn't bother to find out why you'd stopped coming around without any reason. I wondered about it, then got distracted by college work and just… stopped paying attention." She looked very guilty.

Taylor smiled gently at her. "Anne, listen to me. I don't blame you. Or your parents, or Dad. Or myself for that matter. We should have talked to each other, sure, but one thing I've realized is that people don't communicate enough all the time. Half the problems we have would probably go away if everyone would just sit down and talk them out calmly rather than running around screaming about things, or ignoring them completely. But that's just how people are. Me included, and you, and everyone else. I'm trying to be better, and so is Dad, and it's working. But you can't really change human nature, I guess."

"You probably can with the right powers," Lisa put in from beside them, making them both jump as they were concentrating on each other so hard neither had heard her come back in. The other girl grinned at their expressions and handed each a mug of coffee.

"Not quite the point I was going for, but thanks for your insight," Taylor commented with a mild sigh and a smile. "Anne, this is my friend Lisa, who's staying here at the moment. It's a long story, but she knows about Emma, Hess, and the PRT thing. I told her before the PRT settled, but she's not going to tell anyone else."

Anne looked at Lisa, who nodded to her with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Anne," Lisa said.

"You too," Anne replied, finally letting go of Taylor's hand and wrapping both of hers around the coffee mug, which she raised to her lips and sipped. "Thank you."

"No problem," the other girl replied, before leaving the room for a moment and returning with her own coffee. She sat down where she'd been and inspected both the others. "If you don't mind me saying, Anne, Taylor's right. It's not your fault. From what I've been told, your sister was able to keep her actions from your parents and you too, and the fact you didn't notice isn't something you should blame yourself for. She was going to a lot of effort to hide how… damaged… she was from you all. At least now you do know and are getting her the help she needs. And the PRT are paying for it."

Anne looked at her coffee, her face glum, but nodded and drank some more. "I know," she replied very quietly. "In my head I know. In my heart I don't. I just can't…" Apparently running out of words, she just sat there with tears occasionally appearing as Taylor exchanged a worried glance with Lisa.

No one said anything for a while, the two younger girls leaving Anne to her thoughts. Lisa started looking through the paperwork again, glancing at the Barnes sister now and then, while Taylor just waited patiently for Anne to work it out in her mind. Eventually, the older girl looked up at her. "I'm sorry," she said in a depressed sort of manner. "I'm not really sure why I came here, but… I guess I needed to see you, and tell you how I felt."

"It's fine, Anne," Taylor replied with a smile. "You're always welcome here, you know that. You're basically family, same as Aunt Zoe and Uncle Alan. You needed to get that off your chest, and that's perfectly normal."

Anne nodded, still looking at her. "How are you so… so… calm… about this?" she finally asked, sounding perplexed. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

Taylor chuckled rather sadly. "Like I said, I can't blame you for what Emma did, and after talking it over with Dad and a few other people a lot, I can't even really blame Emma in some ways. Yeah, I know, she did some horrible things, and I don't even want to think about what she might have ended up doing, but… in a very real way it wasn't her doing all that. Not my Emma. Or yours. It was a version of Emma that needs a lot of help, and one that I suppose you could probably say wasn't in her right mind. It's almost like she was Mastered in a way, although that's not quite accurate. Sophia warped her mind somehow, and…" She shrugged. "Shit happened."

She finished her own coffee and put the mug down next to the chair then leaned back, dropping her head over the back and staring at the ceiling as she tried to come up with the right words. "I've spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about it, of course. Before I realized just who Hess was, and why the school was just ignoring everything… Aside from being completely incompetent generally, of course… I probably wouldn't have agreed to what Dad suggested. Maybe I would. I don't really know at this point. But…" She shook her head a little. "It was hard, when he told me what he thought we should do. My first gut reaction was 'Hell, no,' but I thought about it, and thought how much just talking about things with Dad had helped both of us, and after a while I realized the right thing to do was to combine forces against the people who really are the ones who should have stopped it."

Lifting her head, she looked at Anne, who was listening with a thoughtful expression. "In a funny way I can't even blame the PRT although I want to. Director Piggot, and Armsmaster too, were pretty obviously extremely pissed off with Hess, and I honestly doubt either of them had the first idea what that fucker was doing. I know she killed at least one person, the Director admitted that to me. I'd be surprised if it was only one person to be honest. Sophia is a very angry and bitter person and I can easily believe she's been hunting muggers for sport or something, knowing that she was Shadow Stalker. Someone at the PRT definitely fucked up, but the organization as a whole… well, they're hardly blameless in general, but in this specific case I don't think it was their fault."

Falling silent, she watched Anne think it over for a while. Eventually she added, "Winslow, though? Yeah, them I blame. Practically every teacher in the place saw what was going on and completely ignored it. I've got plenty of audio recordings proving that, over months. And they're going to pay for it, believe me. By the time Michelle and Mrs Dallon get through with them, they'll be lucky if they can afford to eat more than one meal a week." She grinned nastily as Anne giggled.

"Not to mention the city, the school board, and probably a couple of state and federal agencies," Lisa put in, glancing their way and looking amused. "The PRT are probably going to get involved there too, because they're definitely going to want to share the pain."

"Good," Taylor replied firmly. "Winslow deserves everything that happens to it. Sophia and Emma were my personal demons, but there were a lot of people getting bullied all the time, thinking back on it. Not to mention the gangs, and god knows what else."

Anne shuddered. "I have no idea how you could handle going there," she commented.

Taylor shrugged, and sighed. "It was because of Emma, of course. But that's in the past. I won't be going back no matter what, and neither will Emma, so one way or another it's going to work out a lot better. Assuming I even go back to school at all."

"What else would you do?" Anne queried, looking curious and mildly worried.

"Not drop out, if that's what you're thinking," Taylor replied, smiling. "I couldn't live with myself, thinking how disappointed Mom would have been. And Dad would be. But I can homeschool and get a GED easily enough. I haven't decided yet which way to go. The PRT said they can get me into Arcadia, which is an option, but I'm not sure if I can handle more teenagers right now."

"I can't blame you, they're horrible," Lisa said in a completely dead-pan voice, making Anne burst out laughing. Taylor grinned.

"They sure are. Oh well, it's not something I have to worry about until after Christmas anyway, and I have plenty of things to keep myself busy at the moment. And I'm making up for all the lost time at Winslow too, which is good."

"Is that what all this is?" Anne asked, waving at the piles of paperwork on the sofa. Taylor and Lisa exchanged a glance.

"No, not as such," Taylor replied, considering a few things carefully. "This is more along the lines of a personal project."

She could see Anne was very curious but didn't quite know if she could ask. She glanced at Lisa again, who gave her a tiny shrug. Eventually, she came to a decision.

"I found out something cool about an ancestor of mine…," she began, Lisa putting the documentation to one side and listening, Anne looking intrigued as well.

Walking through a familiar door, Danny let it swing shut behind him and looked around. Several people looked back, nodding or waving. "Danny," the man behind the bar said with a faint Irish accent audible. "Been a while. How's it hanging?"

Walking over to the bar, Danny nodded back. "Not bad, Pat. Been a lot worse, let's say."

Pat reached for a pint glass with a look at Danny, who indicated his approval. Moments later the other man was slowly pulling a pint of bitter, paying attention to his job and not really looking up. Even so, he said, "I heard about the asbestos thing. Lot of work in that for you guys, I'd expect."

"It's going to be a long job, yeah," Danny replied, watching the glass fill. He looked around when a couple of other people came in, then went back to Pat as they walked across the room to him and stood next to the bar too. "It's a specialized sort of thing, very dangerous if you do it wrong, and our guys know more about it than anyone else in the state, so we'll probably have our hands full for months at least. All good money, and it'll save a lot of lives in the long run."

Finishing up the pint, Pat put it on the bar top, wiping the bottom on the towel there. "Yeah, so I gather. Last administration pocketed the money they should have spent on it, right?"

"I can almost guarantee it," Danny sighed. Pat began preparing a couple more pints after a glance at the new arrivals. "Christner, to be honest, is a massive improvement on his predecessors despite us not seeing eye to eye all the time, and he's genuinely trying to fix things. I can support that, as can everyone else. Hopefully he'll be able to pin some of this crap on the people who fucked it all up."

"We live in hope," Pat chuckled. He put the next pint down. "Miracles do sometimes happen. Just look at that fecking great ship. Or where it used to be." He gave Danny a sly glance, getting a small grin in return. "Back room's unlocked."

"Thanks, Pat," Danny replied with a nod, picking up his pint and taking a sip. "Fantastic as always. Hey, can I get a bag of those chips too?" He pointed behind Pat, who turned and retrieved the item requested then handed it over. A few people around the room stood up even as he turned to the side.

Taking his glass and chips he headed past the bar to a door at the very rear of the big front room, opening it and going down a corridor and a flight of stairs to a smaller but still quite large room that was technically part of the cellar. The walls were ancient stone, very thick, with a flagstone floor and massive oak beams above holding up the building. The door he'd entered through looked like it had probably been made at least a hundred and fifty years ago, and was a good four inches thick. He knew that it was, like much of the building, made from reclaimed timbers from sailing vessels, and was even older than it looked.

In the middle of the room was a large table, constructed in the same manner from the same materials, with quite a few chairs to match surrounding it. The table was so large it had obviously been built where it was, and had in fact been down in this room for over two centuries to his certain knowledge.

Several other people came in behind him, the last one closing the door with a very solid thud that echoed throughout the room. With it closed, the place was dead quiet, not a hint of external sound being able to penetrate the walls or ceiling. Danny moved to the table and sat down, sliding the heavy chair in a little until he was comfortable, then put his pint on the scarred wooden surface.

Only a few seconds passed before everyone else that had come in were also seated. He looked around at the familiar faces, smiling a little, then lifted his pint in a toast, which was matched by the others. "Here's to no more Oni Lee," he said quietly, before drinking. The rest did likewise, most of them grinning darkly.

"About time someone got that bastard," a gravelly voice from the other side of the table commented a moment later.

"Can't disagree, Erwin," Danny sighed. "I don't like killing someone, but…"

"Hell, kid, he needed killing, trust me on that," the old but ridiculously strongly built man cackled, giving him a look. "I'd have done the same thing. Probably should have taken the fucker out years ago, but… I'm retired, right? Leave that sort of thing to you youngsters." He smirked, then drank some more beer.

"Unless I have no choice, of course," he added when he put his glass down. "PRT had their chance, didn't do shit, and people died. You were completely justified in doing what they should have done. Self defense, nothing more."

"It was more along the lines of animal control," Matt, who was sitting to Danny's right, commented. He looked quite satisfied. "Sometimes you don't have any choice. Been there, done that, and not always in actual combat. We all have."

"Not the first fucker we've had to put down, Danny," Kurt, who was on his other side, put in, clapping him on the shoulder. "You give them every chance to change, but some people won't. All you can do is deal with it. No guilt, just move on. The number of innocent lives you saved you'll never know, but it would have been a lot, I'm completely damn sure."

Danny nodded slowly, sighing a little but accepting it. And to be honest he knew they were right. As he'd told Lisa at the time, he didn't like violence, but when push came to shove, he was going to do everything he could to make sure he walked away and the other guy didn't. That was how it worked.

Especially in this city.

You live in the docks, sooner or later you were in a situation where lives were threatened. It had been better, it had been worse, but it was always there as a possibility. And with any luck, current changes to things would make it much less likely that Taylor, or Lisa, or anyone else their age, would have to deal with the same sort of thing. At least, he hoped so.

Michelle, who was watching his face and had clearly divined his thoughts, smiled a little at him. "They're right, Danny. Don't let it eat at you. The PRT probably will never work out what happened, but even if they did, according to the law it was fully justified defense of others and yourself. He was going to end up dead sooner or later anyway, one way or the other. But he'd have taken a lot of people with him, so…" She shrugged. "That's one less problem to worry about."

Danny nodded. "True enough. I'd have preferred another option, but…"

Kate, who was next to Erwin, shook her head. "No other option with that type of bastard, Danny. Kill or be killed, you know that. Just like sixteen years ago."

Everyone there knew what she meant, and knew she was right.

Sipping his beer and eating a few chips, he offered the bag around, then finished what was left. "OK. Enough of that. Next thing… getting rid of those damned guns. We've got way too many stolen military weapons to make me happy." As Matt opened his mouth, Danny added, "Fine, we'll keep the ammo, and the hardware that isn't likely to get us shot at dawn, but the guns and those anti-tank launchers need to go back to where they came from."

Matt grinned. "Knew you'd see it my way, Chief. U.N.I.O.N. needs it more than Coil did, and if the National Guard can't keep hold of their toys, they don't deserve them back."

"Don't make me regret my decision," Danny growled. Matt just chuckled, as did the others. "And U.N.I.O.N. isn't a thing."

"Bet you're wrong on that, kid," Erwin snickered. "Your lass will make sure of it one way or another. Pretty much just have to live with it now."

"You're a fine one to talk, you ancient bastard," Danny grumbled. "What your lot got up to back in the day was even weirder than what we're handling now."

"For the moment. Give it a chance," Erwin smirked. "I bet it gets a lot stranger."

"Oh, you have no fucking idea." Danny sighed, shaking his head, as several people laughed. "Taylor is…" He could think how to finish the comment.

"Very Taylor," Michelle suggested, looking extremely amused. "Just like her mom. Only more so."

"Yeah. That's kind of what I'm afraid of," he admitted ruefully. "And she's added a lot too much of me as well, then mixed in all the stuff that's unique to her. And fucking Papa, of course. He's probably the one to blame for what's going to happen."

"Sounds like a fun guy," Erwin chuckled. "Like to have met him."

"The thought of both of you in the same room gives me cold chills," Danny stated evenly, staring at the much older man. "Adding Taylor and Lisa to that makes me want to run."

Erwin saluted him with his half-finished pint and grinned. Everyone else laughed. Danny just sighed.

"I'm surrounded by crazy people," he moaned.

"They're the most interesting ones," Matt commented. "And don't put yourself down, Danny. You're at least as crazy as the rest of us, you just hide it better."

"Thanks so very much for that," Danny grumbled.

Matt saluted him. "Any time, Chief."

"Stop that."

"Yes, Chief."

"Oh, god."

He shook his head and finished his beer. "Right. Weapons, military, for the getting rid of. We don't want it traced back to us, of course. Way too much hassle. Here's what I thought might be a good idea, but I'm open to suggestions…" He started talking, while the others became much more serious and listened carefully. An hour later they had reached a decision.

Taylor turned to the door as her father came in, hearing him stomp snow off his shoes. "Someone take these pizzas from me, will you?" he called. She got up and went to help, grabbing the three large pizza boxes and the garlic bread and taking them into the kitchen, while he took his coat off. By the time he followed her into the other room she had all the boxes on the table. He busied himself getting some plates out, saying as he did, "I didn't expect another car in the driveway."

"That would be my fault, Uncle Danny," Anne said from the doorway, making him turn to look at her. His eyebrow went up a little, then he smiled. Lisa was standing behind and to the side of the elder Barnes sister, watching them both with a small smile.

"Anne. What brings you here?" he asked as Taylor quietly got some drinks out of the fridge, listening to the conversation.

"Guilt, mostly," she sighed, although she looked a lot happier than she had when she'd arrived. "I needed to talk to Taylor." Glancing at the younger girl, she smiled again. "We had a long discussion."

"Did it help?" he asked, walking over to her having put the plates on the table then giving her a quick hug.

"Yeah. It did."

"We've found that talking is pretty good at doing that," he chuckled. "Come on in, I got a spare pizza because they had a sale on, so that works out nicely. There's enough for all of us."

"Are you sure?" she asked. "I don't want to impose on you, and it's getting late."

"Anne, you're damn close to family, so it's fine by me," he replied, waving at the table.

"Me too, for the same reason," Taylor put in, smiling at the older girl. "I told you that. Have some pizza."

Anne smiled back, entering the room and moving to sit at the table. Lisa followed her in and did likewise, passing her a plate and taking one for herself. Taylor and her father also sat, and shortly all four of them were eating some very good pizza and talking about whatever came to mind.

All in all, the brunette girl thought, it had been a good day, and a better evening.

By the time she went to bed that night her father had also explained his plan, and they'd worked out how to enact it.

It was, she felt with inner amusement, very U.N.I.O.N.

As was right and proper.

Staring at the email he'd just received, Major Kelly Weller, US Army logistics division, thought rapidly. On the face of it, the information contained in the email sounded somewhat implausible, but on the other hand…

If it was true there was a pretty fucking big problem.

He turned to another computer screen and clicked on a couple of icons, then typed in a password, then another one, and finally a third after navigating through the complex menu that popped up. Eventually reaching the part of the database system he was interested in, he cut and pasted one of the numbers in the email and hit the search icon. A moment later he examined the results of the search with worry.

"Fuck," he mumbled, saving that report and trying another number.

"Goddamn it to hell." He was not a happy Major by this point. Another number was put in, and yet another. Every single one of them produced a result that made him less happy by the second.

"Jesus fucking Christ, someone is going to get shot for this," he growled, picking up the phone by his elbow. Stabbing buttons, he waited for the other end to pick up. "We've got a massive problem," he said when it was answered, without ceremony. "And I'm damn near certain we can roll up at least three separate investigations in one operation if what I'm seeing is on the level."

He listened for a moment. "No, sir. Someone emailed me, me specifically and with the right authentication codes, god knows how they knew who to contact and how, a list of serial numbers of weapons that were apparently recovered from someone described as a super-villain who is no longer in the business of super-villainy. Whatever the hell that means. I checked some of the numbers. Every single one is valid. And according to our records every weapon listed is allegedly in storage at the Cambridge Armory. But there are photos that match the serials, so I'm thinking that we need to check whether those weapons are really where they're supposed to be."

"Yes, sir. No, I realize that, but there's a hell of a lot of stuff listed, enough for a small war. We've had problems in the past but nothing on this scale. Yes, rifles, pistols, several AT launchers, grenades, you name it. All the documentation does appear to be valid. Which is a huge problem if it's real. Someone has been falsifying information for at least… looks like eight years or more… if that's the case. God alone knows what else might be missing."

He nodded unconsciously. "I know. That would fit, but we've never been able to prove it. Agreed. All right. And sir? There's another issue… Some of these weapons listed are noted as being Canadian Forces issue. So it could be cross-border too."

Weller listened to the sound of extreme annoyance from his direct superior, nodding occasionally, until the other man stopped talking. "If ours are real, theirs probably are too. I'll personally check. The contact, whoever they really are, claims they'll arrange to return all the weapons, and will give us a location where we can pick them up in twenty four hours. I think we need to agree."

"Yes, sir. I'll do that, then reply. You'll make arrangements with our northern friends? Excellent. I'll get back to you within four hours. I'm leaving now." Putting the phone down, he studied the email with extreme irritation, mostly because of what it implied, then started printing out the records he'd need. Twenty minutes later he and a squad of very unimpressed MPs were heading towards the Cambridge Armory, determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on.

Of course, when about three hours later he was fully satisfied that every single weapon on his list was in fact not present, and apparently hadn't been present for close to a decade no matter what the paperwork said, he proceeded to lock down the entire facility and arrest damn near everyone in sight.

It was a very, very long day. And the questioning was going to go on for weeks at least.

Taylor stretched in the back of the truck, smiling to herself, then looked at Lisa who was grinning. Both of them turned to her father, the man appearing satisfied. "That was simple enough," she commented with a small grin.

"Only because you are oddly good at property reallocation, Taylor," he replied. "Something I blame on your mother because I have always tried to instill honesty and probity in you…"

She giggled as he gave her a wry smile. "Clearly without as much success as I'd like," he added, shaking his head.

"You know you love this too, Dad," she laughed. "And the Army guys have all their guns back, so they should be happy too. One less thing to worry about at least."

"Yeah, we only have all the other things to worry about," Lisa put in with a smirk. "Like Coil. Although you can keep him as long as you want, I don't care."

"We'll figure that out soon enough, but there's no real hurry I guess," Taylor replied. She glanced at the camera view from the front of their stealth transport, seeing they were nearly back on the interstate now. "When we get back, let's go and get Italian to celebrate another mission successfully completed."

"I could go for some pasta," Lisa commented with interest.

Taylor's father nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

"I like Italian too," Matt said through the intercom.

"Fine, we'll get enough for everyone," her father laughed. "And stop eavesdropping!"

"You got it, Chief."

"Why me?"

Taylor grinned, then looked at Lisa as the girl nudged her. "Did you leave the card?" Lisa asked quietly, but not quietly enough.

"What card?" Taylor's father asked suspiciously.

Both girls gave him identical looks of glee, making him sigh heavily. When they explained, he put his hand over his face and moaned.

Major Weller studied the twenty foot shipping container that was somehow wedged into an alley no truck could possibly have gone down to drop it off. The thing was rusty and looked ancient, but was still pretty solid, solid enough to be fairly secure. The paint was peeling and the numbers on it had long since worn away, apparently from years of sitting exposed to the elements. It was something that was so completely anonymous it would probably be impossible to trace, especially as it was at least twenty five years old and whatever company had once owned it likely didn't exist any more. There were literally tens of thousands just like it in warehouses and work yards all over the country.

Glancing at the two men with him, he shrugged, then approached the door. This was locked with a combination padlock, again pretty elderly and beaten up, but when he set the dials to the five digits his anonymous contact had emailed him, it clicked open immediately. He removed it, handing the thing to one of his companions, then grabbed the locking levers with gloved hands and heaved on both of them. Once they were fully disengaged he pulled the door open. The other man next to him pointed a flashlight into the container.

"Huh." Kelly looked at the crates that lined both sides of the container. "There's a thing. Let's have a look." He stepped inside, turning to the first crate, and lifted the lid. Dully gleaming blued steel met his eyes. Lifting out one of the guns in the thing he turned it over in his hand, found the serial number, and read it out.

"Matches the list, sir," one of the men replied after a few seconds of searching a list on the clipboard he was carrying.

Looking around, Major Weller shook his head in wonder and puzzlement. "Weird. But if they're all here, that's something at least."

"What's that, sir?" the same man asked, pointing past him. He looked to see a small white rectangle sitting on top of another crate and reached for it. Holding it up to the flashlight, he stared at it.

"United National Intervention Operator Network?" he said in a confused voice. "What the fuck is that?" He turned the card over. Printed neatly on the back were the words, 'Best Regards.'

Other than that the card didn't give any other information. He flipped it back and forth in his fingers for a few seconds, staring at it, then shook his head in bemusement, before carefully putting it into his pocket. "That can wait. Get the truck as close as possible and start transferring all this equipment."

"Yes, sir," one man said, turning and hurrying away. He stepped out of the container and looked at it with mild confusion, then around at the scene, which didn't show anything other than a narrow service alley in a nearly abandoned part of the industrial outskirts of Boston. No tire tracks or any other signs of how the container had got where it was were apparent no matter how carefully he looked.

"Parahuman action, it's got to be," the remaining soldier commented, following his gaze. Both of them looked up at the old warehouses on either side of the alley, saw nothing, and exchanged glances.

"I suppose so," he agreed, still puzzled, but for now he had other things to deal with. The sound of a big diesel engine rumbling closer and closer made him dismiss the oddities surrounding the whole thing for the moment in favor of making sure every single weapon went back where it was supposed to be. How they got here was a matter for another day, and in a sense not his problem. Unlike a truckload of stolen guns, which very much was.