Everyone stared as Max choked, coughing so violently it sounded like he was trying to get rid of one of his lungs. Victor jumped up and moved to slam his superior on the back, hitting him just at the wrong moment when Max was leaning forward and heaving for breath. The thud of a hand between the shoulder-blades was echoed a moment later by a different sort of thud of Max's forehead bouncing off the boardroom table, considerably harder than he probably enjoyed.

The shock of the blows made him inhale involuntarily, try to cough at the same moment, go rather blue, then copiously projectile vomit all over the table, himself, Victor who didn't get out of the way fast enough when Max turned his head, and Fenja who shrieked and recoiled in horror. As she frantically tried to get out of range, her flailing elbow caught Stormtiger right in the ear extremely solidly, making him shout in rage and without thinking punch the woman in the face.

Which in turn made her sister jump him and knee him in the groin, then on the chin with her other knee when he folded up in agony.

It all happened in a sequence so neat it was like it was choreographed, and ended as quickly. In less than thirty seconds everyone was nursing bruises, wiping vomit off themselves with extreme distaste, and in the case of Stormtiger, entertaining themselves by curling into a ball under the table and weakly swearing. Max finally hacked up what had caused his coughing fit, the small fly twitching in the puddle of vomit. James, who had also got up and was staring in amazement, rather foolishly slammed a book on it in a fit of pique, which caused a shower of fresh puke that sprayed on everyone left other than Rune, who ducked fast enough to avoid everything and dived under the table.

The room fell silent aside from the faint obscenities in a pained voice coming from somewhere near the floor, harsh breathing from Max, and a certain amount of not quite sufficiently muffled giggling from Rune when she emerged and saw the complete wreckage of what had been a relatively professional meeting a few minutes earlier. Victor and Max both glared at her and she fell silent although by the look in her eyes she still found it hilarious.

Red faced from both fury and lack of oxygen. Max looked down at his completely ruined six thousand dollar suit, and a pair of shoes worth nearly as much which were now slightly squelchy. "Fuck," he growled, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping his face with it, still somewhat short of breath. He winced as he passed it over his forehead, which was already going purple right in the middle. "You stupid bastard, Victor."

"Hey, I was trying to help," the other man retorted, looking up from where he was vainly trying to clean his own clothing. Rubbing only made it worse and the smell was unbelievable.

"If that's you trying to help god help me if you try to hurt me," Max grumbled, kicking his shoes off in distaste. He could swear he could feel something crunchy inside them and really didn't want to know what it was.

"Get maintenance up here to clean this up," he ordered, giving up on his suit. It was a lost cause. "Meeting fucking adjourned. We'll talk again tomorrow." Steaming, he stomped off, turning at the door to add, "And someone get a bug zapper or something in here. That's twice someone's nearly swallowed a fly."

"Perhaps they'll die," Rune murmured in a sing-song voice, before shrinking back as every single person in the room glared at her. "Sorry," she squeaked.

Shaking his head, Max left, grumbling about how some people had a very misplaced sense of humor.

Taylor lay on her bed absolutely howling with laughter, feeling that any day where she could fuck up a room full of Nazis with one little fly was a very good day. When she finally calmed down, she got up and went to find some lunch.

Looking at her phone with a raised eyebrow, Amy thought for a moment, then answered it. "Hello, Director Piggot," she said, making Vicky who was sitting in the chair next to her window look up at her with a somewhat surprised expression. Both of them were in Amy's room, having been talking about random things after school, which they'd just got home from. "How can I help you?"

"I have spent the last five days thinking very hard about a number of things that have come to light, Miss Dallon, at least partially due to your suggestion some weeks ago," the voice of the older woman replied, sounding both somewhat annoyed, which was pretty much normal in Amy's experience, and rather more thoughtful than usual. "As it happens, you were correct. My dialysis has not been working correctly, and in fact according to the renal consultant you recommended, my kidneys are rather more badly damaged than I realized."

Amy thought over her words with interest, and some minor concern. "Did they work out why this was the case?" she queried.

"Yes." Director Piggot sighed. "For reasons that are much too complex to go into now, it appears that someone has been very slowly poisoning me."

"Oh." Finding herself taken aback, but oddly not quite as much as she thought she should have been, Amy considered the implications. "Do you know who did it?"

"We're still working on tracing the entire chain of people who are implicated in the situation but we know who was behind it. Unfortunately I can't express my annoyance with him personally as he's well past any punishment I can bring to bear. Rest assured that everyone else will feel the full weight of my displeasure once we finish digging them out." The woman's voice was a snarl in the last couple of sentences, and Amy got the definite impression that there was a more personal connection there than she knew. "But that is not the main reason I called you."

Amy looked at Vicky, who could apparently hear enough of the other side of the conversation to have some idea what was going on, and was watching and listening with a fascinated expression.

"I assume that you have managed to overcome your dislike of Parahumans enough to want me to help you," she said more than asked. There was a long pause, then the other woman replied.

"Essentially I find myself torn between what I readily admit is prejudice, albeit from a place that I feel many would consider perfectly reasonable, and the sure knowledge that if I don't take advantage of the only chance I have, I probably have less than two years at the outside to live," Director Piggot said with reluctance, a sigh in her voice. "And to be honest I'm not yet ready to give up entirely. If only because to do so would be to allow someone I hate more than any dislike I have of Parahumans in general to have the last laugh. If there is an afterlife, I shall take great pleasure in tracking him down and making my displeasure known, but I would prefer that meeting to be some considerable time in the future, I have decided. So, with that in mind…"

She sighed again, as Amy listened, rather fascinated. "I have talked to Doctor Grant, then my medical insurance provider. You may be aware that the insurance the PRT arranges is very comprehensive, and the provider makes an absolutely obscene amount of money from us. While I intensely dislike medical insurance providers for many reasons, we are stuck with them, so I explained what I wanted to them very carefully. Then even more carefully when they objected, and in fact offered to arrange for a face to face meeting should they wish to continue to object. I pointed out I could bring several troopers with me so no one would be in the slightest doubt about how seriously I take the agreement they have with us, and oddly enough at that point their objections evaporated." She sounded viciously amused and Amy was having trouble not bursting into laughter, amid a new-found respect for the woman. She was still wondering what all this was leading up to though.

"One of the reasons I have never wished to be healed by a Parahuman is that I do not wish to be in debt to them. Call it worry about a conflict of interest, call it my prejudice flaring up, call it what you like, but that's how I see it."

"I don't see it that way, Director, but I do understand why someone like you might, I think," Amy interjected quietly.

"Oddly enough I believe you, Miss Dallon. You impress me in many ways. But the point is, I prefer not to leave debts unpaid. The minimum cost the hospital would charge the insurance company for a kidney transplant, according to Doctor Grant once he worked it out for me, is four hundred and thirty seven thousand two hundred and six dollars and nineteen cents." Amy blinked at the sum, which was higher than she'd realized this sort of thing went to. Apparently she was under-informed about just how expensive conventional medical treatment was, she thought somewhat numbly.

"I proposed to the insurance company that they pay you an even five hundred thousand dollars, and pick up the tax on it too, as while that's more than the minimum cost of the transplant, it removes the long term followup costs, hospital tests, time spent in hospital then off work during recovery, and ongoing health costs for my other ailments, which would easily exceed that sum quite rapidly. While they were initially resistant to the idea I persisted and in the end they agreed. If you agree, I am open to whatever schedule you find convenient, and I can feel that both sides owe each other nothing further. Is this acceptable to you?"

By this point Amy had entirely stopped breathing in shock and Vicky was looking stunned too, having moved closer to hear more clearly. The two sisters exchanged glances. She thought rather hysterically for a moment, not having expected how the conversation had gone at all, then finally replied, "I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be a perfectly reasonable approach, Director." Her voice was somewhat bemused even to her own ears, prompting a snort of laughter from the older woman.

"Excellent. I will have an agreement couriered over to your house immediately stating exactly what I just said, so there's no doubt that this is above board. I expect your mother will probably want to see it. If she has any complaints, have her call me. And if I might make an observation, it would be in your best interests to not let your mother dictate your actions too far. I am aware of Carol Dallon's outlook on life and while we share aspects of it, I suspect we disagree on many parts as well. You are providing a service no one else can, and to be brutally honest you have a right to be fairly recompensed for it in my opinion. Certainly when it's to my benefit."

"You… make a valid point, Director," Amy replied, eventually. "Not one I expected from you, I have to admit."

"I am many things, Miss Dallon, but I am not completely without a sense of right and wrong." She sounded almost amused. "And I have seen just how hard you work at the hospital, and when you've helped us and other groups with their medical requirements. Regardless of my feelings about Parahumans in general, I recognize the amount of strain you are under and the level of control it takes to remain even nominally civil. Believe me, I also deal with people I would prefer to avoid at times, and seldom if ever get thanks for what I do. It comes with the job."

"I guess it does." Amy shrugged a little helplessly, looking at Vicky who was shaking her head in wonder. "I'll wait for your courier. And I think we can proceed as planned as soon as you're ready."

"Simply call me when you have the time, and I'll make a hole in my schedule absent a major disaster. Hopefully we won't have one of those for a while yet."

Snickering, Amy replied, "From what I've heard, crime seems to have plummeted recently for reasons no one can work out. So perhaps things are looking up?"

"We do still live in Brockton Bay, so chaos is always an option," Director Piggot sighed, although by the sound of it she was nearly smiling. "I fear that will remain a constant despite our best efforts. Thank you for your time, Miss Dallon."

"My pleasure, Director."

"Good bye." The line went dead and Amy slowly lowered the phone from her ear, staring at it in a sort of mildly awestruck and highly confused manner, until Vicky waved her hand in front of her eyes.

"Huh? What?"

"Did I just hear right, Ames?" her sister exclaimed with a stunned look on her face. "Did Director Piggot seriously offer you half a million fucking dollars to heal her?"

Flopping back on her bed, which she'd been sitting on the edge of, Amy dropped the phone and put her hands over her face, massaging her eyes. "Apparently so, yeah," she said from under her hands, still completely befuddled.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah. Holy shit."

Lowering her hands she gazed at her sister, who looked back with a weird expression. "Mom's going to lose it entirely," she said after a moment, with a sudden dark grin. Vicky collapsed in laughter next to her, which she joined in with seconds later.

Taylor smiled to herself as she scuttled towards the middle of the city, where she wanted to look at some of the things her crabspiders were finding. Amy seemed nice and the money would help her, she thought.

"Let go you fucking bastard!" Janet screamed as she kicked back at the asshole who'd grabbed her as she was jogging through the park, jumping out of a bush unexpectedly. He'd knocked the can of mace she habitually carried in one hand away, then wrenched both arms behind her back and was hauling her back behind the bush he'd emerged from, which along with other undergrowth turned out to surround a small area of clear space, new grass starting to emerge through the leaf mulch. It was well lit by the sinking sun, the day having been one of the nicest so far this year which was why she'd decided to come this way during her jog, a decision she was bitterly regretting now.

"Hold still bitch," he grunted, grasping both her wrists in one hand and slamming the other one across her mouth. She bit him as hard as she could which resulted in a yowl of pain, then a stunning blow across the back of her head. Releasing her as she fell down, he swore violently for a moment. She was just able to roll onto her back and looked up at him, seeing a medium height and very scruffy white guy wearing an old overcoat, glaring down at her and sucking his hand where she'd drawn blood. His other hand went into his pocket and came out with a small pistol which he leveled at her, making her already fast heartbeat skyrocket as she felt the blood drain from her face.

"Get them clothes off," the guy snarled, gesturing with the gun. Feeling faint, she didn't move, until he gestured more forcefully, then she very slowly reached down. This was the nightmare she'd always feared coming true in front of her.

Then, just as she was resigning herself to a fate she couldn't escape, the man yelped in pain and grabbed at his crotch. "Agh!" he screamed, his face going a funny color. His other hand slapped at his rear and the gun he apparently forgot about discharged with a horribly loud bang, making Janet scramble away quickly. Luckily for both of them the round just went into the ground and the inadvertent firing of the pistol took him unawares, causing it to jump out of his hand. He apparently didn't even notice as he was too busy slapping himself and screaming in agony. Utterly befuddled Janet stared in complete confusion, until she looked down at his feet. After a moment she giggled almost hysterically.

He was standing directly on top of a fire ant mound, which had been hidden under the leafy loam and grass. Now it was boiling with the things, which apparently took exception to being stood on, and had decided vengeance was in order. She could see several of them on his shoes and more disappearing up under his ratty old jeans, and could take a very good guess as to where they'd picked to start biting.

Her assailant certainly wasn't happy about the situation, and was flailing at himself in a deranged manner, now in the process of divesting himself of his lower garments heedless of her staring in a mix of shock and amusement. As he was so preoccupied, he didn't notice her stand up, circle around him, and retrieve the pistol, which for some reason the fire ants were giving a wide berth. They seemed entirely uninterested in her and completely focused on giving him a hard time. Inspecting the gun for a moment she found the safety and flicked it on. Putting it in her pocket, she walked back to the idiot who was now both trying to get his jeans off and move away from the ant's nest, in the process failing at both. He fell over and was instantly swarmed by more ants than seemed plausible, although most of them weren't biting.

If they did she thought absently, lining up on his crotch, he'd probably be dead.

Then she kicked him in the goolies as hard as she could possibly manage. Having played field hockey in school this was really quite hard indeed.

He went stark white and threw up all over himself without any delay at all.

Leaving him retching on the ground, still covered in annoyed ants, Janet pulled out her phone as she left, dialing 911 and feeling that justice had been served.

Deep below the city, swimming underwater down a river which was nearly wide enough for a fishing trawler and full of all sorts of weird crap dating back possibly to before the city itself had been founded, Taylor grinned to herself. This was fun, and she was finding all manner of useful information to show her dad.

And applying arthropodic behavioral modification techniques to lots and lots of deserving individuals, while wondering how many times she might have to repeat the process with some of them. Certain people were really quite slow on the uptake…

But she had plenty of ways to continue the ABMT process, so she'd keep doing it and see how things worked out. There seemed to be a nearly limitless supply of people who needed an insect or two in their lives after all. And the supply of those she had was more than up to the job.

Watching the wasp that flew through the partly open window of her apartment, wandered around through the rooms for a while, seemed to look at her briefly as it hovered in mid air, then left the way it had come, Lisa shook her head. Her power had been telling her some very, very strange things for a while now, and some of the conclusions she'd come to were both terrifying and fascinating in equal quantities.

She certainly wasn't going to tell anyone else about them though. Both because she owed a certain… possibly a person, possibly not… a favor for helping her out of a sticky situation, and because there were only two possible outcomes of doing so. One was that she wasn't believed and everyone thought she was nuts. The other was that she was believed and everyone went entirely crazy. Neither situation seemed like it was desirable, so the simplest thing to do was just to keep quiet about the apparent fact that something she didn't understand seemed to be literally everywhere in the city at the same time.

Luckily it seemed friendly and helpful, and not keen on petty criminals. Which was another reason to get out of that lifestyle, although her pride insisted that she and her friends weren't petty criminals. They were professionals.

Just retired ones now. Unless some particularly deserving target happened to become apparent.

She suspected that should this turn out to be the case at some point, she could get backup that would make Alexandria pale and leave merely by asking for it, but she wasn't going to test that theory unless she really needed to. Some things were best left alone if only for the sake of her inner peace.

Smiling slightly, the blonde turned back to the other three, returning to the discussion of what the next step in her plan to get Brian to have custody of his sister, now she'd successfully maneuvered him into employment.

Studying the latest BBPD crime figure report, Armsmaster frowned thoughtfully. Apparently Calvert's interference had caused a larger impact in more places than any of them had expected, based on how much the overall crime rate seemed to be dropping since his death. The trend was steadily downwards, across multiple categories but particularly noticeably for violent street crime. A remarkable number of relatively minor but very irritating criminals such as muggers, burglars, snatch and grab types, and others in the same general classification were being picked up by the police, far more than historically seen. Hate crime attacks were being hit even harder, as the mostly Neo-Nazi gang members appeared to have run into some severe bad fortune.

It was rather peculiar, but somehow removing Calvert from play had produced an outsize effect across the board. They'd known he was behind a shocking percentage of chaos in the city, Armsmaster suspecting that a significant amount of that entirely accidentally and probably to his own detriment, but apparently they'd underestimated just how dramatic his finger in the pie had been. Since he'd gone, and his network was largely unraveled, it seemed that the BBPD was able to make far more headway in dealing with the non-Parahuman problems than anyone had thought likely. The Mayor was probably ecstatic about it, he mused.

Making some notes to try to design a program to predict the interrelatedness of random criminal activity and overall corruption levels, he closed the report and turned to his next task, servicing his third best halberd, which had been making an unnerving faint whistling sound the last time he'd picked it up. That was never good, and he very much wanted to prevent another dimensional incursion.

Those were always a massive pain to fill in the paperwork after, so he was going to make certain it didn't happen again.

Having Dragon laugh at him made it even worse, of course…

Standing on the shore of the underground lake, which she'd come into from the other direction than the first time after a trip of several miles through a couple of tributaries of the river under the city she'd been following, which wound all over the place through caves full of stalactites hanging from the ceiling, Taylor looked around with enormous interest. She had her own glow turned up as brightly as it would go, illuminating a large area in a virulent green, and several of her glowspiders were poking around the area giving off a nice deep blue glow which added to the ambiance rather well in her opinion. Wishing she'd thought to pick up some good underwater action cameras, she made a note to do that as soon as possible, then panned her phone around, videoing the scene. Unfortunately it wasn't sufficiently waterproof to risk using in the lake itself, so she'd have to wait to get good footage there, but this was still going to make her dad pleased.

Putting the phone away in the waterproof case she'd brought, which went back into her backpack, she walked over to inspect the ancient stone construction sticking out into the incredibly clear water of the lake. It was so clear she could see the bottom from here in her self-generated light, although she could tell from the creatures down there the water was over a hundred feet deep.

Taylor prodded the stone jetty, made of the dark basalt native to the region which had been cut into large blocks and fitted together without any obvious mortar, with one leg. "Weird," she commented to her glowspiders, which congregated around her and watched. "Looks a lot older than the city is supposed to be, doesn't it?" Lowering herself a little she peered at one of the blocks closely. "Hardly any signs of tools at all. That's impressive. I wonder how old it really is?" There was no easy way to tell from what she could see.

The construction stuck out into the water about thirty feet, reaching perhaps six feet above the water level, which from the marks on the walls was fairly static as far as she could tell. It was maybe ten feet wide and emerged from the sand and mud on the shore at a shallow angle, with a raised ridge down either side one block wide. The middle section was made of vast slabs of the same rock which probably weighed several tons each. There were holes cut into the rock down each side, she guessed for tying ropes to, and indeed one right at the end had the remains of a very, very old hemp rope, covered in mold, sticking through it.

Curious, she dug down a little where the rocks disappeared into the sand, and found that it carried on underneath for a while. She could trace it further through all the tiny copepods in the sand. By the looks of it none of this had been there when the thing was built, further suggesting great age because she had a feeling that this much sand would take a very long time to deposit considering how slow the flow of the river tributary that came into the cavern off to one side was. It seemed to feed the lake, which she now knew was at least three miles long, and probably over a quarter of a mile wide at the widest. How no one above seemed to know about the place was a bit of a mystery to her, especially as that old boat on the other side had to have come from here a long time ago. Possibly the fragments of rope she was looking at were even related to it.

On the other hand as far as she'd been able to sense there were no connections to the ground above her anywhere near this place. The only access appeared to come either from the way she'd approached this time, which was certainly human-accessible if you knew about it and didn't mind a very long walk with a huge number of places to get comprehensively lost, from that tunnel over there which led further into the hills to the north and was something she was going to have to check out soon, or the far side where you'd need either good diving skills or a power like hers. There was at least one other exit from the lake right at the limit of her range, deep underwater, where it seemed to drain into an even deeper layer of caves, but from what she could make out from nearby creatures that was a quite small hole that a human couldn't get down. Or at least not with any home of coming back…

She'd need to get closer to find out more, but that was for another day. It would probably be a good idea to make some more crabspiders to scout out the whole lake and explore any offshoot passages too, at some point soon.

Staring thoughtfully at the lake, she finally shook her head and decided it would keep. She needed more ways to record this properly, for a start. A phone just wasn't good enough. Turning, she walked over to the entrance to the other tunnel, which went up slightly, then leveled off after a hundred feet or so and wiggled around until it went out of range of her ability to sense the various arthropods and nematodes inhabiting it. The environment down here was, as she'd read was common in caves, very consistent in temperature and humidity, and supported a surprisingly rich web of life. Nothing all that large, but there were a lot of small things, almost all of them falling into her power's domain without any effort at all.

Even the lake was warmer than she'd expected, and seemed to get slightly warmer still the deeper you went. Possibly some sort of volcanic left over heat? She knew from her school work that New England had a volcanic past, although that was a very long time ago and in theory it was now long defunct. Yet there was definitely a slight upwelling of warmer water deep under the lake, coming up through cracks in the rock…

Intriguing, certainly.

This was a lifetime of study, she thought, even for a whole team of scientists. All she could do was document what she discovered and perhaps one day tell someone else about it. But she was going to have fun exploring before that.

And there were possibilities to the underground areas she'd barely touched with her crabspiders… How many things could live in the lake, for example? Or in the rivers and streams, safe from the cold of winter above them, yet still able to easily access ground level?

Oh, yes. She had ideas.

So many ideas…

Making some more notes, she put everything away, took one last look at the ancient and mysterious stone construction, the dark blocks slippery with a sheen of condensation, then called her glowspiders to her and left for the long trip home. Overall it had been a very good day, she thought as she made rapid progress, navigating the maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Late that night, from a sound sleep, her eyes blinked open. Taylor stared at the ceiling as she thought over the idea that had come to her in her dreams, then she smiled widely. "Oooh. Yes, that has possibilities… If it works."

A glowspider typed a few paragraphs into her laptop as she rolled over and went back to sleep. It could wait until morning, though.