Having finished the last page of a very thick stack of legal paperwork, Carol put the document down and shook her head tiredly. The level of sheer idiocy shown by nearly everyone involved was almost impressive, in a very horrible way. One thing was absolutely certain though; absent some extremely fast talking and a very corrupt judge the Hebert/Barnes case was about as open and shut as anything she'd ever encountered.

The PRT had massively dropped the ball with their little shit of a Ward, to a level she'd never really heard of before. It seemed to her very likely that the rot didn't go all the way to the top, as Emily Piggot, while Carol had her own issues with the woman, was nothing if not competent and very much not keen on Parahumans or anyone else getting away with this sort of crap. The lawyer was pretty damn certain that if the Director had had even an inkling of any of this she'd have put a stop to it with prejudice. In more than one sense of the word. Unless she'd been ordered to allow it, she'd have done something immediately, and if that was the case they had much larger problems.

Renick, likewise, wasn't either stupid or prone to letting this sort of thing go on, and she knew Armsmaster and Miss Militia well enough to be sure they'd also have stepped in as soon as they'd discovered what Hess had been up to. Both Protectorate members had, in her opinion, their own problems, what with Armsmaster being somewhat too full of his own brilliance at times and Miss Militia just that little bit too fond of following orders, but at the same time they also were very good at their jobs and professional with it. They wouldn't have stood for what had happened at Winslow for a moment.

Which meant it was someone lower in the hierarchy, but high enough to have the access required to alter or suppress reports, who was the reason none of this had come to the attention of the Director or anyone else who could have stopped it before it went too far. Or more than one someone, as it seemed implausible to her that a single person could hide things that well for what appeared to have been months, ever since Shadow Stalker joined the Wards. Her liaison officer could certainly have managed to lose important documentation, true, and was undoubtedly involved to the hilt, but there were supposed to be other checks and balances specifically set up to prevent this exact sort of thing. Those had either failed, not existed, or been subverted. None of the possibilities was good.

If nothing else, it left open the question of how many more cases like this were going on and hadn't been caught…

It seemed unlikely to her that this could be completely unique. Hopefully extremely rare, but thinking that otherwise the PRT was squeaky clean seemed rather over-optimistic to her.

That aside, Hess had completely screwed herself and anyone else directly involved, in a way that was likely to cause huge problems for the PRT ENE as a whole and could feasibly cast suspicion on the entire organization. While Carol wasn't fond of the federal agency for many reasons, she was also realistic enough to know it was needed even if it wasn't perfect. That didn't mean she was going to cut them too much if any slack, though, because they should be better. If this hit the public eye in the wrong way it could be a terrible boost for certain villainous groups, and lead to more criminal activity and less public support for those who opposed such things.

The world was shitty enough, it didn't need more reason to lose hope. And all because a stupid girl seemed determined to cause as much chaos as possible for reasons that entirely escaped her. Hess clearly needed psychological help, more so than most Parahumans did, but that wasn't her problem, nor was it that of the Heberts or the Barnes. And it most certainly didn't excuse what she'd done even if mental issues were the ultimate root cause.

On the other hand, Hess might just be a psychopathic little shit.

She'd have to ask Victoria. Her daughter knew the Wards fairly well and might have some useful information.

Picking the document up, Carol flipped through it slowly, rescanning a few points to make sure she had them correct in her mind. She was blackly amused that Hess had managed to sabotage herself in the process of attempting to do exactly that to the Hebert girl, and wondered how stupid you had to be to forget to plant the drugs when you were planting drugs on someone. It was genuinely impressive in a very daft manner.

The woman was rather impressed with Taylor Hebert's acceptance of the Emma on her side of the case too. By the looks of the evidence she'd have been completely justified in firmly rejecting the very idea and wanting to see everyone involved burn, but apparently she'd realized that her former friend was clearly desperately in need of help and pity more than revenge, which spoke well of her. The evidence that Michelle had handed over showed Carol pretty clearly that while Emma Barnes bore quite a lot of blame for actually doing the things she had done, it was obvious that most if not all of the reason for that was in the end due to having had the misfortune to meet Sophia Hess at the most vulnerable point of her life. The ABB assault had left her in a precarious mental state, her mind undoubtedly somewhat broken, and Hess had seized on that to rebuild the poor girl along her own nihilistic lines. It was about the closest thing to actual Mastering short of being a Master that Carol had run across in a long time.

In essence Hess had managed to do what some of the nastier cults put in a huge amount of effort on, probably entirely accidentally. Hopefully entirely accidentally, because if she'd done it on purpose… Some things were completely inexcusable and that sort of deliberate brainwashing was very high up the list.

Madison Clements, the third member of the inner circle, from what Carol had read and based on both Taylor and Emma's testimony, was a born follower with little will of her own who had probably found herself in over her head and not had the mental fortitude to step back. Perhaps, had this gone on longer, she'd have backed away, perhaps not, but it seemed clear that she was far less of a problem than Sophia Hess was. In a sense, she was also a victim, but likely a voluntary one for whatever her reasons were. And in this case she was largely irrelevant anyway.

No, the main issue at hand was a vicious little bitch of a Parahuman so-called Hero who had gone out of her way to spread misery wherever she want, the PRT which had failed to rein her in, and a school system which had at best turned a blind eye even with it repeatedly drawn to their attention. At worst, which the recordings Taylor had made tended to show was more likely, they were actively conspiring to let Hess do whatever she wanted for reasons so far unknown but unlikely to stand up to scrutiny. And the court was going to wreck them for that.

She dropped the thick block of pages on the desk and leaned her head back against her chair. Oh, yes. This one was going to be interesting, one way or the other.

Carol was curious to see what the response of the PRT would ultimately be. Would they cooperate, see sense, and settle as quickly as possible? Or would they dig their heels in and drag the whole thing out as long as possible?

She sighed faintly, although with a degree of anticipation. They'd find out soon enough.

Sitting up again she started writing a preliminary court document, which they'd be needing no matter what happened.

Aching slightly from her dialysis session, on top of a very long meeting that hadn't really managed to come to an agreement yet, which meant doing it all over again tomorrow and possibly the next day, Emily sat behind her desk and groaned with a mix of pain and relief. After thirty seconds or so, she sat up slightly and rummaged around in one desk drawer for the painkillers that she was allowed to take, rather than the ones that really worked, popped a couple of tablets out of the packaging, and swallowed them dry. They were just starting to kick in and take the edge off when there was a knock at her door.

With a sigh she called, "Enter," the door opening to reveal Armsmaster, unarmored with only a cloth mask on, who came in and closed it again. He walked to stand in front of her as she raised an inquisitive eyebrow, noticing he was holding one of the standard PRT folders and wearing an expression that was grim even for him. He pulled out some form of Tinker widget, turned it on, and put it on the desk. A low hiss filled the room as she peered at the thing, working out it was some sort of anti-eavesdropping device from context and instinct.

"Problem?" she asked, having a bad feeling. Was this yet more of Hess's fucking idiocy coming to light? That was all they needed.

"Yes, Director," he replied flatly.

"Hess?"

"No." He opened the folder and put it on her desk, swiveling it around so she could see it. "It's Calvert."

She stared at him, then at the page facing her. After less than ten seconds she could literally feel her blood pressure rising. "You're absolutely certain?" she asked in a snarl.

"Yes." The man moved to the chair in front of her desk and sat, pulling his mask off with a gesture that betrayed he was as tired as she was. Meeting her eyes, he nodded. "It's definitely Thomas Calvert. I pulled every log I could locate, every document he's been even vaguely connected to, cleared for, or in the same building as, all the data I could find or even suspected he might be able to access, and correlated all of it. All on a system I know for a fact is free of any possibility of interference or taps, as I built it from scratch from parts out of my personal stock. Not even Dragon has access to it. Then I ran a custom program suite to cross check everything. Any information we have found, or suspected, about the inside surveillance operations that have been run against us, anything at all that might be relevant. It's been processing the data until about an hour ago."

He lifted a hand and pointed at the folder. "The only person who could have achieved the results we know have happened, is Former Commander Thomas Calvert. No one else has the combination of knowledge, access, contacts, and opportunity. No normal search would have been able to prove that, he's been far too careful to cover his tracks, but I am confident in my methods and results. It's Calvert."

Emily returned her attention to the documentation, reading carefully through pages of graphs, logs, and database outputs, which had been condensed and summarized from terabytes of information down to twenty sheets. Even so, and despite the density of the data, she could follow it well enough to realize that Armsmaster was correct. Calvert was the only person that matched all the requirements for this fiasco, and he matched it perfectly. Although without Armsmaster's computer skills and her own inbuilt suspicion of the man on general principles, they'd have had a bastard of a job proving it even assuming they thought of him in the first place.

"Fuck," she finally said with feeling.

"Indeed," he replied quietly, rubbing his forehead in a remarkably normal manner for him considering how stiff his mannerisms were most of the time. "If you look at page nineteen, you'll also note that there is enough evidence present to suggest that Calvert was also responsible for diverting certain information pertaining to Sophia Hess several times in the last six months. Information that Welton let slip, probably because she didn't realize it would have given the game away. I don't know precisely why he was running interference for her yet but I'm sure he was, even if he wasn't behind the whole Hess problem to begin with. I believe he has his own reasons for allowing that situation to escalate although I currently have no idea what it is."

"So he's not only the second person in that clusterfuck, but the one behind all the other data leaks," she growled. "And god alone knows how much information he's passed on to other people. He could be single-handedly responsible for half the problems we've had with holding onto captured villains, the raids that only found empty warehouses, Christ knows what else."

"I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if that was the case," the man replied with a scowl and a nod. "There are clear traces of certain logs having been erased or manipulated, once you know what to look for, which correspond all too well in time with a number of operations that have gone sideways in the last few years. Inside information would explain most to all of them. We assumed in a few cases that it was someone on our side who either spoke out of turn without being careful or were actively a gang sympathizer, as we've had more of that problem than I like to think about in the past, but…" He shrugged. "While that is likely true in some cases, I can say without reservation that it's not in most of them." Pointing at the folder again, he finished, "That is."

"I am personally going to look him in the face while I stab him in the gut," she said viciously. "How many of our own have we lost because of this fucker?"

"At least twenty PRT agents that I can be certain of, although I expect more thorough analysis will double that or more, potentially as many BBPD officers, over a hundred needless civilian deaths, and probably six to seven newly Triggered Parahumans in the last eight years," he replied heavily. "Not including ones who ended up in one of the gangs, or became independent villains."

Emily closed her eyes for a few seconds, trying to calm herself enough not to take her service weapon and go Calvert hunting. When she'd managed that, she opened them again and looked at him "Colin, how did he manage all that? Even with his access, this is ridiculous."

Slightly surprised at the unusual use of his real name, Colin Wallis regarded her for a moment. "I am not entirely certain," he admitted. "However, one distinct possibility is that Calvert is in fact a Parahuman we didn't realize the truth about."

She stared at him for quite a while as various thoughts went through her mind. Finally, in disgust, she said, "Damnation. That would explain it, wouldn't it?"

"It's a much more feasible solution to the problem than most other things I can think of," he agreed. "A Thinker is most likely, although a Tinker is possible. I think the second option isn't particularly plausible as I am exceedingly well aware of the usual tells of a Tinker and he exhibits none of them. Stranger or Master are also possible with a lower probability. Percentage wise, I'd put it tentatively at sixty percent Thinker, twenty percent Tinker, and ten percent each for Master or Stranger. However if Thinker is correct I am at a loss to currently suggest the most likely sub-type."

"Any way to find out?" she queried, still fuming but keeping her rage suppressed with brutal efficiency.

"Without more data, no, unfortunately. And we also face the problem that if he is a Thinker, especially something like a precog or one of the social Thinker skills, we may find out that he either anticipates us discovering him or quickly works it out. So we're going to have to be very careful indeed about how we move next or he'll undoubtedly flee. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he's already set up one or more exfiltration schemes just in case, and we might not be able to anticipate what plans he has in this eventuality."

"God damn the man," she snarled. "As if we don't already have enough problems. Most of which are probably his fault anyway."

After a moment, Colin went on, "I would strongly suggest that for the moment we restrict this information to only the two of us. While I have no doubt about the loyalty of the other people we have so far positively cleared, there are simply too many potential ways for Calvert to find out we're on to him, and that number increases rapidly as more people are read in on this."

"Can we just grab the bastard and lock him in a cell then work out what's going on?" she queried angrily. "That would be my personal choice. Possibly with a side of blowing his kneecaps off to make sure he doesn't run away."

"Unfortunately Mr Calvert is not currently in the building," Colin said. "I checked before I came to see you. If he had been I'd have already had him in custody. He's most likely at his house but it would be quite difficult to sneak up on him without risking him finding out about it, as we can't be sure that someone else might be reporting to him. There are still quite a few people we haven't positively vetted and we've been going very slowly and carefully to make sure we didn't spook whoever our target was. The exercise has been designed to look like a standard security sweep. If we suddenly change that, he's highly likely to know immediately and will almost certainly run at that point. Requesting him to come in at an unusual time is also very likely to arouse suspicion. We have to work on the basis that any change in routine risks giving the game away."

Emitting a small sigh, he added, "I am also still trying to find all his unauthorized modifications and additions to our systems. Until I'm completely certain I've found them all and can neutralize the entire set in one operation, another risk is that we could inadvertently trip some form of warning trap and alert him. We have no idea what measures he might have put in place to escape, and booby traps that could cause enormous trouble for us are highly likely. It's what I'd do in his place, in an attempt to confuse things so much that I could escape while everyone was trying to fix the problems."

She scowled at the desk, unable to find any flaw in his thinking as much as she wished to. "So we have to let him just keep on merrily thinking he's pulled the wool over our eyes until we can get him?" she asked irritably.

"Essentially, yes. I suggest that I continue with my efforts to neutralize his influence on our systems, while Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick continue the security checks. I will remove myself from the roster for a few days except in the case of a true emergency so I can devote all my time to this, under the cover of working on a critical Tinkering project." His mouth twisted into what was almost a smile for a second. "Which isn't entirely inaccurate."

"And then we set things up to grab the fucker the next time he comes in for one of his routine consultancy jobs," she said.

"Exactly. I checked, we have him scheduled for six days from now. He's supposed to be running a counter-intelligence seminar for security level five agents, ironically enough. I believe that is enough time for me to locate all his remaining traps and taps and work out countermeasures for them. If we can prevent him becoming suspicious, that's the best time to shut down everything he's doing and grab him we're likely to get."

Thinking it over, Emily nodded. "We'll do that. No one but the pair of us knows about this for now, and we'll keep it that way. With any luck we can get this slippery bastard and wring him dry about what he's been up to and why for all this time."

Colin nodded, standing up and reclaiming his folder and Tinker tech device, the latter of which he turned off and put in his pocket. "As you say, Director." He turned to leave.

"Colin," she said, making him stop and turn back. "Excellent work. Thank you."

He nodded again, a small smile coming and going. "It was my pleasure, Director." A moment later the door closed behind him. Emily turned her chair a little so she could look out at the dimness of the early evening, feeling righteously pissed off about the whole thing and more than a little anticipatory about what her old squad-mate's face would look like when she put the cuffs on the bastard…

With any luck she'd get to shoot him too.

Getting off the bus, Taylor slogged through the snow towards the cleared part of the sidewalk. She'd decided that she'd been at home long enough that she needed a break, although she was enjoying her work and being able to read her textbooks in peace for once. It was weird, she thought, how not having to worry about being constantly attacked for hours every day improved her ability to concentrate on English literature or Chemistry. Almost as if being mentally and physically assaulted was bad for you… Shaking her head with a snort of laughter, the girl plodded onwards, finally reaching the snow-free section while wondering when the city was going to get around to removing the white stuff from the bus stop.

She paused to check the list she'd made, then nodded to herself. First stop was the library to get a couple of more advanced physics books, as she'd got to the point in her experiments where she needed to know more about several things than she currently did, and the internet at home was so painfully slow it was hardly worth the bother trying to search for the data she wanted online. Her dad had already arranged to get a decent broadband line put in, as they had the money to do that now, but it would take a couple of days at least and require buying a better computer too. The girl decided to have a look in some of the second hand electronics shops nearby just in case she could find a decent machine cheaply as while they did have money thanks to her lottery 'win' old habits died hard and she saw no reason to waste it.

A few minutes walk in the chilly but not awful weather got her to the library. Inside it was nice and warm so she pulled her hood down, then took the wool hat she'd been wearing off and put it in her pocket. She nodded to the librarian currently at the desk, an older woman she knew reasonably well from previous visits, getting a smile and a wave back as she headed towards the stacks. Shortly she was examining the section on physics and related matters with her head tilted to one side so she could read the titles.

Picking one book out she opened it and had a look through, then flipped to the index and scanned it. Shaking her head she put it back, running her fingers across spines until she found another likely prospect. That one looked more useful so it went on the floor by her feet as she kept going. Half an hour later she'd picked out three physics books, one on chemistry, and one that her Papa-science sense prodded the back of her mind would be helpful, this being on metallurgy. Carrying the whole set to the desk she plonked them down and pulled out her library card.

"Hello, Taylor," Mrs Johnson, the librarian, said in a kind voice. "Studying hard, are you?"

"Yeah, I've got some free time and I thought I'd catch up, maybe read ahead," she replied with a smile.

"I heard about that horrible situation at Winslow. I do hope you weren't too worried about the asbestos scare, dear."

Taylor laughed slightly. "I'm no longer going to Winslow, Mrs Johnson. Right now I'm home schooling but with any luck I'll get into Arcadia or somewhere else better after Christmas."

The woman gave her a look of curiosity as she scanned each book, then stamped them. "I see. Well, good luck," she replied, stacking the last of the books on the desk. "All done. Hopefully they'll be what you need."

"If not I'll bring them back and try again," Taylor grinned. "But I think they are."

"Have fun, then, Taylor. And can I say you're looking a lot happier than you were the last few times?" Mrs Johnson gave her a searching look. Taylor smiled.

"My life is looking up recently in a number of ways, so I'm definitely in a better mood than I was."

"Glad to hear it. It's never nice to see someone so young and full of life having a bad time." The librarian smiled back. "Mind you don't slip on the sidewalk outside, it's very icy at the moment. I nearly went over on my way in earlier."

"I'll be careful," Taylor promised as she put all the books in her backpack and swung it over her shoulder. Pulling her hat on, she put her hood up and waved. "See you next time."

Mrs Johnson waved back as Taylor headed for the exit, before turning to deal with the next person. Outside the girl looked around, then up, seeing that it was starting to snow again although very lightly. The sky was heavily overcast making the late afternoon darker than it would otherwise be, and a rather chilly wind had picked up from the direction of the bay bringing with it moisture that made things even colder. Making sure her sleeves were down over her gloves, she turned and began walking to her next destination, the small supermarket at the end of the block. It was only about a third the size of the one they normally went to but that one was part of a strip mall off to the north side of the commercial district and was far enough away that she didn't feel like sitting on a bus that long. She could pick up the essentials here and her dad and she would go to the bigger one some other time.

As she walked, quite carefully as Mrs Johnson had been correct that the sidewalk was a lot slipperier than ideal, she pushed the books into her hammerspace with an effort of will, feeling the backpack suddenly get much lighter. Grinning to herself at how useful the trick was just in normal day to day use, she moved down the block, glancing in store windows as she passed. Finally reaching the supermarket she went in and spent fifteen minutes filling a basket with various staples like pasta, some more milk, bread, eggs, bacon, various vegetables, and other similar items.

"God damn it you fucking useless shitbag…"

Taylor looked up from the bottle of sweet and sour sauce she'd been examining to see a girl younger than her, black and pretty, jumping up and down trying to reach the top shelf about ten yards down the aisle from where she was standing. The girl, who had a dyed pink stripe in her hair, looked somewhat familiar and it only took her a few moments to place her as the one she'd seen buy lottery tickets in the small store the other day. The one who'd sparked the idea that had paid off so handsomely.

Putting the sauce in her basket she walked over to stand next to the girl who was quite petite although well developed for someone that was probably only about thirteen. Certainly more developed than she was which Taylor felt slightly unfair although she'd more or less given up worrying about such things. Putting her basket down she stretched, reaching up and grabbing the family-sized bag of tortilla chips the girl had been trying to reach just before she began climbing the shelves, apparently not willing to give up easily. The younger girl paused with one foot on the second shelf from the floor, giving her a quizzical look as she handed the bag over. "Here you go," she said with a smile.

"Hey, thanks," the other girl replied with a grin, taking it from her and putting both feet on the floor. "Fucking stock guys hiding all the good shit out of reach, right?"

"Sometimes they seem to do that to be annoying," Taylor agreed with a chuckle as she retrieved her basket.

"Yeah, tell me about it," her new acquaintance muttered, sounding irritated. "Don't help being a shrimp neither."

The girl barely broke five feet, so she wasn't entirely wrong there, Taylor though without replying. "Trying to make some nachos for my bro, he loves them, and I ran out of chips," the girl added as she looked around. "And jalapenos. And cheese."

"So everything," Taylor grinned, the girl snickering at her comment.

"Damn right. Ate them all." She shrugged. "What can I say, I got hungry."

"That happens."

"Pretty often, yeah. Now where the fuck do they hide the jalapenos around here?" the girl grumbled, peering back down the aisle.

"Over there I think," Taylor said as she pointed the other way. "At the end." Scurrying past her the younger girl looked at the display before pouncing on a jar with a cry of triumph.

"Yeah! Thanks again."

"No problem."

Taylor walked over and put a jar into her basket as well as she loved jalapenos and was fairly sure they'd run out at home.

"Aisha," the other girl said, sticking out a hand.

Looking at it, Taylor shook it after a second. "Taylor."

"Nice ta meet you." Aisha grinned. She looked at her watch, then added, "Shit, gotta run, he's back in twenty minutes. See you 'round Tay." With a wave she dashed off, disappearing around the end of the aisle. Taylor looked after her with a raised eyebrow, shook her head, smiled, and got on with the remainder of her shopping. Aisha seemed like someone with more energy than was good for her and possibly a slight lack of focus, but she also appeared good natured and friendly which was a nice change after Winslow.

A few minutes later she was back on the street, her groceries now in hammerspace via the backpack as well to avoid suspicion. Deciding that as long as she was down town she might as well have a look for a computer as she'd pondered earlier, she tried to remember the location of the second hand electronics shop she remembered from a couple of years back. Finally recalling it was at the end of the Boardwalk where it went from tourist crap to useful things, she crossed the street when the lights changed and made her way a couple of blocks closer to the water. Entering the area that the tourists seemed for some reason to find endlessly attractive, she shook her head in bemusement at how many people from out of Brockton there were wandering around even in this weather. Most of them were obvious to a native Brocktonite as they seemed much jumpier than the locals were, probably expecting a Parahuman fight to break out at any moment. Which made it even stranger to her than they'd actually come here on purpose, but people were weird at the best of times in her opinion.

It was only a couple of hundred yards to the shop she was aiming for and it didn't take long to reach. She checked the window, nodded, and went inside, spending another half hour examining all the various machines that looked to have decent specifications combined with a fair price. After asking a few details, she made some notes on the three most promising ones, thanked the guy who'd patiently helped her, told him she'd talk it over with her father, and left again. While she'd been inside the snow had clearly started falling harder for a while considering it was a good inch deep where the road had been clear before, but it had gone back to very light powdery stuff trickling out of the sky. She looked up at it for a moment, wondering if they were going to end up with a massive blizzard like had happened three years ago for Christmas, then shrugged and headed back the way she'd come.

Checking the time and her bus schedule she nodded, deciding to go all the way to the far end of the Boardwalk and catch the bus there, which would take her home by a different route than the one she'd arrived on, in about the same time as the other one would but involving a shorter walk. Taylor wove through the crowd, avoiding the tourists and the locals alike, and pausing for a moment to watch as Kid Win and Vista, two of the ENE Wards, passed in the other direction. Practically every tourist stopped dead and started taking photos, which was another way you could differentiate them from locals who were largely rather blasé about this sort of thing. Mildly amused Taylor watched the pair sign a few autographs as they walked away, then went about her own business too.

She wondered how many, if any, of the Wards knew about Sophia and what she'd been up to. Hopefully the bitch was a lone occurrence, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary she wasn't going to assume that was true. After all, there was no way that Sophia could have gotten away with everything she did for as long as she did without someone in the PRT helping her. That was the entire point of the lawsuit after all.

It was fair to say that at this moment in time Taylor was disinclined to lay her trust in the so called heroes or the PRT until they satisfied her they weren't all in on the whole thing. She knew it was unlikely this was entirely justified but at the same time she wasn't even slightly over what had gone on for so long, and added to the general suspicion that pretty much everyone who lived or worked in her area of the city held for the PRT, it was enough to make her not want to get involved with them any more than absolutely necessary.

Walking along she entertained herself by looking beneath at things, people, and the general scenery. It crossed her mind that she could become an incredibly good pickpocket with this particular skill set, which in fact more or less described Little Anton based on Papa's writings, but it wasn't really something she could accept. By and large she felt she was a decently honest person and would like to remain such. Even so, she was finding it quite funny seeing exactly what people had in their pockets, and how many of those things were probably not entirely legal. There seemed to be a lot of weapons, for a start.

Probably not completely unwarranted, considering where she lived…

As she left the far end of the main tourist area, the crowd density dropping off considerably to only a few people, she thought she heard something off to the right, on the side of the Boardwalk away from the water. Slowing down she listened carefully, turning her head to see if she could localize whatever it was that had attracted her attention. After a few seconds she heard what seemed to be a scuffle, several sets of footsteps that sounded heavy along with a muffled yelp that gave the impression of being scared and probably female.

She scowled. 'A fucking mugging, I bet,' she thought with great irritation. It wasn't exactly unusual around these parts, you only had to watch the news to see that. Looking at the ground, she scanned the footprints in the snow, quickly picking up a set that headed into the alley on the right side that led behind some of the shops along this part of the Boardwalk. Taylor thought the alley went all the way to the next street, and she could see it went around at least one corner fifty feet in.

There were also a much larger set of footprints partially overlapping the first set in a few places, which looked like some sort of work boot instead of the more normal shoes the smaller set showed. Probably a big man following a much smaller woman, she guessed, having seen similar boots on dock workers many times in the past. Glancing around she frowned slightly as the Boardwalk enforcers, the private security the shops which lined this entire area jointly paid for, seemed to be mysteriously absent. Normally you'd see at least a couple of them within line of sight at any point along here during periods anything was open, but right now there weren't any visible at all. Which was definitely a bit weird.

Feeling worried that something worse than just a mugging was going on, Taylor carefully moved to a position where her back was against a wall just in case someone decided to sneak up on her, then looked past normal Reality, scanning the alley right through the buildings. It took a bit of effort but she was able to work out how to focus further away than she'd tried so far. She could see the alley turned right, going along the backs of the block of buildings on the Boardwalk all of which were currently shut as they were mostly summer-type tourist traps, then turned left again and finally bent slightly right to come out as she'd expected on the next street over.

Parked across that end of the alley was a large windowless van, which had half a dozen black-clad men sitting inside it. All of them were holding automatic weapons, which made her eyes widen.

This was not a simple mugging.

Closer to hand, another group of men, identically dressed and holding more guns, were surrounding a teenager about her age, possibly a bit older, who was looking around in a panicked manner. Which wasn't at all surprising, considering…

Producing her phone, Taylor started to dial 911, then paused. There was no way the cops would get here within a timescale that would help, she thought with worry. And one of the armed men was walking closer to the girl, pointing a handgun at her in a menacing way, while the other three seemed to be watching the area and their target equally carefully.

"Fuck," she breathed, angry, worried, and highly irritated that this sort of shit was happening right in front of her. More or less. Glancing back down the Boardwalk she still couldn't see any enforcers which strongly suggested to her that something extremely dubious was going on, even if the evidence of the armed gang didn't prove that. And the Wards were long gone, so no help there either.

"God damn it, why me?" she growled, shaking her head. "Shut down one group of bullies, get a bigger one. Stupid city."

Sighing, she checked no one was close or paying attention then slipped into the alley, walking down it as silently as possible to get closer to whatever was going on. She could hear low voices coming from the group of five people about sixty feet away, around the corner, as she pressed herself against the wall and watched. From what she could make out the man was demanding the girl take the phone he was holding out, while he had his gun aimed right at her forehead from about a foot away.

"Oh, I just know Dad is going to get all funny about this," she muttered under her breath, then carefully plotted the right sequence of actions. A moment later, she reached out with her modification to Little Anton's trick, to perform the most complex thing she'd so far tried.

The voices abruptly cut off.

Smiling, and slightly winded in a very hard to describe way, Taylor nodded. Part one sorted.

She looked around the corner at the place five people had been standing moments before. It was now empty aside from footprints in the slush, causing her to feel satisfied. That had worked better than she'd expected, and had been simpler than it had first seemed. Apparently shoving a full grown man into hammerspace wasn't really all that much harder than doing it to a rubber ball, although she'd certainly felt it take a little more effort than her previous experiments with the squirrel had done. The effort seemed more mental than physical though, as it she'd had to keep track of a lot more things at the same time. Which was actually a fairly good description of it, she mused as she watched the van on the other side of the buildings.

One of the men inside it was apparently using a hand held radio in an attempt to call someone, and she suspected he was trying to contact one of the first four, which wasn't getting any useful results. This seemed to upset him based on his body language. After a few seconds more he turned around and said something to his friends, who all readied their weapons. Deciding that it wasn't an ideal situation to have a bunch of heavily armed gang members charge around shooting the shit out of everything, since they got enough of that already, Taylor scowled and vanished the entire van in one shot, which paradoxically was actually less mental effort than taking all the men individually.

'Now what?' she wondered as she leaned back on the wall and tried to work out the best move. 'They'll keep, but I'll have to put them somewhere sooner or later. I stopped anyone getting shot but now I've got a pocket full of gang members and some girl I've never met before. She's going to freak out when I let her out. Fuck it, this is all we needed.'

She was wondering if she'd made a horrible mistake. This seemed in retrospect to be something that the PRT would get all funny about if they found out. On the other hand, she could hardly let some innocent teenager get shot or something by a bunch of criminals. Taylor wondered who they were. Not E88 as far as she could tell, they didn't seem to have any Nazi regalia as that bunch of insane bastards normally did, and none of them had looked Asian of any type. That left… what?

Sighing, Taylor checked around very carefully just in case these guys had friends, didn't see anything suspicious, checked again to be absolutely sure, then left the alley and resumed walking to the bus stop while trying to figure out what the hell she was going to tell her dad.

He wasn't going to be happy, that much was pretty certain.

It occurred to her that trying to be a decent person was, at times, a pain in the ass. Even with interesting talents. Or possibly because of them.

"What the fuck happened to my mercenaries?" Coil shouted, slamming his hands on his keyboard in fury.

But try as he might, he couldn't figure it out, which left him in a fouler mood than normal, so he went off to torture someone for a while to cheer himself up.

Which tells you all you need to know about the man.