Preliminary debriefing, April 11, 2010, 6:15 a.m., PRT ENE Headquarters, Director Piggott's office:

A rare — very rare — expression of pleasure on the stocky woman's face matched her upbeat mood as she announced, "Now that's what I like to hear! It was worth waking me up and coming in so early today to learn we finally got Lung for once and all. Is he still out cold?"

Armsmaster in his armor standing at attention in front of Piggott's desk gave a crisp nod. "Medical reports his skull fracture and severe concussion won't prevent him from being moved. One of Dragon's transports is already on the way here to take Lung to the Birdcage."

Brockton Bay's PRT Tinker mentally conceded his previous bet to Miss Militia when the Director gloatingly rubbed her hands together at hearing this.

He then heard her happily say, "About time! Let's see him escape from there!"

"Quite," Armsmaster agreed, regretting the bad news he was about to deliver which was sure to thoroughly spoil the Director's current elation.

"Unfortunately, we have no idea as to whoever managed to non-fatally subdue Lung last night. The first PRT responding team found Lung's unconscious body lying in the street without anyone else in sight."

Piggott frowned at Armsmaster. "That's odd. It certainly wasn't us. Some other parahuman rival? I've seen the pictures of the actual dent in Lung's head. He must've already been ramping up because that would've ordinarily decapitated him. Maybe Skidmark? His powered-up projectiles are potentially that impressive."

"Except Skidmark's power when used is relatively quiet," Armsmaster pointed out. "The substantial detonation which attracted our notice also woke up everyone for blocks around."

Rubbing her upper lip in thought, Piggott had to concur. "Not to mention if he'd actually done it, the asshole would be bragging all over town about taking Lung down. So…nobody in the Empire 88 comes to mind who could do that with their special kind of powers. Same thing with the other established groups here. Some new independent hero or villain?"

"It's possible," said Armsmaster guardedly. His body language, even in the man's armor, then subtly altered to appearing a little…shifty.

Piggott had known her Tinker subordinate long enough to pick up on this. She raised her eyebrows at him. "Is there a problem?"

"A report from the investigating officers sent to me just before this meeting confirmed finding the discarded weapon presumably used to defeat Lung. It was somewhat difficult to identify this gun."

"I seriously doubt a mere penny-ante Saturday night special took Lung down. What's complicating things? Oh, God, don't tell me somebody got their hands on an RPG or some other anti-tank weapon! All we need now is ATF poking their noses in—"

Across the office, the wall monitor switched on to show a photograph, due to Armsmaster's remote control signal sent by his armor. It now displayed a very distinctive firearm even in the alley's dawn light, being a massive cannon barrel set on an equally heavy carriage held up by a pair of huge spoked wooden wheels. Comparing the PRT personnel clustered around the cannon who were all gazing with natural awe at this menacing firearm, it was clear the cannon was at least five feet tall, had a banded barrel probably twice as long, and must've weighed several tons.

"What," flatly said Piggott.

The wall monitor split in half, with a new photograph taking its place at the right. Unlike the modern-day Brockton Bay scene, this was an extremely outdated, sepia-toned picture which Armsmaster immediately zoomed in to reveal an identical cannon surrounded by its seven-person crew in archaic military uniforms, including their white pith helmets.

"The Armstrong rifled breech loading gun with a 40-pound shell, used by British field artillery in the late 19th century. The photo for this specific firearm was taken during the Second Afghan-Anglo War from 1878 to 1880—"

"Wait," Piggott interrupted Armsmaster's lecture. "Zoom back."

There was a few moments' pause, before the outdated picture was indeed opened up to reveal a pair of enormous Indian elephants with their mahout riders solidly standing behind the cannon, of which they'd obviously towed earlier to where it was about to fire for practice forty pounds of explosive love and affection.

From where Piggott seated behind her desk had just closed her eyes to avoid looking any more at the wall monitor, she begged, "Please tell me…"

In his most apologetic tone, Armsmaster had to answer, "We discovered a set of animal tracks leaving deep impressions in the asphalt heading away from the gun. After waking up the Brockton Bay Zoo curator, he identified the footprint pictures sent to his phone as being those of an adult elephant but he couldn't confirm if it was an Indian species, they hadn't lost any of theirs lately, and could he go back to sleep now?"

There was dead silence in the office. Eventually, Armsmaster did a wary turn of his head to witness how Director Piggott had just leaned forward to place her face flat against the desktop. Her muttered declaration, despite being a bit muffled, was clearly heard by Colin:

"I hate this fucking city."


Taylor was almost home now. She'd spent a few minutes circling around their neighborhood in the sunrise light, trying to think of the best way to tell Dad how much trouble his daughter had gotten into yesterday evening.

It totally wasn't her fault! All she wanted was to check out if her avatar in its pigeon form was comfortable flying at night. The answer was 'yes,' and her avian vision was also sensitive enough to easily keep a careful lookout for any owls on their hunt. Not that Taylor had seen any of those other birds tonight, though the teenager was pretty sure there were some of them around Brockton Bay.

After a few hours of being in the air, Taylor was ready to head back, until she'd noticed a street crowd in one of the city's less-affluent areas. Dropping to perch atop a building's parapet, Taylor listened to a tall, heavily-muscled man whose shirtless chest displayed multiple tattoos harangue the crowd from behind his metal mask.

It was at the point when Taylor heard about killing kids that she went into a blind rage. Flying down into the alley, Taylor proved again her father's previous joking suggestion that she wasn't confined solely to a single historical avatar form of trained animals in warfare.

(In one of the Dockworker's Union unused warehouses big enough for industrial machinery, even a ten-foot-tall Asiatic elephant had plenty of room to walk around while towing an outmoded, Victorian-era cannon. Danny Hebert had firmly vetoed firing off the thing, though.)

Taylor didn't have any trouble with using the cannon, staying behind it to wait until Lung walked in her line of sight from the alley mouth. An instant mental command shot the shell to make a direct hit against Lung's head and send him reeling, next collapsing insensible onto the street. The rest of the Azn Bad Boys had first gaped at their leader's unexpected defeat, to then take as one to their heels before whoever had just done that went homicidally after them in turn.

No worries; the tremendous noise caused by the artillery shell going off had battered unmercifully Taylor's elephantine ears and shocked her back into a modicum of sense. Turning around to lumber away down the alley, after a few steps the military avatar switched once more to her pigeon form and flew off to hide in a handy empty birdhouse in the nearest suburb, where Taylor could rest and wish for some aspirin to alleviate her aching head.

It'd taken until now for Taylor to come home. Fluttering down into her backyard, she turned again into a human girl. Staring cautiously at the dark kitchen windows, Taylor was glad to see no signs of Dad being up yet. Making breakfast for them both would hopefully put her father in a better mood when she confessed to everything, including the oddest part in that Taylor had evidentially left behind in the alley the Armstrong gun itself.

For whatever reason (probably because as an elephant she'd felt like her ears had just slammed together in the middle of her skull), the cannon didn't vanish into wherever it'd come from in the first place. Taylor hadn't known that was even possible, the weapons she summoned as an avatar remaining in the real world when she was finished with them.

Well, Taylor thought, brightening up at this puckish realization, it wasn't like they could trace the serial numbers back to her…

Humming "Make way there— way for the ten-foot teams of the Forty-Pounder train!" to the tune of 'The British Grenadiers', Taylor opened the rear door and stepped inside.


In a column consisting of Brian at their head, then Alec, followed by Rachel and her dogs, with Lisa at the end, they all wearily entered the Undersiders' hideout very early that morning.

Three of the humans went right to the couch in the center of the apartment where Alec normally played his console games, all of them slumping together onto the couch with again Brian, Alec, and Rachel in their order. The dogs went off to huddle with each other in the corner.

Of their leader Tattletale, Lisa detoured into the apartment kitchen, from which came various noises of cabinets opening and glasses clinking. She reappeared with a bottle of Scotch clenched in one hand and three shot glasses held in her other hand. Stopping by the couch to hand out the glasses, Lisa opened the bottle of expensive booze and poured to the brim all three shot glasses the rest of the Undersiders were proffering.

Striding over to an armchair, Lisa sank into this, bringing up the mouth of the bottle to her lips, and glugged an equal measure of Scotch that her friends also simultaneously tossed back from their glasses.

All of the Undersiders then heaved an exhausted sigh, with Lisa then rasping to the others' agreeing nods:

"That was a big elephant."


Author's Note: Blame Marcus Rowland on Twisting the Hellmouth for this. He suggested in a review that Taylor might be able to manifest other military animal avatars, so that lead to me thinking about Taylor's mother Annette being in Worm canon an English professor who undoubtedly read classic children's stories to her daughter at bedtime.

That includes Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book and its concluding chapter 'Her Majesty's Servants' and the accompanying 'Parade-Song of the Camp Animals.'

The second historical photograph Armsmaster displayed of the Armstrong 40-pounder in all its Victorian glory and the gun's seven-person crew is quite real. Look up 'RBL 40-pounder Armstrong gun' on Wikipedia, and then scroll down to the Land Service section and the picture on the right for which this chapter takes its title. Click onto the photo and then zoom in to properly appreciate it all.

The British soldier at attention while overseeing the loading process has what can only be described as a supreme example of the Beard of Power…