"Chance I will be kidnapped in the next month."

-1%

"Chance that my parents will be harmed in the next month."

-1%

"Chance that I will be harmed in the next month."

-1%

"Chance that something bad will happen to the city in the next month."

-1%

"Chance that the sun will rise tomorrow morning."

100.00%

Dinah Alcott frowned, while tapping her pencil on the school workbook she was using to keep track of what her power told her. She hadn't shown it to her parents, who hadn't really believed she had a power, because in the mood they'd been in due to all the medical tests they'd had run on her, they'd probably just take it as more proof that she wasn't firing on all cylinders.

It was kind of irritating, really. The headaches had been awful, and her parents had immediately jumped to the conclusion that something was wrong with her brain. Despite her trying to explain, she'd been bundled off to a doctor several times, checked out so thoroughly she was now fairly certain that half her blood was missing, given lots of different pills to take to help with the pain, to try to fix possible problems that might be causing the pain, even ones to make her happier so she wouldn't have the pain in the first place, but nothing had really done much for her. The last type made her feel so weird she'd almost immediately worked out how to pretend to take them, then spit them into the toilet the moment no one was looking.

The ones to help with the pain barely had an effect, while the remaining ones either did nothing at all or gave her the most horrible stomach ache she'd ever had. That time her parents did listen to her and got the doctor to think again, but that probably had as much to do with her throwing up spectacularly all over the living room as anything else…

To be fair it had taken her a while to even realize she had powers, because the way they worked was kind of sneaky. But eventually she worked out that the numbers that kept popping into her head when anyone in earshot asked the right sort of question weren't just her imagination, and from there it was only a bit of experimentation to figure out what was going on. But for some reason her parents didn't seem to believe her, and trying to convince them resulted in so much agony from a number of attempted demonstrations that she'd more or less given up for the moment.

If it wasn't for the fact that her power seemed to trigger whenever she heard a question framed in the right way she'd have been fine with living with it, but because it did that, going to school most days eventually resulted in blinding pain in her head and in extreme cases more vomiting. It was kind of hard to ignore that sort of side effect. Half a dozen uses of her power pretty much laid her out for several hours, and she'd found no way to turn it off, so she couldn't just pretend it wasn't there as much as she wanted to a lot of the time.

And then, more or less accidentally, she'd been lying in bed a couple of months ago idly experimenting with her power, very cautiously trying to figure out ways to ideally limit the pain and at worst get enough of a handle on how it worked to get some actual benefit from it, when she happened to ask a question that resulted in her finding out there was a 74.62% chance of her parents having something awful happen to them after Christmas. That had caused her a lot of worry, and many, many carefully designed questions later, along with more pain than she liked to think about, she'd finally discovered that there was a super-villain lurking about that posed a threat to her at some point in the future. What that threat was wasn't entirely clear, aside from it resulting in her kidnapping and a high probability of her parents coming to harm, but she wasn't keen on any of the scenarios that came to mind given those facts.

So, each night, she worked her way through a list of questions trying to narrow down the threat, the point in time it would present itself, who might be involved, and possible methods to avoid the whole thing. She'd ended up, by using Scrabble tiles, some rather speculative lines of questioning, and a lot of imagination, to determine that the super villain in question was called Coil. That had taken her nearly three days of work, because her power wasn't really suited for answers of something concrete like that, but she'd persisted in trying to force it to work in a manner she wanted and somehow managed to achieve her goal. Now she knew the technique she could use it more easily but it still took a lot of work to get information at a decent speed, as she could only do one letter a night before the pain got too bad to concentrate. And that was only possible because for some reason it hurt less if she asked herself the questions rather than if someone else did, accidentally or otherwise.

Even so, it was a useful if slow thing to know the trick to. All it really took was separating out the complete alphabet in tiles in two piles, then asking for example, "What are the odds the first letter of the name of the person threatening me is in this group?" while looking at one of the piles of tiles. Then if the answer was 100%, she just divided the pile in half and repeated the process. If it was 0%, she switched to the other pile and did the same thing. Eventually she'd work her way down to a single letter tile, then just repeat the whole process on the next letter, and so on. It wasn't quick, but it worked.

Dinah was fairly certain there was probably an easier method but that was one she'd figured out all on her own, it did work, and she was quite proud of it.

The problem, however, was that shortly before Christmas, all her questions regarding this Coil person had suddenly started returning exactly -1% as a probability, completely out of the blue. Which from everything she'd learned so far about math didn't even make any sense. No matter how she worded the question, it got that result. And she'd eventually noticed that any question that dealt directly with the city or its inhabitants got the same null result. But if she tried a control question that wasn't specific to Brockton Bay, that worked fine. The sun would rise tomorrow, she was sure of that because it always did, and her power agreed.

But asked if school would be canceled due to snow, that was -1% possible. Even when it actually happened.

What was going on? Why did her power suddenly decide that Brockton Bay was off limits? Had something she did annoyed it or something? Was it something Coil did? Did he know she was aware of him? Did someone else do something? Did her power break somehow?

She had absolutely no idea and that worried her.

There were only two things that were good about the situation. One was that the day before her power went strange on her, it had given her odds of Coil going after her of only 0.035% from the 89.48% of the day before, which suggested that assuming it wasn't already having issues that something had stopped him doing whatever he'd been doing. The other one was that all these questions now getting the weird result didn't seem, for whatever reason, to cause her any pain.

That part, while it was still mightily puzzling, was also a massive relief. It reduced the number of times she ended up with a horrible migraine by a huge amount, since a lot of random questions she overheard and her power seized on revolved in one way or another about things to do with the city, so having all those questions suddenly not make her head feel like it was being squeezed by Glory Girl in a bad mood was definitely good.

Even so, she was still both baffled and concerned about why her power was suddenly on strike, and intended to keep poking it to see if she could come up with an answer. If only to satisfy her own curiosity because everything she'd managed to read about powers told her they didn't work like that.

On the other hand, she was only twelve, and it wasn't like she knew a lot about powers at the moment. That wasn't going to stop her learning more, though.

And checking her standard list of potential threats every night, because you never knew. Whatever made her power go odd might stop doing that just as fast…

She fell asleep with a faint sense of puzzlement about why she imagined something enormous was smirking at her with amusement. When she woke up the next day she couldn't remember what she'd dreamed about, and by the time she was at school the entire thing had vanished from her mind. But she felt somehow relieved as if a weight had been taken off her mind for most of the day.

Lying in bed early in the morning, before the sun rose, Taylor pondered various things like someone who is pondering a lot. Because she was.

Today was her first day back at school after the hell that had been Winslow, that one one of the things to ponder on. Would it work out? Would she find it enjoyable, acceptable, useful, and not the sort of thing that made her want to rip someone's head off and fire it into the middle of the bay? Under ideal circumstances she'd never consider even contemplating such a thing, but after what she'd gone through at Winslow, even with the backing of her father, Lisa, the Barnes', Administrator, and even the PRT in a sense, she couldn't help feel worried that things might turn out badly.

She knew this was stupid, because Winslow was a very specific confluence of idiots, corruption, and Sophia Hess that was extremely unlikely to happen anywhere else, but now it was only a few hours until she was immersed back into the scholastic system she couldn't help having second thoughts. And third ones, and even if she allowed herself to indulge, fourth ones.

Also, she'd got used to having her time be something she could set to her own schedule, assigning herself her own lesson plans, doing her own work whenever she wanted to, and it was somewhat annoying that she was going to have to give that up. Not all of it, obviously, because school was after all only about seven hours or so out of the day and she had all the rest free, but it was the best seven hours of the day. At least if you wanted sunlight at this time of year.

On the other side of the equation, Arcadia seemed to be from the limited amount she'd so far seen of it to be vastly better than Winslow was, have teachers who were actually teachers rather than popularity-contest-wannabes and caricatures of corrupt administrators, and probably had a student body that wasn't entirely comprised of future gang members, drug addicts, bullies, the downtrodden masses, and Sophia Hess. Which was nice.

And the Dallon sisters went there. Along with Edgar. Taylor and Lisa had both found Amy and Vicky to be interesting, intelligent, and friendly people they'd like to know better, while Edgar was clearly the brains of the operation. Taylor snorted quietly with laughter at her own thoughts, remembering the raven and how he'd been eyeing her meaningfully during that entire stupidity with the E88 and the ABB, as if he knew much more about her and what she could do than anyone should outside the DWA and her family. That bird was much, much smarter than seemed plausible, she was certain of that somehow, and she rather suspected that even Amy and Vicky didn't quite realize just how smart he was.

She'd read quite a lot about corvid intelligence a while ago just out of interest and had been significantly impressed by what she'd learned. Meeting Edgar in person, so to speak, had made it apparent that the research papers and YouTube videos were only the tip of the iceberg. It would be interesting to see what happened as time went on with him. And all his little friends, of which he seemed to have a completely ridiculous number. Taylor found herself grinning at the memory of the entire front of Arcadia covered in lurking ravens making it look like it should really be some sort of gothic cathedral to learning rather than a fairly up to date example of modern building practice.

Oh well. In… she looked at the bedside clock… two and a half hours, she'd be sitting down for her first day at Arcadia, and she could find out what it was going to be like without all the speculation. A sensation of encouragement rolled over her from Administrator, making her smile a little. Yeah. With any luck it would work out. If not, she always had self study to fall back on. But her dad was probably right, having a larger peer group than just Anne and Lisa was likely a good thing. As much as she liked both of them.

She felt a pang of regret that she couldn't say the same about Emma, and closed her eyes as she suppressed the memories of better times. Who knew, though? Maybe one day, a long time after the pain had faded, she might rekindle some sort of relationship with her oldest friend. Maybe not, too, but right now it wasn't something she could really predict.

Stretching luxuriously under the covers, she listened to the wind blowing outside the window. It sounded like it was dying down after having strengthened late last night into something that was briefly only just short of storm force again. This time of year, this close to the coast, that happened a lot and often brought quite a bit of snow with it, but as far as she could see when looking outside through beneath it had only put down half an inch or so. Based on what usually occurred they could probably expect four or five more proper blizzards and a few smaller storms this winter, before everything warmed up quite suddenly and the snow all melted rapidly. Quite likely flooding low lying areas, which sometimes caused problems.

But that wouldn't be something anyone would have to worry about until late March or so, which meant they were stuck with cold snowy weather for another couple of months at least.

It was enough to make someone wish for something like a nice cozy underground facility with all the comforts of home…

Oh. Wait.

Taylor giggled very quietly to herself, feeling extremely satisfied with how things seemed to have worked out so far. Last year had been horrible, but right at the end there, everything really improved an awful lot. And by the looks of it, with some effort it would continue down that path.

The only thing their shiny new base was missing was a swimming pool.

She wondered for a moment if she could find a super villain who had a good one he didn't deserve…

Something to keep an eye out for.

But for now, there was all the other things to do. It wasn't like she lacked for interesting ideas and projects, after all. Rolling onto her back, she folded her hands across her stomach having pulled the covers up to her chin, then closed her eyes and let her beneath-sense, which at this point was so practiced and natural she didn't really notice it until she deliberately did this sort of thing, expand out around the house. In directions that weren't just the normal three dimensional ones.

In her bedroom, Lisa was still asleep, lying on her side and looking very comfortable. Taylor's dad was stirring, and clearly about to wake as it was near the time his alarm normally went off, but he was also still sleeping even so. Next door on the left, Mr and Mrs Inchley, a retired couple Taylor had sometimes mowed the lawn for, were just getting up. On the right, Mrs Weston, a widow in her eighties who tended to keep to herself although she always smiled at Taylor and her dad when she saw them, was apparently snoring like no one's business going on her expression and open mouth.

Taylor was somewhat pleased she couldn't yet figure out how to hear things through beneath, although she was fairly sure she'd get that working sooner or later too.

Briefly scanning the area, she kept looking around, not wanting to invade anyone's privacy but just keeping in practice. She wasn't sure if her dad actually realized quite how much she could see now, although it was likely Lisa was entirely aware of it. Taylor was knew full well that many people would freak the fuck out at what she'd learned to do if they found out about the real extent of her self-taught abilities so she was in no hurry to explain it to all and sundry, even leaving aside what the PRT might think about the matter.

While she'd admit that Director Piggot had come through for them, and personally thought based on their meeting that the woman was probably both competent and sensible, she still didn't trust the PRT at large and had zero inclination to let them get involved with her work or that of the DWA. She was not alone in this feeling, as pretty much everyone who lived and worked in the Docks area wasn't all that fond of the authorities in general and the PRT specifically due to a lot of trouble that had come from that direction over the years. By and large, as she'd mulled over before, people in these parts preferred to settle problems themselves wherever possible, and she was fully in agreement with that philosophy of life.

One couldn't grow up here around the people who had lived here for generations without learning things that those from the better off areas probably didn't even realize existed, she mused. Her father had said as much when he'd talked about meeting Marquis just after Lisa arrived, and all the other things from years back.

And she was proud of the fact that when the opportunity to deal with one of those long term problems presented itself that time with Oni Lee, he'd done what needed to be done without hesitation. Even though she didn't like to think about people dying, even a villain, she knew damn well that guy had earned his fate. Many, many times over.

She was fifteen. She wasn't a naive idiot. Sometimes certain actions needed to be taken regardless of your personal feelings.

Taylor hoped very much she wouldn't need to take such direct action herself, but she was all too aware that if she did she had a hell of a lot of ways to pull it off. And was learning more by the day. Not to mention how easy it would be in many cases to make it look like an accident…

Shaking her head, she wondered how her thoughts had turned so dark so quickly and felt somewhat ill. It was probably due to the talk she'd had with Administrator the night before, which had produced some revelations she was still processing. That problem needed to be dealt with fairly soon, because the next Endbringer attack was due in weeks at most, and she was damned if she was going to let it keep on the way it had been if she could stop it. If she did that, she was part of the problem after all. Having the opportunity to stop mass death and not doing so was nearly as bad as actually doing the deed yourself in her opinion.

There was an easy solution, of course, but it was somewhat drastic. There were also some slightly less easy solutions which would need some careful thinking about to work out the most effective technique to use, and a number of rather speculative ones that could well end up being the best method, but there were a lot of unknowns involved. She and Administrator were going to have to think hard about which of the options available was the most apt. And she was going to have to bring all this up with Lisa, her dad, and the others. It was always possible that someone else would see something the pair of them couldn't for any number of reasons.

So simply grabbing Eidolon and sticking him beneath while doing the same to his power was probably the last resort, as was just doing that to his brain. Administrator said it would work, but it was kind of obvious.

U.N.I.O.N. didn't do obvious. She grinned in the darkness, feeling amusement other than her own sweep through her. It was somewhat hilarious how much fun Administrator seemed to have being sneaky about things. Apparently her friend was developing a real sense of humor, in a way that many people might get a touch worried about.

Ah well. It didn't need to be done right now, and she was sure that with some thought they could work out a good method to fix that particular issue. One way or the other.

Having stretched her beneath muscles for a while, she pulled back to the immediate environment of the house, spending some time examining the connection in the basement to the base to check it was still stable. As she'd expected everything was fine, the end result of what she'd done fixing the link through the surface of reality to something just under it so solidly it was in no danger at all of slipping. She could easily unlink it, of course, but there was no reason to do that.

Once she was sure everything else was working correctly, she quickly checked the time, seeing it was still only barely a quarter after six. She didn't need to be out of bed for an hour, which would give plenty of time for showering, breakfast, and catching the bus to school. Settling back again, the girl delved back into beneath, this time to a very familiar part of the infinitely large storage volume it presented.

She pondered the problem presented by Alabaster and Victor. Sooner or later she was going to have to do something with them, since she didn't really want to carry spare Nazis around indefinitely. Although it had to be said that this was a hundred percent effective method of preventing them causing trouble… Still, she had other things she'd rather keep available than some racists. It wasn't like they were all that hard to find in the wild in any case, after all. Unfortunately.

Having spent quite a lot of time talking to Administrator about how powers worked, and correlating that with what she saw, and had seen in the case of Coil, she was fairly certain she had a pretty good handle on the mechanics of the whole thing. Some aspects were still a little unclear, because it was a fearsomely complex system when you got into the details of the whole thing, but understanding every last little part of it wasn't required to make some interesting alterations to an active link to a Parahuman. Or even a first stage one to a potential Parahuman, of course. She'd proven that rather effectively with her modifications via a Papa-tech crystal to her own low bandwidth link to Administrator.

Which was now a hell of a high bandwidth one, in ways the alien top level node wouldn't have understood at all according to her friend. Even Administrator was having trouble getting to grips with it, for that matter. It amused Taylor that in one direction she was still trying to understand how Administrator's method worked, while in the other Administrator was having the same problem with her method. By the time both of them completely understood both systems they were probably going to be able to do some really cool stuff, she felt.

Not that it wasn't cool already, because it very much was.

But getting back to the problem of the two E88 capes, she could see several potential methods for basically neutering them as far as a threat went. Obviously the simplest thing was probably just to disconnect them from their powers completely. That would sort out the problem rather nicely, but there was a somewhat high risk that it would either kill them in the process, or cause some severe brain damage even if it didn't. The link, from what Administrator had said, wasn't intended to be disconnected once fully active, except at the point when the host of a power no longer needed the power. IE, ended up dead, which was pretty much inevitable for Parahumans, by design. The aliens weren't interested in non-destructive testing of their experimental subjects, after all.

So there was, from their point of view, no reason to waste effort making it easy to remove the power once it was installed. If anything that could be seen as a weakness of the system. From what she'd learned, it wasn't so much that there were anti-tampering methods in use, but more that the way the full link connected to the brain basically acted a little like some drugs did; it changed the brain chemistry and structure to make the whole thing dependent on the power, so when it was abruptly removed, the brain just blew a number of rather important fuses on the spot. Which manifested as a massive stroke if the victim was lucky. Because at least that would be an instant death, rather than something more lingering and horrible…

Taylor shuddered a little at the rather graphic memory of what Administrator had shown her as one possibility. It wasn't nice.

Of course, it was technically possible to remove the whole thing cleanly, but it took considerable work which the alien supercomputers generally weren't equipped or authorized to pull off even if they were so inclined. Administrator could do it, and having met Taylor could see the reasons for making connections in a less dangerous manner, but most powers were nothing like as intelligent and imaginative as she was. Lisa's power likely was, but that was a rarity according to her giant friend. For the purposes of the aliens, having their own tools capable of working against them was obviously not something they'd been interested in allowing.

Administrator was a special case, and Taylor was too. The confluence of the pair of them had done something extremely unexpected that the aliens could never have foreseen. Not least because, according to Administrator, they were idiots.

Powerful idiots, but still idiots. And her top level node was apparently something of a fuckwit even by those low standards.

A sensation of agreement and irritation came to her and made her grin into the darkness of her room. Administrator was not a fan of her top level node. In any way at all.

And Administrator couldn't simply order his power to disconnect, annoyingly. Because that was a top level command which she didn't have the credentials to execute while the top level node was still active. This wasn't something she was happy about, but until they could work out the best method to deal with the alien without causing even bigger problems they had to live with it. Almost amusingly Administrator could order a power not to disconnect, which was what she'd done to Rachel's ability, but the reverse was locked out for now.

All of which meant that while it was not impossible to disconnect Victor's power without wrecking his brain, it wasn't the most trivial solution. Coil had been a somewhat different situation as in his case, and that of other Cauldron-created Parahumans using undeployed powers, the link was malformed to start with. And due to that, whenever he'd been shoved beneath, the connection had weakened and degraded dramatically, which essentially disconnected him in stages rather than all at once. Since his power was practically speaking almost out of energy anyway, and was running on automatic with no one behind the wheel even as much as most powers had, once the link started to break apart, it was always going to end up completely shut down sooner or later. All she'd done the last time was remove the final bits of it, and even that had left him in a very odd state of mind.

Not that the man had seemed all that stable to begin with, of course, she thought with a frown. He'd probably recover to some degree or other sooner or later, from what Administrator and Lisa's power said, but it could take quite a while and he was unlikely to go entirely back to what passed for normal for him. Knowing what he'd done and was trying to do, Taylor couldn't really find it in herself to have all that much sympathy.

So if brute-forcing Victor's powers to disconnect wasn't the ideal method unless she wanted to kill the asshole, which to be honest she had certainly mulled over a few times because he was an unrepentant mass murderer who'd happily kill her and everyone she knew just because he was an asshole, she had to come up with a different method. One possibility was to try to force something like what had happened to Calvert by repeatedly shoving him into beneath and yoinking him out again, to see if it would degrade his link enough that it could be broken more or less safely. He probably wouldn't enjoy the process, but he'd likely survive it.

Administrator seemed to be giggling at the thought. Apparently she didn't like Victor either.

Or… what about reversing the problem? Taylor frowned slightly. Would that work? Leave the link in his brain alone, and grab the other end of it. Pull the whole damn mechanism that his power was using to drive the link right out of the thing and stash it away safely. It was functionally the same, on the face of it, but…

{Would that work?} she asked Administrator, who was apparently thinking about it with a sort of intrigued air.

[UNKNOWN]

[NOVEL]

[FEASIBLE?]

{Oh, I can do it, sure,} Taylor nodded, her hair rustling against her pillow. {I know what to look for, because that's how I did this with us. The… transceiver? Whatever you'd call it, that's not very big at all. I don't know if I could drop an entire power into beneath yet, but that part should be feasible. Assuming it would actually do the job.}

[SIMULATING…]

[INSUFFICIENT DATA]

[EXPERIMENTATION?]

{Yeah, we might have to let him take one for the team. Or Alabaster, who at least is harder to kill… Bit hard on the fucker, but then he's also a mass murderer, so I can't say I'd be all that broken up about it if something went wrong. And either way we'd have…}

[DATA!]

{DATA, indeed}

Taylor chuckled at the enthusiasm present, feeling that some people might find it a touch unnerving. For some reason or other.

She wondered if they could work out a power nullifier emulator, which might be the cleanest method to deal with evil Parahumans. Administrator had told her that a power nullifier power, such as Hatchet Face of the Slaughterhouse 9 had, didn't actually remove powers. It was basically broadcasting a 'temporarily suppress active power use' signal via one method or another, usually over a very short range. Again, by design of course. The power-granting computer behind the Parahuman so affected just stopped responding to the Parahuman's requirements during this, but the power itself was unaffected. In essence it was a software pause command, not a hardware shutdown system.

Perhaps there was some way to leverage that approach? Could they more or less hack a power to make it do the same thing but permanently, without actually disconnecting the thing and risking catastrophic damage?

Something to consider, she felt. Administrator agreed and appeared to be thinking hard about ways to pull off the trick. The problem was obviously that it was outside the scope of normal operation, and as a result there would be quite a lot of imagination required to bypass various protections. The alien system as a whole didn't seem to be all that well thought out, from what she could determine, which was at least partially because it wasn't thought out, it just evolved over ridiculous amounts of time. Parts were insanely efficient, while other parts were just stupid. The fact it worked at all was something of a miracle in her opinion because it was so ridiculously over-complicated and messy. Administrator actually agreed with her on that, and having seen how nice and neat her crystals were, was getting a bit peeved at how bad her own systems were…

Of course, they were working on a fix for that too. Which could turn out to be interesting when they figured out all the details.

Oh well. Between them they'd work out a good method to shut down Victor, Alabaster, and any other annoying villain sooner or later. And at least where they were right now kept them out of everyone's hair. If she got the opportunity she might end up with a complete set!

Grinning evilly into the slowly lightening bedroom, Taylor felt Administrator emoting amusement too.

Deciding that she'd probably better start getting out of bed, while reluctant to do so since it was so nice and warm and comfortable, the girl stretched, yawned, and finally flipped the covers back. Hopping to her feet she scratched her head in a couple of places, ran her fingers through her hair, then walked over to the window to pull the curtains to one side and peer out. Dawn was just breaking, the lightening east horizon showing that the sun was about to make an appearance, in a sky that was mostly clear with high fast-moving clouds, a few brighter stars still just visible. She looked up at them for a moment, wondering what else was out there other than stupid vast alien entities, sighed faintly, then shook her head.

Perhaps one day they'd be able to find out. Here and now there were more down to earth problems to deal with. The most pressing one involving an urgent visit to the smallest room in the house.

By the time she was heading downstairs, clean and dressed, Lisa was coming out of her room yawning. "Morning," her friend mumbled, walking right past and into the bathroom, the door closing behind her. Taylor laughed quietly. Lisa was not a morning person…

Shortly she was sitting in front of a bowl of cereal, a mug of tea next to it, and the coffee machine burbling away on the counter. Her dad and Lisa turned up almost at the same time, both immediately heading for the coffee. He poured two cups and handed one to Lisa, who accepted it with a murmur of thanks and drained half of it in seconds, shuddered as it was very strong indeed since he liked it like that and the machine was set to his preference, then sat next to Taylor.

Pushing the cereal box to her friend, Taylor grinned at the other girl. "Tired?"

"We were up way too late last night to be up this early this morning," her friend moaned, rubbing her eyes with one hand. Lifting the cup in the other one to her mouth she slurped loudly.

"I'm sure you'll be awake soon enough, Lisa," Taylor's dad chuckled as he began preparations for something more substantial that cereal.

"I don't want to be," Lisa grumbled, finishing the coffee then putting her head in her hands. "I want to go back to bed."

"We have learning to do!" Taylor chirped brightly, getting a sideways glare from the other girl, one green eye visible under the hands and glaring at her. She giggled and poured some cereal into Lisa's bowl.

It took a while, but eventually everyone was fully awake and left the house in different directions. Taylor's dad drove away with a cheery honk and a wave, while the other two started walking towards the bus stop. Shortly they were on their way to the first day of Arcadia, discussing quietly what might happen next

Edgar pulled his head out from under his wing and shook it, then spread both wings widely in a relaxing stretch. Once he'd made sure all his feathers were in order, he looked around, his gaze fixing on his human in her bed. She was sleeping, the soft stuff she covered herself with pulled right up to her chin and only her head visible. Faint rumbling sounds emanated from her slightly open mouth.

He examined her for a few seconds, his head on one side. Then he looked around again. Cocking his head both ways he listened, before jumping with a couple of flaps to land on the desk next to the big opening to the outside covered with that transparent stuff they used. Sticking his head under the soft material blocking out the light, he checked the sky. Still dark. But getting lighter, which meant it was time to start moving around.

Making a little sound of glee, and having a very good sense of both time and timing, he knew that his human would wake soon on her own. The small machine that made the loud noise was right next to her, and he could see from the symbols on it that it was very shortly going to make the loud noise. Then the Amy would wake, and they could get on with interesting things.

But… where was the fun in that?

Perhaps he could help.

Clicking his beak with humor, he launched himself into the air and flew out her half-open door, folding his wings just in time to clear everything, then glided down the stairs. At the bottom he zipped around the corner, heading for the room with the big box full of tasty treats and cold. None of his human's flock were stirring yet, so he was unobserved as he landed on the counter next to the thing with a click of talons.

Hopping closer he looked at the opening in the front of the humming machine with his head on one side, trying to remember how he'd seen it used. Oh, yes, that was it. Jumping onto the tray that was in the lower part of the opening, he leaned up and tapped one of the silver buttons above it on the black metal surface. The thing beeped obligingly at him. Satisfied, he pushed another button and held it in, hearing a grinding sound. As soon as this was followed by a rattle, he let go, then leaned down to inspect the chunk of ice that had magically appeared in the tray in front of him.

It was just the right size.

Pleased, he carefully picked up in his beak, churred happily to himself, and jumped backwards, flaring his wings out in the process and performing a back flip combined with a turn that had him flying back the way he'd come. He flapped as quietly as possible up the stairs and back into the Amy's room, landing on the surface next to her head.

Then he gently leaned forward and ever so carefully placed the piece of ice on her ear, before hopping back to a safe distance and watching with interest.

The shriek that echoed through the house a couple of seconds later was glorious.

Edgar, even as he fled kronking cheerfully, felt that his life was just about perfect. And he was spreading the word, so all raven-kind could reap the benefits of knowing the Amy.

And the Amy could reap the benefits of knowing them.