"That's… not quite what I expected," Taylor commented in a thoughtful voice as she inspected the results of the last run of her crystal maker. It had been gently burbling away to itself for days now, the changes she'd made slowing the process significantly, and although she'd checked on it a few times since she fired it up, she'd left it to consume the entire stock of chemicals just to see what the end result was.

She and Lisa had gone to monitor the progress before they got on with the main event, and had discovered that the device had apparently finished the crystal building process overnight. So she'd shut it down and pulled out the growth substrate holder, finding rather to her surprise that instead of lots of little crystals, she'd ended up with three substantially larger ones. All of them looked identical, and the shape wasn't at all the same as the original gnurr resonators. Those were a sort of weird L form, although that was a somewhat simplified description. These things were… not that.

Very gently she worked one free from the substrate, finding that after a moment's resistance it popped loose without issue. Putting the holder down on the bench she turned the crystal over in her fingers, examining it closely with fascination. As she moved it, the thing seemed to fluctuate in size and shape in a manner that was completely unlike anything she'd ever seen before. The basic shape was kind of a cube, but it was a cube with far too many corners and faces, which somehow appeared to vary in number as it turned. Lisa was gaping at it in amazement.

"What the fuck is that?" her friend asked in a bemused and somewhat stunned voice.

Taylor looked at her, then back at the glistening crystalline object in her hand. The color was almost impossible to describe, seeming to simultaneously be every shade you could imagine at once, and deep inside she could swear there was a strange iridescent glow that was darkly brilliant. If that was a thing, which it did appear to be in this case no matter how unlikely it was.

Even the size of the crystal was a little subject to opinion, although it was roughly an inch across. Most of the time. On the outside.

"I think it's sort of… a tesseract?" she finally said in a wondering voice, going back to studying the thing she was holding. "As it grew it folded itself through more than three dimensions. A lot more. The normal crystals are already dimensionally transcendent, but these are way more complicated…" She slowly trailed off as she examined the crystal through beneath and stared in amazement. "Oh, wow," she breathed. "It's enormous…" The crystalline object was impressive enough to normal vision. When looked at via beneath it was spectacular. Layer after layer after layer of perfectly aligned not entirely real metamaterials seemed to go on almost forever in directions she didn't even have words for. Experimentally she pulled the crystal into storage for a better look, then shook her head in wonderment.

"It's absolutely beautiful," she murmured in awe. "I really didn't expect anything like this." Pulling it out again she held it in her palm, both girls staring at it. "This is weird even for Papa's stuff," she finally said. Handing it to Lisa who accepted it carefully then gazed into it, she wiggled the other two off the growth matrix and inspected them. Each crystal was as far as she could tell as perfect as the first one and essentially identical.

"I wonder what you can do with this?" Lisa asked, still staring at the crystal she was holding.

Taylor shrugged slightly, as she put the two she had into a small padded plastic box. "I bet they'll come in handy sooner or later," she replied, accepting the first one when Lisa handed it to her after seeming to almost come out of a trance and blinking a few times. The box was closed and stored away, then she moved to fully shut off the growth machine as it was empty and not required at the moment. Soon it had rumbled down to silence, the only sound dripping water as the ice that had build up on the recirculation stacks started slowly melting and running down to the floor over the bench. From there it would drain away through the grate in the corner.

"You could probably call something a lot worse than gnurrs with one of those things if dimensional complexity is a key part of the process," her friend commented, smiling a little. Taylor laughed.

"I'm not sure if it works that way. And I don't think they'd resonate correctly anyway. But…" She thought about the results of her experimental changes to the machine as she inspected the device thoughtfully. "I've got a few ideas they might work for." The girl glanced at Lisa, who was also visibly thinking, and apparently communing with her ability.

"Yeah…" her friend muttered. "My power is kind of gaping at you right now, by the way. In what almost feels like horror."

Taylor grinned. "I always like freaking out a superpower at least once a day," she responded lightly. "It keeps them on their toes."

"They don't have toes," Lisa laughed.

"Tentacles, then." Glancing at her watch, Taylor nodded. "Better get on with the main event before the PRT beats us to it."

"Yeah, it'll be hard to hide it if we steal Coil's bunker after they find it," Lisa agreed readily. Both girls left the room, Taylor looking back fondly at her dormant machine for a moment, before she closed and locked the door. As they walked away, she smiled very slightly at the sense of something closely watching her with a distinct air of impressed affection from somewhere hard to describe...

Lisa looked around as the door opened, revealing Anne accompanied by Kurt. The older girl was smiling as she came into the room, glancing about with interest before she walked over and sat next to Taylor. "Cool place," Anne said with humor in her voice. "I've never been here before."

"I thought you'd like to see how U.N.I.O.N. works up close," Taylor replied, making several people laugh and her father mumble something under his breath. Anne giggled, nodding. "Good timing too, we're nearly ready."

"I'd have been here earlier but I could hardly move until I finished digesting." Anne shrugged as Lisa smiled. "That was a very good meal."

"Yeah, it was great." Taylor pulled one of the large printed plans across the table and smoothed it out, the three girls leaning over it. "So, as you know, this is our new base," she began, waving a hand dismissively as her father coughed loudly. "Ignore the Chief, he needs another cup of coffee," she added, grinning. "New base. Just sitting there waiting for a little creative asset rearrangement to happen to it. Now, the problem is, if I just yoink it out from under the office building we're going to end up with a big pile of rubble and lots of people complaining."

"Which wouldn't be entirely ideal," Lisa pointed out.

"No. So we need to make sure we don't have something like that happen."

"How are you going to do that?" Anne asked curiously, tracing the outline of the former Endbringer shelter with a forefinger as she listened. "This place is enormous. And you still haven't worked out where you're going to put it, right?"

"That's something we can worry about later," Taylor chuckled. "Right now we need to snag it before the PRT comes around being all grabby."

"Yeah, we saw it first, we're getting grabby!" Lisa said cheerfully.

"Exactly. Finders keepers. Everyone knows that."

"Sounds good to me," Anne smiled. "So you're going to replace it with gravel like we talked about?"

"Apparently that's not quite good enough," Taylor replied, looking over at Kurt and Matt, who were discussing another set of plans in a low voice along with several of the construction experts. "Because the weight of the overburden once we remove the shelter would compress the gravel enough to cause massive subsidence, then the building falls over."

"Hmm. Yeah, I get it," Anne commented thoughtfully, tapping her finger on the plans. "So we need something stronger…"

"Or precompressed," Lisa put in.

"Or both," Taylor nodded. "And we're going to need a lot of it. This place is huge. We talked it over and Matt suggested that we could… acquire… some suitable material by repurposing some of the old warehouses out near the ship's graveyard. Or what's left of them."

"Oh… I see." Anne also nodded. "There's about a square mile of buildings that are so decayed they're pretty much just rubble now, right? I remember seeing something online about that. Gang fights, the riots, and general decay wrecked a whole district even worse than some of the stuff where you were experimenting with your gnurr-pfeife…" Taylor had shown the elder Barnes sister how her first Papa-invention worked about a week before Christmas and the older girl had been… impressed. And terrified. But mostly impressed.

"Yeah. Some of it is so overgrown with weeds now that you can barely tell there even was a warehouse or whatever there in the first place," Taylor agreed. "And there's half a dozen concrete wharfs that have totally collapsed into the bay too, several of them even sank into the mud so you can't see the remains at all. It's more than enough material to completely fill in the hole the base would leave once it's not there. The tricky bit is getting the base out and the infill in without letting anything collapse in the process."

"How are you going to do that?" Anne asked curiously.

"With a lot of care, and even more careful prepwork," Matt said as he and Kurt came around the table to join them, making all three girls look up at him. "The basic idea is that Taylor grabs enough material to do the job, including a lot of prestressed concrete beams and foundation slabs. We've spent a few days figuring out where we can salvage that sort of stuff without it being obvious. It'll take some work to move things around, like we'll have to grab the sections we want to use, then move other material to fill the holes left by that so it's not so obvious what happened, but we've got a whole list of operations that should cover our tracks pretty well."

"Then we get Taylor to pull out sections of ground between the shelter and the foundations of the building, and shove in the beams and slabs as fast as possible before anything collapses," Kurt said, taking up the conversation. "Lisa here uses her power to keep an eye on things, along with Danny watching, and the rest of us using surveying equipment to monitor the building itself. We can do that with laser rangerfinders from a distance, and it's accurate enough so we can see if it moves even a fraction of an inch."

Matt nodded. "That lets us basically prop the whole office block up just long enough so that the entire shelter can be pulled out from under it, then all the infill put back in before anything starts to sag. The construction guys have run the calculations and they're sure it will work as long as we do things in the right order. Once we've got the hole packed tight with rubble, it'll be stable enough so nothing will collapse. At least until the building falls over naturally, which it's going to do sooner or later because it's a fucking disaster area. But that probably won't happen for years yet so there won't be anything connecting it to us."

"U.N.I.O.N. is very good at its job," Lisa commented wisely, making everyone nod, and Danny sigh. He'd been listening with interest poorly disguised by a disapproving expression, but Lisa didn't need her power to tell her he was curious to see if this worked even as he was somewhat apprehensive.

"We'll be covering the whole operation as more road repairs just in case anyone is watching," Matt went on. "Same as with Coil himself. The repairs need to be done, it's completely legit, and we even get paid for it. And the surveying work is looking for more asbestos if anyone gets curious, which we also get paid for!" He grinned widely, making Anne laugh and Taylor looked pleased. "You'll like the U.N.I.O.N. stealth truck…"

The Barnes girl appeared intrigued. "This is something you didn't tell me about, Taylor," she said.

Taylor grinned too. "Q Division has some cool tricks," she giggled. "Come on, I'll show you." She jumped to her feet, rolling the plans up and making them vanish. Anne and Lisa also rose, the whole group leaving the room and heading for the vehicle depot and an intriguing job of non-standard creative property relocation.

"This is really neat," Anne said admiringly, leaning slightly as the truck rumbled out the gate of the yard and turned right. She, along with Taylor, her father, and Lisa, were in the hidden compartment, while Matt, Kurt, and Harry were in the front. Several other vehicles brought up the rear, the whole convoy splitting up into two parts at the next junction. Their three vehicles headed towards the nearly obliterated outer section of the docks, to collect the required material, while the other four containing the people with all the surveying equipment headed deeper into the city to set things up for the operation.

"Yeah, it's amazing what the guys can make if they get a reason to," Taylor agreed. "Dad's gang is really good."

Her father gave her a look which made all three girls laugh. "Enough, or we won't stop for burgers on the way home," he grumbled good-naturedly.

"You got it, Chief," she replied immediately, causing him to shake his head. He seemed to be doing a lot of that today, she mused with an inner smile. Turning her attention to the large print-out of an old and very detailed map of what the docks used to be like before decades of destruction, misuse, and general decay had had their way, she studied the areas which had been highlighted on the paper. "We're going here first," she continued after a moment, tapping one location. "It's just a whole series of empty lots now, nothing left but piles of rubble. Once it was some sort of factory though, right Dad?"

"It was a fish processing plant," her father replied with a nod. "Ships would unload their catch at a wharf that's long since gone, and it would be processed, frozen or smoked, and packaged, then shipped out all over the country." He pointed to the map. "There were half a dozen of them along here, but only two even exist as buildings now. They're all long since shut down and most of them were gutted for equipment or salvage years ago. This one burned down at least fifteen years back, then what was left was smashed to pieces during a fight between the Teeth and Marquis from what I recall."

His finger moved slightly. "Used to be a spur railway line that ran about four miles past this point, out to what's now just wasteland, and in the other direction all the way back to the main line at the trainyard. Most of the rails were pulled up something like eight or nine years back? We did some of that, used it for spares, and various other groups stole the rest for scrap." He shrugged a little sadly. "So much industry gone. But that's life, I suppose, at least around here."

Taylor smiled sympathetically at him, knowing how he felt about seeing the city he'd devoted his life to go downhill like this. She, despite her younger age, often felt similarly. As she'd told Lisa, this was her home, and she'd seen all around her the effect losing the industry in the docks had caused to the people she knew. Watching your future slip away at least partly because those with the money didn't appear to even care about those without was hard.

Hopefully, with some effort, they could fix some of that. And have fun in the process.

"Anyway, the point is that it's a great place to get all the material we need to disguise taking the other material we need to actually do the job," she said after a few seconds. "I'll skim out about a foot or so a few feet under the surface, which will make the entire area sink slightly, but it's such a mess already no one will even notice. It won't affect the trees and weeds and stuff on the surface and the subsidence will be so gentle you'd have trouble proving anything actually happened even if you did notice."

"And being right next to the shoreline, in that case it's likely that anyone would assume it was the ground just getting undermined by water," Lisa added.

"That's the idea, yes," Taylor nodded. "Dad's map here shows there are some buried streams somewhere under all this stuff, so that's a plausible reason for subsidence."

"Sounds complicated but it makes sense," Anne agreed.

"As much as any of this does," Taylor's dad sighed. He looked somewhat proud even so, she noticed.

The truck jostled as they went over a series of potholes, making them hold on for a while. Eventually the ride smoothed out again.

"So once we've got your first stage infill, we go and get the second stage stuff?" Anne queried.

"Exactly. That's over here, about half a mile away. We know that there are three two-hundredish-yard-long concrete wharfs sitting in the bay under the mud, or what's left of them after the pilings rotted away. Two of them were put in during the war, the other one was sometimes in the fifties. Storms and fires destroyed them in the end, and new ones were built a little up the bay in the late sixties, Dad says. The guys checked and what's left is large enough and solid enough it should do as supporting sections, combined with some foundation slabs from old buildings here, here, and here," Taylor replied, tapping the map in a few places. "And we'll scoop up as much old brick and concrete as we can find around the place too, for filling the big hole afterwards."

"This is going to take ages," Lisa pointed out.

"Good thing we brought lunch then, isn't it?" Taylor's father said, motioning at the cooler under the table. "Assuming everyone isn't sick of turkey already." He chuckled as Anne looked mildly apprehensive for a moment. "I put some apples and chips in there too," he added.

The quartet discussed the process while they kept slowly making their way through the by now very rough roads, crossing several sections which were more snow and rubble than actual tarmac, until they finally drew up in a line next to each other on top of a low rise overlooking the bay. Surrounding them all the way to the water was an area of land pockmarked with depressions, some containing frozen ponds, and low rises, each marking the grave of what had once been parts of a thriving industrial port. One could barely make out the outlines of roads in a few places, in between the scrubby bare trees and bushes that had overgrown most of the area where it wasn't either a bog or grassland. Here and there something recognizable still stood, protruding from the snow in the form of a telephone pole leaning at an alarming angle over there, or a signpost without any sign over here.

Overall it looked more like the aftermath of some apocalyptic disaster than anything else, Taylor thought as she studied the vista through the walls of the truck. Which, in a loose sense, it kind of was…

"We're here," Mark announced through the intercom, somewhat unnecessarily. "Feel free to do your thing, Agent Gimme."

Laughing, Taylor checked the notes they'd all spent days working on, then began doing her thing. Nothing visibly happened although an observer with keen hearing might just have made out a very faint intermittent grumble of land settling over a large area.

By the time the three trucks left an hour later, several acres of the wasteland would find themselves very gently subsiding to a new equilibrium over the coming weeks, but it would have taken some careful measurements before and after to have proven that. And aside from some tire tracks in the snow, nowhere near the affected zone, there was nothing to indicate anyone had been there at all.

After the next snowfall even that evidence would vanish.

"Watch it, we're seeing a quarter inch tilt to the north-west," came through the intercom, one of the survey team using a laser rangefinder on the office building giving the warning. They'd hooked up a series of cabled links back to the vehicle to avoid any radio traffic so no one would overhear anything. Lisa watched the screen in front of her, showing several high def images from cameras aimed at the target, while she and her power conferred in a way she'd have found impossible to explain to anyone. It was almost a trance, her power feeding her data in a manner that it never could before at a nearly subconscious level. The sensation was, if she let herself think about it, very strange, but in the moment it was also about the biggest rush she'd ever experienced.

"Confirmed," she replied immediately as her ability showed her more information about the state of their work than most people would believe possible. "Taylor, insert the third beam at position twenty six."

"Done," her friend said a moment later.

"Tilt stopped," the observer reported almost immediately. "Currently stable, no damage noted."

"Next beam, position ten," Lisa instructed after assessing the situation.

"Beam in."

"Put the big slab between positions eight and nine."

"Hang on… Got it."

"Survey team, any subsidence?"

"Tiny drop, less than a sixteenth of an inch, but it's completely vertical without any tilt. Everything stable again."

Lisa scanned the monitors, working out the next set of operations, then double-checked the annotated map on the table. Danny was alternately inspecting that as well and peering through the side of the truck at the building, while making rapid notes and talking in a very low voice to Taylor, who was listening while visibly concentrating. And sweating slightly from the sheer number of things she was keeping track of, Lisa could tell without even using her power.

Anne was sitting quietly watching, with great interest.

"All right, I think we're good," Lisa finally said. She checked the notes she'd been given and nodded to herself. "Yeah, we can move to the next stage. We need to insert beams in positions four, twenty three, fifteen, and twelve in that order. Then let things settle for a minute just in case. After that we can put all the remaining ones in from north to south."

"Got it," Taylor replied, taking a deep breath. Then another. "Here we go… four in place… twenty three… fifteen…"

They all felt a slight rumble underfoot, making everyone look around then at each other.

"I think that was part of the foundation cracking a little," Danny said, staring out and down at an angle. "Yeah. Crap concrete, it doesn't look too bad though." Taylor peered in the same direction and nodded.

"I can see it. I think it was already cracked, up the top there, see?"

"Looks like it. Most likely water freezing in the concrete by the looks of it. That building has five years left if that, I'd guess, but that's not the problem right now."

"Everything looks stable, but it very slightly tilted to the south when whatever that was happened," the observer reported. "Nothing moving now though."

Lisa and her power conferred then she said, "We're fine, that won't cause any problems. Keep going."

"OK." Taylor nodded, taking the kleenex Anne handed her and wiping her brow with a small smile of thanks. "Twelve in place. How's it looking?"

"Looking good," Lisa said, keeping her attention on the monitor. "Give it a bit to settle…"

They waited for a minute or so, until she nodded. "Great. No movement. Put the rest in as fast as you can."

Taylor signified assent and got to work. Five minutes later she relaxed, leaning back in the seat and going limp. "Done. That was harder than I expected," she murmured, looking tired. "Lots of things to keep track of at the same time."

"Here." Anne offered her a bottle of water, which she accepted gratefully, opened, and drained almost entirely in one long swallow.

"Thanks. I needed that."

"Let's take a break, then do the rest," her father suggested. "Matt, take fifteen, it's lunch," he added, raising his voice a little.

"Sounds like a good idea, Danny," the other man replied. "Good work, guys."

Anne opened the cooler again and handed around some sandwiches and more drinks. Shortly the entire group was eating and relaxing, and Lisa could see on the other monitor showing the truck camera views that the road crews, who had been working the entire time to patch more potholes, had all also gone back to their vehicles and were doing the same. "It's going well," she said, having finished the first sandwich in record time. This sort of heavy duty power usage was oddly tiring even if she didn't move around much, and she was starving.

"Nothing fell over, so that's a good start," Danny commented, smiling. "This is still completely ridiculous but I have to admit it's working better than I feared it might."

"It's hard work but the payoff will be fun," Taylor laughed. "And we've invented a whole new method of construction in the process."

Her dad shook his head slightly but looked amused and oddly proud. "Only you, Taylor."

"Papa helped!" the girl grinned.

"Papa was a fucking menace and if he was still around I'd want words with that man," Danny grumbled. Lisa and Anne giggled at the look on his face.

"I'm really enjoying seeing how U.N.I.O.N. works, Uncle Chief," the latter said with a sly smirk, causing Taylor and Lisa to crease up and Danny to put his hand over his eyes.

"Oh Lord," he sighed. "Eat your lunch and stop being so happy, Anne."

She took a bite out of her sandwich, eyes twinkling, and winked at Taylor who grinned. "We'll have to think what your Agent name should be," Taylor suggested. "Agent Wheels?"

"She is the only one of us with a car," Lisa nodded. Danny sighed again.

"This is taking years off my life," he complained.

"You know you love this, Dad," Taylor told him. "It's a hell of a lot of fun."

"It's completely ridiculous is what it is," he told her sternly, but Lisa knew he was still enjoying himself. Taylor merely shrugged acceptance and kept eating her sandwich, looking pleased.

Once they'd had lunch, they got back to work. It only took another hour's effort to support the ground everywhere else over the bunker, a task made much easier as there was nowhere near as much surface loading. Eventually the preparations were complete and the building was still stable, so they could proceed with the main event that all this work had been leading up to.

"Right, everyone ready?" Lisa said. She waited for the replies in the affirmative from the various crews, and Taylor and Danny here with her. "OK. Taylor, initiate plan Steal Coil's Bunker on my mark! Three… two… one… Steal!"

Taylor was wearing a frankly disturbing grin, which Lisa was pretty sure she was echoing. Raising one hand, her friend snapped her fingers, the sound like a gunshot in the confines of the truck. "Stolen!" Taylor cried.

Her dad was rubbing his face with both hands, his glasses pushed up to his forehead, and Anne was going red trying not to laugh her ass off.

Lisa twitched as she felt a sense of alien amusement briefly touch her, making her look around uneasily. That was always weird. Taylor simply smiled.

"Well, that's that. Now all we do is fill the hole properly and finish up," she said after a moment, dismissing the eerie feeling. "And figure out where the hell you're going to actually put a massive underground super villain's lair."

Waving a hand airily, Taylor replied, "We can deal with that later. The main thing is it's ours now." They shared a grin, then got on with the process of putting hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble into a massive void under the city. By the time they'd finished, the road crews had also filled all the potholes and rolled them, sealed the edges, and were in the packing up stage.

"Mission complete, I think," Danny finally said, sounding relieved. "Without any catastrophic and embarrassing collapses."

"That would have been awkward," Anne agreed, nodding wisely.

Lisa chuckled, then looked at the list of tasks. "Just need to grab all his cameras in the building over there…"

"Did that when we arrived," Taylor noted.

"Great. And remove all the external hidden access points too."

"That's easy enough." Her friend looked at the documentation they'd drawn up based on their original surveillance of Coil, and the information from his interrogation, then spent ten minutes grabbing everything that could have pointed to the existence of the bunker. Lisa and her power advised on how to disguise the removal with carefully created damage to the old garage the vehicle accessway had been concealed in, making it look like the place had simply collapsed due to lack of maintenance. Which it was on the verge of doing anyway, so that wasn't hard.

Eventually they were done. All the road crews and survey teams had packed up, all traces of the bunker had been removed as far as was possible, and nothing important had fallen over.

And the survey crews had even managed to check the nearby buildings for asbestos, indeed finding it present in three of them, which got added to the city's master list of properties that required remediation.

"Job's done," Taylor said with satisfaction. "Let's go home."

Everyone being of the same mind, the convoy reformed and all the vehicles rumbled away towards the yard, leaving a neatly repaired road behind them, already beginning to get covered with snow as the wind picked up again and flakes began drifting out of the sky.

Closing her book having finished the last page, Amy put it to the side and lay back on her bed, feeling cheerful. The book had been, as she'd expected, excellent, and she was feeling more relaxed than she'd done for months. No school for a while yet, no particular reason to go to the hospital unless there was an emergency, and she was comfortably full of good food left over from the day before. All in all she was definitely having a better time than she'd managed for quite a while. Even Carol still seemed to be almost tolerable, which was close to a miracle in her view.

Smiling a little, she closed her eyes and relaxed, listening to the wind whistling through the trees in the back yard, making the house creak slightly. The forecast had been for a fairly significant amount of snow overnight yet again, with a high northerly wind that was going to make things very unpleasant with the wind chill it would bring. But after that blew itself out sometime tomorrow night, the next week was supposed to be sunny and calm, which would be a relief after the weather they'd had recently.

She considered whether she and her sister should have another go at building a snowman at that point. It had been, even if not all that successful, good fun…

A little later there was a tap at the door, which opened to reveal Vicky. The blonde girl smiled at Amy, who lifted her head to look at her. "Everything all right, Ames?" Vicky asked as she came in and closed the door behind her. "You disappeared after supper again."

"Just reading," Amy replied, lifting the book to show it to her sister. "It was really good."

"You finished it already?" Vicky queried.

"Yep. Fast reader, you know that." Amy grinned. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," her sister replied, sitting on the end of her bed, Amy moving her feet a little to make room. "Dad will want to read it next, I guess."

Amy nodded. "He said that, yeah. I'll give it to him later."

Vicky smiled to herself. "He was in a good mood today," she said softly. "I miss that so much."

Reaching over, Amy patted her leg. "We just need to make sure he takes his meds regularly," she replied equally softly. "The new drugs work really well, but only if he takes them. And you know how it goes, if he forgets, he gets into a condition where he's more likely to forget the next dose. So we make sure he doesn't forget."

"I hold him down and you shove one down his throat?" Vicky questioned with a grin. Amy laughed.

"That might be a little excessive, but if that's what it takes…" They shared a giggle.

"You've been in a good mood the last few days," her sister observed after a period of companionable silence. Amy, who was now lying with her hands behind her head on her pillow staring at the ceiling, glanced at the other girl and smiled.

"I'm feeling a lot more relaxed lately for some reason," she admitted. "The hospital was right. I needed a break."

"I've been telling you that for six months," Vicky commented wryly. Amy shrugged, smiled still.

"I know. You were right too. I should have listened. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just pay more attention to the wisdom of your sister in future, young lady," Vicky responded in a dead-accurate imitation of their mother. Amy put her fist in her mouth to stop herself screaming with laughter, while Vicky grinned at her. Both checked the door just in case, before meeting each other's eyes then collapsing in giggles.

"Better not do that where Carol can hear it," Amy whispered, shaking her head in hilarity.

Vicky just grinned. Both of them looked up as the roof creaked again, quite loudly, then she said, "Wow, it's getting really windy out there. Bet it's cold as fuck too."

"Yeah, I don't particularly want to go out right now either," Amy replied. "Hope no one does something I'll need to go and fix tonight, because I'll shout at them if they do."

As Vicky opened her mouth to reply, something tapped on the window.

They looked at it, then each other. "What was that?" Vicky said in a mystified voice.

"Dunno," Amy replied. It had sounded like something fairly large had hit the glass.

The sound came again, twice. Then again.

They exchanged a glance. Amy swiveled around and got up, while Vicky stood as well and moved to follow behind her as the brunette walked over to the window and carefully moved the curtain to the side, ready to jump out of the way. Even as she did so the sound recurred, while simultaneously the house creaked as the wind moaned over the roof.

Light from her room shone out the window, casting a glow onto the snow on the porch roof. She peered out, before gaping slightly.

"What the hell…?" Vicky said from behind her, looking over her shoulder.

Both watched the raven which was sitting on the windowsill lean forward and tap sharply on the glass, then look at them with one beady eye. It was hunched down against the wind which was blowing across the back of the house, bringing snow with it in copious amounts, and the bird looked cold, bedraggled, and annoyed.

Its beak opened and even through the double-glazed pane Amy could hear an aggrieved 'Kronk.'

She looked over her shoulder at her sister, who shrugged, appearing baffled. Looking back at the raven, she slowly reached out and turned the handle on the window, swinging one side out and admitting a blast of cold air and snowflakes.

And one raven, which didn't hesitate to dive through the opening, flap twice, and land on the back of her desk chair. Amy shied away from the damp feathers, stared in considerable confusion, then yelped as a gust of wind slammed the window shut nearly taking her fingers off. "OW! Mother fucker that hurt," she shouted, waving her abused hand. Vicky hastily latched the window before the wind yanked it open again while Amy stuck her fingers in her mouth and glared at the raven which was sitting watching her with what she'd be prepared to swear was amusement in its eyes.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she demanded in a muffled voice, pointing at the bird with her undamaged hand. Vicky looked at her, then the raven, then back at her, her eyebrows up so far they almost disappeared behind her bangs. "I nearly lost a finger to that fucking window," she added with asperity.

The raven made a low gurgling sound and fluffed up the feathers on its head.

"Don't laugh at me you little shit," Amy growled. Removing her fingers from her mouth she inspected them. A couple of red marks showed where the window had hit them, but making a fist proved no real damage had been done. It still hurt though.

"Ames?" Vicky sounded confused. "Why is there a crow in the room? Why was it knocking on your window, for that matter?"

"It's not a crow, it's a raven, and I have no idea how it knew which room was mine," she replied, staring at the bird, which was staring back, seeming oddly relaxed for a wild animal inside a house. The wind blew hard again and all three of them looked around at the creaking sound. "I guess it doesn't want to get smashed into the fence again," she continued, listening to the incipient storm outside.

Vicky was looking oddly at her. "I get the feeling that I'm missing a story somewhere," she commented slowly.

Sighing a little, Amy sat on her bed, her eyes on the raven, which was now preening itself, straightening feathers and dripping a little on the chair. "I found it in the back yard nearly dead this morning and fixed it," she explained. "Dad helped. Then we let it go outside. It flew away, but…" She shrugged. "Guess it's smarter than you'd expect and it decided that inside is safer than outside or something."

"I've read that ravens are some of the smartest birds around," Vicky replied, sitting next to her. "Like, as smart as a dog at least, some of them as smart as a human child. But this seems a little weird even so…"

"Maybe it realized I saved its life and decided that I'm going to help it again?" Amy shook her head in mild wonder. She'd seen just how complex the bird's brain was but this sort of thing still impressed her. It suggested a level of cognition that was far more than she'd realized an animal was capable of. Getting up she moved slowly over to the raven, holding her hand out. It watched her approach, then when she stopped with her hand a few inches away, reached out and tapped her fingers with its beak, before dipping its head a few times with that strange bell-like sound.

She smiled, gently stroking the soft feathers of the raven's head, which it let her do without flinching. "Fine. You can stay here tonight," she said after a moment. "But if you crap on my chair there's going to be trouble, got it?"

The raven kronk-ed agreeably, making her grin. Vicky was watching them with an expression halfway between laughter and bafflement. Turning to her sister, she asked, "Do we still have any turkey left?"

"That's almost cannibalism, Ames," Vicky protested with a grin.

"I doubt he cares," Amy replied, laughing. The raven looked at her as if agreeing. "Let's get him something to eat, and see what happens."

"You sure about this?"

"I'm not going to throw anything out into that," Amy said, pointing at the window, through which it could be seen that it was now snowing horizontally. Vicky followed her finger and nodded.

"Fair point, well made," she replied after a second or two. "Mom's going to get funny though."

"We'll deal with it," Amy responded. "Hopefully she's in a good enough mood not to go crazy." After a little thought, she added with a grin, "Ravens are a protected species anyway, so if she hurts him she'll get in a lot of trouble."

Her sister looked somewhat amused, then turned her attention to the raven, which was watching them with what looked like interest. "What's his name?" she asked.

Amy stared at her, then the bird. "Name?" she echoed.

"If you're keeping him, he needs a name," Vicky explained patiently.

"I'm not keeping him, I'm just letting him stay here until the weather improves."

"And you're feeding him, and you saved his life in the first place, and he knew where to come to get more help…" Vicky grinned. "Face it, Ames, you're keeping him. Or he's keeping you."

Sighing, Amy rubbed her forehead, then turned to study the bird. Eventually she replied, "Edgar."

"Edgar?" Vicky sounded like she was trying not to laugh. "Why Edgar?"

"He looks like an Edgar to me, and anyway it's in honor of Edgar Allen Poe," Amy explained, smirking slightly. "It was that or Nevermore. Which is just too edgy for me."

"Fine." Vicky got up and came over to stand next to her, the raven peering up at both of them. "Nice to meet you, Edgar."

Edgar preened, looking pleased with himself somehow, and emitted a soft chirp all out of keeping with his size. Both girls laughed. Turning to leave the room, Amy jumped when just as she opened the door there was a flurry of feathers and Edgar landed on her shoulder, closing his wings and clamping talons into her sweater the moment he landed. "Holy shit!" she squawked, shocked. The raven kronk-ed and Vicky, after a moment of amazement, nearly fell over laughing.

"Why are you like this, you stupid bird," Amy complained, but the raven simply started playing with her hair, causing renewed laughter from her sister. Muttering to herself, the girl headed downstairs, wondering how her life had become so strange so quickly.

The shouting when Carol spotted the new addition to the household was epic.